Forty-One Truth

FORTY-ONE

Truth

MARY

I had never been more grateful to step into the close confines of my cabin. I leaned against the closed door, letting the feeling of watching eyes slip away, and shedding weeks of anxiety with each breath.

The scent of the room came to me—a mix of stuffy shipboard odors mixed with beeswax from my candle lantern and the lavender I hung from the beams. My small table remained pushed against the wall as a desk, while my chair was hooked to the bulkhead to keep it from overturning in heavy swells.

I went over to one of my trunks and opened it. It had clearly been rifled through in my absence, but much of my clothing remained intact, and my hammock still lay bundled to one side.

I busied myself stringing my bed from the beams, then dug out a change of clothes. But I had not counted days ' worth of stress sweat and grime on my body, and the idea of subjecting a clean shift to my skin was untenable.

I went to the galley and requested a bucket of hot water, then wandered to Sam's cabin door while I waited for it to heat.

"Come in."

I opened the door slowly, expecting to find Ben there too, but to my surprise Sam was alone. He sat next to the stove in his breeches, shirtless and barefoot. He looked clean, and his damp hair was combed back from his forehead.

"What is it?" he asked, catching my gaze. "It makes me nervous when you smile like that. I feel as though I am about to be mocked."

"You look like a country boy," I said, closing the door and crossing the room. We hadn't been alone together since the hallway in the river town—I left two paces between us.

"Ah." He looked down at himself, unabashed. He was less tense than I expected him to be, though I could see the weight of the last few weeks in his posture. "Mary?"

"Yes?"

"What am I to do?"

The rawness of his question made my heart flip. I snagged a chair and pulled it in front of him. "I'm afraid we are beset on every side, Sam. You must be more specific."

"Regarding Ben."

"Ah." I sat, waiting for him to go on.

He took my hand and rested it on his thigh. His thumb began a distracted sweep over the back of my fingers, and I shifted a little closer.

"We have escaped, yes, but Benedict's future is ruined. The Admiralty, if not all polite society, knows Ben was Ms. Irving's lover, not me. Now that we are bound for the Anchorage… I am forced to consider what the ramifications of that might be. Within a week Ben and I will be forced to present ourselves to the Admiral of the South Fleet. Given the news we bring, of the fleet and Mereish magecrafts, she will likely offer me— Hart —a commission. Perhaps temporary. Perhaps not."

"We are under contract to the Usti," I pointed out warily. The thought of Samuel returning to the Navy filled me with dread and raised questions about my future I was too tired to wrestle with.

"The need for ships to face the Mereish will be overwhelming," he went on. "They will not let Hart sail away in such times. And could we truly leave? Knowing how great a threat the Mereish Fleet is?"

"I might."

He gave a grudging half-smile. We both knew his principles would not permit him to leave, even if I did not feel so bound.

"I will be pressured, regardless," Sam said.

"What if they offer you a permanent commission?"

The stroking of his thumb slowed. A tightness crept around his eyes, and his gaze passed through me, through the deck.

I laid my free hand atop his. "Sam."

He seemed to come back to himself. "I am tempted."

He looked at me then, wholly looked at me, and the world shrank around us. Gone was the rush of waves against the hull, the creak of timber, and the grate and clack and rumble of the vessel's constant maintenance. All yielded to this singular moment—Sam and I and the uncertainty of what he would say next.

"But your contract remains with the Usti. They are your protection."

For a moment I couldn't find anything to say, then I managed, "If you decide to retake your commission, I would go south and join my mother and Demery."

"You would not find a new ship?" He seemed wary. I wondered precisely what had provoked him—the idea of me not wanting any other captain, or the reality that the small progress he and I had made for the good of my kind would quickly fade from memory.

I shrugged, forcing more nonchalance than I felt. "Who would I trust? But please, Sam, feel no obligation towards me. I have other prospects."

"There is no obligation. Though I intend to stay by you, if you will allow me to." A small smile touched the corner of his mouth, though sadness tugged about his eyes. "Aside from my affection for you, there are other complications. Ben, for one. I took the fall for his crime because I knew his discharge from the Navy would destroy him. That remains true."

He kept speaking but my attention had come to a sudden, jarring halt. I intend stay by you . How could he say that and continue speaking of other things?

I frowned at him.

"Ben is a villain, his reputation destroyed. He will be pushed even farther into the darkness. Yet we now have a cure—or so Ms. Alamay claims. And he will not use it," Sam continued, oblivious to my irritation. "Do I force him, then, to be healed? Must I trick him? If I do not, I am as good as abandoning him, and all the sacrifices I have made will be for nothing."

I do intend to keep you.

I forced my mind forward. "Yes, we trick him, lie to him, force him if need be. You have given everything for him, including nearly all our lives."

Guilt cluttered his expression.

"He lost the ability to make the right choice a long time ago," I stated, holding his fingers tighter than necessary, though Samuel seemed unbothered. "So make the choice for him. That is not so uncommon for the pair of you, is it?"

"No," he affirmed. "It is not."

"Then it's settled," I summarized, slipping farther forward on my chair. Our knees touched. "You will stop worrying, and I will help you trap Ben for his own good. And for your own good, I will now distract you."

Sam abruptly met my gaze. Emotions flickered through his eyes—a ghost of promised happiness. Then they were chased away by a familiar hesitation.

My stomach sank.

"Don't do that," I warned. "Don't close yourself off now."

All of a sudden both his hands cupped my head, pulling me in for a long, slow kiss. His wind-dry lips were rough against mine, but warm and needy. My head felt light and I leaned forward, but that was not close enough.

I jerked up my skirts carelessly, straddling him with a clatter of my chair and deepening the kiss. He let me grasp his face in turn and tilt his head back.

