Read My Lord and Spymaster for Free Online

fragile cargo. Papa buys a bale or two on the docks at Valletta, last thing, and we toss them on top of . . .

    Then it was gone. The image of the dock at Valletta rippled into pieces and blew away, taking Papa with it. There was something she needed to do for Papa. Something important. She had to . . .

    Chaos ani>I="3">Chd spinning pain in her head. Nothing else. She couldn’t think.

    She looked down. Her toes peeked out the bottom of the blanket, pink and defenseless and silly-looking. “I don’t remember how I got here.”

    “I carried you in after the wagon hit you. Let me get you some light. It’s getting dark early.”

    I got hit by a wagon? That’s a fool’s trick. Doesn’t sound like me, somehow. She watched him as he walked across the cabin, taking lanterns with him. It hurt like needles to move her eyes. They hurt when she closed them, too. Sometimes you only have bad choices. Lazarus used to say that to me.

    When the Captain passed the squares of the windows, she saw him in outline against the gray outside.

    That joggled loose another little moment.

    He had his back to me and he was holding a knife. Men came spewing out of the Dark like demons. He put himself between me and those men . . .

    “I was out . . . in that.” She looked at the rain and fog outside the window. “With you. And you killed someone.”

    “There was a fight.” He set the lanterns on the chart table. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. You can sort everything out when your head doesn’t ache.”

    He’s a killer, then. I know too many killers.

    He’d protected her, in some shadowy fight in the fog. She was sure of it. Maybe that was why he didn’t scare her as much as he should have. She watched him make fire, sheltering the tinder with his hand. Big hands, he had. He was substantial in general, and being on shipboard made it obvious. A man his size filled up the space, bulkhead to hull, deck to overhead.

    He blew on the spark and got the candle lit. All the while he was taking quick glances in her direction. Assessing. Seeing whether she was about to panic or scream or run. She might have, if her head hurt less. Easier to panic when your head didn’t hurt.

    He hooked one lantern up over the chart table. It swung when he let it loose. Bright and shadow skittered around the cabin. He walked toward her, holding the other lantern, and he bulged out in his breeches, randy as a stallion.

    No.

    Fear ran down her like water. For the first time since she’d opened her eyes, she was crawly skinned frightened. Cold with it. Shocked and sick with it.

    She darted her eyes away and pretended she didn’t see. Oh, she was looking at the chart table. She was staring at the carpet on the deck. But she didn’t fool him. He pulled up, halfway across the cabin, just stood still, and watched her.

    She folded up small, hiding under the blanket.

    “Stop that,” he said sharp-like.

    Easing the blanket with her, she edged back farther in the bunk. No escamakbunk. Npe that way. The door was on the other side of the cabin. Past him. No escape there, either.

    “Don’t be a idiot.” He looked annoyed.

    A flash of memory struck. The Captain yelled, his face distorted with rage and contempt. “Run from me.”

    She was in his cabin. No way out. The world got wavery at the edges. I am in so much trouble.

    He started toward her, across the cabin, deliberate and slow, like piled-up thunderheads approaching at sea. She jerked the blanket and scuttled backwards on the bed, rucking up the covers till she slammed against the portside hull. Just a startling amount of useless, that was.

    He came to the side of the bed. He hung up the lantern on the hook in the overhead and stood there scowling. “Would you calm down? I’m not going to lay a hand on you.”

    Her memory was full of dark patches of pain and fighting and trying to run. Anything could have happened to her, and she wouldn’t remember. “Maybe you already have.”

    “You