Nate read the letter a second time that night, alone in his own hammock with a single candle stub burning low, and it was on that second read that the middle portion, the part he'd skimmed too quickly the first time, finally settled into him properly.

If your business ever brings you east past the Windward approach, she'd written, I'll be putting in at a trading post called Marrow's Reach a month from the day this crate left my hands, settling accounts of my own and looking to rebuild what those fools cost me in Nassau. I make no promises and no demands, Nate. I know well enough what kind of life you've chosen, and I know a captain's course belongs to the captain, not to a woman writing letters he may never read at all. But if the winds happen to agree with you, I'll be there a fortnight either side of that date, and I would not be sorry to see your face again, however unlikely that sounds coming from a woman who told your friend to eat his fruit and stop sulking about it.

And then, underneath that, in a hand grown smaller and more hurried, as though she'd added it after deciding to send the letter anyway despite better judgment: Tell Lou nothing of this if he's the sort of captain who'd refuse a good harbor purely to spite his quartermaster's heart. Some men are.

Nate folded the letter and lay back in the dark for a long while, turning the problem over the way he turned over most problems, sideways, and with more cheerful dishonesty than the situation strictly called for. He was fairly certain Lou was not, in fact, the sort of captain who'd refuse a good harbor out of spite. He was also fairly certain that a straightforward request, sail east for a month so I can see a woman I've known less than a fortnight, was exactly the kind of request Lou's current mood, four years deep into a hunt that had cost him more than it had given him, would have every practical reason to say no to. Cortez's trail, whatever thin thread of it remained, didn't run through Marrow's Reach. Nate knew that much without needing to check a chart.

Which meant, Nate decided, chewing on the problem with the particular relish of a man who enjoyed a good scheme almost as much as he enjoyed the thing the scheme was in service of, that the request simply needed better packaging.

He found Lou at the charts the following morning, same as always, and made a show of easing into the subject sideways rather than launching at it directly, the way a man approaches a skittish horse rather than a door.

"I heard something in Governor's Harbor I didn't think much of at the time," Nate said, leaning against the table with the particular casualness he reserved for moments when he was being anything but casual. "Dockside talk, nothing solid. But there's a broker out of a place called Marrow's Reach, east past the Windward approach, does business buying and selling contracts other men don't want their names attached to. Privateer commissions. Letters of marque bought and sold quiet, changing hands between men who'd rather not be seen doing it in person."

Lou looked up from the chart, and Nate felt the small, familiar thrill of watching a hook actually take. "Contracts like the one Cortez is working under."

"Could be. Could be nothing at all." Nate shrugged, the picture of a man entirely indifferent to the answer. "But if a broker like that's real, and if he's the kind of man who keeps a ledger the way brokers like that generally do, he might know a name or two worth knowing. Might know where a man like Cortez picked up his commission in the first place, or who else is buying the same kind of paper he's carrying."

Lou was quiet a moment, turning the idea over with the same careful weighing he gave everything that might cost the ship time it didn't strictly have to spend. "How far past the Windward approach."

"A month out, near enough, if the wind holds fair." Nate said it lightly, though something in his chest had gone tighter than he'd expected, waiting on the answer. "Longer if it doesn't."

"That's a long way to chase dockside talk with nothing solid behind it."

"It is." Nate met his eyes without flinching, which cost him more than he let show. "But we've chased worse leads on thinner talk than this, and this is the first new direction anyone's handed us since Sorrel gave up the cove. I'd rather spend a month running down a broker who might know something than spend it drifting these same waters hoping Cortez trips over his own trail again."

Lou studied him a moment longer than the answer strictly required, and Nate had the sudden, uncomfortable sense of being read the way Lou read most men, patient, unhurried, missing very little. But whatever Lou saw, or didn't see, he only nodded once, and turned back to the chart, already working out a heading.

"East past the Windward approach, then," Lou said. "A month, and we'll see what this broker actually knows before we decide whether it was worth the detour."

"Aye, Captain," Nate said, and kept his face carefully, deliberately unremarkable, the whole way back up onto the deck, where the wind was already turning fair for exactly the direction he needed it to.

He found Vincent near the bow not an hour later, and made the mistake, born of relief more than sense, of mentioning the broker at Marrow's Reach in passing, the way a man mentions something he's already stopped worrying about. Vincent's head came up at the name slower than Nate would have liked.

"A contract broker," Vincent said. "At Marrow's Reach."

"That's what I told him."

"I've never heard of one." Vincent said it plainly, without accusation, which somehow made it worse than if he'd simply called Nate a liar to his face. "Doesn't mean he's not real. Men like that don't advertise. But I've moved through enough of these ports to know most of the names worth knowing, and that one's never once come up, not from Sorrel, not from anyone in Cortez's crew, not from anyone at all."

Nate said nothing for a moment too long, and Vincent, who made his living reading exactly that kind of silence, only tilted his head slightly, waiting.

"It's not entirely a lie," Nate said finally, quieter now. "There's a place at Marrow's Reach worth going. Just not the one I told him about."

"Isabela."

"Isabela." Nate exhaled, some of the careful lightness going out of him all at once, the way it did when a performance finally stopped being worth the effort of keeping up. "She's putting in there a month out. Wrote as much in the letter. Told me plain not to tell him if he was the sort of captain who'd say no out of spite for my sake, and I decided rather than find out whether he was that sort of man, I'd just make certain he never had to answer the question."

