Tacitly, everyone agreed not to examine the mirror until the morning. Before dawn, Stathis and his sons had loosened the lines between the two caiques, then, with promises of a future reunion, sailed off to make their catch.
London heard Athena and Kallas arguing below deck. Something about her resting more, which the witch refused to do.
“It never seems to stop with them,” London murmured, “the arguments.”
“Surely that doesn’t surprise you,” said Bennett.
She rolled her eyes. “I do know how anger and lust fuel one another.” When he raised a brow at her, she explained, “It was like that, sometimes, with Lawrence and me. We’d fight about something I did to the house or an aspect of my behavior that he disliked, and I would get angry that he’d make demands but was hardly around, so why should it matter if I went riding by myself or expanded the library.” She waved away the memories of those rows.
“The best part of those arguments,” she continued, “was what happened afterward. The lights were off, of course,” she added with a blush, “but things became a good deal less…routine.” That passion between them never lasted, though. Only in the heat of wrath did London and her late husband find any form of desire between them. And the pleasure they’d achieved had been selfish, each clawing toward gratification, using the other’s body as a means of attaining climax. She never felt truly fulfilled after such encounters. Only more alone.
“So you understand what goes on between Kallas and Athena,” Bennett said with a scowl. Interesting. He did not strike London as the sort of man who even comprehended jealousy, let alone felt it. Surely, London had to be mistaken in her interpretation.
“It seems that there is more to what is happening between our captain and our witch than mere desire,” London said. “Affection, perhaps.”
“Our witch has got a new fancy,” Bennett allowed. He watched the wind in the sails, noting its direction. “But nothing lasts. She moves on.”
“Like you,” London said softly.
He gazed at her steadily. “Like me.”
“There’s freedom in that.” She would not frustrate herself, grasping at what could not be. “To unloose the passions and let them run where they will with no fear of tomorrow.”
“Think you did a rather good job of it last night—freeing your passions.”
The heat of his voice made her tremble. “I did, didn’t I?” She felt proud of herself, proud of what she and Bennett had done, how little she cared what anyone else thought.
At last, Athena and Kallas joined them on deck, the witch looking considerably improved, though a bit vexed with the captain, a sentiment he shared.
Bennett uncovered the mirror. It gleamed even more brightly than it had when it was first removed from the stream.
“Such brilliance in its surface,” Athena marveled, then asked London, “Are you sure of its age?”
“Quite,” said London, and felt certain of herself. Where language was concerned, she needed no other assurances besides her own. “The dialect died out millennia ago. Only a few fragments remain, but there are perhaps only a half dozen people familiar with it, maybe even less.”
“Including you,” added Bennett. His smile warmed her deeply.
“And me,” she said, pride and modesty butting up against each other. She was used to comments about her appearance or her clothing or other inconsequential things, but Bennett was the first man, the first person, to value her skill with languages.
“And the writings?” Kallas asked, scattering her thoughts. “What do they say?”
London held the mirror, tilting it this way and that to better read the words encircling its rim. She cleared her throat, then began:
“My eye is golden and lost.
The rocks tumble, seven three nine, on the east;
Then the precarious narrow path that must be taken,
Else find yourself stranded, walk upon the water.
Onward, and reflect toward the dawn.
Find me then, if you can, to see
What I see.”
Finished, she looked to Bennett to see what he could make of such a riddle. “I wish, sometimes, that these ancients spoke plainly.”
“Then there’d be no fun in it.” He stared at the mirror as if it could reflect back an answer. London watched the light bounce off the mirror’s surface to bathe Bennett in a golden halo, but he was far more devil than angel. She had proof of that in the wonderful soreness throughout her body.
“You sure that’s some magic something?” Kallas asked. “Because it sounds like a sailor giving directions.”
Athena frowned, but did not scoff. “What do you mean?”
“There’s a stretch of the sea to the northeast of here, a few days’ sail,” Kallas explained. “A chain of islands, more rocks in the sea than islands, in groups. The first of seven, then three, and then nine. Once past those, there are two islands that face each other with a narrow strait between them—maybe three times the width of this boat. A difficult sail. No one has ever dared it. Around the islands are wide shoals, too shallow to sail, but it’s said a man could walk on them and the water would only come to his ankles. Then, toward the dawn would mean go east from there.”
