A Swift and Savage Tide (A Captain Kit Brightling Novel Book 2)

It may have been the best question Kit had ever been asked as a captain. And, oh, but she had thoughts. While Kit didn’t think the Diana was the right ship to act as escort for troop carriers—bigger ships with more guns were needed to provide that kind of security—her speed and flexibility (and nimble crew, of course) made her an ideal scout. For magic, for Doucette, for signs of enemy activity.

“I’d give you a marque for him particularly,” Perez murmured, “but as war hasn’t yet been declared, our options are limited.”

“Perhaps not for the man,” Kit said. “But if an opportunity for a bit of sabotage were to come along?”

“I’m listening,” Perez said.

“Watching for trouble is fine and well,” Kit said. “But acting on the trouble one finds is much more useful. There may be ships to unmoor. Packets to intercept. It comes to this, Commodore: The gunships will see the troops safe. And the Diana will keep the enemy busy.”

When the meeting was complete, she and Grant parted ways; he had his own business to attend to, including responding to the communications from his brother and Mrs. Spivey regarding the estate.

After checking again on Jin—still impudent, which was a good sign—Kit took the opportunity to walk through Portsea. The rain had stopped, and while the day was still gray, she wasn’t sure when she might have the chance to wander about onshore.

As towns went, it wasn’t nearly as pretty as Auevilla. But Auevilla catered to, apparently, hiding Islish aristocrats. Portsea catered to sailors, who were notoriously less particular. And had much less coin.

She turned onto West Street, where the physick had said the amulet maker’s stall was located, and found a narrow building stuck between two others like a bookmark between the pages of a large tome. There was a half-circle window above the narrow door, and patterned brickwork inscribed with a symbol: three vertical lines with shorter horizontals together within a circle.

It was a symbol of the old gods, written in their language. Kit didn’t know its meaning, but that the building had been marked by old magic piqued her curiosity.

The door was open, so Kit stepped inside. The shop was as short as it was narrow, presumably to make room for the curving metal stairs. The ceiling was a good twenty feet above; the walls had been given over to a collection of goods that certainly weren’t from the Isles.

Behind a wooden counter on the far wall—which wasn’t really so far considering the size—sat an older woman with pale skin and salt-and-pepper curls piled atop her head. She peered through small spectacles at a book on the wooden counter and didn’t look up.

“We’ve no rum or vice here, sailor. Be on your way.”

“I’ve no need for rum or vice,” Kit said. “The symbol over the door. May I ask what it is?”

The woman turned a page of her book. “It’s a charm to keep nosy sailors out of my shop.”

“Not a very good one then, is it?”

For the first time, the woman looked up. Her eyes were pale blue beneath long, dark brows, and it took only a moment for her to return to her book again. “It’s in one of the old languages from the cold lands. A hope for protection.”

Since the woman had answered, and hadn’t yet kicked Kit out of the shop, she walked to the left-hand wall and looked it over. Woven tapestries with bold patterns and colors, masks that sprouted braided grasses and grinning mouths, brass bells, and strands of amber beads.

“You’ve a beautiful collection,” Kit said, wandering to the left-side wall. “Where are they from?”

“Across the world,” the woman said, with enough disinterest that Kit concluded she’d given the same answer a thousand times before to a question she thought was simply inane.

Kit’s gaze landed on a sculpted bit of iron, no larger than a man’s outstretched hand. It was a sea dragon, sinuous and curving, the body of dark iron and eyes of bright orange-red and full of knowledge. Its mouth had been drawn into a smile that curved impishly, and a front claw held a wreath of small leaves. The piece was so finely rendered the veins on the leaves were visible, each round scale on the dragon’s back defined. Kit reached out a finger to test the texture when the shopkeep’s voice cut through the quiet.

“No touching,” she snapped, and Kit snatched her hand back.

With a loud and thoroughly haggard sigh, the woman bent down a corner of the book’s page—heresy, Kit thought—and closed it with a thud. Then she folded her hands, her index fingers ink stained, and lifted her brows. “It appears I’ll get no peace while you’re in here.”

“If you don’t want me in here, why is the door open?”

“For the breeze,” the woman said after a moment. “Not just a sailor,” she concluded, “but a captain of them. Unusual for a woman.”

Impatience had already primed Kit’s temper. That was enough to set the spark.

“Settle yourself, girl,” the woman said. “I meant no offense. You know as well as I that the care of the world is rarely offered to women, much to its detriment.”

Kit found the woman’s honesty and frankness a bit unusual—but appealing compared to the doublespeak and mincing of her meeting with the Crown Command’s high officers.

“You speak your mind,” Kit said.

