resplendant.

“you’re filling in words for me, my sweet man — pretending they come from me, when they come from yourself.” he asked her to put it down, to take the charade and set it aside; she took a new mask instead, a mask shaped like a mirror, and held it over her features. the mask said: you cannot ask for honesty without giving it. the mask said: the honesty we shape has never been anything more than the shadows behind us. 

she turned, her hands finding either side of his face. ( for a moment, she imagined a world where she might hold him instead; she found herself grateful that love had never tainted this thing they carry between them. ) “marcus estrada, listen to me. brave men have never followed the book, and i am so tired of not being near to a brave man.” here it came, the belief, the devotion — the knowledge that she would never be the brave one. “do you think you are the only one who would burn it, if given a match?”  

captain, you made the shot; it is time to live with the kill.  captain, let me help you turn the bullet you used into gold, let me convince the world the blood you have spilled is wine that we can drink, that we can be merry from. let me continue the only path i have been allowed. 

winnie let out a sigh, the same soft parting of lips she had given to her husband when they shared a bed. a false glow and a relief it was done. “that is enough, i think, for now. do you hear it?” her hands dropped from him. she hoped she might remember it rightly, as she spread it from passenger to passenger. ( the captain will hand us the newborn foal of truth and trust us in a way we have never been trusted. speak to us in a way we have never been spoken to. ) “they’ll be grateful for the show of heart and might, and they won’t think of anything else. you will make a fine captain, marcus — you will be what we need.” 

His face turns in her hands, cheek plied to thumb. To one side, yes; but also to something else. It pivots like the mask of Janus, one of those myriad Grecian gods they had to learn by rote. When the classical revival had swept the continent, the well-heeled preened: here is a prototype, they said, here is a staple for reform. Cautions and morphemes bent over the ruler of a tutor. He cannot remember anything worth its tears. Divinity came a dime a dozen, in their circles; even the crests that no longer believed in it, the civilization who, when it came to rites and fear, polished their children by way of reason instead.

Here it is, now, the consequence of it. The cold, sharp rationality, whetted on both Winnifred and himself. He murmurs his laughter, rather than ring it out. The sound goes easy into the limn of her palm, where it roots for a moment before withdrawing. As if tied to a cantilever, his fist replaces it. Swipes quick knuckles over his mouth, his chin, the savagery growing into a stubble along it. A new thing, among not so many others; not how many one might expect from such dawns. ❝That’s always been the case. You speak, and men hear their own dreams tolling. Like the clink of a glass come toast time. Spoon and skein, my darling. Well, Winnie, that’s the kind of starling you’ve shaped yourself into, after all. A bird of useful echo.❞

He’s facing her, right hand to left. He can see the shape her elbow left over the desk, the clean swath of wood where the letters were pushed off. He can also catch the sigh before it heaves, before it hangs on her shoulders. It springs from the same place it always did. There’s an urgency to believe on Winnifred: not necessarily in him, but in the choice. She’s drawing on bravery like a third act hero, like a call for them to act. Not quite a call to arms, no; Winnie’s blood-taste plied to subtler things. But it showed on her the same way, this need to drive the evening home, the bargain over. Whether it was holy purpose or fickle pastimes they were discussing—he sees it pouring like it did when they were still inconsequential things, needling out a plan, an ambush. When their actions held only the pennyweights others had strung there, and what was being hashed out was nothing worse than the ruin of some engagement. The ruin of some career, too, why not? These were singular evils. Sins didn’t count unless they formed a tapestry, the ministration went—from so high up, they’re scarcely visible.

It feels as though there is something missing, now. A lapse in this scene that’s both payment and reversal. That he should laugh, or confess madness; that he should grab her thighs to him, hitch up her skirts and take her on the desk. It seems ridiculous, for a second, and then it seems nothing at all. Not even the fraught landscape of scheming has anything of home.

❝In the end, Winnie, they just need to remember what they wanted. Why they wanted, in the first place. Just replace Her Majesty’s glory with the clarion of liberty; replace it with your petticoats, whatever you bloody please. You can make them fall in love with you by noon, if that’s what you’re after. Reel, and reel, and then seal them in: have your matches done up in the dark. For brusque certainties, I have Sohrab on it. The cartographer will assuage both guest and crew that we can be out before the leads close. Land is near, haven’t you heard? What’s left to decide is who we’ll leave behind on it.❞

His hand tarries, chest level, points loosely to the window. Conjures the port that’s yet to appear, and which reason dictates should not—not for weeks of sail yet. But reason can be thwarted, tarnished and thawed. That’s what London didn’t wager on. Reason can be warmed like a bed gone empty for too long.

