Chapter 9: Mutiny
The cabin was scented with jasmine and absinthe, a mesmerising aroma that hung about Ulrika's shoulders like a second coat. She paced a tight circle around Tanna, boots thumping on the oak planks, her eye running over the knight like a butcher sizing a flank.
Tanna stayed rigidly at attention. Head high. Eyes fixed on the far wall. She had been through worse than this a hundred times over.
"You've been standing there for two minutes, girl," Ulrika said. "Your cunt's half out of your trousers. That's not the stance I taught you."
Tanna's jaw tightened. "Apologies, Colonel."
"Apologies." Ulrika repeated the word like it was rotten meat. "You've been distracted since we left Dunkel. You think I don't notice? You think I don't watch my own protege?"
The knight's cheeks went red. "I've been performing my duties."
"You've been mooning. That's what you've been doing. A knight of your calibre, mooning like a lovesick calf." Ulrika stopped pacing, standing inches from Tanna's face. "I outrank you, girl. So I will ask you once. What is on your mind?"
Tanna's breath came short. "It's Captain Nell, Commander."
"Captain Nell."
"Yes. I've fallen in love with her. I can't help it. I think about her every waking minute. I want to touch her, and hold her, and—"
"Love." Ulrika let the word hang in the spice-scented air, then laughed, a deep, cracked sound like gravel falling down a well. "Love. You poor fool. Love's a tavern tale for women who haven't learned better. It rots your judgement, clouds your aim, and makes you stupid in the sack."
Tanna's eyes flinched. "I know you don't believe in it, Colonel. But I—"
"You're my protege. I should be teaching you discipline, and instead you're off dripping honey over a woman with a fancy hat." Ulrika shook her head. "Well. There's only one way I've ever sorted out a problem of this nature. And it requires you to get on your knees."
Tanna blinked. "Commander?"
"You heard me. Lick my arse."
The command hung between them. Tanna's throat bobbed. She had never disobeyed an order in her life. Her hands came down, unbuckling her sword belt, laying the blade aside on Ulrika's chart table. Then she knelt.
Ulrika had already hiked her silken trews down to her thighs, turning round to present her bare arse. It was a firm arse, smooth and dark like wine, with a fine line of softest down at the crack. The skin was like onyx, deep and black.
"Get on with it," Ulrika said. "And make it good. I've got a ship full of idle crewmen to deal with, and there's something afoot with them too, griping all the time. It's quite giving me a headache."
Tanna leaned in. Her tongue touched the seam of Ulrika's arse, sliding up the cleft, tasting sweat, salt, and the dark musk of the woman. She pressed deeper, circling the pucker, then flattened her tongue wide and lapped upward again. Ulrika let out a low grunt of approval.
"That's it. That's the girl I trained. You think about Captain Nell while you work, and I'll know it by the quality of your strokes."
Tanna worked harder. She spread Ulrika's cheeks with both hands and ate her out, tongue stabbing at the hole, sliding down to lap at the Dark Elf's perineum. Ulrika's legs shook faintly. A smell of woodsmoke and roses filled Tanna's nose, and she found she didn't mind it.
After a long minute, Ulrika pulled away, breathing hard. "Right. Enough of that. I'd say you've earned your strap-on."
She gestured to a sea chest at the foot of her cot. Tanna rose, unsteady, and opened the lid. Inside lay a collection of dildos: a glass one shaped like a gull, a leather one with a brass knob, and a sturdy black rubber model with a wide flared base, harness attached. Tanna took the black one.
"Good choice," Ulrika said, turning to face her. "You know what to do with it, girl?"
"Yes, Colonel Grimquim."
"Then show me. And while you're at it, I'll consider this little problem of yours. The Captain Doris, what's her name. Nell. I'll think on whether you're allowed to keep her."
Tanna strapped on the harness, buckled it tight, and stepped between Ulrika's spread legs. Ulrika braced herself against the chart table, bending forward over the sea charts, her taut, perfect arse raised once more.
Tanna lined herself up. The rubber head pressed against Ulrika's pink-lipped cunt, slick with hunger already. Ulrika grunted. "Get on with it, girl. I know you can do better than that."
Tanna drove forward. The dildo sank into Ulrika's wet heat, deep, and Ulrika gasped, a throaty sound of pure animal satisfaction. Tanna began to fuck her, long steady strokes, hands gripping the Dark Elf woman's hips, the slap of her firm thighs against Ulrika's equally firm arse echoing in the tight cabin.
"Faster," Ulrika grunted. "I'm weighing a matter of discipline and you're distracting me. That's a failure of command."
