I squint at the map, and the tiny white island with a shape that puts me in mind of cauliflower. “Iceland?” I ask.
“It’s a fishing island,” he replies. “The Dutch and the Danes and the Finns all have a presence there.” He frowns down at the map, rubbing his thumb into the marked island. “My father was the one who found these charts, but he died before he learned anything more.”
“Was he looking for the spyglass too?”
“That’s what he spent the last years of his life searching for. A way to restore the seas to order. He wouldn’t have looked unless there was still time. But there can’t be much left.”
“Time?” I repeat.
Saad glares at me, frustrated I’m not keeping up. “Until the Dutchman docks. Once every one hundred years, on the same day it left, the ship returns to the same place it last touched land. That’s where I meet it and make the captain a deal. They leave Crown and Cleaver ships be in exchange for the return of the spyglass.”
“I want to help you,” I say. “When you meet the Dutchman, I want to come.”
Saad arches an eyebrow. “You sound as though you have a score to settle.”
“Something like that.” What I want is answers. I want to know what the captain did to my mother. Why she never really returned from the sea, and why she clung to this spyglass. If she knew any of this. If possession of this cursed object alone was enough to taint our bloodline. If there’s a way to break it.
“Let me take the Eleftheria to Portugal,” I say. “That’s where my mother was wrecked. I’ll see what I can find out about what happened to the ship and the rest of the spyglass and meet you there.”
Saad rolls the charts back into a tight coil, then shoves them in one of the pigeonholes behind the desk. A different one, I notice, than he took it from. “I’m not taking my flagship into Portuguese waters. The Azores are dangerous enough. The Crown and Cleaver has no friends in Portugal.”
“Then we meet somewhere else,” I say, trying not to let the urgency bleed into my voice. Don’t show your hand until you have to.
“Where?”
“Anywhere.” I mentally palm my forehead. So much for not sounding desperate.
He considers this for a moment, massaging the space between his eyes with his middle finger, then says, “In Porto, there’s a bar called the Armas Imperiais. It’s on the waterfront, at the mouth of the Rio Leça. There’s a wall of bottles in the third room—leave a note with your next port. I can send one of my men to find it, and I’ll meet you there.”
“Which bottle?” I ask.
“You’ll know.”
A plague upon all vagaries. Nothing is as stressful as a plan that ends in a hand wave. But this alliance feels too precarious to test with a But can you tell me specifically, because I’m incredibly anxious and obsessive unless I know every detail of everything happening to me at all times? “Fine,” I say. “But I get to keep the spyglass.”
Saad snatches it up from the desk, just a second before I can get to it. “No, it’s mine.”
“How do I know you won’t run off with it and I’ll never see you again?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” He glares at me, his chin stuck out. “We can take it apart—you take one lens and I’ll take the other.”
How have I gone from being in possession of half of a cursed spyglass to negotiating for my claim to half of a half of said spyglass? “No,” I say, wondering if this was some sort of Solomonic test. “Keep it.”
He must not have suspected I’d give in so easily, or perhaps suspects there’s some sort of trap to my words, for he doesn’t drop his peacocking posture. He looks down at the spyglass, and I wonder if he’s going to insist no, you, and I’ll say the same back, and then we’ll be caught in a loop of insisting the other take it. But instead, he pockets it, then holds out a hand to me. “So we have an alliance?”
I don’t take it. I can’t decide if I’m about to make a deal with the devil or with a child who can’t possibly understand the scale of his own actions. No one I trust trusts Saad. In the few weeks I’ve known him, he’s given me no reason to. Fewer reasons to like him. But if there were ever cause to build an unlikely bridge, crossing the River Styx might be it.
“May I offer some advice?” I ask.
Saad immediately pulls his hand away, chin jutted out again in indignation. “Depends on the advice.”
I want to warn him about what I overheard Sim and Felicity saying without putting either of them in the center of his sights. I wouldn’t have given a fig about the leadership of a pirate fleet if we were parting ways here, but if Saad and I are to be allies, my ability to find the Dutchman may be directly tied into his ability to stay in power. Maybe a vague admonition to try being less of an ass might be better. But that is exactly the kind of advice that seems most likely to strike a fifteen-year-old boy and bounce straight off.
So instead I say, “Don’t tell your sister about this.” And when I offer my hand, and he takes it, I add, “And wash your socks more often.”
Back on the Eleftheria, George and the other sailor are carrying the stretcher up the gangplank, toward the captain’s cabin. Saad stayed on the Dey, and he watches from the deck with a hat pulled down low so I can’t see whether it’s me or the boarding party he’s watching. Sim joins him, her teal headscarf the same color as the water surrounding the island. She leans in to say something to him, but he brushes her off and walks away. Even from a distance, I can see her jaw set.
Seb hauls up the gangplank behind the boarding party and calls to George, “Shall we weigh anchor, Captain?”
“Aye,” George replies, “and hoist the sails.” He catches my eye and nods toward the sailor carrying the other end of the stretcher. “Could you take over so Ven can get to his station?”
As I take his place, Ven mutters in broken French, “Careful. He’s heavier than he looks.”
“Any problems with Saad?” George asks as we cross the deck to the cabin, him walking backward and hardly looking where he’s going. It’s a miracle they made it down the mountain. “Do you think he suspects?” I shake my head.
There’s barely room for George and me to fit into the narrow space of the cabin with the hammock-stretcher. George counts us down, and together we heave the load onto the bed. My elbows buckle under the weight.
George rubs his raw palms on his trousers, wincing at the blisters. “Stay in here until we’re away from the harbor,” he says. “I’ll come fetch you when it’s safe.” A pause, then he adds, “You can sit up, though.”
“Thank God.” The blankets bundled around the stretcher are thrown back and Felicity emerges, gasping for air. Her eyes are still red and streaming, and she scrubs at them with the inside of her forearms. “God, Monty, your breath.”
Monty rolls out from beneath her, nearly falling off the bunk. “Christ Almighty.” He hauls his broken leg free from the tangle of blankets, unable to bite back a groan of pain when he moves. They’re both sweaty and rumpled from spending the hike down the mountain in such close quarters, Felicity literally on top of Monty, but he looks poorly again, his face white and his gaze unfocused. Felicity’s monologue to Saad about Monty’s health taking a turn may have been made true by the escape attempt it was meant to facilitate.