Eventually they found somewhere else for the snakes to go and managed to round up a few of the crew who didn’t mind helping to transport them. After the incident with the brown fangs, many of the men were reluctant to go near any more snakes.

As they carried the last of the snakes to their new area Amanda asked Thatch about the library.

“It’s where Shiv and the captain do most of their work when they’re not at the wheel. It’s technically what should be the captain’s quarters but he likes his small room so…” Thatch shrugged. “But they do keep the books in there and Sirius likes to read a lot so if he’s not in the wheelhouse or anywhere else on the ship that’s where you’ll find him, plus the maps and ship logs and things like that.”

“Where is it then?” Amanda asked.

Thatch pointed. “Near the rear of the boat, port side, but it’s locked most of the time if no one’s in there.”

Amanda wondered at what sort of books Sirius liked to read.

She found Sirius once they were done moving the pythons. He was talking to Shiv.

“What did the itinerary say was in that crate?” Sirius asked Shiv.

Shiv squinted one eye tight as he tried to remember. “Scarves,” he finally replied.

“Hmm,” Sirius frowned in thought. The moment he caught sight of Amanda however, the frown disappeared. “Hey, snakes all settled and warm?” The edge of his mouth curled up in a friendly greeting.

She couldn’t help replying with a smile of her own as she nodded. “Yeah. Hey I wanted to ask you, someone left a box in my room last night or this morning. I didn’t actually notice it until I went back in there just after lunch. Was that you?” The box she’d found once she’d returned to her cabin a little more sober than she’d woken up, had contained a mix of items, useful things that she’d missed from home. There were clothes roughly in her size, a hairbrush, toothbrush, toothpaste, even tampons, as well as a book – Ghost Stories of the Sea, and a sailing knife. Whoever had put it together had really put some thought into it.

“Yeah, just some things I thought you might need. We’ll be heading out into colder waters too so you’ll need the warmer gear. I probably should have gotten some of that stuff to you earlier. Was anything you needed missing?”

Amanda smiled and shook her head. “No, thank you.”

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the narrow-eyed look Shiv was giving them. He didn’t look happy for some reason.

“Hey, I heard the ship has a library?”

The look on Sirius’s face perked up considerably. “Yeah, it does. Do you want to see it?”

She nodded.

“Don’t we need to be checking the crew’s got their earplugs?” Shiv reminded him. “Not to mention, there’s still a few more crates to search.”

“Eh, it’s late, the last of the crates can wait one more day and I’m sure you can check in with the rest of the crew about the earplugs right Shiv?” But for a single glance he barely moved his eyes from Amanda.

“Whatever you want,” Shiv grumbled.

Sirius gave him a more fixed look.

The two spoke in nothing but glances for a few moments and then Sirius turned back to Amanda. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

Amanda glanced back at Shiv just before following Sirius off down the hall. He seemed colder today somehow. Less approachable and friendly than he had before they’d left Wildwater.

She waited until they reached the library door before she asked, “What’s up with Shiv?”

Sirius didn’t immediately answer but he did make a slight huffing noise.

Amanda could guess though and she spoke plainly. “He doesn’t want me here?”

Another huff. Sirius used unlocking the door as an excuse not to reply. He pushed it open and then nodded at her to go first.

She stepped inside and momentarily forgot her question as she was presented with the largest room so far on the ship, except for maybe the mess room. This one was far better decorated though. A room fit for a captain. A giant red and gold rug took up the bulk of the floor space. There was an old oak desk which looked decently solid. Green leather covered it’s top. It was tidy with a few pens held upright at one end in a wooden carved pen holder. Behind it, glass windows gave a view of the sea. And around the edges of the room upon several bookshelves sat many many books. Most of them were big and leather bound. They looked more like textbooks than fiction. Amanda’s eye caught some of the titles, words like anatomy, astronomy, marine biology, physics, all in alphabetical order. There was a whole section on astronomy which made sense she supposed since sailors used the night sky for navigation. There were books on knots and sailing and what looked like several cook books too. And in one small corner she did spy what looked like smaller-sized fiction stories.

“Wow,” she remarked.

“Yeah,” Sirius agreed, but his tone didn’t carry the same enthusiasm hers did.

She turned to look at him and waited.

