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

Jin!” Kit screamed, and slid to her knees beside him. Fingers shaking, she pulled back his coat, found the mirror stain across his shirt, just above his left hip. She ripped the linen next, revealing the open wound, angry and red and seeping lines of blood.

The sniper had hit her commander.

She looked back at the crew, fury in her gaze. “Take the sniper out,” she said, every syllable a new and dangerous threat. “And keep her moving, Watson! They do not get another chance.” A tribute to her training, Watson took the helm without question, began shouting orders.

“Allow me,” Grant said, and shouldered a rifle, aimed it toward the brig. One second, then two, and gunfire echoed across the water.

Two seconds later, the blot of red dropped from the mast like a stone.

There were tenuous cheers and applause as Grant lowered the weapon, a wisp of smoke curling from the end of the barrel.

“March!” Kit called out. “I need March on deck!”

It took only seconds for March to make her way to the helm and crouch beside Kit. With nimble fingers and quiet, competent speed, she looked over the wound, checked Jin’s breathing and the beat of his heart.

“I need to turn him,” she said, “and see if the ball is lodged or went through.” She leaned up to look at Jin. His eyes were closed, his face a terrifying kind of gray.

“I’ll shift him at the hip. You shift him at the ribs,” she said, and pointed to the spot where she wanted Kit to help move him.

“I can still hear you,” Jin said. “And I can turn myself.”

“Excellent,” March said, utterly unperturbed. “That will be a great help to all of us.”

“Here,” Grant said, and offered Jin a bit of thick leather. “Something to bite on, at least until you can take a nip of something warm.”

She saw a hint of fear in Jin’s eyes, but he pushed it back, nodded, and slipped the leather between his teeth.

Kit met Grant’s gaze, gave him a nod of thanks.

“All right,” Marsh said. “On three.” She counted down, and they shifted Jin onto his side.

His harsh groan clutched painfully at Kit’s chest, but she kept her fingers steady, kept Jin turned so March could inspect her patient.

“Figures you’d find a way out of doing your work,” Kit said with an exceedingly forced smile, trying to keep the mood light—and ignoring the drumbeat of her heart. It was the universal burden of soldiers and sailors to shoulder the pain of death and gore, and their universal gift to continue fighting.

“Any port in a storm,” Jin said, his own (exceedingly forced) smile wiped away when March grunted, nodded at Kit, and they laid him down again.

“It didn’t go through,” March said. “It needs to come out, and any bit of wadding that might have gone with it. We don’t want a fever to set in.”

“Bloody hell,” Jin said. “If this doesn’t kill me, Nanae certainly will.”

Nanae was his lovely and thoughtful wife. “I’m not telling her,” Kit said. “She scares me.”

“She scares me, too,” Jin said, and looked at March. “What do we do?”

“You’re going to drink a ridiculous amount of any sailor’s favorite medicine,” March said. “And when you’re good and drunk on that rum, I’m going to poke around in your innards and see if I can’t find the little blighter. If we’re lucky, I will, and I’ll sew you up neat and tidy.”

“And if we aren’t lucky?” Jin asked.

There was a pause. “More rum,” March said. “Great, gasping quantities of rum.”

Kit hoped they had that much on board. And that it would be enough.

Grant and Sampson helped move Jin to the officers’ mess, as it had the largest table and best lighting on the ship. Cook, to his grouchy credit, had covered the table in linens probably once used to cover the table for fancier captains than Kit, who thought Cook had enough to handle in feeding twenty-four sailors and didn’t need to add laundering to the list. March’s supplies, so many of them silver and sharp, were placed in a neat leather binding on a chair beside the bottle of wine Kit had brought on board—recorked now—and a bottle of rum.

They carefully put Jin at the edge of the table. As gingerly as they could, the men helped remove his boots, jacket, linen shirt.

“Water and linens,” Cook said from the doorway, and Kit moved out of the way as a pot of water and stack of clean fabric were placed beside the tools. He looked at Kit, nodded, his eyes grave. Cook loved to stir trouble, but he was still a sailor.

“And I’ll take the clothes,” he said, picking up the bundle without argument. Perhaps he was willing to do a bit of laundering after all.

“How can I help?” Kit asked March, as she began to organize her tools.

Wordlessly, she pointed at the bottle of rum. “Liberal application.”

