A Swift and Savage Tide (A Captain Kit Brightling Novel Book 2)

Kit worked to ignore the anger, and the hollow in the pit of her stomach.

She’d focus on the bath, she decided. There was oil in the water, green droplets that gave off the heady scent of evergreen trees, the crispness of snowcapped mountains. She might smell like a Western lord when she climbed out but decided it would be well worth the risk. She disrobed, folding her clothes neatly beside the tub in the event she needed to grab them quickly. And then sucked in a breath, dipped a toe into the water.

It was deliciously hot, so she stepped inside and eased her way down, fingers clenching the copper edges as her body adjusted to the temperature. She hadn’t been this warm since she’d left New London; being a sailor for the Isles meant facing, more often than not, wind and drizzle and the constant chill created by the mix of them.

She sat down, closed her eyes, and rested her arms on the sides. She wasn’t sure even the queen’s order could have summoned her out of the warmth.

She exhaled and, finally alone, offered herself the opportunity for a good cry. But she wasn’t the weeping kind. Kit was nothing if not practical. She didn’t forbid others their sobbing, but she didn’t usually see the point in it. Tears solved no problems; action did. But she’d earned a good, melancholic soak today.

She hadn’t expected a proposal of marriage—hadn’t needed a proposal. Unlike the older of her sisters, she’d had no season in New London; sailors almost never did. And she was no lark, but she’d decided many years ago that the life of a sailor was too short to waste. She wasn’t greatly experienced, but there’d been a few men here and there. She’d demanded precisely none of them propose, and she had no regrets. Marriage was a phantom that might lurk in some future she’d never really imagined, and didn’t want.

But there went the damned viscount, making her an offer.

And she’d said no, and the look in his eyes when she’d done so. Gods be, she’d remember it forever. The shock—he was a viscount, hardly accustomed to rejection—and the hurt.

She punched a fist in the bath, which did nothing, of course, but splash water on the floor.

“Honor be damned,” she said. She rejected completely the notion that a man and woman somehow lost their honor merely by enjoying each other, as if honor was something cast aside like an unwanted cravat.

She didn’t want to hurt him. He’d become important to her, which wasn’t something she could say of many people. But the woman he needed was a woman she couldn’t be. It simply couldn’t be helped, the difference in what they wanted.

But still . . . After so many weeks of wondering about him, the idea of his being absent from her life seemed wrong in ways that left a strange and unfamiliar hollow in her chest.

“Bloody hell,” she murmured, before sucking in a breath and dunking herself entirely beneath the water. It filled her ears, blocking out sound, and gave her the slightly unnerving experience of floating in water while floating on water, she and the tub gently bobbing together while the sea bobbed beneath and around them.

She emerged, pushed her hair from her eyes, then the water from her hair, then let her head drop to the back of the tub. And found her problems hadn’t, unfortunately, dissolved in the bathwater, oiled and scented though it was. Grant was angry, and she was on an unfamiliar ship, had given a promise to betray her fleet. Or to sneak past it, anyway.

There was a pounding at the door. No sinking past that. Kit sunk lower, covered her breasts with her hands.

“This room is occupied,” she called out. “Go very far away.” To ensure she was understood, she said the former in perfect Gallic, the latter in very loud Islish.

Not loud enough, she judged, when the door opened despite the warning.

Jean came in.

Kit nearly sat up straight before recalling where she was—and how very naked—as water sloshed onto the floor over the tub’s sides. She sunk down again. “You don’t follow directions very well.”

“You aren’t my captain,” Jean said simply, and closed the door. “I’ve brought you some clean clothes and a hammock. You’ll find space for the latter in the officers’ mess. Two doors down, port side.” She put a pile of dun-colored fabric on a chest near the bath. Then she turned back to Kit. “There are matters of which we should speak.”

“I’d be happy to speak with you at a more mutually convenient time. This is the first hot bath I’ve had in weeks. I’m not getting out.”

“You don’t have to.” Apparently undisturbed, she pulled a chair from Donal’s table, took a seat.