He took a seat against the desk and studied the toe of his boots for a few seconds. Finally he replied, “Shiv thinks you’ll convince me to give you the pegasus?”

“Will I?” Amanda ventured.

He met her eyes, looking up at her from beneath dark brows, and he gave her a studied look.

His voice then said, “It isn’t really an option,” but his look said ‘convince me,’ and Amanda took a chance.

“You don’t know the people its going to, how they’ll treat it.”

“You don’t either.” He crossed his arms. “Look if it were in my interest I’d give it to you but there’s no benefit here, only losses. I bend on this I set a precedent for every trader out there and none will ship with me.”

“So it’s just business?”

“Yes, although in this business that can mean life or death. Unless you can see a way in which it doesn’t cost me that horse gets delivered.”

She didn’t waste time correcting his usage of the word ‘horse’, instead she focused on developing an idea that had just popped into her head. Something that might actually work.

“The beetles.”

“The beetles?” he asked. Confusion flashed across his face.

She nodded. “They belong to the same person who’s shipping the pegasus. They’ve caused enough trouble for you already.”

He shook his head. “Not enough to seize her property.”

Amanda didn’t correct him on the ‘her property’ statement either. “No, but it’s a pity the beetles got to the floor with the pegasus on it…”

He frowned for a moment and then his eyes widened in understanding. He cocked his head thoughtfully. She had his attention now.

“They don’t know,” she added with a smile. “They don’t know what the beetles got to. So tell them it was the pegasus, show them some bones. I’m sure horse bones aren’t hard to come by and they probably don’t even know the difference, especially if you just show them really quickly. I’ll take the pegasus, I’ll give him a good home.”

Sirius shook his head. “We don’t get paid in full until delivery. And there’s another problem. One person who would know what happened. Their animal keeper.”

Amanda’s face fell along with her hopes. She’d forgotten about Michael.

But Sirius gave her a smile. “But I think you’re on to something. All you need to do is come up with a solution to those two problems, the money and the keeper and then you’ll have yourself a deal. Easy.” He cocked an eyebrow.

Was he toying with her? It didn’t matter. At least he’d given her something. Actually he’d given her more than that. “Is that before or after you deduct the cost of my new box of things and the food I’ve eaten so far?” she inquired.

His eyes narrowed, obviously suspecting something. He licked his lips as he studied her. Seeing no trap he replied, “You can consider that box your wages. You have been helping out after all.”

“So you pay the other men a wage?”

“They take a cut of whatever we ship.”

“Do I get a cut?”

Now he saw it, the trap, and he couldn’t help but smile.

She smiled right back at him.

“Stowaways don’t usually take a cut on their first trip.” His smile widened. He thought he had her.

“But I could earn it?” she asked more earnestly.

His look got more serious. “Maybe.”

“I mean,” she took a step closer, “You do need a new animal handler, after what happened to the last one.”

It took him only a moment and then he gave her a curious look.

Keeping her expression straight she added, “You know, it’s a pity how he got too close to those beetles or maybe it was the arasnids, after all given what was left it was hard to tell.”

His eyes narrowed. He seemed unsure if she was serious of not.

She let her smile out. “It’s a joke,” she explained. “I’m joking.” She took up the spot next to him and pulled herself up onto the desk so she was sitting with her legs dangling down. Then she sighed and tried to think of a better solution.

After a beat of silence, with as much seriousness as she had used he replied, “That’s too bad. That guy is a pain in the arse.”

Now it was her turn to check if he was serious. But the moment she caught his eye, the corners of his mouth were already curling upward.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

She burst out laughing at the boyish look on his face, so out of place, and a moment later they were both in hysterics. He chuckled softly and deeply rather than raucously but it made such a sweet sound in her ears.

Finally, still smiling he remarked, “It would solve a lot of our problems though.”

“Too bad I’m not the murdering kind,” Amanda replied in between her slowing laughs.

“No?” he asked with a cocked eyebrow.

His tone surprised her. Oh there was playfulness there for sure, she could hear that. But buried underneath there was a genuine question too. A question of trust.

She stopped laughing and looked at him. With a gentle candid smile she repeated his phrase. “No.”

