Page 12 of The Sea Witch (Salt & Sorcery #1)

“Of your many good ideas, this is not one of them.” Stasia spoke lowly to Alys, as two of the crew set up a hammock at one

end of Alys’s great cabin. It was a typical canvas hammock, no different from the other ones used by the rest of the crew.

Neither a punishment nor a reward. Or so Alys told herself.

“I’ve run through several scenarios,” Alys answered, “and this is the best option. He knows the Caribbean, better than any

of us. Assets as valuable as him don’t simply get caught in our trawling net. If I do this, I’ll need him here, and safe.”

“What about your safety?”

“The sailing master is shackled, manacled, and unarmed.” She glanced toward the man in question, who stood near the large

window and gazed around her quarters with a keen and interested eye.

If he was looking for telltale details that might give him more insight into her, he’d not have much luck searching the great

cabin. There was the usual assortment of furnishings taken from plundered ships, including a French tapestry and a collection

of gilded Spanish bowls that were nothing like the plain wooden ones she’d eaten out of back home. Alys still couldn’t bring

herself to eat from the gilded bowls, though, so they sat unused on her shelves.

When Alys had fled Norham, she’d taken the barest of essentials. Nothing from home held sentimental value, save for a compass, and the seashell Ellen had given her long ago, which now resided in a locked drawer in Alys’s desk.

His sharp gaze fell on one of her few personal possessions that held any true meaning: between books on seamanship and navigation,

there was a small painting of a woman reading by the light of a single candle, rendered in the Dutch style. The woman resembled

Ellen, not so much in appearance, but in thoughtful, absorbed disposition. Yet he couldn’t know this, and nothing in and of

itself in the painting gave anything about her away. Even so, merely seeing him have this tiny glimpse into her made the impossible

happen: she blushed.

“I can’t sleep through a mosquito sneezing,” she added. “With those irons on him, he won’t scratch his bollocks without me

hearing. Any attempted attack during the night will be met by a spell that summons the energy of a bear snapping saplings

to break every bone in his hands.”

“Physical attacks are not of much concern to me,” Stasia noted dryly. “Even Blind Yannis from my village would be aware of

how the sailing master looks at you.”

“The navy man is afraid and uncertain.”

“There is more than fear in his eyes.”

Alys glanced in Benjamin Priestley’s direction. His own gaze darted away, but not before she felt his regard on her, warm

honey upon her skin. It wasn’t quite the way a captive contemplated their captor.

He was a warrant officer of His Majesty’s Navy. If he’d been so determined to chase her from the tavern through St. Gertrude

and then onto the naval ship Jupiter , and then cling to the side of a longboat as she made her escape... she’d be a damned fool to think he wouldn’t seize any opportunity

to reverse their situation and see her in irons.

And, unlike her general policy of not killing those she captured, if she fell into the hands of the navy, she’d be summarily tried and hanged at Gallows Point in Port Royal, with her rotting body displayed in a cage as a warning to others who might follow in her footsteps.

They would love to see not just a pirate but a witch executed for the crime of existing.

“He serves one purpose. Warming my berth is not it.”

“You have another aim in mind. If it is what I believe you intend, I consider it a prodigiously bad idea.”

“What choice do I have?” Alys demanded lowly. “He won’t speak of what he knows, but there’s another way to get him to reveal

his secrets.”

Stasia’s lips thinned. “Dreamwalking is a dangerous tactic.”

“What happens in dreams isn’t real.”

“Not in the dream itself, but,” the quartermaster added in a whisper, “what happens after . I have heard that dreamwalking binds you to someone. It is impossible to step through someone’s dreams without having a

part of you interwoven with some part of them. There is no going back from taking that leap into their mind.”

Dreamwalking was something Stasia had told her about, a legendary practice that witches and mages of the Mediterranean and

Levantine Sea dared to employ whenever they needed to go deep within someone’s mind to unlock hidden mysteries. It was seldom

done, though, risky as it was for both the witch and the dreamer.

“How’ve you gained this knowledge?” Alys asked. “You’ve never done it before.”

“Neither have you.”

Despite the unease in her belly from the danger that loomed, Alys clipped, “I’ve little choice in the matter. His dreams will

give us what we need, and the task’s too important not to try. Consider what it’d mean if we used Little George’s fail-safe.

We’d have far less to fear from the threat of the Jupiter if it didn’t have the leviathan. If that means taking this risk, I’ll do it.”

