A/N-- I'm sorry for how long this update took, but my internet was down and we just got it working again. The updates will continue, as before, every three days. There is extensive French in this chapter. I do not speak the language, so any mistakes are those of the online translator I used. My apologies.

For anyone who wondered, the title of last chapter is also the title of a chapter in Charles Dickens's classic A Tale of Two Cities.


Chapter Ten
A Pirate's Honor
in which true colors are finally flown

There were no orders Cora could give that weren't already being carried out. The anchor was rising, the sails that had only lately been raised were sheeting home once more. The Fraternité's broadside ripped through their shrouds, slamming home into the foremast and any sailor unwary enough to be left standing.

"Anamaria, get into my cabin and make sure Dom hides himself well!" She shouted. "Gun crews to their stations! Gibbs, turn us so we're broadside on! Someone rig splinter-netting!"

They were too slow, far too slow. Faster than most, but not fast enough. Their first ragged broadside included only the top tier of guns. She could hear Finn shouting in Irish, trying to get the second tier opened and ready. Their next broadside was a little louder, a little stronger. But the Fraternité's drove in right every time. With a groan that shook every bone in Cora's body, the foremast began to fall.

"Aim for her hull!" Cora shouted.

"The shells are bouncing off of it!" Jack called back from where he'd taken command of the guns in the last quarter.

"Is there any way we can get closer?"

"She's got the weather-gauge, Captain. We're trapped!"

"Someone get the carpenters up here. We need to cut that foremast free before it drags us down with it."

As if sensing that her prey was hamstringed, the Fraternité's next broadside was aimed for the Deliverance's hull. Several balls went through right at the waterline. Others took out the front two guns in the first tier. She began to close the distance between them.

"She means to board us!"

"Orders, Captain?" Anamaria's voice was unusually quiet as she stood beside Cora.

"Run up a white flag," Cora's voice was strong by comparison. They carried no colors to strike, and so there seemed less dishonor in the action. "Then everyone but the best marks get below deck. Leave the dead as they lie. Quietly, now!"

There was a muted flurry of action as everything was abandoned as it was. Sailors dropped out of the rigging with less sound than normal, then crouched and crawled into the open hatches as the last shots from the Fraternité whistled overhead.

Cora found herself, Anamaria and several of her sailors crouching in the orlop where Stephen was up to his elbows in blood.

"Doctor, will everyone in here hold as they are?" Anamaria asked.

"I can vouch for all but a few-"

"Good," She threw him a pair of pistols and a cutlass from the bucket she seized before she went below deck. "Because unless every sword we've got is with us rushing these Frenchmen, you'll have quite a few extra patients to care for."

Cora's mind was racing as she waited in the relative silence of the Deliverance. A few of their best shots had been left on the masts. Their first shots would signal the time to charge. It would be much more difficult to surrender in the chaos of a man-to-man melee. Then again, surrender hadn't been an option since the Fraternité appeared from behind the Isla de Tesoro. They would take no prisoners. She said a silent prayer to those who'd gone before her- don't let me join you too soon. I still have a son to raise.

Then it hit her. Dominic was alone in her cabin.

"No!"

"What's in your head?" Anamaria hissed, seizing Cora's arm as she tried to dart back up the ladder.

"Let me go. Dom is still up there!"

Then the first crash of musket fire- the screams of dying men all too near- feet just above them. They leapt out of the hatchway- Cora impaled one enemy without even meaning to. Anamaria and Stephen's pistols went off just behind her and her ears rang. The world seemed less real when she couldn't hear the man hit the deck after she slit his throat from behind.

From hatchways all over the ship the sailors came pouring out; the deck was thick with people alive and dead. As Cora tried to skirt the battle, moving towards her cabin, she was forced to try and move a body blocking her way over the rail. She couldn't lift the heavy man, and going around him meant going through the melee- meant facing death before she could get to her son. She dropped to her knees and sheathed her cutlass and nearly cried with the worthless exertion- then all at once someone was at the other end, lifting the head and shoulders and sending him into the sea with a crash. She didn't have to look to know it was Stephen.