She got the impression that he was a man who didn’t trust easily. Perhaps none of them were. They put up a front of friendliness but how many of them really actually knew one another? The truth was she had no idea. From him at least she did get a sense of some kind of loneliness. But what better way to break down a wall than with a gentle push. “Are you?” she asked.

His mouth twitched. An almost smile maybe? But here they danced between the serious and the playful, right on the line, he could tip it either way. Make a joke or answer the question. His choice. Whatever he wanted. He chose honesty.

With one arm tucked across his chest and the other resting on it and pointing up so his chin could rest on his hand he replied thoughtfully, “Sometimes we meet other ships, pirates who want our cargo, or scavengers who want the same bounty we’ve located if there’s a wreck. There are fights, tussles. Sometimes people get hurt, or killed. It’s the way of the sea.” He didn’t look at her while he spoke, not until the end. “You’ve never killed anybody right? You talked about the musters, how they could be dangerous…”

Amanda gave a sad smile. “Not intentionally.”

They sat there in silence for several seconds before Amanda spoke. She made her tone more chipper, gave it an inquisitive edge. “Can I ask you something?”

He glanced up, stared at her a moment and then catching her tone, he replied, with a twinkle in his emerald eyes, “You already did.”

At the look in his eye she almost forgot her question. She laughed softly. “I mean, I was wondering why you all carry swords but no guns?”

Sirius pulled aside his black coat. Inside it, slotted into perfectly shaped pockets Amanda could see a total of three older looking pistols. There were other things too, in various pockets, everything from regular knives to what looked like small jars of magic powders, antidotes, and charms.

“Oh.”

He smiled. “The others carry guns too, some of them. But out here things get wet and salty regularly. Swords are more reliable and useful for other things like cutting rope if need be.”

She frowned and nodded at his pockets. “And the rest of the stuff. What else are you carrying there?”

He smiled again and pointed to one jar. “Well, this one’s belladonna. If I’d known it was so useful I’d have carried it before. “This,” he pointed to another, “is dreamwalking infused powder. As for the rest, well the truth is I don’t actually know. I inherited them along with the coat.”

“You don’t know?”

He shook his head.

“How do you know that one’s a dreamwalking infusment then?” she asked.

He smiled. “I have my ways.”

“Oh, secret ways huh?” she teased.

“Perhaps.”

The stared at each other for a full three seconds. She studied the colours in his eyes and the fresh crinkles at the edges. His gaze dropped to her lips but only for a moment and then he looked away and down.

“I know because my sister was a dreamwalker.”

“Was?” Amanda asked.

“Is,” Sirius corrected. “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I haven’t seen her in awhile.” He stood up from the desk and walked across the room toward the book store. Half way there he paused as if unsure of his next step.

Amanda gave him a lifeline. “So you recognised the magic?”

He nodded. “I got a sense when I touched it. It was familiar.”

“But not the others?”

He shook his head and finally met her gaze again. “I’ve never used infusements before. I wouldn’t even really know what to do with that one anyway. I like to keep them around though, just in case.”

“But you’ve dreamwalked?”

“Yeah.” His reply was soft, barely audible, and he dropped his gaze to a distant spot on the floor again.

Amanda could sense his unease. She wanted to know more but didn’t want to push him away. Luckily there was something else that also called her attention. The magic. She distracted both of them with it. “Mind if I try?”

This she knew she was good at. When she had been a lot younger her and a friend had found a chest, someone’s lost luggage, maybe a sorcerer or a warlock, professional magic users, scientists of the unknown. Whoever it had belonged to had filled it full to the brim with spell books and infusements - charms containing various magics tamed and contained. Amanda and her friend had experimented and they’d gotten addicted. Not in the traditional sense but they’d spent countless hours trying things out, making mistakes. Horrible, terrible mistakes. With that chest and just enough knowledge from school they’d found a way to get their hands on more infusements, more spells, and they had gotten what Amanda believed to be pretty darn good. It had cost them though and the last couple of years, ever since she’d mastered her own fire magic that one autumn, neither had dabbled quite so much as they used to. But she had to admit, there was a part of her that missed it. Other than horse riding, playing music, and hacking into the school computers to turn her D grade in math into a passing B, it had been the one of the few things she was really truly good at. Then again, if you didn’t count the test taking part she hadn’t been that bad at chemistry.

