Chapter 281: A Cup from the Well*

A couple of hours after the undead walked home, a bonfire burned near the pyramid.

The party tended to their wounds as best they could, but walking back to the Fortune in the darkness was out of the question unless the merry band was either drunk or Spanish, and neither condition made the journey any safer.

The mangrove channel lay an afternoon’s march away, its warm black water deadly, its leeches thick as bootlaces, and its mosquitoes numerous enough to carry off the careless.

So they made camp some distance from the pyramid, upwind of the heap at its foot, on dry ground where the jungle left a patch of sky overhead. Their packs, slung on before they set out, held hardtack, dried pork, waterskins, blankets, and a flask of rum.

It was enough to get seven people through the night, provided no one developed a sudden appetite for an extra supper.

James had the first night watch, leaving everyone else to sleep.

Mary sat with her back against a tree, boots on and cutlass across her knees, Bonnet lay on his back with his torn shirt held shut and his hands folded over his chest.

Near enough, Dunk had his hat pulled over his eyes and Pike snored with his bare eyebrow ridge exposed, while Nub slept with his green fingers tucked under one arm, glossy.

Beyond the fire, Zephy lay wrapped in a blanket.

As for James, he went to a fallen trunk at the edge of the firelight, well away from the sleepers, and put his boots up on it. The pyramid stood black against the ordinary stars, and the whole place was silent enough for him to hear himself breathe, more than he wanted from the night.

His hat lay in his lap. It was made of the same black wool as the coat, and he turned it over, brushed his thumb across the gold-thread band, and picked at the lining.

Unfortunately, no part lit up.

"Some hat to ward off ghosts, is it? Och, you bonnie wee thing."

Then he put it on, took it off, and put it on again, just in case any ghosts happened to be watching.

The empty pistol hung cold from its strap, but here wasn’t much to try it on, unless he wanted to wake the crew and ask them to act haunted. The voice had told him about a feathered cloak, worn by some old lord of the island, with spirits sliding off him as readily as water off a duck.

James pondered that for a while, but got no wiser.

The key lay inside its oilcloth wrapping beneath his coat, warm against his ribs, keeping half a beat behind his heart.

Then his thoughts were interrupted by a string of small bells that chimed across the camp.

Zephy came through the firelight at a gentle pace, hand brushing across the trunks. She had washed the sap from her hair and put the shells and red thread back in place, and her hands were clean, too, the injured palm wrapped in the strip of James’s torn linen.

She stopped twice to catch her breath before reaching him.

James lowered his boots and caught her by the elbow.

"I left a derelict bundled under a blanket, and here she comes driftin’ through the camp."

"A derelict?"

She clapped her hand to her heart and reeled back as if he’d put a shot through it, the shells in her hair chattering their outrage. "Mon Dieu, the insult. Eleven hundred years, mon capitaine, or thirty-four, if the customer is paying, and now the customer, he calls her a wreck!"

Aware of their surroundings, she dropped her voice to a hiss and flung a hand toward the snoring heap by the fire. "The sibyl, she cannot sleep, chéri. Too much of the old power moving in her, like the sea in a bottle, and that one with no eyebrows, he snores like a hog at his own wedding."

James chuckled and helped her onto the end of the log, their knees close, and her fingertips crept up his sleeve.

Then her voice came out purring. "The sibyl keeps her word, chéri. The work is done, the key is in your hands, and now she comes to receive what is owed. That is only fair, non?"

James remembered the bargain. First, a voyage, then a measure of the life that moved inside him, a cup from a well that never ran dry.

"Aye, aye, I mind it well enough. Go on, then, lass, explain the price."

She laid her hands on his knee and let the words come slow, drawn out on the vowels as syrup off a spoon. "The voyage, it is simple, chéri. You carry the sibyl to Concordia, aboard that black ship of yours, with the wind at her back."

"Done and done. Same as I swore atop your pyramid, and I’ll not be sealin’ it in blood twice.

He tipped his head toward her, one eyebrow cocked.

"But why Concordia, I’m askin’?

Her smile curled, and she waved her fingers at the sky.

"Ah, chéri. Does the moon explain herself to the tide?"

He barked a laugh and shook his head, ruefully. "Och, I’ve never met a witch yet that’d give a straight answer to a straight question. Zephy, you’d make a grand lawyer, the way you talk in circles."