Tanna sped up. She buried herself to the hilt, grinding on each thrust, working it in and out of those quivering buttocks. Ulrika's purple-black hair bounced with the rhythm. The table's instruments rattled, brass dividers sliding across the charts.
"Good girl," Ulrika said, her voice strained. "Tell me, when Nell has you, does she call you her little knight? Her loyal blade?"
Tanna's face burned. "Sometimes. She calls me her northern star."
Ulrika laughed, a choked, gasping thing. "Northern star. Stars. Love is a disease, girl. But there are worse ways to die." She bucked back into the thrust, her arse taking the dildo deep. "You can keep her. For the voyage. After that - we shall have to see. But you will absolutely do your duty to the letter."
"Yes, Ma'am. Thank you, Ma'am," Tanna managed through the rhythm.
"And you tell me all the luscious details. Now keep fucking me, and I'll give you leave to go back to your northern star and plough her till she sings."
Tanna's hands tightened on Ulrika's hips. The dildo surged in and out, deeper, wetter, the slap of flesh growing louder. Ulrika began to tremble, her whole body seizing, her fingers clawing the chart table's edge. She came with a howl, arse clenching around the rubber shaft, body thrashing as Tanna kept driving.
When Ulrika finally went limp over the table, Tanna pulled out. Her own cunt strained against the harness, slick with Ulrika's juices.
Ulrika straightened, breathing hard, and turned. "Not bad," she said. "You've got your northern star. Go on then, girl. She's probably wondering where her loyal blade got to."
Tanna unbuckled the harness, cleaned herself, and fled, her heart hammering in her chest. Behind her, Ulrika sat down heavily on the cot and poured herself a tankard of rum from the barrel beside it.
"I love you too, Colonel," Tanna whispered at the door. Then she stepped out into the hanging air of a ship stalled by breakfast.
Tanna stepped out of Ulrika's cabin and into the hanging air of a ship gone still. Ropes lay coiled and idle. Crates sat overturned. No one hauled, no one scrubbed, no one shouted. The Sea-Nymph's Revenge drifted on a calm sea under listless sails, and the only sound was the low murmur of argument rising from the mess deck.
She made her way to the captain's cabin and found the door ajar. Nell sat rigid behind her chart table, white braid tight over her shoulder, fingers steepled. Scathach Scarface stood before her, leathers creaking as she shifted from foot to foot.
"Say it again," Nell said.
"Half the crew is refusing duty, Captain. The other half is refusing duty too. Different reasons."
"For what, precisely?"
"Breakfast. Greta changed the menu. Half of them were sick of porridge, so she made stew. But the other half are threatening to throw the stew over the side if they don't get their porridge back."
Nell stared at her. "They are mutinying. Over breakfast."
"Aye. And neither side'll work till they get their way. Ship's just drifting."
Nell pinched the bridge of her nose. "Round up the ringleaders. I want them in here in ten minutes. Both sides. I don't care how you do it."
Scathach nodded once and was gone, boots thumping down the companionway. Nell let out a long, slow breath and dropped her head into her hands. Tanna stepped inside and latched the door behind her.
"What do they want me to do?" Nell said, not looking up. "I can't make porridge and stew at the same time. I can't make half a crew work while the other half sulks. I'm a captain, not a cook."
Tanna crossed the cabin, knelt beside Nell's chair, and took her hand. "You don't have to solve it this minute."
"I do. They've stopped the ship."
"Only for breakfast." Tanna's voice was low. She ran her palm up Nell's thigh, slow, deliberate. "The meeting's in ten minutes. Let me settle you first."
Nell looked at her, the fight draining from her eyes. "That's not command."
"It's taking care of my captain."
Nell's thighs parted without argument. Tanna slid from the chair to the floor, pulled Nell's breeches down her hips, and pressed her face between those strong pale thighs. The piercing glinted, a small mithril ring through the flesh of Nell's clit, warm against Tanna's lips.
Tanna licked. Flat and broad, then a pointed jab of her tongue, circling the ring, flicking the pearl beneath. Nell gasped and gripped the chair arms, knuckles white.
"Just like that," Nell breathed. "Harder. Please."
Tanna obeyed. She sucked the little pearl into her mouth, worked it with her tongue, teased the ring with the tip until Nell's hips bucked off the chair. The captain's breath came in short, sharp bursts, and her fingers found Tanna's hair, gripping, pulling.
"Don't stop," Nell said. "Don't you dare stop."