❝I’m keeping Montgomery. Can’t even begin to explain why, so be a darling and don’t ask it of me, now that we’ve covered inauguration speech and all. For the spring cleaning, I’m thinking... well, Boyne, Rowland, Orestes. From the lower rung, the Maori hand. Dowling’s steward, the soothsayer’s brother. The soothsayer, too, while we’re at it: he’s entertained us easy enough, hasn’t he, all those seances on softer shores. But I’m not much for dividing families, myself. Makes for ugly business.❞

He preempts the next thought, catches it like a punch in the temple. He frowns under the impact, the inconvenience of feeling; of matters that cannot be swiftly trenched out. ❝The soldier guards. I want them all gone. Sutherland will go ugly about it, you and I both know the sod. He’ll scream anarchy and treason without us adding a kidnapping count to boot. Besides, the kid’s—❞, the grimace widens, splays with disgust, ❝practically ruined. No good for the long run, the chase they’ll put us to next year.❞ There’s a stomach-roil at the weakness of it, the pathetics of grief. Snaps fast enough to kneel him, had he not know where he stood on the matter already; had he not watched the mourners pacing the deck, and snarled.

His own grief is turning to bone, so it needs little guidance, little help on where to cut or how. He thinks he can hear her name without flinching. He thinks, well, if this is what life is, then at least I’ll never bother with the handkerchief of it; the torn silk, the damp frays. The Captain holds out his palm, face up. Staples it between them as if asking the socialite to dance.

out of predisposition, out of habit honed by decades of quietly biding his time, subsuming all that he saw, heard, touched, into his personal arsenal, his war chest, he studies the captain. he measures the way he sits, broad shoulders flanked by the high back of his chair, the borders of some invisible, but tangible, self-possession filling the seat like a throne. the thing about wealth, despite every endeavour to deny it by those who possess it, is that it bears its own physical gravity. it has a weight, a feeling, a presence. the signature of it stamped through the very veins of those who are born with it. the ease that comes, the sense of ubiquitous rightness in all that you are and ever will be, it’s not a guise or mask that can be pulled on in the third act of the play. hugo has lived his whole life hungry for it, starving for it, and he’s never realised till now how fucking futile all that time and desperation and hollow-hearted chasing was. 

britain would never have bought it. britain was never made for him. britain would have chewed him up and spat him out and left him for dead as quickly as they would dowling.

and for estrada, who rose up through her ranks and echelons, who cut his teeth in her prestigious academies and whitehall showgrounds, who had britain in the palm of his hand, to say good fucking riddance at the first chance of mutiny? it was either revolutionary, or utterly, fatally self-righteous. hugo hasn’t yet decided which. the shadow of him that had seen estrada’s prestige and reputation and marvelled at all that he’d built for himself still aches, just a little, for all that he was laying waste to. 

your kingdom, captain, for a ship of ghosts and dead men walking.

“for all my lack of pedigree and eton education, yes.”  a fact cutting closer to the skin and truth than he’d usually allow, but here it feels like showmanship. feels like long-awaited acclaim after a lifetime of cloaking his most accomplished feats in persiflage and smokescreen.  “if. we made port with violence and gunfire. do you think it’s necessary to incite more? what if dowling gets to them first? a tragic sob story and bloodied fingers pointed at your loose cannon may be just enough to sway their sympathies. are you so willing to lean into the role he would carve out for you?”  he probably ought to bristle, ought to scoff and soak up offence at the relegation to mindless henchman and mere bodyweight to be thrown behind a cause. the underbelly of the matter is: no amount of dirty work could ever be too filthy for his hands. it doesn’t make the aftertaste of it any more pleasant as he swallows, the tread of his voice light and tempered sardonic. “your will be done, captain.”

he doesn’t know what to make of the look in estrada’s eyes. between the sniper intensity of his gaze and the non sequitur of the command, he takes it to be rhetorical, at first. some grander point he’s illustrating that needs to be illuminated by more than words or gestures to be acknowledged. but estrada doesn’t make any other movement, doesn’t say another word. hugo’s eyes flicker to the desk, the papers ordered along its surface in immaculate piles, his mind audibly ticking with calculations, projections, all in an attempt to approximate what estrada is thinking in this moment. he straightens, the chair scraping against the ground with a shrill creak as he rises. he eyes some near point on estrada’s collar as he comes round the table, comes to a pause right beside his chair, the seat of literal power seized from its former keeper.

in an act of deliberation, fleeting and seamless, he clears his expression. the sum of his features erased into a resting neutral, a blank canvas to render whatever estrada needs to see. 

