The Scorpion's captain's cabin was not spacious.
Compared with the nouveau riche extravagance of the Black Reef Prince's ship, it felt cramped, yet brimmed with a savage abundance.
A silk carpet with curling edges lay carelessly across the floor. Several crudely fashioned but hefty gold ornaments hung on the walls, while gilded drinking vessels from the South were heaped at one corner of the table like scrap metal their owner had forgotten.
Rosa sat at the table, slicing white bread with a silver knife. The blade sank into the soft crust with almost no resistance.
She spread butter thickly over it, its greasy, tempting sheen catching the dim candlelight.
Faint, low chewing sounds drifted through the window.
Those were her sailors, crouched in the wind on deck, gnawing on hardened black biscuits.
Dry crumbs fell into the gaps between the deck planks and were soon ground deep into the wood grain by bare feet.
Of course, not everyone lived that way.
A handful of core crew members gathered around a brazier sheltered from the wind.
Their rations were soft bread enriched with fat, and occasionally they could take turns having a sip of weak wine.
These men worked the sails and manned the cannons. They were the real assets that decided life or death in battle.
As for those at the very bottom-the newly recruited swine, the unlucky bastards owing debts to the ship, or laborers unfortunate enough to have been dragged aboard-
They deserved only to crouch in the cold wind, softening those stone-hard black biscuits with their spit.
Pirates had never been a band of equal brothers. They were a staircase, each level trampling the one below.
Those who could stand amidships trampled those at the stern, those at the stern trampled those in the hold, and she