The smell of salt seemed stronger than usual. Buffy was standing up on deck, watching the shoreline as they slowly made their way to the port. Buffy leaned against the railing. She was looking forward to spending some time in Cadiz. The trip from Canton had been a slow one, with almost nothing breaking the daily routine. Even when they had passed the Cape the weather had stayed calm, an event so unusual that some of the sailors talked about it as a bad omen. In a way, it had been, because the lack of storm around the Cape was followed by a complete lack of wind as they slowly made their journey north.
The five months they had spent in Canton had been good. This time, she had been able to spend a lot more time ashore. Together with Spike and Giles she had explored not only the small trade area, but the surrounding town and countryside as well. She felt at home in the crowded town and in the dark inns. Still, there was nothing like the sea. When they had left China for the return journey, she had been so happy that she had almost sung as they rigged the sails.
Buffy yawned as she watched the sun sink lower as they got nearer to their destination.
“Hey, Summers. Feel up for a lesson?”
Spike startled her, and she turned around and looked at him. Spike hadn’t immediately followed up on his promise after the storm, to take over the lessons Giles had started, but he had stayed close while Buffy and Giles had their routine practices on deck. A couple of weeks later, he had simply pushed Giles aside. “You’ve done your best, old man,” he had told him. “I’m taking over.” Since then, they had practised almost every day, both on the ship and in Canton.
“Not really,” she answered his question. “I still have a nasty bruise on my leg.”
He snorted.
”That little bruise is nothing compared to the one I have on my back. That move you made with your elbow yesterday was great!”
She winced. Spike had taught her not to hold back in a fight, not even in a practice fight with him, and she hadn’t. The result had almost knocked him out the day before. Still, he didn’t seem bothered by it at all. Not like she had been. He had worked hard with her, from the very beginning. Even the thought of those first times made her remember how the bruises had felt.
“You have to be quicker,” Spike said with a frown.
“It’s not that easy,” Buffy whined. “You make all those moves that I can’t predict.”
“Then you’re either lazy, or incredibly daft. I’ve been doing the same moves for the last ten sessions.”
“Yeah, well…” Buffy tried while she got up from the deck. She hadn’t even realised that he had been doing the same thing over and over again. That last punch had sent her flying.
“Come on, let’s try again,” Spike said, getting into fighting position. “I’ll start with the left punch, just like last time, and you’ll block it.”
The first and second punch she avoided easily, but then it got trickier. They moved across the deck, Spike hitting at her and Buffy doing the best she could to stay out of his way. The others moved out of their way, so used to them by now that they didn’t even bother to comment. Even though he had said he was going through the same motions as all the other times, she just couldn’t see it. All of his movements felt unexpected, and once again she was thrown down on deck as his right fist hit her jaw. Spike growled in disappointment.
“Shape up, Summers! It was the exact same thing that you fell for last time!”
“You do all those shifty things,” she complained as she tried to get up. “I thing you’re going to go right, and then all of a sudden – bam! You come in from the left.”
“That’s kind of the point,” he remarked. “God, you’re really hopeless, Summers. You better show me something better tomorrow.”
He left, leaving her on the deck. She felt stiff from the pain, and that night her entire body seemed to be covered in bruises. Her jaw turned a nice shade of purple that actually made Spike cancel their training session the next day.
She shrugged to shake the thoughts away. At least she had gotten better. Spike leaned against the railing next to her.
“Look at that,” he said. “Cadiz. So close we can almost touch it.”
“Definitely so close that we can smell it,” Buffy answered with a frown. “Why do all harbours smell like someone just died in them?”
”Probably because someone did,” Spike said with glittering eyes. “God, I want to be there tonight! Stupid captain with his stupid rules. Not going ashore the first night! Have you ever heard of such nonsense, Summers?”
“Yes, stupid rules forbidding us to get roaring drunk the day before we have to unload half of the cargo.”
“Exactly my point.”
Buffy laughed at him.
“You seem happy, Spike. I didn’t know you loved Spain so much.”
“Ah, not Spain,” he corrected. “The Spanish! And to be more specific: the Spanish ladies.”
“Oh, really?” Buffy raised an eyebrow at him. “And what’s so special about the Spanish ladies?”
“To be honest, it’s more about a Spanish lady,” Spike confessed. He leaned closer to Buffy to whisper in her ear, as if he was about to reveal a conspiracy. “I have a dark princess in this port.”
Buffy smiled, even though it suddenly felt as if they had had a training session after all, and he had hit her right in the stomach.
“Don’t you have a dark princess in every port?” she joked.
“Nothing like this one,” he said, serious all of a sudden. “She’s special. I can’t wait till tomorrow to see her. I bet she’s waiting for me. She always seems to know when I come in to port.”
Buffy swallowed, trying to push away that strange feeling in her stomach. Maybe the meat they had every day for dinner had finally gone bad. It wouldn’t be so strange if it had. The sun touched the horizon, and the captain ordered them to set anchor. Spike groaned.
“We’re so close! Evil, evil captain,” he said in a low voice to Buffy. “He leaves us out here for the night so that we can’t sneak away. I had planned to, you know.”
“You just have to wait for tomorrow,” she said. “It’s just a night away.”
She felt a bit relieved that the captain had decided to leave the ship out on the sea for one more night, even though they were so close to the harbour.
That night, Buffy couldn’t sleep. They were so close to the town that the sounds of it carried across the water to them. She sighed and tried to find a more comfortable position.
“Can’t sleep, pet?”
“No,” she answered and turned around. She could see Spike lying in his own hammock, so close to her own that she could touch it if she reached out for it. If they were out on deck, he always called her “Summers”, but when they were alone, and no-one could hear, he would call her “pet,” or “kitten”. She liked it.
“I can’t sleep, either. We’re so close to that bloody town, and still we’re trapped here.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Oh yes, it is. If you had ever seen my girl, you would understand how bad this is.”
“What’s her name?” she asked, not sure if she wanted to know or not.
“Drusilla.”
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Author’s note: This update was pretty short, mostly because my work is evil, and also because I needed to write this part to get to the more… interesting parts of the story. =)
I’m going to New York for a week (have to be at the airport in just a couple of hours, and then eight hours on a plane… eek!), so the next update will be when I get home, probably on the 30th of March.
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