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

Kit’s face, neck, and hands were powdered to add a bit of pallor, and then cool liquid was painted across her face and hands, sprinkled across her jacket. Grant got the same treatment, and then they looked at each other.

It was surprisingly convincing, and certainly enough to give the effect they needed—that Fouché had expressed his considerable anger on sailor and soldier.

“Good luck,” Grant said, offering Raleigh a hand.

“And to you,” Raleigh said, and they shook with aristocratic efficiency. Then the duke turned to Kit.

“Captain. Perhaps we’ll meet again under more pleasant circumstances.”

“You should return to New London,” she said. “You can host a ball and be the talk of the Beau Monde.”

“That,” he said crisply, “I will not do.”

Kit was carried at the shoulders and ankles out to the street. She managed to go limp, but fingers gripped her with such force she imagined she’d see bruises for a week. She was dumped into the back of the wagon. She let her arms and legs fall where they would and kept her eyes closed. After a moment, she felt Grant beside her.

Then muslin was drawn over them, light enough to contour around their bodies and leave little mystery as to the wagon’s contents.

The wagon shook, the horses were clucked forward, and they began to move.

Kit opened her eyes beneath the muslin, glanced beside her. Grant did the same, light filtering through muslin casting lacy shadows across his face.

“Hello again,” he whispered, in their world of shifting sunlight.

“Hello,” she said, and winced as the wagon hit a low spot. “He couldn’t have tossed us into the duke’s fancy carriage? I assume he has one.”

“He probably has several,” Grant whispered. “Perhaps we could talk of other things?”

“Such as?”

His smile was wide.

But before he could answer, the wagon jolted. They heard Cragwell’s haggard sigh, then: “What’s this, then?”

Kit and Grant went very still.

“We’ve word of spies,” someone said in Gallic, in a low and gruff voice.

“I am in the employ of Fouché,” Cragwell said. “I know nothing about spies, which is my lord’s business. I merely handle the consequences of perfidy, as you are aware.” He’d been well trained, and his voice was flat and bored.

“You’ve already been this way once today.” This was a different man, his voice a bit higher.

Cragwell snorted. “Do you think I’ve control over Fouché’s activities? That when he says, ‘Go again, boy,’ I can tell him, ‘No, as I don’t find your methods efficient’?” He sighed with great exhaustion.

“He has a point,” said High Voice. “It’s no business of ours what Fouché does. We don’t want his attention on us, aye?”

There was silence for a moment, and Kit poured her energy into willing the men to let them go ahead.

“No,” Low Voice said, and Kit’s heart sped a bit more. “Beauvoir said to watch carefully for spies. So we’d better look.”

“You’ve got the belly for it?” Cragwell asked. “I’ve seen them, and Fouché was not gentle or kind. There’s quite a bit of, well, blood.”

Kit heard the considering pause, swallowed hard. Keep walking, she told them. Just keep walking.

“I’ve no belly for blood,” Low Voice said. “But better someone else’s than mine. The marshal’s in town, and I’ve seen what he can do.”

“You’re right,” said High Voice. “We’ll have a look.”

Footsteps moved toward the wagon’s rear. Grant quickly squeezed her hand, then pulled away again.

Kit sucked in a breath, closed her eyes, willed herself to go rigid as the muslin was pulled away and light poured over them both.

They looked in silence for a moment, then High Voice poked Kit’s hand with a finger. “The body is cold.”

“It’s cold outside, you dolt,” Low Voice said.

High Voice poked harder. “And a damn shame. She’s got a good face and a nice pair of—”

“She’s deceased, man. Show a bit of respect.” The wagon shifted, probably as Cragwell turned on the bench seat.

“Only recently,” Low Voice said, as if the only problem was a bit of unlucky timing. “And ain’t this the muscle?” He poked at Grant.

“That’s him,” Cragwell said, the horses shuffling in their harnesses, ready to move. Which might be the first time Kit had sided with the horses. Her lungs were beginning to burn with need. Pity she didn’t have the same ability on land as she did in the water.