Sirius studied her a moment, seemingly not quite understanding the request.

“The infusements, if that’s what they all are. Maybe I could… I’m…” she trailed off, the words ‘quite good’ dying on her tongue. Now that she thought about it this was dangerous territory. Talking about magic was too close to talking about her own powers and she still didn’t think it was wise to reveal herself as a firestarter nor had she come up with a suitable alternative. But now he was looking at her expectantly. She better come up with another good distraction. She jumped on the first thing she could think of. “Hey, whatever happened to that lighter you took off me the first day? When your crew searched me? I was wondering if I could have it back? I won’t use it or anything. It’s just... it’s sentimental. It belonged to my dad.”

“Oh. I suppose.” He thought a moment. Then he started to nod and he walked around to the back of the desk. “Speaking of that. I sent a letter.” He opened a drawer in the desk and pulled out her gold lighter and a pack of cards.

“A letter?” She frowned, wondering and slightly worried what a letter had to do with the lighter.

He nodded and studied the lighter in his hand. “A letter back to Little Rock. I wasn’t sure who your parents were but I figured, well you mentioned it was your father’s horse, err pegasus.”

He corrected himself this time and she gave him a smile.

“Anyway I figured someone was probably missing you, seeing as you didn’t seem to have much on you and thus can’t have planned on sailing with us, well then maybe they were wondering where you were. But I wasn’t sure who to send it to so I sent two letters, one to the barman at the Rusty Nail, since he knows almost everyone in Little Rock, and one for him to give to your family. I figured with hair like yours and you being you, well he’d probably know who to give it to. Plus there can’t be that many Amanda’s in Little Rock.”

“Me being me?” Amanda arched an eyebrow.

“Well,” he hesitated, then he gave her a questioning look. Checking to see if she was just teasing. “I mean,” he started then hesitated again. “You’re… so… um...”

She smiled.

“Charismatic,” he finally finished.

Then he handed her her lighter and cards.

“Thanks,” she replied, surprised that he had given them back so easily, especially the lighter. She took it and pocketed it. “Is that another way of saying I’m loud and obnoxious?” she teased.

“It’s another way of saying you get on well with people. And you speak your mind but diplomatically you know. You’re hard to miss.”

“Well, thank you. It does mean I’m not very stealthy though where as you seem very good at sneaking up on people. How do you do it?”

He shrugged. “I think it’s the coat.”

“The coat?” Amanda hadn’t expected that answer.

He nodded. “I think it might be enchanted.”

“You think?”

He nodded again. “I don’t actually know. The previous owner’s dead.”

“That seems like a bad omen.”

He laughed, a proper deep laugh, his loudest yet. “See what I mean. You just say what you think.”

She liked his laugh. She tried and failed to think of something to say to get him to do it again because ‘I like your laugh’ was just way too corny. Instead she settled on, “Well I thought it was funny.”

“It was,” he agreed, still chuckling softly. “How do you do it?”

“How do I..?”

“Make people laugh.”

She studied his look and realised his question was serious. “Well I…” she trailed off for a moment losing herself in his expression. There was so much curiosity in his eyes and in here, surrounded by all the books, he didn’t fit her initial impressions at all. He seemed so much younger, less serious, less intimidating, not captain like at all, but more like her, except obviously much smarter, but just a boy trying to make his way in the world, learning and seeing as much as he could. She liked that thought and she gave him a crooked half smile and then watched as he matched it until they were both laughing for no good reason. “Well I suppose I just speak my mind like you said,” she answered finally.

“You must have a funny mind then… I mean… ah crap.” He frowned as he realised how that didn’t sound quite like he’d meant it to.

She laughed. Gods he was endearing. For a moment the craziness of the situation struck her. Here she was, who know how many miles from home sitting on a fancy desk on a ship in the middle of the sea watching a handsome 6 foot something sailor blush. She was pretty sure by this point her face was probably as pink as his.

“I guess it’s not as easy as it seems,” he said meeting her gaze.

“Nothing ever is,” she replied. “So, what did you say in your note then?”

“Just that you’d accidentally ended up on board the ship, that we didn’t intend to hurt you and would have you home safe in a couple weeks.”

