here's a little detour into another character's past and then we'll get back to the main action for Captain Sanya Harkon.

Sanya paced the deck of the Bloody Galia . It was her ship. She was the captain. She had the ultimate authority on where her crew should sail. And yet here she was set on a course following her sister toward the very islands she swore she would never set foot on again.

Jak stepped up beside her where she had paused at the rail. "It'll be good. We'll be able to set my father straight on a few things and the families will be able to lay aside their animosity for each other."

Would they ever really?

"... and Nya, you know I wouldn't mind if…"

She wasn't looking at him but she felt him take her hand and then shift his weight on his feet as if he were about to drop to one knee.

She pulled her hand back and hurried towards the quarter deck before he could do so. "I believe you're on the next watch Mister Frasier," she called back towards him. She wouldn't use his true name, the name it seemed he wished to foist upon her.

"Aye, Captain," He regained his footing with a skip to disguise his original intent and went off to follow orders.

Sanya was thankful. She didn't really want to talk to anyone else at the moment but had to stop when Freddie slid down the ratlines and landed directly in her path.

"Captain."

"What is it? Did you sight another vessel? A storm blowing up?" Sanya pulled her long coat tighter around herself. There was a nip in the air but it was coming on to winter. The winters had been mild since she was a child and they had no reason to think this one wouldn't be as well.

"No. All's clear. We can still see your brother-in-law's ship ahead of us on the horizon but every other direction is just as it should be." The female sailor gave Sanya an unnecessary salute and then dropped her hand to her side.

"Well then?" Sanya snapped. "You obviously have something on your mind."

"Not to be impertinent, Captain. I don't want to intrude on your business."

And yet here she was …

"I was thinking if you were wanting to drop anchor to have some time to consider… things. Maybe have some time alone with the quartermaster to talk things out."

"If I did?"

Freddie took encouragement from the fact that she hadn't been shot down immediately. "I know of a small island, not far off this course. It's not much more than a spar of rock but there's a cabin with food stores and good fishing and fresh water besides."

"And no one lives there?" It sounded like maybe just the thing.

"No one has for some time that I know of. Like I said it doesn't appear to be more than a piece of rock on the waves but if someone were wishing to avoid one of the larger family occupied islands…"

Sanya looked over their bow toward where she could just make out Talya's ship running ahead of them. It's not like she had promised that she'd follow them all the way to Harkon Hall or make the detour that Jak had suggested to Blackhold. "Make the necessary course correction, Freddie. I'll be in my cabin."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Freddie smiled.

…

"She took you up on your advice," Jon the medic sidled up next to Freddie as over half the crew, those not on watch and those who could abandon their stations, observed the quartermaster and the captain rowing toward the small, only dock on the island.

The water was far too shallow for the ship to take them any closer but the Bloody Galia would remain at anchor until what time as the couple returned to take up their posts.

"Sometimes it just takes a woman's touch," Freddie sighed. "I didn't suggest anything that she wouldn't have wanted. It was obvious she was looking for an alternative to following the Braylkburns."

Jon chuckled. "Perhaps I should have you try to convince her to let me give her a health check up."

She smiled at him. "I'm sure even my powers of persuasion only go so far."

"And yet you were able to get her to take a much needed rest." He took a step closer to the lady sailor, as if she had magnetized him. "How did you even know this place existed?"

Freddie took a long look at the spar of rock jutting from the ocean with its shallow beach and the stone cabin on the hill beyond. "I lived here once…"

…

Her Da wasn't on the island when Freya Leanne Thackory was born. He was off on his ship the Golden Vanity . He was a great captain, loyal to his lords and fair to his men. His one weakness was his wife and his child.

He wanted to be with them. He came to stay on the small island whenever his sailing schedule allowed for him to do so. And he longed to bring them aboard his ship to sail with him and show them all the ports of call he visited and everything about ships and sailing.

Freya grew up on her father's stories and when he would leave again on the next tide would pretend that she was out there sailing with him. Her mother, Dalla Thackory, never discouraged her. She would remind Freya of the stories, telling them over and over again by their fireside in the evenings. All day Freya would play by the shore floating sticks and leaves on the waves and watching them for hours. And at night she would dream…

She noticed her mother's cough, of course. It interrupted the stories she told and it made her voice hoarse when she would call Freya in from the shore for her meals.

Da noticed it too when he came for a visit. It worried him, Freya could tell. He didn't take her out to play and tell her about the kinds of waves and wind they'd dealt with and how they'd set the sails to compensate. He didn't tell her about the crew and the pirates they chased and the bryks they saw playing in their wake.

