"The repair crew tells me it will be another eight days before the sails are set in place," Judith said as the pair made their way sternward. "As soon as the Tribunal is fit to sail, we shall return to Blackrock for essential supplies, and then sail on to Zooport. We're at sea for at least another three weeks, it would seem."

Nick looked out to the Implacable, where the partly disassembled masts hung like caped colossuses, dark against the slowly setting sun. The late afternoon painted the sky with vivid gold and indigo hues, staining the scattered clouds with a palette that would make an artist swoon. Nick was unsurprised that the sailors were making use of every ration of daylight available, given the fervour to restore the ship that seemed to have possessed them. The hero's reception awaiting them at Zooport was certainly an enticement, too.

"This looks like challenging work," he observed, gesturing to the system in place to move the sails from one ship to the other. It consisted of a series of pulleys and heavy rope, running to the heights of the Tribunal's main sail, effectively turning it into an ad hoc crane. Additional anchors on the ship's opposite side counteracted the enormous weight being transferred between. "Is there any danger they'll slump over, and we spend the rest of time trying to fish them out of the ocean?"

"Absolutely," said Judith cheerfully, "given we are at one third strength, doing labour that would undo the confidence of a full repair crew with proper training. And yet, somehow..."

They paused and watched as MacHorn, still plastered with white dressings and missing an ear, took hold of a trailing rope. He caught their gaze for a moment, giving them a nod, and then he heaved on the line. The hanging mast shuddered, shifting by a clear foot.

"Somehow, things will turn out for the best?" Nick finished.

"We even have time to see to improving the ship's ornamentation," Judith said, "along with the necessary repairs to the gunwales and decking. Which, care of your genius plan, were all shot to destruction."

"There's no such thing as a delicate victory, Captain," Nick observed. "Not in my experience. And you gave the order to fire, in any case."

"I shall have to have Samuel change the lettering at the stern of the ship, as well," Judith continued, thumb to chin. "The Porcine national motto is hardly a suitable maxim to have on show."

"I suppose the Zoohaven Navy has something equally pompous you can settle for?"

"Trust; Integrity; Bravery."

"That's terrible," Nick chuckled. "It sounds like something mindless that the City Watch would chant. Saints, isn't there a scrap of artistic talent left in your bloody country? Hasn't anyone read Geoffrey Clawser?"

If Nick's barbs caused offense, Judith didn't let it show. Pausing at the base of the stairwell, she gave Nick a look of concern. "Are you fit to climb the stairs? Do you need assistance?"

Again, Judith cut through his joviality, and Nick's humour wrinkled into annoyance. "I'm just fine, thank you," he muttered.

Judith made her way up to the gun deck, continuing to talk of the repairs that needed seeing to. As he hobbled behind her, Nick found his eyes caught on the sway of her ears, bobbing slightly left and right. That newly-minted feeling raised its head again, and occasioned some alarm in him. After all, she was a rabbit. A rabbit, Saints sake! They weren't even close to the same species. They were natural enemies, besides. Not to mention he was a rough, unrefined bandit, and she an imperial captain; part of a society whose rules about who made suitable company for who were deeply entrenched, as unchanging as a sheer granite cliff. It was a patently absurd thought. Surely the product of a delusion. Surely the work of a damaged mind, which rest would put right.

And yet all his rationalization did nothing to dampen the urge he felt now to reach out and touch her, to put a hand on her shoulder, or to run one claw along the length of her ear. Nick had seen beauty before: in vixens; in she-wolves; even a lioness once, draped in gold and red satin, whom he had enticed to his bed with sweet whispers and promises that were instantly broken. Nick had spent nights with goddesses before, and they in no way drew any semblance to Judith, not in shape, nor size, nor melody of voice. So why was he now unable to take his eyes off the small, steel-grey bunny? Off her cottony tuft of a tail?

There was one thing he did know, though; this new and unnerving feeling seemed to have force. Have life. It was a fire in no peril of sputtering out. It was no passing fantasy.

And so, he resolved to build a dam inside himself, as solid and permanent a structure as ever was built, and he would keep this feeling safely contained behind its impenetrable walls, and never dare to lap at the rising waters that promised to be so cool and sweet. To do other would be reckless, irrational.

They reached the top of the stairs, and suddenly Nick realised Judith had asked him a question, and watched him expectantly for the answer.

"Sorry, Captain. My recovery has left me slightly hard of hearing," he lied, cleaning his ear with one extended claw.

"I said, you never really planned to desert mid-battle, did you?"

"Oh," Nick said, grinning. "Not especially. I was too worried about that ogre of a pig, Bronhelm, and who was going to save you from being flattened."

"How unpatronizing," Judith chided, her arms crossed. "If I remember correctly, it was I coming to your rescue first. Although, of course, thank you for that legendary final blow. The officers have been talking about that for days. Half the crew doesn't even believe it happened."

"Of course they don't," said Nick. "Foxes don't go to the aid of rabbits. It's unnatural, like a swift sloth. That said, if any loud-mouthed, aggrandizing cur ever deserved the shame of being undone by a pirate fox, it was Bronhelm."

