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“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… the Chromatic Priate!”
Lucius bowed and scuttled away before anything else could be thrown at him just as Stede Bluebonnet made his dramatic entrance.
Within seconds, a mug of something dark and staining hit him in the chest, covering his exquisite cornflower suit with filthy spatters. Stede looked down at himself in horror, looked at Lucius, back at himself… and made a run for it, Lucius close at his heels. Behind them, the bar burst into violent antichromatic uproar. The sounds of chairs being smashed, faces being punched, and knives being thrown followed them for a good couple of alleys.
“I…. I told… told you… the Greypublic of Pirates… was… was dangerous,” Lucius panted out, leaning heavily against a wall. “Christ, I am not… not made for… this shit.” He wheezed and mopped at his face with his neckerchief.
“Yes, I think perhaps it may be better to introduce myself to my piratical colleagues on a more personal, one-to-one basis, going forward…” Stede mused, glancing back the way they came and wincing as a distant pistol-shot echoed off the cobblestones.
“Are you sure you want to be a pirate?” Lucius asked. “It’s not just a matter of giving up your chromatic privilege - you can’t just ‘identify’ as colourblind. You’ll always be able to see blue, and the achromatic will always know that and resent it.”
“Nonsense!” Stede snorted. “Why would they resent it? I can’t help being born hued any more than it’s their fault they were born unhued! I believe a person should be judged on the merits of their individual thoughts and actions - not by their ability to see colour. And that’s exactly what the pirates are fighting for. I’m one of them! Now come along, you need to help me get changed.”
“Right. You’re one of them,” Lucius agreed woodenly, trailing obediently behind as Stede sashayed opulently towards the docks. “A regular colourless bloke amongst all the other colourless blokes. Right… ”
Izzy stood at parade rest and finished his report to Blackbeard. “He’s a chromatocrat. A genuine Blueblood. Had a ship built, hired a crew, and left his wife and kids to be a pirate.”
Blackbeard puffed at his pipe, blowing a lazy smoke ring. “Hmmn… What’s his saturation?”
“Seven eighths Blue, one eighth Violet,” Izzy replied promptly. “The real deal; just one step down from royalty.”
Of course the pompous twat was highly saturated. Centuries of inbreeding to keep as much blue sight in the bloodline as possible. Chromtatocratic marriages were made solely on how much of a particular colour the parties could see. Reds pushed to marry Oranges and Yellows, who tried to make matches with Greens, who were eyeing up Blues… with everyone ultimately trying to breed up the spectral ladder to make a baby who could see Violet and would automatically qualify as royal. And it wasn’t just about being able to see the colour but about how well they could see it; anyone who scored less than half on their Ishihara test was considered colourblind, like the vast majority of people. Unhued. A Grey.
A commoner.
Someone strapped for cash might marry his son to a rich Green-seeing girl if she was highly saturated, and for the right dowry; her family eager to gain offspring who would bring up-hue prestige into the line. But the Blue risked having a Green-seeing child who would bring their family down the spectral hierarchy, losing power and privilege on the way.
And of course, there was always the risk of a chromatocrat having the humiliation of a spontaneously Grey child; just as naturally hued children cropped up in Grey families now and then. While on paper, a Grey family having a colour-seeing child was cause for celebration, as when they reached adulthood they would qualify as a chromatocrat and be granted land and titles accordingly. In reality the child often grew up alienated and alone as their peers were resentful of their extra ability and the power they would eventually wield over the unhued.
As Red was the most commonly-occurring spontaneous hue and the colour most likely to have spontaneously colourblind children, the Reds - just one rung up on the spectral hierarchy - were stereotypically the most prideful of their colour sight, the most zealously protective of their saturation, and and the most dangerously ambitious in terms of breeding up-spectrum, though the Blues gave them a run for their money on that count. They were also often the cruelest employers and treated the unhued with the worst kind of contempt and colourism.
That the chromatocrats were the ruling classes based only on colour vision, and lorded it over all the rest of the population regardless of how intelligent or talented they may be was at the core of most political unrest. Unfortunately, those in power make the rules and so while it was illegal to kill, injure, harm, or in some places even insult a chromatocrat, there were no such protections for Greys, who could be legally slaughtered by a hued person with no legal repercussions. They tended not to do so only because it made their servants and labourers unsettled and less efficient in their work. A happy Grey was a profitable Grey, after all. The world was in a constant balance of the chromatocrats keeping the Greys down and the Greys threatening to strike or revolt.
There was a growing faction of dissenters who simply abandoned the mainland and set up colonies and outposts with their own social rules, usually simply wanting to be left alone to live their lives peacefully away from the chromatocracy. And there were the outright rebels who were not content with simply separating themselves from the status quo, but who wanted to destroy it entirely. Who fought to dismantle the spectriarchy and replace it with a merit-based form of social governance.
The pirates .
They were almost entirely made up of the unhued; people who could see less than half of any colour - and who could usually see a great deal less than that. But there was a smattering of hued people amongst them, usually Reds who were tired of being abused from both above and below, but some spontaneously hued, and some for whom heading to sea suddenly became the best choice due to debt, infidelity, or good old-fashioned criminality. And as long as they kept their heads down, weren’t afraid to do a day’s hard work, and kept their coloursight to themselves until it was needed, they were tolerated fairly well.
