“Battle?” Ruein sounded incredulous.
“Aye,” Drake said, showing Ruein his golden tooth. “Don’t you know? We’re at war.”
Chapter 41 - The Phoenix
Her hands were raw and red with blisters that sported their own blisters, and hurt more than childbirth, which, Aimi had been assured many a time, was about as painful as torture. Years of working as a serving girl had made Aimi’s hands tough and leathery, but the calluses were long gone and needed to be earned all over again. She didn’t mind though. She was once again out on the ocean and sailing the world. It was a glorious feeling to see new sights, experience new things, and meet new people. Aimi had been born at sea, and she was more than a little certain that the sea was where she belonged.
The sea ranged from crystal blue to emerald green, and was usually clear enough that Aimi could see down beneath the waves. There, she might spot any number of animals and monsters that called the water their home. Some of those creatures were fairly dangerous, and many were large enough to pose a real threat to a person’s life, but they were also beautiful.
Aimi let out a contented sigh, which quickly turned into a curse as the rope she was desalting popped another blister and deposited a stinging build-up in the wound all at the same time. She clenched her teeth and blinked away the tears of pain, biting her lip to stop herself shouting out a whole myriad of curses. She failed.
“Maggoty cock-swallowing fuck-monkey!” A couple of nearby pirates laughed, and one even applauded her.
“There’s a trick to it,” Captain Stillwater said from above. Aimi looked up to see him hanging from the rigging, looking down at her with a smile. He was nothing if not clumsy in his obvious advances, but Aimi didn’t truly mind. The captain was easy on the eyes and charming despite himself.
“Really? Oh, master of sailing, please enlighten me.” Aimi grinned up at the captain and turned her attention back to the devious length of rope.
“You don’t think much of me as a sailor, do you?” Aimi thought she detected a note of disappointment in the captain’s voice. He’d likely come down in an attempt to impress her.
“I don’t think much of any captain as a sailor,” she said. “Most are good at giving orders and sounding like they know a cleat from a grommet, but…” She paused and rolled her eyes at him. “Ask ’em to actually haul up a mizzen and tack the yard, and they’ll probably just end up dropping the anchor.”
The captain shook his head. “I didn’t catch a word of that.” He dropped from the rigging and landed easily on his feet, before leaning against the railing and staring out across the sea.
Aimi was young, not even twenty years, and the captain was older, but at that moment she reckoned him younger than he looked. Life at sea had a habit of ageing people before their time. Too much wind and sun and salt was the most likely cause of it.
The captain glanced Aimi’s way and caught her staring. She curled her lip at him and went back to the task of scraping the damned salt off the rope.
“I was a sailor long before a captain,” he said.
“Uh huh.” Aimi may have been interested, but it was much more fun to let the man think he had no chance.
“I spent a good few years as ship’s boy aboard The Black Death.”
Aimi had heard of Captain Black, and she’d heard a great many horror stories about his ship and her crew as well as the captain himself. If even half those tales were true – and she knew it was likely a good half of them weren’t – being a young boy aboard The Black Death must have been a harrowing experience.
“Sounds jolly,” Aimi said, digging her knife into the rope and narrowly missing cutting her own finger open. Trouble was, she was paying far too much attention to the captain and the attention he was paying her.
“Anything but, actually.” Aimi sneaked a glance to see the captain once again staring out over the ocean.
“Captain Black ruled his ship by terror and pain. The crew had to fight for the best jobs, for the best bunk, for the first servings at meal time, and to keep that food once we had it. I can’t tell you the number of times I took a beating and had my cut stolen from me just as we made port. And by men I was supposed to rely on during a fight.”
“Well, I certainly can’t think of a worse life,” Aimi said with a grin. “Tell me, have you ever tried imagining what it’s like to be a young girl of fucking age in a town full of pirates?”
The captain looked at her then, with eyes wider than a whale’s. “Uh… no. I haven’t.”
In truth, Aimi had never fucked a man she didn’t want to. There had been a few and then some more that had tried it on, but she was smart enough to stay away from the ones that looked like they might get a bit rapey, and quick enough to outrun the more persistent bastards. Still, it hadn’t been fun, living with the fear of it hanging over her head for three years. Some pirates had morals, that much was true, but when a man killed folk and stole their goods for a living, there weren’t that many that were above taking what they wanted.
“I just meant to say,” the captain said, “I do know how to sail and how to do a sailor’s job.”
Aimi grinned at Stillwater and gave him a wink. “I was only messing with you, Captain. So what is this grand trick to not fucking up my hands on the rope?”
He was staring at something out in the ocean, a wild grin on his face. “Oh, it’s simple really. Give the job to the lowest-ranked sailor on the boat.”
Before Aimi could think of a retort, the captain rushed away, calling for a course change. She couldn’t believe she’d let him suck her in like that. As she started to come up with ways to get her own back, she glanced over the railing and saw a sail in the distance.
The ship turned out to be a merchant carrack, and it was carrying a complement of guards as well as sailors. It was a nice prize for any pirate, and likely to contain quite a few treasures. The chase was long and a forgone conclusion, The Phoenix both sleeker and faster in the wind. The fight to take the carrack was vicious and bloody; at least, it certainly sounded vicious from below decks, and afterwards the deck of the carrack was certainly bloody. Aimi was no slouch with a knife in close quarters when the poor fool on the pointy end wasn’t expecting it, but she wouldn’t know where to begin in a battle with a sword or axe, so she kept well and truly out of the fight and sent a prayer to Rin for it to go well and for the captain to remain unscathed.
Once the cheering started she knew the crew of The Phoenix were victorious. Nobody cheered quite like a group of ecstatic pirates. Emerging onto the deck, Aimi was surprised to see the sky had darkened considerably, the daylight almost over. The deck of The Phoenix was all but empty, but the captured carrack was swarming.
Aimi could see the crew of The Phoenix, weapons still in hand, were moving about with a purpose. Some were descending below decks while others were securing the ship and keeping the prisoners under guard.
As she mounted one of the makeshift bridges between the two ships, Aimi felt her stomach lurch, and she counted herself lucky that she was over water because a moment later her most-recent meal evacuated her body in a torrent of foul-tasting vomit. She wasn’t certain what sickened her more – the bodies, the blood, the scale of carnage, or the men standing over it all admiring and celebrating their gruesome work. It didn’t take her long to decide. It was the smell. Blood and shit and sweat and fear and death all mingled together to form a nauseating miasma. In that moment of realisation, Aimi feared she’d made a horrible choice in signing on with Stillwater’s crew.