Chapter Text
Art by the inimitable Jules/stealyourblorbos (on tumblr @stealyourblorbos and on twitter @stealurblorbos)
chapter one: the raid
It starts, like most fucking things, with no warning.
Israel knots his trouser laces with shaking fingers. He leans one hip against the Captain’s desk, unsteady; Captain Thomas lounges back in the bunk, placket undone and a smirk on his face.
“I’ve instructed Hughes to grant you a bonus on your monthly pay,” the Captain yawns, leaning back into a pile of fine, soft pillows. “Nothing too obscene, of course. Merely a mark of gratitude for your service.”
Israel chokes down a spike of thick fury. “Fine,” he says, jaw tight.
He wants to push, to lash out, to tear a strip into the posh fuckhead, but there’s no point — what the hell would it accomplish, besides getting him in even deeper shit than usual?
“Come, now,” the Captain tuts. “Is that your way of showing gratitude?”
Israel tucks his laces away and tugs at his shirt to make the shoulders lie flat. “Thank you, sir,” he forces out —
A colossal crash rips through the air.
The deck tilts wildly. Israel grabs at the edge of the desk, clinging hard, scrabbling for purchase. From somewhere below comes shouting and the sharp screech of a watchman’s whistle.
Another horrible crunch, loud as thunder. The ship rolls.
“Oh God,” the Captain howls, scrambling out of his berth, half-tangled in cotton sheets. “Stockard, get out of here — to your station!”
“Aye, sir,” Israel shouts. Heart pounding, hands half-numb in terror, he staggers to the door; someone outside shrieks, high and horrible.
He runs out into chaos.
The mainmast is shattered. Its jagged remains jut like knives into the morning fog. Thick spikes of wood have torn the nearby sails to rags. A tangled web of snapped and snarled rigging sags under the weight of splintered lumber.
Below, on the deck — bodies. Three, at least, all crushed beneath the weight of the mast, speared by debris, legs and arms akimbo.
Israel stumbles. He knows them. Of course he does, he knows everyone on this godforsaken boat, and that leg — that’s Tomson, the gunner, and he’d recognise Walker’s awful tattoos anywhere —
Men pour up out of the lower decks, all shouting, and the fucking bosun is nowhere to be seen, so Israel hollers “Get to your fucking stations!” because no one else is fucking going to.
Near the prow, Fletcher, last of the men on watch, bays like a mad dog, half-drowned out by the clamour of the crew. “To arms,” he howls. “God save us! To arms!”
Off the starboard bow, the fog parts, and a sleek, smooth ship slips into view, easy as a panther before a fat, helpless sheep. Atop the mainmast flies a strange, horrible flag — two daggers stacked above a grinning skull, laid a field of mourning-black.
Sound falls away. Only the pounding of Israel’s heart and the creak of the rail under his white-knuckled grip remain.
Pirates.
It’s barely a battle, in the end. Their slow, bumbling fluyt, no matter how fine or expensive her hull, is no match for the strange brigantine. Every cannon volley shreds sail, crunches lumber, and cores through flesh. By the time the pirates draw up alongside, the deck is a nightmare of slick blood and seawater.
They’re boarded swiftly and easily.
Israel fights. Of course he does. He has no gun at hand, nor sword, but he yanks a knife from the grip of a dying man (Collins, who taught him to curse in Yiddish and now lays twitching, tangled in his own guts — Christ above, Israel doesn’t want to die on this fucking ship). A pirate grabs him by the arm, and Israel spins, stabbing hard at the meat of the man’s shoulder; the blade sinks home, scraping across bone, and the cutthroat howls, hand spasming open. Israel wrenches away, yanking the knife with him. He half-trips on the extended leg of, fuck, one of the cabin boys — Armstrong, barely sixteen. Something wet and greyish leaks from his caved-in skull. Israel barely holds down a violent surge of nausea, staggering back to the stairs by the cabin.
He lurches into the Captain’s quarters, slamming the door behind him. Hands slick with red, Israel fumbles with the latch, heart pounding. “Captain,” he croaks.
The bed is empty. No one under the desk, either. Outside, someone’s scream chokes off into silence.
Israel leans against the door, panting. He somehow managed to roll his ankle in the skirmish, slipping on something he doesn’t want to think about, and it throbs with his heartbeat; his pulse pounds, heart slamming at the cage of his ribs like it’s trying to rip its way out.
What the fuck is he going to do?
A tiny creak.
Israel whips around.
A hidden closet by the cot swings open. The Captain stands, bone-white and trembling, his new-bought shaving razor in hand.
“Stockard,” the Captain whispers, “Christ, I thought you were — no matter, you can come with us, Barker will be lowering the lifeboat by now, and Hughes, it’ll only take another few minutes at most —”
Something heavy pounds against the door.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Israel hisses. “Your men are dying out there, they need you! Where is your sword? Get out there and fucking surrender!”
Bug-eyed, the Captain bares his teeth. “Don’t be a bloody fool! I am not a simple seaman, to surrender to pirates! I have a, a business to tend to, a wife and children to care for!”