“yes, sir?”

There was something about Montgomery: an air of pent-up regicide. Marcus had noticed it, early on, when he was a different man and the world was still streaked in spit and cognac. In tears hanging from lashes, a lash on the back, another round the throat. When Sutherland and Westminster were still hoisting him along, and, paraded as he was, did not much care for the nuances of king-killers and bastards. Did not pay any more attention to the dagger melded to Hugo, the body of him like a sheath. Or, at least, he only heeded it enough to mock it. He had not imagined he would ever use it, the instrument, the coated object of retribution. A boy like a holy rage, a boy like a blade pointed to the heart of the kingdom, and he himself not knowing what for; if it’s to seize it, or to burn it whole.

Estrada remembers thinking it was both amusing and dangerous. And then, as the once-admiral always did, his mind went on to pleasant coves, sweeter junctions: the passage between a thigh and a cunt, the brawling of cadets on the deck. It has only ever been a passing realization, scribbled in their margins of their rivalry. Even that pawing match, that imitation of Troy, had barely lasted the season. What had it been, except corridor politics, boudoir stratagem, to take and take and never mind the carrion? Never mind the wrung neck of the swan. No surprise, there, no bolt from the blue. Estrada had thought himself deserving of Pantea, because, of course, he’s always been deserving of the best. It was hardly more profound than that, on the first upshots; until it grew profound enough to throttle everyone involved. It served no immediate purpose in the furtive, febrile dogfight they carried for a little while      before the world put a boot on their neck, and a slicing of truths before them. When both their arms had still been primed for a woman who deserved so much better than anything London-nursed, London-plumed. Yes, it was short lasting; the taking of stock, the believing. The desire of it all.

If only it had been longer. If only it hadn’t been at all.

What remains is this: had only seen the hunger in Hugo enough to paint his own in more flattering colours. Long-lasting: war paint, not veneer. Yet who knows what the bloody fuck he fancied himself as, back then? Who knows how he imagined he different from the kid, in whether merit or marrow, in merciless power? It feels like the thought and wanting of another man. The pride of one, too, maybe; though what there was of pride, well, it’s all he has left.

Of pride, there is no speaking. With pride, there is even less.

Hugo says ‘your will be done’, eyes low. Hugo swallows recalcitrance like cod oil, like hyssop or honey wine, mouth turning wry and amber. Hugo sways to him, and Marcus pulls.

His hand goes on Montgomery’s cheek.

❝You go at it like the girls at Covent Garden. Those on their back, hm? Ready to swear on parents and saints that you’re the biggest they’ve ever held in hand. One knows it’s put upon: knows the obedience, the gaped mouth is farcical. That you’re not really the best, or the biggest—only the well-timed option that stumbled to their bed.❞

Estrada tilts his head, unsmiling. A strange thing strains the corner of his mouth. Can feel the grimace inch up before he can root it anywhere, before he can put a name to it. Any feeling seems to be nameless, these days. Perhaps that’s the worst and holiest about this place. His palm skims the jaw of the other man, going flat and splayed over the nape. A hitch, and it would be the windpipe. Another hitch, and he could push him on his knees. Wonders if he’d go. Wiling, or at all. With those eyes, with that talk of obedience, it would not be implausible.

❝Do you imagine I’ve never had it offered to me, this gravel flattery? This empty look? It’s not ineffective. One always does end up believing them, the whores at the Rose. And one almost would believe you’ve nothing else to say on the matter. Go on, then. Speak your mind. Why would dear Malachy try to sway their canons, when Dowling is the one that counts on going back at all? When he’s got the deadweight of reputation around him, all those names to protect—and all we have is the need for a quick resupply? We need these people’s provisions, and the men need their rest; some tumble in a fancy hotel, to remind them why the chose this. I intend to seize this by trade or by fire. When the city yields, it’s not going to be over sympathy.❞

He leans forward, culls the hair’s breadth of space. His voice trebles, a three-pronged blade, and it shatters into the silence. An almost ascetic stillness seems to have come over Hugo, shoulder line taut enough to snap, mind whirring, weighing. Mouth ready to eat the blame. How many serpents can say this of themselves? That they know when to be martyrs, too.

His hand slides to the epaulets. Fists around them, yanks the tassels around the length.