“Then this mirror is a map,” said London.
“A map of words,” the captain said. He drew on his pipe as punctuation, but could not quite hide some deserved masculine preening when Athena gaped in admiration and amazement.
“The men in your family must all be incredible sailors,” said Bennett, approving.
“Always. It’s said one of my ancestors taught Jason how to sail, and another sailed with Odysseus. Will they sing of me, the Muses?”
“Without a doubt,” said London.
“You, too, will be in their song, Lady Oracle, who reads the words of the past.”
“An extraordinary little boat we’ve got here,” said Bennett. He rubbed his hands together. “Now, let’s have ourselves some breakfast. I’m so hungry, I could eat a halyard.”
London looked around the deck of the caique, at Kallas attending to the sails of his beloved boat, at Athena still shaking her head in wonderment, at Bennett heading off toward the galley below. He was the man whose bed she shared. For a few hours. For a few days. And then…and then she did not know, but she would not let herself dwell on uncertainties. For now, she was here, in the middle of the ocean, on this swift-sailing boat, with these people.
Sea captain. Noble witch. Life-loving scoundrel. And her. An odd group, but one in which she was discovering her most truthful self.
London adjusted the tension on the jib’s halyard, keeping its leading edge straight as the wind shifted. She didn’t need Kallas’s guidance anymore. She knew what the boat needed.
Certain moments in one’s life would always be returned to, even years, decades, later. Some of them were painful—heartbreak, mortification, loss—but there were others that held the clarity and perfection of cut gems, to sparkle against the velvet drape of memory. And, as the years progressed and unfolded in their relentless march, again and again would the mind revisit those moments. Eating a plum, the juices running down your hand, as you walked an esplanade along the shore. The day that the weather cleared and the ground was finally firm enough to be ridden upon, and the leap of your heart as your horse took the first fence. A new old book being delivered and unwrapped from its brown paper, sitting upon your desk, full of possibility, and the musty, rich smell of its pages as you opened it.
You returned to these moments, sometimes to ease a current suffering, and sometimes for the simple pleasure of revisiting a past joy, but they were there, and held and treasured in the cupped palms of your mind.
London knew that, no matter what the years brought her, or even the next few weeks, she would always cherish her days spent on the caique, as they sailed toward the mirror’s destination. Though she hadn’t much experience with the larger world, she understood enough to see these days as miniature miracles painted in azure, cobalt, turquoise. Perhaps they were all the more precious because they could not last.
Squinting in the sun, she checked the jibsheets, both port and starboard, feeling the power in the lines, taking their power into herself.
Knowing the transience of her happiness, she reveled in each and every heartbeat, each breath. Daytime was filled with light and sky and sea, the glitter of gold upon the waves, the snap of the sails as she learned the wind, passing other brightly painted boats in the timeless rhythm of seafaring life. She felt softness leave her arms, her body, in the joy of movement. Her hair smelled of saltwater and sun. She laughed often. Stories were told, many outrageous, some entirely fabricated. She drank dark wine and ate briny olives. She became a sailor.
And the nights. She felt like Psyche, visited each night by the embodiment of sensuality. In truth, it was she who visited him, since London and Athena shared a cabin, but the general idea was much the same. Though she prized her days, London could not wait for night, after dinner, when Kallas took the wheel for a few hours, leaving Bennett and her free to do unspeakably wonderful and wicked things to one another in dark, intimate seclusion.
She explored every inch of Bennett’s magnificent body and, in so doing, came to know her own completely. How, when he bit the tender juncture of her neck and shoulder, she shuddered with pleasure. The insides of her arms, she discovered, were sensitive, and she ran them over his back, across his broad chest, feeling the textures of his skin, his hair. Her breath on the inside of his thigh caused him to growl. His tongue, lapping at the folds of her pussy, made her whimper and writhe. She loved to clutch at the tight muscles of his buttocks as he drove into her, pulling him closer until they were almost one creature.
He taught her things. She guided him. They tangled together.
The heat that now suffused her cheeks was not caused by the sun, but by exquisite memory of what she and Bennett had done the night before.
