The Wolves threw their packs into the dink and rolled into the little boat. It settled in the water appreciably with their added weight.
Valentine looked into the stern, at the figure with the paddle. What he had thought was a young boy was in fact a young woman dressed in shapeless white canvas. She had a round face and merry eyes, looking at her passengers over freckled cheekbones.
"Nice night, eh, boys? Captain Doss sends her compliments to the representatives of the OzarkFreeTerritory and invites you aboard the yawl White Lightning," she said, flashing an impressive set of teeth.
"The what White Lightning?" Valentine asked.
"Yawl," she repeated. "You know nothing of ships, soldier?"
"Not much," Valentine admitted.
"It's a little thing, but seaworthy as a porpoise. A ship not very different from ours made it around the world with only a single man on board. Over a hundred years ago, that was."
"Good to see you again... Teri, is it?" Harper said, contemplating his soaked deerskin breeches.
"I thought you looked familiar. Aaron... no, Randall Harper. Met you twice before, I recall. But I didn't see you this spring."
"I had the overland route. I don't want it again," Harper explained.
"Well, the captain will be glad to see you. So who's this with you?"
"Lt. David Valentine. He hails from Minnesota."
She reached over to shake Valentine's hand. "Pleased to know you, Lieutenant. Teri Silvertongue, first mate of the White Lightning. Will it be possible for you gentlemen to be joining us as guests this lovely evening?"
"I can't think of anything I'd like more, Miss Silver-tongue," Valentine said, imitating her courteous phraseology. He wondered if Silvertongue was a nickname.
"We go by Mr. in the flotilla, man or woman," Silvertongue corrected. "Just as you do in the Wolves. Will you take an oar, sir?"
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Silvertongue. Sergeant Harper here didn't tell me the ship had a female crew, let alone how you expected to be addressed. Likes to keep a good thing to himself, I guess," Valentine explained, shooting a glance at Harper. He paddled for the white blob outside the gentle surf.
"Oh, there's plenty of men in the Flotilla," Silvertongue explained. "The commodore of our fleet just has a soft spot in her heart for any woman with a sad tale. It's the only soft spot she has; the woman has steel in her backbone and flint in her heart in all other matters excepting her 'poor foundlings," as she calls us. But yes, it's three women on the Lightning. But it beats life on land. The Capos just want us for breeding stock, and their gunbelt lackeys seem to think they have the right to get the job started on any girl who tickles their fancy."
"Capos?" Valentine asked.
"That's what we call the Reapers out east, handsome boy."
The dinghy reached the ship, and Valentine got a good look at the White Lightning. Her lines had kind of an off-balanced beauty, with an oversize central mast set well forward and a smaller, secondary mast projecting from far astern.
Captain Doss wore a smart white semi-uniform to greet her guests. The captain had beautiful, dusky skin and the angular features of a storybook pirate queen. Her short black hair matched even Valentine's own mane in its glossy sheen.
A third woman, who helped Valentine and Harper into the White Lightning, stood over six feet tall and had the long, graceful limbs of a ballerina. "Give me the bags up," she said perfunctorily, and Valentine realized he had heard a foreign accent for the first time in his life.
Once on board, the White Lightning seemed smaller than it had looked from the dinghy. It was wide-waisted; the top of what was obviously the cabin area filled the middle third of the ship. It had a wheel to steer it-someone had spent a lot of hours carving and polishing the spokes-placed in front of the rear mast. All the woodwork, save the planks of the deck and the decorative wheel, was painted a uniform light gray.
The captain introduced her crew. "You've met my first mate, Mr. Silvertongue. My second mate, who works so hard I don't need any more crew, is Eva Stepanicz. She crossed the Atlantic four round trips before ending up in the Lakes."
"It will be more times, once I have goods enough for my own ship," she said.
"You mean gold enough?" Harper asked.
"No, sir. Goods. In Riga is agent of tradings, who pays most for paintings brought back from America. I anf here collecting arts."
The captain smiled. "It's hard not to indulge someone so determined. And she's a hard bargainer. I don't know a Picasso from an espresso, but I think our Mr. Stepanicz has enough to start a gallery."
"But I'm forgetting my manners," Harper said, reaching into his haversack. "Captain, compliments of my last trip through Tennessee," he said, handing over a pair of elabo-rately wrapped and sealed bottles of liquor. In the muted light, Valentine couldn't read the black labels, but they looked authentic.
"Sergeant Harper, you just bought us a new coat of paint, and maybe some standing rigging. My thanks to you, sir."