**Author's note: I thank you all for the wonderful reviews, the support and the encouragement are really more than I expected.  This story has, to date, gotten over twice as many reviews as any of my other stories, and probably twice as many as my other stories combined.  As I'm a writer and not a mathematician, though, I'll let that be.  I fear the story is winding its way down… (dodges possible flames).  But we'll see… Happy reading.**

            He'd looked through everything and still hadn't found her.  But he knew the sneaking wench was aboard somewhere.  He'd found her dress, the rump-loose whore, lying on the floor in a heap with one of the dratted books she insisted on packing about everywhere.  He stood in the middle of the ransacked cabin, rocking to and fro on the balls of his feet, his hooded eyes shifting rapidly from left to right and back again.   

            She had to be around somewhere.

            When the door swung open, he stood where he was for a moment, mesmerized by his own rhythmic movement.  In the open door stood the bastard who'd taken her—the one who'd coshed him on the head.  "Well, ho there, ye high talkin' thief."  Grinning nastily, he leaned forward at the waist in a brawler's stance.

            Jack found himself completely unable to banter, the wit he ordinarily called upon dried up in the face of this man.  In its place was an anger he hadn't felt since his ship had been stolen, and before that, his father. 

            "It seems to me ye have somethin' of mine," Philip insisted, stepping on Amelia's book as he crossed to Jack.  "But I have a deal to make, y'ken?"  He rubbed the intact fingers of his left hand together as though feeling a coin, and his eyes glinted with the combination of fever and greed.  "It seems to me if ye've been lyin' with my no-good, bitch cur of a sister, we'd be just about even if ye'd pay me what she's worth, and I'll let ye keep her."

            "What she's worth?"  Jack walked around the man in a half-circle, pleased and not surprised to see that the oaf was moving slowly, his steps sluggish and his eyes unfocused.  It would take half-nothing to have the man finished, and finished was what he should have been years before. 

            If he did nothing else right in his life, Jack knew he'd do this one thing right.

            "She be worth a lot, if you've kept her aboard this long," Philip snickered nastily.  His face clouded suddenly, as it had on the docks days before when Amelia had spoken of their mother.  "It's disrespectin', you are!" he shouted suddenly, lunging at Jack unexpectedly.  "Disrespectin' my family, and everythin' my poor mother worked to raise us for!"  Jack didn't draw either of his weapons, but stood still as the man slung a clumsy arm about his neck, bringing himself closer to the calm and angry pirate.

            Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, Jack thought, eyeing the dagger he'd stuck in the wall.  It was perfect for close work, and Jack wanted no mistakes.

            Jack never wanted this man to lay a hand on Amelia again, even if it meant the same for Jack himself.

~~~

            Amelia sat with Anamaria, trying to make sense of the events as best she could.  Though they were puzzling out between the two of them that it had likely been Daniel who'd hit her, the answers weren't enough for Amelia.  She glanced over her shoulder periodically, watching the men search, and wondered where Philip was.

            She felt guilty, but not at all sad, when she thought perhaps he'd gone ahead and drowned.  There would be justice in that, she thought.  For him to die in the manner of the rest of her family.  To die in the manner of the mother who'd shaped him so cruelly into her own image. 

            Uneasy, she turned back to Anamaria to check on the small amount of blood still trickling from the woman's head.  Amelia opened her mouth to speak, to say something soothing, something friendly to the woman who had somehow, in the common ground of Jack's ingénues, become her friend, but the shouts made her freeze.

            "It's disrespectin' you are!"

            The voice, so familiar that it stayed with her even in the fastest of sleep, the deepest of dreams, made her blood turn icy and her arms stand out in gooseflesh. 

            "I have to go," she said suddenly, scrambling from her kneeling position into a standing one, stumbling clumsily over the skirts of her dress as she tried to run to the cabin.  "Jack!" she shouted, unable to help herself, the captain suddenly foremost in her mind, crowding out the fear and memories of her brother.

            Anamaria had her feet under her faster than Amelia did, but the weight of standing sent a piercing pain through the back of her head and she landed on her rear back on the planks of the ship, a moan escaping her lips.  "High-nose!" she called, making Amelia turn.  Bending over, the piratess slid a bone-handled knife across the deck of the ship, landing it neatly at the laundress's feet.

            Without a word, Amelia scooped it up and ran the rest of the way to the cabin, where she could see the two men grappling together.

            "Philip!" she shouted, desperate for him to turn his attention to her.  The face that swung toward her was a nightmare caricature of her brother's, swollen and sunburned, the eyes shining and nearly colorless save for the blood in the whites. 

            "There you are, you lying whore," he crooned in a strange, gurgling voice.  "Surely you've gots what you owes your dear brother."

            Holding the knife in plain sight, Amelia nodded her head shakily.  "Aye," she said, not bothering with formalities or even educated speech.  "Got it I 'ave, brother, and what I should have given long before."  Her hand shook, sending silvery beads of oil lamplight bouncing off the well-tended blade and onto the walls.  She wasn't certain she had the fortitude to do what she implied, but if it took his attention away from Jack, she'd do whatever it took.

            "Amelia," Jack's voice was quiet in the small room, shocked as she'd never heard it.  "Turn and take yerself away from here, love, 'tisn't your concern."

            "Love, now, is it?" Philip said, regarding Amelia and then Jack.  "Aye, 's what I thought was happenin' here.  Now who's ready to deal with me?"

            Ignoring him, Amelia walked to her left, bringing her closer to Jack and around her brother.  "This isn't yours, Jack.  Please."

            Jack chose not to answer her, instead focusing on the man in front of them, who stood rubbing absently at his right arm and hand and licking his lips. 

            The moment stood captured as it was, only for a brief second, each member of the vignette locked in concentration on another, and then Philip broke it by moving.  Unable to choose which of his foes he'd rather face, he dived between them, reaching for the lamp on the table. 

            Amelia stepped into him, smelling suddenly the stench of rotten flesh and maddened sweat, and closed her eyes as she felt knife crunch into bone.  She felt her stomach roll over and a cold sweat break over her head, but she kept her eyes on her brothers' as they popped open in surprise.  She saw no pain there, only shock. 

            As he backed away, she could see Jack on the other side of him, grasping the jeweled hilt of his dagger, blood running down the blade and over his fingers and wrist, staining the cuffs of his shirt. 

            If she'd bothered to look down, she'd have seen her own hand looked much the same.  Cuts had scored her thumb and forefinger, her hand having slipped down the blade, and her blood mingled with her brother's, not for the first time in their lives. 

            Philip dropped to his knees, the fight gone out of him, the fierce glitter in his eyes already beginning to dull as his lips tried to form words, his slow-witted brain trying to puzzle out the situation.  He'd never been challenged, and certain never been on the losing end of a battle with his sister. 

            When he slumped to the floor, Amelia let her head drop, her tangled hair hanging in her face.  Clenching her hand into a fist and feeling the blood pumping there, she turned her head slightly, away from the body on the floor.  "Now who's the devil?" she whispered, turning and walking toward the open door.