Sailing by Carina's Star, page 39
So she looks to the one person who can help. René has stepped away from the men surrounding him, his red coat billowing in the breeze. Abeni meets his eye across the crowd. He meets hers. Danso takes notice, his mouth falling open in shock. Abeni nods, and she makes a choice. The one that Danso started but couldn’t quite finish.
She lets René go.
“Well, lads,” Eli says with his usual confidence, though Abeni knows him well enough to hear the slight waver as he holds the unlit powder flask in one hand and a match in the other, the small flame flickering like a threat. “You might not want to move too suddenly.”
The moment René sees Eli surrounded, the moment Abeni meets his eye across the crowd, he knows it’s time.
Abeni can’t help Eli out of this tough spot and protect Danso. And no way is René going to let Eli die. Besides, if Eli can’t set off his flask, they need to give Marc time to set off his. Those controlled explosions are their way out of here without a fight, and from the looks of Danso, he needs to go. Now.
Jerome’s rushing toward Eli, but he won’t care about Eli once he sees René’s face.
The decision strikes his body like lightning. It sparks the sinew connecting muscle and bone. It runs hot through his blood. He is scared but he is ready, and he will show the two men who broke every promise they ever made just who he is out from under their thumb.
Abeni has Danso’s arm, and she’s all but shoving him toward the Saiph. Jahni swoops in on his uncle’s other side, urging him in the same direction. Finally, Danso relents, saying something René cannot hear to Abeni.
René grasps Frantz’s wrist. “It’s time. Are we ready?”
Frantz nods. This is their risk, and they will take it on together.
“I’ll go first,” René continues. “Toward Eli. You and Auden come up when you see fit.”
René squeezes Frantz’s hand, their fingers sliding together when they let go. He knows Frantz is whispering the plan to Auden, but he doesn’t have time to watch. He only has a split second to think, because Jerome is running toward Eli now. The match Eli was holding, his last defense, goes out in a spray of sea water. Other naval sailors close in.
René climbs up onto the rail near the ratlines, hoisting himself up just enough to get some height. He takes a deep breath, steadies his heart, and throws himself forward, his boots hitting the deck with a loud, echoing bang.
The part of the scarf covering his face comes undone.
The naval sailors shout, scattering at the sudden noise and the unexpected sight of a pirate nearly knocking them off their feet, but it doesn’t deter Jerome. Not for one second.
Jerome unsheathes his sword, aiming to knock the powder flask out of Eli’s hand, no doubt, and by way of maiming him. If Eli moves, the blade could kill him. René unsheathes his own cutlass, the metallic, fateful sound ringing in his ears, and that does draw Jerome’s attention. René lunges the last foot, closing the distance between himself and Jerome, before swinging his sword up from below. His blade crashes against Jerome’s, and all he hears over the clash of steel are the echoes of the past. His own voice. The clattering of two wooden swords. Seven words that forever altered his world.
Will you play swords with me, sir?
René breathes hard as Jerome’s eyes narrow in half-recognition.
As it did during a long-ago sword lesson, Jerome’s grip loosens in surprise—a rare loss of control for a man so bent on it.
René takes the moment of distraction and steps back once before swinging again, hard, the cutlass falling from Jerome’s hand. The movement makes René’s already disheveled scarf fall off entirely, his hair tumbling out when the black cloth falls to the deck. He keeps his cutlass up and pointed toward Jerome, kicking his old teacher’s weapon away.
Everything goes dead silent.
Everything.
There is nothing but the sea, the Chase’s creaking, and René’s heart pounding in his ears.
Until Jerome laughs.
He tosses his head back and he laughs, a few strands of his neatly tied black hair slipping loose and framing his face. René starts when Jerome looks at him and doesn’t let go, the laughter morphing into an odd, soft, sinister chuckle. Time stops. The past crashes into the present. For one fleeting moment, the world tips and spins, or maybe that’s just in René’s own mind. He’s not certain. The light in Jerome’s gleaming gray eyes is the light of a dying star—too bright. A supernova. An inevitable explosion. There was a story Uncle Arthur told just weeks before his death, about Johannes Kepler studying such a thing in 1604, until the star and its light faded from the sight of the naked eye.