His hands fell lower, flexing on the curve of my waist and slipping their way under my skirts. Distantly, I felt Tane's presence leave, slipping away through the wood of the ship to keep watch outside the cabin door.

"I did not hesitate… about this. About you." He fumbled for words. I'd freed his mouth, using my own to plant a row of kisses and nibbles down the side of his throat. His fingers skimmed across the bare flesh of my thighs. "I was only thinking of… Saint, you are not wearing trousers. Mary. Why are you not wearing trousers?"

"I intended to bathe, but you distracted me."

"It is still quite cold."

"I'm quite warm."

His hands paused, and he cracked his eyes open. "Would you marry me, if I asked? We have had over a year in one another's company. We have seen one another at our worst and our best, and my affection for you has only grown, even against my own will."

I sat back, scowling. "Repeat that, slowly."

He grimaced. "What I mean is… what I feel for you is not something I can turn away from, even if I wanted to, which I wholeheartedly do not. Many marriages are built upon much less. I would give you security, and our relationship—as Captain and Stormsinger—legitimacy."

His hands slipped and settled higher, nails grazing my backside.

I suppressed a shiver. "Must we discuss this now? Or can I simply lock the cabin door and make love to you?"

He visibly fought himself, and gravity gradually replaced the want in his eyes. His hands moved again, gentling, and he rested them on the outside of my knees. I took a deep breath, waiting for the bough to break.

"There is nothing on these seas I would not do for you, Mary Firth," he said at length. "And so I will not risk you. Aside from our stations—"

"Our stations should not matter."

" Aside from them," he emphasized, "I will not risk taking more of you, getting a child on you, when I have given you no assurances. When I can give you no assurances—neither of myself, of my sanity and wholeness, nor of our future."

He faltered as I ran my thumbs over his bottom lip. "I would happily risk that," I murmured, not carelessly, not laughingly, but as solemnly as he looked at me now. "But I also will not ask you for more than you are willing to give."

Silently, he rested his head on my chest, and I my chin atop his head, and we simply… breathed. After an indefinable length of time I lifted his head away and sat back, dropping my hands to his chest to feel his heart, now slowed.

"Give me a little more time," he murmured into my hair, and kissed my head softly.

"All right. Just a little."

Tane slipped a warning through our connection just before a knock sounded at the door. Reluctantly I got up and rearranged my skirts as Samuel raked back his hair and, standing, reached for his shirt.

"Yes?" he called as he stuffed the shirt into his breeches.

"We need to speak." Olsa's voice came through the wood. "If you two are finished."

"Sooths," I muttered, brushing at my swollen lips, and opened the door.

Olsa entered with a coffee service, arranged with Willoughby's usual care, and placed it on the table. She poured us each a cup and ensured we had taken them and sat before she spoke again.

Tane wandered back into the cabin and rejoined with me.

"The papers Jessin Faucher gave us were seized when Hart was captured," she said without preamble. I had forgotten this in the wake of our escape, and I sipped my coffee slowly as I waited for Samuel to react.

Samuel loosely held his own cup on the table before him, the liquid gently sloshing with the movement of the ship. "You are sure?"

Olsa nodded. "I believe the Ess Noti were seeking them in particular. It was not our presence in Mere that resulted in Hart 's capture, nor the prison break—they occurred simultaneously, and. at first, our captors believed Illya to be captain and I his Sooth. They believed Hart to be its false name, Macholka , until they realized Illya and I are ghiseau and Benedict's escape came to light."

"The Ess Noti must have learned that Captain Faucher gave the documents to us," Samuel concluded. "And came to reclaim them."

"Jessin Faucher is the son of Adamus Faucher, head of the Ess Noti, and his father has been trying to protect his son from himself," I put in. "I doubt Jessin is unwatched. Spies among his crew?"

They both looked at me, Samuel clearly intrigued by this information and Olsa deep in thought.

"Mr. Maren may know more," I suggested.

"Enisca certainly would," Olsa added. "However, she has hardly left her cabin and will not speak to me. I doubt we will find any answers with her."

"But," I cut in quickly, "given the tide, the invasion, what we've learned about Mereish magecraft… Does any of it truly matter to us?"

"It matters if we are serving a nation that covertly perpetuates war on the Winter Sea," Samuel said. All remnants of our earlier encounter had faded from his expression and posture, and he was wholly captain now, Samuel Rosser, honor-bound and detached. "The same war that stole your mother from you and that is currently driving the Mereish Fleet to our shores. I will not be party to that."

Conviction and embarrassment collided inside me. "My mother is no longer involved, and neither must we be. The papers are gone. Whatever Jessin tried to pull us into is no longer our problem."

"Ms. Alamay—" Samuel began.

"Is an Usti spy ," I returned. "Why would she tell us anything? Or do you plan to interrogate her? Unleash Ben on her?"

"I would not do that."

"Then you will get nothing from her," Olsa concluded. She blew calmly across the surface of her coffee, sending a swirl of steam over the table between Sam and I.

It occurred to me to wonder precisely how she and Illya felt about all this as Usti themselves, but she did not seem inclined to share.

Samuel looked as though he wanted to counter us, but took a deep breath instead and dropped his chin in something not quite a nod. "For the moment, I will concede. There is little we can do but speculate without the documents themselves, and more immediate concerns beset us. So, for now, we must put this aside. Ms. Alamay intends to remain with us for the time being?"

Olsa nodded. "Or so she says."

"Then an opportunity remains. However," Samuel went on, "I do not consider the matter closed. If our resident spy has information and decides to share, or Jessin Faucher and The Red Tempest cross our paths again, I will not let the opportunity to learn the truth pass me by."