Read Chapter 16: False Colours

The gun deck stank of sulfur and sweat, and Aidan O’Malley was beginning to hate the smell of his own competence. Darrow had given him the run of the cannons—a reward disguised as a leash—and the crew had taken to calling him “Gunner” with a grudging respect that felt like a noose tightening around his neck.

He was checking the powder charges when he noticed it. Third cannon from the bow, a fuse coil that looked brand new, too clean against the salt-crusted wood. Aidan picked it up, felt the weight of it, and his blood went cold. The fuse was rigged with a slow-burn core that would ignite fast—too fast. A man lighting this would have half a second to clear before the charge went off in his face. Not a misfire. A bomb.

“Oleson,” he muttered under his breath.

The stocky Swede was at the far end of the deck, hauling a fresh keg of powder with the ease of a man who had done it a thousand times. Aidan watched him for a long moment, seeing what he had not seen before: Oleson never joked with the crew, never drank in the evenings, and always volunteered for the night watch when they were near Spanish waters.

Aidan tucked the fuse into his belt and walked the line of cannons, checking every coil. Seven more. All rigged the same way, all placed in the guns most likely to be fired first in an engagement. If the Sea Wyvern had taken a broadside from that Spanish sloop, these would have been the first guns manned. And the first to blow.

He found the eighth fuse and stopped. The pattern was too careful. Too deliberate. This was not the work of a man trying to wound a single ship. This was preparation for a very specific kind of chaos—one that left a ship dead in the water, ripe for the taking.

Vincente’s words echoed in his skull: *The compass was planted. A decoy.* Aidan had been so focused on the compass that he had nearly missed the real trap. The compass was meant to be found. It was meant to make Darrow paranoid, to turn him against his own officers, to make him look anywhere but at the guns.

He turned and walked to the captain’s cabin, the fuses burning against his palm like accusations.

---

Darrow listened without interrupting, his fingers drumming a slow rhythm on the charts spread across his desk. When Aidan finished, he leaned back, and the candlelight carved deep shadows into his face.

“You’re certain,” Darrow said. Not a question. A demand.

“I checked every fuse on the gun deck and the forecastle,” Aidan said. “Eight total. All rigged the same way. Whoever did this knows gunnery well enough to make it look like an accident.”

Darrow’s eyes narrowed. “That Spanish sloop. We drove it off, but if it had crippled us instead, they would have come back with friends. The whole crew would have been captured or killed.”

“Aye,” Aidan said, letting the word hang.

“You have a name.”

“Oleson. He stocked the ordnance three days ago. I saw him handling the fuses myself, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time.” Aidan paused, then added, “I also checked his hammock. Found Spanish coin—a piece from the last treasure fleet, minted in Havana.”

That was a lie. Aidan had found nothing in Oleson’s hammock. But he had seen the way Oleson’s eyes flicked to the horizon whenever they sighted sail, and he had a feeling the Swede had more secrets than he could afford to keep.

Darrow’s jaw tightened. For a moment, Aidan thought the captain might ask why he had searched the crew without permission. Instead, Darrow nodded slowly.

“Bring him to the quarterdeck,” he said. “We’ll hold a trial. The crew deserves to see justice done aboard their own ship.”

---

The crew gathered in a loose semicircle, the morning sun bleaching the color from the deck. Oleson stood in the center, his hands bound behind his back, his face carefully blank. Beside him, Darrow stood with his arms crossed, and Aidan stood at the captain’s right hand, the fuses laid out on a crate like evidence at a court-martial.

“Oleson,” Darrow said, his voice carrying over the murmur of the crew. “You are accused of tampering with the ship’s ordnance, of rigging fuses to explode during battle. Do you deny it?”

Oleson lifted his chin. “I do deny it. I stocked those fuses from the same batch we’ve always used. If they’re faulty, it’s not my doing.”

Aidan stepped forward. “The fuses are not faulty. They’re rigged—each one cut with a faster-burning core and resealed with resin so it wouldn’t show. That’s not a manufacturing defect. That’s sabotage.”

Oleson’s eyes flicked to Aidan, and for a moment, something cold passed between them. “You’re new to this ship, Gunner. Maybe you don’t know what you’re looking at.”

“I know what a slow match looks like,” Aidan said. “I’ve been lighting guns since before you learned to tie a knot. And I know Spanish resin when I smell it.” He picked up one of the fuses and held it close to Oleson’s face. “This comes from Havana. So do the coins in your hammock.”

A ripple ran through the crew. Oleson’s face flushed. “You went through my things?”

“I went through the things of every man who’s been aboard longer than a month,” Aidan said. “You’re the only one sleeping on Spanish silver.”

The lies came easier than they should have. Aidan filed that thought away and pressed on.

“We found a Spanish sloop three days ago,” he said, turning to address the crew. “A small ship, lightly armed, running from us. We drove it off. But what if that ship wasn’t running from us? What if it was running to tell its masters that the Sea Wyvern was ready to explode from the inside?”

The crew murmured. Darrow’s hand drifted to the pistol at his belt.

Oleson’s composure cracked. His jaw worked, and his eyes darted from face to face, searching for a friend and finding none.

“I served the King of Spain,” he said finally, his voice low and bitter. “I swore an oath to him. And then I was captured, and this—” he spat on the deck, “—this pirate is what I became. You think I wanted to be here? You think I wanted to salt and gunpowder and the stink of men who have nothing better to do than steal from honest traders?”

“Honest traders,” Darrow repeated, a cold smile spreading across his face. “The Spanish call it honest when they burn English settlements and hang our sailors from the yardarm. But I suppose that’s a matter of perspective.”

“You have no right—” Oleson began.

“I have every right,” Darrow said, stepping closer. “I have the right of the man you tried to kill. And I have the right of the captain who hangs traitors from his own yardarm.”

He turned to the crew. “You have heard the evidence. You have heard the confession. What say you? Guilty, or not guilty?”

The crew was silent for a long moment. Then Groves stepped forward, his face twisted with the particular pleasure of a man who enjoyed seeing others fall.

“Guilty,” he said.

The cry was taken up, a swelling chorus of voices that drowned out Oleson’s protests. Darrow raised his hand, and the noise died.

“Bring a rope,” he said.

---

They hanged Oleson from the yardarm at noon. The crew watched in silence, and Aidan watched with them, his face as still as carved stone. When the body stopped twitching, Darrow clapped a hand on Aidan’s shoulder.

“Well done, Gunner,” he said, his voice low and approving. “You’ve cleared the rot from my ship. I’ll not forget it.”

Aidan nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He had sent a man to his death on the strength of a lie, and the weight of it sat in his gut like a lead ball. But as he looked around the deck, at the faces of men who now looked at him with something like trust, he knew it had been necessary.

Oleson had been a saboteur. The fuses had been real. The only lie was the coins, and the lie had been worth the cost.

His eyes drifted to the brig. Vincente was still in there, waiting, watching. And somewhere in the captain’s cabin, Isabelle was scheming with Darrow over a plunder that would never be theirs if Aidan had his way.

He had bought himself time. He had bought himself trust. But the ship was still sailing toward Port Royal, and the French were still pulling the strings.

Aidan turned away from the swinging body and walked toward the mainmast, where a man named Thorne was watching him with eyes that knew too much.