THE EVENING OF MAKING LANDFALL. THE GREAT CABIN. FOR @intrepidim​​.

the feeling of uncanny weaves a labyrinth through him of spider-silk and minotaur thread. this port of crossroads, this isle without a name or scratch on a map, borderless and unchartered as bermuda, atlantis, aeaea — is nothing more than a harbinger, surely, of death and treachery yet to transpire. stripped bare of the solace of divine mandate, untethered by imperative and duty, the starboard chill coming from the docks is unexpectedly cold. and perhaps this is all par for the course. perhaps this is how the morningstar felt on that first night of freedom, the twin scars on his back freshly guttered, gazing out upon a starlit land he had only ever glimpsed from gilded spires.

— but this is no dawning creation myth, and if there is anything to be unravelled from this island’s obscurity, it is how her inhabitants have managed to survive the jaws of a beast that would make bloodsport out of their hospitality.

what port have you ever sailed to and found the seas safer than going to shore?

as night begins to seep across the dusk horizon, he cuts across the upper deck and descends down into the hallway lined with officers’ cabins. his own lies largely unoccupied these days, an empty mausoleum without funeral blooms or body to bury. there’s no need for propriety or pretence anymore; he enters the great cabin without knocking, the only soul on this ship who would dare seek out an audience with the captain unannounced.

“i wouldn’t trust even the dirt lining that port.”  hugo spares the captain a fleeting, laden glance as he esconces himself in the singular chair opposite his desk, a parallel of latitude he’s come to think of as his own.  “and dowling and his loyalists go traipsing off into its tavern and shops and inns as if a warm bed to sleep in and any face that won’t point a rifle at their back isn’t merely a trap. the whole island reeks of something rotten. something damned. but i suppose we didn’t leave them much choice. better the land of the lotus-eaters than london. better freedom than treason.”

He listens half-mindedly to Montgomery; eyes front, letters first. He registers the chair’s creak, the added weight to the room. Hears the thump of Hugo’s ankle on the oakwood leg, one of those keyed up ministrations he always subjects furniture to. Extension of nerves and need, like space is a personal offense to his status. A fidgety boy, that’s what he is. But, oh, tireless. Tireless. With some oiling, the ropes on him might actually last the year.

Deeper, under, the Captain’s mind swims on. The latch wraps around the halyard. Red sands, red shores. Off-white skies. Sutherland, you motherfucker. Had no hint of it, did you? The whole of London hounding our dear old passage, palming themselves hard over East trade, and all the while... all the fucking while, there it is. King John’s country. Locus amoenus, utopia at the end of the barrel. How does it survive, without some line to further territories? Some root of contact? It’s either filthy rich, or surrendered to something greater. I’ll be damned a hell over; et in Arcadia, all the way here. City of Caesars, and no one even had to die for it. Well—almost.

He wonders how many men it’d take to map this place. Wonders, then, how many to claim it. 

Doesn’t remember seeing canon, no heavy artillery at a once-over. The buildings look almost... well, picturesque. Something of Crete; something of Tunis. A month ago, a year, Marcus might’ve actually asked someone to sketch it for him. Keepsakes and souvenirs, the kind he always racked in his journeys, pressed under file. Might’ve asked Pippa to.

Estrada’s head snaps up. It happens towards the peak of Hugo’s diatribe, the mound his ambition crosses, stretched right over the valleys of doubts, duplicity, intemperance. The reared bulwark of self-sabotage. Easy does it, kid. I’ll take care of Dowling.

An amused expression drags itself on his face. His hands come to rest under his chin, steeple of control all over him. Bottom of the drawer reassurance. Bottom of the drawer humanity. It should do, in these circumstances. He has a world to conquer, after all.

❝Lotus eaters? You applied yourself to your classics, Montgomery, that’s for bloody certain. Too bad we don’t need you to quote Lucan—Pharsalia’s done and over with, I think. Just about now. Your job isn’t to trust. It isn’t to worry. I want you to scout the defenses and report back. Full reconnaissance: if it takes throwing a sack over some barmaid’s head and hauling her to me, well, par for course. You should be at least as skilled with that as you’ve been this far, hm?❞ A smile like a slap on the back. A slap on the face, too, if you look closely; congratulation, condescension, depends what glass you’re turning, and from what end. Then the Captain’s gaze jumps to something on Montgomery’s shoulder. Darts, darkens. His legs spread in his chair, spine leaning.