Israel’s gut goes cold.
Another bang, this time with the crunch of splinters. The latch won’t last.
Hands outstretched, the Captain looks to him. “Don’t tell them I’m here – I’ll take you with me, pay you whatever you wish – gold, silver, land, my daughter’s hand in fucking marriage – just – don’t!”
The door slams open, and Israel flinches, spinning to face it.
A pale man the size of a barge lumbers inside, his face a wreck of scarring and his hand wrapped easily about the handle of a well-used boarding axe; he surveys the cabin, barely interested in Israel or his pitifully small knife. “You gonna come easy or difficult,” he says.
Israel, of course, picks fucking difficult.
He’s dragged out of the cabin a minute later, head spinning, nose bleeding freely down his front and stumbling against the big man’s pull on his collar. He can’t fucking see through sticky blood dripping from a cut on his brow. The screaming has stopped, at least; a few people are weeping, and he can barely make out the soft sound of someone praying. He trips on the fucking stairs, cursing a blue streak under his breath, but the pirate doesn’t give a shit, lumbering sedately past the fog and noise as cool morning turns mist to a soft, cold drizzle.
“’Zat him?” says a young, smooth voice.
“Nah,” says the pirate, “just a coward hidin’ away in his rooms,” and he shakes Israel by the neck.
“Get your fucking hands off me,” Israel snarls, kicking out, hitting nothing. “I’ll show you a fucking coward!”
He’s dropped like a bag of stones.
Pain spikes up through his hips and between his legs. His teeth knock together, shooting agony through the bridge of his nose. He tries to stand, but slips sideways, crashing to the deck —
Someone grabs him by the hair and yanks.
“Christ fuck,” he yelps, jerked up onto his knees. The grip is strong and sure, tight as a vise, and he’s being scruffed like a fucking animal.
“Come on, then,” says the young man’s voice. “Where’s your Captain, coward?”
“Go fuck yourself,” Israel hisses, too fucking furious to think. The hand shakes him like a naughty dog, sending his senses reeling.
“Where,” the man repeats.
Israel spits a gob of blood at the sound.
A laugh, sharp and mean. “That how this is gonna go, then? I can work with that.”
His hand cracks across Israel’s face.
Christ. It stings like a son of a bitch.
Israel breathes through it, jaw clenched. He focuses on the shock. The ringing in his ear. He’s had worse. He’s done worse. He’s survived. He can survive this, too.
A rough touch – there’s a hand on his face, wiping along the fiery wound over his brow, then scrubbing at the wet, bloody crust around his eyes. He tries to flinch away, but the hand in his hair holds fast.
A young man crouches before him. Lanky limbs. Wide, dark eyes. Thick black curls pulled into a queue. Soft tan skin and sharp cheekbones, like an Islander. The diffuse light of early morning clings to his lashes and the crests of his cheeks. His head tilts in curiosity. “You don’t look like an idiot, mate,” he says. “My Captain has something to say to your Captain. Where the fuck is he?”
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
He’s lying. Got to be. There’s no fucking way. Captain Thomas is a failure, a heavy-drinking idiot of a merchant — what in the hell would anyone want with him? Not unless he’s done something really fucking stupid.
Like fall in with fucking pirates.
Israel meets the young man’s dark eyes, willing away the icy terror fermenting in his gut. “You don’t need Captain Thomas to get the cargo. It’s already yours.”
“Yeah, the cargo,” the man says, cool and easy. “Real nice stuff down there. Linen, sugar. A few bales of nice, expensive silk.” He puts on a charming, roguish grin. “Enough smuggled rum to drown a city.”
“We’re not carrying rum.”
“Oh, mate. You sure about that?”
“Yes,” Israel snarls.
The grin fades, leaving a sharp, intelligent gaze. He stares carefully at Israel for a moment. “Huh.”
The hand in Israel’s hair twists and pulls up, and Israel yelps, stumbling to his feet. He’s dragged backwards past the pulverised mainmast, tripping over splintered wood. Body after body — they’re moving too fast for him to tell stranger from crewmate, but there are too many, too fucking many for a simple robbery —
“I know his type. Won’t say shit unless we spend an hour beating it out of him,” says the young man, and tosses Israel down.
He lands unceremoniously in a kneeling huddle of his fellow crewmen, weight falling hard on one knee, jarring the absolute shit out of his hips and the stabbing ache between them.
“Hands behind your head,” someone shouts.
Israel drags his arms up. Laces his fingers together just behind his nape.
Then, a whisper: “Oh, thank Christ, Stockard.”
It’s Hughes, curled up beside him. Even bone-white with terror, with one eye blacked and slowly swelling shut, the man looks every inch a purser-cum-surgeon, his hair neatly pulled back and his collar buttoned. Must’ve already been dressed at dawn, the posh twat.
God, Israel’s glad he’s alive.
“Stockard — you have to know, where in Hell is Captain Thomas?” Hughes whispers. “They’re at all of us to give him up — I thought you were, well…”
The cowardly, murderous son of a bitch is hidden in a cupboard in his fucking cabin, Israel wants to spit, jaw clenched. But he can’t. Not yet. Not until he can think of something — of some fucking way to survive this, to get the crew out. Every moment the pirates waste looking for Captain Thomas is another breath of air in all their lungs.
