Anne Dray's Arc

Chapter 15 of 28

The cut past the Shelf was quiet water, but the quiet did not last. On the second morning, Claire dropped from the rigging and found Anne at the rail. Claire read water and distance better than anyone in the fleet; she had spotted trouble before it reached a deck her whole life. "Three sails at the far mouth," she said. "Small, fast. Not Crown. They hold there and watch us. This is their water." Grimjack came up beside Anne. He looked at the far sails without his compass, which he had stopped trusting years ago. "Local crew," he said. "They work these waters past the Shelf. They know the cuts we don't. To them we're thieves in their harbor." The three ships drifted closer at dusk. One fired a single shot that fell short of Emily's lead hull. A warning. Kate wanted to answer it. Anne did not. She knew the fight. She could break three ships. But a broken crew here meant a war for every cut, and the Crown was already hunting the man who could follow her. She needed this water safe, not bought with blood. Anne took a small boat out at first light with Grimjack and Tom. She flew no red banner from it. Chris rowed. The lead local ship let them come alongside. Its captain leaned over the rail, hand near his pistol, and asked why she sailed into his cut uninvited. "Because the Crown drove me here," Anne said. "And they can't follow. Their hulls run too deep for the Shelf. Mine don't. Yours don't." The captain spat. "Your trouble becomes ours the day you moor here." "Only if I moor alone." Anne set a hand on the gunwale. "I have a fleet under one banner and a code every captain marked. Equal shares. No theft. You keep your waters. I bring hulls to guard the mouth. The Crown burns you out one crew at a time, or we hold this cut together." Tom spoke up then, plain and young. "They can't find the passage without one navigator. We can hold it. All of us." The captain studied the boy, then the old man beside him. Grimjack said nothing. He did not have to. His name carried across the Shelf on its own. They talked through the morning. By noon the local captain lowered his pistol. He would not sign Anne's carved code. But he took her offer: shared guard of the mouth, his waters left to him, her fleet moored on the far side of the cut. Not one banner. Two crews, one wall against the Crown. Anne rowed back with a base that would hold. But the local captain had said one thing that stayed with her. "You're not the first to run here," he told her. "Another captain came through the Shelf a month back. Flew no colors. Still here. Waiting on something." Anne knew, without asking, which silent captain he meant.