Silk burns quickly but does not melt away. It remains, intact but ruined. You cannot repair burnt silk. Once aflame, it is done for.

Silk is the life's thread of a thousand tiny creatures, the hopes and dreams of future moths. Unrealised futures, because as soon as they have given their silk, the caterpillars are sentenced to death. They never get their wings, and only their hope, their silk, remains.

Perhaps that is why silk is so tough, yet so delicate. Why it burns so quickly and so well.

The sea is taut and sparkling on the day Ed has news of Stede.

Ed has been at the ship's helm since dawn, sensing trouble and therefore seeking it on every horizon. The last watch retires and the first watch arrives, gingerly bringing Ed's coffee, and Ed has seen nothing, nothing to raise concern, not even a cloud, and this does not improve his mood. Quite the reverse.

"Coffee, Captain." The young deckhand proffers a delicate china cup

"Ed," says Ed. "Or Blackbeard."

"Aye sir."

"Not sir," says Ed.

"Sorry sir. I mean - "

"Just give me the fucking coffee."

The lad scuttles to his post.

Ed slurps the coffee - rich and black, stolen beans previously destined for England - and continues scanning for trouble.

Trouble he can handle. Trouble is familiar and comforting. He knows what to do with trouble (kill it, tie it up, make it sing for its supper before throwing it to the sharks, or simply light a touchpaper and set it on fire). Trouble is Ed's oldest friend.

The lack of it makes him nervous.

He blames Stede Bonnet for this. Stede Bonnet, the Gentleman Pirate, fascinated Ed, captivated him, taught him elegance, showed him kindness and finally took his heart and squeezed it til it was no more than pulp. Until Stede, Ed was certain. Since Stede, Ed has been ... lost.

It's not good, for a sailor to be lost. Much less a pirate. Much less a pirate known to all as the fearsome Blackbeard, the greatest robber the seas have ever seen, a man so terrifying that his very name causes dogs to howl and deckhands to faint clean away.

But Stede ended that, made Blackbeard into just Ed, just a man. A man in a regular shirt, or sometimes something fancier - silk, or lace. A man who laughed and learned from this strange, aristocratic sailor. Until it ended.

Ed resumed his before-Stede clothes - leather, black, and scarred with a thousand nicks and scratches of battle - and his old terrorism of the seas. His beard grew back, wilder than ever. He renamed his ship - once Stede's ship - and sailed farther and faster than ever, growing its fame and filling its hold with new cargo.

None of it has helped. He despises himself, for his weakness and his viciousness. He hates the ship, but hates more that it affects him so to be here, to be sleeping in Stede's bed, eating at Stede's table, looking through the fashionably elaborate windows at Stede's view.

He misses Stede horribly.

Stede the faithless. Stede who promised to come, but who had not come. Stede who, without a word of farewell, broke Ed's heart.

Ed stares at the mesmerising sea and sees, as he always does, the patterns of waves and stars, clouds and currents, that guide him across oceans without much need for maps and booklore. The sea makes no promises, breaks no faith. Ed watches the horizon.

There is nothing. No ship. No cloud, no sandbank.

His mind drifts again to Stede's face. Blonde hair in a dashing coiffure above a sweet face, soft, untouched by any hardship. A face protected by wealth and privilege. Eyes, kindly, full of humour and bright enthusiasm. Ed had loved those eyes. He thought, gazing into those eyes, that Stede loved him in return. He thought wrong. How such a face as Stede's could lie, Ed does not understand. But lie Stede did.

Of course, Ed is Blackbeard - a monster. A hardened pirate, a killer, a thief. Stede must have realised this, finally. Must have recoiled from his promise, taken his chance and fled.

Any sane man would do the same.

But Stede is not at all sane. He is wildly, wonderfully crazy. He cast off his life of ease to build a pirate ship, and then proceeded to be the worst pirate in history, and he does not care. Stede says stuff that Ed finds amazing. Stede is unpredictable, a gentleman, a nerd, a fop, a swordsman and a dancing master, a lily-livered coward and a shockingly daring hero. With his jacquard coats and his collection of gold mollusc spoons, Stede is an absolute maniac.

And Ed loved him.

Ed closes his eyes. This pain will end. One day.

Or Ed will. Whichever comes first will be welcome. He can't keep up this fakery forever. At least Stede was openly playing at pirates.

When Ed opens his eyes there is a dot on the horizon. The dot shifts a little, like a haze, a cloud.

Ed snatches up his telescope. Yes. Smoke. Black smoke. Something more than wood burning there.

He waits. Soon the dot enlarges in his lens, becomes a white blotch, and masts.

Ed grins. At last. Here is trouble.

"Sail", he roars, and leaps down the stair to the main deck.

"Sail," echoes the cry all along the ship as the crew come to life.

"Hoist the flag, Captain?" says Israel Hands, his sea-scoured first mate.

Ed does not look at him. "Of course the fucking flag, Izzy." He yells across the deck. "Frenchie? Where are you? Get Jim, now! Now!"

Izzy Hands narrows his eyes. "Very well, Edward," he says, and a more careful audience than Ed might have caught sarcasm in that tone, rebellion in the slow lurch of that gaze at his captain's retreating back.

Ed knows none of it. Ahead is a fight, and fresh loot, and the only distraction he knows.

The sea glitters, and promises an interesting day.