Read Chapter 2: Name on a Board

The deck of the *Sea Wyvern* was a different beast from the quarterdeck of the *Retribution*. No polished brass, no spotless holystoned planking. Here, the wood was scarred by cutlass and weather, stained with salt and something darker that no amount of scrubbing would ever lift. Aidan O'Malley stood at the mainmast, a coil of rope in his hands, doing the work of a common landsman.

"Haul, you useless son of a whore!" bellowed Bosun Pike, a barrel-chested man with a face like a fist. "That's the fore-topsail brace, not yer mother's stays!"

Aidan hauled. The muscles in his back screamed. Three days adrift on an open sea, starving and sun-scorched, had left him weaker than he'd like to admit. But he'd be damned before he showed it. He'd been a gunner's mate on a King's ship, a man with rank and respect. Now he was pulling ropes for a pirate crew, and every eye on deck was watching to see if he'd break.

They'd learn different.

The morning sun climbed high over a turquoise sea, and the *Wyvern* cut through it like a blade, her black hull low and predatory. Tortuga lay two days west, Pike had said. Two days of this. Aidan wiped sweat from his brow and reached for another line.

"You're not half bad at that," came a voice beside him. A wiry man with a quick smile and a faded red kerchief had appeared at his elbow. "Name's Ezekiel Croft. Ship's carpenter, when I'm not patching holes in men."

"Aidan O'Malley."

"I know who you are. The whole ship knows. Navy man." Croft said it without judgment, just fact. "Darrow's got a nose for strays, I'll give him that. Found me in a Port Royal gaol, three weeks from the noose."

Aidan grunted. "He found me floating on a piece of wreckage."

"See? A stray." Croft grinned. "Look, the captain wants you below. His cabin. Now."

Aidan's gut tightened. He'd been aboard less than a day, and already the captain had called for him. He passed the coil to a nearby sailor and made his way aft, navigating the cluttered deck with its coils of line and lashed-down cannons. The guns. He'd counted them earlier. Twelve, nine-pounders, well-maintained despite the ship's rough appearance. Whoever commanded this vessel knew his artillery.

The captain's cabin was surprisingly spare for a pirate king. A simple desk, a narrow cot, a chart table littered with navigation instruments. And there, on the bulkhead, a wooden board.

It was about three feet long, dark with age, and mounted where a portrait might hang in a gentleman's home. Names were carved into it. Aidan counted six, each scratched out with deep, vicious gouges that had split the wood. All but the last. The seventh name was fresh, clean-cut letters that still showed pale against the dark grain.

*Darrow.*

"Like the ocean view?"

Aidan spun. Captain Damien Darrow stood in the doorway, filling it with his broad frame. He was younger than Aidan had expected, mid-thirties perhaps, with sharp green eyes and a smile that never quite reached them. His coat was fine velvet, dark blue, a captain's coat once stolen from a navy officer, perhaps.

"The board, Captain. What is it?"

Darrow's smile widened. "Ah. You've noticed. That's my little ledger of loyalty." He crossed to the board and ran a finger over the scratched-out names. "Every man who's served as my first mate. Every one who thought they could take her from me, or sell me out to the Spanish, or slip a blade between my ribs while I slept." His finger stopped on the fresh name. "Number seven. Elias Vance. Good man. We'll see how he lasts."

Aidan looked at the board again. The first name on it, nearly obliterated by gouges, caught his eye. There was something familiar about the shape of those letters. He leaned closer, squinting.

*Landon.*

The name hit him like a punch to the gut. Lieutenant Edward Landon. He'd served under him on the *Dauntless* five years past, a stern but fair officer whose ship had vanished from naval records under mysterious circumstances. Official word said she'd gone down in a hurricane off the Windward Passage. But here was Landon's name, carved into the wood of a pirate's cabin, gouged out like a failure.

"You recognize something?" Darrow's voice was soft, dangerous.

"No, Captain." Aidan straightened. "Just wondering if I'll earn a spot on the board myself."

Darrow laughed, a full-bellied sound that didn't match the coldness in his eyes. "Earn it? You'd have to be something special, Gunner. Or something deadly foolish." He gestured to a paper on his desk. "Articles. You sign, you get a share. You break them, you walk the plank or swing from the yardarm. Simple enough."

Aidan picked up the quill. The paper was worn, much-signed, a list of rules that amounted to one thing: the captain's word was law. His hand hovered over the blank space at the bottom.

Behind him, he heard movement. He glanced over his shoulder. The door had opened silently, and a tall, lean man stood there, arms crossed. The first mate. Elias Vance. His face was narrow and sun-darkened, and his eyes, the color of a winter sea, were fixed on Aidan with an intensity that made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

Vance said nothing. Just watched, unblinking.

Aidan turned back to the paper and signed.

Darrow swept the document away with a flourish. "Welcome to the *Sea Wyvern*, Mister O'Malley. Croft will show you to the mess. We eat at sunset, and you'll find we're a democratic lot — when we're not in a fight." He paused, his smile turning thin. "And in a fight, you'll obey my orders or you'll meet the sharks. As you've probably guessed, I'm not a patient man."

"Aye, Captain." Aidan touched his brow, a gesture of deference he wasn't sure he meant.

Back on deck, the crew moved with the ease of men who'd found their rhythm. Aidan found a spot near the bow, out of the way, and watched the horizon. Tortuga ahead. A new life. But his mind kept drifting back to that board, to Landon's name scratched deep into dark wood. A King's officer turned pirate, dead or worse. Six first mates, all failed. All scratched out.

And Darrow, calm and smiling, adding names to the board as casually as a merchant counting coin.

"He watches you."

Aidan turned. Vance had appeared at his side, silent as smoke. Close up, his face was younger than it had seemed in the cabin, but his eyes were old.

"Who does?"

"The captain. He watches everyone, but you more than most." Vance's voice was flat, unreadable. "He sees something in you, O'Malley. A tool to be used. Or a threat to be cut down." He tilted his head, studying Aidan the way a man studies a rope he's about to hang from. "I'm not sure which yet."