“No longer useful when they start working for the enemy.”

“To hell with the Isles,” Low Voice said. “Long live Rousseau.”

“Long live Rousseau,” High Voice repeated, but without much enthusiasm.

“You can plainly see they’re dead, aye? Show some respect and cover them up. You don’t want to traumatize the citizenry, do you?”

Yes, Kit silently agreed. Cover us so we can breathe again.

“ ‘Traumatize the citizenry,’ ” Low Voice repeated dramatically. “You’re a fancy talker for a wagon driver.”

“I like to expand my mind,” Cragwell said. “If you’re done, can we be on our way? Fouché runs a tight schedule, and as you can see, he corrects mistakes with his fists.”

“I guess these two got the brunt of that, aye?” Low Voice asked.

“Aye,” Cragwell said. “Pitiful thing, too, having to kill a pretty woman. But Fouché doesn’t take with spies.”

One of the gendarmes huffed but pulled the muslin back over Grant and Kit. She pursed her lips, tried to suck in a breath that moved her body as little as possible.

Another pause, then the sound of a pat on a horse’s haunch. “Begone then.”

Kit didn’t breathe until the wagon began moving again, wheels creaking over the pitted road.

She shifted her gaze to look at Grant and saw his features scrunch, his eyes watering ferociously. Making as little movement as possible, she reached out, squeezed his hand.

He looked at her, wiggled his nose. “The hay,” he mouthed, clearly trying to control a physical reaction to it.

She squeezed his hand harder but knew they’d lost when he closed his eyes.

The sneeze was so loud the Diana must have heard it. And it was followed by silence—including that of the gendarmes’ footsteps.

“Achoo!” Cragwell said, then honked loudly, as if cleaning his nose.

Another beat of silence, and then the footsteps grew closer. “What was that sound?”

Grant squeezed his eyes closed.

“My sneeze?” Cragwell asked. “Surely you’ve heard a sneeze before. Damnable weather. Always makes me sneeze.” He honked loudly again, and Kit hoped he’d managed to find a handkerchief.

But the gendarmes moved closer still, each sound speeding Kit’s heartbeat. If they were captured now, there’d be no easy outcome. Grant and Raleigh would be confirmed as spies, and all of them punished for it.

Given the information they needed to impart, being captured was absolutely not an option. The Crown Command, the queen, had to be advised about the Fidelity and warned about Doucette—not to mention the intelligence Grant and Raleigh had gathered.

She shifted her head to look at Grant, got his minuscule nod as his fingers reached for hers, squeezed.

“Would you like to ride with me?” Cragwell offered. “I need to finish my task and return the wagon.”

The gendarmes didn’t seem to believe him, despite the impressively chill tone, as their footsteps moved closer still.

“I believe that must be our cue,” Grant whispered, his lips near her ear.

“We aren’t giving up Raleigh,” she said, just as quietly. Not unlike Cooper, she wasn’t going to throw someone else into the fire in order to avoid being singed.

“Of course not. But we need to give Cragwell time to make his escape. On three, we’re up and we run for the boat.”

She’d barely nodded when their “shroud” was ripped away.

“Three,” Grant called out in Islish, and they scrambled up.

Might as well employ a bit of drama, Kit thought. She jumped to her feet, hands fisted into claws and eyes wide, and screamed at the men in Gallic, “All murderers shall perish!”

The men’s faces went pale as death. She thought they might simply fall over, but she didn’t wait to find out. She took off at a sprint, Grant in step beside her. A flick of the reins and Cragwell had the wagon moving at a gallop in the other direction.

She didn’t know this part of town beyond the minimal sketch Simon had pulled from the ship’s store of maps, so she let Grant take the lead and followed him down one narrow street as the gendarmes stomped behind them, blowing whistles and yelling warnings through the town. They turned around a building—the prison, she belatedly realized—and ran into a slender alley between buildings through an inch-deep pile of muck that would require her to burn the boots the moment she returned to the Diana.

