‘Of course I hate it!’ When Kite snapped, he lowered his voice rather than raised it, but it felt like whiplash all the same. ‘I know officers who didn’t ask for leave for their children’s funerals, and that isn’t extraordinary; it’s just how it should be or there would be no navy. Family is a luxury, and watching you chase after them at the expense of the well-being of thousands of people is repulsive. But I’m not punishing you for anything, Tournier, I physically have not the means to help you now this instant.’
Joe was savagely glad to have got something out of him at last. ‘I’m not repulsive for wanting to go home, Kite. I’m normal. You’re lonely. You don’t object to me because I’m endangering anyone, you object because I’m not lonely and I have a home to go back to.’ He had meant to stop there, but it was the mechanical voice that took over then, because he was furious, and he knew all of Kite’s weak places now, and exactly which sticks to shove into them. ‘You wish I was just as lonely as you, because then I might stay. I remind you of Jem and you were in love with him. You had to be, the way you pine and sulk. But I’m not Jem, and you’re a nasty creep with a disgusting little crush that’s grown on you like rot. Grow the fuck up.’
Kite slowed right down. He watched Joe for too long. Joe stiffened, waiting for a punch in the face, but it never came. ‘If I send you off without approval from Lawrence,’ Kite said, inhumanly level, ‘he’ll send someone after you. They’ll hurt you, and I don’t mean a knock to the head. They’ll hurt you until you swear honest fealty to the King. Whether you like it or not, it is for me to say what’s safe and what isn’t, because you are a member of my crew, and I am responsible for your life. You’re not going anywhere until that blockade is cleared. Do you understand?’
Responsible raked its fingernails along a nerve Joe hadn’t even known he had. Responsible was for slaves. You didn’t keep promises to slaves.
‘I understand,’ Joe said.
‘Good. I have to buy a mast. Do what you like for now. Keep with him,’ Kite added to the marines. ‘I’ll see you back at the house for dinner.’
The mechanical voice was raging.
I’ll fucking show you responsible.
Joe turned off onto a random street and walked until he found what he was looking for: a woman putting out washing. He slipped through the open door behind her and through the house, out the front. Nobody noticed. He waited, but the marines didn’t come after him. Then he walked as quickly as he could to the castle.
He had been too disorientated and too tired to notice when they’d first come up, but there were barricades on the road – star-shaped hulks of wood spaced far enough apart to admit people but not horses. There was traffic on both sides; carters from the city were stopping to unload onto carts that must have been running the rest of the way up to the castle, and then having to go through the precarious business of turning around at the front of the queue.
People were ducking through the horses and the wheels. Close to the barricade, children held signs saying they would courier packages up for much less than the official carts did. Joe went through slowly, part of a single-file shuffle. The points of two star-arms met just above his head. They’d been salvaged from ships. One of the beams still had rope loops pegged into it, the kind that ran along all the ceilings on Agamemnon so you could hang hammocks. He glanced back down the hill in case the marines had guessed where he was going. The crowd was full of men in the same red jackets, but none of them were hurrying. Slimy unease turned over in his stomach again even so. Kite had known what he was going to do, he was sure.
He gave himself a shake. Kite was not omniscient.
He followed the way round, up the steep hill and past the forbidding guards, until he found the Admiralty’s surprisingly small building opposite the prison.
He had no idea if Lord Lawrence would be in and he thought that, if he wasn’t, he’d have to bribe someone or do some sneaking. But when he asked the servant inside, the servant stared at him for too long, then nodded and saw him up so quickly that Joe wondered if the man was worried about voodoo curses waiting to be deployed on the unobliging.
At the top of the stairs was a library. Lawrence was the only person there, settled in an armchair by the fire, with a bottle of red wine open beside him. His tiger was there too. She loped across and rubbed her head against Joe’s hip. Tentatively, Joe stroked her neck.
‘What are you doing here?’ Lawrence frowned. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in the gaol?’
‘I was under guard, sir, but I wanted to see you.’
He lifted his eyebrows. They were black, and they looked too dark with the grey wig. ‘Why?’
Why? Well. What I’d really like you to do, you see, is arrest Missouri Kite and chuck him in a cell as he richly deserves, and in the inevitable chaos that will ensue when your soldiers come for him, everyone will forget about me for at least a minute. That’s more than long enough to get on my way to Eilean Mòr.
Or maybe I won’t be so lucky, maybe you’ll be organised and you’ll hand me to some other captain to