“A couple weeks huh?” Amanda felt almost sad about it, it seemed so short in some ways. She was glad he’d written to her parents and that they knew she was safe but she was also enjoying her time at sea. Perhaps the company helped with that a little.

“So what name should I have made it out to then?”

“Are you asking for my last name?” she teased. She even batted her eyes a little jokingly, she couldn’t resist.

“Well unless you go by Mandy or some other first name-”

Amanda gave him a firm look and in a deadly serious voice she replied, “Nobody calls me Mandy. Not ever.”

He chuckled. He was getting good at picking when she was just messing with him. She rewarded him a smile in reply. Then she added, more sternly, “I’m serious though, anybody calls me Mandy and they’ll wake up with carpet pythons in their bed the next morning, and that’s if they’re lucky.”

“Well alright then.” He tried to look serious but he couldn’t stop grinning.

“But since you asked I go by Amanda Byrns. Byrns spellt with a ‘y’ instead of a ‘u’.“

“Byrns?” he repeated with a frown, “Like the town crook? That Byrns. The one who’s always day drunk and fleecing people at cards?”

Amanda opened her mouth and then closed it again. She hadn’t expected Sirius to recognise the name not after the other crew had told her that they almost never sailed into Little Rock and hadn’t been there in years. “He’s not a cheat,” she replied, defending her father, even though she was pretty sure that he definitely sometimes was. Sometimes he got a little too lucky at the cards, especially when the loan sharks started looking a little too closely for their repayments. “How do you even know who he is?”

“Everybody in Little Rock knows him.”

“Only if they’re a crook,” she replied. Or a horse trader or a loan shark, which to be fair had a lot of crossover with the crooks. More than a few fixed races had been organised in those tavern backrooms over the years between poker games. ‘Everybody did it,’ is what her father said ‘so it’s really only evening the playing field’.

“Well, I never said my father was a good man,” Sirius replied with what looked like a sympathetic smile.

“He a crook then?” she asked.

“And worse,” Sirius replied, not a hint of humour this time.

Amanda wondered at that.

“Well that explains where you get it from,” Sirius mused.

She raised her eyebrows at him surprised at his comment.

“The excessive drinking,” he clarified. “And the attempted theft of a pegasus.”

“The pegasus was mine to begin with and I don’t drink that much, often.”

“No, only every night since you got on this ship.” He gave her a frank look.

Amanda let her mouth hang open. No one had ever challenged her drinking before, not quite that directly anyway, but there was a part of her that thought maybe he was right, or at least he would have been a couple years ago. Maybe the reason she had a D in math class was because she’d spent half her nights for the first few years of high school getting drunk off her face at band parties and had completely slept through all the basic algebra classes and the other half playing hooky so she could practice magic, play the drums, and ride the horses but so what? Math wasn’t that important right? She could count. And after that one autumn, after that place..., she’d cleaned up her act, mostly. But one had to have a little fun every now and again and it wasn’t like she’d had so much that she’d blacked out since like… oh, wait... Wildwater. Maybe he had a point.

Sirius was still giving her that look. He hadn’t budged an inch.

She closed her mouth. “I mean. Maybe I’ve been drinking a bit much.”

“You think? You make my sailors look like kindergartners.” He was back to looking like an intimidating captain again.

She swallowed. Yeah, perhaps there was some truth to that. To be fair, being able to hold one’s liquor was a tactic in poker. But he was right. Firestarter or not, her actions had been foolish. She bit her lip and glanced down. “I…”

He sighed. “It’s fine. It’s your body I guess.”

“No, maybe you’re right.”

He studied her. “You know, after the first couple nights I thought maybe your parents were really strict and you were just cutting loose but it turns out it’s the opposite.”

She was quick to shake her head. “It’s not like that.”

“No?”

“No.” But she couldn’t explain the reason because that meant talking about her powers.

She was worried for a moment that he would press for more information but he didn’t.

“Well,” he said with a shrug. “Whatever your reason, being drunk at sea can be dangerous. The men do it, and I let em but just know, you’re playing with fire when you do it.”

‘Less than you’d think,’ Amanda thought, but the statement was less true these days. Perhaps now it was more true than she thought and who was she if she couldn’t take honest criticism? She nodded. “I’ll take that on board. So, now that you’re done lecturing me, are you going to tell me where we’re headed next?”