“Yes, well,” Theo said, pulling away. “Sometimes you’re a damn liar, aren’t you?”
This made the three of them laugh, the tension breaking like a sheet of glass. Theo’s laughter released several waiting tears from his eyes, and he winced as he wiped them from his bruised face.
“I’m glad you’re alright,” he said. He offered Zander’s dagger to him.
Zander didn’t know what to say. He nodded, clapping his hand gently on Theo’s good shoulder with one hand and taking the dagger with the other.
“You okay to sail?” he asked Theo.
“I’m always okay to sail,” Theo answered.
“And below deck?” Zander said, looking to Yarrow.
“All’s quiet,” Yarrow said. “Let’s turn this bitch around.”
Sailing a large ship was an entirely different beast than sailing The Valerian. The sloop was fast, versatile, and didn’t require many hands. The ship was a slow, uncooperative thing. Yarrow manned the helm. They held Ace’s compass; Zander had found his jacket right where he left it, the contents of the pockets untouched. Zander and Theo painstakingly tended to the sails.
Zander wished he had six more hands to make the work easier. Instead, he and Theo rushed back and forth, each doing the work of three men. Theo stayed on deck, not able to climb the rigging due to his arm. Zander stayed above ground, leaping from one part of the rigging to another like an ape, coordinating his movements with Theo on the ground as they adjusted the sails, pouring every ounce of their will into making the ship turn ‘round and head Northeast.
Zander gave little thought to rest. His eyes were on his hands, on Theo, on Yarrow, on the stars above their heads that pointed his way home. He wouldn’t sleep until he found her if that’s what it took.
A part of him knew he was pushing his body to its limits. But his muscles had stopped aching soon after boarding the pirate ship once more. His body was numb of all feeling, lithe and ready, as long as he didn’t stop moving.
And below his still bare feet, the crew slept, the sounds of the ocean lapping against the hull filling their ears, fueling their drug-induced dreams.
They didn’t head back to Cadiz. They veered farther east instead, aiming sloppily toward the Strait of Gibraltar. They wouldn’t be able to sail across the strait—in addition to a greater naval presence, the winds in the strait were notoriously difficult to sail in.
They would end up somewhere on the Spanish shore just shy of the strait itself. Precision was not achievable with so many sails and so few sailors; all they needed to concern themselves with was finding a piece of shore they could make berth—or run aground, more likely—and run east.
When the sight of land appeared distantly on the darkened horizon, Zander’s hands were aching. His clothes were finally dry, the wind having whipped the wet material against his skin for the past few hours. His boots, still drying, remained on deck. When they were satisfied with their trajectory toward a long stretch of shore that appeared abandoned, he climbed down from the rigging and donned his wool coat.
The three then wordlessly prepared themselves to abandon ship. As Theo and Yarrow began attaching long climbing ropes to the bow, Zander put his hand gently on Yarrow’s shoulder.
“The captain,” he said. “Did he have any of your rum punch?”
Yarrow nodded, smiling. “Plenty. He let me lead him into his room like a small child who’d stayed up past their bedtime.”
Zander chuckled. “I’m going to sneak in and take a look around. I’ll bind the door behind me.” He picked up a spare piece of rope Yarrow and Theo weren’t using. Yarrow nodded and turned away, and Zander headed to the captain’s quarters, still barefoot.
Creeping inside, Zander allowed himself a more careful look at the opulent room. It was larger than Ace’s quarters, decorated in garish reds and golds, as if the captain thought himself some sort of king. The captain himself was snoring loudly in his bed, draped atop a velvet blanket with his clothes still on. A familiar chest—the one he and Theo had carried inside only hours ago—sat at the foot of his bed.
Zander crept carefully forward and tested the lid—it was locked. He looked around, and when no key was found sitting on a table or hanging on a hook labeled “important keys,” he tiptoed toward the captain. He carefully inspected his pockets—a pipe, a flask, an apple core, its sliminess making Zander shudder and toss it across the room like it meant to bite him.
Finally, he found a key inside an inner pocket of the captain’s red coat. He slept soundly through the frisking.
The chest opened with a loud yawn, but still the captain slept. Inside was more gold than Zander had ever seen before, far more than the sum they’d taken from the dreaded merchant ship weeks ago. Zander quickly filled his pockets, then closed the chest and made to leave.
Something caught his eye before he reached the door. Sitting on a small table near the bed was a crystal about the size of a guava fruit. Its base was a thin rock in layers of black and brown. Towering atop it were small mountains of purple all clustered together, their tips dark, growing lighter the further down they went.
Smiling, Zander thought of Ace and her collection of beautiful things. He took the crystal and placed it in an inner pocket, where it would be safe.
Zander left the captain’s quarters with significantly heavier pockets. Outside, he tied the rope tightly around the handles of the double doors leading to the captain’s quarters, preventing them from being opened from the inside. The thought crossed his mind that he ought to have just killed him, but Zander had done enough killing for the day. His shoulders felt heavy with death.
He looked behind him—the shore loomed closer. Theo and Yarrow emerged from below deck, each fully outfitted with weapons and supplies. Theo’s gun vest was filled with a new collection of stolen guns. Two pistols hung from the holsters at his belt, along with a sword. Yarrow carried their own sword, taken back from whichever pirate had it, along with a dagger, and their satchel, which was full with god-knows-what.
Theo was wiping his hands on a piece of cloth when they emerged. Blood stained the rag, but there were no wounds on Theo’s hands—the blood was someone else’s.
“Trouble?” Zander asked, looking pointedly at the rag.
Theo shook his head. “Just taking care of a problem.”
One of Yarrow’s eyebrows shot up. “He wasn’t exactly a problem. He was asleep.”
“He punched you and knocked you unconscious, my heart. Him continuing to breathe was a problem.”
Zander smirked at the reluctant smile on Yarrow’s face and walked past them to find his damp socks and boots. He accepted a spare pistol when Yarrow handed it to him, shoving it roughly in his outer pocket. Ace’s cutlass hung from his hip, and he tucked his twin daggers back into his boots. He’d become accustomed to feeling them there.
Remembering the coins he’d taken, he split them roughly between him and his friends, and the three of them approached the bow of the ship.
They would run aground in roughly a minute. The ship wasn’t exactly going fast, but it was moving quickly enough they’d have to brace themselves. Then they’d climb down the ropes Theo and Yarrow had fastened and run for their lives before the rest of the pirates streamed out onto deck. The plan was to head east, following the shore as closely as possible while maintaining cover, and get far enough from the pirates that they wouldn’t bother pursuing them.
Zander looked at the sky, then checked Ace’s compass. He had the faintest idea of where they were. He guessed it was around one o’clock in the morning. He was at least partially confident this plan would work, that they wouldn’t be caught or killed in the midst of it. He was almost certain his body would continue to carry him forward once they were free from immediate danger.
He was only completely sure of one thing as the ship barreled toward the shore—he was going to find Ace again if it killed him.
But you and I both know that even death can’t interrupt this particular love story.