“There!” The guards were closer now, with more knowledge of the narrow streets than either she or Grant. She’d nearly made it halfway down the alley when a hand gripped her wrist, pulled her into an even narrower slot between buildings. She’d nearly made the instinctual scream when she realized it was Grant who’d taken her hand and was leading her through the alley.

They emerged into a backstreet busy with traders and merchants, carts and horses and people moving back and forth as crates and barrels were bought, sold, shifted.

A man pushed a low cart of wine bottles into the street. Kit swerved around it, made it three steps past, and then turned back and snagged a bottle by the neck.

“Merci!” she said, and tossed a coin as she ran on.

The merchant lowered the handles of his cart, began shouting, fist pumping, about the thief. Kit tucked her prize under her arm as they ran toward the shore.

Grant cursed. “Brightling, you are considerable trouble. Was that really necessary?”

“You aren’t the first to say so. And I’m not going back without a token for Jin,” she said. “I gave him a gold coin. He’ll not get better, I imagine.”

Calls and whistles erupted behind them as the gendarmes caught up, and they pushed harder, dodging the gawkers who walked the boardwalk, then pitching into the sand.

Running through sand was no easy task, and sailors were rarely afforded the opportunity for long constitutionals. Grant’s longer legs gave him an advantage that had her falling behind.

“Stop!” the gendarmes called out in Gallic. “Stop there or we will fire!”

Grant glanced back and she saw the concern in his eyes, imagined powder being rammed down a barrel a dozen yards behind her. “Don’t make me carry you!” he called out.

Oh, she would not be carried by a soldier into her own damned jolly boat. Absolutely not.

She thought of the man Doucette had killed, body jerking on the ground, and the fact that only she could relay the details of that story to the Crown Command. If she died, the information would be lost. So she pushed harder.

The jolly boat lay twenty yards ahead, already in the water, Sampson and Cooper at the oars.

Crack.

The report of a rifle echoed behind her. Splinters flew out from the boat, and Cooper and Sampson dropped onto the deck.

Grant reached the water first, jogging through the surf to the boat. “Everyone intact?”

Still running, she saw a thumb poke through the hull just above the waterline; then Cooper’s and Sampson’s faces popped up.

“Fine,” they called out together.

Kit hit the water, and her reconnection to the ocean gave her a new surge of energy. Just in time, as the sound of men running behind her grew louder, closer; she refused to look back and kept her eyes on the boat, watched Grant clamber into it. Then his eyes went wide.

“Down!” he called out, and she dropped into the knee-high water, saw the ball shoot past her, leaving behind a slender white wake.

At least it didn’t hit the boat. She swam toward it, the damned bottle of wine trying to bob to the surface. But she refused to let it go, not when she’d paid a good coin for it.

She surfaced just beyond the white hull, took the hand Grant offered her, and was pulled over the side. Kit looked back at the beach. They were thirty yards offshore now, their pursuers—Dock Man and half a dozen gendarmes—still on foot. She scanned the horizon as Sampson and Cooper rowed, looking for mast or sail, some indication the chase would continue in the water. But saw nothing.

Two men with rifles continued to reload, but the others looked disinterested in the chase and more interested in the women who bobbed in the water outside their bathing houses, now sodden and staring at the gendarmes whose shots had ruined their fun.

In the other direction, the Diana waited a hundred yards away in increasing waves and wind that pushed her closer to shore. Water sloshed through the hole in the jolly boat, pooling in the bottom.

Kit gauged the hole’s diameter, then looked at the bottle of wine in her hand. She used her teeth to yank out the cork, then slammed it into the hole in the boat with the back of her fist, pounding a couple of times for good measure.

The fit was perfect.

“Problem solved,” she said, then took a well-deserved swig of wine. She’d been right; it wasn’t worth the gold coin.