“Do make yourself comfortable,” Kit said, closing her eyes and leaning her head on the back of the tub. She wasn’t so modest, after years in the Crown Command, that she was going to let this opportunity slip out of her grasp like so much soap. “We’re bosom companions.”

“We’ve bosoms,” Jean agreed, “but we aren’t companions.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“I’m aware. I preferred to clarify.”

Kit opened an eye, looked at her. And for the first time, saw something concerning in her eyes. But decided she’d let this play out a bit. Let the woman tell her own story. “What do you want, fortune-teller? You’re very bad at that, by the by.”

Jean snorted. “I’m as good as I need to be.”

“For what purpose?”

“Whatever may be needed.”

Kit watched her for a moment, considered. “Ut myrkri, solas,” she said. That was the challenge phrase Chandler had given her, the one she could use to determine if someone was an asset for the spymaster. Given her travels, Jean seemed like a good candidate.

“Ut lyga, firinn,” Jean said, reciting Chandler’s response.

“You’re one of Chandler’s,” Kit said.

“We share mutually beneficial information.”

Kit sunk down again. “That’s why you were outside that building in Auevilla—the one Doucette went into. You were monitoring?”

“I was. It’s owned by the regimental captain and used to pass messages.”

Kit knew it. She tapped fingers on the rim of the tub. “Doucette obtained a packet from there.”

“So I saw. We’ve friends who will do what they can to take a peek.”

“Friends other than ‘Fouché’?”

Jean’s stare went considering. “You met with Fouché?”

“The gendarmes believed my midshipman and I were spies,” Kit said, and told her the rest of the story.

“You were very busy in Auevilla.”

“Not by choice,” she said. “And Fouché is safe. He was preparing to secure the staff and leave the town when we left it. He got out safely.”

“Good,” she said, with obvious relief.

Kit cocked her head at Jean. “You and he . . . ?”

“What? No.” She snorted. “I’ve no interest in a duke or the lifestyle that marrying him would require.”

Kit’s relief was nearly as soothing as the bathwater. “I understand completely.”

Jean crossed one leg over the other. “It can’t be a wholly comfortable life, despite the money. Being forced to wear gowns and gloves. Eating their strange delicacies. Being subject to the whims of those who imagine they’re better than you because of who they know. No, thank you.”

Kit rarely said no to a decent delicacy. But she wasn’t in a position to argue about aristocratic expectations, all things considered, so she changed the subject. At least in a sense. “Does Grant know you?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Jean said. “Spies knowing each other is generally considered poor practice. Your viscount is one of Chandler’s?”

“He’s not my viscount,” Kit said. “But he’s mostly one of Chandler’s. Donal lets you come and go? He’s not suspicious when you leave the crew?”

“He knows I trade in information. Occasionally, he gets some of it. That suits him well enough. He’s a good man,” she added.

“He’s a pirate,” Kit said. This was not the bathing experience she’d hoped for.

“He’s a privateer.”

“You can dress it up however you’d like, but he’s a literal pirate king. And he’s responsible, at least partly, for the death of a good man.”

Jean’s expression didn’t change. “You mean Dunwood.”

“He told you.”

“He’s mentioned the man in passing—and his regrets. But more, this ship is small enough for word to travel. You spoke of him and were overheard.”

So, no privacy aboard the Phoenix. Good to know.

“He’s a good man,” Jean said again, with less patience this time. “He rescued you and the viscount, gave you food, gave you a bath.”

Kit put her elbows on the tub’s edges, linked her fingers, and studied Jean-Baptiste. “He’s titled, or a son of someone titled, from the Western Isle, who has apparently turned his back on that life and the Isles, and instead turned to thievery, kidnapping, and murder.” She lifted a finger. “And extortion. He is a criminal who acts in direct contravention to the needs of the Isles.”

“Things are rarely so simple.”

“Except when they are. Why are you here? And what’s Donal hiding?”

