The Pirate King Ch. 17

He didn't say any more. He didn't have to. I knew how Drey was with those he fancied. I knew how he treated them like kings, how everyone around envied their clothes, their wealth, their standing. How he had found the woman he had been with when he sailed under me begging, how he had reminded her and all those around them how much he'd done for her. Or the sailor he'd brought on board after saving his life, given him a position of honor. How often he reminded us all that that man owed him, how often that man himself seemed to repeat it. How the way he said it slowly went from glowing praise to quiet acceptance. How often that man seemed to limp, how he stopped coming to arms practice or would pull away if you raised your arm. How that woman did her best to hide her bruises when we left the docks where she lived.

"It would explain how he got his own ship," Val said quietly. "And the industry was his, in the end. He owned them all." My fists were clenched tight.It's better when you own them he'd told me once. He'd been so drunk he couldn't stand, and the sailor he'd brought on board had locked himself in the brig to get away from him.They can't fuckin' run if you own their life.

"I should have killed him years ago," I managed. My voice felt like lightning. My body felt like direction, like rain on the edge of fifty mile an hour winds. "If I find out he's laid one hand on my Captain -"

Val waited for me to finish my sentence, eyes already checking the sky for a storm. He wouldn't find it here. Any pain I sent out into the world was gathering far away, on a ship I had once called home, that seemed to bring the world nothing but pain. "You'll what?"

I'd what? I'll kill him, I wanted to say, but I was already going to kill him and what good would that do?You can't kill trauma, Sneg's voice called in my head, and I wanted to punch those words out of me, wanted to rip my brother out of time and make it so I had destroyed him when we were only children and he had first shown me he was not a being to be trusted.

But didn't that make me what my father wanted? Could I have known? Could I have done that at all? Me a child, him a child, and yes I had killed as a child and yes I had killed other children but only when my father demanded and only when it was my life or theirs and this, this was not that and besides, he was my brother - more than that, he was a being who had fought at my side for years, had saved my life, had lived the same things I had. Who understood. In that moment, in the aftermath of my father's death, with Val leaving the sea, leaving me, with Miranda turning on me and forcing me to choose between her death and her exile, would I have been able to give that up? How could I allow myself to lose such an intimacy?

"Fuck," I snapped, and whirled around to punch the wall.

Val, arms crossed, stared with pursed lips at the hole I had created. "You're fixing that."

No, I couldn't have killed him in the past. He had not yet become the killable being he now was, and I had not yet become the killer. Or perhaps it was the other way around; I was not yet killable enough, and he not enough of a killer for me to take action. And so I had died, and because of that he might have found the Captain and so the Captain had found me and all of that was how it should have been, had been how it had to be to bring me here but that didn't make the knowledge of it, the possibilities surrounding the ways it could have been different hurt any damn less.

Standing there in the living room, in the present, I knew I could not kill him in the past. I could only kill him in the future, and so I would, and when that time came I would deal with the things that motion brought with it. For now, I could only control the things that this moment brought. And so I did the only thing I could think to do.

I turned, walked past Val, and headed into the kitchen to begin making dinner.

***

Val tried talking to me a little more about Dreyfus and the Captain's possible relationship with him as I chopped and fried and prepared, but I ignored him. Not only was it speculative and therefore uninteresting, there was nothing to be done about it even if it was true. Val, used to this type of behavior from me and knowing how useless any further questioning would be, very quickly switched subjects.

"You know your ship doesn't show up when I try to scry." Val was working beside me, his hands just as quick as mine on the onions. He had spent his time in Minnie's kitchen, had learned all the same skills. It was an important part of our childhood - it was possibly why we were still alive when so many other children on that ship had died.

I shrugged. "It doesn't surprise me." Such spells had been Minnie's forte. It made sense that Alan would know of them.

"Are you putting protection on it?" Val almost sounded put out. He probably believed he should be able to get past any protection I put down. He probably should. He was the stronger spell weaver of the two of us.

