Page 58 of Rears & Vices

The tin fell to the railing, bounced off with a loud clang and flying drops—Everard winced—and dropped into the water below, ker-plunk. Then Everard had a lot of woman and lace threateningly close to his person.

Holy good God, she was truly as tall as he was.

“You are a fool,” she hissed, directly in his ear, “and a liar. You think Vitya’s motivated by something as small as wealth? Or you’ll just imply that? To me? Who holds his balls? To anyone? After so much paper farce?” She leaned, spat rougey phlegm directly on his boot, and came back up to the level of his nose. Everard saw nothing but grey eyes, fury, a vague dark halo of curly hair. “You should know better. It is this thing that separates Vee from le crétin Lafitte, Vee’s ungreediness that holds him in higher esteem than Lafitte to Haïti and México, the reason why they will even give him time of day. And you, the man supposed to him closest, you will refute it?”

Everard hadn’t known this. Hadn’t realised it at all. “I⁠—”

René leaned even closer, ’til he thought she might try to bite off his nose. “Lucky you said those liar’s words to me, and me alone. If I catch you again spreading shit about Vee, undermining him to save only your pitiful pride, matelot… I don’t care who you are or what kind of magic cunt you have. You will not live to kiss him goodnight. And Vee will not care, for his business is utmost. You are… convenient.” She sneered.

Then she about-faced, bows fluttering, skirts heaving, and stomped across the cross-gangway to the Birch, out of sight.

Everard leaned heavily on the rail. Naturally, the commotion had caught everyone’s attention; the stunned quiet that had fallen over the loader crew was already giving way to speculative murmurs.

Worst of all, Vitaliy stared over, Louis-Michel Alarie curious at his side. Vee’s expression was as flat as René’s had been, and he stood deadly still. Everard couldn’t look away. Some mate he was.

At last, expressionless, Vitaliy turned back to Alarie. Arm-in-arm, they went into the companionway and then the greatcabin; the door shut firmly behind. Everard frowned.

Someone thrust a fresh, undented mug into his vision: two fingers of straight rum, unwatered. He took it gratefully and looked over. He expected D’Arcy, but it was León.

“Words of advice, matelot,” he rumbled. He, too, said it mat-low. “You know no one fucks with Vee?” A broad brow waggled. “Excepting you.”

Everard grunted. Thankfully, his face couldn’t get much more enflamed.

“Pues hombre,” León said, thumping him on the shoulder with a palm and a knowing look, “entiéndalo. Not even Vee fucks with Romilly René.”

Everard wished he could believe that.

Fifteen

By lunch mess, they’d sailed clear of both Jean Lafitte’s territorial waters and the loop current, and were making three knots southeast past Havana. There were no storms nor sail on the horizon. D’Arcy was by now back to his usual self, but that might have been that the Sévère’s cook—Rob Appleby—had made good with the fresh rations, having taken the influx as an excuse to slaughter a quantity of the ship’s cocks, “for space.” The result was an exceptional spiced capón a la barbacoa with sauce, and fluffy rice and potatoes, fresh and unbored by bichos.

They’d taken on Louis-Michel Alarie and his pretty face in one of the teniente’s cabins, since he shared their ultimate destination of Haïti. The Birch—which had a necessary Spanish marque—had left their convoy outside Havana, leaving the Sévère to give the slaver port a wide berth.

To Everard’s dismay, Romilly René still did not join her but stayed on, apparently essential. Selfishly, Everard wished that she had gone, but no; there she sat beside Vitaliy, her long, ruthlessly clean nails digging into fowl flesh and pushing it daintily into a rouge-stained mouth. While Alarie ate in the greatcabin parlour, as befitted His Governorship, Vee never took his meals there, but seemingly at random hours with the crew mess. By chance, they’d all ended up together today, awkwardly ignoring each other from opposite ends of the table.

Messes upon the Sévère were organised thusly: everyone ate in shifts, either in the second-deck teniente’s parlour, with its long table and row of windows, or in the regular mess, where the proximity to the galley was preferable for a hot meal—except, of course, at the height of Caribbean summer, when nowhere without a through-breeze was preferable.

It was nearly like being a midshipman again, except that the rations were vastly better. The company, too.

D’Arcy hadn’t been telling the full truth when he talked of crew hierarchy. The crew sorted themselves into shift watches, messes, and ingroups as persons were wont to do; there was a gang of Welshmen all the others kept warily clear of, reminding Everard of Aedd from the coffeehouse. But quite like nearly every person aboard knowing their way around a cannon, jobs and responsibilities were unspecialised, and no one was held higher than another. Food rations were portioned as equally as could be managed.

Above all, Everard realised, the main difference was choice. No one had been wrangled from the docks with ropey sailors’ arms and shoved into a dirty, sloshy underbelly hold. They’d chosen—even if it had been that choice, between the devil and the deep blue sea, or between the sea and slavery—and would get a fair share for at least four months’ term.

Early on, he’d asked Vitaliy what portion of his crew was plucked from enemy prizes, and the offhand number had shocked him: almost no one had been forced over the years. Unofficially, of course, because forced men could be tried as reluctant criminals instead of wholehearted deserters. But although there were a bare handful they’d picked up from storm wrecks—and true, most preferred solid land after surviving a wreck—most of Varfolomey’s pirates were hired in much the same way as on a merchantman, only with terms far more appealing, and that it came with a higher risk of death.

Of runaways and plunderers and exiles, Vee had first pick.

That, he thought, was probably enough for Jean Lafitte to hate his rival on its own.

Lacking old newsprint gossip as research, Everard asked D’Arcy what of the Sévère’s reputation with prized crew. He chuckled, said, “Of those ships he’s boarded? Probably few enough persons left in shape to force, if I’m being honest.”

It meant no mercy. No survivors. V. Varfolomey didn’t play games; he was deadly serious.

D’Arcy watched his expression, snorted, and said gently, “He’s not a hunter, Ev. If anything short of a man-o’-war’s stupid enough to take on a pirate meregildo with a fleet behind her, they deserve it.”

Everard had some thoughts on that, most of them disagreeing.

He watched Vitaliy give a quiet half-smile to something Romilly René said. At the moment, his lips were more starkly outlined than usual, bloodred from the heat of the spice rub Everard could still feel on his own tongue.