The moors were a graveyard of gray light and freezing mist.
Every time the wind whistled through the tall grass, I jumped, my hand flying to the heavy silver-mounted pistols tucked into my belt. They were cold against my skin, a constant reminder that I was no longer an innkeeper's son. I was a target.
I had been walking for six hours since I left the Black Crag. My boots were soaked through with peat water, and my legs felt like they were made of lead.
But I couldn't stop.
Vane's words echoed in my head, louder than the rhythm of my own pulse. Every pirate in the Bristol Channel will soon know your name.
I looked at the horizon. The sky was the color of a bruised plum, the sun struggling to break through a ceiling of heavy, iron-colored clouds. Somewhere to the east lay Bristol. Somewhere to the east lay safety.
Or so I hoped.
The path narrowed as I reached a crossroads marked by a rotting wooden signpost. The wood was so weathered I couldn't even read the directions. I paused, shielding my eyes from the fine drizzle, and that's when I heard it.
The rhythmic thud of hooves.
I dove into a thicket of gorse, the thorns tearing at my breeches and scratching my face. I pressed my chest into the damp earth, trying to quiet my breathing.
A group of three riders crested the hill. They weren't wearing the fine silks of gentlemen or the red coats of the military. They wore stained leather jackets and heavy sea-boots. They looked like sailors who had been forced onto horses, and they weren't happy about it.
"I'm telling you, the boy couldn't have gone far," one of them growled. He had a voice like grinding stones and a tangled beard that reached his chest. "Vane said he headed for the moors. There's a price on that satchel he's carrying that'd buy us a fleet of galleons."
"Unless the bogs took him," another replied, his horse dancing nervously on the slick path. "If he drowned in the peat, we're hunting a ghost. And Vane doesn't pay for ghosts."
"He's alive," the first one snapped. "He's got Flint's luck, if the stories are true. We find the boy, we find the map. Keep your eyes sharp."
They lingered at the crossroads for a moment, their horses huffing steam into the cold air. My heart was thumping so hard against the ground I was certain they could hear it. The map beneath my shirt felt like it was glowing, a beacon for every cutthroat in England.
They finally turned south, toward the coastal road. I waited until the sound of the hooves had completely faded before I crawled out of the thicket.
They were already ahead of me. The hunt wasn't just behind me—it was circling.
By mid-afternoon, the moors began to give way to rolling hills and the first signs of civilization. I saw a few lonely sheep huddling against stone walls and the distant smoke of a farmhouse.
Hunger was starting to gnaw at my stomach, a sharp, twisting pain. I reached into my satchel and pulled out the small loaf of bread my mother had given me. It was hard and tasted like dust, but I ate it greedily, watching the road below.
I was crossing a narrow stone bridge over a rushing stream when two men stepped out from behind a cluster of willow trees.
They weren't the pirates from earlier. These were scavengers of a different sort. They were dressed in rags, their faces smeared with soot to hide their features. One held a rusted pitchfork; the other had a heavy club weighted with lead.
"Right then," the one with the pitchfork said, stepping into the middle of the bridge. "Where're you off to in such a hurry, little lord?"
"I'm just a traveler," I said, my voice steady despite the trembling in my knees. I kept my hands away from my belt, trying not to look like I was carrying anything of value.
"A traveler with a fine leather satchel and boots that haven't seen enough miles," the man with the club sneered. He began to circle me, his eyes landing on the bulge of the pistols. "And look at that. A pair of popsies. Very expensive popsies."
"Let me pass," I said. "I have no money for you."
"We'll be the judge of that," the leader said, lunging forward with the pitchfork.
I didn't think. My hand moved on its own, a desperate instinct for survival I didn't know I possessed. I drew the right-hand pistol. The hammer clicked back with a metallic sound that seemed to echo across the valley.
I didn't point it at his head. I pointed it at his chest.
The man froze. The tip of the pitchfork was inches from my throat.
"I've never fired this," I said, my voice dropping to a low, dangerous whisper I'd heard the Captain use. "But it's loaded with a heavy ball and enough powder to take down a horse. Do you want to find out if I've got a steady hand?"
The man with the club stopped circling. He looked at the pistol, then at my eyes. He saw the desperation there—the look of a boy who had nothing left to lose.
"Easy, lad," the leader said, his bravado vanishing like mist in the sun. He slowly lowered the pitchfork. "No need for that. Just a misunderstanding between friends, eh?"
"Back away," I commanded.
They backed off the bridge, their hands raised. I kept the pistol leveled at them as I backed across the rest of the stones. Once I reached the other side, I turned and ran. I didn't stop until I had crested the next ridge, my lungs screaming for air.
I looked at the pistol in my hand. My fingers were shaking so violently I almost dropped it. I hadn't killed them, but the realization hit me like a physical blow: I was willing to.
The boy who had scrubbed floors at the Sea Raven Inn was dying. Someone else was taking his place.
The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon when the smell of the air changed.
The scent of damp grass and peat was replaced by something sharper, something heavier. It was the smell of coal smoke, rotting fish, and old timber. It was the smell of salt and tar.
Bristol.
I reached the top of a long, sweeping hill that overlooked the Avon Gorge. Below me, the city was a sprawling carpet of cobblestones and slate roofs, illuminated by thousands of flickering oil lamps and hearth fires.
It was a forest of stone and wood, larger than anything I had ever imagined.
But it was the harbor that took my breath away.
The docks were a chaotic maze of masts and rigging, looking like a giant's weaving project. Hundreds of ships—sloops, brigs, and massive East Indiamen—were crammed into the narrow waterways. The sound of it drifted up to me even from this distance: the rhythmic clanging of hammers, the shouting of sailors, and the mournful creak of hulls rubbing against the piers.
I felt a surge of hope. Surely, in all this noise and life, I could find Captain Locke. Surely, the law lived here.
I began to walk down the hill, my pace quickening. I needed a tavern, somewhere to hide until I could make my way to the Admiralty office in the morning.
I stopped at a small lookout point where the road curved sharply toward the city gates. I pulled the Captain's brass spyglass from my satchel. It was heavy and cold, the glass slightly smudged.
I wiped it on my sleeve and leveled it at the harbor.
I scanned the ships, marveling at the sheer variety of flags. I saw the Union Jack, the yellow and red of Spain, and the blue of the French merchant navy.
Then, my breath caught in my throat.
In a secluded slip at the far end of the harbor, tucked away from the main traffic of the merchant ships, sat a schooner. She was painted a deep, matte black that seemed to drink the light of the setting sun. Her masts were raked back at a sharp angle, built for speed and pursuit.
I didn't need the spyglass to know whose ship it was. But I looked anyway.
And the flag confirmed my worst fear.
High on the mainmast, a flag fluttered in the evening breeze. It wasn't the Jolly Roger—not yet. It was a simple black field with a white, long-necked bird in the center.
The same flag I had seen on the ship anchored in our cove.
Vane's ship.
He hadn't followed me on the road. He hadn't needed to. The Specter was already here, waiting for me like a spider in the center of its web.
And as I looked closer through the glass, I saw a figure standing on the quarterdeck, looking toward the hills. He was leaning on a cane, a puff of blue pipe smoke rising into the air around his tricorn hat.
Victor Vane wasn't hunting me. He was welcoming me home.
End of Chapter 4