"No."

"Is the sea?" There was a familiar edge to his voice; I avoided it with practice.

"No."

"Then you should fucking show up."

I thought for a moment. It was rude of me to do this, but my loyalty to Val came first and I knew he wouldn't let this rest until I explained what was going on. I sent silent apologies to Cookie. "Do you remember Minnie's brother?"

"The one who worked with Urumbu?"

I had forgotten about Urumbu. He was dead nearly ten years now, Minnie's brother with him. "No, not that one. Alan."

Val paused, then turned to me so quickly his braid nearly hit me in the face. "The one who abandoned his kitchen? The one who sailed his ship into the Void?"

I shrugged. That was the story.

"Gods." Val went to press his hands to his face, stopping just in time as he remembered that they were covered in the sweat of onions. "No wonder you felt comfortable bringing them here again. With that man as crew, I'd go anywhere I wanted too."

"He isn't crew." Val peeked around his fingers. "He's the cook."

Val blanched. I saw him, the color draining from his dark skin to make him a sort of grey. "Gods," he whispered. "Gods. The fucking cook? He went back from fucking captain to fucking cook? Holy shit. Holy fucking shit, are you mad? Are you fucking insane to have him on your ship? You saw what he could do as captain, and you're letting him be the fucking cook?"

Cook was the most powerful position of a ship. I knew it. Val knew it. Alan, now Cookie, had learned it the hard way, had thought he'd lived in power and instead had found his power in anonymity and I was in danger of breaking that now. I frowned, looking out over the sea.

"Does he know?"

"Does who know what?"

"The Captain. Does he know who works under him, the fucking power his ship holds?"

I shrugged, preoccupied with wondering if I was putting our protections in danger by revealing Cookie's identity to my brother. "Well, he doesn't know Minnie."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"It would be foolish to point out that Minnie's brother was aboard if he doesn't know Minnie," I explained patiently.

"Gods," Val repeated. I frowned at him. It was not incredibly smart to call on the gods, new or old, so often in a place where the call might just go through. "He's a little more thanMinnie's brother, don't you think?"

I shrugged. However powerful Alan might be, whatever stories he might hold on his back, Minnie was still the matriarch.

"Go-" Val started. I reached out and placed my finger on his lip before he could finish the thought. He immediately froze, realizing how often he had allowed that usually mundane curse to pass unhindered in this anything but mundane place. "Shit," he finished sullenly, and I removed my finger.

There was a stretch of silence. Then, "Does Minnie know?"

I remembered Alan's words to me when I had first met him, how he had told me he hadn't spoken to his sister in some years. "I don't think so."

"Shit." Val pinched the bridge of his nose. "She should know this. This changes everything."

"It changes nothing." I didn't know what change he might be referring to, but I knew that Alan should be allowed to reach out to his blood on his own time. "I don't think he wants her to know."

"I don't really fucking care what he -"

"Val." I turned to him. "He took on a new name. He came back to the kitchen." For all of his power, for all of his well-stocked spells cabinets, he nearly refused to do any of the work I asked of him. He was wary of power in the way only those who understood what true power was could be. "Give him time to adjust before you throw him back into that family, into the war."

"What war," Val muttered. "There's no fucking war."

Of course not, I silently agreed. No war, merely dead kings and stolen loyalties, broken vows and alliances, the children of gods thrust into a world that had places picked out for them while cooks and servants and other beings of power that had chosen their sides bade their time and were now simply waiting, waiting, waiting...

If there was no war, it was because the time had not yet come for the war to begin. If there was no war, it would be because I would be able to avoid it by doing what all my predecessors had done - silently, successfully kill the king. To do what Dreyfus had done. To do what I had done, what Val had helped me with. What Miranda had done to me because she thought I would do the same to her, because we were children of the sea and that was what we were raised to do.

No, I thought. There is no war. There is only death. I had been brought into this from such a young age that I knew nothing else; this had been my entire life, watching the slow death of Kings. Participating in my own. Would I ever be free of this cycle?

