Chapter 184: The Better Part of Valor

The voice took its time to reply, as it enjoyed letting a man stew for some extra few seconds.

No headstone needed after all.

I admit I was a little disappointed, I’d grown rather fond of the idea before you spoiled it by having the bad manners to survive. Still, I’ve found another use for it. Discretion, as you are about to learn, is the better part of valor.

You’ll get the joke soon enough, though I doubt you’ll like it half as well as I do.

⚓ [SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]

Quest Complete : Outnumbered, Not Outgunned

Reward : 50 Fate

Reward : Unique Equipment

Fifty Fate, just as promised, for surviving odds considerably uglier than either of us had expected you to face.

Balance, fifty.

James grinned at the empty air.

"Bloody generous of ye, considerin’ ye spent most o’ that fight bettin’ against me."

I bet against you as a matter of professional habit. So far, it has cost me nothing I couldn’t comfortably afford to lose.

The shimmer convened before James could think of a witty reply, and this time it took on a form he recognized immediately.

[Verdict] and [Counterargument] had arrived in exactly this fashion, once upon a battle he had survived far more easily.

🏴 [ITEM ACQUIRED] — Discretion

A captain’s coat of black wool fine enough to make an admiral look underdressed, with gold thread worked through the cuffs and lapels, accompanied by a hat cut from the same cloth. The tailoring alone was enough to turn heads from here to London.

What happened when a blade or musket shot found the weave was another question altogether, one no tailor in Christendom could understand and one you would be wise not to investigate twice out of curiosity.

James picked up the coat and turned it over in his hands before putting it on. He brushed a thumb along one cuff, watching the gold catch the lamplight.

Good cloth. Fine cloth.

It had some weight to it, too, the sort that draped instead of standing about like it had been starched for burial.

He set the hat beside it and gave that a turn as well, taking a moment to admire the brim.

"Christ," he said, mostly to himself. "That’s a mighty captain’s coat, that."

He wore it and the coat lay across his shoulders as though somebody had measured him for it while he slept.

There was no pull when he rolled his shoulders, nor stiffness anywhere worth complaining about.

He put the hat on at a thoroughly dashing angle, then turned toward a strip of polished brass fitted into the bulkhead, which was the closest thing the cabin possessed to a mirror.

"Well now."

He turned another quarter and examined the collar.

"Aren’t I somethin’."

It is curious how you have survived a musket shot, the gallows, and a naval engagement fought against a squadron, all within a single week. And given a moment’s peace, the first thing you discover is apparently that you must admire yourself in a bulkhead fitting like a merchant’s daughter preparing for her wedding.

"One ought to to know when he looks fine, practically a survival skill in its own right."

I confess I had not considered vanity among the talents responsible for keeping you alive this long. I’ll add it to the file, somewhere near the bottom, beside luck, and directly beneath your apparently inexhaustible supply of other people’s patience.

James cocked the hat another degree and found that he preferred it there.

"You’re only jealous you’ve got no shoulders to hang a coat like this off of."

I have no shoulders whatsoever. I find this considerably less troubling than you seem to find the condition of your own.

His grin stayed put until his hand wandered down to his hip out of simple habit, reaching for a hilt that wasn’t there.

That stopped the grin.

The little movement struck him harder than he had expected.

[Verdict] and [Counterargument], both of them were still in Havana, exactly where he’d left them, in Esperanza’s keeping.

Now that the memory had come calling, he turned it over in his mind.

One man intending to get himself tossed into a prison had no business carrying an argentsteel sword or a four-shot pistol that half of Havana would recognize on sight. Distinctive weapons made distinctive prisoners, and distinctive prisoners had a nasty habit of being remembered.

So he’d handed both to her before Kit had thrown the first punch in that tavern. He’d trusted them to a woman he’d known less than a week and walked into the fight with nothing sharper than a stolen knife.

He hadn’t thought much about it since.

Both pieces were still in Havana, the very city where he’d just publicly embarrassed a governor, a fat traitor, and a squadron of the Guarda Costa.

That was one more reason to go back.

He put the coat and hat aside with more care than he’d shown most things that day, then turned to the considerably less impressive business underneath.

His shirt had gone stiff with salt somewhere around Havana and had seen no reason to improve since.

He worked it off, along with the rest, until he stood in his breeches.

The clothes had encountered more blood in the past several hours than a barber’s floor on market day.

It had been longer than he cared to count since he’d had the chance to wash properly.

His fingers scrapped his shoulder first, and he brushed the wound Ambrosio’s man had given him what seemed like another lifetime ago.

The skin had pulled tight and pink around it, healing slow and steady.

He pressed harder than necessary, partly to feel it and partly because a man will sometimes poke an old wound simply to find out whether it has finally learned some manners.

It hadn’t.

Lower down, the cut across his forearm from that same miserable evening had closed into a thin, pale line, already fading toward whatever ordinary scar it intended to become.

He couldn’t remember when it had stopped hurting, which seemed as good an indication as any that it had.

He looked himself over for another moment.

There wasn’t much left of him that hadn’t been opened, cut, shot at, or otherwise persuaded to grow scar tissue.

"Like this, I could open a shop sellin’ the leftovers," he muttered, then crossed to the basin.

He worked a wet cloth over his arms, his chest, and the back of his neck, scrubbing away several days of salt, smoke, and blood.

For a little while, the cabin wanted nothing from him.

No enemy was shooting at him, cutting him, trying to hang him, asking him to make an impossible decision before supper.

It was, in its small way, a luxury.

Naturally, it didn’t last.

The door was pushed open without even the courtesy of a knock, and Anne came through it as though permission were a custom invented for people with less sense than she had.

"Already ready for me?"

She looked him over slowly, licking her lips with unmistakable satisfaction.

"I recall a promise, lass, about dealin’ with me properly."

"Aye, and you fulfilled your part when you came back breathin’."

She walked through the cabin while already loosening the laces at her clothes.

"I’m only here to pay for mine."

James caught her around the waist with a smile.

"Don’t forget the interest."

Yet, before they could continue, the door was pushed open again.

Milagros stood there, somehow oddly awkwardly and also resolved.

"I don’t know why I let her talk me into this."

She addressed them, arms folded tightly across herself, though her boots had already pushed her inside the cabin.

"Come in properly, then, and stop lettin’ the door throw all the heat out."

Anne smiled provocatively.

"No sense standin’ there like a virgin at her own wedding."

"I am not-" Milagros began.

Then she apparently felt there were arguments worth winning and this wasn’t one of them.

She came the rest of the way inside the room, muttering beneath her breath that James was fairly sure was not intended kindly toward either of them.

James stood there in nothing but his breeches, one woman’s hands still around his waist while another glared at him from across the cabin.

He grinned.

He grinned so broadly it hurt.

Two women inside his cabin, and one door that, by every sensible rule of seamanship, ought to have remained shut after the first one came through it.

He’d survived a hanging, a jailbreak, and a frigate in the same week.

One who had come through all that had earned the right to claim some fun for himself, especially if it was likely to be considerably more pleasant than the things he’d already endured.

"Well then, ladies."

He looked from one to the other, taking his own sweet time about it.

"Reckon there’s room enough in here for the three of us to get nicely acquainted."