Lost at Sea Bk. 02 Ch. 14

Will was surprised. He'd heard Bella talk about how bad hexes were before. "I thought you didn't hex people."

"I don't, usually. It's one of those things the Magistrate really frowns on, but against pirates trying to kill us I'm willing to bend the rules," Bella smiled. She finished crawling around and drawing the second circle as Will tied the mirror to the mast. Inside the mirror Will heard Tonya arrive.

"Sorry it took me so long, I really needed to get cleaned up. What's going on?" Bella's apprentice asked.

"They're being chased by pirates. Bella is going to use the mirror as an energy source to hex them, so we have to replenish the mirror from this side," Janie explained. "Help me draw this circle."

"Woah. Alright. What's he doing here?" Tonya asked.

"Helping," Caine replied.

"You look like you're just sitting there drinking," Tonya snarked.

"That's how I usually help," Caine shrugged.

"Good point," Tonya conceded as she got down on her hands and knees to help draw a circle.

"You should just get a rug made," Caine suggested. "Would save you a lot of time drawing on the ground."

"Woah," Tonya said, surprised. "Bella, would that work?"

"What?" Bella called from the other side. She was only about ten feet away, but the ship and weather were noisy.

"A rug! A big circular rug, woven as a spellbinding circle!" Tonya called from closer to the mirror. "Would that work?"

"I don't know," Bella answered. "I'll think it through later."

Will finished roping the mirror to the mast. Water steadily dripped off the tip of his tricorn hat. The rain was still slow and heavy, but it was picking up. "What now?" he asked Bella.

The naked witch was finishing up the second circle. "I'm going to run through my whole supply of paint on this," she muttered. "Three more circles. Smaller, in a stack. One around the mast and the mirror, one in front of it, and one behind it." She shortened the protractor rope and started the smaller circle around the mast.

"This is a lot more complex than things I've seen you do before," Will said.

"It wasn't my original plan to do things this way. I'm improvising a bit, but I think it will work well. It's probably hard to tell, but there's a lot of things that are coming together in very lucky ways right now."

Will was suddenly very aware of his own equilibrium. Usually that was where he first noticed when his curse might be kicking in. It was automatic. He'd developed a habit of mentally checking in with his own balance anytime things seemed strange. It was a habit that grounded him and helped him stay focused when things started getting out of hand. Things definitely seemed like they were headed toward out of hand, and Bella's talk of luck reminded him far too much of the conversation he'd just had about his curse with Jack.. It was possible that Jack was wrong, but his instincts told him that she was onto something. He couldn't help but feel suspicious of anything involving luck now.

The deck was shifting and the wind was blowing too much for him to notice if he was feeling off kilter. The feeling of the curse shifting things was often subtle, and in the midst of a storm he just couldn't tell.

Will looked out into the black in the direction the ship hunting them had last been spotted, wondering if purposefully trying to engage his curse might have had consequences he couldn't see or feel yet. Or maybe he just had a guilty conscience.

"I hope you're right."

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Lynch opened the door and Jack barged in without any kind of explanation. Lynch stopped her with a stiff arm, but she knocked it aside and kept moving. He reached for her again, but Morant stopped him with a raised hand. Jack gave Lynch a sharp look and finished walking into the room.

"What is it?" Morant asked. He finished buttoning his expensive black coat over his shirt and vest. "A storm?"

"And a ship. We're being chased, and headed into the storm to escape," Jack said quickly.

Lord Morant looked exasperated but largely unconcerned. "I will remain here. Mister Lynch, help see to the defense of the ship." Lynch nodded and headed to a large chest against the wall and opened it.

Jack left, pulling the door shut behind her. She crossed the hold to her own cabin and walked in to find Doctor Kalfou still sleeping.

"Wake up, Doc," she said loudly Doctor Kalfou's face scrunched in discomfort. She rolled her head to the side and cracked an eye. The lanterns shone through the doorway casting Jack in silhouette.

"What?" the doctor asked unhappily.

"We're headed into a storm and being chased by pirates," Jack turned up the lantern on the wall, brightening the room.

"What?" The doctor sat up quickly, fully awake now, squinting and using her hand to shield her eyes from the sudden light.

"Get dressed, arm yourself, and get up top. There's probably going to be wounded before the night's over." Jack opened up her footlocker and began rifling through it.