"If you had been on equal terms, I've no doubt you could have beaten him at swordplay," said Judith earnestly. "He was near untouched, and you were on the brink of ruination. I've seen you fight before, Nick; you outclassed him. Your sword is like a piece of you."

Glad that his red fur hid the scarlet tinge to his ear, Nick replied, "Well, that is high praise coming from a swordmammal as accomplished as yourself. Your blade earned this victory as much as mine did..."

Judith's lip curled in a little smile, and she beckoned him to follow, while he cursed inwardly. Where had his silver tongue gotten to? Where was his acid wit? He was not the kind to pay compliments, and here he was, gushing like a young bachelorette to an eligible suitor. He followed, silently demanding that his old, sardonic self come out of hiding.

They made their way to the top of the Tribunal's quarter deck, where Hopps' navigation desk sat, having been amongst the first fixtures transferred across from the Implacable. The map they had studied over a week prior was still pinned to it.

"I may be the faster sword, Nick," Judith said, stopping by the edge of the map, "but your genius is what really secured victory that day. Without your scheme, we'd have surrendered our advantages completely."

"That is my purpose now, right?" Nick asked, resting against the map board. "Helping you think like a scoundrel would?"

"Yes," said Judith, "but you aren't just some tool. Not to me. You deserve better than that."

She pressed her paw to the map, drawing Nick's eye to the Ribbons, the clutch of thin, finger-bone islands amidst which the battle against Bronhelm had been fought, and to the lump of an island through which Nick had guided them. Across the latter, in as close a mimicry of the map maker's style as could be achieved, was a meandering line, indicating the passage that split the island in half. Over the top of it read the newly-inked words, Fox's Guile.

Nick stared at the change for a moment, and then looked up a Judith.

"I'll take the name to the Royal Archive of Cartography," she said, with a wry little smile, "to make sure it's made official."

"Is this my reward?" he asked. "For my indispensable wisdom? For coming to the rescue multiple times, and then almost getting killed?"

"Yes," replied Judith. "Also, the Zoohaven Navy lets you carry on under my command, and doesn't hang you by the neck."

Nick flashed a toothy grin, and looked back to his small piece of immortality. "Now the strategic significance of this ugly little island will be common knowledge. You won't be able to use it to gain the advantage a second time."

"Well, I was once told it is blind idiocy to pull the same trick twice. I can't recall by whom, but it has the air of good advice, doesn't it?"

Nick was about to feign hurt over the title referring to any old fox's guile, rather than his in particular, when Judith said, "Do you remember how we met, Nick?"

Nick glanced up at her. She was watching him attentively, as if trying to catch a glimpse of his mind at work. "How could I forget," Nick said. "I'd never wanted to kill anyone so completely before in all my life."

It had started when Judith, sailing a small sloop under the command of Commodore Adam Pepper, had been tasked with ridding the Alphesian Gulf of piracy. She had taken down many noteworthy buccaneers; Pierce Grew, Robert Whiteye, Walter 'Well-Scarred' Harris, Grey Thomas the Mad Rat. The Redcoat was the only noticeable omission from her list, and she was resolved to bring his infamy to a halt.

He had given her the slip many a time, and he had started to suspect her of senselessness, until she had caught him in a trap by pretending to be a damaged merchant vessel, and striking when he took the bait. Nick managed to flee, but not without taking on holes which, in turn, began taking on water.

Somehow luck deigned to deposit him on some uncharted coast, where the remains of his crew dispersed and scurried into the jungle. Nick did so too, and after several hours passed he pronounced his escape successful, and began to consider a suite of conniving options to get himself off the island and at the helm of another ship. Then he heard something scampering thought the undergrowth; saw a flash of steel, glimpses of grey fur and blue tunic, and he had set off running again, hoping desperately that this was all a nightmare, while ferns and vines whipped at his face to remind him it was no dream.

She finally cornered him at an ancient stone wall, the long-abandoned ruins of some primitive culture, and demanded he throw down his weapons and surrender, or submit to the sword's justice.

Nick had drawn his own blade and rushed her, murder in his eyes, planning to kill her quickly and disappear into the cover of the wilderness and the falling night. Nothing such occurred; she parried his every attack, wore him down to his last bead of stamina, and then punished his exhaustion with a brutal disarm that nearly broke his finger.

Then she had drawn her loaded pistol, levelled it calmly at him, and asked him one last time; would he come in irons, or would his life end here and now? It was more than a brigand could ask in the situation; a second chance, when he had already made his best attempt at slaying her.

He had turned her down. Demanded a quick kill. Poured scorn on her and her kind and all who sailed under the Zoohaven flag. Said some highly uncouth things about her mother. Spat at her. And then, when the fire of his anger had blown out, and all that was left were the cold, sad ashes of his fear, and he was standing, quiet and trembling, waiting for the end, Judith fired.

The ball brushed past him, missing his stomach by mere inches, punching a gaping hole in the waist of his coat.

Nick's life, it seemed, was not at an end; instead, a beginning.

