Chapter the second

In which Rodney meets the second most notorious pirate in the Caribbees

Rodney woke to find the world swaying beneath him. It had really happened, then. He had been abducted by pirates, and was immured deep in their lair, heading out to sea, far away from civilisation and the reach of law. They had locked him in. The beatings would follow, and the manacles, and foul punishments when he refused to…

Oh! A grape! He snatched it up from where it must have fallen when he had eaten the night before. Its sweetness exploded in his mouth, still sour from sleep. Then he started to pace, twisting his hands in front of him.

Sounds came from outside his cabin. Feet padded on the roof above him, and he heard shouted orders and the sounds of ropes being hauled, sails being adjusted, and all the usual sounds of a ship under way. He could not hear any screaming, but perhaps the places of punishment were deep in the bowels of the ship. Maybe the captain cut people's tongues out so they couldn't scream. Maybe…

Foot approached his door. He heard the key turn, and the woman's voice said, "May I come in?"

He took up position in the centre of the room, his hands clenched and resolute. "You… you can open the door," he said, "but you can't come in. It wouldn't… wouldn't be seemly."

The door opened, letting in the light of a lovely day, sunlight filtering down from the hatch at the top of the steps. The light was more than enough to show him that the woman was beautiful. It was also quite sufficient to show him the knives that she wore at her belt, and he already knew how strong her grip was, and how she moved, not like a lady at all. "Seemly?" she said. He thought there was ferocity in her lovely smile.

"Not that you pirates care about such things," he said, "but it matters for respectable people like me." Rodney! Have you no shame? I will unable to show my face in public for a whole season! That foul smell and the yellow smoke…! And in front of the Dowager Lady Burnett as well! "Well, it matters to some people. There isn't… You haven't got a… a… chaperone."

"I do have Ronon." She moved to one side, and the light was blocked out by the figure of the large man who took up his place behind her. He was even more terrifying in the sunlight, his shadow reaching right into the room.

"Ah." He swallowed. "Have you come to drag me away to dreadful torment. I won't break, you know."

"I have come to take you to the captain."

"Oh." His mouth was dry. He had drifted towards slumber with defiant speeches echoing in his mind, and at the very cusp of sleep he had come up with a perfect one, but all of that seemed to have slipped from his mind. He was all alone on a pirate ship, and there must have been hundreds of villainous crewmen within shouting range, ready to cut him down with their cutlasses and bait him with the pointed ends of their swords. All he could do was go calmly and defiantly, then, like Socrates taking the hemlock, and…

"Coming!" he gasped, when she placed her hand on the handle on her knife. "Coming!"

The big man called Ronon did not come with them, but there were plenty of other dastardly henchmen watching them as he climbed the steps and emerged beneath the blue sky. Although he was trying to look straight ahead – defiant, Rodney, and robed in calm and honour – he could not help but see them. They did not look like a cast of demons from Dante's Inferno. There were no toothless grins and cackling maws of mouths. Most of them looked no different from the seamen on one of his father's ships.

"They look…" he blurted out. "You don't look like pirates."

He saw her quirk an eyebrow, but she said nothing.

Perhaps the truly evil-looking ones had been kept out of sight. Maybe all the normal-looking ones had been put on deck to lull him into lowering his guard. "Although that Ronon friend of yours…"

"What about him?" she said sharply.

"He… uh… looks the part." He looked round to check that the man was not within earshot. "Is he a Savage? I have read about them, and –"

"Two years ago," the woman interrupted, "the captain left the ship to go on one of his solitary enterprises. He was expected back within seven days, but it was three weeks before he returned. We kept the rendezvous." Her eyes bore into his own, as if trying to convey some message. "When he returned, he was… not well, and he had clearly been much worse. He also had Ronon with him, and there Ronon has been ever since. People distrusted him at first, but the first man who called him a mere savage to his face… Let us just say that he could not sit down for a week."

"Which, come to think of it, was not a very good counter argument," Rodney could not resist saying.