"Hurry. They'll try to break in if they can't find you-"

He'd barely finished the words before she was running towards the door. He followed close at hand. Her pistols remained loaded and she discharged one to stop a man rushing out of the melee from attacking them. Jack's group had been late in coming out of the hatch and they were fighting to stop from being pressed back below; nowhere was the battle louder than where they stood, fighting. Jack's face was red with blood, and they could only pray it wasn't his.

They reached the doors of the cabin at last and pressed their backs against it. Cora fired her other pistol into the swarm surrounding Jack's group. Those they'd managed to escape skirting the battle had found them now and the scant three feet of free ground they were defending suddenly seemed too much to hold. There was no more time for thought. They rushed in when they could, disarming and killing with ruthless efficiency.

At some point, everyone realized it was too much. They would never be able to hold off all of the Frenchmen. They were trained soldiers, and paid ones, not pirates who'd been left with no other choice.

Jack's group had the last great victory. They forced their way free from the ring encircling them, and it was safe to say that the everything aft of the mizenmast was theirs again. It wasn't long after they started taking stock of their wounds (Stephen couldn't resist the urge to stop and bandage some) and preparing to advance when the Frenchmen remaining on the Fraternité began to fling flaming pitch onto the sails. It was then they knew they were defeated. They had to stop fighting to throw water on the sheets and the pitch that dropped to the deck. After some harsh French commands, the sailors began to demand surrender before they killed.

Most of the pirates fought back- death before surrender! But Cora from her position at the back could see the hopelessness. She nodded to Anamaria when the dark woman was cornered at last by a Frenchman. After she dropped her weapon and raised her hands, the surrender proceeded slowly back towards them. The French sailors started corralling them towards the mainmast. Cora took the opportunity to survey the damage. The French had suffered far more casualties than they had, but that was only because they had more men to lose. She was relieved to see Finn sitting there, smiling at her, when they were made to kneel before the mainmast in a line. Anamaria and Gibbs remained alive too, though Anamaria was bleeding badly. Jack and Stephen were at her side. It was a small piece of comfort to know they'd made it this far- that she'd been given a chance to say good-bye.
Closing her eyes and saying one more prayer, she sank to her knees beside them.


When all the defeated were gathered together and placed under guard, the captain came forward. He was taller than most of the others, with sallow skin and an aristocratic nose that had been badly broken once before. His brown hair was loose and wild over his shoulders. He was easily the bloodiest person in view- clearly he harbored no fear of violence.

"Est-ce que ceux-ci sont tous les prisonniers?" He said. His voice wasn't as deep as one would assume from his large frame.

Are these all the prisoners? Stephen mouthed when Cora looked to him. Her face was smeared with soot and blood, but she wasn't as wild-eyed as some of the men around her- Jack still looked ready to strangle every last Frenchman aboard the ship.

"Il y a juste encore un. Nous avons trouvé un petit passager clandestin." Another sailor called out to him. His voice sounded out from far aft.

"There's just one more. We found a little stowaway." He whispered hoarsely. He gripped Cora's hand out of the sight of the guards when he heard her choked sound of terror. Tiny footsteps echoed across the deck towards them as the sailor who'd spoken half led and half dragged Dominic into view.

"Mettez-le avec les autres." The captain waved his hand in their direction.

"Momma!" He called, catching sight of Cora as they pushed him roughly towards the end of the line.

"Hush, darling. You'll be all right, just listen to what they tell you." She said quickly before the guard behind her put a knee into her shoulder blade.

"Fait taire, chienne!"

"That was unnecessary, Monsiuer." The captain's switch into English was as smooth as his ship's attack had been. It startled the prisoners more than it seemed to startle him. "My name is Captain Rémy. I would not have put your captain amongst you thus if you did not all dress so much the same. I am afraid that I must ask the captain to step forward now and do not try to deceive me. But honor is foreign to pirates such as yourselves, so I have someone who knows just who you are right here." He gestured to their right and they heard the rattle of chains across the plank that had been set down between the two ships.

"Ashli..." Cora breathed the name more than she said it as the young woman was brought to stand just off to the captain's side. Both sisters were bruised and battered, and that was the only strong resemblance. Ashli looked more like her grandmother Elizabeth than her sister, with a slighter frame and lighter hair. She hadn't inherited the blue Starre eyes, but from her letter and Cora's tales she was by all rights the one who'd inherited the Starre temperament.

"So, I will repeat myself- the rightful captain of this vessel must step forward now, or we will kill this woman."

