It took a minute before I could push up to sit. Resting on the opposite hip, I met Madwulf’s pitiless gaze with the bravest face I could muster.

“On the morrow, at eight bells of the morning watch, I shall return.” He dropped the compass onto my lap. “If it’s not unlocked, I’ll provide another incentive. I’ll do this every morning, and each incentive will become increasingly more convincing. I do hope you solve the puzzle before you’re too broken.”

He ambled away, and I hugged the compass to my chest, realizing my shirt was still awash in the sticky blood from the man in the cottage. I felt sick. Scared. Angry.

Daily beatings.

The horrendous pain in my thigh would be less pronounced by the morning. I could do this. I’d endured a fortnight of torture on the admiral’s flagship. Blows against my bones with a wooden plank were less intrusive, less damaging to my psyche. I would survive this.

I wanted to see Priest and Ashley again too badly to give up.

Gripping both hands under the knee of my injured leg, I dragged it out in front of me. My choked whimpers couldn’t be helped. The agony swept through me like fire, but the limb didn’t look broken. No visible bones protruded. No unnatural angles. Just muscle and ligament damage, perhaps.

As the Caribbee heat blazed down upon my pale skin, I scooted into a patch of shade cast by the rigging. Over the next few hours, I moved with that shadow, desperate for its cool protection as it crept across the deck with the passage of the sun.

Blitz headed east. The bird island was southeast. If Madwulf had taken my bait, we would be headed there. But it was too soon to know.

That night, I lay on my back on the deck, staring up at the starlit sky and thinking about my father. I’d toyed with the compass all afternoon without any real commitment to opening it.

It was time to solve it. Shackled to the foremast, I faced certain torture on the morrow. At some point, I would have to give up the combination in exchange for mercy. But I needed to figure it out first.

So I closed my eyes and mentally recited poems, songs, and rhymes that I remembered hearing in my father’s Irish brogue. God’s wounds, I missed him. If he were alive today, perhaps he would be disappointed in me for taking so long to solve his puzzle.

When you’re ready, you’ll know what to do.

I didn’t know what he’d meant when he said that, but his compass had saved the two men I’d left on the beach. I didn’t think he would mind that I’d bartered his treasure in the name of love.