THE VETERAN

“i’ve got my demands too,” she stated, not moving from her spot on the floor. her head still tipped back, her features almost relaxed, almost lazy. what could you say to icarus outside of — look at me, i contain hubris too? what else would he listen to? “because, as i’m sure you’ve put together, you’ve got me a bit upset, captain. put me in a bit of a spot.” 

the best of lies came with a tinge of truth. he wove his lies together with such art that she could not pick up on which was the thread of truth — was malachy safe? had ayla seen him? would he stick to his word? she often thought in too stark of colors to imagine the shades, but she could play along with her own tinge of truth. angry, but helpless. angry, but with bigger things to worry about. 

a glance to roi. remember what we talked about. 

“you need a quartermaster still, and i want to make sure my crew gets through this. i love them more than i hate you. so let me keep my title, and i’ll keep them in line. i’ll play nice, do my job, and make sure this ship stays together.” let him believe the thing that was true: she did not care where they ended up, only that the crew was alive at the end of it. 

the door opens and it takes everything roi has to shuffle to the side, still seated infront of it, one leg up to his chest. at this angle, it’s almost as though he’s baring marcus entry, rather than their own exit. at long last the door has opened to him but there’s nothing he can do about it - the actions still cordoned off as effectively as if the door was still there.

angry, but helpless. he takes his cue from jules in this, stays sat, stays indolent. she calls him captain, and his fist clenches, thumb on the outside of the fist to push into the broken skin of the knuckles, doesn’t know if the lie could come as easily to him, if at all. the flash of her gaze is a reminder, cracks back the resurging anger and render it helpless.

his jaw clenches, his eyes close, breathes in. he could kill marcus here, destablish the ship once again, mutiny the mutiny and restore the correct order.

breathes out, opens his eyes, cracks his neck. ‘ for the crew. ‘ pushes himself onto his feet and steps away from the door, leans against the nearby wall and crosses his arms. close enough to loom, but not an immediate threat. ‘ why don’t just throw us in the brig as well and call it a day? ‘

❝ A bit upset? ❞ He sneers, smacks his lips into it, almost, eyes passing over the veteran as if it took concerted effort to remind she’s there. ❝ Yeah, I’d say that’s a fair assumption. ❞ Moves away from her, away and yet sticking to her good side, rounding through the brig like he had to take the measurement clean off. ❝ I believe you, on the crew. I’ve been with this lot a while; might’ve been someone else myself, back then, but the effect of it stays the same. I know they’re loyal to you, which, really, Rowland, is the crux of the matter. Can’t let you lollygag above deck now, can I? Can’t give you a rifle and trust your blue honour on it. ❞

His heel digs into the plank, the scratched off timber. Chances a look to the door, where Violet Bell is still waiting with murderous efficiency, and, to give the turncloak their due, quite respectful patience. He makes a mental note of being impressed. It’s gonna do them fuck-all good if his grand magnanimous moment is gonna end with him shot point blank, so, back to the tracks at hand: Jules’ position. Estrada’s boot clicks down. ❝ You can walk. That’s what I can give you. Both of you. First port you reach, you’re on your own. You’ll all be paid in full for what you served so far, and that’s the last of it. No more serving on this ship. No more wages stamped with the queen’s mug. I’m sure you heard the rumour, but, just in case— ❞

He takes the prisoners in the scope of his eyes, sweeps one arm across the sordid, scrawny length of the room. Nods to Jules, says it with his face: you know what I’m about. You made the same choice yourself, river pirate. I merely intend to take it further up.

As for the steward, Estrada circumvents them entirely; can see the person’s motions like the arc of a deadbolt, there and back again, wall and composure and wrought fists crammed into shadow, but Marc could care less about suppressed anger, at the moment. It’s the burning ones that concern him. The ones that might not even wait til land to try their hand.

they were partners, even here, even now — even without recognizing it, even while leaving it cold and trembling. tell me a joke, i’ll give you a laugh — both roles crucial for a successful comedy. tell me a tragedy, i’ll show you a broken heart. one could not move through the world easily without the other; they allowed themselves to build it, separately but together, standing on the tender, breaking backs of connections. even if he thought himself through with it here, far into the melting ice, she knew the truth of the matter: they had fashioned themselves into these dark creatures, they had chosen to dance with masks. shedding them would not be so easy. 

he did not look at her, so she made herself something that must be looked at. 

“oh, marcus. you’re so dramatic.” she walked to his desk and found her seat on top of it. 

