Page 21 of The Sea Witch (Salt & Sorcery #1)

Alys strode down the passageway, her boot heels sharp on the planks beneath them. A bedeviling red-edged sensation gnawed

at her.

She wasn’t hurt. Anyone in the sailing master’s position would have tried to escape. Alys would have done the same, and it

was almost more admirable that he’d attempted to flee rather than sit meekly and pray that fate saw to his welfare.

And yet instead of going to her quarters to rinse off the sweat of the nerve-inducing day and have a hot meal, she found herself

standing at the entrance to the brig. Inés served as guard, her pistol pointed into the stockade, her face wearing the same

terrifyingly blank look she would use when playing cards. That expression had cost Alys more than a few doubloons.

Inés did, however, wink at Alys when she stepped into the brig. It was a brief wink, barely noticeable, but Alys saw it. Ben,

however, didn’t, since he was hunched on the floor of the stockade, his head in his hands.

His desolation was a palpable thing, in his posture. And within her, his fathomless sorrow and fury was harrowing.

Her heart squeezed, but it was a stupid and foolish piece of meat that only ever caused her problems.

“Is the ship gone?” he rasped from behind the cage of his fingers cradling his head.

“I’ve given Van der Meer ample time to lose himself and his ship,” she answered. “By now, they should be en route to Havana, or wherever the hell he can peddle his unique flavor of charming treachery.”

“Fuck,” Ben said on a long growl.

She blinked to hear him curse. Sailors were infamous for their crude language, but not him .

With his hands and ankles manacled, any kind of escape attempt was rather impressive. Somehow, he’d gotten out of her cabin...

Hell. She hadn’t locked the windows. Damned remarkable of him to climb out that way, and wind up on the upper deck. The physical

strength and determination needed was beyond human.

She pictured him falling, sinking through the blue water, being pinned to the seafloor as the last of his air bubbled up from

his lips, and then the bubbles stopping.

“Fucking stupid ,” she snapped with more heat than she’d intended. “If you were hoping to swim to the island, that wouldn’t have been possible, and even if you did make it, you’d be bound and marooned. Not a winning formula for survival.”

“I wasn’t trying to get to the island.”

She barked out a laugh. “Jacob would ransom you back to the Royal Navy, and deliver you to Port Royal with your throat cut.

Difficult as it may be for you to believe, you’re safer on my ship than you are on his.”

“Escaping to Van der Meer wasn’t part of my plan, either.”

“Then what in the name of Christ’s arsehole did you think you were doing?”

“Learning the truth,” he answered

“What truth? We have everything there is to understand about the fail-safe, and there isn’t a single buccaneer, pirate, privateer,

or sea dog who knows any better.”

Ben shot to his feet and lunged for the bars. She watched a magical shock course the length of his body.

Alys barely managed to keep from stepping back in alarm. He’d never lost command of his self-control.

Ben’s angular face was hard with fury, his blue eyes fiery and sharp as blades fresh from the forge. And his anger resonated

within her in hot waves.

“ Him ,” he said through gritted teeth. “ Who murdered him ?”

Her lips opened yet no sound came out. Him. The older naval officer from Ben’s dream.

“Your father,” she whispered.

Ben’s jaw clenched and his hands flexed into fists at his sides.

“Leave us, Inés,” Alys said over her shoulder.

“Aye, Cap’n.” The crew woman slipped out of the brig, and Alys was alone with Ben, who shook and shuddered. Frustration and

rage and sorrow all drummed through her. She sailed through this storm every day, but the tempest she felt now was his.

Slowly, Alys approached the stockade. Behind the glowing bars, Ben appeared a specimen in an enchanted zoo: Vengeful Male.

“You served on your father’s ship,” she murmured, attempting to calm a feral beast. “And you didn’t accompany him on one mission.”

“I should have been there.” His words were heavy with self-recrimination. “He gave me orders that morning: stay behind. Some

useless task that only I could accomplish. Well, you saw,” he added bitterly. “Compiling logbooks, as though that was a chore

anyone asked for. No one cared. But no, he gave the order, and I had to obey. From the window, I watched the Valiant sail away. Off on a mission to patrol the waters off the north coast of Jamaica.”

She kept silent.

“I wasn’t necessary,” he muttered. “I never had been. Not to him. And I wasn’t there when the pirates attacked and killed him. But maybe... maybe...” He swallowed hard. “I could’ve helped. Defended the ship. Kept him alive.”

“Master’s mates aren’t trained to fight.”

“I wasn’t then. I have more skill now.”

“I—” Words formed and dissolved before she could speak them because, truly, what was there to say? Condolences were such puny

and laughable things in the face of violent death. Even the few offered to her after Ellen’s execution were worse than silence,

devastating and pitiful and so unbearably useless.

