Grady scrambled back, his boots slipping against the slick, rotting wood beneath him. For a moment he faltered, catching himself awkwardly before retreating further. Then he vanished into the gloom of the steerage, swallowed by shadow.
His eyes, however, lingered—burning with a hateful, cowardly fire.
He did not look back.
The burly man turned toward Killian, his expression softening only slightly, though his gaze remained hard and watchful.
"He's gone for now, lad," he said. "But a man like that does not learn—he waits."
His eyes shifted briefly to Siobhan before returning to Killian.
"Keep your sister close. In this world, predators do not only wear red coats… sometimes they wear the same rags we do."
A short pause followed, then he added, more plainly:
"My name is Dermot—Dermot 'the Anvil' McCann. Your cousin once did me a good turn. If you've need of me, you call."
Killian nodded once. "Thank you."
He stepped inside, taking his sister's hand with deliberate care.
The cabin stood in stark contrast to the suffocating, rat-infested hold below. It was no luxury by the standards of a proper estate, yet in the middle of the Atlantic it felt almost like a sanctuary—one built not of comfort, but of iron, discipline, and quiet danger.
The air was thick, though not with sickness. Instead, it carried the heavy scent of stale tobacco, worn leather, and gun oil. The space itself was narrow, lined with sturdy wooden bunks bolted firmly to the hull with iron brackets—beds that did not creak or sway with every restless movement of the sea.
A brass gimbal lamp swung gently overhead, its flame steady but restless, casting long, shifting shadows across the walls.
The men within were not sailors in the ordinary sense. They wore high-collared wool coats and fine, mud-stained boots of calfskin. At their belts hung flintlock pistols and short, wicked dirks—tools not merely for defense, but for certainty.
Siobhan pressed closer to Killian. Even without understanding their trade, she sensed it. There was something in their faces—calm, deliberate, and untroubled by violence—that unsettled her.
At the far end of the cabin sat Cormac.
He was seated at a bolted table, engaged in a game of cards, a wooden tankard of rum in hand. Laughter and wagers passed easily among the men—until he noticed Killian.
Cormac slammed the tankard down. Dark rum sloshed over the edge, spilling across a stack of worn, greasy cards.
He did not look at them.
His eyes—sharp and grey as a storm-tossed Atlantic—fixed entirely on Killian.
"I hear things from the family, lad," he said, his voice carrying over the low murmur of the room. "They say that back in the county, you were not like the rest of us. That you kept more company with ledgers than with shovels."
He leaned forward slightly.
"But here is what I do not understand…"
The men around the table stilled. Dice went untouched, cards half-held in hand. Attention shifted, quiet but complete.
"Look at these men," Cormac continued, gesturing with a thick, calloused thumb. "Every one of them is a predator. And every one has put his name to a piece of parchment owned by some gentleman in a silk waistcoat in Philadelphia or New York."
A faint, humorless smile crossed his face.
"They have their passage paid. Their bellies filled with salt pork. Their pistols loaded. All in exchange for the next five years of their lives—to masters they have never seen."
He lifted the tankard again and took a slow drink, never breaking his gaze.
"But you…" he said at last. "The family tells me you signed no such contract. That you paid for your own passage—and the girl's besides."
A brief pause settled between them.
"In a time when men sell their souls merely to escape hunger, you walk aboard this ship a free man."
His voice lowered slightly.
"Why? Why spend the last of your coin to remain unowned… in a country that devours the unowned without thought?"
Killian did not answer at once. His grip on Siobhan's hand tightened faintly—more in thought than fear.
Then, calmly:
"Because a servant cannot become a master," he said. "But a free man—"
He paused, choosing his words with care.
"—even if he must serve for a time, may one day rise beyond it."
Silence followed.
Cormac let out a short chuckle—but it did not last. It faded quickly, replaced by something more measured. Something knowing.
Cormac's chuckle faded, leaving behind a grim, knowing look. He leaned forward, the shifting light of the lamp casting uneven shadows across his rugged face, giving him the stillness of something carved rather than living.