“‘ none of them will understand ’? have you spoken to the guests at all? they long for exactly that — for understanding to what’s occurred. because, and you must believe me on this, they are eager for you; you’ve given them a way forward, if only you remind them.” weave a story, he asked, not realizing it began in the great cabin, it began with the pair of them. a thrill traveled through her: here was where their hands closed around the neck of the past, here was where they squeezed. “few took such a long, dangerous voyage because they love england. there’s power to be had in the need for escape.”

a slight tilt of the head, a review of his form against the window. “is that what you want, captain estrada? to find a new life somewhere away from the english shadow?”

He half-anticipates, half-attunes to it, rather than hears it proper. The swish of skirts, the soft thud of flesh and fabric against the woodprint; the benchmark Winnie always rose up to, rose up against. He connects point to motion, thigh to desk; can imagine she’s hoisted herself there like some hunting trophy in reverse. Henry’s letter opener, not one weapon less.

Marcus veers from the window, sharp, and invective already on his mouth, an order to cull such girlish impulses—but then his eyes stick to her. Sweet, saccharine, show off. It still works. He takes it in, the full sugar span of her body. And he smiles. Ducks his head, temple pressed to glass. Blinks at her, sandpaper eyelids; thinks he might lay his head on her lap, if this was another story. If this was still a point where he could receive it.

❝ You can put it down. This... tittering charade. You’d give me a telling off, and I know it. About how I’ve just turned diplomacy on its arse. How I’ve fucked over every rule in the book. The book. Winnie, the truth is, the sodding thing can burn. ❞ He drifts away from the window; something both aimless and purposeful at once. Drapes his body closer to the desk, closer to the shape she leaves on it. In the sun-down waver, his shadow cuts into hers.

❝ I won’t speak to them as rhetoric; won’t give them some grand Catilina to chew on, gawk at. I’ll talk to each one by one, when the moment calls. As men do. As people must. Real people. Not tacticians, not theater. I’ll tell them why I want to move further into Asia, and beyond, and I’ll do so outside of diplomacy. What a notion to fancy—that the outside even exists. That chaos can take out the veneer. That something genuine can be gleaned underneath it all. Hearts of men, hm? You ought know best. ❞

The Captain’s laughter rings tired, rings low. He sketches a wave. Sweeping dismissal, disavowing notion and note. Not dismissive of her, though. Or, fairer still, not of her as she is today, but of her as she was—of them as they had been. Pawns, rooks, waltz steps and cannon salves. They had thought the world of their own cunning, mettle and might; had blasted on about their ability to see through, see beyond. And yet they walked right into it. Hadn’t they? Her ring, her ringless finger; his epaulets, the rust and oxide of it.

Winnifred, dearest: what a poor show we cut. What a long time it took for us to make a call. A choice that was really ours; not pushed, not pulled along, but seized. And is this even it? Can you tell me that much? Are we finally breaking into something else, or just tearing ourselves mad, tearing ourselves to shreds out of the mold?

he laughs. doesn’t listen to estrada either; first few words, the tone of them, make kane reduce whatever he’s got to say to nothing but some unintelligible noise. he can jeer him all he wants, if that’s what the captain needs to do to assert his authority. it means absolutely shit to kane, but he’ll let him.

but the show goes on and it doesn’t end at words. when kane loses his balance, there’s a surge of panic going right through him—it’s been a while since someone responded to him pushing on like this; most of the time, when he crosses a line, the other subdues. he should’ve expected that marcus would fight back. or perhaps he did expect it—and that’s the reason why he didn’t hold back.

he grunts when his chest hits the railing but is quick enough to cover it up with a low laugh. and then the second kane registers the threat, he decides to ignore it. laughs again, louder this time. “do you talk to all your men like this?” the words are laced with amusement, as if estrada wasn’t the one on top of the food chain.

“you want to destroy me? go ahead.” he turns his head to the side; grins, but doesn’t bare teeth. there’s something ironic about being unable to do it right into estrada’s face. kane doesn’t try to stand up straight again, instead pushes back against the body behind him. to see how flexible the line is before it snaps back at him and leaves a mark.  “go ahead,” he repeats. while marcus said his part loud enough for half the deck to hear, kane does the opposite, it’s a show just for the two of them. he smiles again, shows his teeth; proof that he’s enjoying the game. “but at least make it interesting. give me something to look forward to.”

                                                      ⁎⁎⁎

❝ Destroy you? Mr. Keane, please. Get a hold of yourself. ❞ There’s no impending snarl, no animal noise prodding at the blanket of his lips. There is nothing but the cold, proprietary sense of civilization: you are an embarrassment, little boy, and the real people are about. That calling upon better natures, upon rules and respect, has chilled him many times before—whenever it was used on him. Civilization always makes one feel.... lesser. As if you made a patent failure, a slip at being human. At being among them. It’s quite the act to drag up. For all that it is feint, for all that is, has likely always been, a farce and a foil. Marc knows that; can go to bed with it. But he can also use the reverse against people like Kane, who have been savages since the slicked out of their mother’s legs, who have never known the toll it takes to pretend any different.

