Thief (7 page)

“Feel like sharing?” Kraft chipped a gob off the stove and it landed on the kitchen floor. The patchy mix of neospring and textured durosteel looked almost as bad as the stove top. Once she had the stove clean, she’d sweep the floor, that’s if she could find a broom. Cleaning supplies were in short supply around here.

Garrett flipped through his notebook. “How about a limerick?”

“Is it salacious?” She popped another glop of crusty gods-knew-what onto the floor.

“I don’t know you well enough for those yet, girl.” Garrett flashed her a toothy grin as he tipped back his straw hat.

“Damn shame.” She winked and grinned back. “Let’s hear a prim and proper limerick, if there is such a thing.”

After a few flips, Garrett found the page he wanted. “There was a young girl named Heather, who wanted to be light as a feather. She ate only beans, for she wanted small jeans, but somehow she got into leather.”

Kraft applauded. “It’s a little risqué.”

“Mild. Compared to some I have.” Garrett stroked the page fondly. Even from a distance, Kraft felt how important that notebook was to him. All of his hopes, dreams, and fears lay bare within those pages. Garrett presented himself as a jokester, but behind his generous smile was a heart filled with tears and painful longings.

“Ever heard of a place called Nantucket?” Kraft lifted her brow and tilted her head.

Garrett tipped his hat back. “Why, darling, if I didn’t know you better, I’d swear you were flirting with me.” He flashed her enough teeth to line a keyboard.

As Kraft scoured the kitchen, she exchanged limericks with Garrett. Laughing with him made her feel more comfortable on
Mutiny
, and the exercise from cleaning the kitchen helped to dispel the last of the drugs from her system.

In the back of her mind she knew that if Jace thought for half a second she posed a danger to his ship or his crew, he’d chuck her out the nearest airlock. And her honor would compel her to let him.

But apparently all Jace expected her to do was to cook for him and his crew. She felt a twinge of disappointment that she wouldn’t be sharing his bed, but she liked his crew. Well, his crew minus Heller.

Chapter Nine

Jace found Kraft sitting in the kitchen, looking out the window in the ceiling, a dented metal cup in her large, calloused hands. Without her black clothes, wearing his castoffs, she didn’t seem smaller or less deadly. She seemed a tiger, slowly twitching her tail, poised. She sat with one bare foot up on the counter, her knee cradled by her arms. The length of her hair, bound in black linen, draped her back, then snaked around her hip to her thigh.

“You all right?” Jace asked.

“Most of me.” She didn’t even turn when he spoke. Kraft continued to consider the Void out the tiny and oddly misplaced window in the kitchen ceiling. “How’s Heller’s face?”

“Ugly.”

Kraft laughed, low and deep. She crossed her legs then spun on her behind to face him. “Before or after you smacked his snout?”

“That’s a hard call.” Jace chuckled. “But he’ll live.”

“Aye, there’s the rub.” She sighed. “I don’t relish starting over.”

Jace leaned against the opposite counter. “You could give up, I suppose.”

“Nope. That’d be easy.” She sipped from her cup. “I don’t seem to take to things simple or easy.” She shook her head, causing the tail of her hair to brush her thigh. “Tell you what, I have a knack for finding the most onerous road and then running down it headlong. Usually blindfolded to boot.”

“Makes you special.” He nodded.

“Or crazy.” She winked.

Jace looked at the cup in her hand.

Kraft tipped her head. “On the stove.”

As he plucked his cup from his locker in the galley, he swore he felt her gaze running up and down his backside. When he turned, she held out the soup pan and carefully filled his cup.

“I’m a lucky lady.”

Her comment jolted him. He sloshed his drink, recovered, then leaned against the far counter.

“I’m still alive.” She set the soup pan aside and grinned. “I’ve gone from captain to cook—such a tumble from grace—but I can start over. I’ve done it before.”

“After everything—”

“How can I still be standing?” Kraft said it very slowly, enunciating each word. Her huge, extraordinary eyes focused on the small swath of Void out the window. “If I let it break my spirit, it wins. But more than that, I lose.”

Kraft turned her pinning gaze on him. “Tell you what, I don’t like to lose.” She thought for a moment. “The Void can kick me, beat me, and spit in my face, but I’m not dead yet.”

Flashing her teeth, not in a smile, but in a baring of them, as if for a fight, she looked out the window again. “I think that’s what irks the Void so. I just flat-out refuse to die.”

