One
She despised aristocrats, save one: the damned viscount.
Colonel
Rian Grant, Viscount Queenscliffe, looked more soldier than member of
New London’s Beau Monde and was as honorable a man as she’d ever met.
She
was no simpering miss herself, of course. Captain Kit Brightling was a
member of the Queen’s Own Guards and-with Grant-a new inductee into the
Order of Saint James. Joining the order was both honor-appreciation for
their work on behalf of their home, the Saxon Isles-and
obligation-assignment to the council of the queen’s closest advisers.
She
and Grant had had one adventure together, uncovering a plot by Gerard
to employ a magical warship. That adventure had featured one very good,
and very dangerous, kiss. She hadn’t expected to see him again, which
was fine. Kit had no need of a viscount.
But then she’d seen his
face across the palace’s ballroom-just after they’d been inducted into
the order-and her heart had stuttered like she’d put a hand directly
into a current of magic. Broad shoulders, immaculate beneath his black
tailcoat, and gleaming Hessians. He looked not unlike the roguish heroes
in the penny novels she loved-the straight nose, the strong brow over
eyes the color of a southern sea.
He’d strode toward her, the
crowd parting around him like the sea, and offered his hand. He was
taller than her, forcing her to lift her gaze. “Captain.”
She
thought she’d worn her uniform but, when she glanced down, found she was
wearing long white gloves and a dress of pale blue-gray taffeta dotted
with ivory, the sleeves capped and waist-high, as was the style. “Are we
to dance?”
On cue, the players began their tune, and a waltz streamed through the ballroom.
“Only if you’re brave enough,” Grant said with a grin.
“I’m
no coward,” Kit said, and put her hand atop Grant’s, even as her heart
pounded. His other hand went to her waist, hers to his shoulder, and
they began to move. One-two-three. One-two-three. His steps were strong
and precise, his body warming the mere whisper of space between them.
The fingers that skimmed her hip were hot enough to brand, as if they
might sear the memory, or the connection, into her.
They couldn’t
have been the only ones dancing, but Kit kept her gaze on his face, on
the promise in his eyes, the determination in the set of his jaw.
“You waltz tolerably,” Grant said, amusement lighting his eyes.
“I
waltz magnificently,” she said. “A ship at sea has the same rhythm.”
But the sea’s music was different-a thrum she felt in her bones. Kit was
Aligned to it, could feel the particular magic that flowed through the
waters surrounding the Saxon Isles. The magic that crisscrossed the
earth, through soil and stone and underwater, deep and powerful currents
that humans were trying to harness, sometimes with disastrous results.
“I wasn’t sure you’d agree to a dance,” Grant said as they turned a corner, Kit’s skirts rustling with the motion.
She
shouldn’t have. She had no interest in members of the Beau Monde, with
their haughtiness and pretentions. But then she’d kissed him, and that
kiss had been potent as any current of magic, and it had pulled at her
like the tide.
A bell struck, the sound golden and insistent.
“Is that a ship’s bell?” Kit asked, as the sound-and what it signified-clawed at her attention.
“I don’t hear anything,” Grant said, but his voice sounded far away now, and his hands felt less substantial.
“The bell is ringing,” she said, raising her voice, but the words barely audible over the din. “I need to check on the crew!”
But
the floor undulated beneath her like the deck of a swaying ship. Water
had begun to seep beneath the ballroom’s closed doors, flowing toward
them across the wooden floors.
“I think I should…” she began to
say, and looked back at Grant. But he’d begun to disappear, his image
beside her fading as water lapped at their feet, staining her satin
slippers.
“Obligations…” he began, but his voice diminished to a whisper. “You must…”
Then the trickle was a swell, cold and dark, and covered them both.
She jolted awake, chest heaving and damp with sweat, and braced a hand on the swaying hull of the ship.
She wasn’t in New London, nor in the palace. She was on her ship, the Diana. On the water, somewhere in the Narrow Sea.
“Bloody hell,” she said, and pushed her short, dark hair from her face.
She
actually had seen Grant across the ballroom after the induction
ceremony. But she hadn’t danced with him. The queen had called them both
into her anteroom, where she and her spymaster, Chandler, had delivered
the news: Gerard Rousseau, the self-proclaimed emperor who’d waged war
against the entire Continent, had escaped his “prison” via fishing
schooner. And, they’d come to learn, had rendezvoused with the Gallic
flagship the Continental powers had allowed him to keep-the Fidelity.