His hold tightens on the man’s shirt, even as his voice steps away, distant, truncated.

❝ You are nothing but a moneylender. A two-penny kind of thing, whose use and utility, if any, have long exceeded their run. Even in London, Sir, and you and I both know London is hardly a stage to brag about, you’d be the grime sticking to my shoes. Here, though? Where we intend to turn the whole thing arse-up? Here you get to choose. And yet all you’ve been doing is the same small minded, spineless, rat-scum affairs. Rubbing hands and scurrying off. Everyone else is racing for a principle, or against one; there are women half your age gallivanting into the night to meet with devils, to meet with Gods. There are boys still sniffling for their mothers who are, at this moment, oiling their rifles. Whetting their knives. Wetting them, too; maybe soon. And you? Where are you, Mr. Keane? ❞

He gives him one push into the railing, one last bat of wood inside plexus. Then he wrings his hand clean of the shirt, wipes the back of it on his thighs. Back and forth, scrubs off the rodent exhaust on it. At the end, his other palm comes up to right his uniform. Wonders, idle, indifferent, how long he’ll have to wear it for. At least until they can resupply on their layover. At least until he can still make them believe that the real crew was lost on the ice, and their reasons for entering Hong Kong are nothing but harmless. The generosity of peril: wasn’t that what all this months have taught him? Survivors don’t need to keep up appearances, so long as the cavalry is raw.

To the empresario, now, he only gives a look of disdain.

where: starts outside the armory to somewhere private idk  when: after the mutiny whom: @intrepidim 

“Play nice and you’ll both get to stretch your legs.”

Marcus addresses that, not to her, but to their prisoners––Jules and Roi––but she cannot pretend that she does not hear it; cannot be deaf to such an absurd concept. It shouldn’t be her place to comment. Violet is not a seaman nor veteran, at least not to any war Her Majesty would ever record; but what is war? Is it not the grappling of power between two groups ready to spill blood for an ounce of control? If that is the case then she is a veteran many times over. The scars on her hands, the bullet wound in her shoulder––long since scarred over––aches in memory to every power struggle she has survived and won. She was a captain once too, of her own concrete bound crew. The alley battles, the guerilla tactics, the victories; all of it, comes back to the forefront of her mind. A flexing of an old muscle. It is the tactician in her that urges to voice protest, but she is careful. Estrada is the captain and she does not forget to give him the respect he is due. “May I have word, sir? In private?” Tense politeness coats every syllable. And when they are alone, away from anyone who can witness a subordinate advising a superior, she continues. 

“Sir, please don’t tell me you actually think that letting Jules out is a good idea.”

There’s something to the tension in his jaw, when he turns to her. Something that, if not culled, if not properly supervised, can unfold on the hook of a snarl. Marcus presses his tongue against his teeth. Notches it in the mouth’s roof, lets a breath roll over, over and under.

He nods, as if he needs her. He nods, as if he needs anyone nipping at the hold he has on this. On himself, most of all, wound tight enough to sear the skin in divots. As if he can spare even a single tug on the harness, the curb and the bridle. A trickle of reason says: you do, fool. Violet Bell is instrumental. You can play the lone wolf the minute you reach port.

He prompts her to follow. The movement is a cut of the wrist, at odds with the leisure steps he’s climbing. He falls into an easy stroll as soon as they’re up the ladderway; the officer’s corridor, above all things, is a place where men can see him. Where men should see him, poised and purposeful. Bending an ear to the fait accomplice.

❝ Yes, Bell. I believe it’s as good of an idea as can be, given what we’re up against. Jules has always held the hearts of the crew in her teeth. The most dangerous parts of them. Did I ever tell you about how we met, me and her? ❞

After a meaningful look, a line thrown over shoulder, he opens the door to his cabin. Dowling’s cabin. Soon, there’ll be no more ranks, and no more plaques of title. He might even pass this on to Violet herself; she sure looks like she’d appreciate a mark of gratitude. Another practical study: everyone does, principle can’t match against it. Everyone gets on their back, belly up, for something in particular. The only thing that changes is the degrees of it. The former admiral steps in behind her.

