Page 86 of Rears & Vices

Everard discouraged a sharp-toothed, junk-beribboned pirate—no indigo—away and down to the deck with a thrust of blade to the shoulder. He looked up. He yelled, “Vee, you’ll dismast her!”

Vitaliy withdrew his knife from the bandolier with his left hand and stepped over the pirate still bleeding at Everard’s feet.

“Yes.” He bent, quick and unceremonious, and slit the pirate’s throat.

It was then that Everard realised: he meant to disable the San Telmo irreparably.

“You know,” Everard said, “I don’t think he would’ve got up?”

Vitaliy grimaced as he straightened. The look in his eyes was frightening: as flat as the night sea.

But then, they’d flown the red. No mercy; no quarter.

Then, quick as a flash, he raised his pistol from his belt and shot it over Everard’s shoulder; there was a thud as someone hit the deck behind him, their weapon clattering away.

“New plan,” Vitaliy growled. “I was wrong.” He brushed sticky blond from his forehead.

Everard spun, clutching his ear, to goggle backward. Vitaliy’s aim wasn’t terrible, either—ball straight through the neck—though Everard could’ve done to keep his eardrum intact. “So, kill everyone is your recompense for it?”

Vitaliy shook his head. He backed against the rail and began to reload his pistol with Marine efficiency. Everard covered him, back to his front, sabre ready, though the battle had already begun to stale, fizzle in their favor. One after another, the pirates of the San Telmo were realising their fate and running.

“It’s Lafitte’s ship,” Vitaliy said. Everard heard him spit cartridge paper, heard the hiss of powder. “Lafitte’s flag. Lafitte’s men, Spaniards, mercenaries. But he is not aboard. This is a captainless ship.”

“What?” Everard said, shoving off a man who’d decided to make a last stand, bashing him in the head with the sabre hilt. “A captainless warship?” The man collapsed. Everard rationalised: drowning while unconscious was better than bleeding out. Surely. “Is that even bloody possible? And if that is the case, then—do pardon my French—what in blasted hellfire are we doing?”

Vitaliy grimaced again, pulled back on the hammer. He shoved the gun into his belt. “Someone wants this ship. We must ensure she does not return to Cuba—with or without her new leadership.”

Vitaliy crossed the deck to the starboard mizzen-yard braces, and cut those, too, swift thunks of his axe. No one tried to stop them; the battle was nearly over.

New leadership, Everard thought. A slot-in captain for the Spanish San Telmo. Someone waiting in the wings of the Sévère with her crew. Someone who had been sailing with them, waiting for their chance, their rendezvous. Someone who worked for Lafitte, or La Corona, or both.

Someone who knew Vitaliy, who had maybe expected a ship from him, who would use a meregildo to defeat a man-o’-war. Someone who had stayed on with them beyond Havana instead of leading the Birch.

Romilly René, bells rang in his head. Romilly René. It must be.

Louis-Michel Alarie appeared from the smoke, covered in sand and viscera, and launched himself up onto the quarterdeck. He leaned out far over the rail, swinging an enemy hat like a flag.

“Indigo pirates of the Sévère!” he bellowed, to an answering cacophony, up and down the deck. “We have our victory! Take what prizes you may carry… et retournez dans le navire!”

The second cheer was deafening.

Twenty-One

After Vitaliy had briefly gone back to the Sévère and returned, down the hatch of the San Telmo they went, into the smoky dim of her second deck. The Sévère crew had already swept through there, fierce with victory and intent on plunder, and enemy bodies were sprawled to every corner, sliding down to larboard, where the deck was lowest. Several hammocks still hung from their hooks: an extreme dereliction of procedure in Everard’s eyes. Neither were there signs that the guns had been cast loose, or even attempted.

Everard said, “They didn’t clear it for battle?”

Vitaliy surveyed the deck with narrowed eyes. “I’d thought they wanted to take her intact. But this…”

For a warship to not clear the gundecks for battle… but instead spend the time to build a cheval-de-frise of pikes on deck and slick it… it made no sense.

“Why not surrender, straight off?” Everard said. “Why risk you broadsiding and sinking her, and no defence?”

Vitaliy frowned. He looked troubled. “Someone who thinks they know me well in a fight would have made that gamble.”

“That you wouldn’t sink her unless direly provoked?” Then Everard caught on. “Oh, you, you mean, not Varfolomey.”

Vitaliy nodded again, carefully sidestepping a wrong-way limb. “Me. Someone who knows the man behind the mask.”