The woman’s brows lifted. “Hardly a fault, is it?”

“If it is, it’s one I’ve mastered.”

A corner of the woman’s mouth lifted. “Your name?”

“Kit Brightling.”

“I’m Mathilda,” the woman said. “And you’ve no amulet.”

“No. I understand you sell them,” Kit said, glancing around again, as unlike the stalls nearer the dock, none were on display.

“Sell is a cheap word. I hear what the magic deigns to tell me, and then I Align. Charm to wearer.” She tilted her head at Kit. “You’re Aligned to the sea, I suspect?”

Kit’s stare was flat. “I’m a sailor. Hardly difficult to guess that.”

The woman snorted. “The Aligned have no need for guesswork. I was born in the Northlands. There, stone and moor stretch toward the sky. The magic is harder than yours, and I can feel the difference.”

“Harder?”

“More rigid,” she said with a knowing smile. “And more stationary. It doesn’t”—she wiggled her hand—“move about as much as the water does, or so I understand.”

“Currents in the water are quite flexible.”

The woman nodded. “You’re water,” she continued. “Your opposite is fire.”

“My opposite?”

“The opposite Alignment.” Her voice was remarkably patient given her obvious frustration. “The magic you battle, and that battles you.”

She thought of Doucette, of his blue-green flame, and the sense she’d had at Auevilla of being actively repelled by him. The possibility their magic had clashed in some deep and fundamental way.

“It’s my enemy?” Kit felt as if she was on the cusp of knowledge, grasping at a book that remained just—and frustratingly—out of reach.

“Not always,” Mathilda said. “Fire can provoke, and also inspire. Earth and air are your complements. They may offer safe harbors and friendship, or lethargy and temperance.”

Tamlin was Aligned to the air, and one of her closest friends. Grant wasn’t Aligned at all, but he was undeniably a man of the earth. A soldier, a viscount, a landowner responsible for the lives of his tenants.

“I’ve not heard of any of this,” Kit said.

The woman’s expression didn’t change. “That you’ve not heard it hardly means it doesn’t exist. Have you been to Akranes?”

“No.”

“And yet it exists, in spite of your absence. It’s a damnable shame how this country ignores its own history.” She linked her hands on the counter, peered at Kit with narrowed eyes. “You’ve truly had no education regarding your Alignment?”

“No,” Kit said, and felt a bit disloyal by the admission. Hetta loved her girls and wanted them to know as much about as many subjects as possible—from languages to fencing. But Hetta wasn’t Aligned, and the ban on manipulation kept information limited.

Mathilda looked her over. “You appear to be healthy, well nourished, clean. Your speech is New London gentry. Not quite Beau Monde,” she said, head cocked as she considered.

“Certainly not,” Kit murmured, Quite Offended now.

“When you have wealth and power,” Mathilda continued, “you’ve no cause to risk your safety or your freedom by engaging in something illegal. But there is knowledge in dark corners and small rooms. There is knowledge at the hearth, at the birthing table, and in despair and want.” She met Kit’s gaze squarely. “Some do it in order to eat. To sleep. To breathe. Some manipulate the world’s magic in order to win dominion over others, like Gerard and his dandies flitting about, tossing the current here and there like a child’s toy.”

It was Kit’s turn to narrow her eyes. “What do you know of Gerard’s activities?”

The woman snorted. “You know sailors, girl. They’re sieves where information is concerned, and that doesn’t include the soldiers. The gods brought magic to the Isles, or told us where to find it, depending how you believe. And yet, because of the errors of fools, we decided dallying with magic is wrong. That manipulating it is a violation of man and earth both, that it risks famine and fire and destruction.”

“Contra Costa proved it.”

“The error of a fool,” she said again. “But I hear tell he’s learned to correct that error?”

“At least visibly. It appears he has discovered how to direct the magic—bring it to the surface and control its movement.”

“Nonsense.”

Kit’s brow lifted. “I saw him do it. Watched him kill a man with current he’d deployed.”

“I don’t doubt what you saw, child. I doubt the mechanism. The current does not obey the whims of man. It is not a dog, hoping for praise from its master. It is a force. He cannot move the current. But he can . . . free it. Allow it to move outside its normal boundaries.”

This may have been the most valuable conversation Kit had ever had—and one that was needed for the entire admiralty, if not the entire Crown Command itself.

“Is there”—she searched for words—“some sort of manual?”

“A Cox’s Seamanship of magic?”

Kit leaned forward, avarice in her eyes. “Yes. Exactly.”

“No.”

“Blast,” Kit muttered.

“I’m aware of no grimoires, as one does not ‘make’ magic. One learns how to see the magic that already exists.”