No
one doubted Gerard would return to Gallia, make his way across the
country to its capital of Saint-Denis, and attempt to retake his throne.
Otherwise, why leave Montgraf, the island to which he’d been exiled,
and the comforts he’d been afforded there? It might have been a smaller
kingdom than he was accustomed to, but it was still a kingdom.
“Search
the waters for him,” the queen had ordered Kit, “for the Fidelity and
the magic he may be using. Find him before he breaks the world again. We
are clever fools, Captain, and Gerard has played us all. The tide is
turning, and it will turn swift and savage. We must stand before him and
turn back his charge. The world depends on it.”
The queen had
ordered Grant to the Continent, to resume his prior work as an
observation officer, and the Diana had been provisioned. That had been
two weeks ago, and she hadn’t seen New London-or Grant-since.
At
twenty-four, Kit understood the ways of romance, and she wasn’t one to
pine over a man. Certainly not a viscount. But the fire ignited by
seeing him across the ballroom-the unexpected shock of it, the
exhilaration of it, and the discovery that she needed to see him
again-hadn’t diminished in the intervening weeks. It had left her
feeling hollow in some deep inner corner of her heart that had never
been opened before.
Etchings of Gerard’s warship had been shown
to the crew as the Diana flew across the Narrow Sea between Gallia and
the Saxon Isles, a predator seeking its prey. They’d skimmed the coast
within the blockade set by larger Isles ships, searching for Gerard…and
waiting for war to begin.
The dreams, stark and disturbing, had
begun when they’d sailed into the Narrow Sea, which separated the Saxon
Isles from the Continent. Its magic-which had once flowed steady and
true-now fluctuated, as if the current of power was whipping about in
the depths of the water.
Kit thought she knew why: Gerard’s
loyalists had built a new kind of warship at Forstadt, on the shore of
the Northern Sea, and in doing so they’d nearly destroyed the Northern
Sea’s current. The Diana hadn’t sailed so far north this time, so either
the Narrow Sea’s magic was seeping north to fill the void, or Gerard’s
people had done more damage to the current in the interim. Kit didn’t
know. But there was little doubt now that human activity was behind it.
Whatever
the reason, the twisted magic-and the dreams wrought by it-had wrapped
around her apparent desire for Grant like the tentacles of a kraken.
They’d become a leviathan that stalked her sleep.
The bell stopped ringing, but a fist on the door of her cabin replaced the cacophony of noise.
“A moment!” she called out, willing herself awake to face gods knew what awaited her outside.
Kit
closed her eyes-shutting out the sight of her cabin and the sea
beyond-and reached down for the current. Past dark, cold water, the
glimmer of light fading as she felt, deeper yet, for the silver cord of
magic that surged through the water.
Some called the currents ley
lines; others believed they were remnants of the old gods, spots where
they’d touched the earth and left behind the fingerprints of their great
and terrible power. Whatever their origin, they were tributaries of
power, spread unevenly across the world and ever moving, ever swaying,
like anemones in the tide.
The current may have been thin here,
less a cord of magic than a shadow of it. But it was, at least, a
connection to the sea, to her magic, to whatever in her birth had linked
her soul to this place. That comforted her, gave her energy enough to
throw her legs over the side of her bunk, pull on her thin night rail,
and stride across wooden planks to the door.
She opened it, had
to lift her gaze to the dark eyes of the tall, lean man who looked down
at her with humor. Jin Takamura was her second-in-command. An officer by
commission, but a thief by aptitude. Behind him, sailors scurried
through the passageway. The watch bell had signaled the change of shift.
Jin’s expression was mild; it wasn’t the first time he had woken her. “Captain.”
“Commander. What’s happened?”
He
cocked his head at her, a smile in his eyes. “What will happen if I
suggest you look like you’ve been dragged by sea dragons for a few
hundred fathoms?”
That he’d asked the question signaled there was no immediate threat to her crew, so she let herself breathe.
Kit
grunted, pulled the thin night rail tighter. The briny air that blew
down the companionway from the deck was bracingly chilly. “I will
suggest you are perilously close to insubordination.”
“Fortunately,
I can walk a very narrow line.” As if to prove his point, he lifted a
foot and balanced on a single plank of decking.
“Hilarity.” She paused. “I had another dream.”
His brow furrowed. “The rising sea?”
Kit nodded. The plot of the dreams varied, but that was a common theme. “Report, please.”
