Page 128 of A Flash of Golden Fire

“Oh yes,” Captain Martin spoke overtop of Mr Silk, whilst Duncan regarded me with visible horror. “Terrible business. But ’twas necessary, or we would all have perished.”

He glanced at me with a look on his face I’d never seen there before—sheepish and deceptive.

What the fuck was going on?

I glanced at Domingo, who stood near to Squid by the mizzenmast. Neither of them looked at me, and I wondered what was suddenly so fascinating about the wooden planks at their feet.

“Necessary?” Duncan spoke up now, his voice rough from dehydration, no doubt. “Truly? Necessary to demolish the entire town of Cayonne?”

Hushed silence followed. The captain coughed, his cheeks red with embarrassment.

Hillier spoke up, “No, no. Not as bad as that,” he said, looking at the captain and then at me.

Captain Martin got a hold of himself and smiled, the way he did when he was trying to appease an enemy. “Please tell me there’s a bottle of rum for your captain? And his right-hand man, of course—” He flourished a hand at me. “—who saved us all from certain death, so many times! To Simon White! Hip, hip, hooray!”

Hanes passed him a bottle, and he lifted it high, repeating the chant that no one took up on my behalf.

“Hip, hip, hooray!” he said, gazing about him with a silent entreaty.

Then the crew took up the chant with feigned enthusiasm, and everyone acted as if nothing had happened.

“What is going on?” I asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

Nobody heard me, of course. I watched the crew dance and jig and tipple. Dinesh spoke with put-upon joviality with a still wary and confused Silk and Duncan, and so I shouted at the top of my lungs.

“What the fuck is going on!”

Everyone heard me. Domingo and Squid looked at me now, their eyes wide.

And the rest, as a group, stopped celebrating and stared at the deck as if they wanted the boards to swallow them up. I caught a few looks of abject terror at my outburst. But most didn’t even see me. A few glanced at the captain with questions in their eyes, then looked down again.

And Captain Martin watched me with the saddest look in his eyes—as if I’d just learned I had a horrible disease and was on my deathbed.

“What the fuck is wrong with everyone?” I asked Captain Martin, not in a loud or demanding way, but in genuine bafflement.

“Just tell him,” Hillier said, sounding weary and forlorn.

“Aye. You’ve got to,” Mr Guthrie agreed, whilst Squid came through and stood at my side.

Domingo joined him and reached for my hand. I let him wrap my fingers with his because I’d wager whatever truth was about to be revealed was going to be hard to hear.

“Tell me what?” I asked, quaking to hear the secret.

What had I done at Cayonne? What had they not told me?

“Let’s go to my rooms,” Captain Martin said in a gentle voice.

“No. Tell me here. Now.”

Captain Martin looked at Hillier, who spoke next, as Dinesh couldn’t get the words out.

“That storm you called up to save all of us, when you fell into the sea and came up and clutched onto the skiff…”

I nodded. I remembered that part. I repeated what they’d told me: “I burned the docks. That’s what the captain said. I burned the docks.”

Maybe if I kept saying the words, they would be the truth, not what they were about to tell me.

Domingo squeezed my hand as Hillier kept talking. Dinesh looked at the boards of theArrow’sdeck in silent regret.

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