Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Pirates of the Caribbean, and I don't claim to.

This story takes place some time after the events of Dead Man's Chest, although Jack was never eaten by the Kraken. And for those of you wondering: no, not all the chapters will focus on Norrington! Fear not, for Captain Jack will play a major part in the story, if you'll just get past the first chapter.

Note as of 1/6/08: It's always disconcerting to look at your hits and see that less than half of the people who read the first chapter go on to read the second, so I'm putting this up here in hopes to perhaps interest more of you that would click out of this window otherwise: There's tons of Norrington, tons of him doubting himself and tons of him feeling confident in his new position. There's tons of Jack, being just who he's best at being: Captain Jack Sparrow. And then there's tons of a mysterious (well, he likes to think so) boy named Edmund who overestimates his abilities and gets in a bit over his head. It's a story about doubt and trust and guilt and hate and certainly a story about lies. Oh yes, lots of lies. If you enjoy intrigue and ulterior motives and half-truths, you will enjoy this plot as soon as it gets going.
So give Accord a chance, even if you just skim through a few chapters until something catches your interest. Thanks! Enjoy, I hope! (:

Chapter One

Somewhere in the Caribbean, 1724

His promotion was not at all what he had imagined it would be.

The HMS Albatross rolled dangerously to the side as another poorly coordinated broadside from the pirate ship just a few meters away slammed into the thick wood of the hull. Splintered wood flew wildly into the air, mixing with the already thick, dark smoke from the cannons and a fire or two that had started belowdecks.

James Norrington flinched and dropped to the deck just as a cannonball flew careening over the railing. A momentary silence while both sides reloaded their cannons; James glanced up, hand covering the back of his neck, and searched through the debris.

A dark blue coat, covered in splinters and powder, lay crumpled beneath a tent of wood. James pulled himself across the deck with his elbows, staying low to the wood. He turned the man's face – just as he feared.

"Sir?" The man barely stirred, the only indication that he was still alive being a small twitch between his eyebrows. Some marines had stopped firing to look on. James shook the man, propped him up and held his lolling head. "Sir, wake up."

Vice-Admiral Ingram jerked suddenly, and his body stiffened. His hands clutched at his stomach, where a growing red stain stuck his crisp white shirt to his body. "Norrington," he gasped. His eyes snapped open, watery and glazed with pain. "The papers– Get me my papers."

James glanced over at the pirate ship in time to see the blur of a chain shot pound into the mizzenmast just above them. The mast loomed terribly for only a second before it fell forward with frightening slowness, the dirty sails ballooning upwards and straining at their ropes. He pulled his commander from beneath the mast's path just in time and shielded him from the flying shards of wood. An unpleasantly large chunk thrust directly in his lower back.

Ingram's hand gripped the lapel of his coat. "The papers–!"

James squeezed out from beneath the mast, checking to make sure that the vice-admiral was reasonably safe, and ran back across the deck, ducking into the Captain's quarters just as the Albatross fired another broadside. He staggered against the doorframe and surveyed the room. The cannons had fulfilled their job: the room was in complete disarray, with the large slanting windows shattered and the desk badly smashed up.

But he knew exactly where to look.

The papers – a letter of commission, started months ago, waiting only for Ingram's signature – were in a drawer, scattered on the floor. He gathered what he could: the parchment, a quill, an ink well, a candle. The candle would prove to be the biggest problem; keeping it lit while dashing madly across the deck would be a challenge.

By whatever luck had found them the only pirate ship in the Caribbean stupid enough to fight back and strong enough to badly cripple the ship, he made it back to the vice-admiral safely. A lieutenant knelt beside the man, pillowing his head on his lap. The boy looked up as James maneuvered back into the small space. "What are you doing?" he asked, sounding scandalized. His eyes lingered angrily on the papers James held in his arms.

James ignored him, setting down the candle and arranging everything as best he could. He bent over Ingram again, gently patting his cheek. The man was shivering, even though his face ran with sweat. He opened his eyes and squinted up at James. "Here, sir." He handed him the already-dipped quill and placed his hand along the back of the parchment where he would have to sign.

To be sure, this was never how he imagined being promoted to Vice-Admiral. In his fantasies, it would have come during peacetime, while he was resting in Port Royal after a long hard struggle, after Vice-Admiral Ingram died peacefully of some disease. He felt as though he were committing a crime, asking for a dying man to give up his position and hand it off to him.

Ingram grasped the quill with an effort and squinted with some confusion at the paper. "Ah," he said, more a quiet sigh than a sound of understanding. He placed the tip on the line beneath the King'ssignature. A sudden shudder of the ship and a violent rock to one side, and the quill tip shot down to the bottom edge of the page. The rest of his signature measured the resulting vibrations of the ship more than spelled out his actual name.

