Sonja Nehalenniasdóttir is finally free. After a daring escape from servitude and a sharp rise to first mate of the North Sea's most notorious pirate crew, she's survived punishing storms, several double crosses, and even diffused a mutiny against t...
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SAILS OF WRATH AND SILVER ✵ I. ——————————————————
Anthonius Strijk sensed storms like sharks detected drops of blood in open water. A lifetime at sea had taught him to read the signs: the bristling of the wind against the sails, the hiss of the ready-to-roil sea, the gathering gloom of distant clouds.
Before rough seas turned high, he was on the deck of Nehalennia's Desire preparing his officers for the carnage to come. Reef the main sail. Tie down any and all cargo heavy enough to crush bone or sharp enough to poke an eye. Send the two most trusted helmsmen to man the whipstaff. Two mates dared to defy him, muttering about the apparent calmness of the seas. The look he shot them was like the blade of a cutlass: sharp, steely, cold. The tasks he handed out were far duller; one to fill any cracks with old rope and tar, the other to assemble a crew worthy of manning the bilge pump.
However, Strijk hadn't bothered to give Sonja, his quartermaster and first mate, her own order. While she couldn't make as much sense of the sea, she could read him like the Van den Vondel poetry she kept in her pack. He'd seen the storm's signs, and she'd taken the foreboding in his face as her queue to make Mister Mikkelsen adjust course.
Sonja was still below deck when a flash of distant lightning answered the first whip of wind. She kept her finger on the trigger of her pistol, the barrel flush against Mikkelsen's temple. As he consulted his compass and observation notes, she glanced over his shoulder. Mikkelsen's charts were in his native Danish, rendering them incomprehensible. Sonja read and spoke Dutch, understood the words of the Danes and Norwegians, but couldn't produce any one language cleanly or in her own hand. Thankfully, the meaning of a pistol was universal, and Mikkelsen seemed to understand she was holding him to the demands of her captain and crew.
Still, Sonja didn't trust him carry out orders. He was a man who happened to be a head and a half taller than her. That was enough of an advantage. When he took off his eyeglasses and rose as if ready to present to Strijk, she shoved him back into the chair to rob him of it.
"You report to me, and I report to the captain," she said, her voice honeyed but hard around the edges like quartz. "What's the way of it?"
"I cannot determine a—"
Sonja pressed the pistol deeper into his temple, forcing his head to one side. "Don't lie to me, danske."
"Never, Miss Sonja."
"Nehalenniasdóttir."
"Miss Nehalenniasdóttir," he corrected with a curt nod.
Her cobbled together surname always seemed to evade him. Few people south of the Faroes bore the suffix, and far fewer claimed to be the daughter of a sea goddess.
"While I cannot determine Nehalennia's precise position, I've plotted the rest of her course: if Captain Strijk keeps due west, he'll reach the western coast of Denmark by sunrise."
