Prompt: Letters of marque. Originally posted 25/1/08.
She had thought that she knew where death lay. In swift pistols; in long straight swords, balanced to a hair's breadth; in hot explosions; in the timbers of a dying ship as she was smashed to pieces about one; few knew better than Elizabeth how surely one's life or death could be determined by these. Among all the weapons she had wielded and faced, however, she had never counted a piece of parchment. Yet here it was, a few words written in ink upon paper, promising life just as the warrants had held death. The might of the pen, indeed.