René plants his feet on the deck. He will be steady. He will be calm. A smirk slides across Jerome’s face with liquid ease. Caught you, it says.
“I knew it.” Jerome speaks those words aloud, not blinking, not even flinching despite a cutlass inches from his face. “Hello, René.”
There’s the tiniest, hairline crack in Jerome’s voice when he says René’s name, but it vanishes as soon as René hears it, vanishes so quickly it might never have happened at all. Something about his name on Jerome’s lips makes René realize just how many people are watching as the abrupt silence of the two ships crushes down upon them. Not just Danso and Abeni. Not just his closest friends on the Saiph, but the entire crew he leads. He can’t do anything that might make them lose faith in him, not now, when Danso was nearly ripped away. René wants to look back at Danso or Abeni or Frantz or Auden, but he can’t. He can only look at Jerome. Where has Marc gone with the other powder flasks?
Footsteps come rushing toward them. A voice calling his name. A French accent.
Mon etoile.
No. That’s not what he heard. That’s only a memory. A wound that never healed.
“René?”
Commodore Michel Delacroix speaks the name with grief. Disbelief. Fury. And then he’s there, standing next to Jerome again. He’s there with his perfect East India captain’s coat. He’s there with a pale gold ribbon in his hair. He’s there, and the only difference from a decade ago are the silver strands near his temple and the new lines on his face. A sharp pain comes to life behind René’s eye, like the headaches he used to get in those final years in Kingston. He gets them now, sometimes, but far less often.
René looks at the man whose legacy he tried to discard but never could, for a long time, maybe an eternity, and oh, he is angry.
“Commodore.”
His father’s eyes go rounder at the address.
Eli’s still standing there, oddly quiet. He’s backed up a few steps, giving them space, but not leaving René alone with this. Eli is like an older brother too, though far less stern than Jerome ever was. Stern isn’t even in his vocabulary.
A hand comes down on René’s shoulder, and Frantz steps up beside him, pulling off his scarf. Auden follows, and it is once again the three of them staring down their past. Michel’s chest heaves, his face pales, and René isn’t certain his father won’t retch right here on the deck.
“Nicholas was right,” Michel says. “He was right all along. The three of you ... all three of you are here.”
“Captain Jerome’s instincts, it would appear, are as honed as ever,” Frantz says. Sharp. Sarcastic. Stiff. This is not the gentle man with his head buried in a book. This is the boy who was betrayed.
None of them can be their best selves in this moment. René cannot be René. Not really. They don’t deserve René, besides. They don’t deserve the vulnerable, soft parts of him that they tore to shreds. He must be who the papers say he is.
Lucifer. Robin Hood’s Devil. Satan.
Or, as some sailors tend to call him, and the name he prefers himself, the Morning Star.
Jerome looks back toward the Saiph, where Danso’s limping along the rail for a closer view. One of the Misericorde’s crew, Logan, follows behind with Abeni in his wake, trying and failing to make Danso stand still so the shackles can be undone. But Danso is too occupied staring at René and Jerome. At Jerome and René. Nausea sits at the bottom of René’s stomach. He doesn’t want Danso to be angry at him, but he can’t say he say he’s sorry for this.
It's working. At least so far.
“You absolute liar, Danso!” Jerome shouts. “René always did always like to play pirate as a boy. You made that game a reality, I see.”
“Don’t talk to Captain Danso.” René wants to snap, but he keeps calm. Cold. The fire blazes in his chest, but he must wait. He must be patient. Jerome and his father are not stubborn merchant captains. They know him in a way that cannot be undone. They know where to make him bleed.
Red blotches stain Jerome’s cheeks. “Don’t you tell me who to address, boy,” he says through clenched teeth.
Abeni returns before anything else is said, running up to Frantz’s side.
“Nicholas,” Michel warns, like a friend, like a father, and the sound of it is like a knife to René’s heart.
