Page 99 of Rears & Vices

“The ship?” Everard raised his eyebrows. “Or the press?”

Vitaliy’s gaze dropped. “The press. I can see the ship is⁠—”

“She’s not rusted yet,” Everard said, rudely. He peeled the page from the carriage and slotted it into the drying rack.

There was an awkward silence.

“Preston’s back on his feet,” Everard said, his back turned. Not that you’ve asked.

Another pause. Vitaliy said, “I passed him on deck. He looks well.”

It was unmistakably a gentle reprimand, and well deserved on Everard’s part. He turned round.

“I’m sorry—I don’t have much daylight left to hand, and two hundred pages yet to impress…” The Stanhope was a dream of efficiency, but Everard was tired.

Vitaliy took one sideways step. “No. I am sorry. Only…” And then one forward step. His hands came out from behind his back, holding something: a wooden, leather-covered, conspicuously triangular box. A blush bloomed pink on his cheeks as he balanced the box—a hatbox?—upon a pair of stacked crates.

It was a hatbox. Everard blinked, his heart suddenly caught on his sternum.

“I know you do not like… things,” Vitaliy said, still not looking up. “But you had brought only the one hat, and you seemed to… care for it.” He made a quick, compulsive fist with his left hand, and then splayed it, held out a flat palm and pushed it towards the hatbox. For you, the gesture unmistakably said.

God, Everard was an ass. Maybe he was still angry, but that didn’t mean he was excused to act like this.

“I do like hats,” Everard said. “I like hats quite a lot.” And he was sure that he’d never told Vitaliy how much, but he had obviously divined it anyway. “Is… that a hat for me?”

Vitaliy glanced up. The cautious, hopeful glimmer upon his face was nearly enough to bring Everard to his knees from shame. “Yes. It’s meant to be. I hope it is recent enough in style… I was not confident about lace.” He pulled the wig from his head and gave a tiny smile. “I’m not the best judge of such things. Perhaps obvious.”

“No,” Everard said, and Vitaliy’s smile fell away. “I mean to say, you’re wrong. It’s not obvious at all. You look very nice. Beautiful,” Everard said hastily. “And I’m sure the hat is beautiful too. But, er, the ink…” He gestured over himself, his apron that was covered in ink and bits of paper fluff. “I wouldn’t want to…”

“No, I understand.” Vitaliy plunked the wig unevenly back upon his skull. If Everard hadn’t had ink hands, he would’ve centered it for him, pushed those fine blond hairs back into place.

“I should not have…” Vitaliy trailed off with a grunt. “I will let you to it. I must get back myself.”

“Vee,” Everard said, “wait—you could—show…”

But Vitaliy was gone—before Everard could even utter the smallest of thank-yous.

On the ninth day, the ship Vuelte of Vitaliy’s fleet came into Port-au-Prince, all the way from port New York; D’Arcy was well enough by then to lean upon the quarterdeck rail and make a stream of quips at her loading and unloading.

“So—let me make this straight,” D’Arcy said. “They are taking the vanilla, that has been paid for, from us, onto the Vuelte, to Philadelphia. It goes then to Europe. There’s Haitian coffee—that has also been paid for—which also goes to Philadelphia.”

“And Halifax,” Everard added. There was coffee; there was sugar; there was tobacco and indigo. Incoming on the Vuelte were beans, oats, corn, peas, lumber; all of these could not get to or from Haïti by traditional means, since she wasn’t recognised for legal trade by England or America.

He didn’t mention Vitaliy’s taking a net loss on the coffee. It was such an odd thing for a pirate to do, it was almost suspicious. And both of them were all too aware of the thousands of American small arms being loaded into the depths of the Sévère: paid for with pirated Spanish silver and Vitaliy’s slowly eroding sensibilities towards ways and means.

Intention matters.

“And Halifax! There’s no Navy there at all,” D’Arcy said sarcastically.

“Vee isn’t going to Halifax any longer. He’ll stay with me on the Sévère.”

D’Arcy sighed, slumping onto the rail. He winced as his elbows hit. “I ought have joined a merchantman.”

Everard eyed him. They both knew profit shares weren’t why D’Arcy had signed Vee’s articles.

Motivation matters.

“That path would quickly land you in Halifax,” Everard said, “in a hulk.”