Doctor Kalfou tossed back her covers and pulled her own locker out from beneath her bed. "Where does the ship receive wounded?" she asked, quickly shimmying into her trousers.

"No idea. Ask one of the Norths," Jack took off her belt and began sliding pouches, holsters and sheaths onto it one by one. She snapped a shoulder strap onto it and put the entire thing on again. The strap ran across her body from left hip to right shoulder, helping to distribute the added weight of the two pistols that now rode her left hip. The sheath of her machete ran lengthwise across the small of her back. She hefted her bulky firearm, settling its sling over her shoulder, and closed her footlocker.

Doctor Kalfou finished pulling on her boots and headed out the door at a run. Jack took a calming breath. "Quinn, I need you."

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Sailing into a storm, at night, at full sail was incredibly dangerous. The swabs were all tied in to the masts and assigned hauling duties. They had ahold of this lines running to the corners of the sails and were pulling under the direction of Mister Reeve. The sails had to be tilted properly to help steer and compensate for the wind, and also just to keep the gusts from capsizing them. Without the swabs helping the riggers would have had no hope of keeping the sails under control. The crew was in a tug-of-war with a thunderhead.

Lightning lit the night again. Will craned his neck around behind him and waited, hoping for another to follow. It did, right as the thunder from the first rolled. He could make out the black silhouette of the other ship. It loomed much larger in the distance than he'd hoped.

"Ship astern, due south!" came the call from above.

"She's gaining, captain," Will called over the storm.

"Gaining, aye!" Vex called behind her, acknowledging him. They couldn't really see each other because of the arrangement Bella had put Will in.

He was sitting in a chair that they had tied and nailed to the deck. Ropes were pulled tight across his lap, tying him to the chair so the waves wouldn't toss him out of it. The tabletop was sitting across his thighs. It was wet, but the glass top had been smartly made to keep water from getting to the maps beneath. The lantern from the mast in front of him was more than enough to see by. He couldn't move much, but he didn't need to for his job. Tucked into his belt was a small silver hand mirror that Bella had given him. He had no idea what it was for, but she'd been very clear that he needed to keep it with him, and keep it safe.

He had to lean to the side to see around the mast in order to have a clear line of sight to Bella. She was in another circle, like his. The pattern she'd drawn was complex. There were three circles in a line. He was in the southernmost one, the center circle held the mirror, and the mizzenmast, the northern smaller circle was where Bella knelt. Around those three circles were the two larger circles she had drawn first. In the gap between the two larger circles she'd drawn a number of symbols Will didn't recognize. The whole things had taken her almost all her paint.

"So, what do I need to do, Bella?" he called around the mast.

"Nothing! Just don't leave your circle! If your curse starts feeling strange, ignore it!" Bella called back.

"Usually if I do that, bad things happen!" he replied.

"I know!" Bella called. "I'm trying to use that!"

"What?!" Will was suddenly nervous.

"It's a fortune hex!" Bella called back.

"Report!" Captain Vex called out.

"Bosun!" Danica called.

"All present!" Reeve boomed

"Rigging!" Danica called again.

"All present!" Lace shouted down.

"Quarters!" Danica continued.

Up from the hold came Mister North's voice. "All secure! Passengers accounted for!"

Danica came up the stairs, holding the rail as the winds and waves buffeted her. "We're ready, Captain. Miss Hunter, Mister Quinn, Mister Lynch, and the rest of Lord Morant's retinue are standing by below decks to help repel boarders should it come to that. I have Doctor Kalfou in your quarters preparing to receive wounded."

"The crew fully armed?" Captain Vex asked.

"Almost. The crew that came up early to respond to the storm didn't bring weapons with them. We need to run weapons up to the riggers. Other than that, we're ready for a fight," Danica said.

"I want Colin here with me. You head to the prow," Captain Vex said, her eyes on the black horizon, focused in concentration.

"Aye," Danica said curtly and headed back down the steps as quickly as she could safely go.

The winds and rain were picking up. Belita could feel the ship's timbers beneath her feet and the straining of the wheel against the hands. Her ship was protesting the treatment she was getting. Captain Vex spared a glance over her shoulder, knowing she wouldn't see anything in the blackness but giving into the impulse anyway.

"Sails to half!" she barked.

"Sails to half! Sails to half!" came the echoing relay of acknowledgements from Reeve and Webber.

