that he needed to know her name just before shooting her. She lifted her chin, determined to meet her end with grace. “Cate.”
“Catherine?”
“No, Cate will do nicely.”
He pivoted around on his heel. “Very well, Cate…”
A firm rap at the door caused her to start. A man’s silhouette, a dark blot against the glare of daylight, filled the doorway.
“Cap’n?”
She shrank back at recognizing the voice. It filled the room the same way it had echoed across the Constancy’s deck.
“Yes, Master Pryce?” Blackthorne beckoned him in with a wave.
Pryce advanced several steps, before he pulled up short at the sight of her. She snugged the coat tighter around her under his cold stare.
“Wishin’ to report, Cap’n,” Pryce said, averting his attention. “The prize has give over.”
“Readily?”
“None so much as might o’ been. Their weapons were already laid, until the cap’n’s wife there called the charge.” Pryce cut her a look, now a heated glare. “Took Chin directly in the leg, she did, and then managed to draw blood on several more afore…”
Blackthorne whirled on Cate. “I could have you hocked and heaved or flogged for drawing the blood of another.”
At some point, she had risen to her feet. She shrank back, coming up hard against the gun carriage as Blackthorne stalked toward her. He grabbed her by the arm and towed her around the table. Releasing her, he went out on deck, where a number of pirates churned through trunks taken from the Constancy. Shoving them aside, he pawed through the contents, seized something, and stomped back.
“I don’t give a damn about you, but that’s me number one coat and I’ll not have it bloodied up. Here,” he said and flung a garment at her. “Put it on or parade about half-naked, I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
The garment turned out to be a shift. She turned her back and wormed out of the coat while donning the other. The hem was barely over her hips, before the coat was yanked away. Blackthorne reached, meaning to snatch her by the hair. Thinking better, he took her by the wrist instead, the force grinding the bones together, and half-drug her to the steps below. In morbid dread of stumbling, she concentrated on her footing as he pushed from behind.
At the bottom, a shove propelled her much faster than her feet could manage. She stumbled several times. The passage wasn’t unlike that of the Constancy’s: narrow and lined with a couple of cabins to one side, and the galley the other, the cook, ladle poised in hand, watching them pass. They came out of the passage into an open space one could only call the gundeck. As low-ceilinged as the Constancy, the ’tween deck was cavernous. The pirate ship was no more than a platform for the double phalanx of guns, crouched in their carriages like silent black sentinels. The ports stood open, the fresh air thankfully stirring the miasma of bilge, stale gunpowder, and soiled hammocks.
She balked at the sight of a large number of men gathered at the foot of another companionway. It was only Blackthorne’s presence pushing from behind that kept her from turning and running, that and the recollection of what had happened the last time she tried to do so. The smell of blood grew sharp. It mingled with that of sweat and gunpowder as they neared. It was then that she saw the injured being helped down the steps. The wounded sat where they could, the more serious lying on the floor. Some glared at the sight of her; others looked on with mild interest.
Pryce’s voice rose over the commotion. “By the saints, Chin. Any chuckle-headed fool could see a thing like that won’t close on its own.”
A final shove from Blackthorne put Cate squarely before the man Pryce addressed. Hunched on a stool, his sweat-soaked shirt clinging to his chest, the man clutched his thigh, the blood seeping between his fingers pooling on the floor. He looked up and she found herself looking into the same impassive broad face and flat black eyes of the one who had held the knife to her throat, the one she had slashed with her sword. Her stomach lurched, the rum she had drank now an icy cannonball. Chin’s face twitched with recognition, and then settled into malevolence.
“He be refusin’, Cap’n,” Pryce said, his hands propped on his hips. His destroyed mouth tucked up in a wry twist. “You know how he is about bein’ sewed.”
“I sorry for it, Cap’n. In