Page 75 of Rears & Vices

D’Arcy crouched beside Stephan. “Marcus put up a fight,” he murmured. “This one bled out?”

Stephan nodded. The ship’s surgeon was a slight, soft-spoken Black man with whom Everard, chronically healthy on the water, hadn’t had much conversation with one-on-one, but knew from the post-supper singing and music that the whole ship indulged in. He had a Philadelphian accent in a beautiful low baritone that—more often than not—smoothed over Vee’s hesitant, staccato fiddle-playing, and steady doctor’s hands that corrected Vee on his fingering.

Everard hadn’t missed his subtle survey of Everard’s definitely-not-syphilitic forearm upon first meeting. The protectiveness for his friend and captain had endeared him to Everard instantly.

“Here.” Stephan pointed to a red-soaked rent of trouser. “Or here.” A lower right-side puncture, equally soaked. Marcus had fought hard and fierce; his murderer hadn’t outlived him long.

“The poor brave sod,” Everard said.

Thom returned, chair slung over his shoulder.

D’Arcy stood. “I’ll help with the chair.” He handed Everard one of his pistols, and then up into the ratlines he too went. It would take two to maneuver a dead man into the sling chair and carefully belay him down.

Louis-Michel Alarie stood behind his own gilt spyglass, eyeing the ship on the horizon.

“What do you think, Governor?” Everard asked. “Is it Armada?”

“I believe yes,” Alarie said crisply, after a moment. “Her make is very new: anti-revolutionary, as they have used against us in Amérique du Sud. I will say… seventy guns? But quicker than you would think. And she’s windward, of course—on the trades.”

“Right,” Everard replied. He blew out a breath. The Sévère was anything but fast: most especially when sailing against the wind as they were. “Well, shite. What’s the chance of Vee tacking and fleeing her?”

Alarie’s eyes flicked over, as if wondering why Everard didn’t know the answer to that. Everard wondered too.

“With men murdered on his deck?” Alarie tapped his lips. “Very small, I think. Especially now we have shot at her.” He grimaced. “We have a rendezvous.”

Eighteen

Three hours by Vitaliy’s hack watch, ’til the warship would be close enough to engage; a forenoon confrontation.

Not much time at all.

Abovedecks, they’d found every man of the fourth bell watch had been murdered sometime in the predawn. León had found the foretopman as dead as Marcus, similarly garroted. They had a hasty funeral, and René turned up three more infiltrator unknowns from her sweep, three more infiltrators that someone had let aboard.

Two and one-half hours.

All three gun decks had been cleared for action. The crew hammocks had been rolled, lashed, and stacked into the rail stanchions as a canvas parapet against musket sight. Even the guns in Vitaliy’s greatcabin had been run out and pointed.

Vitaliy had the infiltrating Spaniards gagged and tied to the mainmast while he held council on what to do with them. It wasn’t a long discussion; mostly, the question was whether they had the time to coerce information from them, and what use it would be. It was only at René’s anticipatory gleam at the suggestion of torture that Everard fully understood the strange, conflicted look that had come over Vitaliy earlier, because it came down over his brows like a shadow again.

Everard thought of León’s comment. Not even Vee crosses her.

In the end, the verdict was almost unanimous: given the little time, and since the fourth bell watch had all been garroted, the pirates kept to their infamous code of reciprocity. They hauled the infiltrators up in tight nooses, the loose end of each threaded through a block and winch that was cranked much too slowly for mercy. They were hung from the bowsprit, better to be seen by the advancing enemy.

Everard had seen worse in the name of what the Crown called justice. He tried to keep this in mind, observing Vitaliy as the sentence was meted out: his straight back, flattened lips, and slight, troubled frown.

But reciprocal violence was written into his articles, the pirate code of law. His hands were tied.

How are you truly a pirate, Vitya? he wondered. How is this the man Vitaliy Gray became?

Two hours.

The Spanish ship—named by the three dead instigators as San Telmo—crept closer, sending up signal flag after signal flag, until finally they raised the inevitable: surrender or face death.

To this, the Sévère raised the massive black, with Varfolomey’s signature calligraphic V upon it in stark white; beneath it, the deadly red. No quarter made in battle.

No point not to. The Sévère could not flee if they wanted to keep course, and the crew wouldn’t want her to even if she could. They wanted recompense. Justification for losing five men, for the backbreaking trouble of sailing a massive, slow meregildo. They wanted battle, the thrill of another Spanish warship prize.

One and one-half hours.