Read Chapter 27: Recruits

The morning sun turned the harbor of Santo Domingo to hammered brass as Aidan stood on the foredeck of the *Reprisal*, watching a line of sorry souls shuffle up the gangplank. Twenty-three of them. Sailors, mostly—men who'd jumped ship from merchantmen, a few fishermen who'd lost their boats to the French privateer's raiding, and two who claimed they'd served on a Spanish galleon before it went down off Puerto Rico.

He'd have taken more, but the crown's purse only stretched so far, and the governor of Hispaniola had made it clear that His Majesty's commission did not include feeding an army of freebooters. Fifty pounds advance. The rest upon delivery of Laurent de Monteil's head or his capture, whichever proved easier.

Aidan ran his gaze down the line. Some stood straight, eyes sharp. Others slouched, and one—a slab-shouldered man with a scar splitting his left eyebrow—stared back at him with an insolence that bordered on contempt.

"You there," Aidan called. "Name."

"William Cross." The man's voice was a low rumble. "Late of His Majesty's Navy."

Aidan felt the deck shift beneath him, though the sea was calm. "Late of the Navy. That's a broad church. What made you leave?"

Cross's eyes flickered. "Disagreement over command, Captain. I was first lieutenant aboard the HMS *Tempest*. My captain ran us aground on a reef off Barbuda—lost eight men. I told the court-martial what happened. They believed him, not me. I resigned my commission before they could cashier me."

A murmur ran through the crew gathered on deck. A few men spat. Naval officers were not popular aboard pirate vessels, even reformed ones.

"Disagreement over command," Aidan repeated. "That's a careful way of putting it. You didn't strike him?"

Cross's jaw tightened. "I wanted to."

"But you didn't. You followed procedure. You testified." Aidan stepped down from the quarterdeck and walked along the line, stopping in front of Cross. "And the court chose the captain's word over yours, because that's how the Navy works. Rank is truth, and truth is rank."

Cross said nothing, but something shifted in his face—a crack in the mask of soldierly discipline.

"I need men who can follow orders," Aidan said, loud enough for all to hear. "But I also need men who can think for themselves when the powder's flying and the captain's dead. That's not a Navy skill. That's a skill you learn in the places between, where the only thing between you and the deep is your own wits."

He extended his hand. Cross stared at it.

"Your record says you're a gunner's mate," Aidan said. "I was a gunner's mate once. Before the Navy threw me out for a crime I didn't commit."

Cross took his hand. His grip was iron. "Then we're both men who know what it is to be measured by another man's lie."

Aidan nodded. "Report to Mr. Hale. He'll set you to the guns."

He turned away, but Cross's voice followed him. "One more thing, Captain. Word's spreading that you took a pardon and sold out the governor who tried to hang you. Men want to know—are you still a pirate, or are you now a Navy dog with a letter of marque?"

The crew went quiet. Aidan felt the weight of every eye on his back.

He turned slowly. "I'm a man who was given a commission," he said. "The same commission that gives me the right to hunt Laurent de Monteil and take his ship, his cargo, and his head, if I can manage it. The difference between a pirate and a privateer is a piece of paper and the wind at your back. I've got the paper. Now I need the wind. If that troubles you, the gangplank's still down."

Cross held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded once. "Fair answer, Captain."

Aidan felt the tension ease, but only slightly. He knew the kind of man Cross was—the kind who'd been broken by the institution he'd served and now wore the damage like armor. He could be useful. Or he could be a knife in the dark. Time would tell.

---

The ship's stores were restocked, the sails bent, and the *Reprisal*'s new crew set to drills as Aidan spread a map across the captain's table in his cabin. Beside him stood Miguel Hale, his surviving officer from the old days, and the ship's master, a wiry Englishman called Sidcup who'd sailed these waters for thirty years.

"Monteil's last known position was off the Île de la Tortue," Sidcup said, tracing a calloused finger over the chart. "He's been raiding the Spanish settlements along the Cibao coast—burning plantations, stealing cattle, selling what he can to the Dutch at Curaçao. He moves fast and he knows the shoals. We can't outrun him in open water. We'd need to catch him at anchor or force him into a channel where our guns can tell."

Aidan nodded. "What do we know about him? Beyond the bounty."