London was sure that every morning, she emerged on deck with the sleepy, satisfied look of a woman who had been thoroughly pleasured. God knew that Kallas and Athena had to hear her moans each night. She could not bring herself to care. Shameless. She was without shame. And it was wonderful.
It wasn’t only the physical aspects of their lovemaking that had London smiling to herself. Once they had temporarily sated themselves with each other’s bodies, she and Bennett would lay together in the narrow bunk and talk of everything—weighty matters, trifles. She learned about his life in England as the second son of a noted barrister, his restlessness at the idea of settling down, practicing law himself, and how, when he was recruited for the Blades, life finally made sense. He could at last make good use of his skill with codes, his ease in the darkness. A man like him, of excellent breeding and solid English values, clever of mind and strong of body, could have been an Heir. To her utter astonishment, she learned that he had, in fact, been approached by an agent of the Heirs of Albion while in his second year at Cambridge. Bennett rejected their advances, their appeals to his vanity, his cupidity. Soon after that, a man by the name of Catullus Graves sent him a letter, inviting him to Southampton to decode some ancient Scandinavian ciphers. That’s when he learned about the Blades, and that’s when he vowed to make their cause his own.
At his prompting, she told him about her own life, but it was far less interesting, in her opinion, than his. Unlike him, she’d never been to Lapland, Tangiers, Bucharest. She hadn’t scrambled up the sides of snow-covered mountains, seeking shelter before a blizzard hit. She never shared a Berber’s hookah while watching kohl-eyed, veiled dancers in firelight. But, oh, she wanted to, and he described his adventures with such vivid detail that she felt as if she’d lived a whole other life, one outside of books. He asked about the numerous languages she studied, her joy in them, and took his pleasure in hers. She had never spoken to anyone about her linguistic scholarship, always afraid of their response. Bennett was different. She knew she could trust him; he wouldn’t turn on her or decry what was so important to her.
She thought about them following the mirror’s direction. It would be a difficult voyage—the mirror guarded its secrets well. London hoped Kallas had the skill of generations to navigate treacherous waters.
Satisfied that the jib’s rigging was in order, London drifted from the bow of the boat toward the quarterdeck. There, she found Athena and Kallas passionately arguing about whether Jason should have abandoned Medea. Naturally, the witch defended the sorceress. Kallas insisted that Jason rightly found a new woman, as Medea was of a less-than-sane disposition.
“But she killed her own brother to help him escape Colchis,” Athena protested.
“Exactly,” said Kallas. “She was several sails short of a clipper.”
Athena made a noise of outrage.
London smothered her laugh, then asked, “Where is Bennett?”
With the stem of his pipe, Kallas pointed toward the stern of the boat.
Leaving the witch and the sailor locked in their dispute, London picked her way toward the back of the caique. As she neared, she glanced around with a frown. Bennett wasn’t there.
But he was. London got closer and saw him. Sprawled on his back along the decking, his head propped on a coil of rope, Bennett lay across the stern. His chest rose and fell in gentle swells. He was asleep.
For a few moments, she watched him. He’d had the opportunity to watch her sleep back on Delos, and she seized her chance for reversal.
His long legs stretched out, the fabric of his trousers outlining the clean shapes of his muscles. An athlete at rest, the subject for sculpture. His fingers interlaced over the breadth of his chest—she shivered, remembering how, last night, those deft fingers felt as they trailed along her spine, over the curve of her behind, and down her legs in a whisper caress. In sleep, his face was as beautiful as a night full of stars over the sea. Long, dark eyelashes that trembled slightly with dreams. His mouth, delectable, full, turned in a half smile, for even asleep there was lightness in his heart. A surge of tenderness swept through her.
London realized that they never actually slept together. She always had to return to her cabin, so that, when Kallas’s shift at the helm was over, he had a bed to himself. She and Bennett might doze, briefly, but then it was time for her to struggle into her clothing and stagger across the passageway, and for him to go above. To wake beside him in the glow of morning, both of them warm and naked, talking of half-remembered dreams as they surfaced into wakefulness, it was a pleasure she might never experience.
A pain tightened within her, but she struggled to banish it. No demands, she reminded herself. Nothing but now.