Jerome gets Michel’s gentleness. He gets the mercy René never got. René can’t pinpoint the exact moment when the kind, playful father he knew got swallowed up by the sea. Maybe after Uncle Arthur died. Maybe before.
“Lower the cutlass, René,” Michel says. An order, not a request. The grief in his face morphs into severity, as if he too, is aware of all the men watching him, and behaving as he believes he should.
“No.”
“Enough with your games,” Jerome growls. “If you were going to hurt me you would have done it already.”
“I’m afraid you don’t know me any longer, Captain Jerome,” René replies. “So making assumptions about what I will and won’t do is perhaps a dangerous game to play.”
Would he hurt Jerome? Not unless forced to. Would he hesitate to injure Jerome if forced into a fight? No. But he doesn’t want to kill him. The mere idea of killing him is excruciating. He wishes he didn’t still love Jerome, but he does, and denying it is foolish. The parts of the Morning Star that are real, the parts that came out when he stole those press ganged boys from Captain Benjamin, scratch at his insides. He invented Lucifer, Satan, Robin Hood’s Devil, played that game, leaned into the name, to keep the the rage at bay. The Morning Star wasn’t born when he nearly killed that naval captain, he was just released into the world. No, a devil was born the moment his grandfather called him a devilish boy.
That’s where the story started.
He won’t hurt Jerome unless he must, but he does want to scare him.
“René!” Michel chides, and this, more than anything, makes René’s anger drown out his grief.
René’s gaze snaps sharply over to his father. “I am not a boy you may order about, Commodore Delacroix. That was a long time ago, and we’re well past it now. It didn’t work then, in any case.”
Jerome laughs a second time, he laughs, and some of the pirates stare at him, no doubt wondering exactly what he’s laughing at. Abeni rolls her eyes.
“Your persona might work on merchantmen who have no spine,” Jerome says, “but your father and I hunt down men like you day in and day out. We know what you’re doing. And it won’t work.” Jerome looks at all the pirates gathered around, chuckling in that uneasy, unsettling way, like he’s on the edge of something. “I hope you all know you’re putting your lives in the hands of a boy who never grew up, and who will leave as soon as something suits him better.”
René keeps his temper even as a wildfire starts blazing inside him. He has to help Abeni get them out of here. “Forgive the men for not trusting the word of a pirate hunter. Or is it someone else sending our brothers to the gallows?”
Jerome ignores that comment, looking at Abeni with that smirk on his face again. “You brought them here even though you were chasing me, of all people. I can promise you that no matter what happens today, that was a mistake. One I knew you would make.”
“Think what you like.” Abeni shrugs, keeping Jerome’s gaze, and her nonchalance makes Jerome’s eyes turn to slits.
René keeps the cutlass pointed at him. He dares not move.
“Oh, I hope you and Danso are pleased with yourselves,” Jerome says, his voice going deeper. “You have killed René Delacroix with his happy consent, and replaced him with this ... monster.”
“Nicholas, please,” Michel cuts in.
It does make Jerome fall silent, but the glint in his eye remains.
“Speak that way to our consort captain again,” Abeni seethes, stepping up closer, “and see what it earns you, Captain Jerome. You have no right.” She glares at Michel, who at least looks a touch guilty even as he narrows his eyes in snobbish irritation. “I would list off all the sins you’ve committed, but I’m afraid I don’t have that much time.”
Someone moves behind Jerome and Michel. Someone slight. There’s a flash of reddish-gold hair.
Marc.
With everyone watching the confrontation in front of them, they need to prolong this conversation to give Marc enough time to reach the Chase’s bow.
“My sins!” Jerome shouts. “You thieving—”
“Nicholas,” Michel repeats, turning his attention back to René. “What now, René?” His posture stays tense as he steps up closer like Abeni did, enough that he is a barrier between René and Jerome.
You didn’t tell me they were brothers, Papa, René hears himself say in that high, childish voice, rage thrumming between him and his old tutor. That first night cemented this moment, didn’t it? Maybe he and Jerome were destined to clash, no matter how softly they started out.
