Chapter 42: Blood on the Deck
The world had narrowed to the rectangle of the hatch, the slick ladder, and the chaos boiling above.
Seraphina heard the metallic shriek of blades, a wet thump, a curse bitten short. The sounds were both alien and familiar, a brutal symphony she’d heard through closed doors all her life. Now, it was at her doorstep. Mia buried her face in Seraphina’s neck, her small body rigid. Leo stared upward, unblinking. Kya held the stave, her knuckles bone-white, her aim unwavering at the hatch.
Another pair of boots appeared on the ladder, descending fast. Navy-issue leather, buckles glinting.
“Kya, now!”
Kya swung the oak stave like she was threshing grain. It connected with the soldier’s descending shin with a crack that made even Seraphina wince. The man bellowed, lost his grip, and fell the last few feet, landing heavily on the body of his dead comrade. He was scrabbling for his short sword, face contorted with pain and rage.
Seraphina was already moving. She pushed Mia into Leo’s arms. “Don’t look.” Her own command was a whisper. She stepped over Vincent’s victim, her hand closing around the hilt of the dagger she’d lifted from the dead man’s belt. It was cheap, utilitarian steel, not balanced for throwing. Meant for close work.
The soldier saw her, saw the children, and his expression shifted from pain to a predatory gleam. He didn’t see a threat. He saw a woman. Prey.
That was his last mistake.
He lunged, favoring his injured leg. Seraphina didn’t brace. She flowed backward, letting his momentum carry him. He was overextended, off-center. She didn’t go for his heart or his throat—those were moving targets, armored. She drove the dagger up, under the rim of his leather cuirass, into the soft hollow of his armpit.
The shock traveled up her arm. He gasped, a hot, sour breath blasting her face. His eyes widened, confused, as if a piece of furniture had attacked him. She twisted the blade, the way she’d seen a kitchen girl do to a suckling pig, and yanked it free. He collapsed, twitching, adding his own coppery scent to the hold’s stew of smells.
Seraphina stood over him, breathing hard. The dagger dripped. There was no triumph. Only a cold, surgical clarity. One less.
“Mom?” Kya’s voice was small.
“It’s okay,” Seraphina said, wiping the blade on the man’s trousers. Her voice didn’t sound like her own. “Guard the door.”
Above, the sounds of fighting were changing. Fewer shouts. More heavy breathing, the scrape of boots on wet wood. Then Callum’s voice, ragged but clear. “Clear! Sera!”
Vincent’s head appeared in the hatch, his face splattered with dark droplets. “Come up. Carefully.”
Seraphina herded the children up the ladder. The deck was a tableau of grim disorder. Three bodies in imperial navy uniforms lay in spreading, rain-diluted crimson puddles. Jerek was slumped against the mast, clutching a bleeding forearm, his face pale. The cutter was alongside, held close by grappling hooks, its deck eerily quiet.
Callum stood near its rail, his sword tip resting on the throat of a surviving imperial officer—the one who’d ordered the search. The man was on his knees, his bored superiority utterly gone, replaced by raw terror.
Vincent was methodically cutting the ropes on the grapples. “Jerek says we’re taking their boat. This one’s finished if the weather turns.”
“You can’t,” the officer pleaded, his eyes on Callum’s blade. “This is an imperial vessel! This is treason!”
“Yeah, we’re familiar with the concept,” Callum said, his tone almost conversational. He pressed the tip a little harder. A bead of blood welled. “How many were in your crew?”
“T-Twelve.”
“We count six. So either your math is bad, or four are hiding below wishing they’d joined the infantry. Where’s your captain?”
A door at another cutter’s stern slammed open. The boat latched onto the other side of the now empty cutter. A man emerged, not in uniform but in a rich, if now rain-soaked, velvet doublet. He had a wine goblet in one hand. The merchant lord whose ledgers were currently pressed against Seraphina’s sweating skin.
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Rhys sighed, surveying the mess with distaste. He took a sip of wine. “Lieutenant, you are profoundly incompetent.”
Callum’s smile was all teeth. “Rhys. Out for a pleasure cruise?”
