Anne Dray's Arc

Chapter 12 of 28

Kate's ship was hers again, but the win came with a clock. The last Crown guards had rowed off before Anne could stop them. They knew her heading. They knew how many hulls flew her red banner. By nightfall the whole navy would too. Anne stood on the deck of the reclaimed ship and watched the empty water where the guards had fled. Her fleet was scattered across three days of open sea, each captain sailing home from the fight. She had no harbor to gather them. She had nowhere to hide a fleet the Crown was now hunting in force. Chris Redfield came up from below, a deckhand she had pulled from a merchant crew months back. He wiped blood off his hands and did not look sorry about it. He never softened anything. "Guards are gone. Two boats." "How far?" "Far enough. They won't stop." Anne turned to the crow's nest. Claire Redfield rode it, the sharpest eyes in the fleet. She had spotted Crown sails at dawn before anyone else. "Claire. Where can I put a fleet the Crown can't follow?" Claire leaned over the rail and pointed south. "Reef passage. Two hours out. Their hulls are too deep. Ours aren't." Anne knew the water there. Shallow, broken with rock, uncharted. Crown ships drew too much keel to enter. Her own vessels sat higher. Grimjack had run her through such waters before. It was the one place a scattered fleet could gather and a deep-hulled navy could not chase. "Signal every ship," Anne said. "New rendezvous. The reef." Tom Harker stood at the rail, still soaked from his boat run past the enemy bow. He had rowed straight at their guns and come back grinning. "How do the others find it, captain? We can't shout it. The Crown's listening." He was right. A flag signal any Crown scout could read would hand the navy her hiding place. Anne looked at the boy who had risked his life an hour ago and trusted him with more. "You ran their guns once. Take a fast boat. Carry the heading by hand to each captain. No paper. Say it to their face and nothing else." Tom did not flinch. "To all of them?" "Chris goes with you. Split the run. Move now." The two dropped over the side into a boat and pulled hard for open water. Anne swung her own ship toward the reef. Emily wedged the current, Grimjack read the rock, and by dusk the first of Anne's scattered hulls slid through the narrow passage behind her. One by one they came, safe inside water no Crown ship could enter. By full dark her fleet lay gathered in the shallows, hidden and whole. Anne had her harbor. But the Crown now knew her banner, her strength, and the reef that swallowed her. They would not send a patrol next time. They would send everything they had.