Wayfarer

Nicholas weighed the odds, as he impatiently turned his now-warm pint of ale between his hands, that the “three crowns” in the tavern’s name referred to the three vices that seemed to reign over it: avarice, gluttony, and lust.

A lone fiddler huddled over his instrument in the corner, trying in vain to raise a tune over the bawdy singing of the men nearby. The knot in his throat tightened, aided by the knot of his stained cravat.

“Jolly mortals, fill your glasses; noble deeds are done by wine. Scorn the nymph and all her graces; who’d for love or beauty pine! Fa-la-la-la-la…!”

Nicholas jerked away from the sight of the bow gliding over the strings, lest his mind start chasing memories down that unhappy trail again. Each second was chipping at his resolve, and what patience he had left seemed as insubstantial as a feather.

Steady, he coaxed himself, steady.

How very difficult, though, when the temptation to claw at the table and walls to release the bottled-up storm in him had him so close to surrender. He forced himself to focus on the men hunched over their tables, slapping down cards in perfect ignorance of the onslaught of rain pounding against the windows. The dialects and languages were as varied as the ships out in the bay. There were no uniforms present, which was a welcome surprise to him and a boon to the men at the tables around him, as they shamelessly attempted to unload their contraband.

Little wonder that Rose Linden had chosen this place to meet. He was beginning to question whether the woman courted villainy, or if she merely felt at home in it. If nothing else, her choice ensured that the Ironwood guardians watching the hidden passage on the island would not be likely to step in—their sensibilities were too delicate to risk brushing up against the scruffy charm of the seamen.

Settle yourself.

Nicholas reached up to press his fingers against the cord of leather hidden beneath his linen shirt. Against the outline of the delicate earring he’d strung through it for safekeeping. He didn’t dare take it out; he’d seen the look of pity and disgust Sophia had fired his way last evening, when she’d caught him looking at it by the light of their small fire, studying the pale pearl, the gold leaves and blue beads attached to the gold hoop.

It was a safer thing by far to keep his eyes forward, rather than fixed on the evidence of his failures.

Etta would find this place agreeable. He could not catch the thought before it escaped, nor could he stop himself from picturing her here. She would have delighted in watching the room, soliciting whatever stories she could about the island’s sordid history as a pirate kingdom. He might have lost her, even, to an ill-fated treasure hunt or a smuggler’s crew.

Lost her all the same. Nicholas exhaled slowly, packing the ache away again.

On the worst of days, when the restlessness and fear turned his blood to squirming spiders and his inaction became unbearable, his thoughts turned to nightmares. Hurt. Gone. Dead. But the very simple truth, the one that remained when every doubt swirled around him, was that Etta was simply too clever and stubborn to die.

He’d purposefully extinguished the lantern hanging on the wall beside them, and he’d ordered just enough small plates of food and ale to allow them to keep their table without question. But his pockets had lightened as the hours wound down, and Nicholas knew that what little pay he’d scraped together from a morning’s work unloading cargo on the docks wouldn’t keep for much longer.

“She’s not showing,” Sophia growled at him from across the table.

Nicholas pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to tamp down the swell of frustration before it carried him off.

“Patience,” he growled. The night wasn’t over yet. “We aren’t finished here.”

Sophia huffed, downing whatever was left in her pint before reaching over and snatching his, drawing appreciative looks from the next table over as she gulped the remainder of the ale.

“There,” she said, slamming the tankard down. “Now we can go.”

In his twenty-odd years of life, Nicholas never could have dreamt he’d see the day when an Ironwood looked so utterly disreputable. Owing to the presence of Ironwoods on the island, and owing even more greatly to the fact that the Grand Master himself had likely put a bounty on his and Sophia’s heads large enough to purchase said island, they were in disguise.

Sophia had sullenly—but willingly—sheared her long, dark, curling locks to her shoulders, and braided the remainder into a neat queue. He’d secured clothing from a sailor who shared, approximately, her small stature, and she wore it as comfortably as she did her own skin—unexpected, given her past proclivity for silk and lace.

Most surprising, however, was the leather patch over the now-empty socket of her left eye.

Nicholas’s fears of her losing her eye after the brutal beating she’d suffered in Palmyra had been well founded. By the time he and Hasan had brought her back to a hospital in Damascus, the wound had become infected, and her sight in that eye was already gone. Sophia had elected for slow death by rot and fever rather than willingly let any of the physicians remove it, no doubt for vanity’s sake.

Yet, when they at last had been forced to remove it, some part of her must have wanted to survive, because she had not retreated from life even in the fiercest clutches of agony. In fact, she had healed quickly, and he had to begrudgingly admit her force of will, once she had made a decision, was something to be feared.

It was a lucky thing, too. While she recovered in Damascus, Nicholas received an unexpected note from Rose, left inside Hasan’s home for him to find.