“Checking on an investment,” Rhys said, his gaze sliding past Callum to Seraphina and the children. His eyes lingered on her, a cold, appraising look that made her skin crawl. It was the same look she’d gotten from buyers. “I heard there was some commotion at my facility. Unauthorized withdrawals. I assume you’re the cause.”
“We’re the correction,” Vincent said, swinging himself onto the cutter’s deck. He kicked a grapple loose. It splashed into the churning water.
“You’re a duke’s son playing revolutionary,” Rhys sneered. “And you.” He nodded at Callum. “The spare prince with a death wish. You think this changes anything? You have one ledger. I have a dozen copyists. You kill me, another takes my place. The machine doesn’t care.”
“Maybe,” Callum said. “But machines need oil. We’re just here to throw sand in the gears.” He looked at Vincent. “Get them on the cutter.”
Vincent helped Jerek to his feet and guided him across the rocking gap between the boats. Seraphina lifted Mia, then Leo, handing them over to Vincent’s steadying arms. Kya scrambled across herself.
Rhys watched, unimpressed. “You’re forgetting something.” He raised his voice. “Archers!”
From the cutter’s forecastle, three crossbows swung into view, aimed at the crowded deck where Seraphina and the children now stood.
Time stretched, thin and taut.
Callum didn’t move his sword from the lieutenant’s throat. Vincent slowly raised his hands, stepping subtly in front of Kya.
Rhys smiled. “The ledgers, if you please. And the girls. Then you can take this wretched boat and sail off to your pathetic rebellion. You can have the boy, too.”
The rain hissed on the hot lantern glass. Seraphina felt the oilskin packet, a rectangle of truth, digging into her ribs. She looked at Rhys’s smug face, at the archers’ steady aim, at her children’s wide, frightened eyes. She saw the endless cycle of it. A new Rhys. A new Silks Emporium. A new Blackwood compound. A new wagon in the dark.
A strange calm settled over her.
“You want the ledgers?” she said, her voice carrying over the wind. She didn’t look at Callum or Vincent. She kept her eyes on Rhys. She pulled the packet from her shirt. The parchment was stained with seawater and sweat. She held it up. “This is your life’s work. All the names. All the payments. All the children.”
Rhys’ smile flickered. “Give it here.”
“No.” Seraphina walked to the side of the boat, to the gap of churning, black water between the two vessels. She held the packet over the abyss.
“Shoot her!” Rhys barked.
The archers shifted their aim. Vincent moved, but he was too far.
Callum moved faster. He didn’t kill the lieutenant. He shoved the man hard, sending him stumbling into Rhys. The two men collapsed in a heap of velvet and uniform, the wine goblet clattering across the deck.
In that second of disrupted aim, Seraphina didn’t drop the ledgers.
She looked directly at Rhys. “You said the machine doesn’t care.” Then she tilted her head, a mocking, almost girlish gesture. “But the sea might.”
She threw the packet. Not into the water between the boats.
She threw it with all her strength, up and over, a high, arcing toss that carried it past the cutter’s mast. It spun through the rain-swept air and landed with a soft, final slap on the roof of the cutter’s enclosed stern cabin—steep, slick, and utterly out of immediate reach from where Rhys stood.
It was a child’s taunt. A brilliant, impossible delay.
Rhys screeched, scrambling to his feet. “Get it! You idiots, get it!”
The archers hesitated, confused. Their orders were to shoot, not to climb.
“Go!” Callum yelled.
It was all the opening they needed. Vincent seized a boarding pike and slammed its hooked end into the cutter’s rail, using it to violently shove the two vessels apart. Wood squealed and splintered. The gap of water widened suddenly, a rushing, frothing maw.
Callum leapt across, landing beside Seraphina. The last grapple line, stretched taut, snapped with a sound like a gunshot.
Rhys was screaming orders, pointing frantically at the cabin roof as the cutter began to drift away on the swell, its archers now scrambling for the elusive packet.
On the faster, cleaner imperial vessel, Jerek was already at the helm, spinning the wheel. The sails caught the wind with a sharp crack.
They left the shouting, the chaos, and the precious ledgers behind on the drifting cutter, a tantalizing prize just out of reach. Rhys’s outraged curses faded into the storm’s roar.