It was extremely dangerous to head into a storm under sail, but they needed the extra distance from their pursuers. It was a risk that built the more the storm built and the deeper in the ship got. Belita was relying on the ship itself to tell her when things were getting to be more than she could handle. Reducing the sail might get them caught, but it wouldn't matter if they snapped a mast or capsized first.

The riggers worked quickly, hauling up the lower sail beams and re-tying the lines to secure the sails at the halfway point. Suddenly Belita was wishing they'd been in a triangular sail configuration rather than square-rigged. Square sails had a higher top speed, but required more sailors to man and weren't as quick to be adjusted. Triangular sails were great for navigating coastlines and tacking. They were more maneuverable, which is what Captain Vex needed most right now.

Speed was vitally important, but she could already tell that this race wasn't going to be about speed in the end. All speed did was delay the inevitable. In spite of the grim thought her heart was pounding with excitement. A determined smile crept across her face and she patted the ship's wheel encouragingly.

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Caine and Janie looked at each other with identical expressions of surprise and concern on their faces.

"No," Caine said. Janie looked relieved.

"Why the hell not!?" Tonya barked, throwing her hands up. She'd just finished painting the transfer sigil on her chest and was ready to get started. She hadn't expected Caine and Janie to suddenly become prudes.

"Because she doesn't want to," Caine said simply.

"We have to fuel this somehow! I can't do it all myself," Tonya snapped, frustrated.

"I shouldn't even be agreeing to have sex with you," Caine said archly.

"What? Why? I thought you liked me," Tonya said, not understanding the reluctance the other two were displaying at all.

"I do. You're a good kid," Caine said with a shrug. "You're just... way too young for me."

Tonya yanked her dress down and let the entire thing pool on the ground. "Does this look like the body of a kid to you?" she said angrily. She cocked one rounded hip and rested her hand on it saucily. She had small, pert breasts and a round face that made her look younger than she probably was, but the rest of her body was unmistakably adult.

Caine sighed. "I don't know.... That's the problem. I don't know and neither do you."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Tonya demanded. "You think I don't know if I'm a kid or not?"

"How old are you?" Caine asked.

"Old enough," Tonya said through clenched teeth, knowing exactly where this was going.

"Really? I thought you didn't know how old you were," Caine said, not letting the subject go.

"I don't! I didn't even learn to count until after I started my first moon-cycle," Tonya said defensively. "We went over all of this when Chance hired me. Just because I look young doesn't mean I am. I might be older than Janie!"

Caine raised an eyebrow. "Or you might be fifteen. That's the problem. We have no way of knowing."

"So what!?" Tonya snapped. "I fuck people for a living, Caine! I've been doing it for almost two years! If I was adult enough then, I'm sure as hell adult enough now!"

Caine sighed. "Yeah, I know. It just feels wrong, like I might be taking advantage of you. I'm old. Even if you are twenty five, that's probably still too young for me."

"Oh you asshole," Tonya stared flatly. "I should-"

"Stop," Janie said.

The arguing pair turned to look at her, surprised and curious.

"This is not the time," she continued. "Tonya, I can help you find out how old you are. Not now. It will take time we don't have. Later. If you want to know, I can help you. Right now we have more important things to focus on. Caine, if you don't have a problem with her profession in the abstract, you shouldn't have one now. It's fine if you just aren't interested, but it isn't fine to treat her like a child to give yourself an excuse to back out."

"Fine," Tonya agreed. "So are we going to do this or not?" she demanded of Caine.

Caine looked conflicted.

"The other option is Janie, and you two just said no to that!" Tonya threw up her hands. "It's just sex, why is this so damn difficult?"

"There's also you and Tonya. You two don't actually need me for this," Caine said, trying to change the focus off of him.

"Bella asked you to be here," Janie said. "I don't understand it either, but I assume you do."

"Yeah. I do. She's guessing about something. She's not quite right, but she's close enough that I can't just leave," Caine said with a roll of his eyes.

"What the hell does that mean?" Tonya said, still grumpy.

"It means I can help. I just didn't think I was going to have to have sex with someone to do it," Caine sighed.

"Oh, you poor thing. Gotta have sex to help a friend. Poor you," Tonya snarked.

Caine looked pensive, then let out a small sigh. "Alright, good point."

