“Iwould thank God we’ve got you on our crew,” Jack Davies said, then winked.“If only I believed in God.”
Rebecca found herself looking around to see a dozen pirates she knew and respected vying for her attention, not because she was a warm body, but because she had earned her place among them.
She considered, with a brief pang, that she could remain on the ship no matter what.She would not have her husband, but she would still be a pirate.
She would still have these men as her family.
Her thoughts—and the men’s teasing—were interrupted by Sharkhead’s gruff call.“Rebecca!”
He said it with no tenderness at all.Which allowed Rebecca to shield herself as she climbed the steps to join him on the quarterdeck.This would be the moment he ordered her below, and when he did, she would force him to say what he really meant.She would do it nicely, for he had been good to her, but before they went into battle, she would know exactly how he felt.
He stood with two feet firmly planted, the telescope clutched in his left hand.There was no emotion on his face, which made the tattooed shark on his neck that much fiercer.After all this time, Rebecca couldn’t read the silence of his expressions.She could only feel her heart hammering too loudly in her chest.“Aye, Captain?”
At least he emoted in response to that: a grimace.“That frigate is coming for us fast.”
“Aye.”She didn’t turn toward the horizon.She had never needed to look in order to sense doom on her doorstep.“And now you’re our captain.”
She saw him reel back from the words, though she hadn’t intended them to hurt.She had only meant to get to the point of the conversation: that he was no longer her not-husband.
Her hand landed on his sleeve before she could stop herself.“You’ll get us out of this.I’m sure of it.”
His opposite hand, the one without the telescope, took her fingers and pulled her close.So close that the crew might think they were embracing.So close that when his words came out as soft as raindrops, Rebecca could still hear them.“When I left England, I was a man who thought he knew better than everyone around him.Better than my parents and certainly better than Lord Preston.I paid for a ticket on an East Indiaman, same as the white brother and sister going to Calcutta to make their fortunes and the white missionaries off to save souls in Shanghai.But as soon as we were past Ireland, the bosun ordered me below—not them.It wasn’t even the captain, can you believe that?Just a bosun, a Lascar himself with a cat-o’-nine-tails that I can still feel on my back.That was my first lesson: money doesn’t guarantee you anything, not when you look like me.”
Rebecca watched anger steal over his face, his eyes narrowing and his lips hardening.
“We were somewhere off the coast of Africa, five weeks into the journey, when a pirate ship attacked.The East Indiaman survived, but I followed the pirates onto their ship and begged the captain to take me on.”
She pictured it like her own entrance on theGhost, the crew watching with interest, waiting for the man in power to decide.
“Even still, I thought I knew everything.If rank doesn’t matter, as I learned from Lord Preston, nor money, as I learned from the East India Company, then what makes a man is strength.And I decided to be the strongest by learning from the strongest.We were fearsome, we pirates, and we did terrible things with our strength.I knew they were terrible things, but terrible things had been done to me, so why should I not return the favor?”
Now his eyes shone with a horrific brightness, stuck on the horizon far beyond her.Despite the unending heat, a chill ran down Rebecca’s spine.She knew what pirates did.She had done it too, now.
She had never imagined this not-husband of hers doing anythingterrible.Fighting, yes.Killing in a battle, yes.But shooting cannons into towns?Waking women in their beds?Setting fire to houses whether or not there were still children inside?
She steeled herself not to break away if he confessed to any of that.
“I lived by their code for a year or so.Attack ships, steal their treasure, sell it somewhere on the coast, and do it again.Then we attackedCalliope.”His pause was not for dramatic effect but because his voice seemed to be giving out.“Off the coast of Brazil.I should have known…What other kind of merchant ship would it be?”He cleared his throat.“It was a slave ship.That was clear when we boarded.A few of them were armed to help fight us off.We killed them.”His body shrank, withdrawing from her.“I thought we were going to free them.Or maybe make them pirates.Give them free rein ofCalliopeand let them sail off to do whatever they wanted.”
In the silence that followed, Rebecca guessed, “Instead, you sold them at the nearest town?”
“But first, we got our pick of the women.Raped them.”His words came fast now, like they might not come out at all if he didn’t rush through them.“Not me.I didn’t—couldn’t—but I was there.On the deck.I saw it.No one tried to hide it.”
At last, his eyes landed on Rebecca.Dark.Hopeless.Condemned.
“I didn’t try to stop it.”
Rebecca could feel the scene as viscerally as if she stood onCalliopethat moment.The humiliation of being naked for months on end, inspected, disregarded, and now, when there should be salvation, being pressed to the hard deck, still shackled, and used by a greedy pirate who smelled and spit and didn’t care if any of it hurt.
But she also felt the scene as Chow, a man standing futilely by the railing, pressing backward and backward and backward as he tried to escape the crime.She felt the sun burning his skin, the helplessness of having nowhere to look.The weapons that hung at his side boasted the dried blood of slavers, yet he couldn’t wield them now.If he did, he would be shot, hanged, or thrown to the sharks, and the women would still be raped.
And so he remained where he was.He let it happen.The moment ended, but it lived on in him, until one day, years later, a captain threatened to take a woman to his cabin, and Martin Chow broke free from his silence and claimed her as his own instead.
“I had heard of theGhostby then,” he continued, “and so I abandoned that crew when they made port and I followed rumors until I found theGhostin Cartagena.I told Captain Boukman about what I had done and why he might not want me on the crew because of it.He took me on.Said that I could make up for it by stopping as many slavers as possible with him.”
“And save yourself in the process.”She didn’t mean it biblically.She meant that she could see his soul had been torn into tatters onCalliope.If a person didn’t repair such a wound, they couldn’t live.They could only wake, eat, work, sleep, and so forth, until the day they died.
He took it as a religious comment.“I don’t believe in any of that.But I’m a villain, I know that much, and you deserve to know it, too.”