She could watch him all day. Yet she didn’t want to wake him. Perhaps she would join Kallas and Athena’s disputation, even though she felt as though her presence was not necessary. The two Greeks always had some variety of argument brewing.
London turned to go back, but at the faint sound of her skirts, Bennett opened his eyes. He saw her and smiled, stretching like a cat.
“Don’t go,” he rumbled.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she said.
“I’m already disturbed.” He reached out a hand toward her. “Sit with me.”
She came forward and took his hand, reveling in the feel of his skin against hers. When he drew her down, she readily acquiesced, sitting cross-legged and cradling his head in her lap.
“Mm,” he murmured, nuzzling her thigh. “Much better.”
Even this turned her blood tropic. Her hands ran through his dark hair. Here was another of those moments, she realized, that she would return to many times over in the course of her life. “Poor beast,” she said, soft, “have I been wearing you out these past few nights?”
“Worn down to the bone.” He took one of her hands and rubbed it against his cheek. Slight bristles prickled against her palm, and she adored the masculinity of it, of him.
“Perhaps I should let you sleep at night instead of demanding ravishment.”
His bright aqua eyes held hers, sharp and intense. “I’m not giving you up. Not even for a night. Either you come to my cabin or I go to yours.”
“Athena might not appreciate that,” she said placidly, yet inside, she rioted, knowing that he needed her as much as she needed him.
“She’s a grown woman,” he said with a shrug. “God knows she’s seen me doing worse.”
London raised a brow. “So, you and she were lovers.” Try as she did, it was impossible to keep the edge from her voice.
“A long time ago. Briefly.” He gripped London’s hand tighter. “But that means nothing. We’re friends now. Only friends.”
London said, “I’m not quite as…sophisticated as you. I wonder how you’d feel if one of my former amours was on this boat. Not that I had any, but if I did.”
“I’d tie raw steaks to him and throw him overboard. But not before beating him into a paste.”
“Very bloodthirsty.”
He flashed a vicious grin. “Love, where you’re concerned, you have no idea.”
She bent forward and kissed him, mouths upside down. Then, for some time, they were quiet. She continued to stroke his hair, and he closed his eyes, leaning into her touch, almost purring.
“What kind of name is London?” he asked suddenly. “I’ve never met anybody with that name before.”
Who knew what directions his clever mind would take? “My full name is Victoria Regina Gloriana London Edgeworth Harcourt.”
“Great God, how cumbersome to embroider.”
London chuckled. “Yes, well, my father is possessed of a rather overdeveloped patriotic fervor. When I was very small, everyone called me Victoria, but as soon as I learned to read—”
“At the age of two.”
“Four, Clever Britches,” she said, tugging hard on his hair. He grimaced comically. “When I was four,” she continued, loosening her hold, “I saw that everywhere we went in the city, my middle name kept popping up. On everything. Signs. Newspapers. Painted on the sides of wagons. And I thought that, if my name was everywhere, then everything belonged to me.”
“A greedy little imp.”
“Not greedy,” she defended. “I thought that our Queen could rule the country, and I would rule the city.”
“Power mad,” he said sagely. “I knew it. Not so meek and mild, after all.”
She shook her head at him, torn between amusement and exasperation. “So I insisted on being called ‘London.’ Miraculously, even my father agreed. And that is what I have gone by ever since.” Even speaking of her father cast a pall over what had been a lovely afternoon. She tried to turn the conversation to more pleasant topics. “And what about you? I’ve never met anyone named Bennett.”
“My mother was, is, a great admirer of the novels of Miss Austen. Pride and Prejudice is one of her favorites.”
“Lucky that you weren’t named Fitzwilliam.”
“Tell that to my brother.”
“No!”
“Yes. Fitzwilliam Darcy Day. Couldn’t even take refuge in his middle name. I believe it shaped him into the venal man he is today.” He sighed mournfully. “A barrister.”
“My condolences,” she murmured, but a smile curved her mouth.
They were smiling together in the Aegean sunlight when Kallas’s shout had them both leaping to their feet and running to the helm, hand in hand.
“What’s wrong?” Bennett demanded, awake and alert.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Kallas answered. “But I thought you should know, we have been guided properly by your mirror. And me. Look.”