Vincent was quiet a moment, and something that wasn't quite disapproval and wasn't quite amusement moved across his face. "You lied to your captain to go see a woman."

"I redirected him toward a good harbor for reasons of my own. There's a difference." Nate didn't sound entirely convinced of the distinction himself. "Are you going to tell him?"

"I'm not in the business of telling Lou things that aren't mine to tell." Vincent's mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile. "But I'd think carefully about whether you want to be the one he catches it from, or the one who hands it to him himself. Those tend to land differently."

Nate thought about that for the better part of the afternoon, and for a good stretch of it, he thought seriously about simply letting the lie stand. It had worked. Lou had bought it clean, the course was already set, and no harm would come of a fiction that got everyone exactly where they needed to go regardless. Vincent wasn't going to say anything. Nobody else on the ship had any reason to look twice at a story about a broker. He could let it lie, he told himself, and mean it for the better part of an hour before the thought of Lou finding out some other way, later, worse, curdled the ease right out of the plan.

It was closer to evening when he finally climbed back down to the charts, where Lou was still working the new heading against the old one, and set the letter down on the table between them without a word of preamble.

Lou looked at it, then at Nate's face, which had none of its usual armor left on it at all. "What's this."

"The truth, mostly." Nate nodded at the page. "Read the middle of it. I'll wait."

Lou read it slow, the same careful attention he gave anything that might matter, and Nate watched his captain's face for the particular shift he'd learned to read after years of sailing together, though this time he genuinely didn't know which way it would go. Lou's eyes caught somewhere past the middle of the page, on a portion Nate hadn't mentioned at all, and something in his expression flickered, caught between embarrassment and the particular stillness of a man realizing he'd been read more plainly than he liked.

Tell your captain the peaches weren't an accident, Isabela had written, further down the page than Nate had thought to warn him about. He can pretend all he likes that a man doesn't notice what he's hungry for, but I watched him watch her eat one in that market like it was the last kind thing the world was ever going to offer him, and I've known enough men in my life to recognize hunger when I see it wearing a captain's coat. Brigid will deny every word of this if you ever repeat it to her, and she'll deny it twice as hard if she finds out I sent them. Tell him to eat the fruit anyway. A man that stubborn needs something sweet forced on him from time to time, whether he asks for it or not.

Lou read the passage twice before he trusted himself to look up, and found, with some irritation, that his ears had gone warm in a way he hadn't managed since he was considerably younger and considerably worse at hiding things.

"You knew about that part," Lou said, not quite a question, lifting his eyes to find Nate wearing an expression far too innocent to be believed.

"I may have read it before I handed it over." Nate didn't even attempt to look sorry about it. "Seemed only fair, given how much of my own business you were about to be privy to."

When Lou finally looked up from the rest of the page, there was no anger in it that Nate could find, only something tired and a little wry, the expression of a man who'd been managed and wasn't entirely surprised by it.

"A contract broker," Lou said.

"There isn't one. Not that I know of." Nate held his ground, which cost him something. "I made it up because I didn't think you'd say yes to the truth, and I wanted the yes more than I wanted to ask the question honestly."

"You were probably right." Lou set the letter down, rubbing at his jaw. "A month out of our way for a woman I've heard you talk about since Governor's Harbor. I'd have found reasons to say no. Cortez doesn't wait on any man's heart, mine or yours."

"I know it."

"And you did it anyway."

"I did." Nate met his eyes, steady now that the worst of it was said. "I'd do it again, if it came to it. I'm sorry for the lying. Not for this."

Lou was quiet a long moment, and Nate braced himself for the course correction, the order to turn back north, the particular flatness Lou's voice took on when a decision had already been made and wasn't open for further argument. Instead, Lou picked the letter back up, and read past the part about the broker, past Isabela's careful hedging, all the way down to the smaller, hurried line at the bottom, the one meant for Nate alone to see and heed.

"She told you not to tell me," Lou said, "if I was the sort of captain who'd refuse a good harbor out of spite."

"Aye."

"I'd like to think I'm not that sort of captain." Something in Lou's face eased, fractionally, the tired wryness giving ground to something closer to genuine amusement. "Though I notice you didn't trust that enough to test it honestly."

Nate didn't argue the point.

Lou folded the letter and handed it back, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all, the particular quiet of two men who'd known each other long enough to let a thing settle without needing to talk it fully to death. "We hold the course," Lou said finally. "East past the Windward approach. Not for a broker who doesn't exist. For a woman who apparently thinks well enough of you to write two pages when one would have done, and for the fact that you've earned a month's detour more than most men on this ship ever will."

Nate's face did something complicated, relief and gratitude and the particular embarrassment of a man caught being decent when he'd expected to be caught being foolish. "That's more grace than I gave you credit for."

"Don't get used to it." Lou turned back to the chart, though the corner of his mouth hadn't quite settled back into its usual flatness. "And don't lie to me again. Next time, ask the question honestly. I'd rather say no to your face than find out later I said yes to a lie."

"Understood, Captain."

"Good." Lou tapped the chart, already moving past it the way he moved past most things once a decision was made and settled. "Now go tell Vincent he was right, since I've no doubt he already worked out every piece of this before either of us said a word."

Nate laughed, low and genuine, some old weight visibly lifting off him as he climbed back up into the evening air, and Lou stood alone a moment longer at the chart table, looking down at the new heading, and found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he wasn't entirely sorry for where the next month was about to take them either.