Anne Dray's Arc

Chapter 28 of 28

The third gun sat trained down the shadow line, but Anne knew a wall of iron meant nothing if she was blind. The Crown scout had already fled north with her harbor's location. The fleet would come. She just didn't know when. On the fort wall her captains argued in low voices, hands near their belts. They watched the empty sea and guessed, and guessing made them mean. Kate Blackwater climbed the tower stair with her spyglass still slung. She had held first watch here since the fort's guns went up, and she trusted her own eyes more than any promise. She dropped onto a stone and looked at Anne. "They know where we are. We don't know where they are. Bad trade." "Then we fix the trade," Anne said. "We stop waiting. We watch them." Kate's mouth twitched, gone as fast as it came. "With what." Grimjack answered from the wall. "The scout ran north." He tapped the stone. "The fleet mounts north too. One narrow water leads them here. Set eyes on that water and you count their sails before they count yours." Emily Deepwood came up wiping tar from her hands. She had built the gun bed by dusk the day before. Now she looked at the northern approach and named the problem plainly. "One lookout on a small boat, sitting off the north point. She signals back with a lamp. Two flashes, ships coming. Count for the number." She glanced at Anne. "The Crown calls it a picket. I call it a pair of eyes we don't have yet." "Claire," Anne said. Her sharpest lookout had ridden the night current once already. "She takes a fast boat and a lamp. She sits north and she counts." Kate stood. "One boat, alone, in Crown water. If they see her, she's dead." "She won't be seen," Anne said. "She sees everything first. That's why it's her." They rigged the fastest boat by noon. Claire took a shuttered lamp and a fixed signal: two flashes for sails, then a count for numbers, then run for home. Anne walked her to the water herself. "Don't fight. Don't wait. Count and come back." Claire nodded and pushed off. The boat cut north and shrank to nothing. Anne stood the watch through the night. She did not sleep. Near dawn a light blinked far out on the black water. Two flashes. Then Kate, glass to her eye, counted aloud beside her. "Three. Four. Five." The light kept blinking. "Nine." It stopped, then began moving toward home. "Nine ships," Kate said. She lowered the glass. "Coming." Anne's captains had guessed for days. Now she had a number and a heading. The waiting was over. She turned from the wall and began giving orders, because a fleet of nine was two days out, and every gun and chain had to be ready before it arrived.