Anne Dray's Arc

Chapter 1 of 28

Anne Dray wanted a fleet, but no captain would follow a woman with a rowboat. She stood on a leaking sloop and read the letter again. Three free crews had turned her down that week. Each answer was the same. Bring us a ship worth dying for, and we'll fly your red banner. Until then, she was just a redhead with a flag and no deck to plant it on. Grimjack spat over the rail. He had charted seas for forty years, and he had steered Anne since she was a deckhand. The brass compass on his chest was older than most of the men who now refused her. "They laughed at me in the last port," he said. "Your oldest friend, vouching for a captain with no ship. I've never felt so small." "Then help me find one," Anne said. He pulled a torn chart from his coat. His thick finger stopped on a marked cove. "There's a shipyard drowned off that reef. Naval work. A warship still sits in the cradle. Big enough to make grown captains weep." He paused. "But it's her yard. Emily's." They sailed two days. The cove opened into a graveyard of broken wood. Broken cranes leaned over the water. Beneath them rose a warship, its hull streaked orange, taller than any deck Anne had ever walked. On a half-sunk dock stood a blonde woman in a leather vest, a wrench hanging from her belt. Emily Deepwood did not look up. She ran her hand along a rotted wood like a doctor checking a wound. "The crown exiled me from this yard," she said. "I built ships for kings. Now I build nothing." "I need that warship," Anne said. "I mean to unite every free crew under one banner. They won't take me without a flagship." Emily finally turned. Her eyes moved from Anne's flag to Grimjack's old compass. "That hull hasn't floated in years. The sails are torn. The keel is sound, but it needs a hundred hands and a month of work." She wiped grease on her thigh. "And it needs someone who knows every bolt. That's me, or it's no one." Anne understood the price at once. "Then you don't just fix it. You sail with me." Emily was quiet. A gull cried somewhere in the wrecked cranes. "The king took this from me," she said slowly. "Maybe it's time I took something back." She held out a dirty hand. Anne gripped it. They worked the pumps for three days. On the fourth, the warship groaned and rose. Water poured from its hull as it settled upright, floating for the first time in years. Grimjack laughed out loud. Anne climbed the deck and planted her red banner at the bow. She had her flagship now. But a warship that size could not hide. By nightfall, word would reach the ports — and the crown that once owned this hull would come looking for the woman who raised it.