Anamaria still tried to stand, to protect Cora, but Gibbs held her back. Cora gave Stephen's hand one last squeeze- he tried to hold her back too, knowing he couldn't -before she stood and moved stiffly to stand before Rémy. Her belt was unbuckled and she started to offer her sword to him. Instead he took hold of her just below the jaw and drew her close.

"Are you the captain, or the captain's whore?"

She jerked back from him and raised the sword stiffly once more.

"For better or for worse, I am the captain of this vessel."

Rémy glanced at Ashli, who bowed her head and began to cry.

"I am so sorry, Cora. Please, I'm so sorry..."

Rémy smiled and took her sword from her.

"Messieurs, enlevez-la d'autres armes, s'il vous plaît."

The two Frenchmen who'd stood behind Rémy stepped forward. One removed the pistols she wore at her sides, caressing suggestively higher on her ribs than was necessary, while the other pressed himself against her from behind and removed the knives she'd strapped there. Rémy made no move to stop them, and after a moment they returned to his side like dutiful watch dogs.

"I guess I still found it hard to believe what your sister said," He mused, stepping forward. "A woman for a captain? But it is of no consequence to me. Kneel." She complied. Rémy paced in a circle around her until he stood on her left, just out of her peripheral vision. Then with one swift motion he tore the bandana from her head. She stiffened as her long, thick brown hair swung free over her back, waving a little in the breeze.

"Your sister said I would recognize you by your hair. She said you always wore something over it in battle- it was your one vanity." He circled her again. Her gaze darted to Ashli, who was on her knees too, tears still streaming down her face.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, she mouthed again and again.

"Do you know what they did to my parents during the Revolution? They accused them of piracy. They said they were using their ships to take goods to the emigres." He drew her cutlass and threw the scabbard away to one side, then lay the blade gently along her neck. A visible shiver ran through her. Stephen ached with the urge to leap to his feet and tear the cutlass away. It wasn't even clean yet.

"After they set them on the same level with people like you, they sent my parents to meet that sharp-witted female, la Guillotine. Truly, I have never seen a bloodier way to die."

The cutlass went up and then down again in a swift flash of sun. Ashli screamed, and Dominic along with her. Stephen was certain his heart had stopped. For a moment he was struck blind by the flash of light off of the blade. He heard a choking sound and feared to see again- but when he did, Cora was still breathing. Her hair slid down her back and to the deck. The longest layer now reached only to her ears.

"A fine blade." Rémy remarked, observing it. "How do you feel now, Captain? How do you feel now that the one thing that made you feel beautiful is gone?"

She said nothing. She tilted her head back and looked at him with a blend of hatred and desperation.

"If you're going to kill me, at least spare us the show. And don't do it in front of my son."

With the same lightning fastness he'd used when he wielded the cutlass, Rémy drew his foot back and hammered it into Cora's ribs, sending her into a roll across the deck. She sat up, swaying, just as he caught up.

"I haven't killed you yet, captain, because I don't understand you yet. I want to know what sort of monster I have in my net. I heard all about your little love affair with the surgeon- how you killed your own mother to aid the Royal Navy." He spat the words. Jack tensed at Stephen's side, a low growl in his throat. "You had a chance to turn back from this wretched life then, and yet you came here. You brought your son with you!" He kicked her again. She didn't even roll this time. She lay still and didn't even cough.

"You were sentimental enough to follow a letter from your sister, thinking you could somehow find redemption. Thinking you were worth saving. But you're not. You're a pirate, born and bred. There is no salvation for you, whatever pardon you may have been given."

Cora straightened up very carefully, remaining on one knee and tilting her head back to meet Rémy's eyes. Her shoulders straightened. Rémy's assault had led them to the larboard rail, several feet away from where they started, and Stephen barely noticed it when one of her hands dropped to rest on her boot.

"You're right," She whispered. "I am a pirate. And your first mistake was trusting me with my hands unbound."

In one movement more graceful than either of Rémy's she was on her feet, the knife she kept always hidden in her boot in her hand. She stepped back in time to avoid a swift tide of red stained her clothes as she slit his throat. His body had barely hit the deck before she dove again, reaching for a bucket of arms that had been forgotten. One Frenchman had sense enough to fire before she picked them up. She had the sense to fire as many of the pistols as she could over their heads before Jack turned and dove at his captor, leading the surge of resistance.

