The ship was definitely coming toward them, growing larger by the minute, and a volatile agitation settled over the crew as it did. It seemed like everyone had just decided that it was Blackbeard, even though the ship was still too far to be sure and hadn't raised a flag; when she asked the helmsman, he gave her a tight smile.
"Our colors're raised," he explained tensely. "Not many a ship's gonna make headway for the Jolly Roger."
"Except maybe the Revenge," she inferred, frowning. The helmsman laughed a bit, mirthlessly.
"No maybe," he grumbled. "Blackbeard sees us on the water, he'll come right at us, fast as he can. Y'might say there's a bit of bad blood 'twixt him an' the captain."
"Oh? But he's so nice and accommodating. I can't imagine anyone having a problem with him," she replied innocently, and he laughed outright, which made her feel a bit better, even if only for a moment.
"Cap and Teach have got in a more'n a few scrapes over the last few years, th' old scumbag's had his eye on the Roger for a bit. Can't never seem to really win, always ends up somethin' of a draw. 'cept last time they tangled, Teach made the mistake o' challenging Cap'n to a duel, figgered he could best 'im simple." The helmsman smiled at that, proud by proxy. "He was wrong," he said unnecessarily. "Easy mistake t' make, though," he added airily.
"You mean to tell me that he," she said incredulously, gesturing somewhere vaguely behind her to the rest of the ship, "is a better swordsman than Blackbeard? I'm sorry, nothing against Jones, but… doesn't Blackbeard have like forty years of pirating on him?"
The man smiled ambiguously. "Y'd be surprised, Lady Emma," he replied in a low voice. "Cap'n's a lot older'n he looks."
She hesitated, unsure if she wanted to know, something pricking at the back of her mind that she couldn't quite place, and finally decided not to ask any more questions. It wasn't like they were doing anything to ease the cold brick of dread that had settled in her stomach.
"Oh," she said lamely.
.
Sure enough, it was Blackbeard.
Jones caught her by the waist unceremoniously as she was climbing up onto the bow to see the Revenge out of morbid curiosity, an unwillingness to get in the way of the crew's mad preparations, and a lack of a better thing to do, all-but dragging her to the other side of the ship, scowling the whole way.
"Why isn't he attacking?" she asked, stumbling to keep up his pace and, when she'd had enough of tripping, digging her heels into the wood and grabbing the mast, forcing him to stop. "You said he'd lose if he boarded us but he has so many cannons, he can just blow us out of the water. Why isn't he?"
"Are you trying to get yourself killed?" he snapped, pulling at her arm in an effort to make her walk again. She stubbornly clung to the mast.
"I'll move when you stop dragging me," she hissed coldly, and something passed over his face, too quick to name. It worked; with a disgruntled sigh, he dropped her arm and motioned for her to lead the way, somehow making a hand gesture ooze with sarcasm. "Lemme guess," she went on, taking great care to walk in the way she was taught to, like royalty at high court, more a float than a walk. She had never been fond of the Queenly Glide, but it would piss him off, so she did it with relish. "It's a manly pride thing. He wants to beat you one-on-one."
"That, or he's spotted and recognized you standing at the bow like a bloody lamb to the slaughter," he growled, fist clenching as she took her sweet time crossing the ship. It wasn't like it was a huge distance; it was the lack of control he hated.
It was so small a victory that it couldn't even really be called one, but every time his hands twitched in frustration, she felt that much better about the situation.
He slammed the door behind him when he left her in the cabin, and all the satisfaction abruptly vanished as the reality fully sunk in.
With Jones, there was always this lurking but ultimately unformed threat: he was dangerous, sure, but she was valuable to him and so she was completely secure (at least, for the moment). With Blackbeard — feared, legendarily ruthless pirate captain — she had no such guarantee.
And Blackbeard — feared, legendarily ruthless pirate captain — was launching an attack on the ship.
It didn't matter if Jones could beat him in a duel, if he or one of his crewmen got to her first.
For just a moment, she gave into the crushing fear (she even, in slight hysteria, considered how to commit suicide rather than be captured by Blackbeard's men), and then rallied herself as the shouting outside the door grew louder and exploded into gunfire.
She began scanning the room for potential weapons.
It was just in case, as she had no intention of getting involved — Emma was a fighter, but Emma also wasn't stupid: with Blackbeard attacking the ship, it was in her best interest to be elsewhere, noble courage and pride be damned.
