Read Chapter 28: Crossing Swords

The wind carried the stench of salt and rotting fish as the *Revenge* rounded the headland, and Aidan saw the blockade. Three ships sat in a crescent across the harbor mouth of Port-de-Paix—two French merchantmen pressed into service, their gunports open, and behind them the lean, wolfish shape of a privateer flying the fleur-de-lis. Laurent de Monteil's colors.

“He’s got the channel bottled tight,” William Cross said at his elbow, studying the arrangement through his glass. The disgraced lieutenant had shed his naval coat for a plain canvas shirt, but he still held himself like a man reading a drill manual. “We go in, we get raked. We go around, we lose the tide and he’s got messengers to Santo Domingo before we make landfall.”

Aidan grunted. He’d expected to find Monteil at sea, hunting the decoy. Instead the Frenchman had planted himself like a thorn in the colony’s throat, cutting off the trade that fed the capital. Bold. Or desperate. Either way, it changed the shape of the trap.

“Then we don’t go around,” Aidan said. “We go through.”

Behind him, someone laughed—a short, ugly sound. He turned. Jenkins, a gunner’s mate from the old *Merry Dancer* days, stood with his arms crossed, a knot of men gathered at his back. Men Aidan had sailed with. Men he’d bled with. And right now they looked at him like he was wearing the governor’s collar.

“Through,” Jenkins repeated. “Through three ships and a privateer, with a crew half of which you ain’t even sailed with. And the other half you pardoned out from under the gallows because some clerk in a wig said you could.”

Aidan felt the deck shift under his feet. The *Revenge* was a captured sloop, fast and nimble, but her crew was a patchwork—his nine survivors, twelve new recruits scraped from the docks and taverns of the capital, and Jenkins’s men, veterans who’d followed him through fire and storm and had expected to follow him into a quiet island life. Instead they’d gotten a crown commission and a mad chase.

“You got something to say, Jenkins, say it plain.”

“Plain enough.” Jenkins spat over the rail. “We heard you sold the governor’s secrets for a pardon. Fine. We heard you took the king’s shilling to hunt a Frenchman. Fine. But now you want us to sail into a blockade with half a crew of strangers and a plan that’s got more holes than a cheese crate. And you expect us to follow because you say so.”

The murmur behind him grew. Cross shifted, hand drifting toward his belt. Aidan held up a palm.

“You’re right,” he said.

Jenkins blinked. The murmur died.

“I expect you to follow because I’m the best gunner on this side of the Atlantic, and because I’ve got a plan that doesn’t require us to trade broadsides with a French privateer.” Aidan stepped forward, closing the distance until he was chest-to-chest with Jenkins, close enough to smell the rum on his breath. “But if you want to test that, we can do it now. Right here. You and me, cutlass and knife, winner calls the shots.”

Jenkins’s eyes flickered. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, with knuckles scarred from a hundred brawls. Aidan was leaner, older, with a limp he’d never quite shaken from a cannonball fragment in his thigh. The crew knew the odds.

“You’d fight your own man over a word?” Jenkins said.

“I’d fight Satan himself over this mission.” Aidan’s voice was low, carrying. “You want to know why? Because that Frenchman out there is Laurent de Monteil. He’s got a price on his head that could buy this crew their own island. And he’s blockading a port that’s starving because the governor’s theft emptied the treasury. You want to walk away from that, walk. I won’t stop you. But you stay—you stay, you follow my orders, and you trust that I know what I’m doing.”

Jenkins held his gaze. A long, tense silence stretched across the deck. Then Jenkins let out a breath and stepped back.

“You’re still the best gunner on this side of the Atlantic,” he muttered. “That’s the only reason I’m staying.”

Aidan clapped him on the shoulder, feeling the tension drain like water from a hull. “Then get the guns ready. We’re going to make Monteil wish he’d never heard of Port-de-Paix.”

---

The plan was insane, but insanity had been working for Aidan lately.

The *Revenge* ran in fast, flying English colors, hugging the northern shore where the water ran shallow and the French guns couldn’t depress low enough to hit her hull. Aidan had spent the approach in the bow, taking soundings with a lead line, memorizing the curve of the sandbar that jutted out like a broken tooth. The French had anchored deep, where the channel widened—perfect for commanding the main approach. Useless against a sloop that drew half their draft.

