Chapter 14: The Night Before

Kahina

The corridors of Le Sanctuaire smell of heavy rosewater and stale candle grease. Scents designed to hide the rot hang in the air. Walking straight into Armand's house on the night he is being dismantled is a risk I do not need to take. The risk is real, but the city belongs to him, and this place most of all. I move through the side entrance, my slippers silent on the carpet.

The ally is near the secondary exit, standing by a brass lamp in her silver fish-scale dress. Her face is serious as she looks at me.

"Jafar," she says. The name is quiet, spoken without breath. "He runs the northern route on a ship of three hundred tons financed by the Duke," she adds. "Malik uses him to carry the cargo west."

She presses a folded scrap of paper into my hand, her fingers dry and firm.

"Remember which way the ships go," she says.

I tuck the paper into the pocket of my coat. We part without sentiment, two people inside the same machine, making our own exits.

I walk down the limestone steps to the harbor. The scrap of paper is flat in my pocket, pressing against my thigh. The sight of the Sans Souci tied to the stone pier steadies my chest. Her white hull is clean against the gray cliffs and the dirty harbor water.

Nico is on the aft deck in the last of the evening light. He has thrown his formal coat onto the bench. His white sleeves are rolled to the elbows, the muscles in his sun-dark forearms shifting as he works the winch. The easy, social smile he wore in the salons is gone. His face is older tonight, the jaw set and quiet.

"Everything settled?" I ask, stepping onto the gangway.

"Settled enough," he says. He keeps his gaze on the winch, pulling the line tight. "We sail before first light," he says. "The crew is ready."

Théo and his girls have made their camp on the deck forward, their laughter drifting over the cabin roof. They are the small, loyal company that showed up when the rest of the Circle stayed away.

Night settles over the harbor, and the cabin below deck goes warm and close. A single beeswax candle burns on the teak desk, the flame casting yellow shadows on the bulkheads. The smell of salt and sun-warmed pine is thick in the air.

The negotiated structure, the rules about who touches what and when, is gone. Our agreement dissolved the moment he walked away from his father's name for mine.

I unlace the blue silk dress. The heavy fabric puddles on the deck boards, a discarded shell. Standing before him in the thin linen chemise, I make him look at the transparent fabric.

Nico sits on the edge of the narrow bunk, his boots off, his shirt half unbuttoned. He reaches out, his thumbs brushing the hollows of my collarbones, and draws the chemise down slowly. The linen falls to my feet.

I step between his knees. My hands find his stubbled jaw, sliding down his neck to his chest, where his heart thuds heavy and steady under my palm. The performance is over.

I push him back onto the narrow mattress and climb over him, my knees framing his hips. The chest I spent three weeks refusing to look at is solid and warm under my hands.

"The trousers," I say.

His hands find my waist, his grip tight on my hips. I slide the wool trousers down his legs, exposing him. He is thick and hard, his skin warm. I take him in my hand. Spreading the slick from the tip down his shaft, I slide my palm along the ridge of him, holding him, easing him to the edge. His jaw goes tight.

"Kahina," he says.

He says it low and rough. I rub the wet of myself along his shaft until he groans, his knuckles turning white as he grips my thighs. Guiding him to my opening, I sink down.

The stretch is sharp and real, filling me. Riding him, I grind my clitoris against his pubic bone. I set the pace, starting slow, then pressing faster as his hands slide from my hips to cupping my breasts.

"Some warning," he gasps, his chest rising fast under mine.

"You would not have liked it," I say.

I grind down, and a laugh escapes him. The vibration runs through my own body, and I laugh with him, both of us still moving, the wood of the bunk knocking against the bulkhead on the downbeat.

His hips lock. He calls my name again, the word torn from his throat as he releases inside me. The heat of him fills me, and my own release breaks around him, a hard, shaking wave that leaves me resting my forehead against his shoulder.

Afterward, we lie folded into the narrow bunk. My back is pressed to his chest, his arm heavy over my waist, his fingers idle on my hip. The boat rocks gently at its mooring. Out the stern ports, the cliff-lights of Seravalle go out one by one, and no one ashore marks the two of us slipping clear of the harbor. The name Malik is a distant problem for another woman in another harbor. I am not ready to ask why I am in this bunk, why I stayed when leaving would have been simpler. That is a question for tomorrow, when the cliffs are gone and the water is the only thing left between us.

Tomorrow is fine. His arm is heavy over my waist, and I do not move it.

Nico

Flat on the water, the grey dawn light reveals our departure. The Sans Souci slips her mooring before the first light hits the limestone walls of Seravalle, the cliffs shrinking to a pale line astern. Her sails catch the wind with a heavy crack before they fill, the canvas stretching tight. I ease the wheel to port, the rudder biting into the tide.

This is an escape as much as a leaving. The harbor belongs to Armand Vellier. The city is his domain. We are clearing the bay while he still expects me to crawl back. I stand at the helm, the teak wheel warm under my palms. A cool wind presses my linen shirt flat against my chest. The crew moves in silence, reefing and trimming the sails. Nobody speaks above the work.

Forward, Théo and his girls are sleeping off the night. Théo clinked the last glasses at midnight. Now he is sprawled on his back, his arm slung over the forecastle hatch. The two girls from Le Cercle are curled beside him under a wool sailcloth. They look small in the grey light, their silk dresses stained with wine and salt. Théo asked nothing. He did not ask what Armand said, and he did not ask why I was throwing away the Valderre banks. He simply brought the champagne and stayed.

Kahina stands at the starboard rail in a simple cotton shift. Her black hair is tied back with a strip of dark ribbon. She does not look back at the lights of the city. Her gaze stays fixed on the dark water ahead. The city tried to price her and keep her. Now it is a grey smudge behind the stern.

The night sits between us, a flame banked low. Our narrow bunk and the laugh that broke out of her at the worst possible moment stay with me. The rules we wrote are gone. The skin of my thighs still carries the weight of her. She was warm and direct, riding me with a slow, deliberate pace. When I gasped for warning, she laughed. The sound of her laughter against my neck was the first real thing to reach me in years. No performance remained.

The old version of me would already have made a clever joke to shrink the tenderness. I keep my mouth shut.

Below deck, the Duke's letter sits on the chart table. The red wax seal is split in two, the lion crest broken. My father's handwriting is neat, listing the betrothal and the count's signature. Ashore, his agents are writing the letters to freeze my accounts in Valderre and Seravalle. Armand is sitting in his room at Le Cercle, adjusting his linen cuffs, expecting me to return when the money runs dry. He believes the name and the gold are the only things holding me up. The ship in Saverno remains my secret. I have spent two years preparing to sail without their bankrolls.

The wind comes off the open water with a salt cold that gets under the linen and reaches the skin.

I came out here to vanish. I am sailing toward the men whose ships I let pass for two years.

The Sans Souci is a hull and a direction. The crew is ready. At the rail, Kahina stands with two captain names in her head. Malik and Jafar are the men she means to hunt, and she has invited me to join it. I spent years sailing these waters for pleasure, ignoring the manifests and the cargo in the holds. Now, the teak deck and the white sails are the tools of a hunt.

I look at the open water. The horizon holds nothing but the line where the grey sea meets the greyer sky, and I steer for it.