Seraphina slumped against the cutter’s rail, the adrenaline bleeding away, leaving her limbs weak. Mia was crying softly. Leo was silent, in that terrible way of his. Kya still held the oak stave, clutching it like a talisman.
Callum looked at Seraphina, water streaming down his face. He wasn’t smiling. His expression was one of stark, unvarnished awe. “You… are genuinely terrifying.”
Vincent, checking Jerek’s wound, glanced over. A faint, approving grunt. “Sand in the gears.” He tied off a bandage. “He’ll remember that throw.”
The cutter surged forward, cutting a cleaner path through the waves than Jerek’s tub ever could. The storm was easing, the clouds breaking to the west, showing a sliver of bruised, twilight purple.
They had no ledgers. They had a faster ship. They had each other, bloodied and breathing.
And somewhere behind them, a corrupt merchant lord was dancing with rage on a rain-slick deck, obsessed with a packet on a roof, while his prisoners sailed into the dark.
Seraphina watched the horizon where the other ship vanished into the gloom. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she wasn’t just escaping from something. She was sailing toward something. The feeling was unfamiliar. It felt a little like a beginning, carved out with a stolen knife and a reckless, arcing throw.
“I can’t believe that lazy man is out here looking for the ledger… and me… I told you he was obsessed with me…” Sera looked down at her two youngest children, both Leo and Mia clinging to her sides. They had no idea how close they had just been to their biological father.
The deck beneath her feet was steady, a stolen prize, but her insides were a roiling sea. Mia’s tears were warm against her neck. Leo’s silence was a weight. Kya’s fierce grip on the stave hadn’t loosened.
Callum watched her, his earlier awe hardening into a sharper understanding. He wiped his blade clean on a discarded scrap of sailcloth. “Right… you told us he was….” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.
It wasn’t a question. Seraphina just stared at the dark water where the other ship had been consumed by rain and distance. The face in the velvet doublet, contorted with entitled rage, superimposed itself over a dozen fragmented memories. A smile in a gilded hallway. A hand on her mother’s arm in captivity. A different kind of transaction.
“About seven years ago… he paid for exclusive access. But he’s had his eye on me for two decades. Ever since my mother and I ended up in the Duke’s basement… then Silks… then Blackwood… he followed me everywhere. Paying to use me as he pleased.” She inhaled sharply.
Vincent had finished with Jerek and now stood at the helm, his posture rigid. He’d heard. His knuckles were white on the ship’s wheel. “The ledgers. He’s obsessed with them, too.”
“They don’t just list the children he bought,” Seraphina said, the pieces clicking into a dreadful mosaic. “They list the ones he sired. His investments. He kept track of everything.” She let out a shaky breath. “He wasn’t just retrieving evidence. He was collecting his property.”
The wind bit through their wet clothes. The adrenaline was deserting them, leaving raw fatigue and the chill of the night in its wake. Kya finally lowered the stave. It clattered to the deck.
“You threw his property on a roof,” Callum said quietly. A genuine laugh, rough and surprised, broke from him. “Gods, Sera.”
Vincent didn’t laugh. “He’ll chase the ledgers first. But he’ll remember the insult. He’ll come for you. All of you.”
“Let him try,” Callum said, the levity gone. He moved to the rail, scanning the horizon. “We have his faster ship. Jerek, how’s the arm? Can you hold a heading?”
The old sailor grunted, cradling his bandaged forearm. “Aye. She handles sweet. Where to?”
“The coastline,” Vincent said. “We need to disappear. Find a cove, a fishing village. We need to get off the water before that cutter gets its prize and comes looking.”
“There’s a place,” Jerek muttered. “Smuggler’s drop, north of here. Rock cliffs, a narrow inlet. Can’t see it from the sea unless you know it’s there.”
“Plot the course.”
The mechanics of survival took over. Callum checked the rigging. Vincent studied Jerek’s crude charts. Seraphina herded the children down into the cutter’s actual cabin, which was small but clean and smelled of hemp and pine tar, not despair.
She lit a single lantern. Mia and Leo curled together on a narrow bunk, asleep almost instantly, their exhaustion a mercy. Kya sat on the floor, her back against the wood, staring at nothing.