Eyes narrowed, Jean watched Kit for a moment. “Nothing of note. And my experiences with members of the Crown Command haven’t been positive, so it is difficult for me to trust you with the secrets of others.”

“I’m not one of Chandler’s people,” Kit said. “And I don’t need to know others’ personal secrets. I have few of my own to offer in trade.”

“A foundling,” Jean said. “Raised by Hetta Brightling, Aligned to the sea. Involved in a bit of a row with a very handsome viscount.”

“There’s no row,” Kit said, and didn’t like feeling defensive.

“My father was a Guild member,” Jean said. “And I was thirteen when he tried to marry me off to a lecher in exchange for better trade routes. If I wasn’t a boy, he said, he’d get his money’s worth some other way.”

“I’m sorry,” Kit said, and meant it. She knew how fortunate she was, as a foundling and otherwise, to have found a mother in Hetta Brightling. She’d had no thought but for empowering the girls to do not just what they could, but what they might. Kit had taken that lesson to heart; that’s why she was one of the youngest captains in the Crown Command, woman or no.

Jean nodded. “As was I. And bound and determined that future would not be wedlock to a man older than my own father. So I left. I made mistakes,” she said. “I thought bravery would be enough to get me a position on the docks. But I didn’t know capstan from cleat, and I was small and female. You may be aware that we don’t make competent sailors,” Jean said, voice dry as old teak.

“So I’ve heard,” Kit said in the same tone.

“But I was desperate, as my father had sent men to find his investment, so I hired onto a sloop. Fortunately for me, being a greenhorn, I inadvertently climbed aboard . . . the wrong ship. And it was Donal’s. He let me stay, taught me what I needed to know. Saved my life three times, including allowing me to stay aboard.”

Kit cocked her head. There was more here, she thought. More to this particular tale that was hiding in that pause before “the wrong ship.”

“What was the other ship?” Kit asked.

Jean waited a beat. “The Mary Margaret.”

“Damn,” Kit murmured. “John Read’s ship.” Or Red Jack, as he’d been known, for the blood he spilled while ravaging the Narrow and Western Seas. He’d been the most violent of pirates born of the Saxon Isles, and hunted for years. He’d been killed by his own crew, or so the story was told, his body tossed to the sea dragons.

“Aye,” Jean said.

“How did you end up working for Chandler?”

“I had information about an Islish aristocrat who sent money abroad for Gerard’s final campaigns. In addition to that atrocity, he had a predilection for hurting women in his employ.” Her smile was thin, and there was nothing of joy in it. “That information made its way to Chandler. The aristocrat is still rotting in prison, and Chandler ensured a portion of his estate was redistributed to the women he injured. That assured my loyalty.”

“It would mine as well,” Kit said.

Jean hopped down from the chair. She crossed her arms, gave Kit a cool, considering stare. “Some of us run away from the past. Some of us run toward the future. I think it matters less which we choose than that we’re honest about our paths.”

“I appreciate honesty,” Kit said, but kept her gaze on Jean. “And?”

“And . . . Donal did me a service. I consider him an asset under my protection. So if and when I’m forced to stand between you, I wanted you to understand why.”

“All right,” Kit said after a moment, and she did. Hadn’t she touched the current across the entire Narrow Sea to save her favorite thief? Faced sea dragons to save Grant? They were, for better or occasionally worse, her other family. A person who lacked in that department had to make their own. Jean had made her own way, moved beyond the world she’d been born into, and made her own family in the meantime. She couldn’t fault Jean for taking care of them.

“As long as you remember,” Kit said, “that one good deed doesn’t make a hero. I made a deal with your captain, and I’ll stand by my word. He’d better do the same.”

She was clean and mostly dry when she donned the clothes left for her: slim trousers and a blousy shirt, both in linen made soft by wear and washing. She pulled on her boots, picked up the bundle of her discarded clothes, and opened the door.

Donal leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed. “As you’ve delayed my work for nearly an hour, I hope you found that refreshing.”

“I did, thanks for asking.”

“You and the soldier are . . . ?” Donal asked, and there was little mistaking the interest that lay beneath the question.