And, God, Israel is terrified, so fucking scared he can barely breathe — but under that, fury burns like lye in his blood; a familiar rolling, boiling, scorching rage, threatening to take him over, steal his reason, leave him a violent, spitting beast.
He pushes it down, down, down. If he loses his head, he’s done for.
“Cap’n fucked off,” Israel grits out. “Who’s lost?”
Hughes eyes him, then relents. “Collins, Tomson, Walker. I saw Fletcher go overboard. Armstrong” — Hughes shudders — “and Wright, God rest their souls. Martin and Hunt won’t make the trip to land. Took a few of them with us, if that makes a difference.”
Of a bare twenty-two men, eight dead and dying. Christ almighty. It’s not even been twenty minutes since the alarm, and so many are dead —
Lightheaded, Israel sways.
Hughes stiffens. “Are you hurt?”
“Fuck off. Had worse.”
“You fuck off. Let me look at your head.”
Israel does, shifting enough to let Hughes obliquely examine the nasty lump swelling on his brow. It’s pretty bad, by Hughes’ pained hiss.
“Not bleeding too much, at least,” Hughes murmurs. “If we get out of this, we can patch you up. No poppy needed.”
Israel swallows down a lurch of nausea at the thought. He fucking hates poppy.
“Oi! I said don’t fuckin’ move,” snarls a pale pirate bearing a wicked-looking scar across his throat. He swings his arm up, aiming a gleaming flintlock at — God, at Adrian Lang.
The boy’s barely fifteen; he signed on to send the advance to his ailing mother, and Israel remembers his first day on board as the poor boy adjusted to the sway of a proper ship rather than his dead pa’s tiny fishing boat. He’s hunched between Singh and Wilson, weeping.
Singh ducks his head and murmurs, “Stayin’ right here, sir.”
The pirate slowly drops his arm, though his finger hovers over the trigger.
What the fuck was Israel thinking letting Lang on board when he knew Captain Thomas wouldn’t bother to pay for more than four fucking guns, let alone an escort ship?
“Hughes,” he murmurs, as urgent as he dares, “I need you to tell me the fucking truth. Are we smuggling rum?”
Hughes looks at him blankly – but there, at the corner of his eye, there’s a small twitch.
No matter how many bluffing games they played, the man never fixed that fucking tell.
Fuck.
Fuck.
“You knew,” Israel says, gut leaden. Rage bubbles up in his throat, hot as acid, sick as bile. “You knew this was a fucking danger and you never said a word?”
“Would you quiet down? They’re going to hear —”
All at once, the dam breaks.
“Armstrong’s head is fucking caved in, you shitpile!” Israel shouts. “One fucking word and I wouldn’t have let him or Lang on this fucking boat!”
“The fuck’s going on over there?” says the pirate with the pistol.
From his place at Lang’s side, Singh shushes, panicked. One of the pirates – a dark-skinned man, Indian or maybe African, with his head shaved bald – looks over at the commotion, hand on the hilt of his sword.
Israel hauls himself upright, swaying. His hands tremble with terror, consumed with utter, blind fury. “Were you in on this from the beginning?” He grabs Hughes' collar in his fist, jerks him to his feet until they’re eye to terrified eye. “What else did you know about, you pathetic, flea-ridden bilge rat?”
“Oy, get off him and sit down,” snaps the Indian pirate.
Hughes doesn’t struggle in Israel’s grip, only grabs at his wrists, teeth bared. “Look, I – Christ, Stockard, I didn’t know about Christopher, I swear! I didn’t even know he was dead until the next morning!”
Rage rises white-hot in Israel’s throat. Mindless, thoughtless, he lunges.
A crack of pistol fire —
A bright line of flame etches itself across Israel’s thigh, just above his knee.
It doesn’t stop him throwing a wild, vicious punch. Hughes drops like a stone.
Someone wrestles Israel off of him. A few people shout.
Israel no longer cares.
“Cowardly, putrescent piece of garbage!” he roars, struggling against whoever’s got him. “You and Thomas both! Clinking your fucking glasses while boys suffer and die —”
Someone boxes his ear, hard. He staggers, reeling; the blow echoes in his nose and rings through his bruised skull. He snarls. Spins.
The Indian pirate is ready, knocking Israel’s fist out of the way only to grab his wrist and twist his arm up behind his back. Someone else — the pale one with the pistol — punches him hard in the stomach, hard enough he buckles over, gagging, held up only by the wrenching of his shoulder.
“Oi, Bendick!” someone shouts. “A hand?”
He’s dragged away from the others, staggering, mind a mess of broken glass, all sharp terror, bright grief, and cutting fury. He roars, wrenching hard at the pirate’s grip —
A boot strikes the back of Israel’s knee, sending him crumpling to the deck. The sudden pull wrenches Israel’s shoulder. His thigh shrieks, his knees throb in time with his nose, and his head fucking aches.