Tanna didn't. She ate her like a starving woman, tongue stabbing, lips sealed, the taste of salt and sea air flooding her mouth. Nell's legs began to shake. Her heels drummed the cabin floor. She cried out, a wordless thing, as the orgasm took her, arse lifting off the chair, thighs clamping around Tanna's head. Tanna kept licking, soft and slow, riding her through it, until Nell sagged back, flushed and panting.
For a long moment the only sound was Nell's ragged breath. Then she looked down at Tanna, eyes soft, and laid a hand on her cheek.
"Thank you," Nell said.
"Always."
Nell stood, hauling her breeches up, tucking her shirt in. She straightened her coat and walked to the door, and at the threshold she paused. "Stay with me through the meeting. I might need you to look fierce."
Tanna rose, smirking. "Is that an order, Captain?"
"It is." Nell pulled the door open. The deck outside thrummed with the approach of boots and grumbling voices. "And I intend to win."
The deck outside was packed shoulder to shoulder with bodies, and every one of them had an opinion. Nell came out onto the quarterdeck with Tanna at her shoulder, and the murmur dropped to a sullen silence, like a classroom when the master walks in.
Two mobs, roughly matched, faced each other across a stretch of scrubbed planks. On the left stood the porridge men: Wilf the sailmaker, three of the riggers, the boatswain's mate, and a cluster of deckhands with their bowls already in hand like weapons. On the right stood the stew men, twice as loud and half as organised, brandishing spoons.
Between them, Scathach Scarface stood with a whip coiled loosely in her fist, letting it hang where they could see it. Nobody had moved yet. Her face said they wouldn't get a second chance.
Greta the Grubgirl stood at the front of the lot, sleeves rolled, apron streaked with something brown. She looked less like a cook than a woman who'd walked into a family argument and been blamed for it.
Off to the side, arms folded, Brutehilde watched from under her blonde plaits with the iron balls clicking softly whenever she shifted her weight. Polly Panzerfaust leaned on the rail beside her, chewing a piece of dried apple and enjoying herself enormously.
"Right," Nell said. She didn't shout. She never had to. "What is going on here?"
The porridge faction and the stew faction both started talking at once, which was no use to anybody. Scathach let the whip uncoil an inch, and the noise died.
Greta cleared her throat. "It's the pot, Captain. There's only the one."
"There's three pots in that galley."
"There's one big pot, and two little ones, and the little ones won't feed thirty. So it's one meal, is what I'm saying." Greta wiped her hands on her apron, which made them dirtier. "They come to me this morning saying the porridge is slop. Fine. Fair. It is slop." She gestured at the deck. "So I says, I'll do a stew, I've got the roots and the pods from the island and there's the bird bones for stock, it'd be a lovely thing. And half of them start shouting that they want their porridge back."
"Because it's breakfast," said Wilf the sailmaker, with the dignity of a man defending his faith.
"It isn't breakfast, it's a menu," Greta said. "And I'll cook what I'm told to cook. I'll cook porridge every day from now till we hit the capital and never hear a word of thanks. I'll cook stew every day and the same. But I've got one pot and one pair of hands, and I can't be doing both at once, and I'm sick of being shouted at before I've had my own breakfast."
Nell looked at her for a moment. "Why can't they simply eat what they're given?"
"Because they're people, Captain." Then Greta brightened, as if she'd found the answer sitting right there. "Not like Lefty. Look at Lefty. Big as a church and he'll eat anything you put near him. Bones, boots, barnacles, a bucket of tar if you waved it at him kindly. Never complains, never takes a vote. Why can't they be like Lefty?"
"Because Lefty's a squid the size of a house," Tanna said.
Greta considered this. "That's fair."
A voice from the stew side. "Captain, we're loyal."
"So am I," said Wilf at once. "Loyal as the day's long. Every one of us here would take a boarding axe for you and not think twice."
"Then go back to work," Nell said.
"We will. Soon as the other lot are told." Wilf jabbed his bowl at the opposite mass. "You can't have a ship where a man's breakfast is decided by a show of hands."
"You can't have a ship where a man's breakfast is decided by a man with a bowl," said the stew side.
Nell let them go at it for a few seconds. It was useful, in a way. She counted heads while they shouted. Roughly fifteen on each side, and about eight sitting on their arses at the rails waiting to see which way the wind blew. The ones in the middle would decide it, as they always did.
Brutehilde uncrossed her arms and stepped forward to the base of the quarterdeck steps. "Captain. They've been at this since dawn. Half the ropes still aren't coiled and nobody's touched the pumps."
"I can see that." Nell set her hands on the rail and leaned over the crowd, and her voice carried without effort across the whole deck. "Listen to me. This ends today."
They shut up.
