Chapter 212: A Council of Mad Captains

Word had the whole afternoon to travel, and it made good use of it.

By the time the light over Concordia’s rooftops went gold, the Broken Crown tavern was packed beyond whatever number of bodies she had ever been designed to accept.

James stood alone at the upper gallery. The floor below was packed shoulder to shoulder with more captains, quartermasters, sailors, and idle hands than any tavern in the bay had ever been foolish enough to accommodate at once.

Lantern light swam through the smoke and cups were thrown around.

He counted the room once for himself before joining it.

Cudjoe stood near the stairs with his arms folded, muttering to nobody in particular about how many mouths this one evening’s rum was going to cost the storehouse.

Bonnet moved through the crowd, pressing cups into hands like a host for a supper, apologizing to strangers for fights he hadn’t started.

Whitlock had taken a corner and a borrowed slate, tallying heads from pure habit, while Roberts sat beside him with a cup of tea gone cold, watching the tally like he finally found a rival worth respect.

Black Sam walked through the floor, talking with random sailors as if they were his best mates.

Paulsgrave Williams stood beside him, eyeing some stranger’s gold tooth with frank hunger.

Thatch, three cups past sober and delighted by the fact, was telling how he captured his new ship to anyone foolish enough to stand near enough to hear it twice.

Israel Hands leaned against a post near Black Caesar, arms folded, neither man troubling the air with a word.

Don Rodrigo sat a little apart with a parrot muttering old Spanish on one shoulder, his eyes still moving over the doors and corners as a soldier’s eyes do when they have forgotten how to stop looking for trouble.

James was still counting them when his eye caught a face belonging to none of the nine.

Charles Vane sat near the back of the room, his beard as wild, his coat hanging open over a half-buttoned shirt. He wore that loose, dangerous ease that made a man forget to be careful around him until it was too late to do anything about it.

Beside Vane sat a lean, watchful young man dressed a shade too fine for the room, calico rather than canvas, which was apparently enough reason for the crew to have already taken to calling him Jack.

His quartermaster, apparently.

James gave the fellow no more thought than he gave the next stranger crowding the floor and turned his attention back to the rest of the room.

That little brigantine sitting apart at the dock belonged to Vane now, bought outright with his share of the Homeward Fleet’s prize. Vane had signed the Code the moment his anchor touched bottom and hadn’t caused a lick of trouble since.

Apparently the ship name was the Ranger.

Below the balcony, the crowd sprawled loud and comfortable.

Anne stood with Milagros near the foot of the stairs, sharing some private joke at the expense of every man who hadn’t yet noticed them.

Mark Read leaned against a barrel with her arms crossed, giving nothing away to strangers who hadn’t earned the truth of her.

Mackerel Jim was three sentences into a story nobody had asked to hear, waving his arms wide enough to knock a cup clean out of somebody’s hand.

Tomás stood near the wall with his hands folded and said nothing at all, while Kit hung half over the stair rail, trying to get a proper look at the whole room at once.

Bran had claimed a corner for herself and enough of her Crows to make the boards groan, already trading boasts across the room.

Farther back, Anvil turned slowly where he stood, asking whoever happened to be nearest whether anybody had spotted a whale yet.

Doyle worked through the crowd, pressing his latest brew on any new hand too polite to refuse a captain’s crew a drink.

Rook and Twice already had a wager running on what tonight’s business even was, while Grey and Crick stood nose to nose over some sounding. Neither man intended to let the other have the last word about it.

Enzo and Kwaku stood together near the bar, Josiah Croft’s gunners close by, laughing along more easily than they had a week before.

James took in the whole loud, impossible room for one more breath.

Then he went down.

The stairs carried him straight into the crowd instead of above it, and the noise died like a wave against a rock. It faded quickly at the center and more slowly toward the edges, until the whole floor had gone silent enough to hear the lanterns creak on their hooks.

Every face turned toward him at once, and no two wore quite the same expression.

Some looked hungry for what was coming, some merely curious. Here and there among the newest faces, James saw something closer to plain nerves.

James didn’t give any of them time to ask first.

"Right then!"

He spread both arms wide enough to take in the whole room.

"I’ve got an ambition, and I mean to share it before this bay drinks itself dry waiting on me!"

He let that sit for half a breath. "We sail on Havana! Spain’s richest harbor in the whole Caribbean, the very port her treasure fleets muster from before the voyage home, walled and garrisoned thicker than any city has a right to be!"

James looked over the room. "We blockade her harbor, and we take every fat merchant that tries slipping in or out, till the bloody city forgets what an easy trade ever felt like!"

The room came apart at once, and it came apart in no single voice.

Thatch’s roar of delight rolled over everything else.

"Christ, finally! Here’s a cause worth bringing my ships to!"

"Fuckin’ hell, Calloway."

Vane laughed, low and hungry. "Half o’ Nassau couldn’t run a decent whorehouse between the lot o’ ’em, and ye mean to choke the whole Spanish Crown."

"Captain."

Bonnet pressed a hand to his chest. "I feel bound to observe that Havana is, by every account I’ve ever encountered, the most fortified harbor in this entire ocean, and I confess myself both alarmed and unable to suppress my own delight at the prospect."

"I already know how I’m telling this one!"

Jim bellowed, already halfway into a story about a fight that hadn’t happened yet.

"There I was, off Havana, forty ships burning behind me..."

"How many hulls, Cap’n?"

Kit shouted over him.

"Give us a number! I want to count before we’ve even sailed!"

Bran folded her arms and lifted her chin.

"My Crows didn’t leave that pit to sit idle in yours, point us at trouble worth bleeding for."

Don Rodrigo crossed himself, then laughed, bitter and delighted at once. "Forty years I bled across that very water for that Crown. God forgive me, I want to watch her starve."

Cudjoe’s voice cut flat and dry through the rest.

"Ye’ve finally lost the last of whatever sense ye were born wi’, Captain."

Roberts alone said nothing.

He set his tea aside and worked the idea of the thing over in his head, already counting powder and days down a column nobody else in the room had thought to open.

James let it run exactly as long as it needed to, and not a breath longer.

He raised both hands until the noise folded back in on itself, then planted one boot on the nearest table and hauled himself onto it.

He stood over the whole crowded room, and grinned down at every face turned toward him.