Wayfarer

“Up you go,” Julian said, offering his hands to hoist her up. Etta ignored him and pulled herself through, despite the pain that lanced through her shoulder and bare feet at the impact on the hard stone path below. Julian landed just as roughly behind her.

The palace sat close to the river, separated only by a small street and embankment. There was no one around them that she could see, but Julian heard something. He reached over, switching off her flashlight, and held out an arm to keep her in place as a car raced down the road, slinging mud and slush up into the air. Julian let out a noise of protest as it splattered onto the front of his otherwise pristine trousers.

Etta scanned the street and river for any way across both. There seemed to be a bridge in the distance, but between it and them was a mass of humanity making its way down the street. She wasn’t about to stick around and see if the marchers were soldiers or more of St. Petersburg’s—Petrograd’s—unhappy population.

Julian darted across the street to the embankment, leaning over the wall. He shouted something down—Etta saw his mouth moving, even if she couldn’t make out his words. The fact that her hearing hadn’t fully come back, that she was still drowning beneath that same piercing whine, threatened to sink her with fear.

Etta limped over to him, peering through the darkness to see what was below—a boatman, as it turned out, in one of three rowboats tied up to the small dock, smoking as if he didn’t have a care in the world. The trail of smoke curled up toward them, a wriggling wisp of white.

Julian’s face was outraged when he looked at her. “He wants over seven thousand rubles to use one of his damned boats. Said the other servants were willing to pay for him to ferry them. I don’t have that kind of money, do you?”

After everything that had happened over the course of the last hour, Etta felt a strange, unnatural calm settle over her. Improvised explosives were a problem. Fleeing a furious mob was a problem. Greedy boatmen were not.

“May I have the flashlight?” she asked, holding out her hand.

He passed it to her, but tried to tug it back at the last second. “What are you planning? You’ve got that deranged look in your eye—”

Etta yanked it out of his hand and sidled up over the wall, then down the short hill that brought her to the wooden dock.

“English?” she called out.

The boatman stood up, stepping out of the boat, a leering smile on his face. His eyes skimmed over the place where the strap of her dress had ripped, exposing one shoulder. “Little English for little lady.”

Etta mentally gagged as she returned his smile with one of her own and said, in what she hoped was a sweet tone, “Yes, little lady in desperate need of help. Will you be a hero and help a girl out?”

“You’re flirting with him?” Julian called down in disbelief.

“Where?” the man asked, smirking.

Etta glanced across the wide stretch of the river, to where another imperial-looking building loomed. She pointed, and the man turned his head to follow the line of her arm, her finger—

Etta slammed the flashlight into his skull, blowing him back into the boat, where he collapsed, unmoving. Stunned, but still breathing.

“Good God, Linden-Hemlock-whoever-you-are!” Julian called, stumbling down the hill.

Etta threw the broken remains of the flashlight into the nearest boat, and reached down to untie the boat the man had fallen into, letting it drift into the patches of ice on the Neva. She thought about apologizing, but then decided that moment that she just didn’t care.

A pirate wouldn’t apologize or thank him. A pirate would just take. And if she had to shut off some crucial, feeling part of herself to survive this and find her way back to the real pirate in her life, she would.

She heard Nicholas’s voice whisper in her ear, a protesting, Legal pirate, thank you, and for an instant allowed the small, sad laugh to bubble up in her chest.

Julian gave her a look that told her exactly what he thought about that laugh.

“Spencer,” she told him. “My last name is Spencer.”

Etta quickly stepped down into the boat, feeling it wobble beneath her feet. It steadied with the added weight of Julian, allowing her to easily reach up and unknot the line anchoring it to the dock. They drifted out toward the clumps of ice forming in the river’s slow waters, and for a moment they both looked at each other expectantly.

“I would row,” Etta told him, “except my shoulder is killing me and I can barely move my arm—so maybe you could try contributing to this escape?”

“Of course,” he said quickly, not meeting her gaze. “I was just waiting to see if you’d be stubborn enough to attempt it yourself.”

Julian picked up the oars, got them on either side of the boat, and then lifted them up and down in the water, doing little more than splashing. Etta stared at him; she was freezing, tired, shaken, and on the verge of reaching over to strangle him for even trying to make a joke at a time like this. But he kept doing it, his brow wrinkled, as if confounded about why the boat was slowly turning in a circle and not moving across the water as expected.

“Are you serious?” she asked him in disbelief. “You don’t know how to row a boat?”

His shoulders set against her words. “I’ll have you know, Nick was always there to do it when the situation called for it.”

Etta felt her jaw tighten to the point of pain as she held out her hands. He hesitated a moment before passing the heavy oars over. With a movement that made her shoulder protest pitifully, she got the boat turned around, her back to the other bank, and made the first long stroke. Those days with Alice rowing by the Loeb Boathouse in Central Park had been for something more than enjoyment after all.