Chapter 213: Seven Ships Against an Empire

The grin stayed put, and so the room, and James let both remain there before either had permission to move.

"Right then."

He spread his hands as he had before. Every man on the floor already knew he hadn’t climbed onto that table merely to tell them what they already knew.

"Here’s what it looks like when you lay it out proper."

James told them the whole picture of the business. A blockade of ships outside Havana’s harbor, beyond any place El Morro or La Punta could throw a cannonball, close enough to watch every ship trying the passage but far enough out that neither fort could do a blessed thing about it.

Every fat merchant trying to get in or out would be stopped, boarded, stripped bare, and sent home considerably lighter than she’d arrived.

The room had already swallowed that part since the first shouting of it.

James told them the rest without hesitation.

"And when Spain sends her Armada to clear us out."

He waited just long enough for the words to hang there.

"We don’t run."

Not a word.

"We stand," he said. "And we sink whatever she sends."

A cup stopped an inch short of a sailor’s mouth and stayed there. The whole floor drew one breath together, the sort a crowd takes just before deciding whether it ought to laugh or start a fight.

Hobbs broke the silence first, his flask in hand as he didn’t consider the occasion important enough to stop drinking.

"Christ." He took a pull. "There goes me whole week’s rest."

The old surgeon clicked his tongue. "Best start countin’ how many stitches a King’s navy needs, before we go sailin’ right into the middle of one."

A few men laughed. It was the strained sort, when sailors know perfectly well someone has just called in a debt they cannot afford.

Then the fear found a voice. It came from the gun crews, where Farrow stood with his arms crossed.

"Guarda Costa first, Cap’n."

He said it flat, and the flatness went farther than shouting would have. "Dozen sloops easy, thick as flies round a dead hog, likely a frigate or two ridin’ and waitin’ for an excuse. And God help us all if Spain’s finally gone and put a ship o’ the line in that harbor."

It traveled around the room, one man’s worry landing on the next, until the whole floor was less like a tavern and more like a ship taking water.

Cudjoe didn’t raise his voice above what was required. It was roughly the volume he used for everything else.

"Hear, ye’ve all forgot somethin’."

A few heads turned toward him. "The Rose put ’em man ’o war on the bottom in one evening not so long past. Dinnae recall askin’ permission the first time, and I’m nae plannin’ on askin’ twice."

Thatch didn’t wait for the last echo to die.

"Queen Anne’s is a bloody man ’o war on her own!"

His grin looked liable to split his beard in two. "Fuckin’ hell, I’ve yet to meet a fat galleon she couldn’t turn to kindlin’! Some ship o’ the line hidin’ behind Havana’s walls? Great! For any bastard that isn’t a damned coward, that’s the first thing all week worth sinkin’!"

The mood in the turned over, and fear came up the other side looking considerably more hungry.

James let it ride a moment, then raised one hand. The floor came back to him more readily the second time.

"I was in that harbor myself, not four weeks gone."

There was no boasting in it. "Spain’s had a war eatin’ at her purse some years ago now, and she hasn’t recovered to spare strengthenin’ a garrison. It was already thin before I ever set foot ashore."

That calmed the fear enough for greed to get its feet underneath it.

Greasy Pete shouldered forward with both fists on his hips.

He was ready to call out a debt long forgotten. "Aye, and what’s a man riskin’ his neck for, exactly? I want enough silver to pay out me two coats ’em Spaniards ruined!"

"Never heard ’em bastard have a grudge over his clothes!" Doyle shouted, delighted.

"It was two fuckin’ personally made coats!"

Vane had no interest in their bullshit.

"Fuck yer coats, Pete. Nobody’s weepin’ over yer wardrobe."

That loose, easy danger of his sat over him as comfortably as ever.

"How much, Calloway, in reales. I don’t spend blood on a good story, but on coin."

Milagros was the one to reply this time, with at last the topic she knew best.

"Sugar and tobacco already run near five million reales in a good season."

She didn’t bother softenin’ the numbers up. "Indigo and hides add another million or two, and any ship unlucky enough to be carryin’ silver toward the flota’s muster is worth more than ten million reales in specie."

Her eyes stayed on Vane, sharp as a blade left too long in the sun. "I skimmed the cream off shipments there for years. So believe me, cabrón, when I tell ye what it’s worth."

The room came apart a second time, louder than before.

James let the uproar run until it had spent some of itself, then hauled it back.

"Shares split fair and square."

He cut through the noise before it could grow another head. "Every crew keeps what it takes with its hands. The whole blockade splits between separate stretches of water, so none of ye end up fightin’ each other over the same prize instead of the Spanish."

That held for perhaps four breaths.

Then the Hollis brothers, over near the bar, discovered some topic to quarrel about that had absolutely nothing to do with Spain.

"Seven ships."

Ezra was already shaking his head at his brother before anybody had finished counting.

"Seven, and he reckons that’s plenty."

"It’s eight, ye deaf article."

"It’s seven. I counted twice."

"Ye can’t tell which one of us is which some mornings, so forgive me if I don’t trust a count out of yer mouth."

"Wager on it, then. A shillin’."

"Ye’ll lose that shillin’ same as ye lose every other one."

More voices piled in from every side, some worried, others simply unwilling to let a louder man have the last word.

Sawyer’s voice came through dry as a plank. "No hull I’ve ever cared for can sit out there for months without careenin’, and worms don’t care whose war they’re eatin’ through."

Ned beside him wondered aloud whether seven hulls, or eight, could even close off a harbor bay as wide as Havana’s.

Briggs finished the argument with one word, flat enough to land like an anchor dropped from the mast.

"Enough."

It worked, as always.

James grinned through most of it before answering the worry beneath all the noise, once the floor let him room to speak.

"Nobody’s sittin’ outside that bay for months like some navy blockadin’ a rival’s port."

There was no coaxing left in his voice now. Just the thing itself. "We hit hard, hit fast, take what we came for, and we’re gone before Havana can summon real help. By the time reinforcement appears in the horizon, we’ll be three days gone and the prize already split."

That was what the whole room had been thinking, and James felt it land the instant it came.

He named his three first.

"The Bloody Rose will sail." One finger.

"The Black Fortune will sail." Two.

"The Grand Dame will sail." Three.

Thatch immediately shouted.

"Both mine!"

He thumped his chest hard enough to spill what remained in his cup. "Revenge and the Queen Anne both, and the big lass don’t need your bloody reefs nor your harbor to find open water from wherever she’s sittin’ now!"

Black Sam grinned across the room, easy as breathing.

"Marianne’s in, mate. Wouldn’t miss it for all the flota’s silver."

Vane laughed loud enough to turn heads three tables away.

"Ranger’s in too, and God help the poor Spanish bastard who thinks a brigantine’s too small to fear."

Seven hulls sailing against the whole of Havana’s Armada.

James stepped down from the table at last, his boots striking the boards with a crack loud enough to carry through the room.

The Broken Crown came apart around him all at once, quartermasters, gunners, and idle sailors together in one roar that shook dust from the rafters and rattled every cup still standing.

Boots hammered the boards until the whole building seemed to lean beneath the noise.

James stood in the middle of it, as he wagered everything he owned and then watched the whole table come up in his favor.