"I have no interest in porridge and no interest in stew. I have an interest in a ship that moves. We are five days behind as it is and I have a Kraken following us like a dog hoping for scraps." She paused to let that land. "Any one of you who stops work again over food will walk the plank. No trial, no vote, no second word. I'll have you off the yardarm before noon and the rest of you can watch and think about it."
Nobody said anything. Somebody on the stew side put his spoon behind his back.
"That said," Nell went on, "I'm not a tyrant and I'm not a fool. I'm not going to decide this for you and have half of you sulking for the rest of the voyage. So. Sunset. We hold a binding vote on deck. Porridge or stew. One meal, one crew, one galley. Whoever loses eats what they're given without a word, ever again, and the first one of you to complain gets the cat and a week on half rations."
Greta nodded, relieved. "That'd do me, Captain."
"And Greta cooks whatever the vote says until we reach port, and if it's porridge, I'll be eating the porridge alongside the lot of you."
A grudging murmur of approval ran through both sides. Nell glanced at Tanna, who had taken up a stance at her shoulder with her hand resting lightly on her sword hilt, looking, as requested, fierce.
Then Nell looked past them both, at the eight men lounging on the rails in the middle.
Eight. Fifteen and fifteen on either side, and eight undecided. If the undecided split evenly, that was nineteen and nineteen. Deadlocked. A tie meant no decision, and no decision meant another dawn like this one.
She turned and beckoned Scathach up the steps, and Scoffer, who was loitering at the foot of the mainmast with his arms crossed and his one shoe on, the other foot still bare from the island.
"Both of you," Nell said quietly, out of earshot of the deck. "Before sunset. Find the ones who haven't taken a side and get them talking. Not bribed. Talked. Find out what their bellies actually want and make them say it out loud in front of the others. I want a majority, not a coin toss."
Scathach's lips curled. "And if talking doesn't do it?"
"Then talk louder." Nell straightened her coat. "Scoffer, you know the deckhands. You've got the ear of every man who's ever been drunk with you, which is all of them."
Scoffer grinned, showing a mouth full of gold and gaps. "So what's in it for Scoffer?"
"You get to keep your shoe. And I'll personally see to it that you never stand a watch on an empty stomach again."
"Done." He stumped off down the deck toward the undecided.
Scathach flicked her whip out with a snap and coiled it back up, then went the other way, straight for the cluster of men at the starboard rail, who all found sudden reasons to be very interested in the horizon.
Tanna watched them go. "Do you think it'll be enough?"
Nell looked out over the flat, still water, where a vast dark shape was basking alongside the hull with one dinner-plate eye rolled up at her, patient as a cow.
"I think I've just turned a breakfast argument into a political campaign," Nell said. "In that respect, no. It will not be enough." She turned for the door of her cabin. "But the vote will be decisive, and that's all I need."
Two hours later, Scoffer had talked himself hoarse and Scathach had talked three men into a state of deep uncertainty, which was not the same thing as a vote.
They met in the shadows at the foot of the after-hold ladder, where the lamp smoke had nowhere to go and the timbers smelled of tar and old bilge. Scoffer leaned against a stanchion and rubbed his bare foot on the back of his ankle. Scathach spat a bit of dried apple she'd stolen off Polly and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Well?" she said.
"Six for stew, four for their grandmothers, and one who wants to know what we're actually voting on." Scoffer shook his head. "What about yours?"
"Same as you. Nodding at everything, committing to nothing." Scathach scratched her jaw. "We've moved nobody. It's still fifteen and fifteen and the rest sitting on the fence with their pricks out."
"You've a way with words, Scarface."
"Just say the plan's not working."
"No," Scoffer admitted. "It's not working."
Then a sound came down the passage from the forward hold. A slow, rhythmic creak of wood on wood. Underneath it, a woman's voice, thin and pleased, making a noise like a cat deciding whether to purr or scratch.
Scathach cocked her head. "That's Elophelia."
"That's the barrels."
"That's Elophelia on the barrels."
They crept along past the hanging beef and the water butts, low and quiet, and stopped at a gap in the bulkhead where a plank had been prised loose and never fixed. Beyond it, in a spill of lamplight, Scruffulus had Elophelia bent face-down over a rum barrel with her red dress shoved up around her ribs and nothing else on at all. The wizard's robes were open to the waist and he was taking her from behind with a steady, patient rhythm, both hands full of her arse, which was pale and round and marked with crumb dust and the shadow of a handprint.
Elophelia had her cheek flat on the barrelhead and her eyes shut. "Harder, you cheap conjurer. I'm not made of glass."