Of course, though, the one time in her life that she decided to do the sensible thing, pirates had to start breaking down the damn door anyway. She wondered if they were just trying to ransack the captain's room, or if maybe someone had seen her up on the bow after all.
She cast about in increasing desperation; she wasn't having much more luck in finding a weapon this time than she had the first, but now — clock ticking at a gallop — she was willing to take anything she could get.
Just as the door's frame began to splinter, her eyes lit on the chair — mahogany was a heavy, hard wood, and a pirate's skull would probably crack faster than it would. With a grunt, she hoisted it so the legs were sideways, aiming the flat edge of the seat at the weakest part of the door, and — as soon as it broke open — swung the chair with all her strength, nailing the intruder right across the abdomen and knocking him back with a strangled yell.
Better yet, his sword skittered across the deck away from him and she shot for it, slipping on the wood and tripping rather than actually running, so that when her fingers touched the hilt, she was flat on her stomach on the deck. She had managed to rise to her knees when she felt the sword at her back.
"Well, well, what do we 'ave here?" a gravelly voice said, slow and triumphant.
She glanced around the deck in the vague hope of catching Jones's eye, but she couldn't find him, and anyway, there was too much going on — shouting and people running and gunpowder smoke and other assorted noises — for him to be on the lookout for someone who was, supposedly, out of harm's way.
"What does it look like you have here?" she snapped, fear making her angry. "An octopus?" Before she could try and quip her way out of this one, the hand presumably attached to the voice grabbed her roughly by the shoulder and pulled her to her feet, turning her — sword never leaving her back — and marching her right back into the captain's quarters. She heard the remnants of the door shut behind him.
At least he wouldn't do anything too nasty with so little privacy.
Right?
"Now, pet, yer gonna s'plain to me why Cap'n Jones is keepin' a pretty li'l firecracker like you all locked up in his room, missin' out on all the fun," the man whispered, right up against her ear in a way that was almost thrilling.
"I think he just didn't want me to get in the way," she answered flippantly, hoping that he found it more believable than it sounded to her. "I'm a civilian, from Rustringen, I bought passage to Bergen."
"Really," he replied in a tone that said no, no he did not find it more believable than she did. "Hefty price y'must've paid."
"I've been saving for a while."
"And how did ye earn this money for passage, dearie?" he asked, hand sliding over her arm in a way that told her exactly how he thought she had, and she cursed internally.
"I'm a hatter," she replied, voice raising with each word, and suppressed a wince. "I make hats. Magic ones."
"Magic hats, eh?" the man repeated in mockery, and she just wanted to turn around and hit him, but that would end badly for her internal organs. "What kind o' magic hats?"
"Portals," she answered quickly, thinking of this hatter she'd heard of, some guy Regina and her mother had both known, with a hat that could let you travel to different realms. She banked on him not being so well-known abroad. "I make hats that can take you to another world."
"Do you, now?" he whispered slowly, intrigued, and she wondered if she had convinced him, and whether or not that was actually a good thing for her immediate future. "Magic hats that take ye to 'nother realm… I've 'eard of such things, I have."
"Have you?" she said, trying to fill the silence and stall for time — eventually, someone would notice the state of the door and come looking, right?
"Aye," he breathed, right up on her neck in a way that was no longer thrilling at all. "Now, I'm not sayin' I believe yer story, but I don't see no reason not to give ye a chance to prove yerself an honest woman. If y' lyin', well…" he paused, either for effect or to indulge his imagination, "I'm sure we can find another use for ye."
With that, he jerked her backwards, hand clamped over her mouth, and began to drag her back to the deck. Panic set in, and with it, previously unknown strength.
She balled her hand up into a fist and slammed it backward, aiming straight for his groin, and grinned when she struck true, drawing a high-pitched shriek from her (newest) would-be kidnapper. In the same motion, she snatched the sword from his suddenly-limp hand and hit him on the head with the hilt, knocking him out.
"I'll find another use for you," she muttered darkly, kicking him in the kidney for good measure.
Emma took a deep breath, weighing her options. The cabin wasn't safe anymore — in fact, it was probably more dangerous than the deck, because there was only one exit — which meant she had no choice: she was going to have to take her chances with the melee.
Well, she thought, she had wanted to test her training in the real world.
Creepy's sword wasn't a good fit for her hand at all — it was too big and heavy, a bit shoddy, and the balance was all wrong — at best, she could use it as a bludgeon. In a flash of brilliance, she checked the man over for any spare knives or guns he might have kept on him, and struck gold: a loaded flintlock pistol, two daggers, and a light hand-axe.
