Read Chapter 14: The Cannon's Mouth

The first cannon shot struck the sea twenty yards off the larboard bow, throwing a plume of white water high enough to soak the deck. Aidan heard the sound before he felt it—the deep, grinding thunder of a Spanish culverin—and then the ship trembled beneath his bare feet.

"Spanish sloop!" came the cry from above. "Two points off the starboard quarter!"

The Sea Wyvern's crew erupted into motion, men scrambling for stations, barefoot and half-dressed from their hammocks. The brig's iron bars rattled as Aidan pressed his face against them, trying to see past the chaos. Vincente stirred beside him, still weak from Darrow's beating.

"They've found us," Vincente muttered. "Of course they have. Darrow's compass may be tampered with, but the Spanish don't need one to follow a trail of our own stupidity."

Aidan ignored him. Through the narrow windows of the brig he could see the sloop's sails—a lean, predatory shape cutting through the dawn mist, flying the colors of the Spanish Main. She was smaller than the Sea Wyvern but faster, carrying a full complement of guns meant for one purpose: to catch and kill pirate ships.

"They'll board us within the hour," Aidan said. "Unless someone fights back."

Vincente laughed bitterly. "And who would that be? The captain who thinks I betrayed him? The first mate who's rotting in chains with us?"

Another shot, closer this time. The Sea Wyvern heeled hard to port, throwing both men against the bars. Aidan heard Darrow's voice bellowing from the quarterdeck, ordering the helm to bring her about, ordering the gun crews to their stations. But there was an edge to his voice Aidan recognized—the edge of a man who knew his gunners were green, his powder unreliable, and his enemy better armed.

"They'll open the brig," Aidan said, more to himself than to Vincente. "They'll need every hand."

"You think Darrow would let you loose with a weapon in your hand? After what he thinks you did?"

Aidan turned from the window. His eyes met Vincente's in the dim light, and for a moment, the Englishman's face was unreadable.

"If they board us," Aidan said slowly, "we're dead men either way. Shackled or not, a Spanish prize crew doesn't take prisoners. They hang pirates. And they don't much care whether a man was framed or not."

Vincente was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded, just once.

"Do you actually know how to fight this ship?" he asked. "Or were you all talk in the navy?"

Aidan almost smiled. "I was the best gunner the Retribution ever had."

"Then you'd better pray Darrow remembers that."

The third shot was the one that mattered. It struck somewhere aft, and the whole ship shuddered with the impact. Wood screamed against wood, and Aidan heard the unmistakable sound of men screaming too. The Sea Wyvern was not built for a long exchange of broadsides. She was built for speed, for strike-and-fade, for running when the odds turned against her. But there was nowhere left to run.

The lock on the brig door rattled.

Aidan stepped back as the door swung open, and there stood Groves—the boatswain, his face hard and his eyes unreadable. Behind him lingered two of Darrow's loyal men, their hands resting on the hilts of their knives.

"Captain wants the Irishman," Groves said. "Says he's needed at the guns."

Vincente rose to his feet, chains clinking. "And me?"

Groves didn't look at him. "The captain hasn't decided what to do with you yet. So you stay put."

Aidan met Vincente's eyes one last time. Neither spoke. They didn't need to. Whatever alliance they had forged in the dark of this cell, it had to survive the daylight now.

The gangplank crew marched Aidan up the companionway into a world of smoke and violence. The Spanish sloop had closed to within hailing distance, her guns thundering in disciplined sequence, each shot a hammer blow against the Sea Wyvern's hull. Splinters flew across the deck. A sailor went down with a cry, clutching his shoulder. Another dragged him below before Aidan could see the wound.

Darrow stood at the rail, his coat black with spray and powder smoke, his face a mask of cold fury. He turned as Aidan approached, and for a long moment, the two men simply looked at each other.

"I should kill you where you stand," Darrow said. "You know that."

"You need my guns," Aidan replied. "Or you need to die. The Spanish don't offer much beyond those two choices."

Darrow's jaw tightened. Around them, the crew worked frantically—loading, aiming, firing—but their shots were wild, poorly timed, the work of men who had never been taught to fight a ship of war. The Spanish sloop maneuvered like a dancer, sliding into position at the Sea Wyvern's exposed flank.