Kit uncorked it, winced. She didn’t care for rum, preferred even old water to the scouring taste of the cheap tipple the Crown Command provided to sailors. But she knew the necessity here, so she offered the bottle to Jin.

“Have a drink, sailor.”

She knew he didn’t care for it, either—rarely touched drink at all. That he took a heartening sip, winced, and then took another spoke to the volume of his pain.

He handed the bottle back to her. “Make sure Nanae is taken care of.”

Kit managed a snort, corked the bottle again. “You’re going to be fine, because March is going to ensure it. And even if you weren’t, Nanae is a strong woman.” She reached out, squeezed his hand. That statement was as far into vulnerability as she was willing to venture.

“Pardon, Captain,” March said, and Kit shifted to the side but kept her grip on Jin’s hand. March employed Sampson to help her with her tools. When those were in place, March nodded.

“Very well,” she said. “Let’s begin.”

It was horrific.

That’s all Kit could think after watching March fiddle in Jin’s torso, trying to find the bullet. He gripped Kit’s hand with bone-bruising strength, and clamped down hard on the leather Grant had provided. Sweat dotted his forehead, and tears streamed from his eyes from a pain Kit couldn’t have imagined.

Kit might have seen physicks do worse. There were, after all, any manner of upsetting ways to be injured at sea. Wood splintered, lines abraded, and cannonballs made a weapon of deck and hull; she’d seen onboard surgery for all of them. But never her closest colleague, her confidant. And guilt weighed on her as much as his groans.

Unfortunately, the bullet was tricksy and avoided even March’s skilled fingers. The pain eventually sent Jin under, thanks to the gods, so when the blade was called for, he was unaware. That was no less gruesome than the prior effort had been, and blood stained the tablecloth beneath her friend and commander.

Kit didn’t let go her iron grip on Jin’s hand, even when the plink of blood onto the floor was broken by a boom that spilled through the air, the concussion shuddering sea and ship. Instinctively, Kit reached for the current, found nothing amiss.

There were footsteps, and she looked back toward the doorway. Found Grant there, hand braced against the swaying of the ship.

“Captain, you’re needed above.”

“Watson has the helm,” she said, and turned back to Jin.

“And Watson and others have need of you.”

“So they sent you to fetch me? I trust they have things in hand.”

“They need your leadership.”

“I won’t leave him.” She meant, I refuse to lose him, the words an exclamation and a promise.

They’d been friends for too long, and she refused to lose him to musket ball or fever. She wasn’t going to tell Nanae that Jin had lost his life under Kit’s command. Refused to let his children grow up without their father. And if she stayed here, if she watched over him, if she refused to turn her back, maybe his chance of survival increased. Maybe his odds improved.

“Captain Brightling,” Grant said again, his voice hard and brittle as glass. “I order you to return to the deck.”

All movement ceased in sheer shock.

With anger now burning at the edges of fear and grief, Kit climbed to her feet, letting go of Jin’s hand for the first time in—minutes? Hours? She had no idea. She turned to face Grant, every feature hard and cold.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, voice low and dangerous. “By what right do you have to give me orders, Colonel?”

He looked down his nose at her, and looked every bit the imperious aristocrat. “I am a peer of this country, Captain.”

Oh, she would have enjoyed wiping the smirk from his face. And what a change, she thought in some vacant part of her mind, from the joy she’d felt at seeing him walk into the room in Auevilla. Perhaps that’s why she felt a hollow in her chest, even as she fumed.

“You may be a peer, but that gives you no authority over my ship or its operations.”

“Your operations are above,” he persisted.

“And Jin is here.”

“Jin is one member of your crew. He is being cared for by March; let her do her work. The rest of us are facing war, and there are a dozen more sailors who need your guidance. It’s your obligation to care for the rest of them.”

His tone had lost its bite but was no less insistent for that.

And as much as it pained and embarrassed her to admit it, she’d seen enough war to understand when leadership was needed. And when she had to leave others behind. She was the captain of the entire ship.

She looked back at Jin, still so pale, and at March, who nodded. “He’s my friend, too, Captain.”

Without a word, Kit turned, worked studiously not to meet his gaze. “I need a moment,” she said, the words chilly enough to frost the air. Then she strode past Grant without a word.

Kit went into her cabin, scrubbed her hands in the basin until her skin was red and raw. Then dumped the water, splashed more into the basin, and plunged her face into it. It was jarringly cold. Brutally cold. And that helped, somehow. As if the pain was atonement for the sin of his injury.