“Because death is too easy,” he said softly.

“Sure enough. Death makes everything real simple. Life is what gums up the works.” Kraft took a deep breath. “Captain Lawless, there’s something I need to say to you.”

“You don’t—”

“Yes. I do.” After looking at the now-clean floor so hard she might have been trying to burn a hole in it, she turned her razor attention to him. “I flew with my crew for five years, and I don’t recollect ever saying thank-you to a one of them, because I was too busy being strong. I thought gratitude would make me look weak.” She shook her head. “I have nothing to give you but my gratitude. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” It tumbled from his mouth prompt and automatic. His upbringing demanded his response. Thinking of what she had done for him, he softened his voice. “You’re welcome.”

Kraft nodded, cupping her drink. “I’ll pull my weight on your ship and follow your orders. It’s how I got my start—Fairing’s cook. I guess it’s not the worst thing I start over as a cook.” She paused. “On a ship called
Mutiny
.” She paused again. “For a man called Captain Lawless.” She chuckled, shaking her head. “Does the Void get any more perverse than this?” Kraft looked at him as if they shared a private joke.

Jace had to admit, in all respects, it was nothing short of strange. But when he pondered what Garrett called the weirdness wonder of it all, Jace thought more about its wonderful weirdness. Huge, so vast, each person a grain of sand in the desert of the Void, he’d found Kraft. Twice.

“Explain to me how a cook becomes more renowned than the captain.” Jace took a deep swig of his drink. Swassing. He hadn’t had swassing since he’d been on Tyaa. Swassing that Senna had forever simmering on the back of the stove. Never had the tart and tangy drink tasted this good. Maybe he held the explanation for Kraft’s notoriety in his hand.

“Fairing, Fairing.” Kraft lifted her cup to the Void. “A fearsome captain.” She took a sip to his memory then eagerly launched herself into the tale. “Smart, deadly, and even though he was a thief, he was an honest one. If Fairing gave you his word, you could count it script. He took me on, raw, didn’t believe I could cook, but he gave me a shot in the kitchen. Turned out I wasn’t lying. I could take the nastiest crap in the Void and make it ambrosia.” Pride made her smile wider as she kept her gaze on the window.

“I’m mighty impressed with your ability to make swassing out of my own pantry.” Jace saluted her with his cup.

She laughed, low and deep. “You’re easy to impress, Captain Lawless. Swassing isn’t much. You ought to try the other delights I can craft with my hands.”

Her hands were big, strong, well-calloused, but also had a slender, dexterous grace. His thoughts turned and he yanked his gaze to the floor. He gave her his back to hide his blush by taking a strong and sudden interest in making sure the galley lockers were firmly closed.

After a chuckle, Kraft said, “Fairing had a rule on his ship—every man by his own worth. The more one made toward the common good, the more one would be paid. As you know, good cooks are rare unless you pay them high. Fairing paid high because the man did so love to eat.”

Once the heat drained from his face, he turned. “It’s not surprising, considering the man weighed three hundred pounds.”

Kraft nodded. “Fairing had vast appetites, food being only one, but he also had a knack for culling the best from his crew. He played no favorites when promoting. If you were the best, you took the front, no matter how long you’d been aboard. In three weeks, I became his head cook.”

“I’ll bet that got some folks a bit upset.” Jace noticed the kitchen was spotless. The room probably hadn’t been this clean since the ship was new a hundred and thirty years ago.

“It did, it did.” Kraft sipped her drink. “Ansley, who’d been Fairing’s head cook for years, didn’t take kindly to my usurping his role. He decided to take me down a peg by bashing in my face.”

She spoke so matter-of-factly that for a moment Jace thought he hadn’t heard her right. “Ansley beat you up?”

With an are-you-kidding-me snort and a mischievous lift of her brow, Kraft said, “Ansley never got close.” She refilled her cup. “The coward couldn’t even face me. He swung a pan at the back of my head. I ducked, grabbed his arm, and pinned his face to the floor in front of the whole kitchen staff. Poor bastard, he was so…” Kraft searched for the word.

“Embarrassed?” Jace supplied.

“Close.” She nodded. “Anyway, Ansley outweighed me by a hundred pounds, stood a hand taller and was twice my age.”

