Crossrose Sails

I

Cannon fire still echoed in Charles Beckham's ears when he woke up in the dry, creaking darkness of a place he didn't know. He was immeasurably bleary and hurt in from bone to bone. His head throbbed, and his tongue felt parched and burnt in his mouth, but worst of all was the static pain in his side, blooming more and more severe as he came to. He might have passed out again, if the ship didn't jolt just then and send a new sting up his body.

He cried out. The sound caught in the air, and spread, lifting up dust from the wooden boards beneath him. Somewhere nearby it evoked a new noise.

"He's up!" it shouted, followed by a thundering of boots, slowly fading away. Charles blinked. He hadn't even seen a person there. Oh, Lord, his head...

He remembered a battle. He remembered standing at the helm with his finger pointed out, giving orders, and then he remembered a bright red crackle and then—

And then he remembered the royal navy ship shredding underneath his feet, and he remembered water, cold water, which had felt more like a slab of solid ice than anything fluid. Screaming. Cannon fire.

Everything after that remained fuzzy.

Light scalded the room. Charles tilted his head up to see a lantern clearing away the darkness, held by a rotund man with muscles the size of a giant cod. His bottom lip jutted out fearsomely, but the look in his eyes was surprisingly soft, even as the lantern's light cast macabre shadows over his face.

But Charles lost focus of the man quickly, because Charles realized he was in a jail cell.

And then, he remembered a little more, but only a little.

Another man came down the stairs, holding a bucket in each hand. One looked measurably heavier than the other. "Mornin', Lad."

Charles didn't respond. Maybe it was because he had honor, and wouldn't deign to talk to his kidnappers, but more likely his throat was just too dry to weave words.

The man with the lantern unlocked his cell door, and the man with the buckets walked through. Charles lifted his hands in what he hoped was a get-away-from-me gesture, but it was difficult when he could so scarcely move. He marveled at the grime on his own fingers.

He set one bucket in the corner as a privy, and placed the other one, brimming with water, in front of Charles, between his curled-up legs. "Drink."

Charles wanted to, but he didn't. The man sighed, grabbed the back of his head, and pushed his face down.

He remembered, again, falling from the breaking ship, into the cold waves below. This water was cold, too, and a shock to his eyes and nostrils, but when he gasped it tasted sweet rather than salty. One sip shattered his stubbornness and he gulped down as much of the bucket as his awkward position would allow. When the man let his head go, seemingly satisfied, Charles managed to spit some of the water back in his face.

The man winced—for a pirate, a scoundrel, his face was surprisingly clean—and knocked a hand against Charles's ear. It wasn't harsh enough to be an attack, but it reminded him once again of the cracking cannon fire from hours earlier.

Then, both of them left, placing the lantern on a stool outside. Charles watched them with a scowl on his face. He tried to stand up, and the piercing pain in his side intensified unbearably, at which point he looked down and saw the dark red stain on his navy-issued undershirt.

A while passed. Charles refused to drink anymore water. Then, just as the lantern started to gutter, footsteps filled the stairs again and a triad of men arrived to face him.

One was Buckets from earlier. The other two were new, though one hung back in the shadows of the hull, face hidden, arms crossed, black boots shining. The last of them opened his cell door with an armful of cream-colored cloth. Charles shifted away from him, but it was no use with a cell so small, and he was too weak to run or fight back.