"You won't be saying that if I bruise your cervix," Scruffulus said, and drove into her so the barrel squeaked half an inch across the boards. Elophelia moaned, long and unembarrassed, and her fingers scrabbled at the barrel's iron hoop.
Scoffer watched. His mouth had gone dry and his trousers had gone tight, and beside him Scathach had stopped breathing through her nose and started breathing through her mouth. She slid her hand down her leathers without meaning to and found herself already wet at the seam.
"Right," she whispered. "I need to go somewhere."
"There's a storeroom behind us," Scoffer said.
They went. Scathach got the door shut and the bolt across, and then Scoffer had her against the grain sacks with one hand in her hair and the other hauling her shirt open. She bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, and he laughed and shoved her back over a crate of dried peas, and the crate shifted and half the peas went rattling across the floor, and neither of them cared.
He got her leathers down past her knees. Her cunt was slick and dark and open, and he put two fingers in her without ceremony, then three, twisting, while she pulled his cock out and worked it with a hard, impatient fist.
"You going to fuck me or write me a poem?" she said.
Scoffer spat on his palm and put his cock to her and shoved the whole length in at once. Scathach grunted like she'd taken a punch and clawed at the sackcloth behind her head. He fucked her hard and flat from the start, no warm-up, the crate jolting, dried peas popping under his foot.
"Bastard," she said, delighted.
She hooked one boot up on the crate edge and opened herself wider, and he went deeper. Then she grabbed his ear, dragged his head down, and bit his shoulder until he yelped. He slapped her arse with an open hand, once, twice, three times, and each blow printed a red hand on her pale cheek, and she moaned into his neck and squeezed his cock with her cunt.
"Again," she said.
He did it again. And again.
They turned over. She got him on his back across the sacks and straddled him, and rode him with her leathers round one ankle and her tits out of her shirt, slamming down with all her weight, and he gripped her hips and met every stroke. The storeroom filled with the wet slap of it and the smell of peas and sweat. She came first, teeth bared, thighs shaking, swearing steadily, and he held her down on him through it, then rolled her back over and fucked her into the sacks until he finished in her with a grunt and a shove that bruised her hip on the crate corner.
They lay there panting. Scathach touched the bruise and grinned.
"There's a beauty."
"You've one on your arse like a sunset."
"Good."
They had another go. Then another. She rode his face until her thighs cramped, kneeling over his mouth in the dark with her hands braced on a barrel and her calves trembling, and he ate her with the enthusiasm of a man who had gold teeth and nothing better to do. She squirted a little onto his chin and they both laughed so hard he nearly choked.
At some point the lamp guttered out. Neither of them noticed for a long while.
It was Scathach who finally noticed the light. She was on her knees on a coil of rope by then, taking Scoffer from behind with her strap-on, her leathers round her knees, sweat running down her spine, when a thin gold line crept through the crack in the storeroom door and laid itself across the floor.
She stopped moving.
"Scoffer."
"Don't stop."
"Scoffer. There's sun on the boards."
He looked. The line of light was long and orange and slanting low, the kind that only comes in at the tail end of the day.
"How long have we been down here?" he said.
Scathach pulled off him and lunged for the door, cracked it, and looked down the passage. The lamp smoke had thinned and gone grey. Through the hatch grating above the ladder, the sky was the colour of a cooked apricot.
"Sun's going down," she said.
Scoffer was up and hopping into his loincloth with the one shoe and one bare foot. "Going down?"
"The captain said sunset. Ours was the job. We were to have a majority by sunset."
"Oh," said Scoffer, in a small voice. "Oh, bugger."
"How long have we been down here?"
"Two hours when we started. Then we found the barrels." He counted on his fingers, then gave up. "Four hours? Five?"
"The whole afternoon. The whole bloody afternoon, Scoffer. We've spent it shagging in a pea store."
"Best afternoon of my life."
"Shut up." She was buckling her leathers wrong, tongue between her teeth. "How long till sunset?"
Scoffer looked at the light. "Ten minutes. Maybe less."
"She'll hang us. She said it out loud, in front of everybody. Any man who stops work again walks the plank. We didn't stop work. We forgot work exists."
"Then we've time," Scoffer said desperately. "Ten minutes is time."
Scathach stared at him. Then she grabbed his collar and pulled him close. "Right. Talk. Fast. What do we do?"
"We get the undecided."
"To what? We've been at them all afternoon and they won't move."
"Then we move them by force. We tell them the vote's void. We tell them Greta's thrown a pot over the side and there's no stew and no porridge and it's ship's biscuit and we all eat it and shut up."
"That makes no sense. Nobody throws a pot over the side."