Sidcup shrugged. "French nobleman's son, by the name. Estate in Normandy. Family fell on hard times, and he took to the sea. Made some coin as a merchant captain, then turned corsair when the war broke. There's a rumor—" He hesitated.

"Go on."

"There's a rumor he's not just fighting for coin. That he's looking for someone. A woman, supposedly. His sister ran off years ago and vanished in the Indies. Some say she was killed by pirates. He's been hunting her killers ever since."

Aidan kept his face still. His hands, however, gripped the table's edge.

"His sister," he said. "What was her name?"

Sidcup squinted at the map. "Isabelle, I believe. Isabelle de Monteil."

The name hit Aidan like a musket ball to the chest. Isabelle. The woman who'd double-crossed him in Nassau, who'd sold him to the governor in exchange for her own freedom. She'd died in the fire that consumed the governor's warehouse—Aidan had seen her body pulled from the wreckage, her lovely face scorched beyond recognition.

He'd told himself it was justice. She'd betrayed him. But he'd also saved her life once, in a different harbor, in a different storm of gunfire and cannonade. He'd held her as she bled, and she'd whispered her thanks before the surgeon took her arm.

None of that mattered now. What mattered was that Laurent de Monteil believed his sister had been murdered by pirates, and he'd turned his whole life to revenge. If Laurent learned that Aidan had been there when Isabelle died—that Aidan's own crew had been in the fight that led to the fire—the man would hunt him to the ends of the earth.

Which meant Aidan had to hunt him first.

"What else do we know about him?" Aidan asked, his voice level.

"He fights like a devil," Sidcup said. "They say he boards his prey himself, cutlass in each hand. Taken three Navy frigates in the last year. The French want him back—there's a price on his head in Paris too. He's made enemies of everyone, which makes him dangerous and also makes him friendless. That's our advantage."

"Our advantage," Aidan repeated. "One ship against his, and he's got the Devil's own luck."

"We'll need more than luck," Hale put in. "We'll need a force that can match him. These men we've taken on—they're green. They've never fought a real action. Monteil's crew are veterans of a dozen boarding actions. If it comes to a fight, they'll cut us apart."

Aidan stared at the map, his mind racing. "Then we don't let it come to a fight. We set a trap. We use his rage against him."

"How?"

"He's hunting his sister's killers. So we give him a target—a ship flying English colors, one that looks like it's carrying the men who were in Nassau when Isabelle died. We bait him into a channel where we've got the guns, and we spring the trap."

Hale frowned. "A decoy ship. We don't have one."

"No. But we can build one." Aidan looked up. "I know a man in Port Royal who owes me a favor. He's got a fast little sloop we can use as bait. We'll need a crew aboard her who can play the part—drunk, careless, easy pickings."

"Who would you trust with that?"

Aidan thought of Cross. The former Navy officer. The man with a grudge against the service that had cast him out.

"Send word to Port Royal," he said. "Tell him we're coming. And find me the name of a mercenary captain who works these waters—a man with a reputation for cruelty and skill. I want to add steel to our force before we meet Monteil."

Sidcup's eyebrows rose. "A mercenary? Sir, that's—it's a gamble. Men like that change sides when the wind shifts."

"It's a gamble I'm willing to take." Aidan's hand went to his coat pocket, where Darrow's mother's ring rested against his ribs. He'd promised to deliver it to Darrow's dying wish—but to whom, and where, he still didn't know. "Monteil has a fleet of his own. We need numbers. And I need men who aren't afraid to get bloody."

Hale exchanged a glance with Sidcup, then nodded slowly. "I'll make inquiries."

"Do it quietly. And find out everything you can about Monteil's sister. The circumstances of her death. I want to know every rumor, every fact, everyone who was there."

Hale's gaze sharpened. "Why?"

Aidan met his eyes without flinching. "Because every man has a weak point. Monteil's is his sister. If we can find what he truly believes about her death, we can use it against him. We can make him angry. We can make him careless."

He didn't say what else he knew. That he was the man Monteil wanted to kill. That Isabelle's death had been an accident, and that she'd been a traitor who'd sold them all. That keeping this secret was the difference between completing his commission and being torn apart by a man whose grief had become a weapon.

The sun cast long shadows through the cabin windows. Aidan's new crew practiced their drills on deck above, their voices drifting down in snatches of song and curse. And somewhere in the vast blue beyond, Laurent de Monteil was sailing toward revenge, unaware that the man he sought was already closing in.