SUN SAID nothing at all during dinner, watching everyone with those storm-dark eyes of his and looking as though he wished he were anywhere else. Though Dom Miguel and Marisol did most of the talking, Benji and I added our own quips and kept the conversation moving, if a bit strained around the edges. After Sun resisted my many attempts to draw him into the conversation, I made an announcement over a nice egg custard boiled in rum.
“Sun, I’m hoping you’ll join me in showing these gentlemen and lady the fine game of tafl.” He looked at me as though I’d grown a third eye in my forehead. “Unless our guests feel they might not understand the rules? It is somewhat like chess, except you have a king who must escape odds against him. Considering your recent histories, I find it apt.”
To a man, including Marisol, they insisted that tafl would not present them any difficulties, and, as propriety required, they prevailed upon Sun to teach them. Glowering, speaking haltingly at first, Sun began instructing them in the basics while I retrieved iron bullets to represent the attacking soldiers and silver coins to represent the king’s men. A saltcellar made an adequate king.
As I’d hoped, before long, as the grog flowed and we all relaxed into the game, Sun’s natural personality surfaced, and I was able draw out a smile or two with a few well-placed jokes. When Dom Miguel laughed and patted Sun’s arm after the two of them got a king out from right under Marisol and Benji’s soldiers, and, instead of tensing for a fight, Sun smiled back at him, I knew my plan was working.
I rotated the teams so everyone could learn each other’s strategies for play and then begged off for some fresh air. “I’m sorry to steal your partner, Dom Miguel,” I apologized. “But I hope Sun will join me above decks?” For my plan to work, I needed Sun to mingle with more than just the upper class.
Sun reluctantly looked up from the engrossing strategy he’d been contemplating with Dom Miguel, and Marisol and Benji looked markedly more cheerful when Sun left him to come to my side. Their pile of betting coins was the smallest, but from the way Dom Miguel rubbed his chin, I suspected it would grow larger before the evening was through.
Sun and I stepped around several groups of dicing sailors enjoying their ration of grog, and then I led him above decks, where night rested gently on the ship as it rocked at anchor next to the large black shape of the mountain. Men, both Benji’s loyal ones and Edwin’s former crew, kept their turn at watch while a few others told tales in small groups, diced, played at cards, or sang and danced. They quieted as we passed, giving Sun dark glances.
We leaned against the gunnel and took in the fresh night air, watching the ripples on the water glide between reflected moonlight and the lights from the ship’s lanterns.
“There’s the sodomite,” a rough voice sounded from behind us—Edwin’s redhead. I stiffened and turned around slowly. He stood behind us, feet apart, chin thrust high, fists clenched. Behind him were three more of Edwin’s former crew—all four of them smelled strongly of the grog Captain Benji had generously distributed. “Martio plumbed his hawsehole but good.”
Shame burned through me like a flash fire that left my earlobes tingling. Sun made a violent movement next to me, but I had the presence of mind to throw an arm across his chest. The very last thing I wanted was for Sun to turn his deadly arts on any of the crew, even ones such as these. The captain had threatened them all not to raise a hand against us, but as Black Miguel had once told me, threats mean nothing to some until they see a man act on his words.
And words were all these were, I told my shaking hands and arms. They couldn’t hurt me.
Sun fired off in Portuguese too quickly for me to understand, drew his knife, and licked the blade. Two of the three men, both Portuguese, laughed.
“What did he call me?”
Still laughing, his companion translated. “He said because you’re jealous, Artur, he’ll fode your bunghole with that and then make some new holes for everyone else to have a turn.”
Blood rushed to Artur’s face, but he didn’t say anything else, only coughed a gob of spit and snot at Sun’s feet. One of his companions pushed him, saying he wanted more grog, and then they were gone as suddenly as they’d appeared. I looked at Sun in surprise—even Marisol would have been impressed by that reply.