"That was two years ago," the woman said, "and neither of them has breathed a word about what they went through during that time away, and Ronon has never said a word about what his life was like before he met the captain. We do not ask. We know he is loyal, and he is one of us. Do not judge by appearances, Rodney McKay."

"I… uh…" It sounded like a warning. The urgency in his eyes told him that it was a warning, but he had no idea what it meant. He had never been good at reading the truths that lay behind men's eyes, or unravelling the meaning of their honeyed words. His father had despaired of him. Apparently you needed such a skill in business.

She gave a quick smile with no humour in it. "The captain is waiting."

The most prudent thing to do seemed to be to follow her. They reached the quarter deck, where a silent man stood at the wheel. Another man was facing away from them, standing with one hand on the rail. From behind, he looked like a gentleman, with a knee-length coat of wine-red velvet, flaring from the waist and falling in fashionable folds. He wore no wig, though, just his own dark hair, pulled back loosely into a tail and tied with a scrap of leather.

The captain. Rodney's mouth was as dry as a desert. The woman gestured him on, then stepped back, and suddenly she felt like a dear friend, like a protector, like a sister, and she was going, leaving him alone with the devil himself.

The captain turned round. "So you're McKay."

And you abducted me, you foul demon, and I will see you hanged on Gallows Point. "Yes," he said.

The captain looked even more gentlemanly from the front, with a long dark waistcoat buttoned over a clean white shirt. He had no cravat, though, just an open shirt, criss-crossed loosely with white ties at his throat, and instead of stockings and shoes, he was wearing leather boots. Rodney had expected to see the stocky face of a brutish murderer, but the man's features were fine – just the sort of face that would set the ladies a-simpering into their fans.

Rodney decided that he hated him. Of course, he was a pirate captain and he had abducted Rodney from his bed to use him in his foul enterprises, so he hated him already, but…

"I know who you are!" he gasped, suddenly remembering the woodcuts and posters in the market hall in Kingston. "You must be John Sheppard."

"So the likeness is getting better. A few years ago, it was terrible. Not even my own mother would have recognised me."

Rodney found himself incapable of doing anything other than gaping, his finger held out in accusing horror. This was the third most hated pirate in the Indies! There was a reward of two hundred pounds…!

He must have said at least some of it aloud, for Sheppard raised his eyebrow, and said, "I believe I have the honour of being promoted to second now that Calico Jack has gone to meet his maker."

"He was a friend of yours?"

"No," Sheppard said shortly.

"Oh."

The sky was blue above him. Birds played on the thermals, not so very different from the gulls in the harbour at home. The smells of strange vegetation drifted from the shore, and here he was on a pirate ship, facing one of the most notorious pirates who plied the seven seas.

"You… you…" He had heard the stories. Turland had relished them on the voyage, and had relayed them to Rodney while dressing him and trying to tidy his study. Rodney had barely listened, but it seemed that all the horrible bits had decided to embed themselves in his brain. "You stole… You… you once killed… You sank…" His tongue refused to frame the horrible details. There was something else, too – some other reason why all the decent folk of Kingston spat when they said his name – but he could not remember what it was.

The captain denied nothing. He was standing stiffly, even haughtily, with his forearm pressed to his side, and the other hand gripping the rail. His face was pale, probably with anger. "Have you finished?" he said, and Rodney realised that he had been spewing out unfinished sentences and gaping like an idiot for a full few minutes.

Well, never let it be said that Rodney McKay could not match a ruthless pirate captain for hauteur. He drew himself up. "I will not submit to such a one as you."

"Don't want you to submit." Sheppard had an accent that Rodney could not place. "Feel free to be shout defiance as much as you like and be generally obnoxious - though I warn you that my crew might not share my forbearance. I don't much care what you say. I just want the job done."

"Job?" He would resent the 'obnoxious' later, if he was still alive.

"Yes." He saw Sheppard's hand tighten on the rail, and watched him look up at the sails and the sky beyond them.