Instead he made Mother go to bed. He got her food and water to drink and he didn't leave her side. He asked why she hadn't written to him sooner. He asked what he was going to do without her. And he cried. Freya had never known him to cry. She hadn't either but she did now. It made her cry to see Da cry.

Mother passed away. Da wrapped her body in a bag and sewed it up himself. Then he wrapped Freya up but not in a shroud to go to the salt gods. He wrapped Freya up in boys' clothes. He asked her, still with tears in his voice, if she was ready to come on board the Golden Vanity and be his cabin boy. She must act like a boy. She must never let anyone know that wasn't the truth.

"But Da, I thought we mustn't ever tell lies. The salt gods want us to tell the truth." She didn't understand. "You said your men respect you for your honesty."

"Aye they do, Freddie." He smoothed down her long dark hair and realized he'd have to do something about that too. "But in this one thing I need you to obey me rather than the salt gods. Do you understand?"

She still didn't but she nodded and then raised her fingers to her eyebrow in a perfect imitation of the salute she'd been told his men honored him with whenever he came on board. "Of course, Da. You're my captain."

"That's my, g-" he caught himself before he called her a girl even here all alone in the house on the island that she would never see again after that day.

He took Mother's sewing shears and cut Freya's hair short. It was Freya's idea to tuck her hair into Mother's shroud. She wanted to send a part of herself off to the salt gods with her. Maybe with her sacrifice they would forgive her for not being entirely truthful.

Then as he had always wanted to do, Captain Nathon Thackory brought his wife and his child aboard the Golden Vanity . Mother's voyage was not a long one, only until they reached deep water in the sight of the nearest salt formation on Bralyk Keep. Freya had never seen a salt formation before. Their small island didn't have a formation of its own.

She stood next to her Father, the Captain, as he said the funeral words and Mother's body was slid off the board on which it had been carried, into the waves and home to the salt gods halls. He didn't cry so she didn't either. She was the Captain's perfect little son and from that moment on she would continue to be.

The crew of course knew that there had been a child on the island with the wife he went to visit but he had never made it clear to them any of the details. He knew that they had never wanted a woman aboard ship. Such a thing was an abomination to them and would bring bad luck so they said. They all seemed greatly relieved when the funeral was over and they could get the running of the ship back to normal.

The lad, though small and fine boned, was an eager learner. Freddie Thackory became as firm a fixture of the Golden Vanity as the mainmast. It didn't matter that she wasn't really a boy as long as she never let them see her go to the head. She worked as hard as ten boys and they accepted her as a member of the crew.

Her Da thought ahead as far as he was able. Maybe that's what made him such a good captain. He would anticipate problems before they began aboard his ship and resolve them quickly. If not loved by his men, he was at least respected.

In his daughter's case. He knew she would always be small even if she gained some muscle through hard work and she would never grow the peach fuzz on her cheeks like the young boys she sailed with. He knew young men would pester each other about such things but maybe by the time Freddie reached that age perhaps circumstances would have changed and she could go back to being his beautiful daughter again. She would be beautiful, just like her mother had been.

For now though he announced that his son was only five years old, a full year younger than Freya's true age. It was another lie and Freddie didn't like it. She felt sure even at that young age that the salt gods wouldn't like it either and they wouldn't be mocked.

Her Da assured her that it wasn't another falsehood just part of the main disguise to keep her safe. The crews who sailed on the northern sea could be superstitious about things like women and girls sailing with them. But wouldn't lying to them make them all the more upset once the truth did come out, she wondered?

The point was just to give her a little more time and it seemed to be working. She sailed for seven glorious years aboard the Golden Vanity and even studied to sit for her midshipman's exams shortly after her thirteenth, Freddie's twelfth, birthday.

That morning before the test was to be administered, she thought that the cramps in her stomach were just nerves. They didn't let up as she was led to the exam room and began to answer the questions on the sheet of flimsi before her and work out the equations posted on the board.

She tried to concentrate even when she felt a wetness between her legs.

After it was over she ran to the 'fresher and salt gods! She was bleeding!

She hadn't felt sick at all other than those cramps she felt that morning. She still felt them now. She must be dying.

Strangely she didn't worry for herself. She only worried about Da. He was going to lose her just like he'd lost Mother. Still who else could she tell. He was the only person in the Galaxy who knew her secret.

She ran out of the building, legs still not quite steady on the cobblestone streets of the land. Or maybe the sickness was already robbing her of her ability to walk.

Da was waiting for her on the dock. He had that expectant expression just waiting to hear how she felt she had done on the test, but his countenance fell when he saw her face. "What's wrong?"

