The stench of charred pitch hung over the Deep Anchor Anchorage like wet wool. Across the dark swell of the outer roadstead, the frigate Sovereign’s Pride rolled with the sluggish heave of a waterlogged timber barge. Scorched black streaks ran up her starboard strakes where privateer thugs had hurled wildfire pots during the midnight battle at the boat ramp. But harbor fire-pumps and three hundred deep-water lengths of wet hemp had kept her afloat. Anchored two cable-lengths off the town stone jetty in forty feet of churning gray seawater, she wore her disguise like a frayed shroud. Flaking coats of lampblack barely hidden the carved naval relief scrolls beneath her gunwale, where someone had chiseled away the King’s gold-trimmed sea-lion and slapped the common coaster name Sea-Gull across her stern transom.
Tomas Reed stood by the main companionway hatch. He waited for the salt wind to clear the sulfur fumes from his throat. The sea damp ate through his canvas coat, settling into the scar tissue of his left forearm. Beneath the calfskin brace, the ruined tendon sheath throbbed like cold iron wire drawn through bone. He leaned against the coaming, loosening the three-inch brass buckle just enough to ease the swelling.