“We go,” René says, finally lowering his cutlass, though he doesn’t sheath it just yet, not with Jerome’s eyes darting back to his own blade resting on the deck a few feet away. “We’ve got the advantage, which both of you know. I’m afraid we’ll have to finish this another day.”
Michel turns toward Frantz instead, but before he can say a word, Frantz cuts him off.
“You will not get a different answer from me.” Frantz stares Michel down. “And before you think of invoking my father’s name, don’t.”
Marc inches closer to the Chase’s bow, one hand in his pocket.
“I think you should let us be on our way, gents,” Auden adds. “Before someone gets hurt.”
The explosion surges through René’s veins half a second before his brain registers the sound. Half a second before the deck rumbles beneath his feet.
Boom!
Marc tosses the second powder flask down, and another, smaller explosion goes off near the bow, the noise and the smoke drawing shouts from the naval and East India sailors. Abeni raises one fist in the air, and Flora calls out something from the Saiph. There’s a moment, a breath, and then the sound of a cannon ball whizzing through the air from the direction of Robin’s sloop. It smashes into the rail of the Chase—a warning, and their sign to get the hell out of here. The powder flasks are meant to cause more distraction than harm, though a few men are bleeding.
René sheathes his sword, but then there’s a hand snatching at the collar of his red coat. Jerome’s hand.
No. He is not going with them. Not like this. He swings his fist toward Jerome’s face with Eli’s tutelage guiding him.
Keep your fist loose, Eli said one late night in Nassau. Hurts less if you do. For you, I mean. I want it to hurt the other guy.
Jerome moves at the last moment, so the blow doesn’t connect hard enough to knock him down, but it does connect.
“You brat!” Jerome shouts, but René barely hears him, using the moment of distraction to shove Jerome hard to the deck.
René leans down, his face inches from the chosen brother he once trusted with everything. He shouldn’t do this. He shouldn’t pause. He should be going. Danso is safe now, and that’s all that matters.
“Don’t you touch me again.”
That comes out in a snarl. That sounds like the Morning Star in a way that isn’t a game at all. For once, Jerome doesn’t shoot back any barbed remark, and he doesn’t get up. Not yet.
“We have to go,” Frantz whispers, tugging on the back of René’s coat as Auden gestures them forward.
All René sees is red, and all he feels is rage, but he heeds his friends calling out to him, letting them lead him back to the Saiph. They’re almost to the rail of the Chase when someone shouts his name.
“René!”
His father, helping a stunned Jerome up before signaling something to his lieutenant. René doesn’t answer, looking forward forward forward because he cannot look back.
“René!” Michel repeats the name, his voice strangled and sick and sliced in two.
Don’t go.
René climbs back onto the Saiph while the crew removes the grappling hooks connecting them to the Chase at Abeni’s order. Jerome’s telling his crew to tend to the ship, knowing full well they’ve lost, this time. At least, in a manner of speaking. In another way entirely, they’ve won.
Danso and Abeni are several feet away from René, closer to the stern than the bow. Flora tugs Danso toward the captain’s cabin. Jahni’s by her side, whispering something in his uncle’s ear. Abeni nods at René, which tells him he should take charge of their departure. Danso stares at René, his leg quaking beneath him. Are those tears in his eyes? René is sure they might be, but all he can do is wave before Jahni, Abeni, and Flora usher Danso to safety.
“Full canvas!” René calls out, turning around to the crew. “Let’s make sail quickly!”
Other orders pierce the air as Jerome strides through the smoke, coming to a halt on the deck of the Chase just across from where René is on the Saiph. Michel stands nearby, frozen in place. René can’t stop staring at his father. He has to stop. Michel is less angry than he expected, and more broken. Jerome’s shout rips René from his contemplation, demanding his attention.
“Back to your games, Captain Delacroix?” Jerome taunts. “Mark my words, boy. I will find you again. I won’t rest until I do it.”
René doesn’t respond, and Jerome pulls something out of his coat pocket: a piece of the Misericorde’s flag. René can tell by the ruined white skeleton trapped between Jerome’s fingers. It must have fallen in the battle when he took Danso.
