Page 62 of Rears & Vices

“Your tone alone⁠—”

“I am simply declining your offer. Because first and foremost, I am a sea man⁠—”

“I know,” Vitaliy growled.

“I was a captain⁠—”

“Please let me speak!” Vitaliy’s voice rose.

Everard winced. Resonant, indeed; and it was a small space. Chastened, he shut his mouth.

Vitaliy breathed, cursed viciously in Russian, pulled his hands through his hair, and said softer: “I’m sorry. I should not yell. But I cannot think whole thought with you biting from every word, and also you speak quickly, it is very difficult.”

Everard counted two, three heartbeats before he responded.

“I’m sorry. Truly. I didn’t realise. Don’t apologise for yelling; I’ll have been yelled at plenty, you know. Navy man.” He wasn’t sure anyone had ever apologised for it before. “And with considerable less cause and… desperation.” He paused again. “Perdóname. What were you to say?”

Vitaliy took a deep breath. “The press is a gift. It trails no strings. You can print what you like, where you like; here, on board ship; it is your machine. I thought you would like to become printer. I thought the house convenient, as it stands empty. I didn’t mean to imply that sort of sexual arrangement without asking, not that it would be bad thing for either. And…” He looked up to the ceiling. “What else? Yes.” He met Everard’s eyes. “I did not think you would ever want be truly pirate, so I found solution for you. Or not solution; alternative, option. Options are good. But I see now I should’ve asked.”

Everard sat on the crate, waited ten heartbeats this time, just to take all of it in properly.

“You do know your way around a lack of articles, you Russian.”

Vitaliy blinked down. He hadn’t refreshed the kohl pencil since the storm—Everard suspected he didn’t know how heartbeat-inducing it made him look, or he’d have done it for Alarie—and his lashes were so blond as to be nonexistent. It was charming.

Then he laughed, and sat beside Everard on the crate, crossing his boots at ankles. “Only when not trying,” Vitaliy admitted. “Between Russian father, Quaker mother, and trader French, it is a wonder I am understandable at all.”

“Don’t forget Jackspeak. Which was your first?” Everard felt he already knew.

“It was Russian. Seal-hunter’s Russian. Mostly curses.”

Everard laughed. “Curses are first to come. Ask any child.”

“But I didn’t speak until I was yea tall, on fishing boat with my father, so that is why.” Vitaliy gestured, perhaps three feet high. “Otherwise, it would have been my mother’s plain speech. Although English comes better than all the rest, so mayhap it still was.”

Everard understood then. “Your mother was a shore wife?”

“Is,” Vitaliy corrected, then frowned. “Isn’t. She lives still. But she and my father never wed, and she certainly never waited ashore for his return.”

Everard wondered if that also meant he hadn’t returned at all. It wasn’t the sort of thing one asked.

“I have the utmost respect for shore wives,” he said, “wed or not. I do. I merely don’t wish to resemble one.”

Vitaliy’s mouth quirked. “Nor have need of one?”

“God, no. Wish I could have had, some days, but no. Not built that way, I suppose.” With his thumb, Everard began to arrange the nails beside him into formation.

After a moment, he said, “You thought I wouldn’t want to stay upon Sévère as a pirate? After everything? I should think I have the qualifications. A suitable epithet, ready-made,” he jested, waving the gloved hand. “A handful of capital offences. An infamous pirate of a spouse.” He looked up. “Don’t I?”

“Yes.” Vitaliy sat as though to brace himself with both feet. “Of course, legally, you do.”

And otherwise than legally? Everard thought greedily.

“Is more than a shore wife would have, come to think,” Vitaliy mused, then looked suddenly worried. “Why are you unsure of this?”

“Er, well… can it be quite… legal?”

He watched as Vitaliy’s realisation dawned.