The Pirate King Ch. 14

This is part of an ongoing series - I highly recommend you go back and read from the beginning. We'll still be here when you get back. :)

Alternate title: his infernal way of being

As always, comments and feedback much appreciated. Longer chapter this time; heard what you had to say and managed to get some more words on the page. Also, something new this way comes. It's long; it's. Well. Different. Keep an eye out for it and let me know what you think.

Love, pleasure, and comfort to each and every one of you. May you find someone with which you can be vulnerable, who will remind you that your soul is dangerous and will hold you when you cry.

*****

"Captain!"

Curls flipped up as the Captain raised his head quickly, his maps abandoned at the urgency of the man's voice. Dark eyes narrowed beneath brows drawn together with concern, and perhaps just a touch of anxiety.

Beside him, Natch straightened. "Speak, man," the small blonde said, not unkindly. "We're in the middle of -"

"There's a ship."

"Well." The Captain's eyes narrowed further. "What of it?"

The man shifted. "It's getting closer."

"Well, naturally." The Captain leaned back on the table. His face didn't change, leveling the interrupting with a gaze that brooked no argument. "We are giving chase, correct?"

The man swallowed. "Nay, Cap."

The Captain's eyebrow moved just the slightest bit up. Natch crossed his arms. "No?"

The Captain was more verbose. "And, pray tell, why is that?"

The man shifted, his eyes flicking between the two men before him. "Seems, Cap, that she be chasin' us."

There was a long moment as the Captain and his first mate processed this information.

Then everyone moved at once. The maps were forgotten. The interruption was forgotten. Everything was forgotten but the ship as the three men rushed up to catch sight of what - perhaps, of who - this approaching vessel might bring.

***

The Hayworth was a small merchant ship captained by a small merchant man. He had given up his life behind a desk with the promise that life on the sea would be more exciting, fulfilling. That he would have grand adventures.

He had never regretted that decision as much as he did at this exact moment.

The captain was standing now uncomfortably, anxiously, on the deck of a pirate ship. It should not have to be said that he did not want to be here, surrounded by men who could kill him or his men and take his goods. And yet, here he was. Voluntarily, none the less.

More or less. Much, much more on the less.

He knew that if word of this made it back to the crown, if they found out he had sought out a pirate for parlay, had not even simply surrendered but had chased down the ship so that he might be able to take that option, he might never carry goods for certain merchants again. Hell, he might very well be hung. Or worse.

But he didn't have much of a choice, now did he? He shuffled his feet and cleared his throat to hide the sudden shivers that slipped down his body at the memory of his instructions, clear as day. "He said you wouldn't hurt us."

The man at his elbow turned at that and gave him a long appraising look. "No one says who I hurt or don't hurt besides me, mate."

The captain did not have a long time to think about that statement, which was probably a good thing, because at that moment a startling man came striding into view.

He was tall, not overly so but tall enough that the captain found himself wishing he could shade his eyes as he looked at him. Or maybe that was just the man himself, the brilliance that he carried. Curls bounced just on the edge of mutiny as he pulled up a few steps from the captain's position, his black cloak snapping back to reveal a series of very businesslike daggers, and a few ones that looked like they weren't businesslike at all, which made them all the more terrifying.

The captain swallowed. Images of a mahogany desk swam forlornly before his eyes.

"Well," the man said. He was staring down at the captain with dark eyes that threatened to push him flat just with the pressure they held.I am a captain, the captain reminded himself.I have a signed affidavit from the king himself. I am safe in my post, and in my standing.

He did not feel very safe.

"Why are you here?"

"He said you wouldn't hurt us," the captain found himself repeating.

The man before him narrowed his eyes. "Who?"

The captain licked his lips. He looked from side to side. This had seemed like a good idea when it was the only option, or, it hadn't, but he'd done it because he'd wanted to live. But now, here, in the light of day, surrounded by pirates. Faced with this man.

He wondered for a moment if he was running from smoke into open flame. But no, that being, those churning grey eyes...

But how the hell do you explain that to someone who wasn't there? He shifted his feet and fidgeted with his hands. I'm just going to have to lie, he thought suddenly. That's it. I'll just make something up. A god, or, or, a message from another pirate ship who captured us. Yes, that would do. "Well, you see..."

