Abigail fell to her hands and knees, soaking herself in the rancid water slowly filling her cabin. More accurately, her cell. The ship groaned, cracked, and rolled against the thundering booms echoing all around. Abigail tried to sort out the sounds: pistols and rifles popped, men yelled and cried out, and the bloody ship never stopped rocking and rumbling.

Even with fresh seawater flooding in, the water currently immersing her stank of men's filth. The stench and the rocking and the overwhelming noise were all too much. Her stomach clenched with a sharp pain before she retched right where she was. It didn't help.

She lifted her tired eyes to the door, but it wouldn't focus. Her vision blurred and her mind was a fog of pain and disgust. Until today, every time she started to feel better, one of the reeking pirates would barge into the cell and force another cup of tea down her throat. Abigail knew it must have been opium, and for the life of her she couldn't understand why anyone would voluntarily do this to themselves.

Her hand reached out, grasping blindly until her fingers made contact with wood. With a few more scrambling reaches, she got hold of the door handle and pulled herself up. Standing did not help the fog in her mind. The room spun wildly, made all the worse by the natural rocking of the ship.

The door fell from her grasp without warning, and she found herself back in the deepening rotten seawater, half out of the cabin now. How had she managed that? It was locked from the outside at all times. Before she could puzzle it out, hands grabbed her by the back of her dress and her hair, hauling her to her feet. The man's breath was hot and foul on her face. Her eyes focused just long enough to see a wet mouth full of yellowed, rotten, or just missing teeth. Her stomach cramped again, but there was nothing but bile. She coughed and gagged as it stuck in her throat. The man shouted something and released her. She crashed in a heap against barrels and crates.

Booted and bare feet pounded past her, kicking up that awful water into her face, but blessedly ignoring her. A dull pain in her hip joined the throbbing in her head. She slowly realized her vision was clearing, but the ship's hold was filling with smoke. She had to get her feet under her and get out of this death trap, but her world wouldn't stay still long enough. She pulled with all her might, weakened as she was, but was only standing for a moment before a hatch blew open in an explosion of wood shrapnel. Abigail tumbled back, falling between a stack of crates.

Boots thumped down the ladderwell with a chorus of shouted commands. Abigail pulled her feet in and tried to make herself as small as possible in her meager hiding place. Her head hit the wood of the bulkhead and Abigail felt her eyes crossing. This was simply too much. Her stomach roiled and the smoke was burning down her nostrils and throat, which already felt raw from vomit.

Men ran past her without stopping and her shoulders sagged with relief, until a shadow paused, then turned to face her.

The single largest man Abigail had ever seen stood before her, naked from the waist up and brandishing a wicked-looking sword. His skin was crisscrossed with black stripes of ash or dirt, Abigail couldn't say. Even his face was smeared with the stuff, giving him the aura of a wild animal.

His face knitted in confusion. He said something, but there was too much noise in her ears. He slid the sword back into the belt at his waist.

"Get Gates," he barked to another pirate. That much she caught. He turned back to her, and started speaking again, but his voice was too low. He held his hands out, palm up, as he sank to a low squat. Abigail shrank away as best she could. His massive hands matched the rest of him - entirely too large, with leather wraps at one wrist, to match the mess of leather and beaded necklaces at his throat. Only pirates dressed themselves in such a manner. This was not the Royal Navy rescue she'd been praying for.

He got incrementally closer, hands still held out to her. Abigail felt herself shaking, until his eyes came in focus through the smoke and haze. She stilled as she focused on eyes bluer and clearer than anything she'd seen since being tossed in the hold of this awful ship.

"Easy, easy," his voice was rumbling gently as he worked his way closer. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

He stopped moving forward and simply held out his hands, as if he was approaching a frightened deer. She tried to bring her hand up, but she was weaker than she realized. He must have seen it because in the next moment, his hand encompassed hers, and then the other found its way to her back, pulling her not to her feet, but straight up into his arms.