I sighed. Only fate could know. Only the stars held the answers. Fate, the stars, and my daughter. I turned my eyes out the window and hoped that perhaps she might hold the key to a brighter future, a better way.

***

Far away from the kitchen, far from the thoughts of dead men and living brothers, farther still from ships that creaked with love and farthest from ships that groaned under fear and the beginnings of a sudden and unexpected storm, a man stood hand in hand with the most powerful seer in the history of the world.

"Papa," she said sternly.

The man sighed. "I'm sorry."

"I just need you to be listening."

"I am," he told her.

"No," the child told him, her face impossibly open and yet the man did not try to read it, did not think to take this moment and learn. "You're not."

What the man did not know, what he had not yet come to understand and perhaps never truly would was that the child was not only speaking to him. Or rather, she was only speaking to him, but she was not only speaking to himnow. She held his hand on this bluff, on this island, but she also stood before him at dinner three years from now, and clasped his arm ten years from now, and froze in the middle of laughter eighteen years from now, because this man on the bluff was only here in the now with her and could only see this moment of time and was therefore at a disadvantage.

But the child could see.

All of these lines, all of these confluences. Each moment that was the child, or the girl, or the woman stood up and drew towards the man, or reached towards him best as she could, because she had seen something important and this man, this poor, sightless man needed to know.

Because the world was turning. And it turned on his soul.

And the girl, everywhere. She cansee.

Three years from now, an eleven year old girl is frowning. She has a better grasp of time then the eight year old girl, but she still struggles. "Did I already tell you the thing about the king?" she asks the man seated at the table. He smiles and nods, and she frowns and is left with a feeling of discontent because there was something important and just because she knows she already told him doesn't mean the importance of the thing has gone away.

Ten years from now, a young woman tightens her grip on the man's shoulder and freezes up. She takes a moment before shaking her head. "I already told you that," she declares. The man pats her on the shoulder decisively before returning to his fishing; he's used to this by now.

Eighteen years from now, the woman barely misses a beat in her laughter. She's used to this by now, too. The man before her finishes his story, then pats the hand of the man beside him, smiling with such fondness the woman melts a bit. These two men are still in love, will always still be in love. She's known this since she first saw her father. Since she first was born, she's lived this moment.

"More tea?" The woman is now turning to see a small woman enter the room. Grey is slipping into her curly hair. Sadness keeps slipping onto her beautiful face. This will be the last time she will come to visit this place; something terrible will happen on her way back to the Vault of Sapphires. Cassandra knows it will happen, even if she doesn't know what it will be.

Sybil knows.

The girl has known ever since she could know things. Ever since she first opened her eyes and could see she's seen the end of her mother, no, more, seen the death of men she hadn't even met, mourned the loss of friends she hasn't yet made and loved lovers that haven't even been born. And so standing there on the bluff with the man, she looked at him and will look at him and is looking at him and she knew that he would be okay, that he would live through this, and knew the exact moment when that would stop being true.

But the man, the man could not see and so he did not think to pay attention.

The Sybil on the bluff squeezed the man's hand. She knew, from the Sybil three years from now, from the Sybil six months from now, that this is not an easy thing to hear. She knew, from the Sybil eleven years from now when the man would get drunk and cry in her arms, exactly what this man had been through in his past. What he had done to survive. She knew, from the Sybil fifty three years from now, that he would survive so, so much more.

But she did not tell the man any of this, because she didn't know how to, because she was a child, and because there was somethingimportant that the world needed him to know. "I know you're not listening," she continued, because the man one year and six months from now was at that very moment or at least as much as any moment could be a moment to the girl telling her how he wasn't listening until the girl had made him listen. "And I really, really need you to listen. Please, Papa. It's important." She tugged on his hand and felt the man from seven years from now gather her into a hug for the first time in months. "Really important."

The man sighed and turned his eyes to her.

