Steel

Henry, however, was coming toward her from the pile of ship stores that had been brought onto the beach while the Diana was careened. He held a sword in each hand.

She smiled for the first time in what must have been weeks.

They stood face-to-face, en garde. Jill kept shifting her feet in the soft sand, and nervously rearranging her hold on the grip. Fidgeting. A beginner’s mistake. She could feel every one of the muscles in her arm. She watched Henry, expecting him to jump at her, and wondering if she’d be able to do anything but scramble out of the way. Was she out of practice or just nervous?

“You’ve only ever used practice swords. Baited blades. Right?”

She nodded.

“You’ve got to stand tall. You’ve got to be just as bold with a real sword as you are in practice.”

She wanted to say that she was bold, she was confident, she knew how to use a sword. But he was right—the sharp edge made her cautious. He’d seen her fidgeting, nervous. While this might be practice, if she screwed up she’d slice him open. He could slice her open without meaning to. She didn’t know that she trusted him not to slice her open by accident. She was pretty sure she didn’t trust herself not to screw up.

At least they had a doctor on hand.

“Really,” he said, “all you’ve got to do is the same things you’ve always done, but with live steel in your hands. You may not think there’d be any difference, but there is. It makes you careful. Now, let’s start with parrying.”

He didn’t jump at her, didn’t tease her. He drilled with her, slowly and carefully. Straightening his arm, he thrust his rapier toward her, not coming close enough to strike. She could parry—blocking his blade with her own as she took a short step back. Then r

iposting—thrusting toward him while his sword was off target. Again, not coming close enough to strike. She felt stupid, like a beginner starting all over again. But he was right; this was a different sword, and she needed to retrain her muscles. The only way to do that was to practice the basic moves. Learning how the sword felt, learning how to use it, practicing so that it would go where she guided it, stop when she wanted it to stop. Strike when she wanted it to strike and not a moment later.

They advanced and retreated, following one another back and forth across the beach, kicking up sand as they went, until she wasn’t sure who was leading and who was following, whether he was directing the drill or she was. They both pretended to attack; they both blocked. She learned to anticipate and evade; then he’d step it up a notch. They were nearly moving at speed. But the precision, the control of their movements—it never stopped being practice—calmed her. This, she knew. Her muscles understood it more than scrubbing decks and hulls. Her mind forgot about being on an island in the middle of the ocean, a million miles from everything, the strangeness, the slave ship—this whole world.

Her skin grew sticky with sweat, her hair sticking to it, so that she had to pause to wipe her face on her sleeve. She’d have rather not stopped at all.

She backed off and lowered her sword to signal the break. Chest working as she caught her breath, she scrubbed her cheeks on her shoulder. She smelled like salt and sweat and badly needed a shower—not that she’d seen a real shower in weeks.

Henry had bent over, letting his sword hang loose in his hand and leaning on his knees. His mouth was open in a wide grin, and he had to pause between words. “That’s bloody brilliant. Been ages since anyone’s given me a go like that!”

People were shouting. They’d collected an audience. Sailors had gathered in a circle around where Jill and Henry had been practicing. Now that the fighters looked up, their audience was raising fists and voices, cheering, like they’d been putting on a show.

“How’s that, eh? They think you’re pretty good!” Henry straightened and slapped a hand on her shoulder. She was so tired she nearly fell over, but she managed a smile.

Captain Cooper had moved to a place at the front of the crowd and seemed to study her with a narrowed gaze. Jill couldn’t tell if she approved or not. Then Cooper turned back, walked away, and people closed in behind her.

Someone put a mug in Jill’s hand. She could smell it without bringing it to her face—rum, of course, mixed with something fruity, lime juice maybe. She’d rather have had a bottle of Gatorade, but she drank it anyway. At least she’d be getting some vitamins.

After that, in addition to working on the ship, Jill and Henry practiced every day. He taught her new tricks—like not fighting in a straight line. “In a real fight,” he said, “You’re not going to stand in the same place. Your opponent won’t stand in the same place while you move back and forth like toys. You’ve got to go ’round, ducking and dodging. You might be on sand or rock or the deck of a sinking ship. You’ve got to go anywhere.” He sprang to the top of a barrel, balancing there, nearly causing her heart to stop because he was only a step away from falling. But he didn’t. He cut the air a couple of times, and sprang away to a set of crates, which he used as a shield. “This is real fighting!” he said, laughing.

As if all the hundreds of bouts she’d fought at her fencing tournaments weren’t real. But he was right; they weren’t. A fight for a medal wasn’t anything like a fight for life and death. Until now, all her fights had referees and rules about scoring, about what parts of the body you could hit. All with baited blades with no edge. Here, their only spectators were pirates hoping to see blood.

Then he gave her a dagger and showed her how to fight with two weapons at once.

“Where did you learn all this?” she asked him. They’d taken a break, rinsing off in the waves before sitting in the shade. Chores waited for them; she was delaying the inevitable.

“Now, that’s a story,” he said, leaning against one of the stacked barrels. “It was a pair of Englishmen, naval officers stationed at the fort at Port Royal. They did it as a joke at first, thinking, here’s this scrawny mulatto kid hanging about, wants to play with swords. Thing is, they didn’t expect me to keep coming back for more. I found myself a rapier—”

“Found, or stole?” Jill said, lips curled in a smile.

He tipped his head, conceding the point. “All right, I acquired one. Learned as much as I could convince them to teach me. Practiced all I could. Started picking fights. I knew I was getting good when people started placing bets on me. Then I put to sea thinking I could find my fortune, like lots of blokes. Haven’t done too badly, I think. I’m not starving and I’m not in chains.”

Those were pretty low standards, Jill thought. But around here they didn’t exactly have the Olympics to aspire to. “And that’s it? You’re a pirate for the rest of your life? Fight duels until you go up against someone better than you?”

“I just have to make sure that never happens, right?” he said.

A fraction of a second, she thought. It could happen to anyone.

The work would never be over. They’d cleaned one side of the hull; then they needed to clean the other. Moving the ship took almost a full day and involved rearranging the rigging, untying countless knots and reassembling winches and pulleys. Part of the crew climbed on board the listing ship to shift weights. They waited until the tide came in; the ship floated again; then with a great heave, and much of the crew pulling on ropes, they rolled her over. The tide went out again, exposing a fresh expanse of barnacle and slime-crusted wood. Once again, Jenks called for them to start scraping. Jill nearly cried. Her hands were chapped and bleeding. Rough rope had left splinters of fiber in her skin. All of it stung when she washed her hands in seawater, but the stinging was better than the aching, simply because it was a change.