The French had no time to react. They were utterly overwhelmed in moments and cried their surrender before they accurately knew what to do. Jack dove for the lieutenant before he could cross the plank back to the Fraternité and warn those left behind. He leveled the bayonet at his throat.

"Nous capitulons! Nous capitulons!" The man cried, dropping his weapons. The others soon followed suit.

Gibbs and Finn took over the crew, beginning the arduous task of determining who was alive and what repairs were needed most urgently. Jack and Anamaria began to organize their prisoners and confirm the terms of surrender. Stephen knew he should be heading to his sick-bay. He'd be needed there soon. But instead his feet carried him to where Cora knelt on the deck, still catching her breath. Her back was to him; he could see the thin stream of blood flowing from her right shoulder blade. One of the French sailors had managed to shoot her when she went for the bucket of pistols. He'd worried for it then, but seeing it now he realized it was lodged shallowly and would need no extensive surgery.

"I'll need to remove that bullet very soon." He whispered nonetheless.

She nodded but didn't bother to rise. She could hear Dominic racing towards her. He paid no mind to her wound as he wrapped himself around her. Then again, she didn't either.
Stephen was on the verge of walking away when Cora caught his hand once more and drew her down to him. It was the most natural thing in all the world then to put his arms around them both and bury his head in Dominic's soft curls. His other hand found Cora's shorn hair and his heart ached for the lost beauty- but it would grow back, with enough time. There were some wounds time would always be able to heal.

"Cora?"

They knew when they heard the sound of chains rattling across the deck that they'd have to stand now and break their tight embrace, but when Ashli's voice sounded beside them they found it strangely hard. Dominic was the most difficult to convince; even after they pried him from his mother he clung stubbornly to Stephen's hand.

"Hello, Ashli."

"Cora, I didn't want to do it- he captured me- he-"

"Hush."

It was all she needed to say. A fresh torrent of tears covered Ashli's face. Cora just guided her sister's head to rest on her shoulder and rocked them both gently, stroking her hair.

"I understand what happened. You don't need to explain anything to me."

"He made me write the letter, but I meant everything it said."

"I know you did, love. We're safe now. That's all that matters. All I need is for you to promise me that we'll never be separated like this again."

"I will." Ashli whispered when the tears stopped.

"Pirate's honor?" Cora asked, holding out her right hand when she stepped back.

"Aye. Pirate's honor." They clasped hands so tightly their knuckles went white.

"Momma?" Dominic asked then, leaving Stephen to tug on Cora's hand. "She looks like the lady in the picture at home. Who is she?"

"She's your Aunt Ashli, darling."

"I thought you were mad at her."

"Well," Cora smiled softly. "I think it's safe to say that time is past."

"A son?" Ashli asked. Cora shook her head once, and then she nodded and wiped her eyes as best as she was able. "Home. Let's go there. I'm so ready to go home, Cora."

Another shadow crossed Cora's face.

"There's something I have to do here at the Isla de Tesoro first, and then I must go to Port Royal. But you can take Dominic with you to Alameade. I'll return in a matter of days."

"At the Isla de Tesoro? You mean the money, don't you?"

"So it is here?"

"What's left of it, yes. I've been using a little of it each year. I haven't your skill at seafaring, I'm afraid. I'm a bad pirate, and all that."

"How much is left?"

"A fair £9,000 I should say. I haven't counted it all. Why do you ask?"

Cora closed her eyes in a brief moment of relief.

"Later, Ashli. Later. Right now I'm just glad to be alive again."

Her sister smiled, knowing just what she meant.


A/N-- Whew. That was a close one! I was working up a sweat writing that chapter for you. How'd it make you feel? Drop me a line and let me know (just like silverwolf of the night, Oriana8 and Kelly Tolkien did)! It's good for the soul. You know it is. Besides, you won't have much more of a chance after this. We only have one more chapter to go and then an epilogue, and we're through.

On a random side note, I was reading a book called the Courtesan earlier today. It's set in Renaissance France, but a character happened to pop up named Stephen Villiers. Anyone who has read the Aubrey-Maturin series should get a kick out of that one :-) Talk about irony, eh?