The cold steel blade of a sword presses against his throat.
At his side stands the monstrous man from the Captain’s quarters. His hair, cropped workman-short, is white-blond; as he frowns, the mass of scars rippling over his brow, cheek, and chin twists his lips out of shape, streaking through his short beard. Israel hadn’t noticed the beard in the scuffle, with how pale the thing is. “The fuck is this, then,” he growls.
Someone kicks at Israel’s leg. “Causing trouble. Knocked the fancy one down flat, said summat about Thomas.”
The blade bites into Israel’s throat. It’s just dull enough to feel as it starts to press the thin skin apart; a drop of hot blood rolls down Israel’s neck.
Bendick tilts his head, eyeing Israel carefully.
Israel pants, ribs heaving, desperately trying to keep still through the fire pounding in his blood. He never liked being on his knees.
“Ah, Bendick,” says a deep, melodic voice from behind them, heavy and honeyed, with a thick Bristol accent. “Give me some good news.”
“Nothin’ yet, Cap’n,” says Bendick, turning. “Moreno broke up a fight.”
“Mm. Pity.”
A pair of fine black boots clip across the timber.
The man before Israel is perhaps the tallest he’s ever seen, whip-thin and wiry, wrapped in a fine grey coat tied at the waist by a thick leather sword belt. At his hip gleams a fine cutlass, hung next to a well-used blunderbuss, and perched on his head is the tobacco-brown cocked hat of a Navy Captain, complete with silken cockade. He leans forward, pale, wind-burnt face framed by wisp-fine red hair and a neat, dark beard, grin too thin and vicious to be handsome despite the easy line of his jaw and the piercing intensity of his stare.
The Captain. The one who wants to speak to Captain Thomas, and who has slaughtered half Israel’s crew to do so.
Israel knows, suddenly, to his bones, that the soul of every man aboard rests in those long, spidery hands.
“I had hoped for an easy go, after that last ship,” the man says with a cold, cruel sigh. Thin lips split into a shark’s grin, and he turns to the ragged remains of Israel’s crew, pulling out his blunderbuss and a powder pouch.
“Good morning, lads,” he drawls, packing the gun deftly. “Listen close, now, for I won’t be repeating myself. Your Captain Thomas is an… old friend of mine. He owes me rather a debt, and I intend to collect. We might spend another hour combing over the ship plank by plank ‘til the diseased little prick turns up, but that sounds like a waste of my time; let’s go one by one.”
“Wait,” says Israel, and the man holding him cuffs the back of his head, hard, sending him reeling.
The Captain looks to Wilson. “You.”
Wilson pales.
The gun comes up, shining and beautiful and brutal, straight at Wilson’s head.
“Where’s Thomas?” the Captain says.
With a terrified sort of groan, Wilson sinks down into himself. “I — I don’t know, sir, haven’t seen him since last night —”
Bang.
The body collapses.
Half of Wilson’s skull is fucking gone. His face — there’s barely anything, just a hanging jaw and a mess of red. Lang, his thin arms shaking, sits frozen in place; his shirt is a mess, coated in foul pulp. At his side, Singh’s eyes are shut tight.
Terror floods through Israel’s guts, cold as seawater. He gags, stomach twisting.
The Captain carefully reloads. A pinch of powder for the pan. Cartridge, shot, paper. Ramrod. “Who’s next?” he says, eyeing the remaining sailors. His gaze falls on Lang. “How about you, then, lad?”
The gun rises. Aims carefully at the centre of Lang’s forehead. The boy whines helplessly, pure animal fear —
“No.”
The Captain, slow and easy, turns to Israel.
“No,” Israel repeats, voice hoarse, because he said it, he interrupted this murderer, he must have — must still be talking, can feel his mouth moving as if it belongs to someone else. Sick, twisting, helpless fury rises in the back of his throat like bile. “You want Thomas, I’ll give you Thomas.”
The Captain lowers his weapon. “There. Was that so hard?”
Lang sobs, once, a loud, gulping sound, and crumples into Singh’s side. Singh catches him, gaze on the pirates; his lips move slightly. Still praying.
The Captain’s attention presses down on Israel’s shoulders, a physical weight. He grins. “Spit it out, then.”
“He’s in — in his cabin. Hidden.”
The Captain cocks his head, face gone ice-cold. “Hidden,” he says, staring into Israel’s eyes like Israel is the key to some unsolvable puzzle. “Bendick, tell me you checked his fucking cabin.”
“Course we checked the bloody cabin,” Bendick scoffs. “That one was the only man in there.”
“There’s a cupboard,” Israel says. “Beside the bed.” He doesn’t blink, doesn’t quail from the pirate Captain’s ice-cool gaze.
The man grins, all teeth. He’s missing one of his canines; the other is very, very sharp. “You heard the lad. Check it again. Look for cupboards.”
Out of Israel’s view — grumbling, footsteps.
The Captain crouches, bringing himself level with Israel. The leather of his boots creaks; he’s not been caring for them as he should, Israel thinks, pulse hammering in his skull, breaths coming quick. “You got some balls on you,” the man marvels. His cheeks are deeply lined, and crease up around his mouth as he grins. “Your name, lad.”