“You were very brave,” Seraphina said, kneeling beside her.
“I hit his leg,” Kya whispered. “I heard it break.”
“You protected us.”
“He was going to hurt Mia.” Kya’s chin trembled. “The man you… the one you stabbed. Was he…?”
Seraphina pulled her daughter close. She wouldn’t lie. The world had already lied to her too much. “Yes. He would have taken you. He would have hurt Leo. I couldn’t let that happen… and before you wonder, no. He’s not your father.” She looked to the two youngest children. “He is… Mia and Leo’s though.” She whispered it just for Kya.
Kya’s small body went very still against hers. She didn’t cry. She just absorbed the information, her young mind fitting this new, terrible piece into the puzzle of her life. “That man on the other boat,” she said, her voice hollow. “He wanted us back?”
“He wants what he thinks he owns,” Seraphina corrected softly, stroking her hair. “But you are not a thing to be owned. You never were. He has no right over you or me, not even over Leo and Mia. His blood may run in their veins but so does mine. The blood you share with them. That’s what makes us family, and him a stranger.” Even if she was achingly familiar with him.
Up on deck, the wind carried low voices. Callum and Vincent were speaking near the helm, the words torn and scattered.
“—need to move inland, disappear completely. My contacts in the—”
“Your contacts are compromised, Vincent. Your father’s house is probably being turned inside out right now. We go to ground. Just us.”
A long pause. The ship creaked. “And then what? We live in a cave? He has resources, Callum. He’ll turn every port city inside out.”
“Let him. We have the one thing he can’t replicate.” Callum’s voice dropped, but Seraphina caught the words. “We have her. And she’s not staying hidden. She’s going to burn his world down. We just need to get her to the tinder.”
The cabin felt suddenly claustrophobic. The walls, so much sturdier than the hold of Jerek’s boat, seemed to press in. Seraphina stood, her legs protesting. “Stay here,” she whispered to Kya. “Watch them.”
She climbed the short ladder and pushed open the hatch. The clean, cold slap of night air was a relief. The clouds had broken, revealing a smear of stars. Callum and Vincent stood by the wheel, Jerek nodding off beside it, his good hand still on the spokes.
They both turned as she approached. Their faces were shadowed in the lantern light, etched with fatigue and the grim residue of the fight. She went to the rail, gripping the cold, wet wood, and looked out at the dark water.
“How long to this cove?” she asked, not looking at them.
“A few hours before dawn,” Vincent said. His tone was careful, measured. “We should be under the cliffs by first light.”
“Good.” She took a deep breath. The salt air filled her lungs. “When we land, I need a sword. Not a dagger. A proper sword.”
Silence stretched behind her, heavy with unspoken questions.
“Sera,” Callum began, his voice uncharacteristically gentle.
“Don’t,” she cut him off, “I need to be able to properly protect my children. Rhys won’t stop coming for me. He’ll see Kya as an opportunity to have young me all over again. He’ll try to take Leo and Mia, citing them as his property because they have his blood. And… he won’t care that they have it either. He’ll dispose of Leo and use Mia just as he has me, blood be damned. That’s the evil we’re fighting right now.” She laid out the rot of that man plainly, so they understood her resolve. Her need to make sure her children never fall into their hands.
Her words hung in the salt-tinged air, not a request but a declaration of a new reality. The ship’s timbers groaned in the following silence.
Callum was the first to move. He walked to a locker near the helm, his boots firm on the deck. He opened it and pulled out a naval officer’s sword, its scabbard plain and functional. He offered it to her, hilt first. “It’s weighted for a man with longer arms. It’ll feel clumsy at first.”
Seraphina took it. The weight was substantial, foreign. She pulled a few inches of blade free; the steel gleamed dully in the lantern light. “I’ll adapt.”
“I know you will,” he said quietly.
Vincent watched, his arms crossed. “Swordsmanship takes years. What you did in the hold was effective because it was instinctual and close. This,” he nodded at the blade, “is a different language. One misstep and it’s a liability.”
“Then teach me the grammar.” She slid the sword back into the scabbard, the click final. “Starting now.”