"Well, what's your idea?"
"We tell them all the other side has already voted and they must fall in behind, whichever side we're standing next to when we say it."
Scoffer blinked. "That's actually not bad."
"It's terrible. Half of them can count."
"Then we get them drunk!" Scoffer's voice cracked with hope. "We pull the rum barrel up and say the vote's been bought. Free rum for everyone who says stew. Then free rum for everyone who says porridge. Then when they're all too pissed to stand we take a vote and nobody remembers what they said."
"That takes an hour, minimum."
"Twenty minutes."
"There isn't twenty minutes!"
"Then we lie!" Scoffer slapped his own thigh. "We go up and tell Nell the vote already happened and we won. We tell her it was nineteen to eleven, overwhelming, in favour of - " He faltered. "In favour of which one?"
Scathach hauled the door open. The passage outside was gold and quiet, and somewhere above them, faintly, the boatswain's whistle went for the change of watch.
"Doesn't matter which one," she said grimly. "We go up and we say it loud and we say it fast and we stand somewhere Nell can't easily get a rope to us."
They moved for the ladder at a dead run, and Scoffer's bare foot slipped on the peas and sent him down on one knee, and Scathach dragged him up by the ear without breaking stride.
Scoffer hit the deck at a stumble, peas still rattling out of his cuff. The sun was a hot copper coin balanced on the horizon, and the whole ship had gathered in a loose ring around the quarterdeck steps. Nell stood at the rail, arms folded, watching the crowd in silence.
Scathach came up beside him, breathing hard. "We're too late."
"Not yet. Look." Scoffer pointed. The undecided eight still hung at the rail, looking at each other and at the sun with the slow dread of men about to be asked to commit.
"We need one," Scathach hissed. "One body on either side and we tip it."
"Then we count again. Fifteen, fifteen, and eight fence-sitters. We get one to porridge, it's sixteen to fifteen, that's a majority."
The surgery door opened.
Sly Truckles came out with his hands out in front of him like a man walking through a dream. His breeches were dark at the crotch and his face was wrapped in bandages from chin to hairline, with a small hole where his mouth had been. He made a sound like a kettle trying to whistle through a sock.
Sindy Sawbones followed him out, wiping her hands on a rag that was not entirely clean, and smiled with the satisfaction of a job done properly.
Scoffer stared. "What happened to him?"
Sindy tucked the rag into her apron. "Toothache."
"Toothache did that to his face?"
"He's had it for three weeks. Wouldn't let me near him. So I pinned him down and took care of it." She patted the bandages. "The jaw's off. The whole thing. That's what was causing the trouble, all those roots and nerves tangled up together. He'll be right as rain now, long as he eats through a straw."
Sly made another sound. His hands found his crotch and hovered there, trembling.
"Oh, that." Sindy shrugged. "I kneeled on them. His stones. Not on purpose, but there you are. And they were paining him terrible, all swollen and blue, so I took them off as well. Kindest thing to do. He'll not be missing them once the shock wears off. I've sewn him up nice and tidy."
Sly's bandaged face turned toward her. His hands dropped.
"Don't look at me like that," Sindy said. "You were in agony. I could see it in your eyes. And I'll thank you not to bleed on my clean floor on the way out."
She went back inside, and the door swung shut.
Scathach and Scoffer stood frozen. Sly wobbled on his heels, one hand reaching for the rail, and his face tilted toward the gathering crowd with the mute, horrified wobble of a man whose body had been rearranged without his consent.
Scoffer's mouth hung open. "He's got no jaw."
"He's got no stones."
"Both."
"Both."
The sun dropped another finger's width. Somewhere on the quarterdeck, Nell shifted her weight and looked up at the sky.
Scoffer looked at Sly. Sly looked at the crowd. The crowd looked at Sly with the dawning, delighted horror of people about to watch someone else's bad day become a useful precedent.
"Wait," Scathach said slowly. "Wait."
"What?"
"Sly's in the stew faction. Was in the stew faction. He can't eat stew anymore, can he? He can't eat anything but thin porridge through a straw."
Scoffer's face split into a grin of pure, tearful relief. "Porridge."
"Porridge."
They moved at once. Scathach grabbed Sly by the shoulder and marched him across the deck, Scoffer herding from behind, and planted him directly in front of the porridge faction. Sly made a sound that might have been a protest and might have been a dying bird, but he couldn't talk, and nobody could ask him to repeat himself.
"Here he is!" Scoffer shouted. "Sly Truckles, back from the doctor's and ready to vote! He's got a belly full of good broth and a heart full of loyalty, and he'll be eating porridge from now till the capital, because that's all he can fit through the hole!"