"I'm sorry," she started with, because that seemed like the thing to say. She never knew how to talk to people, and there were a lot of people with her then.

"What?" the man from ten years from now asked, pulled from his fishing.

The girl shook her head and tried again. "You gotta know some things," she started, and this time she got it right and the man on the bluff was the one who heard. "The world needs you to know some things."

"I'm listening," the man said, and this time he was and she sighed her relief.

"You're not gonna do it." He was staring at her, but she had to say what the world was saying. Had to repeat the things that needed repeated. "The prophecy isn't for you. You can't do it, he's gonna name you."

The man's hand tightened in her's for a moment, then relaxed. "I know," he said quietly.

"You won't be able to kill him," the girl told him.

"I know," he repeated. He wasn't looking at her, was looking at his feet instead. Three years later he was telling her that he thought he was going to cry. Eleven years later he was. "I thought... I mean, I hoped..."

But the girl wasn't finished. There was something building in the cracks, something slipping out. All through the twists, everywhere she touched, the girl lifted her head and listened. She had to.

Then she sighed and tugged at the hand until the man's eyes raised and met hers.

"Long live the King," she told him softly.

His head jerked back. "What?"

"Long live the King," the woman on the docks said.

"Long live the King," a child seated at dinner said.

In a living room somewhere in the future, Cass put her hand knowingly on the woman's shoulder as she pressed her hand to her head in frustration. "Long live the King," Cass said for her.

"Hail," finished the child on the bluff. "For the King will never die."

***

The Captain did not look pleased when he came back into the room. I reached for him when he walked past me, hoping to pull him into me, my body seeking some sense of solidity, safety, comfort, but he dodged my touch and instead settled on a chair on the far side of the room. I saw the look on his face and recognized his need for space and so I drew back, knowing his need was greater than mine. I could find what I needed in his proximity; his comfort was more important to me that his touch.

For the next few moments I drew the conversation away from him, pointedly keeping Val with me until he grew frustrated with his inability to question the Captain and left the room, probably to try and find Sybil to see if he could get some answers from her.

I waited in the silence Val left, knowing that if he wanted to speak he would do so. The Captain sat quietly for a long time, his eyes on the ground, his hands tight on the chair arms. When he finally spoke it was explosive, fast.

"What the fuck." I turned, happy to stop pretending to do work. I had expected his words some time ago and had run out of things to do long before he spoke. "Your fucking kid is. And this fucking place."

I turned to face him, leaning on the table behind me. "Did Sybil say something?" I asked quietly.

The Captain did not answer. His head was in his hands, hair falling in front of his face. I wished I could see him. I wished I could hold him. When his hand fell out towards me, a motion so helpless and yet so deliberate I thought he had become gravity itself, I was there in an instant. My hands closed around the warmth of his palm as I kneeled before him. Still he did not lift his head.

"My love," I called to him softly. His hand closed tight around mine.

"Is this the right thing? What we're doing. Is it." His hand shifted to cover his eyes, then up into his hair. Still his eyes were obscured. "Is this going to work?"

"Of course." Things were true and then I said them; the Captain was always safe with me; I was the sea, and even if I were but a man I would have said those words to him for they were needed, for they were the truth. "The North is ours."

"Is it?" He looked up at me, and I almost drew back, his eyes held so much. "We're going up against a god, Sailor. We're going up against the King."

Those words landed in my chest next to the things I had thought earlier, the fears I held for the possibilities of the Captain's past. I breathed in and felt them settle a little too close to what I used to call home. "I know," I told him quietly.

His eyes searched mine for a moment, and I let him look. Hoped he would see so that I would not have to tell him. But instead he asked me the question that he had been asking me before, back on the ship, the one that I had not bothered to hear. "Is this stupid? Is this safe? You've heard the fucking stories. Fuck, you sailed with him yourself. You know what the Kings can do." His eyes were red and holding something I wasn't ready to name. "Sailor, what the hell are we doing?"