He pointed off the portside bow, and London squeezed Bennett’s hand tightly. There, lined up in groups of seven, then three, and then nine, were tiny islands, more like the jagged peaks of a dragon’s teeth above water than true islands, but they were there just the same, as the mirror had directed. Her heart pounded. They were getting closer to the Source.
London thought she saw something else. She darted into the quarterdeck house and returned with the spyglass, which she trained closer to the horizon. She observed dim, low shapes of two more islands, a narrow strait between them. It was precisely what Kallas and the mirror said they would find.
“Are we going to have to sail through that?” London asked, pointing at the strait. The spyglass was passed around, each of them taking a turn to peer through it. “It seems hardly wide enough to fit a stout man, let alone a boat.”
Everyone fell silent, considering this.
“Now is the time for worrying,” Athena said.
The caucus was brief and didn’t soothe anybody’s nerves. Bennett paced as they debated their options. As they neared the strait, it showed itself to be lined with spiked rocks, a tight squeeze for even the most adept seaman. Surely Scylla presented less of a threat.
“What about sailing around it?” asked London.
“Can’t,” Kallas answered. “The shoals are wide and treacherous. If we skirt them, the wind catches us and throws us far off course. We’d be halfway to Constantinople before we got our direction back.”
“How are we supposed to sail through the shoals to get to the strait?” Athena asked.
“Day, take the helm,” Kallas said. Bennett, knowing it was best to trust the knowledgeable captain, did as instructed, even though the strait approached quickly.
Kallas ran to the bow of the boat and peered closely at the nearing shoals. He returned and took the wheel from Bennett.
“There’s a narrow dip in the sands of the shoals. It’s deep enough to sail through.” His tone left no doubt that the captain, who had saltwater running through his veins, could do just that. Bennett was damned grateful that the captain hadn’t called upon him to perform the nigh-impossible task.
The wind gathered in strength as the caique reached the edge of the shoals, as though pushing them toward it, toward the possibility of running aground. And beyond that, there loomed the dangerous rocks of the strait, and the likelihood of being smashed against them.
Ordinarily, such prospects gave him a thrill, another chance for him to flirt with and escape from death. But there were other people to consider besides himself.
“Either we sail through or turn back,” said Athena. “Those are our choices.”
“I cannot turn back,” London answered.
“Nor I,” Bennett seconded. “And you?” he asked both Kallas and Athena.
Athena drew herself up, proud. “Galanos women never shy from danger.”
“I’m going to forget you asked me that,” the captain growled to Bennett.
Bennett nodded, satisfied, but couldn’t entirely smash a niggling fear that poked and jabbed at his heart. He realized it wasn’t his own skin he worried about. He glanced at London, watching, grave and courageous. The fear spiked. Bennett swore softly, and it didn’t help a damn. So he strode to her and took her mouth in a brief, demanding kiss. Her hands barely had time to cup his jaw before he moved away.
Action removed doubt. They were at the shoals.
“Man your stations,” Kallas barked, and Bennett was again all too glad to obey the order. He took the mainsail, with London at the jib and Athena at the foresail. They would all have to work quickly—the wind rammed them onward, giving no quarter or possibility of a sane, calm navigation. Both London and Athena struggled against their long hair blowing in their faces, and skirts tangling in their legs. Even Bennett felt the invisible, pitiless hands of the wind shoving at him, forcing him to anchor his legs to the deck to keep from being blown about like so much flotsam. Everyone crouched low, shielding themselves. They fought the wind, battling it.
Kallas stood at the helm, his pipe stem held tight between his teeth as he threaded the caique through the tight confines of the shoals’ passage. But the captain grinned, his eyes burning bright. Bennett chuckled to himself. Kallas was breaching the shoals’ maidenhead, and felt a proprietary, feral pleasure in taking its innocence. He caught Bennett’s chuckle and laughed, as well. Athena and London stared at them in confusion. Bennett wasn’t about to tell the women why he and Kallas exulted. Only men knew the pleasure of breaching a narrow opening, sliding through the wet to find home.
There wasn’t time for triumph. No sooner had the caique navigated the shoals than they were at the mouth of the strait, its red rock walls stretching steep and ominous against the perfect blue of the sky.
Nowhere to go but onward. The end of the strait wasn’t far, but to Bennett’s eyes, it seemed leagues away.
