The Caribbean, May 1736

The salt spray and the warm wind. The creak of timbers and yards held together by rope and prayer. A ship at sea with a good crew and a stout captain. Will Graham filled his lungs with it like a drowning man breaching the surface for what he thinks might be the last time. Sucking in particles and memory to fill his blood before he sinks again, points of light to illuminate the abyssal deeps.

"You're on my ship wearing chains again," Beverly said. She was standing on the rail, one hand gripping a backstay, eyes closed and face tilted to the sun, bare feet planted wide and steady, knees rocking with the movement of ship and sea like she was part of it, a creature of foam and zephyr wind pressed into human form for just an instant. She had left her hat somewhere, and her long black hair streamed in the wind. A black flag, signalling a warning of no mercy.

"I think we're both burdened with our irons," Will replied, chains clinking as he gestured to the swords at her belt. "Jack Crawford holds us both down with metal bonds."

Beverly didn't open her eyes or look down at him. "The difference is, when I am freed from mine, the world will be softer."

"No, the difference is that I want to escape mine. You've accepted yours."

"We all become what we are meant to be in the end."

"Are you so sure you have reached your end, Lieutenant?"

"You know the answer to that, Mr. Graham." A cloud passed over the sun, and that shadow pressed a chill against Will Graham's flesh. The sea took on the melancholy mien of a shore that will never again return a lost love. Then it passed and the sea sparkled in the sun. "And don't call me that. That was a long time ago."

Zeller stumped up. "Telling your sins to the sea, Graham?" he demanded, the bosun's bark rougher with loathing. "You shouldn't be up here alone. How about we shut you back in the forecastle." Dark and cramped, a cell that pitched, rolled and stank.

"He's not alone." Matthew Brown, shirtless and Herculean in the sun and salt sweat, dropped down from the shrouds and placed one hand on Will Graham's shoulder. The contact was like touching a weathervane before a thunderstorm. Crackling with potential. "I'm minding him for the captain."

Zeller snorted. "Well I mind filth like this crowding my deck, Mister Brown." The shorter Zeller was up in Brown's face now, the long-practiced authority of a crack bosun swelling up and pushing out against the scraped and quivering musculature before him.

Will Graham watched with interest, looking for... there, the strain behind Brown's eyes like a spar carrying too much sail in a gale. Would it hold, or would it carry away and throw a whole ship into peril? He placed one hand on Brown's bicep, felt the tension there poorly masked by duty. The metal of his shackles held the cool of the ship's hold and raised goosebumps along Brown's skin. "It's alright, Bosun," Will said. "We'll get out of the way. I'm sure you have... things to do."

Zeller snorted and stumped away, managing to mix a sailor's grace with a sergeant's grounded presence. Will watched him go, then turned to find himself locking eyes with Brown. Jack has a wolf here, and he thinks it is a sheepdog. I wonder if the dog knows it is wearing a costume... Aloud, he said, not moving his hand from where it rested on Brown's arm. "Tell me, Mr. Brown, do you always prefer to be the one above? Looking down, like a hawk choosing what flesh it will take next?"

Brown smiled slowly, and behind it Will saw the wolf's fangs. "That is my preferred place, Mr. Graham. But I don't mind sharing my places with someone else who can see what the hawk sees."

Will held up his shackled hands. "I am sadly grounded right now, my wings are clipped."

Brown slid one arm around Will's shoulder and gripped a shroud with the other. "Don't worry, Mr. Graham, I can help you ascend again."

Jack, standing on the quarterdeck, feet braced and hands behind his back, watched Brown half-carry Graham to the lower crosstrees and felt a qualm. He turned his back and looked over the ship's wake.

"Worried Will Graham is going to be a disruptive element?" Beverly asked. She was reclined on the stern rail, back against the running lantern, one booted foot dangling over the edge. Her hat was pulled low enough that Jack could barely see the glint of her eyes.

Jack leaned on the rail, looming over the ocean like a preacher from his pulpit. "Maybe. Brown and Zeller have been locking horns for months. Will Graham is just another bone in their kennel." They watched Hispanolia slide by on the starboard. The jungle was shadowed and backlit by the setting sun. Sail northwest, Will Graham had said, northwest to find Hannibal Lecter. Jack was running lists of every cove and cave and pirate lair he knew, but it was a fruitless exercise that just chafed at his own dependence on a man he's otherwise have cheerfully hung.

The sailor at the wheel kept her eyes studiously forward and ears closed. The captain's space on the quarterdeck was inviolable, four square feet for him to be alone and undisturbed. If he wanted to mutter to the sea, well, sailors knew never to trust a captain who held too closely to appearances.