The man before him drew in a very sharp and very sudden breath. The captain fell silent.

"Who?" the man asked again as if he were asking it for the first time. The captain got the feeling he was not a man who repeated himself often and thanked any god that would listen for this second chance. He didn't waste it, didn't even think.

"The ghost," he said immediately.

Just as immediately he regretted it.

The man's face went dark, so dark. The captain had never seen a face so dark as that. He had the strangest sensation, just for a moment, that he was not looking at a face but instead the night sky just before lightning struck from nowhere.

A small blonde man walked up. "What's the verdict?"

The lightning struck. "He keeps fucking doing this! I'm not some child who needs my food brought to me on a goddamn golden platter, my meat cut up for me! I have fucking knives, I know how to use them!"

"Uh," the captain said, unsure about being compared to meat that needed cutting so close to this man's display of blades.

"He just cares, Cap," the blonde said. "He just wants you to know -"

"Bullshit! He's fucking teasing me, he's tormenting me Natch, I know he's here but I can't fucking see him! Can't touch him! I just get his goddamn fucking. Long distance presents!" He gestured wildly at the captain - the captain blinked.

"Uh," he repeated.

"Fuck!" the man finished up. He whirled away, his curls bouncing after him.

"The third ship in two weeks!" it was possible to hear him shout. "In a goddamn barren stretch of sea! Where is he even finding ships! Where the fuck is he!"

The blonde moved up closer to the captain. "Gotta ask," he said. "You get visited by a ghastly specter lately?"

The captain nodded.

"Huge, scarred? Grey eyes?"

The captain nodded again.

"Pretty much the sea incarnate?"

The captain looked up in surprise. That summed it up pretty well - terrifyingly well, in fact. He nodded a third time.

"He tell you how to find us? What to say when you get here?"

"He was very persuasive," the captain said, suppressing a shudder at the memory.

"What a fucking dick," muttered the small blonde. The captain of the Hayworth looked up in alarm.

"Oh," the blonde said. "Not you, mate." He patted the man on the arm in what might have been a comforting gesture had he not been holding a knife in his other hand.

"We're supposed to give you any cargo you want," the captain found himself saying. There was something going on here that he didn't understand. He figured he'd better just stick to the script.

"Yeah," the blonde said. "We don't want your cargo. Thanks, though."

"Uh, you're welcome." You're welcome? He could have kicked himself. But the blonde man merely nodded.

The wild man was still ranting somewhere. "He's right fucking here, why doesn't he just fucking show himself!"

"What exactly is happening?" the captain asked the blonde. He seemed the most sane of all these people here. Not like there was much of a competition at this point.

The blonde man sighed. "Love, mate. True love."

The captain looked dubiously out at the deck. "I'm gonna fucking kill him!" he heard.

"Oh," he said, and thought privately to himself that he had never been so glad to be a bachelor.

***

I leaned on the railing, staring out of the harbor. Somewhere out there, a captain sailed. Resplendent. Magnificent. Everything.

Without me.

I sighed. It simply wasn't time yet. This ship was too good; we had made it to his bearings far too quickly. Along the way we'd gathered up a few presents for him, just little gifts I could send his way. By now he should know that I was close.

I smiled slightly. He should have received my latest gift by now. I wondered how he had liked it.

"Priliv?"

I was pulled from my daydream by the Russian's hand on my shoulder. I was still not used to this name for me. The Russian had taken to calling each of us by a Russian word after he'd learned Sneg's name.

"Ah," he said. "If you are the Snow, then he is the tide, and he is the dead man." I had thought that was insensitive, especially given that I was more dead than Ichor was, but the Russian was not to be deterred. And Ichor didn't seem to mind, even making the Russian repeat the name over and over again until he, too, could pronounce the strange syllables.

I was much less enthusiastic. It was only after he explained to me that the name he'd chosen for me meant both "the inexorable rush of the tides" and "boss" that I relented.

Sneg, then, had asked him what we should call him. He had shrugged and said, "chelovek".

Sneg later explained to me that was nothing more than the Russian word for man. In any case, it proved too difficult for us, and so he told us we could call him Ivan.