“Stockard,” Israel bites out.
“Stockard. Well, Stockard,” the Captain says, “if what you say is true, you’ve done me a right service. And if not, well. We’ll just have to try again with the next brave sailor.” He reaches out and pats Israel companionably on the shoulder.
Israel doesn’t flinch, though the man’s grip is chill and pale as death.
“This boy,” the Captain says, standing, turning to Israel’s crew and to the pirates, “has more mettle than half of you combined. Stand him up, Moreno, come on.”
There’s a huff, and a harsh yank, and Israel’s half-lifted back onto his feet, head spinning. Upright, the Captain has more than a head on him; in order to meet his eyes, Israel has to tip his chin up far enough he feels dizzy.
“Stockard,” the Captain muses. He looks Israel up and down. “Your position?”
Israel swallows, mouth dry. “Bosun’s mate. Sir.”
“You can read? Write? Know your numbers?”
“Yessir.”
“Ever clerked?”
What is this, a fucking interview, Israel wants to say. Instead, he says, “Yessir. When I had to.”
“Not enough men on this fucking boat to need a dedicated bosun’s mate.”
Israel grits his teeth. “It’s the position I hold.”
The Captain frowns. Tilts his head, thoughtful. “And you were in his room."
A bloodcurdling shriek bursts from the captain’s quarters. The broken door clatters open, and out lumbers Bendick, dragging Captain Thomas by the neck.
Thomas wails, whimpering and kicking. His silken clothes are twisted, his long, fine hair pulled out of its queue; his round, sneering mouth curls in a terrified grimace. He’s tossed to the deck like a sack of offal.
There’s not a drop of blood on him, the fucking coward.
The pirate Captain whirls to meet him, mouth splitting into a grin, bright and hungry as a razor. “Chadwick!” he roars. “Good of you to finally join us, eh, old boy?”
Thomas curls up, knees pulling into his chest. His glance flickers wildly between the pirates. “Rawlins,” he says, finally, voice thin and reedy.
The pirate Captain’s — no, Rawlins’ grin twists at the edges. “Rude of you, running out on me like that. Gave us a merry little chase! Well, it all comes out in the end, doesn’t it?”
Trembling, Thomas shakes his head. “Our business was — concluded.”
“Still a joker! Haven’t changed a whit,” Rawlins laughs, sharp as cracking ice. He looks to Bendick, intent. “Was he really hiding in a fucking cupboard?”
“Aye, sir,” Bendick says. He looks to Israel, something vicious in his eyes. “Posh cunt nearly cut his own hand off fumbling a shaving blade.”
Rawlins cackles, bright and pointed. “A shaving blade! Christ, man. What were you going to do with that? Cut down his beard?”
Furious, terrified tears slip down Thomas’ cheeks. He opens his mouth. Closes it again.
Israel watches as if from a distance. Captain Chadwick Thomas, ruler of his world for so many years, brought low, snivelling like a scolded child — it doesn’t feel real, like some wild pantomime or a fever dream.
(Blood still seeps into Israel’s trousers from the wound on his thigh, though, and the bruises of Thomas’ fingerprints still ache on his hips. Nothing realer in this world than pain.)
Captain Rawlins’ boots clip over the boards. One step forward. Two. “Come on, then,” he says, poison-sweet. “Where is it?”
“I gave you the money,” Thomas croaks.
Suddenly, the air goes thick and cold. Rawlins leans in, smooth as an eel, every angle of him liquid, alien, almost inhuman. His pale eyes gleam deeper cold than ice, the thin slash of his nose a knife-angle over the red wound of his mouth. “You think I give two shits about your gold?” he sneers. “You think I care about your worthless fucking rum? My men could make a skeleton of this ship, sell it all for a single real, and I would slap them on the back for a job well done.”
Quick as a striking snake, Rawlins lashes out, fist cracking into Thomas’ face. Thomas spins, flung over onto his elbow, nearly collapsing.
“Oh, God,” he chokes, “God help me!”
“God can’t do shit for you now, Chadwick,” Rawlins snarls, hand flying back to his sword. “Who did you fucking give it to? I know it was you, you spineless little weasel, and you’re not smart enough to have done anything but sold it on.”
Thomas sobs, tears of terror and humiliation mingling with blood as it drips from his nose. “I didn’t — I didn’t take it, I just — it was Bakersfield, he palmed the thing!”
“Bakersfield is dead,” Rawlins snaps. “I carved off his head myself.”
Thomas blinks. Opens his mouth. Gawps like a stranded fish.
“Right. For every second you continue fucking waste, you’re losing a finger. Bendick, hold him. Perry?”
Bendick leans in and snatches Thomas by the hair, hauling him up to kneeling. The pale pirate with the scarred neck — Perry, Israel thinks, like knowing their names will help him get out of this — grabs Thomas’ arms, yanking them forward on the deck, pinning his wrists. Then Perry grins, brandishing the club-ended butt of his gun.