Sly shook his bandaged head violently. Scathach squeezed his arm.
"He's nodding!" she announced. "He's saying yes with his whole body! That's one more for porridge!"
The porridge faction cheered. The stew faction looked at Sly's face, at his crotch, at his face again, and found that they had lost all appetite for arguing.
Nell, from the rail, had not missed a thing. The corner of her mouth twitched. "That's sixteen for porridge. Does anyone wish to contest the result?"
Nobody did. The stew faction looked at one another, then at Sly, who had begun to cry silently into his bandages through the small hole where his mouth used to be, and decided that whatever they'd wanted for breakfast wasn't worth fighting for anymore.
Greta came up from the galley with a wooden spoon in her fist. "Porridge it is, then. I'll have the pot on by morning." She glanced at Sly and paused. "For the ones who can chew, that is."
Sly had stopped crying. His hands had gone to his belt, fumbling, and his bandaged face tilted toward the surgery door with a look that promised, eventually, a reckoning.
Scathach and Scoffer stood together, breathing hard, and for once in their lives they had nothing to say at all. The sun went down. The vote was won. And somewhere below decks, Sindy Sawbones was already sharpening her saw for the morning.
The evening settled over the Sea-Nymph's Revenge like a blanket. The stew faction had slunk below with their bowls held low. The porridge faction had carried Sly Truckles down to the mess on their shoulders, singing something tuneless about oats. By the time the stars came out, the deck was quiet and the galley fire had been banked for the night.
In the captain's cabin, a single lamp burned low. Nell had shed her coat and her boots, and she sat on the edge of her cot with her white braid undone, hair spilling over her shoulders in a silver wave. Tanna perched beside her, close enough that their thighs touched through the wool of her breeches.
Nell let out a long breath. "I thought they were going to kill each other over a bowl of grain."
"They nearly did." Tanna took her hand, laced their fingers. "You handled it well."
"I threatened to hang them."
"Exactly. Firm. Decisive." Tanna leaned in and kissed her, soft, lingering. "My captain."
Nell hummed against her mouth. "I'm not your captain in here. In here I'm just Nell."
"Just Nell." Tanna kissed her again, deeper, and Nell's hand came up to cup her jaw, pulling her in. They kissed for a long while, slow and lazy, the way two people do when the day is finally over and nothing is expected of either of them.
Nell broke away, breathless, and laughed. "I'm still wearing my breeches. What a state for a captain."
Tanna pulled at the laces. "Let me fix that."
They undressed each other by degrees. Nell's shirt came off first, and Tanna pressed her mouth to the pale skin of her shoulder, then her collarbone, then the soft weight of her breast. Nell undid Tanna's sword belt with trembling fingers, then the laces of her tunic, and when the wool fell away she sat back and looked at her for a long moment.
"You're beautiful," Nell said.
Tanna flushed. "You say that every time."
"And I mean it every time."
Nell shucked her breeches down her hips and Tanna's breath caught. Nell's cunt was bare at the lips, but a fine dark stubble had grown along the edges of the fold, a shadow where the piercing glinted in the low lamp light.
"Oh," Nell said, looking down. "That came back faster than I expected."
Tanna ran a thumb along the line of it. "You want me to take care of that?"
"Would you?" Nell's voice was soft, almost shy. "I can't reach properly, and the mithril ring keeps getting in the way of the blade."
Tanna fetched a small pot of shaving soap from Nell's washstand, a razor, and a bowl of water. She knelt between Nell's spread thighs on the cabin floor, dipped the brush, and worked up a soft lather in the pot.
"Hold still," she said.
Nell watched her with half-lidded eyes. The first pass of the razor swept the stubble away from the left fold, leaving skin smooth as silk. Tanna worked carefully, one hand holding the skin taut, the other guiding the blade in short, gentle strokes. The scrape of it was the only sound in the cabin, a whisper of metal on flesh.
"That's good," Nell breathed. "That's very good."
"Don't talk. You'll move."
Nell closed her mouth. Tanna finished the left side, wiped the razor clean, and started on the right. She shaved around the piercing with particular care, tilting the blade to clear the hair from under the ring without ever touching the metal. A hundred tiny strokes later, she wiped Nell's cunt clean with a damp cloth and leaned back to admire her work.
"Perfect," she said.
Nell looked down. Her cunt was completely bare now, smooth as a river stone, the mithril ring standing proud at the top of the cleft. She ran a finger along it and shivered.
"I've never been this smooth," she said. "Not since I was a girl."