“Then how is one supposed to be educated?” Kit asked.

“By learning from those who already know how to see and hear,” Mathilda said with some obvious satisfaction. “As you’re doing here. Your Alignment,” she continued, reaching behind her for a paper box on a low shelf. “Open sea? Small lake? Burbling stream?”

“I feel the current most strongly in the Narrow Sea.”

Mathilda paused as she turned around, then put the box on the countertop. “Well, that’s interesting, isn’t it? Not many with connections offshore.”

Kit had the unsettling sensation that she’d entered a world where she didn’t speak the language, didn’t understand the customs. But was thrilled at the possibility of understanding.

Mathilda lifted the box, began pulling out baubles nestled in the thin paper inside. “A bit of orange coral. Not native to the Narrow Sea, of course, but flexible. Perhaps a bit of dried sea sedum for healing. A bit of silver for reliability, of course.”

As Kit watched, Mathilda gathered more items, murmured to herself the entire time.

“Captain.”

Kit turned at the voice in the doorway, could hear in Watson’s tone that the time for fripperies was over. “Lieutenant.”

“I was asked to remind you, by Minister Cargile, that it’s time to get ready for the dance.”

Kit growled.

Mathilda snorted. “Don’t all sailors love the quadrille and waltz?”

“Not the ones staring down the abyss of war,” Kit said, and turned back to Mathilda. “Thank you for the information. It was a pleasure meeting you.” She made a little bow.

The woman humphed. “I’ve the information I need. I’ll finish this, and send to you when it’s complete.” And then she named a sum that had Kit goggling.

Kit sighed, pulled coins from her pocket, counted them, dropped them into Mathilda’s hand. She smiled, placed them into a chatelaine at her waist.

“And when I receive the amulet, what ought I do with it?”

Mathilda stared at her in silence for a solid ten seconds.

Behind them, Watson cleared her throat. “You’ll wear it, Captain.”

“I know that much,” Kit said. “But need I say a charm, or an invocation, or—”

“The amulet will know what to do,” Mathilda said. “That’s why they’re worth the coin you pay and more.” She made a shooing motion. “Now go. And good luck to you, Kit Brightling. May you find the fairest of winds.”

Kit felt a bit off-center, as if the knowledge Mathilda had imparted had mass and weight enough to affect her balance.

And she was both embarrassed and insulted that Cargile had sent a messenger to remind her of the ball. She hadn’t made captain by disobeying orders, had she? Fortunately, she kept a dress in her trunk in case some meeting of royalty or admiralty required it.

When she returned to the room, she crouched on the floor beside the trunk and searched through it, but the modest blue-gray silk she’d packed in the bottom was gone. In its place was a paper-wrapped packet tied with a gold ribbon, a note tucked beneath it.

She unfolded it, found Jane’s tidy handwriting again.

My dearest sister:

I won’t be Satisfied until I’ve eliminated blue from your Wardrobe. I borrowed these from Astrid, as they’ll look much better on you. If they do not, you may direct your Objections to her.

All my love, Jane

Astrid, who was obsessed with the marriage mart and making a smart match, was their most sartorially particular sister. And she’d bet a gold coin that Astrid hadn’t voluntarily offered the dress. She probably didn’t know it was missing.

This wasn’t the first time Jane had tried to remove blue from Kit’s wardrobe. The last time, she’d substituted deep red for somber blue. Curious what color had met her approval this time, Kit untied the ribbon and unfolded the paper, revealing soft, dark velvet the color of evergreens in shadow. She unfolded it, revealing short, ruched sleeves, a gold ribbon around the high waist, and a ruched bodice cut so low modesty would flee in terror at the sight. The package included a silk taffeta cape in a slightly paler color with the same gold ribbon at the hem. Kit liked the cape as much as the dress, and took a moment just to rub her thumb across the fabric, watching the shift of light.

“Astrid is going to be livid,” Kit said and rose, spread the garments on the small bed, and began to make her preparations.

It was a challenging thing, squeezing into a corset without a lady’s maid, which was precisely why she didn’t wear one. Kit rarely had reason to visit a modiste, but at a shipmate’s recommendations, she’d found short stays at a shop in London as a young midshipman. They’d quite literally changed her life.

She donned the dress, then brushed her hair and rouged her cheeks with the small pot she’d included in her trunk, and felt suddenly foolish for doing it. She was a captain in the Queen’s Own, not a girl making her debut.

There was a knock at the door, too soft to be Grant. She opened it, found a boy of nine or ten with pink cheeks.

“Note,” he said, and thrust a bit of folded paper into her hand before running down the hallway again.

