Page 94 of Rears & Vices

And in the end, one Spanish man-o’-war, a captaincy, was quite alike another. He’d had captaincies. There was only one Vitaliy Gray.

Everard brushed bits of rope flax from his hands and stood. “Yes, who shall take her? I haven’t been to the States in some years.” He paused, mostly to give everyone, particularly Alarie, time to politely conceal any disbelief. “And never port Charleston. I’ve heard it is beautiful there.”

The line of Vitaliy’s shoulders relaxed. His chin dipped, and his heavy-lidded eyes softened around the edges. And that look—sheer, settled-in fondness—that look was new, and delightful.

“Besides,” Everard added, with a good-natured grimace, “built-in though it may be, we know already the captain’s cot doesn’t harbour fleas.”

Stephan snorted. Romilly René laughed. Alarie raised a perfect eyebrow.

Vitaliy had two bright spots of flush on his cheeks—flush that crinkled and rose as he smiled.

It faded too quickly.

There was a sudden agitation on the Sévère’s weather deck. A small, tightly knotted crowd had gathered, men’s voices alternating angry and hushing each other. Everard craned to look: the epicenter was the weather-deck hatch, through which one Bellingham St. Clare came pushing through, bellowing they let him pass.

Everard’s throat closed painfully, his heart beating in hard pulses. Vitaliy stood and yelled, and the crowd let up marginally; St. Clare was able to haul up and dash across the gangway.

He was visibly distressed, panting hard as he crossed the rail.

“St. Clare?” Everard said. He put out a hand. His question of earlier became urgent, a mantra, but he couldn’t seem to voice it aloud.

Where is D’Arcy?

St. Clare skidded straight past him, coming to a stop before Vitaliy. He whispered.

Vitaliy listened. He looked up, stricken, to Everard, quickly over to the surgeon—oh, God, that meant something bad had gone on, something violent—and back to Everard. His expression was more cautious the second time around. Wary.

Everard knew then. It was heavy in his gut. He shook his head, disbelieving, and managed nothing more than a gasping croak of enquiry:

“No?”

Not Preston.

Louis-Michel Alarie stood. “What’s happened? Mon ami Vee? There was a fight? An attack?”

Vitaliy nodded reluctantly. He said, “The lieutenant.”

Twenty-Three

They’d left D’Arcy in the forecastle quarters.

He was laid across a pair of upright barrels that supported his trunk only. The rest of him hung down loosely. All four limbs outstretched to the floor, fingers curled, toes pointed down and trailing. His head slumped, chin pointed to rafters, his bare neck boneless except for a prominent, vulnerable Adam’s apple. His face⁠—

His face.

D’Arcy looked as though a demon had pulled him up by the chest to a great height and bent him and slashed him and then tossed him down broken.

He didn’t look alive.

Everard made a noise, unknown, and halted, frozen; Vitaliy pushed gently past and blocked his vision with his breadth as Stephan rushed forward⁠—

“Alive,” the surgeon murmured straight away, as though marvelling. Everard sank down, his right hand groping for purchase. He dimly registered that he couldn’t, couldn’t faint—he’d break his wrist⁠—

Bellingham St. Clare appeared and supported him silently, mercifully to the decking, and Everard crumpled like a fawn. St. Clare said something back over his shoulder to Vitaliy, and was replied; then the redhead put his hand to Everard’s cheek briefly—a shocking intimacy—and stood beside him, rock-steady; though it seemed he, too, was holding his breath.

Vitaliy asked a question of Stephan, then abruptly pivoted. Withdrawing his axe, he viciously applied it to the decking beneath his feet. With four mighty overhead swings he cleaved one plank into a neat length the approximate size of a man. It was well-maintained, old-growth wood, speckled with fresh blood. Vitaliy made short work of it.

Behind him, Stephan’s big dark hands hovered near D’Arcy’s ears, close but not touching.