Reborn as a Pirate Captain – My Journey to Build a Pirate Republic

The door was low and flat against the plaster, built to pass for nothing more than a piece of wall to any man who happened along in daylight. James got his boots under him and ran, with the rat-faced sailor half-carrying the big sailor and the big sailor returning the favor by being the heavier half of the burden.

Behind them, boots hammered the cobbles, growing louder with every yard they managed to cover.

The woman had the door cracking open, waving them through with one hand. When everyone went through it, she slammed it shut and dropped a heavy wooden bar across it with both hands.

Once closed, the door fitted the wall so neatly that a man could search for it all day and find nothing, unless somebody had already told him where to look.

"Down," she hissed.

The whole party went against the walls of the dim front room, breathing through their teeth and hoping nobody outside had developed an interest in architecture.

Two sets of people passed closed outside , then three. The voices called back and forth in Spanish, fainter with every heartbeat until the street outside had remembered its silence and gone back to being only a street.

James let out a deep exhale.

"Christ. I was beginning to think we’d have to fight our way out."

Sam looked him over. "I doubt yer arse could fight one man with that shoulder. Sit down before ye black out and wake up thinkin’ we’ve joined the Spanish Armada."

Around them, the room was small and dim, with the shutters closed against the afternoon, a cold hearth in one corner, and some dried and herbal accessory hanging from a beam overhead.

James sank onto a bench against the wall. Now that adrenaline had stopped giving him an excuse to ignore the pain, his wounded shoulder began throbbing with renewed enthusiasm.

Kit was the only one among them who had not earned a mark, and he went on to tear shirt-linen for a bandage with more enthusiasm than the job required.

Sam splashed a measure of alcohol that smelled harsh across James’s wound, and Kit wrapped the shoulder tight.

"Christ, Cap’n, that’s a mighty hole."

Kit pulled the knot tight, and James hissed through his teeth. "Whole business bein’ chased through half of Havana, cutlasses swingin’ every which way, and I come out the other end without so much as a scratch. Doesn’t seem right."

"Count yer blessings, lad."

"I’d rather count a scar, those are better for the stories."

Kit tied off the last of the bandage and looked genuinely disappointed by the result.

"I volunteered for this exact reason, and here I am, prettier than when I started."

Across the room, Jim was making considerably more noise about his ribs than the wound seemed to require. He pressed a fold of linen against the cut while twisting his neck toward a polished tin plate propped against the wall, doing his best to catch his own reflection in it.

"Is it still there?" he asked nobody in particular.

"Is what still there?" the rat-faced sailor asked, winding a strip around the big sailor’s forearm nearby.

"The rouge, ’course. That lass put half her signature on me mouth, and I’d hate to lose it to somethin’ as common as bleedin’."

"God’s teeth, Jim, ye’ve just been cut open and yer worryin’ about a bit of paint."

"Can’t help that, staying alive is no excuse, a man oughtn’t go wastin’ it."

Meanwhile, Sam had already treated his own cheek, doing the whole job one-handed, with his teeth handling half the knot and keeping that flat, untroubled look he wore when things went badly.

"Reckon that’s what comes of barging into some greedy fat bastard’s house expectin’ him to deal square."

He pulled the knot tight. "Next time Calloway, give us a wee warnin’ when the bastard might sell us out soon as a bounty’s dangled under his nose."

"Aye, that one’s on me."

James made no argument of it. He rolled his shoulder once, winced, and muttered under his breath. "Suppose ’flexible morals’ meant somethin’ different where I bought that recommendation from."

Sam’s eyes came up at that, slow and steady, and stayed on James a moment longer than the words themselves required.

The shop promised an opportunity, not a leash, and though I could have bent the obese man’s will to match your own, I found your failure a good deal more interesting than his obedience would have been.

James said nothing aloud and sat with the thought a moment, turning it over in his head. It was rough and unfinished, but it had the lesson in it.

Maybe it was time to lean less on shelves stocked by a voice that clearly enjoyed watching him bleed for his own mistakes, and a little more on the gut he’d been born with.

That was when the woman came back through from wherever she’d been listening at the street.

She crossed the room with confidence, dark eyes moving over the men crowded into the house. Clearly in her twenties, with a sharp, sun-warmed face, dark eyes beneath strong brows, a straight nose, and full lips that let out an expression between amusement and challenge.

Her long dark hair hung loose past her shoulders, while she wore a plain linen dress laced loose at the throat, modest across the chest but flattering the voluptuous curve of her rear and thighs.

The woman leaned one hip against the doorframe, arms crossed beneath her chest that had plainly been given more credit by the low neckline than it had any right to expect.

"Madre de Dios."

She snickered with a mischievous smile, "I have seen fish gutted with more dignity than the lot of you runnin’ through the street."

"In our defense, lass, we were bein’ shot at."

The reply came out sharp, "Only because you trusted that fat pig Ambrosio with your own neck, señor, and that is a mistake half this city could have warned you against, had you thought to ask before knockin’ on his door instead of after."

Without hurry, she picked up some jug on the table and poured herself a cup, without waiting to hear whether anyone wanted one.

"Word of your little conflict has just reached my ears."

"Then I’m obliged to you. For the help, and the not tellin’."

She clicked her tongue in a low pop, "Gratitude is not what I’m after, señor, pretty as you are under all that blood."

James raised an eyebrow, watching her face for any indication of trouble.

"Go on, then."

"I want what you offered him."

She set the cup down in front of James without taking her eyes from his.

"The cargo, the partnership, all of it."

James watched her for a long moment, looking for the little tell of working a con, the sort he’d learned to spot across a card table.

"All right, lass, you have my attention."