"Da," she whispered, afraid mostly for his sorrow at hearing the news. "I'm sick, Da. I don't know what it is but it must be bad. I'm bleeding." She said the words as quietly and clearly and quickly as she could. That's what he would expect when he was brought a report from any of his crew members.

His tan, generally impassive face went white and then after a moment to process what she had said, the look in his eye went from resignation to relief. He placed his hands on both her shoulders and squeezed gently. It was as close as he ever got to giving her a hug but what did that matter now. If she was doomed to death then it didn't matter who found out what she was except maybe for his own reputation.

Was he possibly relieved that she'd be going off to the salt gods halls like her mother and he wouldn't have to worry about the deception any longer. Maybe he was resigned to the fact that they were being punished by the salt gods for their dishonesty.

He didn't say any such thing. He looked into her eyes for a moment longer. She thought perhaps he was looking for her mother there. When he did try to speak he sort of choked up. Maybe he was going to miss her.

He cleared his throat and began again, "at least this happened… come on, follow me."

He knew this was going to happen to her whatever it was. He was expecting it and he never said anything to prepare her. Freddie didn't know what to think of that. She didn't move from that spot.

Da turned back towards her from where he had gone a few steps up the path. "I said, follow me."

"Aye, captain," she answered automatically and followed the order.

If they were on land he could take her to see a healer, one who might be convinced to keep her secret for the right price or they were supposed to do that anyway, aye? Doctors were supposed to keep their patient's medical information confidential. That would make sense why Da would be glad they were on leave when she happened to get sick.

But as they passed through the better part of town near the officers training building where she had taken her exam they passed right by a healer's office and he didn't even glance at the sign.

"Da?" She said softly and then a little louder when he didn't answer, "Captain? Where are we going?"

"Just follow. Don't ask questions."

"Aye, Captain."

They continued on into the seedier part of town. She was never allowed into areas like these with or without her crew mates. Now her Captain, her Da was leading her right into… what? She didn't even think he went into places like this. How did he even know this place existed? Of course, she didn't always go with him when he took his own shore leave. He was a man who worked hard and so she supposed he deserved his leisure time like all the rest.

And then they entered an establishment and Freddie was sure she knew why her dear old Da knew about this particular place. One of the whores looked up when the two of them entered and she looked almost exactly like … Mother.

"Madam Duxa." He called her by name. He had been to this place before to see this woman who looked like his dead wife, perhaps to take comfort in the arms of a woman who reminded him of Freddie's mother?

"Captain Thackory." She welcomed him. "And who might this be?" The woman smiled down on Freddie but the smile didn't reach her heavily charcoaled eyes.

"My son," he addressed the crowd as much as the woman, "has just celebrated his twelfth birthday and sat his midshipman's exams. I wanted to get him a little present."

The room raised a hazzah to the young man they believed was being so honored.

Freddie could only stare at her Da in horror. Technically everything was true according to the original deception but it still felt like a much bigger lie having it celebrated by all these men and the ladies attending them. Some of the men were from their crew. Perhaps that's why Da was laying it on so thick.

One sailor in particular who had always made Freddie rather nervous was staring at her now. He didn't have a girl on his lap and Freddie thought she knew why. She had heard some of his fellow sailors say that he preferred boys. She'd been advised to keep her distance from that Theon Black. Freddie followed the advice.

When she turned back around to look again at the madam the woman was reaching towards her to put an arm around her shoulders. "I'll take good care of him, Captain. Don't you worry 'bout a thing."

Freddie flinched away and looked to her Da for help but Da just gestured for her to go along with this Madam Duxa.

"Come on, my little man," the whore stage whispered into her ear. "I'll see you have a proper education. Mor'n you'll ever learn for those officers' exams."

The occupants of the dining room laughed and cheered. Da looked like he hoped he'd done the right thing. And then a door was closed between Freddie and all of that and she was left alone with Madam Duxa.

Freddie wasn't completely ignorant. The crew, even the other officers, spoke often when they knew her Da wasn't around to listen about what they had done or what they'd like to do with the ladies who worked in places like this. And they never censored themselves as they might have done had they known her true nature.

So it was somewhat of a surprise when this whore let go of Freddie as soon as they were alone. She didn't try to kiss her or lead her to her bed. Instead she went across the room to a hot plate and set a kettle on it for tea.

"Do you take sucrose or blue cream?" the woman asked. She sounded a little like Mother also.

"Sucrose, I guess." She was debating accusing the whore outright of… of what, the fact that she happened to resemble someone who her Da had once been totally devoted to?