She spread her bound hand in a flourish and had no more to say.

James let the matter go.

Eighty-four pirates held their breath until the rowboat left the Fortune’s shadow, and now they were going to have a witch aboard for a few days. Crick would rap the taffrail raw over it, Whitlock would open a new section on his slate and underline it twice, or dare say thrice, and Bonnet would be delighted and offer her tea.

They would manage somehow. Probably.

Zephy’s eyes dropped to his lips.

"And the other half, lass? This cup you keep goin’ on about?"

"Ahhh... the cup."

She rose onto her knees and swung a leg over his lap, lowering herself against him until her hips nestled snugly against his, the warmth of her body seeping through their clothes as she leaned into his embrace. Her voluptuous bosom pressed firmly against his chest, the laces of her indigo bodice drawn taut across them, and she took her time finding her comfort there, close enough that every shift brought a teasing brush of her against him.

The warmth of a banked stove radiated from her, mingling with the heady scent of camphor and burnt sugar that clung to her skin like incense.

Her lips brushed his ear as she whispered, each word on a warm breath that stirred the hairs at his temple, the fire nearby doing little to account for the heat of her so close.

"The sibyl, she will receive it now, mon capitaine. Right here, right now."

James hands came to lay on her hips, his fingers sinking into the softness of her flesh beneath the thin cloth, and he drew her a little closer, feeling the curvy waist beneath his palms. By then one grin tugged at his lips, half a dare, half wary amusement.

"How, lass? Will you bite me and drink it? I’m told I taste of rum and foolishness."

She caught his earlobe between her teeth in a teasing little nip, holding it just enough to make him feel it before releasing him with a low, throaty laugh against his cheek.

"Non, non, non, put that grin away. The sibyl, she had enough blood for one night."

He whispered against her hair, his voice low with that familiar, unhurried mischief.

"Reckon you told me the well wouldn’t feel the cup, lass. I mind it plain."

Her lips curved, and the answer slid out slick as honey, with a sly little lift on the last word. "The well doesn’t feel it, chéri, this is true. But whether the well enjoys it? Ah, that is a different question altogether."

She eased back against his thighs, her fingers wandering towards his belt, though the languid movements and faint weariness creeping into her expression betrayed the exhaustion beneath all her theatrical airs.

But then her voice returned in a tempting whisper. "Listen now, mon capitaine, and think. The essence of life doesn’t run only in the blood, it runs in more rivers, the one a man spends at the end of the night. The tide, she leaves it in the harbor, and the sibyl, she wants a measure of de seed."

James clicked his tongue, the trick had been obvious enough from the start.

A cup of it, a measure of him, poured out for a witch on a jungle. It might be a curse, for all he knew, and leave him sprouting vines like Nub, but he had already drowned, died, and woken in a dead man’s body in the middle of a naval battle.

A witch’s hex would be just one more story for the collection, and he wasn’t particularly worried about it.

Her fingers eased his breeches down just enough to expose his smallclothes, letting the cool night breeze brush his newly bared skin while the firelight washed him in uneven, flickering warmth.

"Here is the harbor, chéri... and here’s the ship..."

Her whisper softened to velvet.

"The sibyl’s lips, they are the cup that gather the essence. And the rest of her..."

She brought his hands in hers and guided them to her bodice, pressing his palms against the tautly laced cloth.

"...she will coax the well. Knead, mon capitaine, don’t be shy now. The sibyl, she is not."

Her ample bosom filled his hands through the laced cloth, warm and yielding beneath his palms, and he could feel them rise against his fingers with each slow breath she took.

The laced bodice grew taut, the fabric pulling close as her breasts shifted in his grasp, their curves shifting beneath to the shape of his hands. The snug cloth accentuated the fullness pressed between his fingers, and a breathy, unguarded moan slipped from her lips.

Zephy’s fingers found the laces and loosened them one eyelet at a time.

The indigo cloth fell open with a faint rustle, exposing her bronze skin to the flickering orange glow of the fire. Her hair spilled around her face, the little shells whispering together as she bent closer, while a slow, insistent heat gathered low in James’s belly.

She bent over him, her dark hair spilling across his lap in a tangle of curls and shells, the little bells at her ankle giving a soft chime as she drew closer, her breath brushing his bare skin in warm, fleeting whispers before the tender touch of her lips followed.