“Moreover, a man defeated by a woman.” Jace knew that alone would chafe a male ego. He’d been none too pleased when Kraft got the drop on him. Things would have been bad enough if a man bested him, but that a woman did just seemed to pack his wounds with salt.

Kraft nodded. “Emasculated. That’s the word. Anyway, I told Ansley things were the way they were, and he’d do best to accept them. I made it clear that if Ansley cut in on my dance with Fairing again, I would cut off his legs.”

“Fairing found out,” Jace guessed.

Kraft nodded. “Ansley demanded an audience with Fairing then insisted I be cast to the Void for attacking him unwarranted. Ansley made two fatal mistakes. He demanded of Fairing.” Kraft shook her head slowly back and forth with her brows lowered. “One could request, not demand. Fairing stood by no man’s laws but his own. But Ansley didn’t stop there. He lied.” Kraft shook her head, side to side, more vigorously. “No matter how ugly or painful the truth, one did not lie to Fairing, because Fairing never acted rashly. He always found out the truth.”

“What happened?” Jace asked, riveted by both her sharp beauty and her compelling tale.

“Fairing cast me and Ansley in the brig, questioned the kitchen staff, then tossed Ansley out an airlock while I watched. Fairing turned to me, and said, ‘Liars bore me. Don’t bore me.’”

Kraft took a sip of her drink. “I faced him, nothing more than a scullery maid in his employ for three weeks who overnight became his head cook. I told him precisely what I had done and why. My honesty impressed him. Fairing asked me to demonstrate my skill on his guards. I took down twenty men before he called them off. Fairing laughed as I stood trying to catch my breath. Fairing had never heard of a cook who could also fight, especially a woman. The idea of it intrigued him. I offered him a deal. I would cook and fight for more script. I became a warrior-cook, very rare, and worked my way up from there.”

With her tale fully spent, Kraft lifted her drink to the Void once again, as if saluting Fairing.

“But why are you known only as Fairing’s cook?” The cramped galley suddenly felt large and Jace wanted to compress the space to echo the intimacy he felt with Kraft.

“Ah, well, that was Fairing’s ego, another vast appetite. Part of our deal included I would only be known as Fairing’s cook.”

“You know everyone assumes his warrior-cook to be a man?”

“Yes.” Kraft smiled as if she’d gotten a joke over on the whole Void.

“And you had no problem with that?” Jace didn’t understand her. Most men would be scrambling all over themselves to get recognition in their own name to build a reputation.

“I did my job.” Kraft shrugged. “I cooked, I fought, and I built Fairing’s legend. Tell you what, I’ve got no desire for notoriety in my own name.”

It struck him suddenly that he knew very little about her, and he asked, “Is Kraft your first or last name?”

“Kraft is my name,” she said shortly. She looked out the window again. “Fairing’s reputation grew along with my script.”

“To buy your own ship.”

“
Whisper
.” She closed her eyes and swayed slightly on the countertop.

Jace wanted to pull her into his arms and comfort her, but she clenched her jaw and shook off her obvious pain.

“Fairing knew I wanted to captain my own ship, and that I’d do anything to get her. That letter Trickster gave you is the only proof I have that I am Fairing’s cook. After losing my crew and my ship, it means the world to me to have that one remnant back.” She covered the breaking of her voice by sipping her drink.

Her vulnerability startled him, because Kraft seemed so strong, almost indestructible. But she was human after all.

“I’m glad I returned it to you.”

She took a deep breath and a sip of her swassing as she kept her gaze on the window in the ceiling.

He let her take all the time she needed to collect herself.

After several minutes of companionable silence where the only sound in the darkened galley was the ticking of the stove-top clock, Kraft lowered her chin, then turned her gaze to him.

Softly, she said, “You’ll find I’m as good in your kitchen as I am by your side during a fight, and I’ll pay you back what you paid to Trickster.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“Yes, it is. I pay my debts, Captain Lawless. But I don’t know if I can ever really repay you for what you’ve done.”

Jace pushed away from the counter. “Just keep cooking meals like that, and I’ll be happy.”

After a long pause, Kraft asked, “You really have no intention of making me your whore?”

With his back to her, he said, “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”

When she remained silent, he turned.

Kraft gave him a really hard, tilted head look. “Are you, like Heller said, a—eunuch?” Up her eyebrow went as she cast a dubious gaze to his trousers.