Hello! Sorry I'm slightly late I was in the wilderness up until, like, four hours ago...

Also a fanfictioner (yes. My word.) called Kitty Qin wrote a 'Reading the Scourge of the Seven Seas' fanfiction. First chapter is really good and I'm waiting for more. Link here, folks: s/8307075/1/Reading_The_Scourge_of_the_Seven_Seas

Enjoy!


9

Blood on Blades

"No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.
Or you don't."
― Stephen King, The Stand

Hylla pulled the sword from the pile of hay where it was hidden. The leaf blade shape caught the sunlight.

"You take it," I said. "You're better with it."

"Shame, I like H2H combat better." Hylla said. Hand to hand combat that way; so wrestling guys down to the ground, kicking, punching, grappling, and so forth. She was stronger than I was, with long limbs which made her quite good at stabilising the people she pinned and keeping them that way.

"I don't think they'll ask which way you'd like to fight before charging," I said. Hylla tied another two knives at her side- I did the same. These were bronze- for some reason the dagger I used (and that I called my dagger in my head) was the only gold weapon. It seemed odd…

My hand brushed a bump in my leg. Something in my right pocket- long and narrow… The dog whistle- right. I'd stolen it from the pirates whom we'd robbed the weapons from in the first place. If I had to roll it'd hurt, but I didn't have the heart to throw it out. Maybe it was a gut feeling. Or pure superstition- nothing that bad had happened to me when I'd had it, and it wouldn't start now.

Superstition was stupid, but so was this plan. They went together, really.

Hylla and I pulled the bodies to the sides of the room so nobody coming in would see them.

"Adcock- Bonnet- what's the racket?" Someone yelled over. I looked over at Hylla and she mouthed; Wait.

"Cap'ain! Cap'ain, Adcock and Bonnet aren't talking!" The same guy yelled with a horribly deep welsh accent that made him hard to understand.

"Well go down there and check, Bellamy you idiot!"

More steps, coming closer… I heard the door coming to the main hold (read: storage room) open and someone getting closer.

Hylla and I flattened ourselves on either sides of the door.

Born to be strong. My mother's voice echoed back to me.

The scars on my back tingled. It wasn't pain, it was like a reminder. They'd given me those scars. That pain had made me who I was now. Every reason to hate them, every minute of fighting they'd let me see, every hand they'd lain on my sister. Every one of it gave me a reason to fight. Every reason to be strong had been something they'd given me. They'd made me want to hurt them. They'd strengthened me. They'd made me want to fight back.

And now they were going to wish they never had.

He took a step into the room and frowned when he saw us.

"Cap-"

Hylla's fist shot out like a cobra and he fell like a rag doll.

Another pirate was dragged to the side, but inside I swore. He had yelled. They had had to hear the yell. They just had to and… Gods of Olympus…

There were about 25 pirates on the ship. The Queen Anne's Avenge, they'd baptised it. One of them had been thrown overboard minutes ago, 3 were here. That was still 21 pirates who would probably be very mad at us, on this ship, and armed. Especially armed.

I heard footsteps of agitated people.

"I think I heard something."

"Yeah me too…"

"Enrique, go check." Someone barked.

"Rey," Hylla said in a whisper.

I looked down at my waist, where Hylla was slipping a gun in the hems of my work pants.

"Volley gun," she said. "There are seven barrels, but they all fire at once, and only once. You don't have any other ammo."

"I'll search these two for weapons," I said. I found a pistol and stuck it in my left pocket. Just in case I needed it while my right hand was busy (hint: right was my sword hand). I was planning on being a real force of destruction, or going down trying. I didn't know if I could do it against anyone other than Hylla, but I was becoming increasingly claustrophobic and I wasn't going to live another day trapped down here.

"Oh hello," Hylla said. I turned and saw her holding up a key ring. She was holding one in particular.

"It's the only one made of the same metal as the doorknob," Hylla said. She looked through the others and I uncovered a ring hanging around his neck. For some reason I unclipped the chain and examined the ring. It looked like a tiny laurel wreath that you could put around your finger, the leaves both silver and gold.

I'd never really been into jewellery, even at Circe's island (I'd left that to Hope and everyone else), but for some reason I showed it to Hylla.

"Reyna, I don't think this is the time." She said.

I slipped it on my finger and Hylla dropped the sword she was holding and her eyes popped.

"How did you do that?"

"Put the ring on?"

"No- that… Rey, I may be hallucinating because gods know this isn't a five star resort, but you're invisible."

I took the ring off immediately.

"Now you're… Rey, that ring's magic." She said.

"That's going to be useful. Let's get out of here, now."

We snuck out from the small room in which we'd been locked in, and into the main hold. It was empty now, no more alcohol, no food, definitely no treasure. Empty crates, cannons with extra cannonballs that were too heavy to be of any use to us…

"This is where the others were," she said. She pointed to a wall where metal plaques were installed. "The ones that they killed, that they didn't keep as pets and cleaning ladies or slaves or whatever we're meant to be. The crew had them shackled to the wall, all in a row. They knew they wanted to keep us from the start. They knew; that's why they separated us from them."

Hylla and I held our breaths and hid behind those big crates. She mouthed something to me and I assumed that she had a plan and so I should let her be. Trusting my sister; that was something strangely new.

The pirate who must be Enrique appeared and frowned when he saw the door open.

"What the bloody hell-"

He ran closer to check it out and at that moment Hylla pounced out, grabbing him in a bear hug and covering his mouth.

"Rey," she said. I rushed to help her, teasing the sensitive skin of his throat with the blade of my knife.

"Look," she said. "I'm going to take your hand off my face. You're going to say something that explains why the three other idiots didn't come back, understand? And if you screw up- if you don't do that; guess what my little sister's going to do."

She let his imagination wander.

