Chapter 4

Cookson struggled against Nigels the Navigator. "The captain lives!" the one-eyed mutineer shouted as he ran past them.

The navigator dropped his noose, and dropped to his knees as Killian approached. "Captain!"

"Am I still?" asked Killian

"I am so sorry—It was First Mate Flint—he told us—to kill you! I stayed behind because I couldn't do it—"

"Don't believe him!" Cookson wheezed. "It's because I stopped them and he said he'd handle me!"

Killian rolled his eyes and told the navigator, "Stand on your feet if you can't stand on principle."

"Aye, Captain—" Nigels began, and Killian drew his sword and gutted him before he'd finished speaking.

He said, "I can't have a navigator who loses his way so easily." The body fell to the ground. "All right, there? Cookson?"

The cook sputtered, shocked, looked from the shyly smiling maiden to the unruffled captain and said, "That—Captain, that was a line I thought…" He trailed off.

"I'd never cross, yes," Killian finished as he walked on past him. "I'm drawing some new ones. It's been a bad day."

The deck was drenched in torrential rain, each droplet of which glowed with the same blue light as the maiden's magic ring. In this light, Killian could see that the three gunners were tied to the mast, and the quartermaster's body lay splayed on deck, as the first mate and boatswain wrestled one another behind the helm.

"Now that's just confusing," Killian remarked. The maiden released his arm as the cloud of blue magic enveloped her. "Are you confused, Jukes?"

"N-No, Captain!" said Jukes. "Five men fell dead at one stroke. You're my Captain, right enough! Two against two is a fair fight, or I don't know what is!"

Killian scoffed at Jukes and nudged the quartermaster's body with his boot. Quartermaster Teyente groaned and raised himself to his knees. Killian helped him up the rest of the way.

"After what just happened below deck," Killian announced, "I was expecting an ambush, not a battle. I knew Cookson was exaggerating!"

Blackbeard had heard him, and called from over the poop. "You're alive! It can't be!"

"Free the gunners, and secure the safety lines," Killian ordered Teyente.

"And the girl?" Teyente asked, looking askance at her as she levitated.

Killian looked up at her and shrugged. "She can handle herself."

Flint called down from helm, "Witchcraft! You've doomed us all, Jones!"

Killian ascended the stairs, saying, "I'll take that as a compliment, and strive to be worthy of it. Really, Flint, if you want to be captain of anything again, you should duel for it—not send impressionable young boys to stab slumbering targets to complacency."

"You don't deserve a duel," Blackbeard said.

"Ah, but I insist upon it—" With that and a smirk, Killian drew his sword.

It should be written that he did away with Flint as easily as he had done away with the mutineers below deck. Flint, alas, was an old sea dog with phenomenally good balance and a knack for fighting dirty. He'd distract Killian with the clashing of their steel swords, and then land a kick to the knee or a headbutt. Had Teyente not ascended the stairs opposite and engaged Blackbeard in a fistfight (his sword had been stolen by Nigels the Navigator,) then Killian might have met his end.

As it was, the young Captain Jones merely found himself momentarily outmatched. A wave broke against the deck, making Killian lose his footing. He fell against the helm, twisting his elbow. His sword clattered out of his hand.

"Done playing pirate yet?" Flint demanded, looming over Killian, and he drew his sword back and answered himself, "I'd say you are…"

But something was looming over Flint, and Killian stared at it until Flint grew concerned, and turned, and stared at it.

It was the figure of a woman, her hair made of lightning bolts, her eyes like two full moons, her body of clouds and ocean water ending in black waves like octopus tentacles. She towered over the boat to the height of a mountain, and seemed just as ancient.

The storm calmed.

The crone spoke, in a voice that bypassed their ears and galvanized their minds. "Who dared to profane the sacredness of My priestess?" The figure's gaze bore down on Flint and Blackbeard. "I know your minds. I see your hearts…" She moved onto Killian, Teyente, Jukes, and all three gunners. "You shall all feel the wrath of the goddess."

The maiden, floating somewhere above the midmast, objected to this.

The crone pondered Killian. "He's no different. But if you request, my foolish child, then he will be under my protection as I lay waste to every other mortal on this ship..."

"No." Killian winced as he pulled himself to his feet. "With all due respect, Milady, I'm no supporter of divine wrath. All that magic doesn't strike me as fair."

"Fair?" The blue haze around the crone turned dusken orange with her fury. "How many more of My chosen people must suffer injustice without retribution?"

"Gods only know," Killian said, "But I won't hide under Your protection, or hers—" he gestured to the maiden "—while you do what you will to my men. As you say, I'm no different. Only I am." He glanced at Flint. "I'm their Captain. Their failures are mine."

"Would you bear the curse of the sea crone?"

"If that's justice done…" Killian said, "Aye, that I would."

Eight tentacle-tips crept on deck, black as tar, and they surrounded him—poised to strike. The gunners, freed by Jukes, took their stances against the threatening shapes.

"Aren't you afraid?"

"Never," answered Killian. The tentacles converged, blotting out his vision.

And then he was afraid. He felt a heavy hand over his nose and mouth as the Maimie Mannering burned all around, and the thought, "This one doesn't want to kill me…no…but I'm a priestess…" The thought came with a peculiar sort of heartbreak, more like snuffing out a flame.

He choked in a cloud of some pink dust—He was on land, but not landsick. A glimpse of Nigels' face, then a spinning room. Suddenly, he was afraid of poppyseed dust—Suddenly, he had always been afraid of poppyseed dust.

He heard Teyente and Murphy singing a shanty together, drunkenly, and realized that the sinister edge he had heard to his crew's laughter that morning had always been there, to some passers-by. A part of Killian that was still himself said that he couldn't very well forbid merrymaking, but he understood this merely as a bothersome whitecap over a much deeper sea...

He was in a castle. There was a key in his hand, and the key was bleeding. It had been a desperate move, to break that rule, and all it had earned was access to a room full of bones and gristle. This was where it would all end, and how—slaughtered, and butchered. He turned, as many victims had, towards the door, and their final thoughts echoed in his mind—

But I wanted to be an adventurer…It's too soon, to never be…but there's no escape…

…Who will remember my old mother in the winter? I'm all she has left, I trusted my husband to help her, oh, but I hope he forgets if this is what he does…

"In the name of Ruel Ghorm, have mercy! I loved you, I carry our child!"

The boatswain was unmoved. In the vision, he did have a beard. He grinned like a blade, and the blade in his hand glinted like a smile.

Despair, fear, and pain swelled like the crest of a wave. The combined intensity of the visions—which were not only visual, but visceral—seemed to rip the world into sea foam.

Killian might have managed to shout a fraction of an "ow".