Kit closed the door and unfolded it, found a message from Grant—instructions not to wait for him at the inn, and he’d see her at the ball.

Kit set aside the note, threw the cape around her shoulders, and blew out the candle.

While she still thought the affair was a bit ridiculous, she couldn’t fault the beauty of a ballroom lit by hundreds of candles and swathed in maroon roses and golden linen. She was announced into the room and moved through the crowd of attendees and their swirling silks and satins, jeweled hair clips, and immaculate gloves.

She curled her fist to hide the small tea stain on the left-hand palm of hers, not that anyone was likely to notice that detail. Most were here less to see than to be seen, to display a new dress or waistcoat, a pretty ribbon or silk slipper.

Yes, it was silly. But Cargile had a point. The lives of soldiers and sailors both were punctuated by war and too often cut short by it. She had no cause to complain that they enjoyed themselves in the interim just because she preferred a grimy tavern to a formal affair.

She looked around, wondering where Grant might be, and wishing there might be some small errand Perez needed done that would require her to spend the next few hours in that grimy tavern.

And then she saw him.

Across the ballroom, a good head taller than most of the others and looking quite . . . dashing. His morning coat was dark gray velvet, his waistcoat white, his trousers black. His hair was perfectly coiffed, his square jaw clean-shaven, his eyes blue as the Southern Sea. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a man quite as handsome, and she was absolutely positive that she’d never gotten flutters over one before.

“Captain Brightling,” he said when he strode through the crowd to reach her.

“My lord.”

“You look exceedingly beautiful,” he said, and she could feel the blush in her toes. She was a captain, for gods’ sake, and had no business with blushing.

“Thank you,” she said, and managed a curtsy. Or would have if he hadn’t stopped her with a tug of the hand.

“You won’t curtsy to me,” he said, eyes bright. “We stand as equals.”

She stood straight again, met his gaze with hers, knew the statement was another apology for what had happened during Jin’s surgery. “Equals,” she agreed. “Although you’ve one more title than me.”

He snorted, moved to stand beside her. “So I’m ever-so-slightly superior.”

“Viscounts,” she said with mock exhaustion, and watched as others moved into the ballroom. Some were officers with spouses; others stepped into the doorway alone, uniforms neatly brushed and eyes bright with excitement.

And realized that some of the eyes were on her—and Grant. Whispers behind fans or folded hands, curiosity in the gazes. Who was that woman standing so near the viscount? Or who was that man standing so near the captain? That wasn’t the type of attention she was used to attracting, and she wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. Being evaluated on her merits as a Brightling, as a captain? That was part of naval service. But as one of a potential couple? That was . . . different. She’d said she hadn’t needed a chaperone, and still didn’t. But this wasn’t a tavernful of sailors.

“You’re glowering, Captain.”

She tried to relax her face. “I don’t enjoy being forced to attend a party when we’re waiting for war and there are thousands of lives in the balance.”

“No,” he said, “I don’t think that’s all of it.”

She didn’t answer but smoothed the front of her dress. And was saved from further discussion when a song began to play. He stepped in front of her, offered his hand.

“Dance with me, Kit.”

She nodded, put her gloved hand in his, and strolled through the watching crowd to the space made for dancers. One hand at her waist, and they began to move together across the floor.

It was a strange sensation, to dance with a man in reality after having dreamed of it. She’d imagined it fairly creditably, but for the horror of the ballroom filling with water.

“Captain, a man might feel he doesn’t have your entire attention.”

“You have a quarter of my attention,” she said, without looking at him. “Another quarter is given to my feet, and ensuring I manage these steps appropriately. One quarter is given to the other couples, and ensuring we don’t run into them. And one quarter is given to—”

Then she saw them come in—Cargile, Sunderland, and Perez—and their expressions were grim.

“Captain,” Grant said, pulling her bodily to the right.

Kit blinked, realized he’d swept her out of the way of two stampeding couples. She took his hand firmly, pulled him out of the array of dancers.

“What is it?” he asked, and she bobbed her head toward the group. She felt his posture change, from viscount to colonel. The straightening of the shoulders, the narrowing of the eyes.

A spoon was dinged against crystal, and the crowd quieted—but for the murmurs of those who’d never seen Sunderland in the flesh, and debated if he lived up to their imaginations.

“I apologize for the interruption,” Sunderland said, voice booming across the hall. “But there’s news from the Continent.”

Even the gawkers went quiet.

His eyes went hard, and she could see the infantryman he’d once been behind the medals and braid. “Ships bearing Gerard’s pennants have destroyed two Isles ships in the Narrow Sea. More than one hundred lives lost. There were no survivors.”