"Master, you say?" he murmured. "It is a fine word, Killian. Sweet on the tongue—but heavy in the gut."
His voice dropped, rough and deliberate, and the low murmur of the cabin died entirely.
"Listen well, lad. You have vision—I will grant you that. But you think like a man who has not yet felt the full weight of an English boot."
He tapped the table once, slowly.
"In these 'United' States, the war with King George may be finished… but the war for the purse has only begun. The men who hold New York—the Livingstons, the Schuylers, the merchants with their counting houses along Pearl Street—they no longer send taxes to London."
A faint pause.
"But they still think like London."
Cormac dragged a jagged line across the table with a dirty fingernail, as though marking a boundary no map recorded.
"There are rules in this world that are not written in any Constitution," he continued. "The English and the Dutch—they own the docks. They own the judges. They own the very air you will breathe the moment you step off that gangplank."
His gaze hardened.
"To them, an Irishman is not a man of trade. He is a beast of burden. You are the back that carries the crate—not the hand that signs the receipt."
Around the table, the other men gave quiet nods. No one spoke.
"If an Irishman dares to buy a shop," Cormac went on, "the tax collector finds cause to ruin him. If he lends money, the constables call it theft. They have built a wall around their gold, Killian—and that wall is made of what they call 'gentlemen's agreements.'"
He leaned back slightly, though his eyes never left Killian.
"They will let you work until your bones give way. But the moment you try to sit among them… they will use every tool they possess—their laws, their hired men, their banks—to drive you back into the mud they believe is your proper place."
Killian listened in silence.
A deep frown settled across his face.
This was not the country he had seen.
In his visions, the United States had been something different—something vast and open. A place where a man might rise by his own will. Where an Irishman, an Italian, even a foreigner from distant lands, might build something of his own and stand without bowing.
What Cormac described was not that vision.
It was another England—only with ballots instead of crowns.
The thought unsettled him more than he cared to show.
Cormac watched him closely. The confusion was plain enough.
He had seen it before.
When word of independence first spread, many Irishmen had believed as Killian did—that across the ocean lay a place where they might cease to be subjects, where they might become masters of their own fate. Yet the reality had proven harsher.
Some had died beneath the same boots they thought to escape.
Others lived on, still bound—only with looser chains.
Even those who had fought the British—the native peoples of the land—found themselves cast aside, treated no better, often worse.
And if such was their fate…
What chance had an Irishman newly arrived?
The silence stretched.
Then, at last, Killian spoke.
"Then we do not compete on their ground, Cormac."
His voice had changed. The uncertainty was gone, replaced by something colder—clearer.
He rose to his feet, steadying himself against the ship's sudden lurch, and leaned over the table. With a firm hand, he pressed a finger against the rum-stained map spread before them.
"You tell me they own the courts of New York, the wharves of Boston, the laws of Philadelphia," he said. "You tell me they despise us because we are many—and because we have nothing."
He lifted his gaze, the lamp's flame reflected sharply in his eyes.
"They are looking east—toward Europe, toward trade across the ocean."
A brief pause.
"But the future of this country is not in the sea."
His finger moved slightly across the map.
"It is in the West."
Cormac frowned, his interest stirred, though his skepticism did not lessen.
"You mean to build a kingdom in the wilderness, lad?"
Killian shook his head once, firmly.
"Not a kingdom, Cormac. A State."
The correction was quiet, but deliberate.
"The Constitution allows for it," he continued. "New territories may become States once they reach a sufficient population. And Ireland…"—he paused briefly—"Ireland will not cease sending men like us. Hungry men. Brave men."
He let that settle before going on.
"If we lead them—ten thousand, perhaps twenty—across the Appalachian Mountains, we will not remain servants in another man's land."
His hand rested against the table, steady despite the ship's motion.
"We will be citizens of our own."
A silence followed.
Not the careless silence of disinterest, but the heavier kind—measured, thoughtful. The kind that comes when a man hears something dangerous… and possible.