“Admiral Strickland and the Jupiter found him and his ship.” His tone flattened. “There were survivors, men too terrified to give much of an accounting of what

had happened when they were brought back to Port Royal. I was never given permission to read the official record, scant as

it was. I’ve collected rumors. Who was sighted off the north coast of Jamaica.”

“Including Van der Meer and his ship.”

Ben dragged his hands through his tangled hair and the chains between his wrists rattled like bones.

“Immediately after, I asked to be transferred to the Jupiter . I had to get back out onto the water as soon as possible, had to find—”

He broke off, and the column of his throat worked.

“So, you search,” Alys said quietly. “The tavern at St. Gertrude. Climbing the rigging of my ship to get a look at Van der

Meer and the Edelsteen . How long has it been, since he died?”

“He didn’t die . He was murdered . You die peacefully in your sleep, in your own bed. You’re murdered on the deck of your ship. Shot in the chest. Point-blank.”

She was silent. Ellen had had her breath stolen, a rough hempen noose around her neck wringing away her life, and too many times Alys had imagined what it had been like for her sister, slowly, slowly choking to the sounds of a crowd cheering on her death.

“Five years,” Ben said after a moment. “Six days after my twenty-first birthday.”

“A long time to carry the burden of vengeance.”

“I’ll bear that weight until the day I die.”

“What’ll you do, when you find whoever was responsible?”

“I...” He cupped his forehead. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. Another way I’ve failed my father.”

“You didn’t fail him.” She stepped closer to the bars. “What happened wasn’t in your control.”

“I should have been there.”

“Sometimes, we can’t be there for the people who need us most. And we have to live with that.”

Her hands came up to reach through the bars and touch him, offer some measure of solace or comfort, paltry as it might be.

But she forced them back down to her sides.

“Did you learn anything from looking at the Edelsteen ?” she asked.

“Evidence was in short supply, but even if the killer was on that ship,” he added, “peering at him through a spyglass from over a hundred feet away isn’t the ideal way to gather intelligence.

For all I know, he’s on Van der Meer’s ship. Hell, he could be Van der Meer, but being trapped here means I’ll never get the truth.”

“Van der Meer is all bluster. And a coward. Trickery is how he plays the game. He’d never look a man in the eye with the muzzle

of a flintlock pressed into his target’s chest. A dagger between the shoulder blades is his favored way, but even that’s too

messy for his liking.”

“He has a reputation for guile, but he might —”

“Jacob wouldn’t kill an officer in the Royal Navy. He’d rather fuck and cheat at cards than attack a naval ship.”

“You sound confident in your assessment of Jacob’s character.”

Her level gaze met his. “Want me to say it? We were lovers.”

“Were.”

“Everyone makes mistakes. One of mine happens to be a handsome Dutchman who can eat cunt like a god but is as trustworthy

as an adder.”

After a long silence, Ben said, “That leaves Diego Sanchez, Louis Dupont, and Edward Best. The other pirates seen near my

father’s ship.” He exhaled. “I’m trying to be Orestes, but I’m as useful as one of Medusa’s victims, turned to stone.”

She’d met some of those men he’d mentioned, yet they were no friends of hers and she knew little about their histories. After

a moment, she snapped her fingers and the glow around the cage’s bars disappeared. She took a key from her belt and used it

to unlock the cage before stepping back.

“It’s late and my crew’s exhausted.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Tomorrow, you’ll get the chance to talk to each

of them to learn if any of them know anything about your father’s murder.”

Motionless, he stared at her.

“We’ll take you back to my quarters,” she continued when he didn’t move, “and through the forenoon watch, the company will

come down one at a time and tell you what they know. Women aren’t looked upon favorably on pirate ships, so they wouldn’t

have served with Sanchez, Dupont, or Best, and wouldn’t have been present at the crime. Even so, it’s always possible someone

heard something, news or a rumor or anything that might give you more information.”

Still, he stayed rooted to the spot. She felt his disbelief, a heavy weight dragging him down.

Alys gripped the bars of the cage’s door and pulled it open.

She waved her arm wide in invitation. “This isn’t a trap, Ben.

It’s not freedom, either. I still need you, but I won’t punish you for doing exactly what I would have done, had I been in your boots.

For the record, I was a seventeen-year-old girl trapped in a grim Cape Ann fishing village five years ago.

And I never knew anything about your father’s murder until this very night.

Believe me. Or don’t. That’s your choice. ”

His chains jangled as he took one step, and then another. He paused on the threshold of the brig, turning his head so his

gaze met hers directly.

“I believe you,” he said lowly.

His words sank all the way through her, landing deep in her belly with a peculiar shiver.

She motioned for him to precede her. As he clanked his way past her, their gazes held. An unnerving tremor moved through her.

By the tides, if only she hadn’t dreamwalked with him. Yet she’d had no choice. Now they were tied to one another. And she

had no idea when, or if, that connection could be severed.

The more she learned of him, the more tangled they became in each other. Such tethers could drag them both down into the depths,

sinking together into the profound deep.