"Is not my name," he told me amicably one day as we coiled ropes. "But in the end, we are all Ivan,da?" Then he slapped me on the shoulder and headed away, smiling.

Sneg did not have an explanation for that one.

"Priliv?" he repeated now, and I turned to him.

"Yes?"

"We are done here?"

I made a quick perusal of the deck. We had been making a stop at a small town on an island that wouldn't be surprised to see a ship such as ours, flying no flag and manned by no men. We only needed some fresh water, a bit of food. And a bag of limes, for Alan.

I smiled to see Ichor carrying the limes up the gangway. Sneg was with him; the two traveled most places together now. Ichor had taken a liking to Sneg's narcotic incense. Sneg had taken a liking to having a large, heavily armed man with them at all times.

At the end of the day, I think they also had taken a liking to each other.

I had not been pleased, at first, with Ichor's obvious enjoyment of the noxious smoke. But in the end it simply slowed him down to a more manageable pace, and calmed him enough to exist around others. I figured that if I ever needed him fighting it wouldn't be too hard to keep him from Sneg's stash.

I, for one, stayed far away from the stuff. A mistake while ghosting an early present for the Captain while using makeshift smoke bombs that Sneg had rigged up had made me wary of the effects. At first we thought perhaps it might have uses beyond just recreation and making men see visions. We'd all just ended up high as shit, myself included, which had. Interesting results.

The ship we were ghosting no longer existed, which was not entirely my fault. In the end, it turned out alright, with most of the crew making it onto one of the three islands that sprung suddenly from the ocean, the men's bodies buoyed by the strange influx of schooling fish, dolphins, and one very large and very confused squid.

We did not use the smoke bombs again.

"Got your fucking limes," Sneg told me now, leaning on the railing with their air of affected indifference. Very little looked like it bothered that kid. I knew that they, like Natch, had years of practice hiding their emotions from those who might weaponize them. It never ceased to amaze me how Natch and Sneg could accomplish the same goals in such different ways.

The same, I thought with some fondness. And so, so different.

"The ship we ghosted last time had a shit ton of limes. Couldn't we have just grabbed some of those?"

I gave them a stern look. To steal from someone else's kitchen?

They rolled their eyes and moved further into the ship. "Well, now we've got town guards looking for us, because Big and Obvious here sucks at lifting shit."

I looked to Ichor. He shrugged, and I sighed. It wasn't his fault he was so large, and it was mine that he was covered in such distinctive markings. "You could have just paid for the limes."

"We could have," Sneg agreed, "if we had any money."

Fair. We had used the last of our scrounged money on the fresh water.

A shout went up on the docks. I turned and saw a few uniformed men begin running our way.

"Oh, hell," Sneg muttered. "All for some fucking limes."

"Limes are very important," I told them.

"Stop!" the men shouted. Or something. It was boring to me; we were done here. Ichor," I said calmly. "Anchor." He nodded and headed below. "Ivan?"

The Russian was at my side in an instant.

"We'll need your power to get the boom in place, I think."

"You're under arrest!" a man shouted. He was insignificant, and so I ignored him.

"Sneg, if you could start on the aft ropes. When those are untied we'll worry about the gangplank."

"You're under arrest!" the man shouted again. He was on the ship now. I walked past him to begin untying our fore ropes.

"Hey! I said -"

He grabbed my arm, hindering my progress. It got my attention enough to earn a stern glare, the sea rising within me without my having to ask it. I wore it close to my skin in those days, knowing it would not surprise the three bodies I had on ship. They understood.

The man who had been shouting did not. He fell silent, and I moved to take care of the ropes.

Sneg met me at the gangplank soon after. We were already moving away from the dock.

"There's a man on our ship," they said.

I had forgotten all about the guard that had come aboard. I sighed and beckoned him closer.

He didn't move.

"Look," I told him. "We're about to pull up the gangplank. If you go now, you can still make it to the dock."

He pointed to the limes. "You stole these." His hand was shaking.

"Yes." I spoke slowly, like you might for a child. "And now I am leaving." I glanced down at the gangplank. "You can still make it."

"You can always come with us," Sneg said, looking casual and uncaring. I saw the smile hiding behind their lips. "Join the crew. Of course, you'd have to work for him..."