“You shouldn’t have stopped me,” Sun said as I dropped my arm. “He needs to be shown.”
“No, Sun. No more killing. There’s been enough of that.”
“I wouldn’t kill him.” Sun’s eyes glinted in the darkness. “Only make him wish I had.”
“Sun, no. I don’t want that. Let it go.” My whole plan for convincing Sun to set sail hinged on him integrating with the crew. A fight was the last thing I wanted. Well, other than a death.
“As you wish, my Benjamin.” Sun put away his knife, but he glared over at the small knot of men laughing around Artur on the forecastle.
Pushing down the emotions rising from Artur’s words, I rested on my heels to throw a few rounds of dice with other sailors here and there, drawing Sun in, and paying our debts with Edwin’s silvers when we lost, until the small supply I’d found in his quarters was gone.
“Ah well,” I said, turning back to the gunnel and looking up at Dread Island’s peak.
Sun leaned next to me. “We can get more.”
“Likely, I haven’t really properly searched Edwin’s—”
“No, Benjamin. I mean that I have some.” He pulled on my sleeve and then walked back below decks. I noticed the sailors he’d lost silvers to were much more accepting of him as we passed, some calling out to him to roll the dice again. I caught up to him as he went below and stepped around more sailors as he took me down into the hold where the guards and chests were.
“Leave us,” he ordered the guards.
“Please,” I added politely. “Wait outside for a moment? I’ll fetch you when we’re finished.”
They exchanged a look but then, to my surprise, obeyed, perhaps because of our connection with and my striking resemblance to their captain.
“There are more than guns here, Benjamin,” Sun said softly. He pulled out the skeleton keys and started opening the group of chests branded differently from the guns. One was full of fine silks from the orient. Another, spices from the Pacific isles. Another, stacked full with hats, but under them were socks of gold and silver coins. Another contained beautiful tooled-leather shoe blanks a skilled cobbler could custom to any foot. There were more besides. I looked around at all these riches, then back at Sun in wonder. “I wasted nothing. Everything that washed up on my shores, I collected,” he said.
It was a princely sum indeed. “Sun, do you realize you could near buy your own ship with this much?”
“Þetta er ekki upp í nös á ketti. This wouldn’t fill a cat’s nostril, Benjamin. When I first explored the caves, I found a cask half-buried in the sand. It’s full of colored stones—gimsteinar. They are enough to buy every slave who ever fought with me or against me, with more left over.”
I stared at him, at the treasure before me, slowly realizing what he’d said.
“Is that what you would like to do? Free slaves?”
“I….” He paused, and I realized he hadn’t meant that was what he wanted to do, but was only making a comparison. He thought a moment and nodded. “Já. I do,” he said firmly. “That would be… the proper use for riches.”
Hope rose in my chest. “You do know it would be hard to do that if we stay on the island?”
He nodded again, solemnly.
I brushed my knuckles gently under his chin and traced his jaw with my fingertips. “You’re not saying this because you know I want to sail away, are you?”
He shook his head and, his voice very small and quiet, said, “I’ve seen how you are with the others on this ship. How you make them… happy. Like you make me happy. I did not think I would ever be happy again, nor that anyone would wish for me to be with them, but…. Benjamin. You make people belong. You make me want… to belong again.” He drew a breath to say more but then shook his head instead.
I kissed the place where his dimple hid in his cheek. “You belong with me, and I belong with you, Sólmundur,” I murmured into his ear, then leaned back and returned his gaze steadily. “I miss the companionship of others, but if you need to stay on the island longer, we can do that. However, when the Fury sails, people will start to hear the truth of Dread Island. And, anyway, our cargo is already aboard, and I’d very much like to get at least my investment back for these guns. But, if afterward, you want to come back and stay here awhile, we can do that. If you want to sail to Georgetown and beyond and free every slave we find, I’m with you. If you want to go home and find the family that lost you, I’m with you.” I kissed him, then borrowed his words. “Where you go, I go.”