A faint, grudging respect flickered in Vincent’s eyes. He shrugged off his own long, rain-sodden coat. “Fine. Stance first. You’re not a soldier on a battlefield. You’re a defender in close quarters. You need balance above all.”
For the next hour, as Jerek guided the cutter through the weakening storm swells and the sky lightened from black to deep charcoal, the deck became a makeshift training ground. Vincent was a relentless, precise instructor. He adjusted her footing, criticized her grip, and had her practice a simple parry and thrust against the empty air until her shoulder burned.
Callum leaned against the mast, observing. He offered corrections in a lighter tone, contrasting Vincent’s severity. “Don’t fight the sword’s weight, ride it. Like the boat on the wave.” He demonstrated a fluid, economic movement. “See? Efficiency. You’re stronger than you think, but you’ll tire faster if you treat it like a club.”
Seraphina’s breath came in ragged gasps. Her muscles, weakened by years of malnutrition and recent trauma, screamed in protest. Every thrust was an effort. She thought of Rhys’s face. She thought of the ledger spinning through the air. She pushed harder.
Kya emerged from the cabin, drawn by the sounds. She watched, her earlier hollowness replaced by a focused intensity. She mimicked her mother’s stance, a small shadow mirroring the movements.
“Your daughter learns quickly,” Vincent noted, pausing to roll a cramp from his own shoulder.
“She’s had to,” Seraphina replied, not breaking her rhythm.
As a band of grey light finally breached the horizon, Jerek called out, his voice rough. “The point. There, to starboard.”
They gathered at the rail. What looked like a solid wall of jagged rock rose from the sea. As they drew closer, a narrow split revealed itself, a secret seam in the cliff face. Jerek guided the cutter expertly, the sails luffing as they slipped into the shadowy inlet. The noise of the open sea faded, replaced by the drip of water on stone and the lap of waves against a hidden pebble beach.
It was a pocket of profound stillness, shrouded in mist. A ramshackle wooden dock, little more than a few rotting posts and planks, extended from the shore.
“Smugglers haven’t used it in years,” Jerek muttered, securing a line. “Too isolated. No road. Just a goat track up the cliff.”
“Perfect,” Callum said, shouldering a pack of scavenged supplies. He jumped onto the dock, testing its stability. It held.
One by one, they disembarked onto the uncertain wood, then onto the cold, smooth stones of the beach. The children were silent, wide-eyed at the enclosing cliffs. The world felt suddenly, overwhelmingly large and small at once.
Vincent helped Jerek secure the cutter to a more solid-looking rock. “We should hide it. Pull the sails, try to camouflage it with driftwood and netting.”
“We’ll need to scout the path,” Callum said, scanning the sheer cliff face. The so-called track was a precarious series of ledges and root-handles. “Make sure it’s viable. Then we sleep in shifts.”
The division of labor was instant, unspoken. Callum began the arduous climb to scout the route. Vincent and Jerek started stripping the cutter of anything identifiable. Seraphina gathered the children on a dry patch of stone beneath an overhang, using the stolen naval coats as blankets.
Mia finally spoke, her voice a tiny thread of sound. “Is that man gone?”
“For now,” Seraphina said, pulling her close. “We’re safe here.”
“I don’t like the quiet,” Leo whispered.
Kya put an arm around him. “It’s better than the shouting.”
From their vantage point, they watched Vincent work. He moved with a focused economy, folding sails, coiling rope. His earlier coldness seemed to have thawed into a weary vigilance. He caught Seraphina looking and gave a short, almost imperceptible nod.
Callum returned an hour later, sliding down the last stretch of the cliff, scattering pebbles. He was breathing hard, but his eyes were alert. “Track’s there. It’s a brutal climb, but it leads to a wooded ridge. No signs of habitation. We can make a camp up there, see for miles.”
“Rest first,” Vincent stated, not asking. “You’re dead on your feet. All of you.”
No one argued. The exhaustion was a physical weight. Under the overhang, huddled together for warmth, they slept a fractured, uneasy sleep. Seraphina drifted off to the sound of Vincent methodically sharpening his sword on a whetstone, a rhythmic, grating promise of vigilance.
