It didn’t help. The sun was nearly level with the western horizon and the glare was causing the contents of her stomach to churn, her head to throb. It had been a necessary evil to drink to each toast made in their honor last night, but as the evening wore on, the ale was bolstered by wine, the wine by rum, and it had taken all of her powers of concentration to make it back to the ship without falling out of the longboat. She did not remember climbing up the hull to the deck, nor did she remember getting from the deck to her cabin. When Johnny Boy had wakened her at four in the afternoon, she was still fully clothed, lying face down in her berth with a thin string of spittle trailing out of her mouth. She had not bothered to do much more than splash her face with cold water and drink half a pitcher of water straight out of the jug before descending to the longboat again and rowing across to the Avenger. Varian St. Clare looked just as bleary-eyed as he sat in throbbing silence beside her, too miserable to do more than grunt when she remarked that more ships appeared to have arrived through the day, for the harbor was a forest of masts from one end to the other.