A sail appeared around a promontory, providing a moment of interest from the crew. Fantasies of a rich prize, but idle fantasies. The wars were over for now, and almost every pirate had been chased from the Caribbean by the Royal Navy. Jack watched it through his scope, noting the boar's head prow and rich detailing.

"One of the Vergers' ships," Beverly said. "Wonder how badly Will Graham wants to run up the black flag and resume old habits."

Jack closed his scope and watched the merchant ship pass by. He fancied he could smell the livestock odour drifting on the wind. "Not much, I think. It was the Vergers who handed him into the tender mercies of Doctor Chilton. Maybe they're the ones who cost him the eye, too. Unless you know differently."

Beverly sighed. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, Jack. I didn't make the connection myself under I saw him."

"So tell me about this connection."

She stared down at the wake. The sun was sinking fast and the ship's churned trail was beginning to fluoresce. "It was another lifetime. I was third lieutenant in the Iron Kate, that is, the Catherine of Aragon. We called our captain that, too. Hard woman. Maybe if she hadn't been so... Will Graham was just a seaman, young and freshly joined. He fell in with a couple of hard cases. One day we were watering on the Yucatan coast, we were cruising for Spanish treasure ships, and he was part of a group that decided to take some liberty in the jungle. They broke into one of the old temples and drank themselves into oblivion. When the marines dragged them back, Captain Prurnell was furious, beyond reason. She had them all clapped in irons and swore she would have them all court-martialled for desertion. I tried to plead their case, get her to agree to giving them all lashes, but she was adamant. When we took a prize a few days later, she transferred them over with the prize crew for transport back to Port Royal for trial."

"Did they rise up and take the ship?"

"No. At least, I never thought that, but the ship never reached Port Royal, or anywhere else. We assumed it ran into a hurricane or suffered some calamity. After the war ended I did some digging, but the Spanish hadn't retaken it, nor the French. It just... vanished."

"Or maybe that ship and its crew encountered the Chesapeake Ripper." Beverly shrugged and said nothing. Jack sighed and stroked the rail of his ship with a weary hand. "Goodnight, Beverly. Mr. Brown," he called in the bedrock tones of command, "please secure the prisoner in the forecastle and resume your duties." He went below, and the quarterdeck was empty again, save for a sailor steering a ship.

Night fell with the languid warmth of the Caribbean. The breeze from the shore brought the smells of the jungle. It was a good ship with a tight crew under easy sail and a clear course. The waxing moon showed its face candidly.

The night watch idled at the windward rail, telling stores of seas seen and lands left behind. Below decks played a symphony of snores and creaks and running water. Jack Crawford slept deeply, utterly still yet intimately aware of his ship. In their cabin, Price and Zeller shared companionable, comfortable silence, communicating without words. In the forecastle, Will Graham waited.

The moon rose and the sea turned. The bell marked time, a soft artificial ripple smoothed away by the eternal stillness of the night. A figure moved, slipping past sleepers and guards with feline purpose. The lock to the forecastle cabin was well-oiled and fresh, sliding open with the ease of innocence.

Matthew Brown slid into Will Graham's cabin. They didn't speak. They didn't need to. They taught each other with soft sounds and guiding hands, and they moved together in symphony with the ship, their motions reflecting and amplifying the sea itself. Afterwards they lay quietly, salt skins pressed together. Brown's fingers traced out the map of Will Graham's life, circumnavigating the knotted, serpentine scar across his belly, traversing the stripes and crosshatching across his back, finding the ridges and depressions of bullet wounds and sword cuts.

"This is a good ship," Will said softly. "Well captained, well crewed. Aged, but sound. He paused, arched as Brown found a particular and thankfully unscarred spot on his hip. "Do you know the meaning of this ship's name? The Quo Bella."

Brown paused. "It's Dago speak, isn't it? Means 'to war'?"

Will chuckled without menace but rich with irony. "Nearly. It's Latin, the language of Rome, of Empire. It means 'whither war', or perhaps it is a statement, 'to war'. Does Jack Crawford seem like a man who sails to war?"

Brown paused to think, resting his chin on Will's shoulder. His stubble was a sharp counterpoint to the smoothness of his touch. A taste of sour to prove the savoury of the dish. "No," Brown said after a moment. "He's looking for a place without war. Even if he has to make that place himself. Even if in the making he ensures he cannot live there.'

"You see the contradiction most don't."

"The hawk sees from above, where patterns are clear."

"Well, then what you should see is that like everything the Romans did, 'bella' has two meanings. War, and beauty. Jack Crawford is looking for beauty, looking for where it went."

"So what is Jack Crawford's beauty?"

"Not what. Who." Will Graham laughed low and tangled his hands in Matthew Brown's hair. Brown brushed his lips across the craggy landscape of Will's ruined eye socket and thought of hawks, wheeling in the clouds.