She pressed her damp face into clean linen and gave herself a minute to feel the fear and panic. Because Grant was right.

She’d needed to be snapped from her trance. She could admit that weakness here, alone. She’d needed to step away from Jin for exactly the reasons Grant had identified. Because Jin was her friend, one of the best of her friends, and she couldn’t help him right now. Her crew—every other soul on board the Diana—needed her.

Would she have simply stayed belowdecks, holding on to Jin as if she was his anchor, while cannon fire echoed above? For she knew that sound, recognized it for what it was. A shot had been fired. Not close enough to damage the ship, but fired all the same. And the sound of it—deep and low—confirmed it wasn’t a small eight-pounder lit as a signal. It was larger, a twenty-four-pounder perhaps, fired as a warning shot. And she’d done nothing.

She tossed the towel aside, now angry at herself for having nearly neglected her duty.

But still furious with Grant, of course. She wouldn’t be bullied by a member of the Beau Monde—much less in front of her crew while another was on the table, bleeding from the gut.

Oh, they were going to have words about that.

She returned to the deck, found Simon, Tamlin, and Watson at the helm, the last barking orders that were carried down the ship by officers to the sailors at the masts, canvas unfurled to increase their speed. Grant stood near them and watched her—expression blank—as she strode toward them. She ignored him. This wasn’t the time for the discussion they needed to have.

“Report,” she said, voice hard.

“Captain,” Watson said. “We’re well clear of damned Gallia, and the brig that shot the commander. But we’ve other guests.” Without waiting, she handed the glass to Kit. And didn’t ask how Jin was, so Grant had given them the report.

“Man-of-war off the starboard bow.”

Kit walked forward, with Watson trailing behind her, and followed the gazes of the sailors who’d paused in their work to stare at the shadow on the horizon.

She lifted the glass and made a low whistle.

It was, quite simply, the largest ship she’d ever seen. A four-masted man-of-war, the hull striped in blue and white, and each white strip a separate gun deck. She stopped counting at forty and knew that was an underestimate due to the angle of the ship.

It was easily twice—perhaps thrice?—the size of the Diana. Close to three hundred feet from bowsprit to stern, with a great golden figurehead of a buxom woman with flowing hair, holding a mallet in one hand and an oversized needle in the other. Frisia, and particularly its capital of Hofstad, was controlled by merchant Guilds.

Kit swore under her breath, raised the glass to the masts, and found the confirming flag, waving in the wind. “Frisian,” she said, lowering the glass again. And even without it, she could still see sailors along the yards, pinpoints of white as they threw off the gaskets to unfurl the sails.

“Warning shot?” she asked without looking back, confident someone would answer her.

“So we assume,” Watson said darkly. “Hit the water a hundred feet to starboard.”

And still made a mighty roar, Kit thought, and looked up at the Diana’s masts, assured herself that the Isles flag—a sea dragon rampant on a field of maroon and saffron—was flying high and plainly visible.

“They’re bearing Frisian flags, and fired a shot at an Isles ship,” Kit murmured, rather astounded. Whether they’d been signaled by Gallia or the brig, or had simply been hunting in the Narrow Sea, was secondary now.

“They fired on an Isles ship,” she said again to no one in particular, her anger building and better directed at Frisia than the viscount. And was heartened by the disdainful mutterings about the man-of-war’s temerity.

She walked back to the helm.

“A declaration of war?” Grant asked.

Kit belayed their feud for now; the deck was no place for personal squabbling. “It’s an act of aggression, certainly; they cannot be confused about our origin.”

“But they could contend they had word of a marauding Islish vessel,” Simon explained, “and were helping keep the peace in the Narrow Sea.”

“As the Guild ship off Finistère contended,” Watson agreed with a nod.

“With Gerard returned to Gallia—wherever in Gallia that might be—it’s a moot issue now.” She looked at her senior staff in turn. “I wouldn’t say this to the crew, but we cannot outrun a ship that large, with that much canvas. And while we could lead them on a glorious chase, we don’t have the time to waste on this one any more than we did the last. Not to chase or be chased, when we’ve a crew member that needs a physick and a sickroom, and admirals that need the information we can provide.”

She didn’t add that they were severely outgunned, as every Jack could see that for himself. And that’s how the chase would almost certainly end.