Kit’s stare remained flat. “Being held against our will?”

Donal’s smile widened, his dark eyes going somehow drowsy, seductive. He moved a step closer, propped an arm on the door. “If that’s your only involvement, perhaps you’d be amenable to . . .”

He took her hand, pressed it against his chest. It was admirably firm, and that was all the approval she could muster. Kit suspected his charms were enough to tempt many women into being “amenable.” But she wasn’t one of them.

“Release my hand,” she said, in the mildest of tones, “or I will break yours off and feed it to the sea dragons.”

He did, but his grin only widened. “You are a woman of fire.”

“I’m captain of the Diana. I am an officer of the queen. And I’ve no interest in children who hunt for coins while others fight.”

This time, his eyes flashed. “We’re delivering supplies.”

“You’re delivering smuggled liquor and silk,” she corrected, then held up a hand. “And I don’t care what you intend to deliver. We made the deal necessary to get us off the ship, and I will hold to it. But that’s it. If you want my admiration, use your brains and your wealth and your ship for something more than padding your pockets.

“And thanks for the bath,” she added as she strolled down the corridor, because she wasn’t totally without manners.

Kit shook out the hammock—she didn’t need fleas added to her current list of concerns—and hung it in the officer’s mess. And undoubtedly crawling things she decided not to dwell on. Every ship had rats; only some of them walked on four legs.

The bell signaled the change of watch and Grant’s entry, hammock in hand, hair damp from his own bath, one dark lock falling over his forehead. He wore quite fitted pantaloons with his boots and a linen shirt. No waistcoat, no frock coat, as Donal and his crew had apparently dispensed with those. What remained of the ensemble left little to the imagination, from the curve of strong thighs to the skin visible in the V of the linen.

He looked, she realized, like a damned pirate. And a damnably convincing one.

One who’d refused her, she reminded herself, because she refused to give up her ship. So she schooled her features.

“Do you know how to hang your hammock?” she asked matter-of-factly.

“I believe I can manage.” He did so, making decent knots before testing its strength. Then he turned back to her. “I saw you speaking with Donal.”

“Well, it’s his ship, after all.”

“It appeared to be an intimate conversation.”

She couldn’t help herself. “Then it would hardly be any business of yours, would it? You’ve made it clear my physical activities don’t interest you, Grant.”

“As you will damned well remember,” he said, stepping closer, “my name is Rian.” His voice was a low growl, and the shiver it sent through her was decidedly not magic related.

She didn’t want to shiver from a single word, or be so affected by his nearness. But that was the way of their world at present. She was somewhat mollified that the frustration in his eyes echoed her unsatisfied arousal.

“I have no interest in him.” Or anyone but you, she quietly amended.

He watched her for a moment, gaze skimming from her own ensemble, which was missing nearly as much as his. “You are a torment.”

“You torment us both and for no need,” she said quietly. “We could—”

“There is a need,” he insisted. “I will not. I have my pride, and my honor. I’ll not ruin a woman’s reputation, sailor or no, for my own pleasure.”

Her anger lit again. “My reputation is mine to manage.”

“Very well then. I’m not interested in less than all of you.”

She stared at him.

“I’ve made an offer, and you’ve declined. If you wish to change our terms, you’ll have to come to me.”

“Then I suppose we’re done here.” She swung into the hammock, settled herself. Heard rope creak as Grant did the same beneath her, with considerably less finesse and a lot more cursing.

Soldiers, she thought with a curse, but then recalled the island, his nightmare. And silently wished him undisturbed sleep.

She managed four hours of it before the bell signaled the change of watch, and sailors moved around her, climbing out of their own hammocks to get to work, pulling them down from the rafters for stowage abovedecks while they worked. Their murmurs were low and concerned, and Kit could hear the patter of rain on the decking above her.

Grant, she noted, was already gone.

She swung out of the hammock and left it hanging, then pulled on her uniform jacket, flipped up the collar, and made her way through the dark and to the companionway.

