Tarriva didn’t touch the shore as cleanly as Hashton; about a quarter mile of jagged black rock stood between the settlement and the docks, and since the people got most of their income by selling lumber to towns further out on the peninsula, they hadn’t yet bothered to bridge it in more than a couple places.

Jared Bastian, the Starwatch’s quartermaster, was waiting on the beach with a rowboat and a disapproving scowl. He didn’t say a word as we reached him, tossing an oar at me and jerking his head at the boat. I flinched, letting the oar clatter to the rocks, then hurried to pick it up, climbing into the boat near the center as Sterling and Kienna took the ends. Bastian shoved the boat’s nose to unlodge it from the rocks and jumped in next to me as we floated free.

Not sure what to say, I dug my oar into the water, straining to push the rowboat toward the Starwatch in the distance.

“Ship’s ready to move as soon as we get there,” Bastian grunted finally, gliding his own oar through the water with far less effort. “If you’re done causing problems, that is.”

I looked up at him. “I was trying to help the crew. And I did.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You did a good job getting our ship’s doctor injured,” he noted with a glance at Kienna.

I didn’t look at her. I couldn’t look at her until I could do something to help. “That won’t happen again,” I promised.

Bastian shook his head, turning away as he loudly muttered, “Typical noble’s behavior, thinking he calls the shots.”

I stared at him for a long moment. Even if I’d been thinking clearly enough to pick a fight, I wasn't about to do it with someone who had nearly as much power as the Captain himself. Finally, I distracted myself by studying his easy rowing motion; yes, he had more muscle than I did, but he had more practice too. I tried holding my paddle more vertically as he did, pulling back with my body instead of bending my arms. It was a little easier.

Within a few minutes, the Starwatch’s hull loomed over us, blocking the fading light of the sunset. I scanned the faces peering over the rail at us; Gavin Morrissey wasn’t one of them, but I knew he was waiting up there.

Our boat knocked against the wooden hull. The iron davit swung out above us with a loud creak, and ropes were lowered down for Bastian and Sterling to secure to the rowboat’s ends. With a jolt, we were grinding up the side.

Morrissey had sent the others to get me. He’d kept the ship waiting for me. He couldn’t be that upset.

Even after I’d gotten someone injured.

We made it to the edge of the deck and climbed over the rail, wading upstream into a torrent of overlapping questions. What had to be half the crew swarmed around us, wondering why I’d disappeared and how the others had found me and how Kienna’s “real gunfight, by the looks of it!” had gone.

“Arrokas!” The navigator Zacharia leaned into my field of vision. “We heard you got lost in town.”

I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be an insult, or if they actually thought that, so I said nothing and continued hanging the rowboat in place, trying to copy the knot Sterling had tied on his end.

“He still helped, in the end,” Sterling spoke up. “Knew to intercept Carter at the bar and everything.”

Bastian muttered something I couldn’t make out and pushed past us toward the stairs up. Kienna wasn’t next to us anymore, either.

“Carter only knows about pirates from stereotypes,” I tried to explain, moving past Zacharia to look around. “Of course he’d assume we were off getting drunk. And I made sure I was seen heading to the bar.”

Sterling huffed. “But you knew when he would be there too-”

“It’s called math, Sterling-”

“-and you musta fought him off somehow, ‘cause it took us a while to get there-”

“Sailors!” the Captain’s voice called, cutting through the air as crisp as the sea mist. “Are you going back to your stations, or do I have to move this ship by myself?”

Sterling snapped his mouth closed and hurried off, along with most of the others. I looked up to see Morrissey on the bridge, joined by Bastian. When he scanned the deck, his eyes passed over me as easily as they did the rail behind me. I got the message: later.

Before Zacharia could disappear to the navigation room, I tapped their shoulder. “Where did Kienna go?”

“Belowdecks,” they said briskly. “Probably went to the infirmary to fix up that gun wound before she bled out.”

I grimaced at the image and hurried for the stairs down. Even though it hadn’t looked anywhere near that serious, I felt anxiety knot in my stomach as I stopped outside the door to the infirmary. As the ship’s doctor, Kienna could probably deal with this herself, but what if she couldn’t? What if she couldn’t reach her own wound, or was in too much pain to think clearly?

I closed my eyes, opened them, and knocked on the wood.

“Yeah?” Kienna’s voice called.