And then along came Stede Bluebonnet. Styling himself ‘The Chromatic Pirate’. Sailing right into the Greypublic as if he owned the fucking place, and poncing about in disgustingly expensive clothes exclaiming loudly about the beauty of blue inks and flowers that he saw. It was abhorrent.
That he was still alive at all, was frankly astonishing.
Blackbeard’s chair shifted as he uncrossed and recrossed his legs, still puffing on his pipe. “And he declined my invitation?”
Izzy snapped back out of his resentful musings. “‘You can go suck eggs’, was his response, I believe.
Blackbeard’s fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. “Fascinating.”
Izzy glanced at the darkening sky through the window. “Boss, we’ve gotta batten down tonight. Ivan says there was a lot of red in the sky this morning - you know that means it’s gonna be a rough night.”
“Yeah, sure,” Blackbeard nodded absently. “Do that thing, Iz. Go for it.”
“Right.” Izzy spun on his heel and headed to the door.
“But Izzy?” Blackbeard called after him.
Izzy stopped with the door half open. “Yeah?”
Smoke wreathed in the air around Blackbeard’s head. “I want to catch up with Bluebonnet by tomorrow night.”
Izzy shut the door before sighing. “Oh Edward, really ? Why?” He just about held it this side of a whine, but it was a close thing.
“Because I said so,” Blackbeard snapped. “Make it happen.”
Biting back his retort, Izzy left the Captain’s cabin and stomped up on deck, grumbling to himself. “Stupid fucking Bluebonnet.”
He found Ivan and Fang at the wheel, eyeing the sky warily. “Furl the sails, boss?” Fang asked immediately. “Wind’s picking up.”
Izzy wanted to agree to the suggestion, but he had his orders. “Just the tops and mids. Keep the lower sails in place for as long as we can, Blackbeard wants to keep us on course to intercept the Chromatic Pirate.”
“Why the hell is he so interested?” Ivan asked.
“How should I know?” Izzy snapped. “Man’s half insane; just do it. And Ivan?”
“Yes boss?”
“Any red in the sky tonight?”
Ivan had nine sixteenths red vision - technically making him a chromatocrat, but he had been born in the Greypublic - and was one of Izzy’s go-to guys for sky-reading and colour assessment. Fang could see three eighths green, and another crewmate had a quarter blue sight - his mother had been a maid for a very powerful family with a son who took liberties. Between the three of them, Izzy could get a pretty good idea of the colours of most things. If Fang said a bolt of silk was light green and Ivan said it was pale red, Izzy knew it’d be yellow. They made a good team.
Blackbeard proudly had absolutely no colour vision at all. A pure Grey who reached his position of wealth and power entirely due to his cleverness and skill.
Ivan squinted up at the sky and turned a circle. “Not a hint that I can see, boss.”
“Shit.” Izzy had been hoping for a red sunset and the calmer weather that would foretell. Looks like the storm was well and truly coming in. He glanced up and found Fang and Ivan still standing there watching him. “Well get to it, boys!” he yelled irritably. “Do some fucking work!”
He took Fang’s place at the wheel as the boys scrambled to obey and glared moodily at the sky while the wind whipped his hair into his eyes.
Bluebonnet had gotten himself into a mess. Why he’d gone aboard a Spanish Navy ship at all was a mystery, but the inevitable had happened and had Blackbeard’s crew not been there to attack the vessel and rescue him, he’d have hanged there and then on their quarterdeck.
As it was, he was tucked up all cosy in his own ridiculously overdressed bed, in his own ridiculously opulent cabin, on his own ridiculously-stocked ship, twitching and muttering a little in the depths of a fever-dream.
Edward puffed on his pipe, frowning as he heard Stede murmur a name. “Who’s this Mary, then?” he asked aloud, laying a soothing hand on Stede’s chest to try to calm him. He was hot and clammy, but possibly not quite as hot as he had been an hour or so ago. Hopefully the fever was breaking.
“We were just playing pirates!” Stede blurted out, and woke up with a jerk that made him cry out in pain.
“Whoa, there… Easy now. take it easy,” Edward gently pushed him back down. “No sudden movements, or you’ll be spilling your guts.”
“What happened?” Stede asked, lifting the bedclothes and wincing at the darkly-stained bandage around his gut.
“Got yourself a little bit stabbed, mate,” Edward told him jovially. “You’ll be alright, they missed all the important bits. Luckily Blackbeard was there to save you.”
“Blackbeard!” Stede exclaimed. “Is he here? Do you work for him?” He turned to face Edward, eyes wide.
“Do I–?” Edward started but then faltered to a halt. Stede had beautiful, startlingly blue eyes.
Blue.
Edward blinked and looked around the room. The bedsheets were blue too. And the teacups on the table had a pattern of blue flowers. Through the window, he could see a dark blue sea under a dazzling blue sky. He looked back at Stede, who was gazing at him in wonder.
His eyes were gorgeous, and they were blue .
Edward opened his mouth to say something, when the blue faded back to grey, then darkened to black, and he slumped heavily to the floor, unconscious.