On deck, the air had chilled and the wind had shifted, blowing hard from the northwest. The ship, big and steady as she was, was swaying now, and the waves were white—and disconcertingly large. Rain hit the deck hard and struck her hood with a noisy pat-pat-pat that seemed to echo in her ears. Gods, but she could use her good wool topcoat.

She crossed her arms over her chest, tucking her hands into the tailcoat, and joined Donal at the helm, handling the ornate, gilded wheel himself. He stood with Jean and other members of his crew and looked every bit the dashing pirate—black hair and brown duster blowing.

“It’s blowing fresh,” she called out over the beat of rain and wind.

“Wind picked up an hour ago,” he said, body braced as he worked to maintain control over the wheel. “Rain just started, and we’re damnably shorthanded.”

Kit had wondered about that, as there hadn’t been nearly as many crew on a ship this size as she’d expected. She’d simply assumed pirate ships ran lean; the fewer the sailors, the greater the individual profits.

“The viscount is already at work,” Jean said, gesturing to the port gunwale, where he helped to haul in a line; the mainsail had been struck, given the increased wind. She’d have done the same on the Diana.

“How can I help?” she asked.

Donal’s brows lifted. “I’d not have expected a fancy captain of the Queen’s Own to assist the rabble.”

“I already agreed to assist you,” she pointed out, “in exchange for a bath and freedom. If we don’t make it through the weather, I won’t be able to collect.”

“Death is a cold bastard,” he agreed. Then he opened his mouth to make a suggestion, when a crack issued across the sky.

Lightning and Doucette were the first things she considered—and then she looked up. One of the ropes of the fore-topgallant—the highest sail on the forward mast—had snapped. The sail was flapping, and the poor bastard who’d been on the yard was twisted in rope and hanging by an ankle. While two more sailors rushed to help him, the sail flapped uselessly despite the increasing rain.

Instincts firing, she’d started to run forward when Donal grabbed her arm. She looked back, eyes narrowed against the action and the falling rain.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he said, but there was fear in his eyes. “A man’s luck doesn’t always hold.”

She wasn’t sure if he meant her luck, his, or the sailor’s on the yard. But what little respect she had for the man diminished. She wrenched her arm loose.

“Your sailors are caring for the man,” she said. “I’m for the sail. The yard is down, but it needs to be furled. We don’t need any more canvas aloft in wind like this. Do you have staysails or storm sails?”

“I don’t know.”

She stared at him. How didn’t he know? “Have someone check. We need at least one hanging if you want to keep the ship upright.”

Donal gave an order, sent a sailor to a storage area.

“Have your men on the lines for the topsail,” she told him. Before he could argue, she strode forward, slipping past the few sailors on deck to reef the sails still hanging from the masts. She passed Grant, but he didn’t seem to notice, likely because she still had her hood up. At least he couldn’t also give her a lecture about danger.

“For gods’ sake,” she murmured, shielding her eyes to get a look at the foremast before climbing up. “A sailor’s going to face dangers. That’s the damned point.” Satisfied she knew the proper holds, she began to climb. She reached the yard where the sailor had nearly been righted, one leg still hanging at a bad angle, still caught in the line, but his torso was upon the yard.

“Do you need help?” she called out. If the two sailors who turned to her—one man and one woman—were surprised to see her, they didn’t show it. And their eyes were reassuringly steady. Sailors, Kit thought with relief. Real and true sailors.

“No!” the woman called out. “We’ve got Fredrick, but we need to secure the sail.”

Kit nodded, looked up again, and kept climbing.

The Phoenix hit a trough, sending the ship and the mast tipping toward port, and she gripped the mast with arms and legs to keep from falling into the drink. After a moment, and a promise to offer a gold coin when she returned to the deck, the Phoenix righted again.

“Dastes,” she said, swallowed down the fear, and kept climbing. She reached the yard and the flapping canvas, found a lone sailor on the port side, eyes wide and arms clenched around wood.

A greenhorn, she thought, and not without sympathy.

“What’s your name?” she called out.