Duxa nodded and sat in a cushioned chair while she waited for the water to boil. "So you're thirteen now?"

"You heard my Da out there. I'm twelve. Or did he tell you differently some other time when he came to see you." Freddie didn't mean to speak so harshly but she felt agitated on top of the cramps and the bleeding. She was dying and they were going to argue about her age.

"He didn't have to tell me, love." she sighed. "Your mother was about your age when she started, and I had to explain the whole process to her. Not that she listened."

This woman had known her mother? A million questions sprang immediately to Freddie's mind but the first one out of her mouth was, "started what?"

"Your cycle."

No reaction from Freddie.

"Your monthly bleeding?"

Freddie's eyes grew wide and her hand went to her stomach that was even now twitching with the cramps. She very nearly spun around to check if there was evidence to be seen on the back of her trousers.

"Didn't that father of yours tell you anything?"

She shook her head.

Duxa heaved another exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes and raised her hands as if petitioning the salt gods. "No. Of course he wouldn't. He wouldn't even know where to start. How do you tell a girl she's becoming a woman while you're trying to convince everyone on the planet that she's a boy?"

She knew. She knew everything. Suddenly the dam broke and tears that Freddie didn't know she'd been holding in burst out of her in a torrent. She sat in the chair on the other side of the little table, buried her head in her arms on the table top, and cried.

"Aw, Freya…" The whore started to move towards her but then the teakettle started to whistle harshly. Duxa swore and went to pour it over the fragrant leaves.

Freddie looked towards the door as if she meant to take the opportunity to bolt. But where would she go? Just find some hole in the wall in this miserable town to curl up and let nature take its course till she bled to death? Da had said he knew this was coming. This Duxa said her mother had started when she was her age… Maybe it was what killed Mother and it was just a long painful process that would take years for her to finally succumb to.

She needed more answers. She would stay for a bit. And the tea smelled good.

"Here then." Duxa placed a cup before her on the table. "That's got a bit of spice in it that'll help with the cramping too."

Freddie looked up at her warily as she reached out for the cup.

"Go on, drink up. It's not going to bite you and I promise you'll feel better."

The first sip warmed her going all the way down her throat. It was exactly the sort of thing her mother would have given her on a cold day in their little cabin on the island if she had the sniffles or a tummy ache. It prompted her to ask, "You knew my Mother?" and then she added. "You look like her."

"That's because she was my little sister." The woman said the words so tenderly as if she missed Dalla Thackery as much as Freddie did.

And then Freddie had a moment of panic. She didn't know all that much about her mother other than what Da had told her. But Da knew how to lie and make it convincing. He knew this place and he knew Madam Duxa. What if her mother was a…

She wasn't sure how to phrase the question without causing offence so she just threw her sheets to the wind. "Was she a whore like you?"

Madam Duxa, her Aunt Duxa she supposed, choked on her own mouthful of tea and then she laughed. She positively crowed. Freddie was absolutely sure everyone in the building heard her and she scowled behind her own teacup.

"My dear Freya, your mother was everything good and pure in the galaxy." She chuckled again. "I'm not saying she didn't try but thankfully she found your Da first. I promise I'll tell you the whole story if you'd like, but first drink your tea."

She looked and sounded like Mother. Duxa knew her proper name. She knew about Mother and Da and how they met but Freddie still couldn't quite bring herself to trust this woman for all her compassion. "And will you tell me what I'm dying of?"

What followed was a scholarly discourse on the curse of being a woman which boiled down to: she wasn't dying, this was going to happen every month pretty much for the rest of her life, and it meant that she wasn't pregnant but she was now able to become so if she… did what Aunt Duxa did for a living.

Aunt Duxa gave her a supply of the necessary items to take care of the problem in the meantime. Freddie had to admit that the tea did help settle her stomach as well.

"Now," Aunt Duxa sat across the table from her after all that unpleasant business was taken care of and reached out to take her niece's hand. "I suppose you'll be wanting to hear about your mother…"

Freddie nodded eagerly and her aunt began the story with the death of their own parents. Freddie's grandparents had left the two sisters here alone in town to fend for themselves.

"Your mother was sick as well and I hated to leave her but neither of us would have lasted long if I hadn't gone out looking for work." Aunt Duxa told her. "I didn't really want to tell her about this place. As she started to get better she got curious and followed me here one day. I thought she'd be horrified. She should have been horrified at what I'd resorted to. But no, she just said I shouldn't have to do this work alone and was prepared to offer her own services to the Madam who ran the place at the time."

"She didn't!" Freddie was enthralled by the story.