She woke to the smell of something cooking. The sun was higher, filtering milky light into the inlet. Callum had a small, smokeless fire going in a ring of stones, heating a pot of thin broth made from hardtack and salted meat. He handed her a cup.
“It’s terrible,” he said cheerfully. “But it’s hot.”
She sipped. He was right. It was awful. It was also the first hot food she’d had in days. “Thank you.”
He sat beside her, his own cup in hand. He watched Vincent, who was now asleep sitting up against a rock, his head tipped back, the whetstone still in his loose grip. “He’s good at this part,” Callum said quietly. “The watchful waiting. The meticulous planning. I’m better at the… introduction.”
“The riot and the fire,” she said, a faint smile touching her lips.
“Exactly. A memorable distraction.” He grew serious then. “What you said last night, about burning his world down. You meant it.”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He finished his broth. “Because Vincent’s right. My contacts are ash. His father’s influence is a cage. The only leverage we have left is testimony. Your testimony. Names, dates, the pattern of it. The ledger was proof, but your memory is a weapon. If we can get you to the right people—”
“The people who matter don’t listen to women like me.”
“They’ll listen to a witness protected by a prince and a duke’s heir,” he countered. “It’s a messy, political play. It’s not a clean sword thrust. It’s digging in the mud. But it’s a start.”
Vincent stirred, his eyes opening instantly, clear and alert. He heard the last part. “It’s the only play. Unless you fancy a life of climbing cliffs and eating Callum’s cooking forever.”
“I’ve had worse offers,” Callum grinned.
The casual exchange, the flicker of normalcy, felt alien and necessary. Seraphina looked from one to the other—the charming strategist, the brooding tactician. Both were here, in this desperate place, because of her. The complexity of that fact settled in her chest, a tangled knot of gratitude, guilt, and something else she couldn’t name.
“We climb today,” Vincent said, standing and stretching the stiffness from his muscles. “We get to high ground. We make a proper plan.”
After the meager meal, they prepared. They hid the cutter as best they could. They divided the remaining supplies into packs. The climb was, as Callum promised, brutal. They went slowly, with Callum leading and Vincent anchoring the rear. Seraphina helped Leo and Mia, while Kya climbed with a fierce, stubborn independence that mirrored her own.
Halfway up, Seraphina’s foot slipped on a mossy stone. Scrabbling for purchase, her pack shifted, threatening to pull her backward. A hand clamped onto her forearm from above—Callum. Another pressed firmly against the small of her back, steadying her—Vincent, from below.
“I’ve got you,” Callum said, pulling.
“Step left,” Vincent instructed, his voice calm.
For a suspended moment, she was held between their strength again, not in the dark hold, but against the open sky. She found her footing. They continued the climb without another word.
They reached the wooded ridge as the afternoon sun slanted through the pines. The view was staggering. They could see the endless expanse of the sea, the jagged coastline, and the faint, dirty smudge that was the distant city of Silver Keep. They were free, and they were exposed.
Callum dropped his pack with a sigh. “Home sweet home.”
Vincent was already scanning the horizon with a spyglass taken from the cutter. He went very still. “Jerek.”
The old sailor hobbled over. Vincent handed him the glass and pointed. Jerek looked, spat on the ground. “Aye. That’s her. Clean lines. Navy cutter.”
Seraphina’s blood went cold. “Is it…?”
“Can’t see the roof from here,” Vincent said, his voice taut. “But it’s on a search pattern. Moving slowly along the coast. Looking.”
Rhys had his ledgers back. And now he was looking for his missing property.
The respite was over. The quiet cove below was no longer a sanctuary. It was a trap waiting to be sprung.
Callum met Seraphina’s eyes, then Vincent’s. The lightheartedness was gone, stripped away by the distant speck on the water. “We move deeper into the woods. Now. We find a defensible position.” He glanced at the sword now strapped awkwardly to Seraphina’s pack. “Lesson two starts tonight. No more theory.”
The momentum shifted, coiled tight once more. They turned their backs on the sea and vanished into the green, shadowed silence of the trees, the hunter’s ship a silent punctuation mark on the horizon behind them.