of you, wasn’t it,’ Kite said into his glass. ‘Thought I’d be being shot around now.’
‘Don’t be dramatic. He wouldn’t shoot you, he just wants to lock you up and give you a scare.’ Joe could feel himself going red. Acting was much harder around Kite than anyone else.
Kite looked at him as if he’d started howling at the moon.
‘Why would you sit here and wait, if you thought Lawrence was coming for you?’ Joe demanded, angry again, but this time it was a hollow, worried anger that came of the suspicion he’d done something truly stupid.
‘Mainly I’m too tired to get up.’ Kite sounded like he was joking, but his focus had gone far away. He was holding the tattoo under his sleeve. ‘That bed is murder.’
Joe turned the glass around on the table between his fingertips. He could feel the seconds dying. The kitchen girl came out to give them some bread and Kite smiled at her, polite rather than flirting. She smiled back, flirting rather than polite. Kite looked away.
The door smacked open. Joe pushed his fingernails into the spaces between the knuckles of his other hand when he heard a hard voice ask for Captain Kite. Kite glanced that way, not surprised. He was relieved.
38
Joe understood.
It was an efficient and unfussy suicide. Kite wasn’t the sort of man to shoot himself and make his sailors find the body, or worry that he’d vanished. Lawrence could do it and all the rest would be the Admiralty’s problem.
Joe didn’t know what he’d expected. Something satisfying. Fury. A chance to say, got you. Not this rotting feeling that he’d attacked a wounded man. He felt sick, worse than sick. Panic was wrapping itself around all his insides exactly as it had on the steps of the castle chapel. He had honestly thought Lawrence would just lock Kite away for a while. He hadn’t meant for Kite to die.
The mechanical voice inside his head hissed. It should not have been difficult to cause the death of a murderer who was holding Lily to ransom, it just shouldn’t, and who gave a toss what Kite had said or done on that lost night at the lighthouse. There was nothing he could have done to deserve this ridiculous attachment.
Knowing that made no difference. Like before, Joe’s throat had closed up, his heart was squeezing, and his fists had clenched themselves so hard he could feel his nails making marks in his palms.
Hetty was pretending not to know who the soldiers were talking about. The officer in black pounded his fist onto the bar. Hetty flinched and nodded towards them.
‘Missouri Kite,’ the officer said when he saw them. ‘You are under arrest at the pleasure of His Majesty and the Admiralty of Great Britain and Ireland for the murder of—’
Something in Joe’s head shut down, and something else snapped awake. Whatever it was, it wasn’t him. It was something else; someone else.
He punched the man in the face. It hurt a lot and he wished he had put his sleeve over his hand first.
The marines started to draw their swords, but the men who had cheered Kite were already up and some of them had guns. Joe hadn’t hit the officer hard enough and the man wrenched out his own gun. Joe bumped back against the edge of the table.
‘I’ll shoot him through your eye, I swear to God.’
Joe wanted to tell him to get on and do it, but his voice wasn’t working. He stayed where he was anyway. A feverish part of him observed that he looked far too scared to convince anyone he’d stand there long.
A shot went off behind him and the officer collapsed. It was so loud it was agony. He had to smack his hand over his ear. When he looked back, the muzzle of Kite’s gun was resting on his shoulder. Kite let it drop while the smoke was still breathing. It smelled like fireworks. Joe thought he was going to tell the sailors to let the marines go, and go with them anyway. He hadn’t killed the man, only shot him through the shoulder; although with a bullet the size of a marble, it was horrific all the same.
‘Disarm those men,’ Kite said. ‘Are there any signal lieutenants here?’
‘Sir,’ someone volunteered towards the back.
‘Put a signal on Agamemnon’s mast. Anyone who wants to break the blockade should come now.’ Then, much lower, ‘Joe? Are you all right?’