“We take the middle,” Kallas shouted above the wind. “Keep the sails close-hauled. London, don’t pull the jib flat. Keep a slot between the jib and the main. Day, trim the main. No one make them fast—we need them at hand.” He wrestled with the wheel as the steep, pitted faces of rock towered over them on both sides.
They raced forward. Bennett kept his station, following Kallas’s yelled commands, as did Athena and London. Both women squinted in the harsh wind but stayed rooted to their posts. The sheer faces of rock crowded the boat on both sides, looming, close. It would take nerves of steel, and close cooperation between everyone on board, to make it through without tearing the hull to matchsticks.
Beneath the wind, Bennett felt it. A rumble. Growing in depth and strength.
He looked up.
“Bollocks,” he muttered to himself, then shouted, “Watch your heads!”
Everyone gazed upward, eyes wide.
Kallas said something in Greek that Bennett couldn’t translate, but no doubt it was a filthy curse. London didn’t mind. She said the exact same thing a heartbeat later.
A boulder came plummeting down the face of the cliff, bouncing off rocks. It skipped off an outcropping and headed for the bow of the boat. Exactly where London stood.
Bennett ran and threw himself at London, sending them both slamming to the deck as the boulder shot across the bow. It shattered on the other cliff, spraying them with gravel.
Seeing her close call, London turned shocked and grateful eyes to Bennett.
“Stay at your posts!” bellowed Kallas. “There’s more!”
Rocks of every size rained down on them. The smaller ones struck the hull and deck of the caique, splintering wood, and peppering everyone on board with bruises. Despite Kallas’s command, Bennett continued to shield London with his body.
“Kallas needs you on the mainsail,” she said, her voice muffled. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
A rock clipped his right shoulder. Bennett swore. It would have hit London if he hadn’t been covering her.
When he didn’t move, she shoved at him. “I’m not made of porcelain. And the boat needs you. Needs us,” she added, glancing up at the unattended jib, clattering in the wind.
He reluctantly peeled himself away, knowing she was right. He took up the mainsail and saw London return to manning the jib. Small rocks pelted her. She winced from the impact but didn’t leave her post, holding the jib tight. Bennett cursed, hating to think of her hurt.
Kallas grappled with the wheel as heavy boulders crashed into the waters just off the starboard bow. Water splashed up, soaking London and Bennett.
More boulders tumbled into the water along the starboard side of the boat. Even in the chaos, Bennett wondered why the rocks were coming down only on one side, and not both. The ancients always protected their Sources well. They were leaving too much of an opening on the port side.
“I’m taking her port!” Kallas yelled. He began to turn the wheel to make the adjustment.
No, something wasn’t quite right.
“Hold, Kallas!” Bennett shouted back. “Keep us starboard!”
“We’ll be flattened,” the captain growled, still turning the wheel.
Bennett dove from his post by the mainsail to wrestle the wheel back. The two men grappled while London and Athena could only look on in horrified confusion.
“Give me back my damned wheel,” Kallas snarled. He punched Bennett in the ribs, not hard enough to break anything, but enough to hurt like hell. A punch like that would have finished most men, but Bennett held on.
He gritted, “No—Kallas, you ass—that’s what they want.” Bennett dug his heels into the deck and held fast. Kallas was as strong as men nearly twice the captain’s size. He had to be part minotaur.
“Who?” demanded Kallas.
“Just…trust me,” Bennett said, panting with effort. “I know how…these things…work.” He gripped the wheel, keeping them to the right.
Just as the last rocks and boulders tumbled down, the boat rocked, listing starboard. An ungodly roar. From the sea floor, giant stone pillars three feet wide and tall as trees, shot up on the left.
Kallas’s curse and Athena’s prayers split the air. London hunkered beneath the jibsheets as displaced seawater washed over the bow. The hull of the boat just grazed the pillars as Bennett and Kallas both steered the caique away from them.
If they had sailed away from the rocks, they and the boat would have been mercilessly shattered on the pillars. This was plainly written on everyone’s faces, including a pale but steady London, who looked at Bennett with wide eyes.
“How did you know?” the captain asked. “About the rocks and those pillars?”