She picked up the sword and the axe, both of which were more or less useless to her, and heaved them over the side of the ship the moment she could skid haphazardly across the deck. The pistol would have to be used immediately, since she didn't have anywhere to store it.
It had one bullet. Best make it count.
The opportunity presented itself immediately, when she turned around to see a man with a black cloth tied around his upper arm — marked as one of Blackbeard's men — coming at her with a wide grin, sword raised. She let him get close up to her, almost within arm's reach, and fired right at his hand.
Unfortunately, it only grazed him, because flintlocks were about as accurate as a blind pigeon in a snowstorm.
Her aim with an empty flintlock, however, was much better, and she got him right between the eyes with the butt of the gun, dazing him and leaving him open to attack.
Emma moved without thinking — only use this in self-defense, she could hear her father saying — tossing one of the daggers from her left hand to her right and stabbing forward and up, aiming for the heart like she'd been taught to do.
It was a perfect blow, and the pirate went limp with a wet grunt, almost bringing her down with him as he fell.
She let out a surprised shout and stumbled, tripping awkwardly over the corpse and choking as she slipped on the blood and almost fell over. She put a foot on the man's chest and pulled the dagger out of him, blinking in shock at the hole it left behind.
…No one had told her how hard it was to get a knife out of someone's body. No one had told her how the eyes didn't always close when they died.
But she didn't get more than a second to stare in horror before a beast of a man with a hell of a beard materialized out of the smoke and the gray early-morning light, tapping his sword against his hand thoughtfully.
"Impressive," he said appreciatively, in an accent not far south of Jones's, "albeit with nary a shred o' grace."
"Thanks?" she replied, and was surprised at how hoarse her voice was. She pretended that her eyes were stinging from the gunpowder smoke.
"Not much of a warrior, are ye, lass?" he asked, without any question, walking around her, eyes raking her up and down like he was inspecting a horse he was considering buying. "Never been in a real-life battle before, I'd wager."
"What makes you say that?" she countered, trying to sound more confident than she felt. A horrible pit had opened up in her gut; this clearly wasn't a grunt she was talking to. This man walked — and talked — like Jones did, implicit authority and casual threat.
"There's panic in your eyes," he replied, tilting her chin up with his sword. "You're trained, and well enough," he added, glancing to the body at their feet, "more'n a mite deadly with those dirks you stole. But for all your learnin' you still don't know how to kill a man."
"Well, I think I've figured it out," she whispered, and the man smiled like a shark.
"Startin' to, p'raps," he said. "What's your name, m'dear?"
"Anamaria," she answered slowly, borrowing one of her maid's identities. The thought of home and safety rose up in the back of her head, unbidden, at the name, but she swallowed the memory hard. Sentimentality wouldn't do her any good here.
"Anamaria," the man repeated, rolling word over on his tongue, walking closer up to her and examining her face from a few different angles. "And what do you do for a livin', Miss Anamaria, to have such trainin'?"
"I'm a thief," she said, and congratulated herself internally: a thief would have good reason to be on a pirate ship, good reason to be an expert with a dagger, and good reason to not be a killer. An airtight alias, provided he didn't expect her to steal anything.
"In that dress?" he murmured, fingering the sleeve. Her stomach dropped further with the close proximity; there were braids all in his graying beard and he had scars on his face and silver teeth in his mouth and hard brown eyes and a high-quality vest over a black shirt, like he could've mentored Jones in how to dress for success. But, thankfully, with the fear came a fresh wave of anger, at herself and at the situation and at all the men around her (this one and Jones especially). She tilted her chin up and jerked away from his hand; he looked amused. "Hardly appropriate thievin' attire, that is."
"That depends on what you're trying to steal," she replied firmly, rallying herself and looking him straight in the eyes, daring him to make a move. What she'd do if he did, she had no idea, but she'd definitely do… something. Something brave and painful.
(Preferably for him.)
He grinned, showing more silver and gold, and took her by the arm in a vice grip, pulling her toward the ropes and gangplank, the ones that he and his crew had used to board the ship. Her throat went dry and she dug her heels in, but he pulled her harder than Jones had, less concerned with her comfort.
"I like the look o' you, Miss Anamaria," he said conspiratorially, and she couldn't shake the feeling that the man was mocking her, "and you should feel special: it's not many a woman Blackbeard respects."