She moved to the cabinet behind the wheel, looked at the map Simon had placed across it, the X he’d drawn over their current location. They’d been sailing for several hours and had hardly made progress against the headwinds, despite—or because of—the constant tacks. It was a damned inefficient way to fly, but it was the only way they had.

Unless . . .

They waited for her to speak, knowing her well enough to belay their questions until she knew her mind.

“How long to Portsea at our current speed?” she asked.

Simon checked the calculations he’d made in her absence. “Ten hours in good wind at top speed,” he said. Much as Kit had predicted. “With poor wind and while tacking? The better part of a day.”

Tamlin turned toward the wind, the wisps of red hair that hadn’t made it into her long braid swirling around her face. “The wind won’t change,” she said. “Not now, nor for a day yet. There’s a storm in the Northern Sea, and it’s altered the winds here. So we’ll be heading into the wind the full way.”

“We can’t fight the man-of-war,” Kit said. “Proud as I am of the Diana, she can’t hold out against that many guns. And we need to get Jin to the physick.”

“What are our options?” Grant asked.

“We keep every crew member on deck and shift the sails as quickly as possible at each tack, and we hope the man-of-war isn’t efficient with its shot.” She looked toward the water, the waves white with foam. “Or we use the current.”

“That won’t sustain our speed,” Simon said. “Not all the way across the Narrow Sea.”

“It will if I remain in contact the entire way.”

Silence followed that proposition.

“You’re proposing to touch the current all the way to the Isles?” Grant asked, his voice carefully neutral.

“Unless anyone has a better idea. We need to move quickly, and to do that, we need to move straight. We run to Portsea and stay out of cannon range.”

“Not merely out of cannon range,” Simon said. “At a full and record-breaking run.”

“The man-of-war will give chase,” Grant said.

“Almost certainly,” Kit agreed. “But while it’s plenty aggressive when we’re alone in the drink, with no land in sight, not even the most arrogant of captains would follow us into Portsea. It’s too well defended. It would be suicidal—and an undeniable act of war.”

“There’s nowhere else?” Grant asked.

“There’s no closer land other than the channel islands unless we return to Gallia,” Watson said, “and Gallia isn’t likely to welcome us.”

“No, it isn’t,” Kit agreed. “And the channel islands aren’t good enough. We need the Crown Command, and we need its physicks.”

Tamlin pushed hair from her eyes. “It will be hard.” She had great skill at reducing problems down to their essence.

“Yes,” Kit said. “I imagine it will be. Hard on the masts, the hull, the lines, the sails. Difficult for the crew. But it’s the best chance we’ve got.”

And that assumed she actually could do it without dooming them all. It had taken time for her to learn even to touch the current, to redirect that energy toward the ship. Mistakes were dangerous, and they didn’t encourage experimentation.

When she’d been a midshipman, before she’d learned to touch the current, the ship she’d been assigned to had hit the doldrums—the total lack of wind. With the captain’s permission, Kit had tried to fill the sails by using the current when the wind stopped blowing. She’d failed. The ship had nearly gone over, and three sailors had been injured, pensioned, because of her mistake.

She’d been cautious since and, with the ban on manipulation, hadn’t even tried to stretch her access beyond the quick method she used now. She wasn’t sure what effect it might have, or if she was vastly overestimating what she might be able to do.

“And what toll will it take on you?” Tamlin asked. She reached out, took Kit’s hands. Very uncharacteristic for a woman who preferred the silence of the topmast to speaking with her fellow officers. Then Tamlin turned them to look at Kit’s palms—and the small black scars they bore. But what were a hundred more pinpoints in the constellation if it gave a trusted friend a greater chance of survival?

“I don’t know,” she said. “And it doesn’t matter.”

Because she’d already made the decision. There was no better option.

More, it was a kind of opportunity. Doucette was alive, and Gerard had already proven his intent to use magic. The Isles had to better understand how they could use magic, and it would begin with her. If that meant pushing herself to the limit, so be it. This would be a test, she knew. A trial, and possibly one that matched pain and exhaustion against resilience and stamina. If the gods were kind, they’d all survive it.

She’d avoided looking at Grant, expecting she’d see anger in his eyes. But when she girded her bravery enough to check, she found only concern. “This will work,” she said.

He nodded. “I know.”

She wasn’t sure if he believed it or was merely trying to bolster her confidence. But she found it absurdly comforting and had to look away to keep emotion from filling her eyes.

“Call the all hands,” she said, and Watson gave the order.

