Gideon actually looked elated at the prospect. Then again, after being stuck on a ship for weeks on end, a man tended to get restless. And a man like Gideon needed an outlet more than most. Normally, he and Rhystan sparred on deck once a day, but they’d both been busy.

In the Baltic Sea when they’d first sailed together, they’d dealt with many unsavory types on the ocean, including cutthroat pirates, whom Gideon had been merciless in hunting down. Given his lethal array of skills, he’d enjoyed putting his deadly scimitars to use. He’d been in the business of privateering for the carnage and the coin, but lately, actual physical combat had been sparse.

In that first year after leaving Joor, Rhystan had made it their business to disrupt the East India Company whenever they could. They sank ships in the dead of night, disrupted known opium trade routes, and repossessed valuable cargo, only to redistribute it to the locals it had been stolen from. He had taken great pleasure in compromising their shoddy practices and emptying their coffers.

The past four years, however, he’d spent more time in the West Indies, investing in infrastructure, trading goods, and doing what he could to better the lives of the people there. Handing over ownership of the former duke’s plantations to the locals was the first thing he’d done as duke. It wasn’t nearly enough to account for the crimes of the past, but it was a beginning—and a sign of how he intended to proceed.

Ironically, those choices had been because of Sarani.

Not that he would ever tell her that.

In Joor, she’d always been suspicious of the crown’s motives. “They didn’t come to settle or to integrate,” she had grumbled once when they were at the river. “They came to pillage. Tell me that isn’t true.”

Rhystan remembered thinking of Markham’s plans to subjugate the princely states under his rule. “I wish I could. In their eyes, more advanced civilizations have always explored lesser ones.”

“Lesser?” Sparks had flown from her. “What makes their country more advanced than mine? Our art, our wealth, our cultural history cannot even be measured. One people’s standards of civilization cannot be held to another’s!”

She’d been right, of course, and in truth, he’d never looked at the expansion of the British empire in the same way. She’d made him open his eyes to the injustices being committed in full view.

Rhystan frowned at the thought of their now intersecting paths. Five years had passed in a blink and yet felt like an eternity. It was a miracle he’d even been in Bombay at all, but he’d received word of an enormous shipment of opium, arranged by none other than his old friend, Markham.

Had fate had a hand in his return?

In this unwelcome reunion?