She must have turned green - the sudden axis-tilt didn't do her stomach any favors - because he frowned and apologized. Or perhaps he was apologizing because of the inappropriate contact, though she didn't think pirates cared much. She tried to push away from him, but his arms and chest were like an iron trap.

"Easy," he murmured again. "You're safe now." She sniffled and looked up to find him watching her with those bright eyes, made all the brighter against the black soot streaking his face. "You'll be okay."

Abigail gave up the exhausting effort of trying to put space between herself and him. Her muscles quit and she found herself resting her cheek against the warm skin of his chest. One of the necklaces featured a bright gold gem, like a cat's eye, twinkling and watching her. The great expanse under her let out a measured breath and then they were moving again.

With the help of one of his men, the pirate carried Abigail out of the hold and up into the bright daylight.

Abigail closed her book and frowned at the tidy garden outside. The window seat lost its comfort at least an hour ago. The sun had fallen too far to provide decent light for reading. She turned away from the window and her frown deepened. Supper would be called soon. It was an increasingly tense and silent affair.

Her generous hosts were growing impatient, and less generous. Their daughter was in the middle of her debut season, and they were running out of euphemisms for Abigail's situation. More than one family had already quietly introduced their sons to other eligible young ladies. Teas were canceled, plans postponed for a vaguely-defined later date.

Abigail was years past her majority and, according to the latest news from her solicitor, rapidly running out of money with which to pay her generous hosts. When she first arrived, they'd made introductions on her behalf with a short series of increasingly detestable bachelors. Then they stopped making inquiries, and the gentlemen stopped coming by the house. Abigail hadn't left the grounds in months.

Something had to break, but Abigail couldn't for the life of her imagine what. The crown had taken all of her father's investments and properties after an investigation into what was being called "the Charles Town debacle." The Milton family in Philadelphia represented the last of her distant relatives who would so much as acknowledge her.

Where would she go? Surely, she couldn't marry. The last suitor who'd called on her was 72 years old. Seventy-two. The one before that had shown up reeking of alcohol and couldn't keep his gaze above Abigail's neck for more than a moment before drifting lower again.

As she sat on her uncomfortable perch by the window, Abigail went over each so-called suitor again. Had she been too harsh? Facing poverty, what would she be willing to compromise on? Was there one who might not look so bad in this new light?

Imagining being wed to any of them made her stomach roil. She missed her father more and more these days. It was his fault she was in this situation, but he would know exactly what to do. He would make the decision for her, and that would be the end of that. She missed the comfort of being guided along the road of her life.

This was all terribly lonely.

She stood and stretched. She'd been on that seat since afternoon tea and everything felt stiff. Her entire body was sore, which made her cringe. Even with daily walks through the gardens, this was the most sedentary she'd ever been in her life, except for those weeks locked in a cabin on a pirate ship.

Her quiet journey back to her room always followed the same route. Abigail nodded and smiled at the servants, but none of them ever slowed or stopped. They gave her a gentle nod in acknowledgment and kept on about their work. No one ever spoke to her anymore. Anna, the Milton's sixteen-year-old daughter, barely deigned to ask her to pass the salt at dinner.

Abigail wrote letters every day, then burned them. When Mrs. Milton saw her with a new journal, the woman had launched into a tirade that ended with Abigail quietly tucking the empty book onto a bookshelf and never picking it up again. She wrote of the same things over and over, perhaps because burning them canceled out the satisfaction of writing them in the first place. She wrote about how she knew she should long for the sprawling gardens and open lands of her family's former estate, how Philadelphia was too crowded, too loud, but none of that was what bothered her. She mourned the man she'd always thought her father was before the investigation and his attempt to ship her off into a hermitage. She mourned the lost opportunity to find that man again.

To her shame, she did not mourn him as he was. Her letters spoke of betrayal, lies, doubt. How could a band of pirates show more integrity than he had? How could she miss the endless blue of the ocean and the smiling faces of the men who sacked her city at all, let alone more than her own family?

Low voices trickled from the library. As she got closer, Abigail slowed, catching bits and pieces, until she reached the door. She almost took another step, which would reveal her to anyone sitting in the cavernous room, but then she heard her name in a hushed whisper. She stayed just out of sight from the open door, unsure whether to alert her hosts that she could hear them, or continue eavesdropping.

