Chapter 263: A Warning, Casually Delivered

The lamp flame bent toward the draught coming through the wrecked doorway, as though even the fire were waiting to hear the answer. Across the table, Jennings kept one thumb pressed on the ruby, like he was trying to keep a troublesome lid from flying open.

James let the silence sit where it was, his grin in place, his split hand beside the cup. He had come to warn them, simple enough, a room with Nassau’s captains and sailors.

Then he looked around the place.

These pirates feared their own shipmates more than the enemy, not a soul here would make a stand tonight, or any other night.

There was another matter, too, and it was one James couldn’t say aloud.

Some clerk would soon sharpen a pen over the Act of Grace, and he knew perfectly well what that paper would do to the pirates in this house.

Jennings would sign it in his patched scarlet coat and call the whole business reasonable. Hornigold, who wasn’t in the room and hadn’t been seen in months, would sign it too, then spend his days hunting the very sailors he had once sailed beside.

Mention pardon in this room and every pirate who already had one foot outside the door would put the other straight through it. What James needed now was an answer Jennings could swallow without finding a bone in it, and a piece of truth for them to swallow whole.

He put down his cup.

It struck the table, and the noise traveled through the Rat like a bell rung in calm water. Jennings’s mates shifted their boots, and some pirates lowered their cutlasses though their shoulders had risen almost to their ears.

That was the effect of a black coat in the back chair, a brigantine at the pier carrying forty-four guns, and a harbor without so much as a battery to answer her.

James leaned back until his chair complained, stretched his boots beneath the table, and raised his split right hand.

"Well now, Jennings, seein’ as you’ve asked so prettily..."

He pressed the first torn knuckle with his left thumb, unbothered.

"Had a wee look-over at the old lass, to see if she’s kept her teeth."

The thumb walked on to the second knuckle. "Find a cobbler for Wesley here, poor lad, seein’ as he’s gone and put his boot through your door and left the thing with no sole worth the name."

On the third knuckle he leaned in a little, like he wanted to share a scandal. "There’s some damned bastard whisperin’ to the Spaniards I eat soldiers for me breakfast. I’d like to know where he’s been findin’ me soldiers, for I’ve gone hungry, you see."

The fourth knuckle he pressed last, and gently. "The English are comin’ to take the place. Now pass the bottle, would you? I’ve a notion to spit again."

James last words stayed in the lamplight, and for half a heartbeat not one fool in the Rat even blinked. Then the Rat exploded like a broadside fired inside a basement.

The benches scraped and shrieked while hilts snapped back into hands all across the wall.

Some pirates made for the night, knocking the others aside as they went. The whores pocketed their shillings and started to leave through the backdoor.

"How in the name o’ Christ’s festerin’ arse’ole d’ye know that, ye black-coated cunt? EH?"

"It’s yer own bleedin’ fault, ye gold-cuffed whoreson!"

"Liar! LIAR! He wants us shittin’ ourselves an’ runnin’!"

"WHEN?! When, ye shite-eatin’ bastard? Go on, say it, ye grinnin’ sod! WHEN?!"

"The King’s frigates, lads! The King’s bleedin’ frigates! Calloway said it ’imself!"

James replied to none of them.

He sat with his boots still out, letting the uproar break over him like a green sea over a sandbar, his grin unchanged.

Across the table, Jennings lips parted open, closed it, then open again. His thumb worried the ruby, and for once the showman had no performance ready.

"Hold yer tongues! D’ye ’ear me? Hold yer tongues, ye mangy, mewlin’, flea-bitten pack o’..."

The Rat washed straight over him like a wave over a dinghy.

Jennings went rigid, then leaned toward him. "Calloway. Calloway, look at me, mate. What ye just said, is it true? Dammit, tell me plain, is it true?"

James raised one shoulder and let it drop, like he just shrugged off rain.

Then he stood, tapped the muddy hat with two fingers, and let a few shillings fall onto the table beside the cup he had spat into.

His voice came carefreely. "Well, I can see I’m not wanted, lads, and I’ve no mind to be where I’m so fine and thoroughly hated. Keep the shillings for the door."

Wesley stepped away from the chair, like a wall that figured it could move. Kwaku’s chain came loose with a soft iron whisper, and Tomás closed his hand around his hilt.

The marry band walked through the tavern, and the crowd pulled itself apart to make room for them.

From the dark between two tables a hiss slid out, curdled with old fear and with no trace of worship left in it.

"...Scourge. Scourge, right enough."

Some hands twitched toward pistols, then stopped beneath Kwaku’s eye.

At the doorway Wesley picked up the fallen door, stood it back in place, and leaned it there with the care of putting a child to bed.

Behind them Jennings’s voice broke through the uproar, shrill and halfway to laughter. "Bloody hell, yer mother was a mule, Calloway! A MULE! And yer father was the mule’s arse! D’ye ’ear me? I never wanted the bloody chair! Never! But I’ll sit in it, by Christ! I’ll sit in it till it rots beneath me, just to spite ye!"

The night air met them outside, heavy with tar and woodsmoke. Some turns downhill, the Rat’s ruckus had dwindled to a low drone.

James turned into a black alley and put his shoulder against the wall. Kwaku stopped at the entrance with his chain hanging loose, while Wesley blocked the far end.

Tomás stood before James with his hands folded.

"Captain, was that truly the whole of our errand?"

Kwaku added. "I should like it entered in the log, Captain, that I struck no man in that house. The restraint was considerable."

James clicked his tongue. "Och, nay, Tomás. Let the lads in there hate me, fear me, or kiss me boots. I can use none of it, and they’d sooner cut each other than touch the navy."

His eyes went downhill to the scatter of lamps, and the grin turned thoughtful. "There’s more to this rock than that taproom. Tapsters, laundresses, chandlers, caulkers, fishermen, whores, folk who stay behind when the crews sail."

He looked down toward the waterfront lamps, where the Rose lay with Anne aboard, a woman who had once poured drinks behind that counter. She knew this island from the other side of the bar, and every door in Nassau that stayed open after the crews had sailed.

That would do nicely. "Tomás. Back to the Rose with ye, lad, and fetch Anne. Tell her to meet us at the chandler on the waterfront, she’ll know the one. We’re gonna pay a call on some friends of hers, and tell Cudjoe I’m still breathin’, so he can keep that sour mood of his a wee while longer."

Tomás touched two fingers to his brow.

"As you command, Captain."

He slipped away into the dark toward the pier, and James led the other two toward the location. Behind them the Rat roared on, surf breaking over a reef, every voice inside it cursing his name.