Sara, Simon and their Father, the Doctor Harwell sat around the supper table, each chewing their food in silence. Any time their father would broach a new subject with his children, they would affably answer the question, but just as quickly, they would turn off, choosing to continue staring at their plates, passively forgetting that he had not seen his son in four years.

"Perhaps we should find a subject the two of you would rather take part in?" Doctor Harwell said, swirling the water in his goblet. "Because as I am no great speaker, I do not like the sound of my own voice scratching for tidbits from you. Simon. Is there something amiss?"

"Nothing father. I just find myself ruminating on the sea."

"I fear all you great mariners are like that. I was sick the whole trip from our home in England, spent most of the time lurched overboard, made my time as temporary ship surgeon quite unordinary. But, you are quite different from me, lad, much more like my father the Admiral. I wish he were to have lived to see you here now. The stories he would tell. I am sure you have a few of your own. New ones that I did not glean from your letters?"

Simon carved into his potato with his fork and answered numbly. "I have a few. But, I do not wish to share them now, that is, when I speak of my experiences, father, I want them to be true."

"How do you mean?"

"Victory in battle and a medal to prove it." Simon looked deep into his father's hazel eyes. The older man was paunchy, but youthful, in spite of the gray in his whiskers. They were not alike, Doctor Harwell was more apt to read books about adventures than to seek them out. Transplanting his young family in the Caribbean was the riskiest venture he had ever undertaken and the result made him quite rich, though the reason for their departure was more for their mother, who had become sick in England. Taking her to the Americas was a way to make her better, hoping the tropical climate would cure her of her ails. For several years it seemed to work, she was better, but in the end, her illness overcame her and the children were left motherless.

That was when Simon was pressed into the service, much against his father's wishes. But, it was his choice, the grandson of a previous Admiral could take his pick in the fleet, and he chose a supply vessel, if only to spare his father from a further broken heart. He lost a wife already, he could not imagine losing his son at the same time. But eight years had passed since the day he first departed in Port Royal, and he was done easing his father's fears, there were dangers out there for the Royal Navy, and he would be damned if he was to spend his rise to Captain aboard a supply ship, toiling in safe waters. Simon had a plan, and he intended to be the youngest person in the history of the Navy to have charge of his own ship, his own crew, making his own destiny.

"Medals. Valor. My father spent his life searching for such glory. He drowned off the Ivory coast when his ship struck reef. All the medals he won did not save him from such a fate. Why not enjoy your life? Enjoy the graces you have been given? You seem intent on spoiling your youth." Doctor Harwell's voice had the tinge of the morose, the echoes of a widower.

"Not spoiling father. Finding the advantage in it. The only the good about being young is that everyone you meet underestimates you."

"You talk like him, too." Doctor Harwell stood and the children rose in respect. "Finish your supper. I have a bit of reading to do before I go to bed. I hope that tomorrow we can talk of more enlightened things."

As soon as he left the room, Sara spoke up. "You still plan on going back to Leon's shack?"

"Now more than ever. Father does not understand what drives me."

"Nor do I?"

"No. You are just like father. Scribbling away in the study when you should be seeking life outside these walls." Simon took a sip of his drink and brushed past her.

"I'm going to tell father what you are planning?"

"No, you won't sister." Simon bounced back.

"How do you know that?"

"Because you, more than anyone, know what sort of destiny I have. And you, more than anyone, know that I have to achieve it. And when I am dead, you will be the one to scribble my story."

Sara threw her arms up in disgust. "Fine. Go and die."

There would be a time that she would forgive him, that was the way with twins. They had always been more connected than anyone, knowing what the other feels without saying it, reading each others thoughts. Simon, had however been learning to deceive her, behaving brash when he should have been scared, confident when he was shaky, all so that she could perceive him a different way, and stop trying to get in his head. When night rolled in, Simon was sitting at his bay window, overlooking the crashing shore at their palatial home on the beach. Growing up in the Caribbean had its own wonders, its own pitfalls, but Gwendolyn Harwell managed to make the place a home before she died and her handiwork could be found everywhere, from the blankets she knitted to the patterns in the flowers planted in the gardens. All the help loved her as well, and all spoke well of her after her death, running the house exactly as she would have done it, respecting her wishes in every thing that they did.