“No, no, I, Rawlins, we never meant any harm, it wasn’t, oh God,” Thomas cries. “Wait wait wait don’t!”
Perry brings the gun down.
A sick crunch, like a snapping green twig, and Thomas shrieks, whole body jerking in Bendick’s grip.
“Oh, have some dignity,” Rawlins sneers.
“Stop,” Thomas begs, “stop, Christ, please, it was Penrose, it was fucking Penrose, no one else, only him, let go of me!”
Rawlins purses his lips. “You sure of that?”
“Yes,” Thomas howls. “It was him, it was Penrose, he gave me, he gave me a full chest of silver for it, it was him.”
Perry laughs, a sharp, raspy noise like a rusted hinge. “Once more, Cap’n?”
Rolling his eyes, Rawlins waves his hand.
The pirates drop Thomas. He collapses, graceless, heaving with sobs, curling in over the wreckage of his hand, a wounded animal.
“Drummond,” Rawlins says.
“Aye, sir?”
The young man with the long, black curls melts from the throng. Now Israel is standing, it’s clear just how tall he is — a leanly-muscled beanpole of a boy, and not yet finished sprouting, still growing into his shoulders and thin waist.
“Where’s the Lady Saxonbury?”
Drummond’s brows twitch down. “Docked in Bridgetown — she’s due to set off for Carolina in the next few weeks. Always stops in Port-au-Prince to pick up more cargo, if you want to intercept.”
Rawlins smirks, and slaps the boy’s shoulder companionably. “Good lad. Hear that, Chadwick? Penrose is on his way north. Coming right to us.”
Thomas doesn’t look up. He’s too busy whimpering.
“And, Chadwick — it’s lucky for you you gave up quick, you pissing little coward. I was planning to shoot you in the fucking head and be done with it, but now I think I have something more interesting in mind.” Rawlins’ smile drops, though his tone stays light. “Do you trust your crew, Captain? Have you earned their respect? See, lads, I know what kind of man Thomas is. I know his tastes.”
Casually, Rawlins gestures to Israel — no, to the man holding him. “Moreno. Give ‘im here.”
Israel’s shoved forward. He stumbles, reeling, all the sharp pains in him brought back anew. His breath comes quick and sharp-cold. He braces, tries to find his feet. His wrists click as he rolls them slowly behind his back.
He’s been let go.
He’s not stupid enough to try anything, not surrounded by cutthroats and beaten half to pulp, but — God, he has no fucking idea what’s about to happen, and his heart hammers in his ears like pounding drums.
“Stockard,” Rawlins purrs.
Israel tips his head back to meet Rawlins’ gaze. Something deadly lurks behind the ice of his eyes, stormcloud-dark and biting chill.
“I’m going to give you a gift.”
With steady hands, Rawlins holds up his gun. Checks the powder. It’s loaded, ready to fire, flint half-cocked and poised over the steel. He strokes the barrel like a lover, then flips it.
Offers the handle.
Israel’s heart stops.
“One shot,” Rawlins says. “Anywhere you like.”
As if pulled by puppet strings, Israel’s arm floats up. His wrist. His hand.
The gun is a cool, familiar weight. He’d had a proper dragoon pistol of his own, once, before everything fell apart, and he kept it religiously oiled and spotless. The sharp smell of charcoal, that hint of sulfur and saltpeter — he knows the power of a gun, the terror of it.
A dread silence falls, broken only by the whistle of wind through the spikes of the shattered mast, and the swell of waves.
Shivering on the deck, Captain Chadwick Thomas looks up.
For the first time, he sees Israel.
“Stockard,” he whispers, pale-faced. “Oh, God — you’re alive!”
Israel swallows. Brings up the gun. “Anywhere I like?” he says.
“Anywhere you like,” Rawlins repeats.
Unsteady, Israel turns.
He points the gun at Rawlins.
Movement — a half-dozen pirates draw their weapons, surging forward, but Rawlins holds out his arm. Grins. “Wait for the shot, lads.”
Half-numb terror claws at Israel’s throat. His hands are shaking. “What’s to stop me killing you?”
“Nothing.” Rawlins chuckles, dry as bone. “But you’ll never get this chance again.”
Israel could do it. Could get Rawlins in the lung, or the heart, easy. Israel would be a dead man for it, would be cut down in seconds by the army of pirates around them, but whatever fucking mission this madman is on, it would be over. How many shipfuls of God-fearing sailors has this monster slaughtered? How many more will he chase down in the years to come? One shot, and Israel’s saved dozens of lives. Hundreds, maybe.
But Rawlins is right.
He’ll never get this chance again.
Shoulders stiff, Israel turns to Thomas.
A pitiful pile on the deck, Thomas yelps. “Oh, God, Stockard, shoot him! You have to shoot him, he’ll kill us all! Shoot him!”
“Captain,” Israel croaks. His jaw tightens.
“What are you doing?! Stockard, this is an order, you must shoot him—!”
Israel aims, carefully, at Captain Thomas’ head.
Thomas freezes. “What. What are you — Stockard, don’t.”