"She'll never be able to pay this," Mrs. Milton said. "Is he sure?"

"Every penny," Mr. Milton replied. "She was just six months shy of her majority. If her solicitor had waited, she wouldn't be in this position, but what can we do? The Crown wants their money back."

Abigail heard Mrs. Milton's deep sigh, creaking of a chair, and the delicate tinkling of a china teacup on its saucer. "She won't agree to this. She practically spat at the only gentlemen who responded to our inquiries."

"Well, it's this, or she can pay off her debt in prison like everyone else." Even Mrs. Milton gasped at her husband's cavalier response. "What? We're not going to pay for it. We've done more than enough. We'll be lucky if we ever get Anna out of the house thanks to her."

She couldn't hear anymore. Abigail clutched the book to her chest as if it might quell the thumping in her heart. She backed up slowly, as quietly as she could, until she was out of earshot, and then she ran the rest of the way to her room.

Abigail Ashe had worn out her welcome.

The whisky was a murky amber in his dirty mug. It tasted like watered-down piss. Billy poured the rest of the contents of his bottle into the mug and kept drinking. His knee throbbed, a dull ache that kept him anchored when all he wanted was to drift into that pleasant place where the world could gently rock him to sleep.

The tavern was alive with yelling, music, gambling. The working girls diligently tried their hands with him, no matter how many times he grunted and shook his head into his cup. The noise made his head throb in tune with his knee, but the silence of a rented room was intolerable. His eyes drifted to a table at the other end of the tavern. Men were throwing dice, jeering and collecting coins from each other. He considered joining the game, but his pockets were nearly bare. It was dice or another bottle, and the bottle was a sure bet.

Of course, it wouldn't help him pay off the dock master who'd helped him fence a crate or two of tobacco. Or the customs officer who never asked for his name. Or the bookmakers who'd fronted him money for games, money he hadn't won back.

Sometimes he thought it'd be easier to just let Silver find him and finish it. He was just so fucking tired. He couldn't stay in one place too long lest anyone recognize him. The English warrant for him had a cash prize only slightly bigger than the payment Silver was offering.

A drunk collided with his table, knocking the now empty bottle and sending it to the floor. Billy sneered and reared away from the table, putting his cup back to his lips. All greasy hair and soiled clothes, the man struggled to right himself, pushing away from the table and making a bigger mess. Then he slowed and narrowed his hazy gray eyes.

"I know you?" he slurred and raised a dirty, unsteady finger at Billy.

Billy continued his drink. He didn't let his eyes wander to the man or betray any reaction. He did recognize him from somewhere; some pirate who survived Nassau, perhaps. He set his drink down and shrugged. "Don't think so."

"No," the man shook his shaggy head and pressed forward. "I do know you. From…from the…from-"

Billy stood so sharply he nearly knocked the table over, shouldered past the man and stomped out of the tavern without a backward glance at any of the offended patrons. Outside, the cool dockside air should have helped clear his head. It didn't. It still swam, alternating between nauseating dizziness and a throbbing headache.

His feet shuffled along the road until they were shuffling down the unmistakable feel of a wooden pier. He was surrounded by the familiar sounds of sailors at their leisure, boats rocking in the gentle, sheltered water. He wrinkled his nose and groaned, turning away lest he wander right off the dock into the water in his current state. He kept walking along the harbor side, searching for a suitable place to collapse.

The night was slowly becoming more clear, urging him to find some semi-dry spot between old crates and barrels all the faster. If he didn't pass out soon, he would become sicker. Sweat was already beading down his neck despite the chilly evening air. A shout rose up in the distance, but Billy ignored it.

Billy ignored the louder chorus of shouting right up until a small, malnourished body collided with his legs and crumpled backward to the street. Billy stalled and blinked, forcing his eyes to focus on the dirty urchin pushing back to his feet. Still confused and unsteady, Billy reached a hand out and took the boy by his shoulder, muttering, "What in the he-"

"Let me go!" the boy cried, struggling uselessly to free himself from Billy's grip. He shot a wide-eyed look over his shoulder, where a crew of men were thundering their direction.