He was all alone with the man, he realised. Well, apart from the man at the wheel, and the men in the rigging and those clambering on the yard arm and hauling on the bowline, and… and all the other nautical things that his father thought he ought to know about, but which he somehow did not, because, really, why did a man need to know about what you called all the bits of a boat, when he could spend his time filling his brain with a catalogue of the heavens, or unweaving a rainbow? Still, he doubted they could get to him in time to stop him if he made a play for the captain's sword, or maybe just gave the man a shove and pushed him into the briny deep, and…

"They'd kill you," Sheppard said quietly, "before you made a single move."

He saw Ronon there, watching out of earshot, and the woman, and a dozen other men, who no longer looked like ordinary seamen on an ordinary ship, because he had never seen seamen before who looked quite so deadly, as if they would tear a man to pieces if he as much as struck their captain with the little finger of his left hand.

"Oh." He could feel his heart beating in his chest, and his breathing was shallow, as if something was stopping him from getting all the air he needed. "Yes. The job."

"There's a certain wreck," Sheppard said, "a few hundred leagues from here. There's something on it that I need."

"You mean treasure," Rodney said. "Huge wealth that belongs to other people."

Sheppard did not deny it. "We've tried everything. It's stuck fast and can't be raised. It's too far down for a single man to hold his breath."

"What do you expect me to do about it?" Rodney protested. "I can't make you grow gills. I don't know what your superstitious little mind thinks that science is, but it's not magic." Then he remembered that this was the second most ruthless killer in the Caribbees, and it was perhaps not a good idea to speak to him as he would speak to Turland. He folded his arms, and decided not to speak another word, no matter how much this foul villain provoked him.

"You told everyone in Kingston that you were a pupil of Edmond Halley."

Rodney snorted. "Not that anyone there knew who he was. And I wasn't just his pupil; I was his right-hand man. His assistant. He told me he was his equal. At least, he would have…" He snapped his mouth shut, remembering that he wasn't talking.

"Edmond Halley," Sheppard said patiently, "wrote a paper describing how he was able to stay underwater for over an hour."

"How on earth would someone like you know that?" Rodney squawked.

"I read it."

"You?" He pressed his lips shut again. Stay quiet. Stay quiet. Don't provoke the ruthless killer in his lair.

"Yes, me." Sheppard gave a wry smile, the Rodney was not fooled. The hand that held the rail was white and trembling now, as if the captain was fighting a killing fury. "And if you're his pupil, his right-hand man, his equal, his better, then you can make such a device for me."

"And if I refuse?"

Sheppard said nothing; he didn't have to.

"You'll kill me in a hundred horrible ways. I understand."

"You can have pen and paper" Sheppard said, "and we'll get you any supplies you need. You have my word that you won't be mistreated."

"The word of a pirate." It meant nothing, of course. Rodney felt suddenly, ridiculously on the point of crying. Perhaps it was just the salt water and the cold wind in his eyes.

"The word of a pirate," Sheppard said, with a strange note to his voice. "So can you do it? If it is beyond your capabilities, I –"

Rodney drew himself up haughtily. "Nothing is beyond my capabilities."

"Good." Sheppard grinned. "So we have ourselves a deal. You make me my diving bell, and I won't let my blood-thirsty ruffians tear you to pieces and feast on your heart."

"They wouldn't…!"

But Sheppard was already turning away. "Go now, please," he said, his voice faint and taken by the wind. So Rodney did.

Teyla looked at Ronon with troubled eyes, then went to take McKay back to his cabin. When they were clear, Ronon pushed himself away from the shroud, and headed to the rail. "He'll do it?"

"He didn't say no." Sheppard was facing forward, his hair escaping its tail and blowing over his cheek. "Of course, he thinks I'm going to have him tortured to death if he refuses. That does tend to act as an incentive."

"I can give him an incentive."

"I know you can." Sheppard sighed. Ronon recognised the willpower that was keeping him upright. "The question is more one of whether he can do it, not whether he will."

"The way he talked, he can do anything." Ronon grunted. "He talks too much."

"That he does." Ronon heard the smile in Sheppard's voice. "His true abilities are doubtless less than he makes out. Perhaps there nothing behind his boasting, and we have risked all this for a fraud."