“Starboard guns, double-shot, aim for the waterline,” Aidan shouted. “We’re not sinking them. We’re shaming them.”

Cross laughed, a sharp, surprised sound. “Shaming them?”

“Monteil’s a prideful man. His brother’s dead, his reputation’s on the line. If we sail past his blockade and make him look a fool, he’ll chase us. And when he chases—” Aidan grinned, feeling the old fire rise in his chest, “—we’ll be ready.”

The first French ship opened fire. The shot fell short, kicking up a geyser of white water off the port bow. Aidan didn’t flinch. He had the wheel now, feeling the sloop’s response through his palms, guiding her through the shallow cut with the precision of a man threading a needle.

“Wait for it,” he murmured. “Wait for it.”

The second ship fired. This one was closer—the ball screamed overhead, tearing through the foremast’s rigging, sending canvas and rope crashing to the deck. A man screamed. Aidan didn’t look.

“Now,” he said.

The *Revenge*’s guns roared. Six cannons, double-shotted, fired in a ragged volley that tore into the third ship’s hull at the waterline. Wood splintered. The ship lurched, listing hard, her gunports drowning as water poured in. She was done—not sunk, but crippled, her crew scrambling to man pumps and cut anchors.

The gap opened.

Aidan spun the wheel, sending the *Revenge* cutting across the privateer’s bow, close enough to see the French crew’s faces—shock, then fury, then a desperate scramble to bring guns to bear. But it was too late. The sloop was past, racing into the harbor mouth, her sails snapping as she caught the open wind.

Behind them, Monteil’s privateer began to turn, shedding canvas as she gave chase.

Aidan allowed himself a thin smile. *Good. Come and get me.*

---

They anchored in the harbor’s lee as dusk settled, the *Revenge* hidden behind a tumble-down wharf that had once serviced the sugar trade. The French privateer prowled the harbor mouth, but she didn’t dare enter the shallows. Monteil would wait. He was patient. He’d been hunting for years.

Aidan sat in his cabin, the lantern swaying with the gentle swell, turning Darrow’s ring over in his fingers. Heavy gold, old-fashioned cut, worn smooth by generations of wear. He’d been carrying it for months, the promise to deliver it to Darrow’s mother weighing on him like an anchor. But he didn’t know where she lived. Darrow had never said. And now—

“That’s a pretty piece.”

Cross stood in the doorway, a bottle of rum in his hand. He’d shed his shirt somewhere, revealing a torso crosshatched with scars—some old, some fresh. He gestured with the bottle. “Mind if I join?”

Aidan nodded. Cross settled into the opposite bunk, pouring two cups without asking. He squinted at the ring in the lamplight.

“You know what that is?” Cross asked.

“A promise.”

“It’s a signet,” Cross said, leaning forward. “See the engraving? That’s a merchant mark. And that crest—three lions passant on a field of sable. That’s the mark of the Aldridge family.”

Aidan’s hand stilled. “Aldridge.”

“English merchant house. Old money, older ships. They ran the West African coast for a hundred years—gold, ivory, and—” Cross hesitated, his eyes meeting Aidan’s. “Slaves.”

The word hung in the air like a drawn sword. Aidan felt something cold settle in his gut.

“Darrow’s mother was an Aldridge,” Cross continued. “The family disowned her when she married a common sailor. But the ring—that’s the family seal. Whoever holds it can deal with Aldridge factors in any port in the Atlantic. Trade permits, letters of credit, safe passage. It’s a key to a fortune.”

A fortune built on human misery.

Aidan looked at the ring, suddenly heavy and wrong in his palm. Darrow had carried it his whole life, a token of a mother he barely knew, a family that had cast her out. And now it sat in Aidan’s hand, a passport to wealth he didn’t want, paid for with suffering he couldn’t ignore.

“You didn’t know,” Cross said quietly.

“No.” Aidan closed his fist around the gold. “But I know now.”

He had a mission. He had a commission. And now he had a weight he hadn’t asked for—the knowledge that the ring at his finger was a brand of shame, and that the family it belonged to had made their fortune on the backs of the souls Monteil’s own brother had helped hunt.

The French privateer’s lanterns glittered in the harbor mouth, patient as a predator.

Aidan tucked the ring into his shirt, against his heart.

*One more secret to carry.*