"Stop him!" "You're coming with us, you little shit!"

A pressgang. Billy's eyes narrowed and he released the boy, who scrambled away into the night. The gang was just steps away from bypassing Billy altogether, but, in an act of pure muscle memory because God knew Billy was far too drunk to have decent control over his own body, his arm shot out and he caught the front man by his collar, just below his neck. The man nearly came off his feet and would have fallen but for the iron grip he now found himself in. He coughed, gagged, and swung uselessly at the beast holding him, but Billy only curled his lip. "That one's not yours."

The men circled him, no longer interested in their lost quarry. The leader stepped forward, seething. "You stopped a legal 'cruitment. You're gonna-"

Billy didn't let him finish. He dropped the other man and took a swing. The last thing he felt before darkness swallowed him whole, was the satisfying crack of his fist landing on a man's jaw.

Three days later, Billy flexed his hands and winced. The manacles were rubbing his wrists raw. The stone wall of his cell was cold and dug into his back. His stomach rumbled and his empty plate - a single piece of stale bread - mocked him.

He shared his cell with four other men, in various states of intoxication, for a variety of petty crimes. He hadn't bothered to speak to them and the only one interested in talking gave up 2 days ago after another cellmate cracked him with an open-palmed slap. Billy figured he was in for the noose. Given his appearance, physical similarity to a wanted pirate and traitor to England, and the nature of beating at least one member of a pressgang nearly to death, the noose seemed like the most logical conclusion. He refused to speak with a solicitor, then sneered at the priest who came to absolve his sins.

Billy Bones was bound for hell, and no amount of confessing would ever change that. Billy chuckled to himself. Every god-awful crime he'd committed in his life, and he'd finally face justice for helping a boy escape the fate that started Billy on this road in the first place.

Seems about right, he sighed and let his head fall back against the cool stone. He knew more than anyone else just how much he'd done to deserve death. Silver's going to be furious that someone else killed me. He snickered again. Oh yes, he deserved this and more.

Yet, when they fished the letter of pardon from his pocket - a real, valid letter he'd fished out of the pocket of a dead man, coincidentally also named William - he hadn't corrected them. He should have. He should have shouted that his true name was Manderly, and he was the pirate known as Billy Bones: the architect of the Nassau resistance, murderer of countless English citizens, traitor to the crown and his own cause over and over again. But he didn't. He remained silent, speaking to no one. They probably wouldn't even believe him. Billy Bones was dead by all accounts. He died when Woodes Rogers chased Captain Flint to Skeleton Island. Now Billy Bones was just a story. It was a story some sailors adopted for myriad reasons, but usually in a misguided attempt to impress each other. If every man who called himself Billy Bones was really Billy Bones, Billy would have quite the brotherhood.

He laughed again, a dry, cracking, mirthless thing. The other men in the cell didn't speak, but two of them exchanged a dark look.

The outer door to the row of cells opened with the sharp protest of iron hinges in need of oiling. The gaoler lead two unfamiliar men down the dark hallway. As they went, the men exchanged comments with the gaoler. They paused in front of Billy's shared cell. No one looked up.

"Those two," the center man said, waving his finger between Billy and the second biggest man in the cell.

"That one's violent." The goaler knocked his wooden club against the bars, eliciting a small, startled jump from almost everyone. "He ain't been sentenced yet, but he's bound for the gallows."

The two unfamiliar men exchanged quiet words before the man in a dark suit and pristine white wig sighed. "You're sure?"

The center man grunted. "Aye, the boss don't care for nothing 'cept a strong back."

"I'll speak to the judge," the clean man addressed the gaoler, who huffed his disapproval but didn't argue. The trio moved on to finish their selection of "strong backs."

One week later, instead of facing his well-earned execution, Billy found himself as he had the first time he was on a ship: chained in the hold and heading west across the Atlantic.

In the darkness, Billy laughed.