James melted the stick of sealing wax, dripped a good size bead onto the paper next to Ingram's signature. "Your hand, sir." Ingram weakly shifted his hand closer to him; James grasped it and pressed his ring into the quickly hardening wax.

When it was done, Ingram didn't let go of his hand. Painfully, his lips drew out into a smile. He whispered, "You'll make a fine Admiral one day, James."

A cannon brought down a yard; James dove over Ingram.

A light breeze from the north cleared away some of the smoke. He opened his eyes when the sounds of exploding cannons and splintering wood quieted.

Ingram's face was frozen into a light frown, an expression he had come to be familiar with after serving beneath the man on his ship for nearly a year now. His eyes no longer twitched beneath the thin skin of his eyelids. James felt for his pulse and found none.

He sat back slowly, arranging Ingram's hands across his chest, trying to loosen the grip his fist had on his wound. His body was already cooling and stiffening; probably he had been injured in the first part of the battle, and only now his adrenaline left him to die.

The soldier, who had never left his commander's side, said, "What– What do we do now, sir?"

James stared at the wax seal and the unrecognizable signature for a moment. Then he folded it with a decisive swiftness. "What are you all standing about for?" he shouted, addressing the small crowd of marines and soldiers that had gathered around their fallen vice-admiral. "Man your cannons! Fire at will!"

Amidst the once again busy crew, James sprinted over to the captain's quarters. He stepped over the scattered furniture and papers. Searching frantically, he found Ingram's flintlock musket just as the cannon volley from the HMS Albatross was fired. He braced himself against the stairs that led up to the helm, placed the butt of the rifle to his shoulder, and aimed.

A man stood full height behind the line of pirates at their cannons on the deck, pacing back and forth and shouting orders that were almost completely drowned out by the excited shouting of both crews.

Waiting for a roll of the ship, James's finger tightened on the trigger and–

The man fell out of sight, clutching his face. Confusion and disorder took over the crew of the other ship.

James shouted to his men "Board!" and, like they had practiced so many times before, they jumped across the narrow gap and onto the deck of the pirate ship.

Not even twenty minutes later, the smoke from the cannons had cleared and a bright late afternoon sun shone down onto the shattered deck. The dead lay sprawled out as they had fallen. What remained of the pirate crew was tied up and sitting in a row, not one meeting any of their captors' eyes.

James held the rifle loosely in one hand as he walked slowly over to the man he shot. With the tip of his boot, he lightly nudged the man over. His bullet had caught him right in the center of his forehead. The man was young, by land standards, but far older than he expected for a pirate captain.

A lieutenant stood by his shoulder. "Sir? What are your orders?"

James drew his eyes away from the dead man at his feet to look back at theAlbatross. She was badly crippled, with at least one hole near the water line, maybe others beneath it. But she would make it back; they could make temporary repairs that would see them back to Port Royal. His eyes rested for a long, silent moment on the pile of rubble where he knew Ingram lay.

He drew his eyes away from his ship, focused on the lieutenant's question. "Lock the live ones in the brig. They will answer to their crimes in the hangman's noose. Leave the dead behind. Destroy the ship."

The lieutenant saluted him. "Sir."

It would be a shame wasting such a quick ship – the Royal Navy, after all, being in sore need of vessels of shallow draft that would be able to chase after the pirates where their men-of-war couldn't follow. But the damage done was irreparable; he was pleased to note that this crew, made up mostly of greenhorns, had managed to cause more damage than they received. He would be sure once they arrived safely in port that these men got the recognition they deserved.

James walked across the deck to the plank laid between the two ships, resting on the railings. He passed by the line of prisoners. A few of them were crying, but most were too shocked to do much else than to stare at the warped wood beneath their knees and at the blank eyes of their fallen shipmates – this was probably the first real battle for many of them, since pirates generally preyed upon ships too weak to fight back. They were cowards, all of them.

Back on the Albatross, James returned to Ingram's side. His face was pale now, all the redness of his nose and cheeks drained away to a pure marble white. James pulled off his coat and folded it, then carefully lifted up Ingram's head and slid his coat beneath him. The dangers of his new responsibility weighed heavily on James's shoulder. That could be me someday, James thought, staring down at his commander's stiff face. That will be me someday.

Vice-Admiral Ingram's body would be committed forever to the sea the very next day, while the fog still hovered low over the water and created a separate world of white and grey. James himself stitched the last stitch though the canvas, through the cartilage of Ingram's nose. His was the last body they gave to the sea that day. James stood tall and silent while the chaplain delivered his sermon beside the railing and the canvas-wrapped corpse. In the distance, though the fog, he could see floating barrels and canvas, and the lazy jut of a broken mast.

---

Admiral Wallis stood bent over the detailed, table-sized map of the Caribbean, his back to the large windows that opened on the bay behind him. His hat rested next to his splayed hand, and his coat hung draped over the back of his chair. The only indication he gave that he noticed James was a quick glance up beneath his lowered eyebrows at the click of the door.

