The Bright and Breaking Sea (A Captain Kit Brightling Novel Book 1)
The Bright and Breaking Sea: Chapter 9

It was just past noon when the call was made.

“Land ho!” Tamlin shouted, and Jin offered Kit her golden glass. She opened it, looked across the water to the point of darkness on the horizon, the water growing brighter as it neared the shore of the first island in the chain.

She offered it to Grant, who stood nearby, quiet and watching.

“Stay on course,” Kit said. “If their lookouts see our sail, I want them to believe we’re passing the island.”

Jin acknowledged her command. “All hands!” he called, and the bell was rung, signaling all sailors, including those below preparing for a night on the watch, to their stations. And in the meantime, she had to prepare.

In her quarters, she changed into garments she’d borrowed from Tamlin. A shirt that had long since faded from crisp white to ivory, and a long vest of thin leather. From one of the lieutenants, scuffed but soft leather boots of doe brown.

She rebelted her scabbard, tied to her belt the small leather pouch containing the sparkers. Then she smeared candle soot across her cheekbones, her jaw. Just enough to look like a woman who’d come through some fire.

She came back above decks unrecognizable, and watched the quartermaster prepare to scold her for going below without permission. Until he realized who she was.

That was one success, at least.

“Captain,” he said, “my apologies.”

“Unnecessary,” she said with a smile. “You’re giving me confidence in my disguise.”

He nodded, began to get very busy chastising sailors for their line-coiling skills.

Jin walked to her, offered a very beaten beaver hat that had become soft with time and damp, and at her nod, placed it on her head. He stood back, looked her over.

“You look like a . . . type of pirate.”

“Your confidence is bracing, Jin. And I’m not wearing this.” She pulled off the hat, sniffed it, held it at arm’s length. “It smells like bilge.”

“All part of the illusion,” Jin said, but took it back.

Grant joined them, wearing a crewman’s work clothes, the shabbier garb worn for messy work—caulking portions of the hull or deck to keep them watertight, or tarring the rigging to keep it from rotting. Trousers of cotton duck, a blousy shirt of linen, and a short blue jacket with a jaunty kerchief. He’d mussed his hair so it fell across his face, and, like her, had added a bit of candle black to his cheeks.

He looked entirely convincing as a sailor, and Kit didn’t care to admit she found it rather attractive on him.

While she perused Grant, he perused her. “You don’t look like a captain now.”

“You don’t look like a viscount. How did you come by the slops?”

He just looked at her.

“The clothing,” she clarified.

“I spoke with Chandler before we left. He suggested I might want attire that was less . . . titled.”

“A good suggestion.” She looked at Grant in the eye. “Finding Dunwood and getting him out is not likely to be easy. I need to know that—if we’re caught, or injured, or the Diana is in danger, or Dunwood is already dead—that I can count on you. Can you handle yourself?”

“Yes.”

She looked at him, kept looking at him.

“I am obviously not unskilled in combat,” he said, and she felt a thrill that he’d been the one to blink first, to put an answer into that heavy silence. “That I don’t want to fight doesn’t mean I’m not capable of it. I’ve had enough of war, Captain. I’ve no need for more of it.”

“And yet,” she said, “you’re about to engage in battle.”

“That’s different.”

“Because it’s Dunwood?”

“And because the queen requested it.”

She understood duty, and could respect it. So she nodded, decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, as she’d do for the members of her crew. “Very well.”

Watson and Sampson joined them in similar ensembles.

“Any questions?” Kit asked, and they all shook their heads. She glanced at Jin. “Have March prepare the crew’s mess in case we have injuries. She can deal with them there.”

“Already done,” he said. “She’s gathering her instruments of torture.”

Watson lifted a hand. “If we’re able to rescue Dunwood, and we were, theoretically speaking, to come across any pirate loot, would we be authorized to liberate said loot?”

“Under those specific conditions,” Kit said, “it’s probably best I not know of any loot-related activity. Understood?”

“Aye, Captain.” She lifted a shoulder. “Odds seem low we’d run across that kind of thing, but a woman likes to be prepared, you know.”

“Always,” Kit said, and turned toward the sea.

They passed a dozen small islands, each a palette of tan and green and black, some nothing more than a spit of sand or stone.

There was no sign of the gun brig. Either it hadn’t been headed for the island, or they’d beaten it here. Whatever the reason, Kit was relieved to replace one less obstacle in her way.