"And she's very angry right now."

"Incredibly," I said.

"Are we understood?" Hylla said in that sweet voice that could've been attractive to him if she weren't promising certain death. My sister was an action hero. Flirty and destructive, both at once. I was slightly repelled, slightly amazed, and slightly shocked. When had this happened? Well she always had scared me when she was really angry.

He nodded against her grip.

"Good." She removed her hand and he gasped. I dug my blade a little further to remind him.

"It's okay mates," he said. "The prisoners are sleeping, the three wastes of space here decided to stay and… Pull a joke on us. They're fine."

"Idiots," Someone replied.

"Sleeping, eh? Think Cap'ain would let us have a go at 'em?"

I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but Hylla paled, and I I caught on.

I nearly wanted to bust over there and bitch slap him, though. Then maybe I could have a go at him with my knife.

"Nah. Nah- I- I don't think that'd be a good idea." Enrique replied. Hylla let go of him and as he breathed in relief she stabbed him through the back.

It was the first time I'd seen blood on a blade, and I was sure that one way or another, even if we walked off this ship freely, it wouldn't be the last.

I had to admit, I had mixed feelings.

I knew that the appropriate, human response would be oh that's so bad, my sister just killed someone right in front of me, she's a murderer and so forth. But my eye caught to the metal and the way the blood dripped down it and that was all my brain could focus on. It was a kind of beautiful contrast that people didn't see often because they were usually too busy being terrified.

For a second I felt powerful. Because I could do that too. For another second I was scared. Because I could do that too.

Then it was victorious. They had deserved it. The second you stopped treating people like people, you lost the right to be treated like a person. The second you condemned someone to being your slave and getting raped and being hurt and eating rats, you lost the right to be treated like a person, and all you deserved was to be treated like you had treated. If karma was a real thing, then it wasn't a bitch. It was what you'd made it become.

"Four down," Hylla said. I couldn't read her face.

Knowing the parts of the ship and having been brought out to wash dishes or scrub the deck more than once; I knew that we were in the storage hold in the back of the ship. Near the hull, the front, there was the forecastle which was the sailors' living quarters. The door was hanging open, which meant that there were still people inside. We could hear them. Someone had an accordion; someone was ranting about something that his European accent and slang made unrecognisable.

We paused and listened to the voices. I heard five different ones. There were two of us and five of them. They were stronger and better fed, but their morale was low while ours was just on fire and our adrenaline was making up for a lifetime of absence. We had the advantage of surprise against them, but part of me still wasn't sure if that was enough.

Hylla pulled me back. "Ideas?" She whispered.

"We'd have to storm it," I said. "And I'm not sure I like that idea. Gunshots would attract attention, so we can't use that. And even then, two against one? Can we handle that?"

"Not sure," she said. "We'd need a way to break them up into smaller groups."

"How?"

"I don't know. It might not be an option."

We sat down for a few more minutes and brainstormed through it. I looked down at my windbreaker and saw the heavy thread Andrew had mended it with.

Wait a sec- there had to be more of this onboard if he's spared some for me out of all things that thread could be used to. And if this was where they kept their supplies…

"I have something but it's insane," I said.

"Go," she told me. "Insane is good. I love insane, insane is fabulous."

We couldn't fight eighteen pirates (all but Andrew were grown men) with force. That would be like trying to survive a tsunami while wearing arm floaties and a float ring shaped like a duck. So we were going to have to use brains instead of brawns, which worried me. I wasn't stupid, but I'd never done it before.

We rummaged through the crates until we found what we were looking for; the thick thread that they used to fix their sails while at sea.

We waited on either side of the door, flattening ourselves as best as we could.

"Bah- I don't care what Enrique or the Cap'ain said. Imma go get the older one." One of the pirates said.

Hylla's jaw was shut about as tightly as it went. My blood chilled and I felt angry enough to punch the daylights out of an African elephant.

"Or the younger one for laughs," He said again. "What'd 'you lot think?"

I felt like every nerve inside me was on fire, objecting to the very thought. Hell. no.

Also, I was terrified.

The door creaked open and the pirate wandered in.

Hylla gave him a silent death, impaling her knives through the back of his head. I wasn't sure how she knew this, but she'd promised me that it'd pass through his brain.

I caught him and dragged him away so that the body didn't fall. He was sticky with sweat and insanely heavy, flopping down towards me.

I deposited him on the crates, happy to do so. His head rolled to the side. Blood dripped onto the wooden floor. I had this insane vision of a rat running straight under, with a stripe of red on his back.

I turned back, shaking my head, and Hylla tossed me the ball of thread. I held it, and pulled it tightly. I wrapped it around a nail sticking out from the wall and tied it in place with a knot I'd seen the sailors use.

For a while it was quiet. Hylla and I were patient. Like praying mantises, just standing there and waiting for the next strike. Some of nature's predators don't move to kill, when you think about it. The Venus flytrap can't move, it just waits for a stupid bug to come to it, and then it kills. Some fish that scuba diving instructors would point out to Circe's visitors would camouflage themselves against the sand or the coral and snap from underneath. Maybe they were the ones who won at the end of the day. Their kills were clean and quick and effortless; whereas lions or wolves had to go out, track their prey, follow it, run after it, exhaust it, catch it, and rip it apart.

"Where's John at?" Someone asked.

"Still in there."

"Nah, it's too quiet."

Hylla blinked and looked up at the ceiling. Was she..?

"Well go look if you worry about him."

The wood cracked and Hylla and I flattened ourselves against the wall. Hylla still held on to her end of the string.

The next one tripped, not looking at where he was going, too confident in a familiar place. He fell on his face and I took a knife between my fingers.

If I could throw a knife and hit something as small as a rat; I could very well hit a man's heart.

And that was the first man I killed.