From around the stack of barrels, a pistol appeared again, its owner leaning out to take aim. Jill exhaled and squeezed her finger. The pistol jumped, burned with fire, and the cloud of smoke burst into her face.
And at the other end of the block, a man screamed.
“Oh, good work, Jill!” Henry said, laughing.
She couldn’t believe it, but when the smoke cleared, one of Blane’s men had fallen, gripping his arm and cursing. His companion started to drag him back to cover, when he twitched back—and Captain Cooper was there, slicing a dagger across his throat. Blood poured, and he fell, hands on his neck, hopelessly trying to stop the flow. Then he lay still.
Cooper put her boot on the chest of the man Jill had shot and leaned over to cut his throat as well. The two had been so distracted by Jill and Henry firing at them, they hadn’t noticed their killer sneaking up behind.
The two bodies lay there, blood dripping from them and soaking into the ground. Jill could almost smell it, sharp and bitter against the dank sea air. Her stomach clenched, and she pressed her hand over her mouth and turned away. After a moment of shallow breathing her stomach settled and her racing heart calmed. The battle was one thing; the blood spilled then had happened too quickly to really process. This was different. She could see their eyes, open and staring at nothing. This looked like murder—even if the men had been trying to kill them. Cooper had slit their throats, and that wasn’t self-defense, was it? What, then, was the difference between a duel and murder?
Her heart racing, Jill wasn’t sure how she felt about this battle in miniature. It didn’t seem right, none of it. Even if they’d had every intention of killing her and her friends. But she’d never seen anyone die before.
She preferred baited blades and no blood.
“You all right, then?” Henry asked. Jill just shook her head.
Cooper returned to them, wiping off her dagger with a handkerchief.
“Here comes Abe with the rowboat,” the captain said.
Abe and Tennant ran the boat ashore, and the others climbed in, splashing in the waves and pushing off. Henry and Abe took the oars, and in moments they were slipping across the harbor. Skillfully, the two cut the water without a splash, with barely a ripple. Cooper stood at the prow of the boat, scanning forward. The harbor was quiet.
“I wish I knew where Blane’s bloody ship was. I fear he’s circling just outside the harbor, waiting for us to sail out so he can pounce on us,” Cooper said. “We’ll get to the Diana and make our escape for nothing.”
“He’s anchored in a cove to the east,” Jill said. “He’s got a camp there. I don’t think he can get here to catch us in time.”
“I don’t know, lass. Blane’s got tricky ways about him, and he’ll want that sword back.” Now she grinned. “That must have been quite a sight, you taking it from him.”
“Honestly, it was kind of a blur,” Jill said.
“Probably for the best. Where’s my crew? Who’s on watch?” Cooper whistled, and a figure appeared at the gunwales. A moment later a line came over the side, and the boat was secured to the Diana.
They waited for the rest of the crew to return, another long, dragging hour. Jill understood the captain’s worry. Logically, Blane was on the other side of the island and couldn’t reach them. Nonetheless, Jill expected to see the Heart’s Revenge blazing into the harbor at any moment, all its cannons firing.
It didn’t happen.
Back on board, Jill followed Captain Cooper and Abe to her cabin, where the two of them started pulling charts from a drawer. The group of them gathered over the table, a conspiracy bent under the light of a single lantern: Captain Cooper and Abe, looking grim and serious; Jill and Henry, who hadn’t left Jill’s side since they found her running through the forest away from Blane.
“We make for the Turks and Caicos, then on to the Lesser Antilles,” Marjory said, pointing, before Jill had even oriented herself. The maps were rough, the lines jagged, the labels scrawled in indecipherable handwriting. The paper itself was stained and wrinkled; these maps had seen better days. “We lose ourselves. Stay far away from where Blane expects to find us. We’ve got to keep this away from him. Let’s see it, then.” Cooper gestured at the broken sword Jill still held close.
The captain could have overpowered Jill, simply taken it, and left her behind to whatever fate. But she didn’t. Jill had kept the sword tucked away and safe during the escape from Nassau. Now she brought it into the faint, flickering light.
The swept hilt was simple and elegant, smooth steel bars looping to form a cage around the hand that gripped it. Quillons stuck out, perpendicular to the wire-wrapped grip. The blade was broad and strong, sharpened until light seemed to spark off the edge. It was fierce and perfect, until the end, which was a jagged, toothy stump.
Cooper reached into a pouch at her belt and drew out the six-inch scrap of rapier Jill had found on that long-ago beach, roughly cleaned, the edges dull. The length of steel trembled, pulling against her fingers, drawn toward the sword as it had been all along. The captain kept a firm hold on it as she brought it to the sword and lined them together.
The ragged edges matched. Cooper fit them together, and not a sliver of steel was missing between them. The scrollwork design that the rusted piece hinted at continued, shining, on the main blade. The sword, though, remained broken. The pieces matched, but didn’t fuse. The magic didn’t go that far.
The captain looked at Jill. “Many years ago, Edmund Blane betrayed me. We fought. I broke his sword and threw the piece overboard. I thought it was lost forever. Then you came along. Now I know that wasn’t the end of it and my job isn’t done yet.”
“How did he betray you?” Jill asked.
“He told me he loved me.” Captain Cooper ducked her gaze for a moment, and a wry smile played on her lips. “Ah, but that was just the start of it. It’s a very dark story, against all nature and reason. A difficult story to tell.”
The room was silent; even the groaning of lines and the wooden hull seemed muted. The others listened—maybe they’d never heard the story, either.
Marjory Cooper gathered herself to tell it. “There are places in these islands where folk practice dark magic—black magic and blood sacrifice. Blane twisted that magic. He told me he loved me, see, and we had a child together. A little girl. Wee Jenny.”
Jill’s breath caught. Abe sighed. “Captain, he—”
“Oh yes, Abe, he did,” Cooper said. “He made himself a sword and quenched it in her blood. All for the power it brought him, no matter how dark.” Her voice had turned soft, and her look numb. No feeling entered her telling of the tale. And how could it? How could she let herself feel it without going mad?
Then she straightened, smiled sadly, and was human for a moment. She nodded at Jill. “She’d be just about your age now, if she had lived. However you found it I think that shard of rapier called to you. Somehow, the blood on it called to you, and called to Blane. Somehow, because of who you are—who you might have been, who my little girl might have been—you’re bound to that sword.”
Jill looked at everything that had happened these past weeks through new eyes, which stung with the tragedy of it. Cooper had become a different person. She studied the sword in her hand, and now saw all that it symbolized. A whole history of betrayal. It was more than cursed. Turning it in the light, Jill could almost see a sheen of red on the blade, tinting the steel. How had she ever thought this sword could help her? How could any of it be possible?
Her voice cracking, Jill said, “I’m not your daughter, Captain.”
“I know, love. But I can dream that she’d have been like you, can’t I?”
Abe took up the story: “Blane is building a fleet—he would have every pirate captain under his sway. He would have them all swear allegiance to him by this cursed sword, and then they would be bound to him, and he would be a pirate emperor. The captain broke the sword rather than let that happen.”