"Is sex the only way to do this?" Janie asked.

"It's the only way I know how to do it," Tonya shrugged. "Do you know another way?"

"Prayer?" Janie answered. "That's the way I learned."

Tonya laughed. "I wouldn't even know where to start."

"I didn't know how to transfer energy through sex until recently. You could both learn," Janie shrugged. "Prayer isn't very difficult, it just takes longer. There are certainly fewer distractions."

"No," Caine said in the same firm, flat tone he'd used earlier.

Now it was Janie's turn to look confused and upset. "Why not?"

"Because I said no," Caine repeated. "We'll do it Tonya's way."

Tonya and Janie shared a confused look, then Tonya shrugged and turned to face Caine with a grin. She sauntered towards him. "C'mere old man."

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Doctor Kalfou lurched and tripped, stumbling into the wall of the stairwell and dropping the large armload of supplies she'd been trying to carry. "Dammit," she cursed as the small boxed and rolls of fabric tumbled down the steps. Getting her balance under her, she headed back down the stairs again.

Jack and Quinn came out of the door to their cabin. Jack spotted Friday's trouble and trotted over to help. Quinn followed at a more measured pace. As the doctor reached the bottom of the steps again, Jack handed a bunch of stuff she'd picked up over. "Where are you headed?" Jack asked.

"The Captain's cabin," Friday answered.

"Go ahead," Jack said. "We'll pick up the rest and follow you."

Doctor Kalfou nodded and headed up the stairs. The buffeting storm made everything more difficult. She wasn't used to walking while the whole ship was jostling back and forth. Just going up the stairs tossed her from one wall to the other more than once. She didn't know how the sailors managed. They barely seemed bothered by the rolling of the ship at all. Come to think of it, neither did Quinn. Jack at least had the decency to stumble a little bit, but Quinn didn't seem like he was even aware the ship was moving. She made her way across the deck, squinting against the rain, and threw open the door to Captain Vex's room. She was surprised at how spacious it was. Ship's cabins were usually cramped, but the captain had clearly spared no expense on her own quarters. It was an office, a den, and a bedroom all in one. The wall display of delicate cups and plates seemed strange to the Doctor, given wat she knew of the Captain. An impressively large bed dominated the center of the back wall, which seemed quite a bit more in keeping with the Captain's personality. Doctor Kalfou unceremoniously dumped the armload of old sail patches, small cases of bottles and bandages, and other supplies onto the floor.

Jack came into the room and followed suit, adding the supplies she and Quinn carried to Kalfou's pile. "Need help?" Jack asked.

"Not needed elsewhere, you?" Doctor Kalfou asked.

"If we get boarded we will be, but until then I'm supposed to stay safe and out of the way," Jack shrugged. "Here seems better than our cabin. Closer to the action, and I might at least be able to help somewhat before any fighting starts."

"Know anything about medicine, you?" the Doctor asked.

"Just basic field first aid," Jack said. "I've had to stitch people up once or twice. They didn't get infections, so I figure I did alright."

"Good enough," Doctor Kalfou nodded. "We need to prep for wounded. Get all the blankets off the bed and shove them underneath it. Take the big sail cloth and fold it a few times, then stretch it over the bed. Tie it off to the posts to keep it in place. That is where we work."

Jack and Quinn took orders well. In short order the captain's cabin was converted into a makeshift hospital room. Doctor Kalfou was not looking forward to the idea of having to do triage in a storm, but here in the captain's cabin, at the back of the ship, the jostling and rolling of the ship was as minimal as it could be. She was thrilled to discover the water pump. Sea water was not as good as water that had been boiled clean but the salt brine was not a terrible method of cleansing wounds. In the short term, it would be fine. Doing the initial wash with sea water and finishing with a splash of alcohol would get any wound clean enough.

"Ready here, we," Friday said once they were as prepared as they were able to get. "Who I should talk to about how I want to receive patients?"

"Reeve, the Bosun," Jack said. "The first mate and the Captain should know your system too, in case something happens to Reeve."

"Thank you. Will speak with them, I," Doctor Kalfou nodded. She headed for the door.

"Quinn, go with her. Help her keep her feet under her," Jack said.

Quinn followed without a word, offering the doctor his arm. She was a bit confused, but took it. Immediately she noticed that holding onto him was like having a handrail.