He looked at her blankly. “What?”

“Your name, sailor.” She used her most captainly tone, as they didn’t have time for squabbles about authority.

“Blakely, sir.”

He couldn’t have been more than fifteen. But she’d seen sailors younger than him on the mast. “Blakely, you’re to do exactly as I tell you, yes?”

He swallowed hard, nodded.

“Good man.” She made herself smile. “Shit duty, isn’t it? Being on the mast in weather like this.”

“It’s not what I expected.”

Life rarely was, she thought. She tested the footrope, found it solid, and moved out. And then began to give the orders.

It took twice as long as it ought have, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever been so soaked through, but once the man was free, and with the help of sailors on the lines below, she and Blakely managed to get the topgallant furled.

She jumped down to the deck, stayed crouched for a moment, so relieved was she to feel something flat and solid beneath her feet.

She rose again to find Grant standing in front of her. He’d no jacket, and he was soaked to the bone, which left very little of his body to the imagination—which a few of the sailors nearby had clearly noticed.

She tried not to recall that she needed no imagination for that.

“What the hell were you doing up there?”

She was tired and sad and sick to death of being questioned. Did no one trust her or her instincts, honed after so many years at sea?

“I was doing what needed to be done, as I always do. And you’ve made clear that’s no business of yours.”

He let her go but was swearing as he walked away. He could curse at her as long as he wished; the words would have as little effect on her obligations as they did on the storm itself.

The ship dipped into a wave again; the bow struck the wall of water, sending a surge across the bow. Grant grabbed Kit by the waist, pulled them both against the mast, held tight, as water—achingly cold—poured over them. His body was rigid behind hers, his arms banded like steel around the mast. Kit could hardly breathe but knew well the force of water, and the likelihood it would have swept her overboard. He’d done her a service.

The bow of the ship rose again, the water washing down the deck and through the scuppers. And yet he remained for a long moment . . . until he finally stepped back, cold air filling the space between them.

She glanced back, found his gaze on hers. “Thank you,” she managed.

He said nothing, but turned away.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the world—and Kit realized that their sadness, and Donal’s weaknesses as a sailor, were not their only concern.

They’d been sailing along the coast, farther in than they might have, in order, Kit presumed, to avoid the blockade. But the wind had pushed them closer—and was still pushing. And the cliffs of what Kit guessed was the Alemanian coast—hard and jagged and eroded by wind and water into daggers of stone—were entirely too close.

“Damn,” she muttered, and ran back through the ship to the helm, Grant at her heels. Donal and Jean were both at the wheel now, struggling to keep the ship on course. They had, at least, managed to get the staysail sheeted home.

“We have to get away from the cliffs!” she called out, the wind louder now, and whistling through the jagged, pitted rocks like a bean sí of the old world.

A sailor ran toward them. “Sir, there’s a foot of water in the hold. We’re pumping, but it’s getting deeper.”

Donal cursed in the Western language; Kit thought it sounded rather like music but assumed the words were different enough. “I knew I shouldn’t have taken this boat last week.”

Kit went absolutely still, and the rising anger was like a welcome fire. “Last week? What do you mean, last week?”

“It’s a very long tale,” Donal said, and swung the wheel toward starboard. “Suffice it to say, its previous captain owed me a debt and I collected. It just happens he was . . . unaware of the collection.”

“You’re sailing a massive ship you hardly know, without enough crew, to smuggle goods to Frisia during a bloody war?”

“This is when you tell him to walk into the sea,” Grant murmured behind her.

They were saved from her outburst—or Donal’s—when a horrid grinding sound echoed from somewhere below, along with the groaning of wood pushed past its limits.

They might not actually survive this, Kit thought, and that just made her furious.

Donal made to leave the helm, when Kit stepped in front of him. “Where are you going?”

“To check what that was!”

“Vas tiva es?” she muttered in the old language. Roughly translated, it asked, “What have the gods done now?” It was the quintessential question of a sailor in a very tight spot.