"Show me," Darrow said at last. "Show me you're worth more than the powder you tried to spoil."

Aidan didn't wait for permission. He crossed the deck in three strides, pushing aside the gun captain at the nearest nine-pounder. The man started to protest, then saw the look in Aidan's eyes and stepped back.

"Swab," Aidan ordered. "Then new cartridge, powder only. No shot."

The gun crew stared at him. "No shot?" one of them stammered. "What are we supposed to—"

"Do it!"

They obeyed. Cartridge went in, rammed home. Aidan checked the priming, his hands moving with the speed of old habit, of a hundred battles fought in the service of a crown that had abandoned him. He sighted down the barrel at the Spanish sloop, watching the rhythm of her movement, the way she rose and fell on the swell.

He waited.

Another Spanish gun fired. Another plume of water rose off the starboard bow. And in that moment—as the sloop steadied to reload, her hull broad and vulnerable—Aidan gave the order.

"Fire."

The nine-pounder roared. The recoil slammed the carriage back against its ropes, and smoke billowed across the deck in a choking cloud. Aidan didn't wait to see if the shot had connected. He was already moving to the next gun, giving the same order, then the next.

"What are you doing?" Darrow demanded, appearing at his shoulder. "You're wasting powder!"

"I'm giving them something to think about," Aidan shouted back. "Watch."

The smoke cleared. The Spanish sloop had not been struck—Aidan's shots had fallen short, deliberately, throwing up walls of water around her bows. But the effect was immediate. The sloop's captain, seeing the splashes, ordered her helm over to avoid a closer engagement, breaking her perfect firing position.

"You can't hit her," Darrow said, "but you can scare her."

"I can do more than scare her," Aidan said. "Give me chain shot and a steady deck, and I'll take down her mainmast before she can reload. But I need men who know what they're doing."

Darrow looked at him for a long moment. The captain's eyes were calculating, weighing Aidan's words, weighing his worth. Around them, the gun crews waited, watching the exchange between their captain and the man he had thrown in chains not a day before.

"You want command of the gun deck," Darrow said slowly.

"I want to stop that sloop from sinking us," Aidan replied. "After that, we can discuss who commands what."

Another Spanish shot slammed into the hull below the waterline. The ship groaned. Somewhere below decks, a man screamed.

Darrow made his decision. "Groves! Cut his chains. He's in charge of every gun on this ship until that sloop is in the water or on the run. And if he so much as looks at me wrong, you put a ball through his back."

A second passed. Then two. The boatswain stepped forward, blade in hand.

"If you can load, you can eat," Groves muttered, severing Aidan's manacles with a single stroke. "Don't make me regret this."

Aidan flexed his wrists, feeling the blood rush back into his hands. He turned to the gun crews, men he had trained alongside, men he had shared hammocks and grog with, men who didn't know whether to trust him any more than Darrow did.

"You heard the captain," he said. "Every gun, double-shotted. We're going to put that bastard on the bottom."

The crew cheered. It was not a sound born of love or loyalty—it was the raw, desperate noise of men who had been given hope at the moment they'd most needed it. Aidan felt it settle into his chest like a stone.

He turned to look at Darrow, who had not moved from the rail. The captain met his gaze, and for a moment, something passed between them—not trust, not friendship, but the understanding of two men who knew they could destroy each other but could not survive this hour alone.

"After this is done," Darrow said quietly, "you'll clean out the rot in my crew. Find the man who put that false compass in my cabin. I want to know which of them sold me to the Spanish."

Aidan nodded. "I'll find your spy, Captain."

He would not, of course. The spy was Vincente, and Vincente was locked in the brig, an English agent who served a different master than Darrow. But Aidan had just learned something far more valuable: Darrow believed the compass had been planted by a third party. The captain suspected one of his own men had betrayed him to the Spanish.

Which meant, when Aidan returned to the crew, he would have to find someone else to blame before the investigation turned back toward the brig.

The guns roared again, and the Sea Wyvern began her slow path through the smoke toward freedom.