Page 41 of Rears & Vices

Everard sighed and pulled the newspaper closer.

D’Arcy was right. Their plan had worked. No one was talking about V. Varfolomey bribing the Navy, no, sir.

The original satire—for this was a copy, done by an in-house satirist—hadn’t been Everard’s best work, but not his worst, either. Vitaliy hadn’t wanted the block print of the trial to resemble him in any significant way, but Everard thought including the waist-to-shoulder ratio of his shirtless figure was harmless enough—and very well represented indeed. Certainly it was a distinctive-enough feature to have been copied by several satirists employed by presses up and down the Atlantic coast. The version in the New York Journal in particular had seemed sympathetic; they’d made both cartoon depictions roguishly handsome, and had inked twin rings on their hands, as though he and Vitaliy were protagonists of a dramatic serial and not a maritime scandal worthy of His Majesty’s censure.

(Canadian gazettes, they’d heard, were now forbidden to run any but the most redacted of stories. Sodomy, it was feared, was catching.)

Here, the Louisiana Star and Chronicle had used Everard’s full surname—their motivations for doing so painfully obvious. De Anglada sounded plenty foreign.

“What says the uncensored Star and Chronicle?” Vitaliy asked.

“Oh!” Everard started. “My apologies. D’you wish to see—?” He began to gather the newsprint, but Vitaliy shook his head.

“Er—they haven’t changed the verbiage, to effect,” Everard said, laying it back down. He cleared his throat. “The caption is new, though. ‘John Bull’s Turn-Coat Shame.’”

Vitaliy hummed. In this version, his caricature looked almost angry to have been spoken for, rearing back from Everard’s outstretched arm.

Turn-coat shame.

Everard said, “They have laid it on a bit thick, haven’t they? Very American.”

Vitaliy said nothing; he glanced up quick, and down again, needles clicking away.

Angry wasn’t too far off the mark, come to think. Vitaliy had seemed upset to be rescued. In fact, Everard still wasn’t sure Vitaliy felt at all grateful for his interventions. Obligated to him, surely, in his debt—the gold on Everard’s right ring finger said that well enough.

Even if the agreement had meant nothing else in practice.

And—D’Arcy was ruthlessly correct on this point—he did mean nothing else. Not on the voyage of the Enemistad, not ashore, and not here. For all that Vitaliy’s eyes had shone wide with anticipation, that day in Kingston, as he proposed they join hands and fates in matelotage, thus far he had been altogether ambivalent towards the more… traditional benefits of the agreement.

But it was for the best. While Vitaliy was already indebted to him for what he’d done, Everard couldn’t broach the subject. Wouldn’t. It would be putting expectations, obligation, on Vitaliy that he didn’t have and, frankly, didn’t want.

I saved your life because we’d fucked once; now let’s again as a thank-you? No, Everard thought queasily. He thought not.

But… had Vitaliy offered it as part and parcel of the matelotage? Freely and openly? Did he want that? Had Everard agreed to it, unrealising?

… unless actually in bed, with one Englishman.

Everard might partake, if offered, perhaps—no, he’d be lying to himself if he thought he was capable of refusing. If Vitaliy had proposed they take it up again, out of interest only, perhaps as a happy clause within the agreement, purely convenient⁠—

No. But he hadn’t. Not a word. And to ask after the consummation of a barely legal pirate marriage done for the sake of public reputation? Absurd. Everard would never.

He was restless, though. Restless and wanting.

Vitaliy had hardly been present to put forward such a thing in either case. Today was the first day that he had spent longer than an hour aboard the pirate flagship. Tonight would be Vitya’s first night spent aboard. Their first night, sharing this greatcabin as sworn mates.

Everard was absolutely not nervous.

He picked up the quill, dipped it, and made one tick more upon the lengthy list before him. First nights were new to Everard; administration of ships was not. His mind didn’t need written lists, but it liked them, and a captain’s requirement of documentation was drilled into him. Vitaliy didn’t mind him making them as long as he burned them after.

Three-quarters of the way down, Everard made another tick with some trepidation, clearing his throat. This, unfortunately, he had to bring to Vitaliy’s attention.

“René sent her Jack to us at breakfast. Galveztown port authority let out a corsario en route to Florida last night, with two dozen Black and one dozen Indigenous slaves aboard. Unpapered. Of course, she carries a Mexican marque.”

Vitaliy’s lips pressed thin.

A marque was a privateering ship’s official papers, allowing her to act under authority of the issuing country—sometimes in violence. That a ship carried a marque from any rebelling Spanish colony, as Everard understood it, meant that even with the anti-slave trade laws being what they were, neither American nor British ships would seize her due to neutrality agreements; nor could they pay other privateers to do so.

It was taken advantage of by many, Varfolomey’s contemporaries most of all. Jean Lafitte in particular.