“You’ll stay on the damned helm and in control of this ship,” she said, then pointed to Jean. “Check the hold. If anyone’s working with the cargo, take them with you to assist with the pumping, and have the carpenter work on repairing whatever that was, at least to get us through the night.”

Jean looked relieved by the order—by the direction—but still looked at Donal for confirmation.

“Go,” he said, and struggled to hold the wheel by himself.

“You,” Kit said, pointing at another sailor. “Help your captain with the wheel.”

“And what are you going to do?” Donal asked. Apparently acknowledging their survival was at stake, there was no more petulance in his voice.

She breathed out through pursed lips. “I’m going to touch the current. And you’ll do exactly as I say.”

He nodded. “And it won’t hurt my crew? Or the ship?”

“Using me was your idea,” she reminded him. “The deal you requested.”

He swore, pushed wet hair from his eyes. “Fine.” She could see his temper flare again, but he controlled it. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I might drive the ship into the rocks. Apurpose.”

A rather stunned silence followed that statement. And she was amused, probably more than she should have been, at the fact that she’d managed to stun a pirate king.

“But I probably won’t,” she said, then looked at Grant. “I can give us speed; I’ll need you to be my eyes again.”

He looked back at the cliffs, visible now without the shocks of lightning. “Stay away from those.”

“That’s very helpful. Do more of that.” She looked at Donal. “You’ll want to hold on.”

His expression was defiant.

“They all make that mistake the first time,” she murmured, and closed her eyes, reached down through the many layers of wood and tar—and silk and wine—to the water below. The water was shallow, the current deep and vibrant, as if energized by the action of wave on rock. She felt no hiccup signaling Doucette’s magic, and the Forstadt gaps were nearly gone now. The current had nearly healed, which was a substantial relief.

“Northwest,” Grant said, body close but not touching. She wasn’t actually sure what would happen if she was touching someone else while she touched the current, and didn’t much want to find out. “We need to go hard northwest.”

She nodded, eyes still closed, and followed the current as it arced through the surf, then cut sharply out and into the waves. The wind was against them again, but as she’d seen on the way to Portsea, that could be managed with care.

“Trim the braces,” she said, as there were still sails flying despite her warning. But she could use that, and worked the angles in her head, hoping Donal was listening. “As if heaving to.”

He made no comment, but there were footsteps around her, calls to man the lines. “Nearly ready,” she said, as she felt the ship shudder as the yards were rotated, repositioning the canvas at an angle.

“Ready,” she said, and touched the current beyond the shoals, where it turned straight for the Isles. She nearly gasped at the flow of power, its flavor somehow different along this stretch of coast, and let it envelop her and the ship. She kept her inner sight trained on the current, even as she braced her legs against another rise and fall of ship on wave.

They would be an arrow, she thought, coursing straight and true, and she let the power go. The lambent energy that she’d stored pushed the ship forward with a jolt. She opened her eyes just in time to see Donal hit the deck on his knees.

“Well,” Grant said, watching him fall. “That actually makes me feel better about doing that my first time.”

It took a moment for current and inertia to meet, to fight, and then the Phoenix was gliding through the water. The ride was no more smooth here—the ship was pushing through waves that struck the bow, water thundering across the deck. But they were moving away from shoreline and shoal, just as she’d intended.

Hands still on the wheel, Donal climbed to his feet again. Sailors moved forward, surrounding Kit and Grant. And all amusement was gone as they stared down Kit with shock and awe and not a small amount of fear.

Most wouldn’t have felt the touch of current before, and that Kit had positioned them toward safety wasn’t enough to overcome their ingrained suspicion of the activity.

Grant shifted closer.

“Feeling protective?” she murmured.

“Merely positioning myself to throw you in front if they attack.”

“Very chivalrous.”

They watched Donal watch her, unsure if their captain meant to upbraid or attack. Then he looked up at the canvas, full and taut against the wind, and slipped through the sailors to the port side. He looked into the water, then he turned back to look at Kit.

“Bloody hell,” he said with a widening smile. “That’s brilliant.”