"No, she didn't because I absolutely forbade it!" Aunt Duxa didn't look like someone you could very easily argue with. She ran a tight ship just like Da. "Truth was the deeper I got in, the further I wanted to keep her away from it."

Aunt Duxa got up to pour herself another cup of tea and topped off Freddie's cup as well. Freddie waited for her to continue the tale.

"One day a gentleman ," she spat the word. "Sometimes they're the worst. It's the upper crust types who think they're better than we are and can take what they want. Well this one saw your mother and he wanted her. I was with somebody else when he first arrived but a few of the other girls knew how I'd feel about it and tried to distract his attention. Nah, he just sat there at the bar getting drunker and staring at sweet little Dalla."

She took an angry gulp of her tea. "I walked up to him and said, 'she's not on the menu but I'm her sister and you can do what you like with me.' Thought he'd taken me up on the offer at first. We went back to a room… and then he beat me senseless, sayin' the whole time how he'd stop if I'd let him have your mother. Like that would have changed my mind."

The whore touched a spot on her cheek reflexively that Freddie hadn't noticed before. It was an old scar that she must have received during the incident in question.

"Did he…" Freddie held her breath.

"No." Duxa shook her head. "I was unconscious for a day and a half and laid up in bed for a couple of weeks. But I found out later that the madam got an enforcer to drag out the…" she cursed. "We never saw him again, thank the salt gods. Your mother however decided it would be a wonderful idea to defy my order and take up the slack for my lack of income."

"You said Da came along before she had the chance." Freddie remembered.

"Your Da had just come ashore to take his lieutenant's exams." she smiled wryly. "He had some friends from his crew that found out that he'd never been with a woman. They decided to all chip in together and..."

"She was… given to him as a gift?"

"Aye." Duxa sighed. "But your mother and Da broke the first rule in the galaxy's oldest profession."

"What's that?" Freddie was sure the question sounded naive.

"They fell in love." Out of all the things that the whore had done and seen in her lifetime it was something she herself had never experienced. She envied her little sister that. "He paid for her time so that she wouldn't go to anyone else. By the time I was back up on my feet and he got his exam results and was scheduled to report back to his ship, you were already on the way.

"I had a few of my best customers telling me that it was a good thing for him that I got back when I did. He couldn't have afforded to keep her to himself much longer even on a lieutenant's salary. Well I got worried that if he couldn't pay for her anymore, he was probably going to try to have her without paying. That is until I found out he and your mother wanted to go to the salt formation before he left to get back on his ship. I couldn't let her do that alone, so I went along with her as her family witness."

Freddie wiped away at two tears that had fallen down her cheeks. "And they were always loyal to each other till the day she died."

"As far as I know they were." Duxa nodded. She breathed deeply, remembering. Then she stood and began to gather the tea things and put them into a basin by the hot plate. "We ought to be getting you ready to go back out to your ship."

"You mean I can just go?" Freddie asked rather surprised at the abrupt dismissal.

"I assume that's what your Da wanted, once I'd explained the way of things to you. That is unless you want to stay."

"Well, no," Freddie stood, after so long pretending to be a boy and then spending the afternoon conversing with a woman, her aunt, about women's matters it was rather a shock to her system to think about going back. "I'm going to be a midshipman, that is if I passed my exams and I think I did alright on all of them."

"I'm sure you did. You are your father's daughter."

She was, but for now she would have to go back to pretending to be his son.

…

Jon listened to the story, his medical mind wondering at the mysterious illness that had taken Freddie's mother, and at her ability to keep her true nature hidden for all those years. He wanted to ask her more, about how she had finally come to be discovered and ended up in that brothel where Captain Harkon had found her and taken her on as part of the crew.

He didn't think any worse of her for it. She had survived and he was glad she was here now speaking to him on the deck of the Bloody Galia .

"Oh salt gods, I didn't realize I'd talked your ear off for this long." Freddie chuckled looking out to the sun setting on the western surface of the sea. "I guess I'd better catch what rest I can before my next watch."

"I-I didn't mind." He grinned sheepishly at her. "It's a thrilling tale."

"I don't know that I've ever told anyone the whole of it."

Was he imagining that she might be enjoying his company so much that she didn't wish to retire to her cabin just yet? "I'm honored that you considered me worthy."

There were no romantic relationships allowed aboard the Bloody Galia . Every crew member knew that well enough. If that was even what the look in her eyes seemed to imply. Surely she wouldn't think of a lowly medic in that way anyhow.

Freddie laughed softly and pushed away from the rail where they had been standing. "I'll see you tomorrow, Jon." And then with steady footsteps across the lightly rolling deck, she made her way to the ladder and down to her cabin.