Stasia drew closer, and said in a whisper, “It is not something you can force upon another. If one party is unwilling, the dreamwalking cannot happen.”

“?‘You and me, we’re enemies to the bone, but do you mind if I enter your dreams?’?” Alys exhaled. “He’d never agree.”

“I would not wish someone to do it to me. The mistakes I have made in my life have been my own—and even then, I paid for them.”

Though Alys was tempted to press Stasia for more details, she held her tongue. They had grown close over the past year, but

even so, the details behind Stasia’s reasons for putting the Mediterranean behind her remained hazy. The few hints Alys had

been able to figure out had been enough to reveal that a broken heart and betrayal lay at the core of the trouble, and when

it came to matters of shattered love, it was best to leave that wreck at the bottom of the sea.

“I will leave his dreams alone,” Alys finally said. “I’ll find some other means of learning what he knows.”

“There is no need to keep him this close. The brig should be where he sleeps.”

“He’ll be less of a mind to help us if his view is spoiled by bars. Staying in more comfortable quarters could sway him.”

“Are you thinking of his comfort, or a view of his fine thighs?”

“I’m captain of this ship,” Alys fired back, “and more concerned with the fate of my crew than the navigator’s thighs.” She

forced herself not to look at Priestley, or the long taut length of his legs shifting beneath the tight fabric of his breeches.

“Apologies, I must be thinking of another redheaded captain who stares at him like he is the fresh beef after months of hardtack.”

Alys sent her friend a rude hand gesture.

“Back to your duties,” she said to the crew once they had finished hanging the hammock from two hooks. It swayed with the motion of the ship, as though being rocked by an unseen mother.

The crew saluted her before quitting her quarters.

“That includes you, quartermaster,” Alys added for Stasia’s ears only. “We’ll break our fast at four bells. Josephine might

be flattered into making coddled eggs and toasted cheese.”

“Yet no one on this ship can make coffee worth a damn. Sleep as soundly as you can tonight.”

“I sleep no other way.”

“Mind, do not think of beef.” After shooting her a wry glance, Stasia quitted the great cabin. Leaving Alys alone with the

sailing master.

They glanced at each other before looking away. A strained and uncomfortable silence fell. Her body was curiously awkward,

her tongue and gaze oddly shy. She snorted in self-disgust. She’d taken to the sea to never again have to adhere to social

niceties or custom. Especially in the presence of men.

“Your quartermaster should be disciplined for being so familiar with you,” he said.

“I rely on her familiarity. It helps me keep this ship sailing smoothly.”

“Without regulation and order, and hierarchy, a ship falls apart.”

“Everyone knows their duties on the Sea Witch , and we take pride in keeping her shipshape, but none of us are better than any other.”

He shook his head. “The customs of pirates are inexplicable.”

“Only to those passing judgment on us. We’re all exiles aboard this ship, in one fashion or another. But not you. This sea

is your home. You know it better than anyone.”

She crossed the cabin to where the map of the Caribbean lay spread across the table.

For over a year, she’d studied charts such as this one, learning islands and inlets and keys and archipelagos, and all the secrets that drew so many to this part of the world.

It was beautiful and treacherous, a place of mystery and azure water, beyond the scope of anyone ever fully grasping the complexity of such a vast place.

“A year isn’t enough to understand this sea,” she murmured.

“Lifetimes aren’t enough.” He clinked his way to stand beside her, and they both regarded the chart and its painstakingly

rendered collection of atolls, peninsulas, and straits, islands both large and barely the size of a grain of sand. “Though

I was born here, many of us will always be outsiders, so we cling to our maps to show us places and things we can’t ever fully

understand.”

Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. “It hurt me, too, to set fire to your chart room.”

“No one impelled your hand to throw that spell.” His voice was flat.

“By chasing me, that’s exactly what you did.”

“A neat rationalization.”

“You don’t have the protection of the king here, Sailing Master. On this ship, in this cabin, we’re simply people trying our

best.”

“I fail to see how making a living through theft and murder is trying your best .” He set his hand on the table, and the chain stretching between his wrists rattled like metal bones.

Alys didn’t tell him that she and the women of Norham had first come to the Caribbean in search of something else other than

plunder. Freedom. Becoming pirates hadn’t been part of anyone’s agenda. Yet in order to fund their liberty, they’d turned