When they assembled, she looked at them. She was proud of her crew, as always, for their bravery and occasional silliness. But most important, because they followed wherever she deemed it necessary to go.

She pointed toward the man-of-war, now fully rigged. “You can see that four-masted palace for yourselves. The Frisians have quite a bit of gilt to decorate their hulls.”

There were murmurs of disgust, of Frisian enmity.

“Jin needs a physick,” she began. “March is remarkably skilled, but she doesn’t have the tools she needs to give him the best chance to avoid fever. Portsea is our best option, but the wind is against us. The current can make the ship go faster—but I’ll need to touch it the entire trip.” She waited for the murmured questions, the glances exchanged.

“Won’t that hurt, Captain?” Mr. Oglejack asked, brow furrowed.

“I honestly don’t know,” Kit said. “I’ve only ever touched the current at intervals. I would not be surprised if it does.” She looked at the bosun, Mr. Jones. “I know it will be a challenge for all of us. But do you think she’ll bear it?”

No need to specify which “she” Kit meant. His fuzzy eyebrows furrowed, and he tapped his chin. “As long as we’ve got the sails bent properly, aye. The Diana, she loves to fly. Even if she pops a seam, we’ll fix it right enough.”

“Then make her fly we will,” she said. “Lieutenant Watson will have the helm. Mr. Pettigrew will keep us on course. Tamlin will monitor the man-of-war and report continually to the helm. We will remain at all hands until we arrive in Portsea”—she paused for the predicted groans—“at which time every Jack gets at least a day of shore leave. On my word,” she said, and touched her heart. Even if the queen desired she sail again immediately, it would take time to reprovision the ship and repair any damage the trip might cause.

That had the crew cheering.

She gave Simon and Mr. Jones a few minutes to discuss the best angle for the sails to keep the ship from somersaulting through the waves as headwinds battled current. And when they were ready, Kit braced her legs against the deck and waves, faced the wind, and closed her eyes.

It was time to go to work.

The Narrow Sea was deeper and colder here than along the shore. She’d have sworn she could feel the chill against her skin as she reached down for the current. She felt it, very nearly whole, shimmering with power just off the silty seafloor.

She touched it, wrapped it around all of them. And after a moment, felt the Diana jump forward through the water, hull and masts groaning from the sudden pressure. She kept her eyes closed against the instinct to look, to check, and focused on maintaining her hold—and her strength.

“She’s fine, Captain,” Mr. Jones called out, as if anticipating her concern. “Keep her moving. Loosen up that line!” he called out to someone else, footsteps sounding away.

She could feel the mainsail being reefed—pulled up to expose less canvas to the wind, which was against them in any event—and the shift of the boat in response. If the Diana had the current, the thinking seemed to be, it didn’t need the sails, or the friction they’d create.

“The frigate?” Watson called out, asking for an update.

“Shifting to follow our course!” was called out by someone amidships. “They think we’ve caught a wind.” There was amusement in her voice.

Behind her, Watson snorted. “They’ll figure it out soon enough—probably after their sails are flapping. And . . . there we are,” Watson said.

Sails flapped when they lost tension, usually when turning away from the wind, such as in the middle of a tack. But if a captain wasn’t careful, the ship wouldn’t have enough wind to right itself again and refill the sails. Changing direction when the wind was against you was a very careful dance.

The man-of-war’s captain was experienced enough to right the error, and probably to realize the Diana wasn’t relying on solely wind, but magic.

“They’ve made it around,” Watson said, all amusement gone now. “And they’re giving chase.”

Kit’s hands shook from the energy that moved through her, but she pushed past her instinct to let go or withdraw herself from the sheer volume of magic. She felt the vibration in her bones—not painful, but insistent.

The current ribboned through the water, darting here and there and back again as if exploring the seafloor, or engaged in its own unique dance. She knew it changed position, could often recognize when it was located in a different spot than she’d felt it before. But because she’d never traveled it so continuously, or for so long a period, she’d never felt this waltz. It was more like a living thing than she’d imagined, and she regretted that it had taken her so long to recognize that quality.

That continuity also made the wax and wane of its strength more noticeable. Much like the waves above it, there were crests and troughs in its power, which changed its resonance. She could feel it with such exhilarating detail that she felt, for a moment, she might simply sink into it, become part of its energies. Give herself over to the power so she might fuel some portion of the world.

It would take hours, Kit thought. Hours yet before they put enough distance between them to have the man-of-war turning tail. So she breathed, settled in . . . and fought her own war.