“Do you even know my first name?” Israel says. His voice is dull. Rasping.
“Of, of course, I, Israel.” Thomas crawls backwards half a step, eyes wide. “Israel, my boy, I — you know you’re my favourite, you know that, I’m, I’m your Captain, you can’t —”
“Tell me,” Israel says. “Who was the man I signed on with?”
“Hentz. No, Hands.”
“And his first name?”
“What are you doing—”
Israel cocks the pistol. “His first name. Now.”
“I,” Thomas says, “it’s been — years, Israel, how would I —”
“You murdered him and you don’t remember his first fucking name,” Israel snarls.
“No! No, he was — I didn’t murder anybody, I never —”
“Kit,” Israel hisses. “His name was Christopher fucking Hands.”
He pulls the trigger.
Boom.
Israel lowers the gun, slow and steady. It ought to be cleaned, once it’s cooled; oiled and polished, barrel cleared, any fractures in the wood or metal attended to to keep it from shattering and blowing up whoever takes its next shot.
Is that what Israel just did? Blew up in Thomas’ face?
Ears ringing, the smoky rotten-egg-and-piss reek of spent powder wafting around him, he distantly feels himself smile, like he’s watching his body move on its own. He wipes off the barrel with his shirt. Lets his shoulders drop. Stands steady.
“Holy shit,” mutters Drummond.
At his side, Rawlins laughs. “That, my lads,” he crows, “is why you don’t fuck over a man with balls!”
The pirates recuperate quickly from their drama. Rawlins, his mysterious business concluded, takes back the gun with unexpected gentleness, and orders the transfer of the ship’s cargo and stores to the brigantine. Moreno — the Indian man with the shaved head, who’d pinned Israel so thoroughly — stays to guard the hostages. Bendick shouts, hurrying the pirates into groups, organising the looting.
Drummond watches Israel.
“The fuck did he do to you, man,” Drummond marvels, arms crossed over his chest.
Israel says nothing. He stares at Thomas’ corpse, at the thick, black-red blood leaking into the planks.
Drummond leans back on the rail. The wind toys with his curls, tossing them softly. “Thought you were gonna shoot Cap’n for a minute,” he offers.
“Not that fucking stupid,” Israel grunts.
Something prickles at the back of Israel’s neck, and he turns to see Drummond grinning, bright and sly and golden. “Yeah, you’re a smart fucker, aren’t you,” he says, and something about the admiration in his voice, the bloody cheek of it, sets Israel’s numb face flushing.
The sound of the shot still rings in his ears.
Israel blinks, and it feels slow, like his eyelids are sleep-heavy. “Shouldn’t I be with the others?”
“Mm. Probably. You’re weird, though,” Drummond says, like that means anything. “Thought I had you pegged. Loyal dog, yeah? Then you turn around and do all that. Hell of a fucking thing.”
Israel shuts his eyes. Feels the lurch of rolling waves. “You going to sink us?” he says.
He thinks for a moment of drowning. Of cold, dark water closing over him like a shroud. The frantic, panicked burning of lungs. Saltwater like acid in his nose, his throat.
There are worse ways to go.
Drummond shrugs. “Probably not. We’ll set a few of you off on a dinghy, point you to Jamaica. Survivors to tell the tale. ”
Right. Survivors.
Because without a mainmast the rest will be dead in the fucking water, lucky to drift until they die of thirst. And without half the crew, and no fucking captain —
Oh, God.
Israel’s murdered his captain.
He blew Thomas’ fucking brains out.
Oh, God.
Israel stumbles to the rail and vomits.
“Ah,” Drummond says, “there it is,” and, like they’re fucking friends, he puts his hand carefully on Israel’s back, rubbing a bit as Israel empties his fucking stomach. “Yeah, man, let it out.”
Israel coughs, hard. He’s been on short rations, and hasn’t eaten since supper, and even then he only let himself take a few bites of his allotted ship’s biscuit; there’s not much to expel. Bile burns in the back of his nose.
“Breathe.”
With a horrid, raspy groan, Israel tries, then spits out what he hopes is the last of it, stomach rolling.
He’s a fucking murderer. He’s shot a man in the head. He’s killed his captain.
God, if he’d shot one of the pirates — if he’d aimed lower and blown off Thomas’ leg, or shot him in the foot — if he’d fired into the fucking air — if he’d shot his own fucking self —
He crumples, sliding down to crouch on the deck, head throbbing.
The crew saw him. They all watched him do it. Singh, Lang, Hughes. He knows every man in this crew, knows what they need and how they have to be handled to get them sailing properly, but he’s hardly well-liked, a cantankerous bastard to begin with, and by the time Thomas started… doing what he did, most of them stopped talking with him altogether.
“They’ll turn me in,” Israel pants, breath sour. “Oh, God. They’ll give me to the fucking British if I go with them.”
“Probably,” Drummond says.
Hands trembling, Israel rips at the knot of his neckerchief — he can feel it closing around his throat, tight as a noose. “I’ll be hanged,” he gasps.
A chuckle.
Israel looks up.
