Chapter 166: The Brotherhood of Improper Conduct
The grey dawn crept through the embrasures, those deep cuts in the wall that could swallow a man’s arm nearly to the elbow, and lighted the dust drifting through the corridors. The black of night had faded to the tone of old iron.
Through one window, the bronze weathervane on the watchtower caught the light of day. Beyond the walls, the moat lay pale and narrow, cutting the fort neatly away from whatever streets outside were just beginning to wake.
Below, beyond the courtyard, a drum began its beat with all the cheer of a banker ready to collect some debt. It called the soldiers out from their slumber and into loose, yawning ranks while a sergeant shouted at them to stand up straight.
"Right, lass."
James kept his voice low enough that it belonged to her and nobody else. "I may as well tell you now, my Spanish’s only good to call for more rum and curse the weather. After that, I’m about as useful as a dog barkin’ at the moon."
Milagros facepalmed with resignation.
"Madre de Dios, that’s all you’ve learned?"
"I have one lad for for the serious business."
"And where is this lad now, señor?"
James clicked his tongue. "Aye, that’s a fair question."
She kept walking as though the conversation were of no importance at all. "Well, you’re not the only one here who’s liable to give us trouble. Nobody in this fort talks like I do either, and I’ll wager they’ll notice that long before they put your rum-and-weather Spanish to the test."
James gave her a sideways look. "Then you’d better find yourself a rougher voice. Oughtn’t be much of a hardship for a tomboy like you."
Her head snapped around so fast the hat nearly came off with it.
"Tomboy?"
"Aye that, though from what I’ve seen, you’re doin’ a damn fine job of bein’ a lad in every respect but the one."
"To hell with you, cabrón. Don’t stand there telling me I ought to have a prick hanging between my legs just because I won’t sit gently and smile like some fair lady while you whisper rubbish about roses and the sea."
Her hand flashed upward, making straight for his ear.
James caught her wrist an inch before it reached his head. For a moment they stood there, wrestling in awkward silence, each trying to get the better of the other. From a distance they might have passed for soldiers fooling around before muster.
Which was fortunate, because that was considerably easier to explain.
"Easy now."
James grinned, though her wrist was still caught in his hand. "At this rate, ye’ll have the whole garrison watchin’ us in a minute."
"Let go of my bloody hand."
"Not while you’re tryin’ to knock my head off, nay."
She twisted free and came at him again before he had prepared for it. James turned just enough to miss the worst of the blow, which was apparently all the success he would get from that.
They went down together in a heap of borrowed coats and boots while his arm shot out on instinct to keep her head from cracking against the stone, and his hand grabbed the first thing it could find.
Unfortunately, the first thing it found was the front of her coat.
By the time either of them had figured out which arm belonged to whom, James’s hand had worked its way inside her coat and accidentally found the soft warmth beneath it. His palm brushed against her chest, and his fingers gave an entirely involuntary little squeeze, more from surprise than intention, before either of them seemed to realize where they had landed.
Frozen there on the floor, tangled together in a position that might have been explained to a priest, a magistrate, or perhaps a particularly imaginative executioner, but certainly not to any ordinary soldier passing by.
An ordinary soldier passed by.
He was little more than a boy, young enough that the uniform still seemed to be borrowed from a larger man. He came around the corner carrying a bucket of water in one hand, presumably on his way to some officer’s chamber that was expected to be clean before the day had properly begun.
He stopped dead when he saw them.
The bucket swung hard, spilling a respectable portion of its contents over the rim and onto his boots.
For one long moment, nobody moved.
Then the boy’s face turned red from neck to hairline, the tone of a boiled crab, and he spun around and fled back the way he’d come without saying a word.
The bucket hammered against his leg with every step, as if even it wanted to get away from what it had just witnessed.
Milagros was the first to get herself upright.
She looked down at him, then switched languages as though Spanish had not quite been sufficient.
"Flea-bitten bastard."
James stayed where he was, laughing too hard to make any useful defense. "Christ, the poor lad. He’ll spend the rest of his life wonderin’ what sort of brotherhood the armada’s got hidden away in these corridors. I’ll wager he’ll sleep with one hand clamped over his arse till he’s an old man, just in case."
"Get up, you useless bastard."
"In a moment."
He got up to his feet, grinning so broadly it looked painful.
"Madre de Dios, lets just move."
She snorted and straightened her coat with multiple short, furious tugs. "Before they catch us doing more than groping each other in a bloody hallway."
They kept going.
The fort changed around them as they went. The walls grew thicker until they were walking through the heart of the bastion itself, while the windows disappeared one by one, followed by the daylight, until all that remained were stone walls and the occasional lamp guttering in its bracket.
It had the particular chill of somewhere built to keep men in, and no barracks ever needed that much stone or so little fresh air.
There was one door ahead, banded with iron, and a single soldier standing before it.
His hat was pulled low over his face, and he stood so stiffly that James immediately decided he did not like him. Ordinary soldiers shifted, scratched, yawned, looked about, or found some other small way to prove they were still alive.
This one looked as though someone had nailed him to the floor.
Neither James nor Milagros moved for a moment.
Milagros went first. She lowered her voice and tried to roughen it enough to pass for a man’s.
"¿Quién va-"
The voice cracked clean through the second word and left her standing there with all the authority of a boy whose voice had just betrayed him in front of half the school.
The soldier tilted his head, more puzzled than persuaded.
James stepped in before the silence had time to become dangerous. He lifted one hand in a vague gesture that meant nothing and rummaged through the very small cupboard of Spanish he had been carrying around with him.
It came out slowly, badly, and with enough mistakes to make a priest weep.
The soldier tilted his head the other way, now apparently trying to decide what sort of Spaniard had managed to get this far while speaking the bastardized version of their tongue.
Then he straightened.
His hat came up just enough for James and Milagros to see the eyes beneath it.
The voice that followed was just as confused as they were.
"...Captain?"