Ronon gripped his knife. "I'll kill him if…"

"No." Sheppard let out a breath. "Don't listen to me. I know his type. He's the best we're likely to get. If he can't do this thing for us, nobody can – nobody we're likely to get our hands on, anyway."

"And what then?" Ronon asked. "You'll give up?"

Sheppard had never been one to give up. It had been one of the first things Ronon had seen in him, when he had come upon him cornered and fighting for his life on that rocky shore. He had taken three sword thrusts, and he had been desperately outnumbered, but he had just kept on fighting. Bitter experience had taught Ronon not to get involved in other people's fights – not to get involved at all, not with anything – but he had found himself wading in. Sheppard had repaid the favour two-fold just days later, and that was that. Ronon had never consciously made the decision to join him, and Sheppard had never asked, but it had just ended up happening. It's only for a little while, he had told himself, but weeks had become months, and months had become a year, and then two. But long before those two years were up, he had woken up one morning, and realised that he couldn't imagine himself living anywhere else.

"I don't know," Sheppard said. "You can only keep on fighting for so long before –"

"That's the wound talking," Ronon said sharply. "You always were a fool. Dolling yourself up like some English gentleman, and pretending that you aren't as weak as a kitten."

"I could still fight if I had to."

"I know it." Ronon took his place at the rail, at his captain's right hand. "Doesn't change anything, though. The surgeon's squawking like a chicken in the cockpit."

"Carson'll get over it." Ronon knew the signs, though; it was only through the sheerest force of will that Sheppard was on his feet right now. "I had to do it, Ronon. McKay needed to see John Sheppard, notorious pirate captain. He didn't need to see an injured man lying on a mountain of pillows."

Ronon decided not to argue. He would have done the same, had the situation been reversed, though that didn't mean he had to like it in others. "You need to get back to bed now, though."

"Think I'll stay here."

But he allowed Ronon to help him to sit down. His legs stretched out on the deck, he leant his head back against the wood, and looked up at the full sails. His mouth turned ever so slightly into a smile.

At least half the crew had served on British ships during the late war. They told Ronon that Sheppard had always been a most unusual captain. Apparently regular captains never opted to sleep on deck beneath the stars, and were loathe to show weakness in front of the crew. "That's because I'm a pirate captain," Sheppard had said, when Ronon had mentioned something about it. "We break the rules. It is rather the point." But of course Sheppard had learnt his trade under officers like that. Ronon still didn't know quite how much Sheppard still retained of those years spent under the red ensign. Of the manner of his leaving, of course, he still retained so much.

"I'll send for Beckett," though, was all he said.

"You do that," Sheppard said. "Worse than my mother, you and Teyla together." His eyes flickered over the quarter deck, and the people on the sails. "All of you."

"Course we are."

Sheppard's eyes slid shut, then opened again, and he looked up at the sails at the Atlantis. "She's beautiful," he had said to Ronon on one of the early nights, after drink had loosened his tongue. "She's the most beautiful thing in the world. I was broken when I came to her, but now…" He had taken another swig, burying his words in amber liquid. Ronon had been new to sea life, then, and had not understood. Sometimes, now, he thought he did.

"Help me out of this ridiculous coat and waistcoat." Sheppard preferred shirt sleeves in the summer, and wore a simple black coat when it was cold. Like all of them, he usually went barefoot on deck. Ronon helped him off with the unfamiliar clothes. Blood had seeped through the shirt, he saw. For a moment, Sheppard's expression reminded him painfully of the expression of his small nephew, caught doing wrong.

"Beckett," Ronon chided him. He caught the eye of a watching deck hand, and gave the signal that the surgeon was required, and another to show that although haste would be appreciated, it was not a matter or life and death. He took his place at Sheppard's side, but far enough away, in case his captain wanted to be alone.

"I hope McKay can do this," Sheppard said, his eyes still on the full white sails. "I've waited seven years for this."

Ronon had only waited two, and sometimes it felt like a lifetime, as if he had never been anywhere other than here, and sometimes it felt like a blinking of an eye. "I'll kill him if he can't," he said.

Sheppard chuckled. "Yeah. You do that."

end of chapter two