Page 48 of Rears & Vices

“Oh, Alarie?” Louis-Michel Alarie: the incumbent governor of Galveztown, appointed under authority of revolutionary México. From what little Vitaliy had said of him, the man fancied himself a nation-state maker of the likes of Washington. “What has his own navy?”

Despite how disdainfully Vitaliy, the man, had spoken of Alarie, Everard got the impression that Varfolomey, the pirate, was wary of him—or at the least, held him in careful consideration.

“Aye.” Vitaliy handed him the glass. “He’s been a privateer, too, in his own right. But call him governor to his face. He has a temper.”

The Birch was quick, even in the post-storm calm, for she was a galley frigate, with sail, oars, and a full rowing crew—of women, apparently, who knew—at her disposal. She was close enough that Everard could in fact see Romilly René standing at the bow, her tall column of dark curly hair, and a man close at her side: shorter, but standing slim and proud and regal in what looked like impeccable emerald satin.

“They’re making good time.” Everard raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t mention Alarie was a dandy.”

And handsome, too, he didn’t say.

“He’s French,” Vitaliy said shortly, as though this explained away it all. “And he can wait until the morrow.” He jogged down the quarterdeck ladder, disappearing below.

Hmm. Left with the glass, Everard raised it once more. Louis-Michel Alarie: temperamental filibuster, dandy, privateer, commodore of the Galveztown navy.

More judgment than that, Everard would reserve.

Thirteen

It became immediately too dark to risk the Birch coming alongside safely, but her captain seemed content with the signal of wait-for-dawn. She pulled back to a comfortable distance, her own raised Spanish melting into the orange sunset.

But her looming presence nonetheless caused Vitaliy’s vigilance to wane slightly. He declared it a holiday of leisure due the storm, and had rum and port wine and gin pulled up from the stores, to great enthusiasm. Petty gambling in card games was temporarily allowed—which Everard thought was unwise but refrained from saying so—and drums and music made enclaves of merriment wherever one went throughout the three-decked ship.

Subtlety was not required of the Sévère, even in enemy territory. Most captains, even pirate ones, would pause at attacking a galley frigate and her meregildo escort.

Despite all this, Vitaliy himself still insisted on standing watch in the ratlines, in the tops. Everard attempted initially to keep him company, but León the bo’sun, high on victory against the sea, pulled him beneath his arm and dragged him into a round of chanties on the weather deck before he could insist otherwise. And one round turned into several, and fingers of liquor, hands of cards…

They gathered their breath in the dining parlour: León in search of more rum, Everard in search of where the hell D’Arcy could’ve got to. A whole port wine cask brought up a half hour since, and Everard hadn’t had eyes on him since the return of the seas to tranquilidad⁠—

“Oye, ten.” León handed him a tin tumbler. Everard clutched it to his chest, then handed it abruptly back.

“No, mejor no.”

León was the Sévère’s impressively bearded, brown-complexioned bo’sun of two years: by his own definition, half Indigenous Mexica, half Spanish Criollo. The language of the Sévère was broadly French, but with him, Everard found himself slipping into Spanish that was less and less a sailor’s neutral Castilian and more his own childhood, rural patois. León apparently found the lack of distinction between Everard’s s’s and c’s endlessly amusing; and for some reason after the revelation of el seseo, he’d that night stopped calling Everard Spaniard, which Everard appreciated profoundly.

He felt still too recently arrived and, if not detached from, then still other to the crew; to be accused of not only Navy man but Spaniard…

The problem was Everard felt more unsure of his place there than he’d ever been aboard a ship, undefined as his role was as Varfolomey’s matelot—and he’d never possessed an easy camaraderie with anyone in the first place.

Well, excepting D’Arcy, but Preston had given them no option but to be intimate, like it was and had been forever inevitable between them.

… perhaps a thought for a soberer Everard. But—where was he?

León stood at the bottom of the ladder, waiting patiently. He really was very friendly, and very attractive, and very skilled at the upkeep and scheduling of a pirate meregildo.

“Thank God the Birch crew was held off ’til dawn,” Everard mused to the man as they unsteadily surfaced to the weather deck.

“¿Y eso porqué?” León asked amusedly.

“Erm. Because on the Birch they’re ladies. Lady pirates. Women.” He belched. He had not been quite this affected by liquor in some years. “They should not… It will begin to get… It is already a bit brutish here. Really, no, thank you,” he said, to the proffered rum.

León handed the mug to a grateful passersby. “Brutish?” His eyebrows rose. He chuckled. “I forget. You haven’t met Romilly’s women. I dunno if you have seen what rowing does to the physique…”

He made a suggestive noise, and gave Everard a warm, encouraging look over his mug, one that was clearly meant to be reciprocated. Or appreciated. Perhaps he wanted Everard to appreciate women’s physiques?

Either way, León possessed an appealing, soul-deep sensuality that Everard was not at all used to being on the receiving end of. He certainly seemed easy to say yes to. And the fact that he was seeking yeses—at the very least Everard’s encouragement—beneath Vitaliy’s nose seemed quite bold.

Almost literally beneath Vitya’s nose now.