I pushed the door open and stepped into the small room, leaving it open behind me in case we needed to call for help. We probably wouldn’t—Kienna was sitting upright, looking alert as she measured string from a spool. But it wouldn’t exactly be the first time I’d been horribly wrong today.

Kienna picked up a tiny needle from the table she was sitting on, then looked up at me. “Could you help me with this?”

I nodded and hurried closer, taking the needle and threading it for her. In the corner of my eye, I saw her lift a piece of fabric from her arm. I stayed focused on the needle.

She scrutinized my work, nodded, and moved the needle toward her arm.

“Shouldn’t you clean that?” I blurted.

“I did.” Her brow furrowed as she lined the point up on her skin. With a hiss through her teeth, she made the first stitch.

Her eyes found mine again, and I resisted the urge to flinch. “Help me tie this?”

I swallowed, looking anywhere but the wound as I held the end of the string for her to tie. She repeated the process several times before asking me to cut the string, then instructed me to tie a new piece of fabric around her arm. When we were done, she looked ironically like Sheriff Brown.

Kienna glanced at me, then at the floor.

“What?”

“Would you keep me company for a bit? I’m just…”

I nodded and pulled a chair from the edge of the room to sit in front of her. It wasn’t like I was that helpful on deck anyway. We sat in silence for a long moment as I tried to sort through my thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” I told her finally. “You guys were right, we should have just run for it.”

She shrugged her uninjured shoulder. “It’s not like we coulda known what would happen.”

I frowned, not sure how to explain that I could have seen it coming, if I’d just been thinking. The officers weren’t like pirates; they wouldn’t shoot to kill unless they had to. They certainly wouldn’t shoot three random people running past without knowing who they were.

“You’ll have to lay low for a while, now that people out there know your name,” Kienna spoke up.

I ran my tongue over my teeth. “I know.”

There was a pause, before she pressed, “Why did you tell it to him?”

“I’m a bad liar.”

She snorted.

The truth was, I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d given my real name. It wasn’t like Carter had a way of figuring out the truth; no one on this continent would recognize me as Chrysanthean nobility. But in that moment, I’d looked around at everyone watching, and I’d told the truth anyway.

“The crew’s pretty impressed that you got in a gunfight,” I said before she could press the issue further.

She laughed. “Of course. I needed to do something for attention after that stunt you pulled in Hashton. Thought you had us all outclassed for a second.”

I couldn’t stop a smile from creeping onto my face at that.

“Sorry today didn’t work out as well, though. I guess Sheriff Carter took you more seriously the second time.”

I huffed in agreement. “You’d think having a gun one inch from your opponent’s back would be enough to guarantee a win.”

Kienna’s eyes flicked over my shoulder, and anxiety shot through them like a zap of electricity. That meant one of three people. I listened for footsteps—none. That narrowed it down to one.

“Rhotar, Farsing,” Roxy Cinder’s voice rasped, too close behind me.

I swallowed. “Roxy,” I addressed her.

“I heard some complaints about plans not going as expected,” the Starwatch’s master gunner said dryly.

I twisted around in my chair, then jumped despite myself. Roxy had one hand planted on the arm of the chair and was leaning over me, crooked teeth inches from my face. I blinked and refocused on her poison green eyes. “I underestimated Carter’s speed,” I said evenly. “It was a fault in my plan.”

Her face twisted into a look of mild disgust—either because of what I’d said, or because she hated the kind of formal speech I’d accidentally slipped into—and she shook her head, causing tangled blonde hair to fall in her face. She didn’t bother to fix it. “I’m sure your plan was fine, Rhotar. Listen to what you said just now.”

I furrowed my brow. “I underestimated Carter’s speed…” I started hesitantly. I was pretty sure she was talking about something else, but it was hard to tell exactly where her point was.

“Before that,” she prompted.

I bit my lip, thinking.

“You had the gun one inch from Carter’s back,” she said, holding up her fingers an inch apart. “That’s lots of wiggle room, Rhotar. Makes him think he can go somewhere as long as you’re hesitating to shoot.” She leaned even closer to me, and I had to concentrate not to scoot back. “Next time, you press it into his damn flesh, you hear?”

I nodded. “Understood.”

She clapped me on the shoulder and stood straight. “Good lad. By the way, Captain wants to see you in his quarters.”

I swallowed at those words, watching her pad silently out of the infirmary before I stood up to follow.

“Good luck,” Kienna offered.

I nodded to her, then left and climbed the two flights of stairs up to the Captain’s quarters.