Read Chapter 13: Truth Salted

The brig stank of salt, sweat, and the sour reek of old vomit. Water slopped against the hull with each lazy roll of the *Sea Wyvern*, and somewhere overhead a block creaked in a rhythm like a hanged man’s swing. Aidan O’Malley sat on the damp planking, wrists chained to a ringbolt, and watched the man across from him with the flat, patient gaze of a gunner calculating elevation.

Vincente met it. The first mate’s face was a patchwork of shadows and grime, but his eyes were bright enough—too bright for a man who might be dead by morning.

“You were going to spoil the powder,” Vincente said. Not a question.

“The captain’s powder,” Aidan said. “And the captain’s plot. The governor of Port Royal has a wife and two daughters I’ve heard singing psalms through the church window. I’d rather not have their corpses on my conscience.”

Vincente laughed—a short, dry sound. “Conscience. From the man who abandoned his king to sail with Darrow.”

“I didn’t abandon the king. The king abandoned me.” Aidan rattled his chains for emphasis. “You’re one to talk, first mate. I found you with your hands in the captain’s compass.”

“Aye.” Vincente leaned forward, the chains on his own wrists going taut. “Because that compass was leading us onto rocks. French rocks, marked on charts the captain never saw. Someone wanted us wrecked before we reached Port Royal.”

Aidan studied him. “You’re English.”

“What gave it away?”

“The way you say ‘wrecked’ like it’s a personal insult.”

Vincente’s mouth twitched. “Intelligence Office. London. I’ve been aboard six months watching Darrow’s contacts—watching her.” He nodded toward the deck above, where Isabelle’s cabin sat. “That woman steers him closer to Versailles with every whisper. The French want the treasury, and they want it through Darrow’s hands so their own ships stay clean.”

“And your orders?”

“Prevent the French from walking the governor’s gold out from under our noses.” Vincente’s voice dropped. “I wasn’t told to kill Darrow. I was told to ensure he didn’t succeed. The magistrate in Port Royal was expecting a warning from me three days ago. That’s gone now.”

Aidan let the silence sit. The ship groaned around them, honest wood and honest strain in a world of liars. He had been a liar himself, lately. A liar and a saboteur and a man who watched his old ship limp away through a reef pass without a word of warning.

“I won’t let the raid happen,” Aidan said at last. “Not with the governor’s family in the crossfire.”

“And if I told you I don’t care about the governor’s family?”

“Then you’d be a worse liar than me.”

Vincente’s grin softened, just a fraction. “You’re right. I’ve got a wife in Bristol who prays for me every night. I’d like to see her again.” He offered his chained hand as far as it would go. “Then we’re agreed. We watch each other’s backs, we get out of these brig chains, and we find a way to stop the French bitch and her pet captain before they light that fuse.”

Aidan clasped the man’s wrist—a sailor’s handshake, firm enough to bruise. “Agreed. But we wait for the right moment. Darrow wants us alive for the trial. He’ll keep us breathing until then.”

“Trial.” Vincente spat the word. “You know they won’t be tribunals. Darrow’s justice is a plank and a length of chain.”

“Then we need an interruption.”

As if God Himself were listening, a gunshot cracked across the water—distant, muffled by leagues of sea, but unmistakable. Then another. Then the frantic bleat of a ship’s horn.

Vincente’s eyes widened. “That’s not a French signal.”

“It isn’t English,” Aidan said, scrambling to his knees, straining to hear past the hull. Footsteps pounded on deck above. A man shouted—the boatswain, by the voice. The words were Spanish.

“Patrol,” Vincente hissed. “Spanish coast guard. They’ve been sniffing around the Windward Passage for a month. Darrow thought he’d slipped them.”

Aidan pulled at his chains. The ringbolt was old iron, set in soft oak—years of rot around the base. He hooked his heels against it and heaved. The wood creaked but held.

“Help me,” he grunted. “They’ll have to clear the decks. The armorers will be overrun.”

Vincente twisted, searching the shadows. “There.” A rusted nail, the size of a finger, wedged in a crack between two planks—left by some previous occupant with escape on his mind. He worked it free and passed it to Aidan, who set to picking the lock on his shackles.

Above, the chaos mounted. Ordering men to stations. The squeal of blocks as sails were trimmed. Then a crash that shook the hull—a broadside, close enough to rattle teeth.

The shackle snapped open. Aidan rubbed his raw wrists, then leaned across and did the same for Vincente. They came up together, shoulder to shoulder, pirates and agent for one burning moment of common cause.

“We need weapons,” Vincente said.

“We need a fight to hide in.”

They tore up the planking and found a cache beneath the brig—an old cutlass, rust-eaten, and a boarding pike with a cracked haft. Better than nothing. Aidan grabbed the cutlass; Vincente took the pike.

A second broadside slammed into the hull. The ship lurched, and somewhere forward a man screamed high and thin—a sound that cut clean through the noise of battle.

“Now,” Aidan said.

They shoved the brig door open. The corridor beyond was empty, lamp-swinging in shadows. The companionway stairs led up to a deck filled with smoke and screaming. They blew up the hatch and climbed into the teeth of the fight.

A Spanish boarder caught sight of them first—a lean man with a boarding axe and a grin. Aidan brought the cutlass up, parried, stepped inside the man’s reach, and drove the hilt into his nose. He went down. Aidan stamped past him.

Through the smoke he saw Darrow at the helm, cutlass in hand, laying about him with the cold fury of a man who never expected to be hunted. Isabelle was nowhere to be seen—cabin, likely, or below. And against the rail, back to the sea, Vincente’s voice rose over the din.

“O’Malley! The far gun—they’ve knocked out the crew!”

Aidan turned. The larboard guns were silent, their gunners tangled in the dead. A Spanish sloop bobbed off the beam, close enough to count faces, pouring muskets fire into the *Wyvern*’s deck.

A gunner’s instinct took hold before thought. He sprinted to the nearest cannon, hauled a dead man aside, and grabbed the rammer. Powder charge—still loaded. He ripped the wad from the touchhole with his knife, reseated it, and hauled the gun around.

The sloop’s bow was turning toward them. He saw the gunner on her forecastle swing his match toward a swivel gun.

Aidan found the linstock, brought it down.

The cannon roared. A plume of smoke, a shudder through the deck—and the sloop’s bowsprit snapped clean, taking her foremast rigging down with it. The ship staggered, crippled, turning away into the smoke.

The fight staggered with it. Shouts of alarm in Spanish, a retreat to the sloop’s rail.

Aidan leaned on the gun, sides heaving, smoke stinging his eyes. Around him, the *Wyvern*’s crew picked themselves up, counted their dead.

And Darrow was looking at him. The captain’s eyes were black coals in a smoke-blackened face, and the cutlass in his hand had not yet tasted its last blood.

He said nothing. But he saw.

And Aidan knew the trial had just been postponed.