"Then you sheathed your pistol," Nick said, "and threw a pair of shackles at my feet, and told me whether I live or die was not a decision to be made that day." He opened his longcoat, and popped his finger through his lucky hole, the one hole which, unlike the fresh ones rent by the clash aboard the Implacable, he had deliberately left unpatched. "I've been drowning in good luck ever since."

Judith smiled at that, but her tone was serious. "I kept you alive for a reason Nick. You're different; whether you like to hear it or not, you aren't the same as the pirates you call company. You're brave, you're valiant, you can show mercy, you can be kind. You're also the cleverest mammal I've ever met. It's a shame that, apparently, it also matters that you're a fox. You're here today because you're of use to me, and to the lords that wave the flag I sail under. But a part of me wants to carry you to the halls where those same lords sit, and demand an explanation for how they decide one mammal is fit, and the other isn't. They wouldn't be able to say, for there is no good answer."

Nick was quiet, watching her carefully, unsure of the point she wanted to make. The walls of the dam remained steadfast.

"I've chosen a hard life for myself, Nick," she continued, looking out to sea. "Do you know why?"

Nick shook his head. He honestly couldn't guess.

"My family were farmers. Are farmers. So were my neighbours, and my friends, and near as I can tell every rabbit I ever met. For some reason, it's taken as an absolute that rabbits do not belong in positions of power. So, I decided to change that, and I encountered every kind of hindrance imaginable. In finding help to move to Zooport. In finding accommodations when I arrived. In securing a scholarship to the Zooport University. Getting the only family I had there, an uncle who worked as a minor bureaucrat, to vouch for me, and somehow persuading the administration that that, and my own talents, were enough. Doing it a second time to enter the Naval Academy. It was all to prove to myself, to my family, to anyone who cared to listen, that rabbits are worth a damn. I'm not finished yet; even now, my success feels meagre, and mostly down to luck, or the arbitrary choices of others I'll never even meet."

"What does this have to do with me?" Nick asked.

"We're the same mammal, you and I," Judith replied, turning to face him. "On different paths, maybe, with different goals. But we are the same. I've dragged myself on my belly to reach where I am, and it still isn't far enough. I need someone to push me that little bit further, Nick. That someone is you; and when you do push me forward, I'll be holding onto you tightly. We'll go together. Because when I do make it, when I reach the summit, and can finally change Zoohaven for the better, I want you standing right by my side. The first rabbit Admiral, taking her seat at the Convention, is going to have the first fox lord to do the same by her side. If you want no part in that, then tell me now, and you can return to being my counsel, and nothing more."

Nick couldn't take his eyes off her. They were stuck fast, unblinking. He wanted to tell her she was delusional and, in any case, should be ashamed for assuming to know so much about his wishes.

He couldn't; she spoke with such unwavering optimism, such unchallengeable want. The picture she painted filled him up with the purest joy he had ever dreamed of. Madness or otherwise, it was what he wanted. And she was determined that he was the necessary piece to seeing that vision fulfilled.

"You think too much of me, Hopps," he said. "I'm just a pirate. A thug. You're kidding yourself to imagine you'll ever stand in the halls of power, and that a fox will be welcome along with you. That just isn't how the world works."

"You can take me there, Nick," she said. Her small paw slid across the map and found his, her gentle fingers resting on his own. "I need everyone; Felix, this crew, whoever else I can convince to stand in my corner. But I need a guardian and adviser most of all. I need you."

The dam he had erected cracked. Burst. The water closed over him, and he drowned. He looked down at those small grey digits, resting on his own red fur, and then back at her daring violet eyes.

"Alright, then. We'll go together."

Imagine, for a moment, a different world; a world where the mind is a glass window, and thoughts could be caught and read as easily as the pages of a book. Imagine the differences in such a world.

In such a world, at this very moment, both the rabbit and the fox would have peered into each other, and seen that really, at their very cores, what they wanted most was each other. Not power, or money, or glory, or the means to fashion a better world, but just the freedom to wrap their arms around one another for comfort, and in time to say, "I love you," and all the other truths that might follow.

There is no such world. The thoughts and desires of others are a murk that can't be pierced. The freedom for innocent love to blossom is burned and crushed by the trials of reality.

In this world, Judith suddenly blinked, and sheepishly took her paw away from Nick's, because even if she kept him as her bodyguard and confident, she could never have him as her lover. Not with the world as it was, with the way jaded eyes fell, condescending and suspicions, on their species respectively. She was too scared.

And Nick felt no sting at her withdrawal, because he did not believe that anyone could look upon a fox without at least a glimmer distrust at best, and outright loathing at worst. Even Judith, he swore, for all her high praise, couldn't want him for more than his experience and skill. Why would she? He was just a red fox, a little too old and too scarred, who needed to be chained before he could be trusted. He was not an object of desire. She might see him as a confidant and protector, but she'd never see him in the way that, it was beginning to dawn on him, he wanted more than wine or wealth or his next breath.

So, the two drew apart. They were still smiling, still touched by the length each was willing to go for the other's dream, but also swallowing a bitter sorrow. A sorrow which sailed with them all the way back to Zooport.