More than anything, Simon wished his mother was with them now. Had she been, he may not have run off to the Navy at all, but instead stayed locked up with his father and become a doctor instead of a fool. A fool. Simon rolled the word around in his head, picturing the face of Leon, the man that told him what it was to be a lord of the Sea. Simon did not consider the old man a fool, a sad case perhaps, but no idiot. He had a reason for wanting him to take possession of the artifacts, and Simon would be pitifully sorry that he should take a commission, which kept him away four more years without getting what was coming to him. Remembering his lessons from long ago, Simon was always surprised at how much Leon knew, and not just about piloting a craft. Surely, he was better than any textbook on the strategies of gunnery crews and navigation. Through Leon, Simon became a fairly skilled marksman and fencer. He did not believe he had the skills to hold off an army of men with just a cutlass at his side, but he could hold his own against one fighter of similar aptitude.

All the lamplights on the plantation were doused and Simon tucked his knife into his belt, stealing out for his boat once more. He slipped easily into the sea, paddling for lack of wind, taking his time, keeping his body low against the hull. Drifting for a bit, he came upon the cove, making out the shack in the bright moonlight above him. Simon moved further up the coast, knowing as he did that the old man was watching that part of the beach from his cannonball confrontation that morning.

Simon moored the dinghy against rough spider grass on a rocky shore. He climbed the bluff that overlooked the cove, taking fists of grass with him as he ascended the slick mossy surface. With each near misstep on the climb, Simon slowed down, breathing, not becoming impatient before moving on to the next handhold or foothold until he found himself perched atop it. Laying flat on his belly, the boy opened his dented spyglass and looked down, using the illumination to make out the shack. There was light within, tiny flickering lamplight that glowed through Leon's foggy window. His long nine was resting against the open ship porthole, set and possibly armed for any barrage that could come.

Simon knew the old man well, he knew that the children of the island had something right. He did not have a cache of buried treasure on the island, but he did go somewhere at night. It was the only time he ever left his house. Waiting for half an hour or more, the time passing was nothing to the accomplished boy that had spent many months sitting in a high crows nest, focusing in the night for any shape, be it an island or a passing vessel. He trained his eyes to look through the dark for anything, and he trained his mind to suffer through tedium to do what must be done.

After several hours, passing as slowly as they could, there was movement in the shack. The door opened and Leon stepped out, dressed in a coat and hat, carrying a cane as he walked up the beach to a horse he had corralled in a pen. It took the old man more than a minute to calm the nag down, but he won the beast over and together they trotted out of sight, leaving the place completely defenseless.

Simon scaled the rocks and made his way to the cabin, coming around the bend where he had been fired upon once before, and stopped. Feeling something in his gut was wrong. The old man would not leave the place unattended, he would leave something in its stead. If he was so busy protecting the artifact, he would of course have some way to guard it when he was gone. A booby trap. It was a classic technique and something he had not forgotten to teach his favorite student about. In their afternoons together, all manner of strategies were conferred to him, including the delicate art of trapping.

Standing feet from the door, Simon considered what the old man had with him. His long nine was still at the porthole, his door closed tight. He took a few paces away, and looked into the foggy window. There were two windows in all, and one was foggy. The other was clean. One clean, one dirty. Leon had never been a man to keep a tidy home, so Simon knew well that the old man would not clean a window unless it was important to look out of. Being too far from the cannon to be useful in aiming, the only other reason would be for one to look inside. Or perhaps climb inside. He trapped the door, the only way in the house, but had to leave a route with which he could reenter.

Simon took a deep breath and plunged the tip of his knife into the window sill, prying it open. He lifted the glass just enough that he could fit, and cautiously entered the shack. As he had expected, their was a trap at the door, a nasty set of blades would have crashed down upon his head had he tried to enter. Perhaps it was not enough, because there was another trap, barrel of gunpowder ingeniously rigged to detonate if someone had perhaps survived the slicing to take a further step. Beyond the two avoidable traps, the place was clean of them. There were not very many places to hide an artifact, but Simon looked for the tale tell signs of treasure. A chest, if there was one. A hollow in the wood, tested by rapping upon the ground or the wall. When he had exhausted all possibilities, even rummaging through the old man's linens and feeling rotten about doing so, both for the invasion of privacy and the smell of sweat stained sheets, Simon sat on a chair and took a minute to think, clearing his mind as best he could.

He considered an artifact. What would it look like? What would it be? What did the Mariners use? Something a Mariner would use, an artifact of a Mariner. What could they be?

And Simon decided. He would take every small trinket in the place. Simon filled his pouch with all of Leon's small belongings. Emptied the shelves, the bags, of anything one would need on a sea voyage and just as he finished, the sun was coming up over the horizon. There was no time, no time at all to think, he squeezed through the window and ran the length of his shore, to his dinghy, pushing it out into the water with as much strength as he had left in him. Exhausted, Simon furled up his sail and caught the morning updraft, cutting around the cove, looking back to find the old man trotting back around the pass.

He wondered for a moment if Leon saw him.