The silence that followed the slamming of the front door was heavier than the storm.
My mother stood by the hearth, her face the color of the ash cooling in the grate. She looked at the Black Spot still clutched in my hand as if it were a venomous spider ready to crawl up my arm.
"Burn it," she whispered. Her voice was thin, trembling like a reed in a gale. "Ethan, burn that map. Burn the ledger. Throw the coins into the cove."
"It won't matter, Mother," I said. I felt a strange, cold clarity settling over me. The fear was there, pulsing in my throat, but beneath it was the realization that our old life had already turned to smoke. "Vane saw me. He knows I was in that chest. If I burn the map, he'll think I'm lying. He'll torture us to find where I hid the 'real' one."
"Then we'll run! We'll go to your aunt's in the valley."
"They have horses, Mother. They have ships. They have eyes in every tavern from here to the Irish Sea." I stepped toward her, taking her hands. They were ice-cold. "Vane gave us until dawn. That wasn't a mercy. It was a countdown."
I looked at the Captain's ledger lying on the table. It wasn't just a list of stolen silver. It was a record of blood. Magnus Flint had been a monster, and his legacy was a curse that had finally found its way to our doorstep.
"We can't stay here," I said firmly. "If we're at the inn when they come back, we're trapped. But if I take the map to Bristol... if I find someone with enough power to stand against them..."
"Bristol?" My mother pulled her hands away, her eyes wide. "That's two days on foot, Ethan! Through the marshes and the high road. The 'gentlemen of the road' are the least of your worries with pirates at your heels."
"I have to try. Captain Locke is in Bristol. I heard the sailors talking last week—he's refitting a ship for the Admiralty. He's a man of honor. If I give him the map, he can protect you. He can clear the cove of these vultures."
My mother looked around our small, flickering common room. The Sea Raven had been our whole world since my father died. The grease-stained tables, the smell of salted pork, the sound of the wind rattling the shingles. It was a hard life, but it was ours.
Now, it was a target.
"Go," she said suddenly. Her voice had changed. The panic had been replaced by a grim, motherly resolve. "If you stay, you die for nothing. If you go, maybe one of us lives."
"I'm not leaving you here alone," I argued.
"I'll go to the village," she snapped, already moving toward the kitchen to grab a cloak. "Old Man Miller will hide me in the cellar. They won't care about a penniless widow once they realize the map is gone. It's you they want, Ethan. You're the one who saw the secrets."
We moved with a frantic, silent speed. I went back upstairs, avoiding the room where the Captain's body lay. I grabbed my sturdiest leather satchel and stuffed the ledger and the map inside, wrapping them in a piece of oilcloth to keep out the damp.
I paused by the Captain's bedside table. The silver-mounted pistols were still there. I'd never fired a gun in my life, but the weight of them in my hands felt like the only solid thing in a world that had gone soft and dangerous. I tucked them into my belt, the cold iron biting into my skin.
Downstairs, my mother handed me a small loaf of bread and a flask of water. She didn't cry. She just touched my cheek, her eyes memorizing my face.
"Don't look back, Ethan," she whispered. "No matter what you hear. No matter how much your legs ache. You run for Bristol like the Devil himself is reaching for your shadow."
"I'll find you, Mother. When this is over, I'll come back."
"Just live," she said.
I slipped out the back door, into the kitchen garden. The rain had turned to a fine, clinging mist that blurred the edges of the world. The wind had died down, leaving the night unnervingly quiet. Every snap of a twig under my boot sounded like a pistol shot.
I didn't take the main road. Vane and his men would be watching that. Instead, I headed for the Black Crag—the treacherous cliff path that wound upward toward the moors. It was a path I'd climbed a thousand times as a boy, looking for bird's eggs or watching for distant sails.
The climb was brutal. The mud was slick, and the salt spray made the rocks feel like they'd been greased with tallow. My lungs burned. The satchel bounced against my hip, the map feeling heavier with every step, as if the gold it promised was already dragging me down.
Halfway up the ridge, I stopped to catch my breath. I looked back down at the Sea Raven.
From this height, the inn looked small and fragile, a lone spark of light against the devouring darkness of the Atlantic. Then, I saw it.
A line of lanterns was moving along the beach. Six... eight... ten of them. They weren't coming from the road. They were coming from the water. Small boats had landed in the surf.
They were early. Vane had lied about the dawn.
I watched, paralyzed, as the lanterns swarmed the inn. I saw the front door smashed open. I saw the flicker of torches moving from room to room. A faint, distant shout drifted up on the wind, followed by the sound of glass breaking.
They were looking for me.
I turned away, tears stinging my eyes, and scrambled the rest of the way up the cliff. I didn't stop until I reached the top of the Black Crag, where the moorland opened up into a sea of heather and gorse.
I took one last look at the horizon. The mist thinned as the first gray light of dawn touched the sky.
In the distance, just beyond the mouth of the cove, a ship waited. It was a schooner, sleek and black, its masts raked back like the ears of a hunting hound. It sat motionless on the water, a predator waiting for its prey to flush.
I didn't see him at first.
A few hundred yards away, perched on a jagged spur of rock that overhung the path I had just climbed, a figure sat perfectly still.
It was Victor Vane.
He wasn't looking at the inn. He wasn't looking at his men. He was looking north, toward the road to Bristol. He held a long brass spyglass to his eye, scanning the terrain with the patience of a fisherman.
The moon broke through the clouds for a brief second, illuminating his face. He looked calm. Almost bored. He lowered the spyglass and leaned back, his brass-tipped peg-leg glinting in the faint light.
I froze, pressing myself into the damp heather. My heart was thundering so loud I was sure he could hear it. I reached for the pistols at my belt, my fingers trembling. I could try to shoot him from here. I could end it.
But he was too far. And I was too slow.
Vane reached into his pocket and pulled out a small piece of flint and a pipe. He struck it, the spark momentarily lighting up his sharp features. He blew a plume of blue smoke into the air, the wind carrying it toward me.
He turned his head slightly, as if sniffing the breeze. He knew I was there. He had to know.
He didn't move to capture me. He didn't signal his men. He just sat there, smoking his pipe, watching the empty moorland.
"Run while you can, boy," Vane muttered, his voice carrying clearly through the crisp morning air, though he didn't even look in my direction.
He tapped his pipe against his peg-leg, the sound sharp and final.
"Every pirate in the Bristol Channel will soon know your name. And I've always found that the hunt is much more entertaining when the fox thinks it has a head start."
He stood up, his mahogany leg biting into the rock, and looked directly at the patch of heather where I lay hidden. He didn't smile. He just nodded, a silent acknowledgment of the game that had finally begun.
I didn't wait for another word. I scrambled to my feet and bolted into the darkness of the moors, running until my heart felt like it would burst, the ghost of Magnus Flint laughing somewhere behind me in the wind.
End of Chapter 4