James stood nervously just inside the doorway, holding in his hands the belongings of the deceased vice-admiral. Shifting the package to one arm, he removed his hat and held it loosely at his side. Even from across the room, James could see the small white shocks of sails on the miniature warships placed here and there throughout the Caribbean.

He took the awkward moments of silence to smooth down his wig as much as possible and to wipe his face free of as much grime as he could. He had come directly from the Albatross, with no time between to clean up.

Finally, the Admiral sighed. "Sit down, Norrington," he said, collapsing into his chair. He rested his face in his palms, elbows on the table.

Another moment of uncomfortable silence. James ventured a quiet, polite "Sir?"

Rubbing his eyes with his hands, Wallis sat back in his chair. He had the air of a constantly sought-out military man, who worked for days without a moment's peace. "I heard about your encounter at sea." He added hesitantly, "And about Ingram."

James wordlessly slid the small cloth-wrapped package across the table and placed his sealed commission behind it.

Wallis stared at the package a long time, before he finally looked up at James. His eyes were rimmed with the red and dark purple of sleepless nights. He seemed to James to be thinner than before, and his usual gregarious nature was unnervingly subdued. "He appointed you to fulfill his position?"

James immediately tensed. "Yes, sir." He watched the admiral mull over this with a dread growing in him; too many times he had been slighted because some captain's son wanted a chance to be just like daddy; because some lender's boy decided that he didn't want to follow in his father's footsteps, and his father held a captain's funds in his hands. It was unfair – and quite often, more than a little disastrous – but James knew politics well enough that he knew there was no way to fight it other than to wait patiently.

"Would you like a drink, James?" He walked over to a table in the back with glass bottles lining the wall beneath a wide landscape.

James was shocked into momentary silence by the sudden familiarity with which the admiral addressed him and at the ease with which he moved about the room, only in dress shirt and breeches. Admiral Wallis glanced over his shoulder.

"A drink?" Wallis repeated.

"Oh, no. No, thank you." Now was no time to get nervous and drink himself into a stupor.

Wallis shrugged and poured himself a glassful, then tossed it down in one gulp. He filled up another glassful. "I am in a rather hard spot, James," he said, finishing the second. "You see, three – three! – of my ships have been completely destroyed by pirates in the past month alone. Three of my best ships, all at once." He crossed the room, glass in one hand, half-full bottle in the other, and sat back down across from James. "And with those ships, I've lost not only countless sailors that will take months and money to replace with new men of equal experience, but I've also lost two rear-admirals and a vice-admiral."

"I was not aware of that, sir." James forced his eyes away from the package on the desk in front of him.

"Yes." Wallis regarded him shrewdly over the top of his glass. He set it down, empty. "James, I would like to be perfectly blunt with you. If I had the luxury of commanding a peacetime Navy, you would not be promoted. You have yet to prove to me that you are truly a supporter of the Crown. And then there's the matter of the pirate Sparrow that you allowed to escape." Here, James looked down at the hat that rested on his knee.

"But," he added, "it's because of your disquieting sympathy toward pirates–"

James tried to protest, but Wallis spoke over him.

"–that I am upholding your promotion. I have a mission for you, Norrington."

"A mission, sir?" James asked, feeling slightly faint.

"You may remember that after you let Sparrow escape, you were listed as a traitor to the Crown. You were saved only by the good words and confidence of a certain Lord Beckett; he assured us that he would make sure that you reformed your actions. But, however much weight his words may hold, they will never speak of your true intentions. And with this, Lord Beckett agrees." Wallis rested his clasped hands before him on the table. "You will have to prove your loyalty to the King."

A cold chill ran through James, starting in the very center of his chest and then traveling slowly up to his throat and out to his fingers. "Prove myself, sir?"

Wallis stared back at him through heavy-lidded eyes. "We must be sure that you have Britain's best interest at heart. That instance with Sparrow has brought doubt into our minds as to your commitment to the good of all."

James set his face carefully.

"This recent wave of pirate activity in the Caribbean, especially around English settlements, has been most disconcerting. If you are truly committed to serving the Crown and the King, you will do your part to destroy these threats to the peace."

"I understand."

"Repair the damage done to the HMS Albatross," Wallis said. "Hire more sailors, replenish your weapons. You are to make sail as soon as possible, to patrol the waters around the most important Jamaican ports. Destroy any pirates you run across."

"Yes, sir."

"Your official orders will arrive in a few days. You may leave, Norrington." He turned back to the map in front of him.

James stood and saluted.

Author's Note: I always look to improve my writing, so constructive criticism or encouragement is greatly appreciated. And if any of you notice any errors on my part, especially historical errors, let me know.