As they neared Finistère, the water changed, lightened—became the color of rich turquoise. The island rose, black and gray, from that water like a table, the stone dotted with seabirds and scatterings of green that had found a foothold in crack or crevice.

“You were right,” Grant said to Simon. “The cliffs would be . . . challenging.”

“Sailors are uniquely adept at gauging the ease of a landfall,” Simon said quietly, gaze on the landscape. “We’ve much practice at it.”

But the cliffs were hardly the only threat. Smaller monoliths of rock stabbed up around the island like the points of a crown. The waves were white between them, the spray ten feet above the surface. And gleaming among them, like jewels in the crown, were the bleached remains of ships that hadn’t judged the shoals carefully enough. Bows and masts speared up, tattered flags and pennants shifting in the wind.

Kit didn’t need to see her crew to know they’d be touching their talismans now, saying a silent prayer for the crew members lost to this graveyard.

They rounded the island, hanging as close as they dared, and neither heard nor saw any indication they’d been seen.

She nodded at Jin. “Bring us in so we can launch the jolly boat.”

While he steered, Mr. Jones, the bosun, called out instructions to haul in the sails, slow the ship’s forward progression.

“I’ll be back,” Kit said, accepting the time had come to give the promised instruction to Louisa.

Kit found her in the galley again, this time pounding her fist into a lump of what appeared to be dough.

Cook looked up, narrowed his gaze at his captain. “We don’t have enough biscuits for you to graze them like sheep all day and night.”

That he was the man in charge of biscuit distribution was the primary reason she didn’t toss him overboard for insubordination.

“And that’s a constant disappointment to me,” she said. “We’re nearing the island.”

Cook’s expression sobered, and he nodded. “Give me that, Tiny Cook.” And he took the bowl from her, placed it onto the table where she worked, and then helped her hop down again.

“Remember what we talked about?” Kit asked her. “How it would be time for you to go into the hold?”

Louisa nodded.

“It’s time now.”

“Is that why you’re dressed different?”

“It is.”

After a moment of narrow-eyed consideration that was nearly as intimidating as the admirals to whom she reported, Louisa nodded. “All right. You have to be careful, though.”

“I will be as careful as I can.”

“I’ll take her,” Cook said, his tone softer.

It was the first time in Kit’s memory that Cook had volunteered for anything outside the mess. But she appreciated the gesture and the care. Until they could get her back to New London, Louisa was their collective responsibility.

Keep her safe, she prayed, to any of the gods who might listen, who might have luck to spare for a child caught in a conflict that wasn’t her doing.

The jolly boat was prepared. Small casks of rum and water were loaded as emergency provisions, then the bargaining chits—hardtack and tea. Then the boat was winched over the side of the Diana, and Watson and Sampson climbed aboard, took seats on two of the plank benches where oars would be extended over the hull. Kit motioned Grant on board, and then followed him in. But she turned back, held out her hand to Jin. Jin clasped her forearm, and they watched each other for a moment.

“Tiva kass,” he said. It meant “gods’ kiss,” in the old language, a way of saying “take care.”

“Tiva kass,” Kit responded. “Lower the boat.” She watched her sailors until she could no longer see them, kept their gazes until they’d disappeared from view. She committed their visages to memory; they would be her touchstone. The reminder, should she need one, of who and what waited for her. Of the crew that needed safe passage back to their homes and families.

Watson pulled a gold coin from the leather harness that crossed her chest, bearing throwing knives that, Kit had reason to know, she could aim with impressive accuracy. She kissed the coin, tossed it into the sea. “Dastes,” she murmured as it slipped into the jewel-toned water.

“Do all sailors pay homage before sailing?” Grant asked, gripping the jolly boat’s gunwale as they jerkily descended. He looked a bit green, Kit thought, and she understood the sensation. Not because of the smaller boat; though he’d be feeling the ocean plenty when they touched it. Kit didn’t like being suspended in air. Having nothing beneath her between the hull of the jolly boat and the ocean’s slick surface. She preferred land, with its unyielding stiffness, to nothingness.

“It’s an unwise sailor doesn’t ask the gods for safe passage,” Sampson said. “And the crew of the Diana ain’t unwise.”

“No, they are not,” Kit agreed, clenching against the final bounce as they hit the water. They unhitched the ropes, which the Diana’s crew began to pull in again.

Jin gave one final salute from the edge of the ship, then he disappeared like the rest.

Kit relaxed, settled into the ocean’s undulations, and the oars were extended into the water. “Let’s go replace our man.”