"Then it's a good thing I'm here." Tanna set the razor aside and kissed the inside of Nell's thigh. "Your turn."
Nell blinked. "My turn?"
"You have a razor in your hand, don't you?"
Nell picked it up, light and warm from use. She looked at Tanna, lying back on the cot now, breeches kicked off, her dark thatch of pubic hair untrimmed and thick.
"I've never done this before," Nell said.
"First time for everything. I've never had it done for me. I've always been fully carpeted ... till now." Tanna folded her hands behind her head and smiled up at her, a challenge glinting in her eyes. "Afraid, Captain?"
"Terrified."
"Do it anyway."
Nell knelt between Tanna's thighs, dipped the brush, and worked up a fresh lather. She spread it over Tanna's mound with slow, deliberate strokes, the bristles scritching through the dark hair. Tanna's stomach fluttered under her touch.
"First I have to trim it," Nell murmured, more to herself than to Tanna. She took a small pair of shears from the washstand and snipped the hair short, close to the skin, a lock at a time. Tanna lay still under her, breath coming short, thighs trembling slightly.
Then the razor. Nell started at the top of the mound and worked downward, careful and slow, the blade sliding through the lather in a clean line. Tanna's hair fell away in dark strands, revealing pink skin beneath. Nell wiped the blade, went back for another stroke.
"There's nothing to be nervous about," Tanna said, and her voice shook a little. "You're doing wonderfully."
"Is your heart beating fast?"
"Yes."
"Good. So is mine."
Nell worked on, shaving the left side, then the right, then the delicate skin between Tanna's thighs, where the hair grew fine and soft. She parted Tanna's lips with two fingers and shaved the edges clean, and Tanna gasped at the touch of the cool blade so close to her clit.
"Careful," Tanna said.
"Trust me."
"I do."
Nell finished. She set the razor down and wiped the last of the lather away with a cloth. Tanna's cunt lay bare and pink and utterly naked, the lips visible, a sweet clean cameltoe pressed together so perfectly that Nell caught her breath, the gold piercing just peeping at the top.
"Oh," Tanna said, looking down. "Oh, that's. I've never seen it."
"Neither have I." Nell ran a fingertip along the seam of it, gentle, reverent. "It's beautiful."
Tanna shuddered under the touch. "It feels strange. Naked."
"It's just you. The real you."
Tanna pulled Nell down and kissed her, hard, and Nell kissed back. Then they shifted together, turning on the cot, curling into each other with their heads at opposite ends. Nell's thighs closed over Tanna's shoulders, and Tanna's wrapped around Nell's head.
Sixty-nine, and both of them naked as the day they were born.
Tanna went first. She pressed her mouth to Nell's shaved cunt and licked, long and flat, the whole length of it, and Nell let out a sound like a prayer. The mithril ring pressed against Tanna's tongue, cool and smooth. She circled it, flicked it, tongued the pearl beneath until Nell's hips lifted off the mattress.
Nell returned the favour with her own careful tongue. She parted Tanna's bare lips with her thumbs and licked the clit free of its new nakedness, tasting soap and salt and woman. Tanna whimpered and her thighs squeezed around Nell's head.
They worked each other for a long time, slow and loving, the way the day deserved. Nell's tongue stabbed and circled and flattened. Tanna answered in kind, matching every stroke, every pressure, until they found a rhythm together, a push and pull like the sea itself.
Nell came first with a strangled, muffled cry, her arse lifting off the cot as Tanna's tongue kept working her through it. Then Tanna followed a minute later, shuddering, biting her own knuckle to keep from screaming. They lay tangled together afterward, sweaty and breathing hard, neither wanting to move.
Tanna kissed the inside of Nell's thigh. "I love you."
Nell's hand found her hair and stroked it. "I love you too."
"Ulrika says love's a disease. She says it rots your judgement and clouds your aim."
"Did she now."
"I think she's wrong." Tanna propped herself on an elbow, looking down the length of Nell's body to meet her eyes. "I think love is the only thing that's ever made me steady. Made me aim true. Made me want to be better."
Nell looked at her, shaved and bare and naked in a way that had nothing to do with skin. She reached up and pulled her down into a kiss.
"Then love is true," Nell said against her lips. "Whatever anyone else thinks."
Tanna settled against her, cheek on her chest, listening to her heartbeat. The ship creaked gently around them. Tomorrow the sails would fill and they would be on course for the capital. Tomorrow there would be porridge for breakfast and work for everyone.
Tonight, Nell's fingers traced lazy circles on Tanna's bare mound, and Tanna's breath went slow and even against her ribs, and the lamp burned down to a whisper of light in the dark.