Drummond smiles like a leopard. He leans back, easy as anything, watching him. “You knew that when you shot him, man.”
“So what if I fucking did?” Israel hisses. “Knowing fire’s hot doesn’t stop it burning.”
A bright, surprised laugh, and Drummond grins, warm and lovely and promising as a sunrise.
Israel’s heart judders, queasy-thrilled.
“You know,” Drummond says, “our bosun’s mate took a sword to the throat just a bit ago. Bosun hasn’t liked anyone on board for the job — needs a man with his numbers and letters both, and the experience to keep up. And, of course, the mettle to call a bunch of fucking pirates to heel.”
Israel stares.
“Just a thought,” Drummond winks.
“Take you with us?” Leaning back on the capstan, Rawlins cocks a thin brow. Waves away Perry, who’s got a bottle of scotch from the Captain’s — from Thomas’ quarters. “And why would we do that?”
Israel stands at perfect attention, hands clutched behind his back, eyes fixed in the distance just over Rawlins’ shoulder. “You need sailors.”
That same shark’s grin from before breaks over Rawlins’ face, baring his teeth. “Always need sailors, aye. But any warm body can haul a line.”
“I can run numbers, keep track of things. Keep proper logs. Been bosun’s mate here for going on three years, been asea since I could walk.”
Rawlins tilts his head. He looks at Israel carefully, up and down. “That why you’ve been mate so long? Your skills?”
Israel’s jaw clenches. “Someone had to run the ship while the bosun spent his days in a bottle, sir.”
“Of course, of course.” Rawlins stands, drawing himself up to his full height. He looms over Israel like the skeleton of a tree, like the broken shards of the mainmast. “And tell me why I, a Captain, should take aboard a man who shot his old Captain dead right in front of me?”
Israel blinks. Cold settles in his gut, a sudden terror-dread spreading through his veins, knotting his stomach. “You gave me the gun,” he says, finally.
“So? Could’ve shot his cock off. Could’ve shot me.”
“Could’ve done a lot of things,” Israel snaps, “but I shot his fucking brains out, sir, because he was a fucking monster.”
Rawlins stares. “And you think I’m not?”
Fuck. Fuck. Israel should — should step back, should apologise, should something —
Israel’s gaze flicks to Drummond, a split-second glance. Drummond crouches next to Moreno, by the rest of Israel’s crew. He’s watching, half-smiling, like he knows something Israel hasn’t picked up on yet.
…Mettle.
Rawlins liked his mettle, his stupid fucking mouth that always got him in trouble, his impulsive, bullheaded decisions.
Fuck it.
“I stay, and I die, either to thirst or the gibbet. I go with you, I live for a little longer,” Israel says, sharp and sneering the way he always sounds when he’s shit-scared. He leans into the drawl of it, prays it makes him seem proud and not just terrified. “Don’t care what you do with me. I’ve survived the worst of men, I can take a little more. But I can help you. And you need help — unless you’ve left another two dozen sailors back to man your ship, you’re practically running a skeleton crew. You need me. I need you.”
Rawlins leans in, slow, careful, hungry. Catches Israel’s eyes with his piercing gaze. “And if I turn out to be just like him?”
Israel schools his expression. Stands steady. “Then you’ll have to watch your back.”
The sea holds its breath —
Rawlins laughs.
“Israel Stockard,” he purrs, a rumble like a creaking hull, “you’re a fucking maniac. Drummond, you meddling little shit, get the fuck over here!”
“Aye, Cap’n,” Drummond chirps, and bounces over, quick as twinkling. He’s got a look like the cat with cream, smug and sweet and proud as anything, sneaking unsubtle, fascinated glances at Israel.
Rawlins grins, all teeth. “We take the lad with us, he’s your fucking responsibility, aye? You feed him, you walk him, you teach him to fucking heel.”
Drummond rakes his eyes over Israel, top to toe, and Israel’s heart pounds. “Alright,” he says. “No skin off my neck. You were gonna press him anyway, I can tell with you.”
“Twat,” Rawlins says. He cuffs Drummond on the back of his head.
Feeling a bit like he’s floating, or dreaming, about to wake up in Thomas’ fucking cabin with the softest sheets he’s ever slept on burning at his skin like lye, Israel says, “So, you’ll take me on?”
Rawlins holds out his great, thin hand. Every finger must be a full inch longer than Israel’s. “You’ll come with us, yes. Bosun’s been looking for another pair of hands, after all.”
Israel reaches out to shake. Rawlins’ palm is cool as mist — then he clamps down on Israel’s hand, grip brutal and crushing.
“But, first,” he says, “you’ll take a traitor’s tattoo.”
Drummond tears his gaze from Israel. “Cap’n, you —”
“Every man on that ship will know exactly who you are,” Rawlins presses. “A killer, who would rather shoot his captain than the cutthroats who murdered his men. Not a coward, no, but a liability, nonetheless.”
The bones in Israels’ hand grind together, a painful promise.
In his periphery, the sun catches, dazzling, on Drummond’s gleaming black curls.
“I’ll take it gladly,” Israel says, and squeezes right back.