“Counterbalance mechanism. Boulders tip the weight, pillars come up.”
There wasn’t time to discuss matters further. The pillars lined the port side of the rest of the strait, cutting their maneuvering room in half. Bennett strode back to the mainsail as Kallas issued more orders for the boat to tack.
The hull of the caique scraped against the spikes, gouging the wooden planks. Kallas guided the boat away from them. On the starboard side, the rocky cliffs grated the hull before their course was corrected. Everyone shuddered at the sounds, knowing that it could have been much, much worse.
And then it did get worse.
Cannon fire thundered over the wind. The boat shook with the percussion as pebbles clattered down, rattled loose from the cliffs. Bennett glanced back.
“Set another place at the table!” he shouted.
Everyone followed his gaze.
“Oh, hell,” said London.
The Heirs’ ship was just entering the strait. Their sails were down, instead using steam to power their way. Which meant they weren’t at the mercy of the wind, like the caique.
“Maybe the fallen boulders will stop them,” said Athena.
Bennett shook his head. “Not so easy to lose those bastards. Look where their guns are aimed.”
The steamship’s cannons pointed at the boulders piled up along the starboard side. Then, with a tremendous boom, the guns fired.
Boulders exploded into gravel. One moment, giant rocks blocked the strait, and then, with a roar, they turned to dust. Kallas had guided the caique carefully around the boulders, but the Heirs took their usual subtle approach by blowing the huge rocks straight to Hades.
“Goat-fucking bastards,” growled Kallas.
Having conquered the first obstacle, the hulking iron monster of the steamship plowed on, straight toward the caique, threading through the narrow passage.
“The stone pillars,” Athena said hopefully.
Bennett heard the sounds of the cannons being repositioned, orders shouted to men. “Cover yourselves,” he commanded. No sooner had those words left his mouth than the cannons fired again, tearing chunks of stone from the pillars. The caique listed from side to side with the force of the impact.
Bennett wasn’t worried. He let out a breath as the caique neared the end of the strait. The wind gentled like a broken horse, ready to be ridden. While the Heirs attempted to pulverize the stone pillars, making way for their cumbersome iron ship, the caique could navigate the shoals and make their escape. Simple.
Except—
“Captain, you need to see this,” London called back from her position in the bow.
Without speaking, Bennett took the wheel from Kallas as the captain dashed forward. Curses that Bennett was sure hadn’t been invented yet streamed from the captain’s mouth, and, once Bennett saw what so angered Kallas, he decided to add his contribution to the swearing lexicon.
Instead of a narrow, but straight, path through the shoals on the other side of the island, this path twisted and turned, a labyrinth. The boat could run aground a million times over on the sandy banks of the shoals. Oh, it might be traversable, but only with a hell of a lot of guts and even more time.
Time was something they didn’t have. The Heirs’ cannons were working to make mince of the stone pillars.
And then the gun turret turned in the direction of the caique.
Bennett’s blood chilled. The sailboat would be shredded by gunfire before they cleared the shoals. Like a shooting gallery target.
Just as Bennett thought this, the first round of gunfire whizzed overhead, narrowly missing the mainsail mast. Hell. The Heirs weren’t planning on bringing down the boat. They’d take out its sails, leaving the Blades as juicy little plums ready to be plucked once the Heirs’ ship made it through the strait. Jesus, what would Edgeworth do to London once he got his hands on her?
The boat glided from the strait and into the shoals. It was Kallas’s boat, but Bennett had to seize command.
“Kallas, take the helm,” he ordered. “London, stay in the bow, keep your eyes on the path through the shoals. You’ll guide Kallas. Athena, you’ve got the sails.”
Everyone hurried to obey, even the captain, who took no offense in Bennett’s assumption of leadership. Not in such treacherous times.
“What about you?” asked London.
Without a word, Bennett dashed below to the cargo hold, grabbed a few things, then sprinted back on deck. London saw what he held and shook her head.
“No.” Her voice was hard and sure.
But there was only one thing he could do. He checked the rifle. It was loaded, and he had slung a cartridge belt over his shoulder. He tugged off his boots and threw them to the deck. “Yes,” he said. “A diversion.” Then he kissed her, fast and hard.
Before she could argue, he vaulted over the side of the boat.