Watching for a ship of that name was no guarantee anyway—The Morrigan could be here incognito, gun ports disguised. He had to give it to Vice and her captain: all the reports suggested they were cunning.

He bit back a sigh. Searching so many vessels would be quite the task, and if she had left, it would delay his pursuit. Not to mention the fact that holding all these ships in dock for a day on the chance she might be on board wouldn’t win him any allies. If it turned out she’d already gone, it could be downright embarrassing for the Navy and, by extension, troublesome for him.

Asking the dockers hadn’t been much help—either they knew nothing about Lady Vice or were damn good liars. Both were entirely possible.

Smoothing his expression, he scanned the ships at rest, bobbing in the ebb tide.

Ebb? Wait—

He pulled out his pocket watch. Six o’clock. The high tide wasn’t meant to be until seven. From the way the water had dropped in the past hour, he’d have guessed there’d been a high tide recently.

He crouched by one of the wharf’s timber posts. Wet almost to the algae-coated high tide line. The sea was too calm to have lapped up that high.

Rocking back on his heels, he scanned the port again. Had there somehow been an extra high tide? But—no, that just wasn’t possible. The tides were caused by the moon, and the moon didn’t just change its orbit on a whim.

Strange. Very strange.

There had to be some other explanation, perhaps—

A burly docker hauled crates at the end of the wharf. The crawling starburst of a scar on his jaw, from gunshot or the edge of an explosion, was familiar.

“Here, Smith, isn’t it?” Knigh rose, dusting off his hands.

The man’s head jerked in his direction, and he nodded. “Aye, ser.” He snapped a neat salute—former Navy, most likely.

Knigh circled to him swiftly.

The docker’s eyes widened. “All’s well with your ship, ser—I’ve been keeping an eye on it as you asked.” He nodded again, body bending too, almost making it a bow.

“Yes, yes, excellent—thank you. It’s not that I’m here about.”

The man visibly relaxed a fraction. “Oh?”

“You might have heard by now—the infamous pirate Lady Vice was here last night.”

His bristly brows shot up. “A pirate? Right under the Navy’s nose, ser?”

Thank you for the reminder. Knigh clenched his jaw, nostrils flaring for a second before he cleared his throat. “I’m afraid so. Did you see anything unusual late last night or early this morning?”

Smith rubbed his whiskered cheeks. “Nothing that stands out, ser. Apologies.”

“What about a woman roughly so tall”—he lifted one hand to his eye level—“dark hair”—he cleared his throat—“easy on the eye.”