“That’s rather magnificent,” Grant said, with what sounded like genuine awe in his voice.

“Sailors know a thing or two,” she said with a grin. “Let’s get the hell back to the boat.”

The higher waves made the rowing harder. Kit held the open bottle of wine between her feet and joined the others at the oars, pushing past increasing surf toward the sailors who peered over the Diana’s gunwale, waiting to lower the davits.

The jolly boat was hauled up—this time with Grant in it—and they climbed out and into the waiting throng of officers and sailors.

Kit heard the sounds of shock, remembered what she and Grant looked like. “We’re all healthy,” she said, holding up her hands to ward them off. “This was just color used by a duke’s staff to aid our escape from the gendarmes.”

Jin’s brows shot up. “Bit of a story there.”

“Indeed,” she said.

“What’s this?” asked Mr. Oglejack, the ship’s carpenter, flicking the cork-filled hole.

“Rifle shot,” Kit said.

He looked it over. “Not a bad repair,” he said, offering her a grin. “You want to help holystone the deck next time?”

“I’ll pass, Mr. Oglejack, but thank you for the invitation.”

Cooper and Sampson all but rolled out of the jolly boat, arms filled with wheels of cheese, long loaves of bread, and more wine.

Kit looked at Cooper, brows raised. “Midshipman. Dare I ask where that came from?”

“It’s the duke’s doing, sir,” Cooper said with a grin. “Sergeant Cragwell insisted.”

“How did they manage—” Kit began, but she shook it off. The how didn’t matter; dukes had their ways.

War was coming, but at least she might mollify Cook. Or allow herself to be in her cups enough to simply ignore his tantrums. “Here,” she said, and thrust the open bottle at them. “Take them all to the galley with my compliments.”

Sampson snickered. “He won’t believe you traded for them.”

Her stare went hard. “Make him believe.”

Chuckling, they crossed the deck to the companionway to the deck below.

“I suppose we’re obliged to thank the duke”—she slid her gaze to Grant—“as this gift is nothing to sneeze about.”

“Hilarious,” Grant said.

“Colonel,” Jin said. “Welcome back aboard.”

“Jin, Simon,” he said, nodding at both of them. “Lovely to see you again, although the circumstances leave a bit to be desired.”

“Given the circumstances,” Kit said, “recall that we’re in hostile territory.”

“You think they’ll give chase?” Jin asked.

“There’ll be a rather involved story to tell, but the short of it is they believe we’re Islish spies, walking away with important information about Gerard’s plans. So it’s likely. Tamlin!” she called out, and waited for the answer from the mast.

“All clear!” came the call.

“For now,” Kit said. “Let’s not give them time to follow.” She nodded at Jin.

“Anchors aweigh!” he called out, and sailors ran to the capstan to begin hauling up the chain to raise the heavy anchor.

“Where are we for?” Simon asked.

“Portsea,” she said.

“There’s more,” Jin said. She looked back at him, found him studying her.

She debated telling them, but only for a moment. Because every sailor on the ship deserved to know the risks they now faced.

“La Boucher is alive,” she said, loud enough for the sound to travel the length of the boat. “He was burned at Contra Costa but survived his injuries.”

For a moment, it seemed every soul on the Diana stopped and looked at her.

Jin just stared at her, eyes wide. “Excuse me?”

“He’s in Auevilla,” she said, loud enough for all the crew to hear. “I saw him myself. And he has apparently learned how to use his Alignment. And control the current with it.”

She squeezed Jin’s hand, then looked around the crew. “He is as alive as we are, and I watched him use magic to kill a man. That he can wield the current as a weapon is . . . well, terrifying. It is of great concern to us, to every sailor and soldier in the fleet, and to the queen, to understand what we’re facing. We sail for Portsea to report to the Crown Command, and we’ll get there as quickly as we can.”

Sounds of agreement and shock moved across the deck as sailors prepared to get underway.

“I’m for my cabin,” she said. She had a very long report to prepare.