He lowered his eyes, head bowed, and I thought I must have said something wrong or hurtful, but then he hugged me tight, as he had done during those first nights. And I rested my chin on his head, and held him gently, as I had done before, and would gladly do again.
MANY SAILORS greeted us with bleary, bloodshot eyes but warm hellos in the morning mists as we made our way back up to the foredeck. After a long interlude in the hold together the night before, sealing our convictions to each other with rather more than a kiss, Sun and I had made more rounds about the ship, playing games and sharing stories with the men. We avoided Artur for now. I wasn’t sure what to do with him. As for the others, Sun was awkward at first but trying hard to be friendly, and his natural skill at strategy games quickly made him friends who would moan when he approached and suggest wildly we play games of chance rather than strategy so they could win. He had no talent for song and dance, but my encyclopedic knowledge of bawdy tavern songs made up for it when sore feelings threatened to turn a loser against him, which wasn’t often.
It seemed Captain Benji selected his men carefully for not only skill, but temperament. From hearing their stories, not a one among them had been crimped, but served Captain Benji willingly. The lot who had worked for Edwin James, all except Artur, in a time-honored sailor tradition of holding the captain of the ship somewhere above kings and just below God, seemed to have completely forgotten their old allegiances and were integrating almost seamlessly with men they’d been trying to kill the day before, united under the autocratic rule of Captain Benji Swift.
We found Benji amidships, calling soft orders to the men whose heads weren’t hurting too much to obey them. “We’ll be ready to sail by midmorning,” he said, taking our measure. “Are we putting you ashore? Or are you setting sail with us?”
I looked at Sun, giving him pause to speak for both of us. He glanced at me, then said, “We’re going with you. But I want to collect a few more things. And Benjamin wants a Christian burial for—” He paused. Was he feeling remorse? Perhaps he did not want to say Martio’s name. “—the men who died,” he ended quietly.
Benji nodded. “I thought you might want something like that, Lector. I have an idea from Dom Miguel, though he doesn’t know it. I’ll have a few trusty lads with no sense of smell set to it shortly.”
“We, uh… I want to help,” Sun said.
“Me too.” I clasped his shoulder. He wasn’t the only killer. Two of those bodies were my responsibility.
“As you wish,” Benji said as Dom Miguel and Marisol joined us amidships. They both looked clean and fresh, despite the fact that they had continued to play tafl long after the rest of us went to bed. I had listened to the low murmur of their voices through the wall in the cabin next door for a long time as Sun fell asleep in my arms.
“Who won the most sets?” I asked, thinking Miguel looked far too pleased with himself.
“Oh, she did. Most definitely.” He executed a courtly bow to her. “To my shame, I must admit we reached a point where she won every set until I had no course but to surrender completely.”
Her cheeks and the tip of her nose pinked ever so slightly, and I wondered if her winning streak had ended the same way mine had when Sun first showed me how to play on the beach what felt like a hundred years ago.
“I suspect the two of you have made some progress on relations between France and Portugal?” Captain Benji suggested, rather bluntly, I thought.
Marisol pursed her lips, raised her eyebrow, and avoided his innuendo. “Perhaps. When do we set sail?”
He gave her a hard, measuring look but answered her question rather than press his own. “Soon. These two wish to collect their personal effects. And I’m told there’s a burial to be had.”
“Captain, we need to get underway if we’re going to rendezvous with the Navy at Tortuga. Unless you agree to forego your orders and take us to Lisbon?”
He glowered.
“Then I suggest we let the dead lie where they are.”
“We will be sailing by noon,” he said.
“But—” I started, and he interrupted me.
“There will be a burial. And we will be underway by noon. Mademoiselle will pay for the speed she requires, yes?”
“Whatever it takes, Captain.”
“Excellent. Forty kegs of powder should just about do it. I’ll draw up the receipt.”
And I understood Captain Benji’s plan at once.