“It pains me to say this,” he began, looking slightly mortified, “but we believe we’ve spotted the Fidelity in port.”
“Port?” Kit asked. “Where are we?”
“Four miles offshore from Auevilla, to the west of the Touques and the docks.”
Kit
lifted her brows at the speed. The Diana didn’t stop sailing-and the
crew didn’t stop working-just because she slept. She was sailed without
pause, through changing shifts of sailors and officers. But she hadn’t
expected them to make such progress along the Gallic coast overnight.
“Steady wind,” Jin offered, apparently reading her surprise. “And your very good crew, of course.”
“Of
course,” Kit said, and recalled what she knew of the landscape here.
The Touques flowed to the Narrow Sea just east of Auevilla, and the
village’s docks were located in that conjunction.
“What would
Gerard be doing in Auevilla?” she asked. It was a Gallic town of
gambling, turf races, fine cuisine, and seaside strolling-not military
offices or barracks. The Beau Monde had adored it before the war and had
returned when the conflict was over. “I’d enjoy a stroll in Auevilla,”
she muttered.
“So say we all. And we don’t know if he’s still there, only that there’s a ship.”
“Who found it?”
Now Jin paused. “Mr. Wells.”
Kit
rolled her eyes. “This is the eighth time he’s spotted the Fidelity
since we left New London. The last two weren’t even ships.”
“In
fairness,” Jin said with a smile, “one was a ship-shaped island. And, if
I was the type to speak freely, I’d suggest the captain ought not have
offered a piece of gold for the sailor who finds it. It tends to
encourage…hopefulness.”
Kit just looked at him. “But you’d never speak freely to your captain without leave.”
There
was a damned twinkle in his eye. “Of course not. I have a wife and
children at home, and they’d prefer I not be forced to walk into the
sea.”
Kit sighed again. “I’d rather be bothered with an error than miss the ship. I’ll dress. Hold us steady.”
“Always,” Jin said, and she closed the door again.
Two
Kit
cleaned and dressed herself as well as she could in the watery light of
dawn. Her uniform nearly matched Jin’s: fitted navy tailcoat over buff
trousers; dark and gleaming boots; and the sabre. But there were
epaulets on her shoulders, and the fading bit of ribbon pinned inside
her coat. It was a pale blue silk with gold embroidery, and the only
physical memento that existed of her foundling past, before Hetta
Brightling had brought her into the Brightling House for Foundlings and
given her a family.
She’d considered adding the small diamond pin of the Order of Saint James but thought the diamonds a bit much for the Diana.
She
pulled a brush through her chin-length hair, pinched her pale cheeks to
add color against her gray eyes. She wasn’t vain, or no more than an
average woman of four-and-twenty, but she had her own role to play. The
deck was her stage, and better that she didn’t look like she’d been
dragged unwillingly from a dream.
When she opened the door again,
she nearly ran into Cook-name and occupation-who stood outside it with a
delicate cup and saucer and a dour expression.
“To break your fast, sir,” he said, and made a very poor curtsy.
“Early
in the morning for sass, is it not?” But she was comforted by Cook’s
reliability-and the tea. Hetta had instilled ten Principles of
Self-Sufficiency into her adopted daughters. Number Six was, perhaps,
the most important: There is always time for tea. It wasn’t really about
the tea, of course-although every self-respecting Islesian appreciated a
good cup-but the ritual.
So she took the cup and saucer with a
smile and climbed the narrow stairs that led to the deck. The remaining
wisps of her mental fog were cleared by the crisp breeze and pink glow
of sunrise.
Kit looked up into the forest of lines, wood, and
rigging that made up the Diana’s engines. She was a topsail schooner:
129 feet of oak and tar, with square sails on the foremost of her two
masts. Everything looked trim and tidy.
Jin waited at the helm
beside the ship’s large wheel with the Diana’s navigator, Simon
Pettigrew. The latter, who had dark brown skin and shorn dark hair,
wiped a smudge from his round spectacles with an immaculate
handkerchief. They were forever getting spotted by seawater.
“Mr.
Pettigrew,” Kit said, and sipped her tea. It was perfect, which was one
of the primary reasons she allowed Cook, with his expansive use of
sass, to continue to feed the Diana. That, and his liberal use of spices
and herbs. The food she’d grown up with, while nutritious, hadn’t been
nearly as flavorful. The Brightlings’ housekeeper, Mrs. Eaves, “didn’t
take with flavor.”
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