The man walked stiffly over to the far side of the ship and jumped.

Sneg tsked at the sound of flesh hitting water. "He didn't even use the gangplank."

I shrugged and pulled it the rest of the way in. It made no difference to me, so long as he was gone.

"Anyway." They turned to me brightly. "Where to, el Capitan?"

I sighed. Sneg was not getting that I was not the captain of this ship, would never be the captain of this ship. I let it go for now. They would learn. "How long have we been doing this?"

"This?" Sneg shrugged. "About two weeks, I suppose."

My mind hurried to put together the requisite math. Two weeks at my house. A week moving towards and dealing with the Russian. Another week waiting on Sneg's reply - that was four weeks, one month.

And then the Captain had come. And then he had left. And my would had been brighter, so much darker, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

And then Sneg had come. And there had been a week of gathering everyone together, and now two weeks at sea.

One month and three weeks. That left one week.

I smiled. One week to reach the man I loved.

"We will be out of harbor in very soon," the Russian called from his post.

"Good," I said. I turned to Sneg. "Let's go get captured by pirates."

***

I knew where he was. I always knew where he was. It was just a matter of pointing our bow in the correct direction, to stop circling around him, toying with the idea of him. To go and truly begin our journey.

I stood in the riggings of the bow as we drew closer, knowing him like a compass must know north. I called bearings out the the Russian, who adjusted our movements thusly.

In this way we came into view of his ship.

I knew the ship instantly, knew it from sight and from the way my stomach suddenly felt a million times lighter and a thousand times heavier all at once. I breathed it in, the sight of those sails. The knowledge of him. The closeness of us.

Then I directed the Russian to turn us 90 degrees starboard.

Sneg was at my side soon enough. "Yo," they said. They didn't say anything more.

"He's there," I told them. My eyes had not left the ship since it had come into view. "He's right there." My heart was singing. My heart was flying to pieces.

Sneg leaned around me to spit. "Then what are we waiting for?"

As we watched, the ship began to turn. I knew the sound of the shout that must be going up; could imagine the flurry of activity that was her deck. I watched as the ocean air filled her sails. My breath caught as she hit the first chuff in her flight towards us.

"That," I said. I turned and strode back across the deck. "90 star again. Full sail, trim it good. We're going running!"

Sneg gave me a look. "I thought the idea was to go to your love, not away."

It is, I thought. Oh, but it is.

But where is the fun in that? I turned and smiled back at where I knew the Captain would be fuming. We were in my playing field now. Let him catch me if he thought he could.

***

"Catch that fucking ship!" the Captain shouted, his eyes trained on the ship on the horizon. When he spoke again, his words were quieter but no less intense. "I fucking saw him Natch. Standing in the goddamn riggings. He's fucking taunting me."

Natch nodded, unwilling to say anything else. All around them, men rushed to push the ship to go even faster. Wood creaked from the stain; rope and canvas did their best to keep up.

"But my ship is goddamn faster, I've got the better fucking ship," the Captain muttered, his eyeglass still pressed to his face. "Fucking arrogant bastard, making me chase -" He froze, leaning into the riggings to try and get a better view. "Is that the fuckingRussian?"

Goddamn it, Ghost, Natch thought as the ship lurched forward. God fucking damn it.

***

Three days.

Three days I let them chase us. We could have outstripped them easily, made maneuvers they weren't equipped to do, unfurled sails they simply didn't have.

We didn't.

On the third day I knew we were approaching the invisible line that separated Things of the North and Things of the South. I could feel it in my bones, in my chest. To most people this line did not mean much, just slightly different currents or a warmer wind where you expected a colder one. But it made a difference, a large one, to those of use who relied on things like the weave of the world to stay informed.

Dreyfus would know if I crossed that line.

"Sails down," I told Sneg. There was no need to shout when everyone was right there. "We'll let them catch us today."

Sneg cross their arms. "They're gonna ram us."

"They won't." I looked out at the approaching ship. The Captain was probably frustrated. He might even be incredibly angry.

But he would also want this ship. Badly. He wouldn't injure it in any way.

Me, on the other hand. I couldn't keep a smile from my face to think of what might be in store for me.