Page 40 of A Pirate's Pleasure
He blinked at me. “And a good morning to you, too. How did you sleep?”
I pulled a face. “As well as ever.” Whitby knew I slept with one eye open, that the band of pirates who’d had an issue with me ever since I’d first set foot on the ship hadn’t become any more kindly disposed toward me. In fact, their acrimony had only grown, and it was hard to shake the feeling that they were slowly recruiting others to their cause. Therefore, despite the lock on Zephyr’s cabin door, I’d spent every night since his disappearance expecting the door to be breached, and to find myself dragged up on deck. Best-case scenario, they’d want to bring me to my knees and humiliate me. Worst-case scenario, whatever they’d planned would result in my death. And the knowledge that Whitby wouldn’t hold back on punishing the culprits after the event didn’t help. Not when dead was dead.
I’d gotten to know Whitby well over the past week during the hours we’d spent poring over maps in Zephyr’s cabin while trying to work out the location of Lucretius’ home. It turned out that Chanfield Sea was home to hundreds of tiny islands. Most of which no one knew the first thing about unless they’d been there. Whitby’s lover, West, who’d turned out to be the ship’s surgeon who’d stitched up my hand, joined us when he could, the three of us working through all the possibilities and crossing off as many as we could for various reasons: too much civilization for a harpy to live there without anyone knowing about it, home of a hydra—there was no way a harpy and a hydra were going to cohabit peacefully—too close to the coast of Theoporia, so inhospitable they made The Welcome Isle look… well, welcoming.
We’d erred on the side of caution, though, annotating any islands worth checking out with a question mark. Discounting them altogether would be a dangerous precedent to set. Even with the thorough process of elimination we’d gone through, that still left fifty or so islands that needed closer examination. The plan was to start with Bloomthon Enclave, the island where Zephyr had first encountered Lucretius, and then work our way out from there. The theory being that Lucretius hadn’t traveled that far, but that’s all it was, a theory.
It would take time, though, and time might be a luxury Zephyr didn’t have unless he played nice, and the thought of him doing that was enough to have bile rising in my throat. How far would a person go to survive? How far would Zephyr go? I prayed he wasn’t finding out the answer to that question. But if he was, I hoped he’d find the resilience to do whatever was required of him. He just needed to buy us some time until we could find him.
“So, whipping, eh?” Whitby asked, breaking into my thoughts. “Is there any reason you woke up this morning thinking about that?” He gave me a hard nudge with his elbow. “One of those dreams, was it?”
I ignored his attempt at lightening the mood. Particularly when any erotic dream would no doubt have had Zephyr in a starring role. No, my dreams were all romance-based rather than sex-based, as if my brain was determined to remind me what I’d given up, and taunt me with the knowledge that just as I’d thought I might regain some of it and make amends, a zealous harpy had snatched it all away.
The glance I threw around the ship was as surreptitious as I could make it as I lowered my voice to not be overheard. “You must have noticed the whispers, how they’ve increased. They’re plotting.” I sounded like a paranoid fool, but that didn’t stop it from being the truth.
“They’re pirates,” Whitby said. “Pirates are always plotting. It’s how we stay alive for as long as we do.”
I fixed him with a stare. “So I shouldn’t worry? Is that what you’re saying?” I was ready for him to put my mind at rest. Maybe if he did, I’d sleep better and not rouse at the slightest noise with my fingers immediately curling around the handle of my dagger that I’d taken to keeping under the pillow.
“Oh no, you should definitely worry.”
“Great. Thanks for that.”
“I have a plan, though,” Whitby said.
“Yeah?”
He scratched his beard. “Yeah, but it requires a ship, and as you’ve seen, they’ve been quite thin on the ground lately.”
That was an understatement. There was a certain irony to the fact that I’d relaxed my stance on piracy for the greater good, only for it not to have been an issue. In some regards, it was a relief, but on the course we’d plotted, food was going to become a huge issue if we didn’t happen upon a ship soon. “Are there usually so few ships?”
Whitby shrugged. “It varies. This time of year, where the weather is less uncertain, it’s not uncommon to come across less of them. Of course, we don’t usually have to concern ourselves with the weather, so it never kept us in port.” Whitby squinted at where there were dark clouds in the distance. “If a storm hits, we’re really going to miss our god of weather.”
I snorted at the label. I bet Zephyr loved that one. Who didn’t want to be labeled a god? “Do you think he’s okay?” I asked.
Whitby turned his head to give me a searching look before answering. “Of course he is. He’s probably escaped and is already on his way back to us. He’ll laugh when he hears how much time we’ve spent discussing his whereabouts and how to track him down.”
I wished I could believe him, and it could be that simple. He hadn’t seen the burning obsession seething under Lucretius’ skin, though. No, there was no way the harpy was letting him go that easily. “So, what’s this plan?” I said, keen to talk about something else.
Whitby gave a crooked smile. “Better that you don’t know. Things’ll come across more naturally that way.” He jerked his head toward the nearest group of pirates. “This lot can be suspicious at the best of times.”
I frowned. “But if it involves me, shouldn’t I have some inkling about what it entails?”
Whitby’s smile and refusal to say more did nothing to put me at ease.
“Ship ahoy!”
It was mid-afternoon when the shout came from Dawson, the pirate acting as lookout at the top of the crow’s nest. I peered into the distance. When I saw nothing, I tried a different direction. Same result. Even with a spyglass to his eye, Whitby didn’t seem to have any better luck, the captain turning in a slow circle. It wasn’t until Dawson shimmied down the mast with admirable athleticism and speed and guided Whitby to look in a specific direction that he studied the horizon for more than a few seconds.
“Well?” I asked, impatience getting the better of me. Whitby passed the spyglass over and I pressed it to my eye. The ship was only a tiny speck in the distance, which explained why I hadn’t been able to see it without magnification, but it was definitely a ship. “Another pirate ship?” I asked.
“You tell me,” Whitby said.
I squinted harder, trying to pick out details. There was no skull and crossbones flying, but that meant nothing. A lot of pirates liked to go under the radar. Nothing got you closer to a ship quicker than pretending to be something you weren’t. It was a fairly small ship, smaller than The Navarino by far. That also pointed toward it not being a pirate ship. Pirates tended to live by the mantra, the bigger, the better. “No?” I said, but there was no keeping the question out of my voice.
“Correct,” Whitby said with a smile in his voice. “Which means it’s all ours.”
A whoop went up around the ship, the pirates eager for plunder. Or blood. Or possibly both. It seemed I was the only one with a cannonball where my stomach used to be. “Change course, Fletcher. Ship is off the port bow at 11 o’clock,” Whitby shouted above the noise of the wind. “It’s coming our way, so we’ll be on them in a couple of hours.”