Like every sailor who lived by the watch bell, Kit knew exhaustion. A shift on the masts after only two hours of sleep, repeated throughout a voyage, blurred the lines between sleep and wakefulness. And she understood physical exertion: She’d held lines and wheels against raging winds until her muscles shook, struggled with her crew to raise anchor when storms threatened. But she’d never felt this bone-deep fatigue. Every muscle in her body ached, vibrating from overwork, her brain fuzzy from overconcentration. The day seemed to have been impossibly long, as if tragedy and trauma drew out the experience, ensuring she felt every miserable second. She longed to simply lay her head down on the deck and sleep, and every second was an internal battle.

They’d reached the halfway point, and the frigate still gave chase, apparently intent on either capturing the Diana or keeping it running back to Portsea. Or perhaps wondering, as Kit now did, if it was possible to simply exhaust the Diana’s ability to use the current to escape them.

She refused to give in to its demand.

The crew sang shanties as they worked to reef or unfurl the sails as the wind required, the rhythms helping them coordinate the pull and release of lines. “I sail for the queen / For saffron, maroon / For cliff and for pasture / Let’s away to them soon.” But in her exhaustion, the words and rhythm worked their way into Kit’s mind, playing an endless loop until she’d hallucinated the queen was swabbing the deck in slops of saffron stripes.

She fought against the literal current, battling to keep herself whole and separate from the magic. Her own creature, her own self.

It was easy to underestimate the sheer volume of magic when one only touched it intermittently. Hours of connection left her with little doubt of its potential; the nation that unlocked it first would win the war—or destroy all others. But that wasn’t the only threat. Becoming too close to the magic was equally dangerous. Weren’t her hands, after all, proof of the connection between Aligned and current?

She had to open her eyes to keep herself from losing total awareness of her surroundings and simply falling into it, unsure what effect that would have.

The next few hours were a blur, at least until the wind blew harder and the waves rose higher. Orders were shouted above her, around her, to reef sails or lower them, shift the yards this way or that to keep waves from breaching the sides of the boat and pushing her over. That would be deadly under any circumstances, much less a storm at night in tossing seas, where sailors in the water would be virtually invisible even if the ship was righted again.

The rain began at midnight—a hard, straight rain that soaked Kit in seconds. She closed her eyes—she could hardly see through the downpour anyway—and clenched her fists against the chill.

Then Grant was beside her, and a coat of canvas was slipped over her shoulders, over each arm. Grant raised the hood over her head. And then he sat on the deck beside her, slipped his fingers into hers, and gently squeezed.

“I’m still furious,” she managed through chattering teeth.

“I was still right,” Grant said. But he squeezed her hand again.

She squeezed back with what little strength she had, grateful for the shelter and the warmth. But she had to let her awareness of him fade again to concentrate on the current. And, once the dizziness began, so she could keep what little food she’d had in her belly. That didn’t work; she retched over the side of the ship—tears coming from the effort of maintaining her connection—until her body was empty of everything, it seemed, but the magic.

She was its conduit and nothing more. A vessel. Empty and tired, she wanted so badly to cry, to sleep, to scream, and knew she could afford none of those.

Jin could afford none of those.

Strength, she prayed, to whatever gods, old or new, might be listening. And it was a promise to Jin, to her sailors, to Grant, that she would hold out until there was nothing left.

Was anything left?

At long last, after she’d stared blindly into darkness for hours, her mind following the current as it ribboned through the water, the rain fell away and the sky began to pinken at the edges.

“Land ahead!” Tamlin called out. “I can see Wihtwara!” That was the island due south of Portsea.

“Jin?” Kit asked, voice hoarse.

“A bit feverish, but he’s holding on,” Simon said behind her. “You did good, Captain. You did good.”

They signaled at Wihtwara for a pilot to lead them into the Crown’s quay. Kit waited until she could see the pilot’s ship waiting at the harbor’s edge.

“I’m—” She had to try twice to manage words. “I’m releasing it,” she said, with the last of what remained of her energy.

“All hands, be ready!” Watson called out.

She released her connection and felt the Diana’s resounding exhale, the groan of lines and canvas no longer under such powerful tension.

“Thank you,” she said to the ship, palm on the deck still soft and damp from rain.

The flags that waved over Portsea were the last thing she saw . . . and Grant was there to catch her when she fell.