“i’m waiting for you to admit that you’re a fucking idiot,” he says, more to the cup in his hand, rather than marcus; at this point, edward feels that if he were to lay his eyes on the man, he’d be on his feet in seconds, wouldn’t even need taunts like the ones he got from teodoro. most of the fight has left him but marcus is capable of making the purser scrape up enough to leave a mark. maybe make his mouth bleed, if he lands it right. the sight itself would cure so many of edward’s issues. but he knows that the second he looks anywhere near threatening, there’s going to be hands around him, maybe even a musket pointed at his back, until he backs down, leaves the traitor be. 

the laugh comes out bitter and it’s a sound that’s reserved only for the worst of the situations. no denying this is one of them. “reasonable? what—you think what you’re doing is reasonable? now that’s a joke, if i ever heard one.” he spits the words out but still refuses to meet his eye. he shouldn’t have started this conversation in the first place. he’s only getting himself more agitated. he knows very well that marcus is capable of pushing him to the edge. it couldn’t possibly end well. 

they’re beyond safety now. whatever they do, there’s loss waiting around the corner, begging them to come forward so it can sink its teeth into whatever’s left of them. “and you reckon it’s easier your way?” the purser finally looks at him. his blood’s boiling but he remains still, his clenched jaw the only sign of the restraint that’s required to stay settled. “we shouldn’t be here. we go further, it’s only going to get worse.” it’s going to get worse regardless. he knows that. but he’d rather jump overboard than agree with estrada right now.

                                                      ⁎⁎⁎           

❝ How the fuck, pray tell ❞, he pauses, clamps his hands together as if takes contact to stop him from launching forward, as if takes contact for the sheer act of grounding down, ❝ do you know that? ❞ The Captain bounces back on his heels. Stays to the wall; sticks to it. His spine finds some solace in the cold, caulked wood, in the railing underneath. Some solace: this is not his ship. Never was. But he’ll make it something else, something better. Take it to a place where a ship no longer belongs to men, or they to it. Where it just serves them, instead.

It takes some mettle, staring into Boyne’s eyes. He cuts into the shiver before it starts; pierces it down, tacked to the other side of his chest. Allows it to burn through.

❝ That what I’m really asking you, here. How do you know it’ll be better ahead? What makes you so, so fucking cocksure about it, wiling to gamble the lives of your men? The lives of other people, who aren’t crew, who only came here for their reasons, such as they are: the good, the awful, the tender. None of them warrant this ending. All of them, Edward, all of them wanted an adventure. A getaway. A chance to be both free and safe at once. Can’t you say the same? Can’t I? ❞

His voice shakes, no, rattles. Can no more cover it than an old man can cover the tremor of his hand. Thinks of Sutherland. Thinks of crunching it down, those liver-stained patches that cover his skin, gnashing his hands to the marrow. Wiping his mouth with it.

Stop.

He thinks of Pippa. Thinks of what Ayla said, more importantly: the words that reamed the motion of it all, head and sinew. She had only wanted to escape. Not like this... but still. An escape. From London. From all it represented. From all it took, and takes, and shall take from us. Oh, yes, he thinks of Pippa—even though he knows the cost it will exact. Has to sit down; cannot. The simple truth of it: he’s got to keep standing up.

“Slumming it. Is that what you think?” Her lips part, teeth exposed, and it takes very little to cause the spread of a smile, the laughter bubbling from her throat. It’s not in the eyes though, not until she tilts her head, softens it with a blink.  Really, she’s not sure what part of her to dredge up for display, when there needs to be honesty in this. A thread through all of it, that can be touched and viewed, inspected and found to be true. 

“Usually,” he doesn’t care, might snap in the middle of her sentence, but she can’t guard herself for that, can’t build a wall against anything, when it goes against what she’s trying to do. Let him in, instead of keep him out. There needs to be trust. “there’s a deckhand who...” trails off, as though with all the time in the world, presses a fingertip to the base of the bottle, the soft underbelly. “lets me take his bed while he’s on shift.” The smile is gone, but her expression is all softness, the lingering of it, as she settles her eyes on him, just to prove she can. “I say let, but I’ve only made him think he does. He couldn’t bear to imagine I’m doing him a favour. He and his siblings all slept together, and with all this dark he misses the comfort of it. The warmth left behind, the knowledge that’s someone’s there.” Blinks languidly, and shakes her head, “So no. You don’t think it, you just say it.” 

Trails her pointer from the bottle, sets a course with the sweep of it. She’s hardly been planning it all the while, when it’s usually so instinctual. And yet she needed to excuse it, the fact her hands are not her own, are not as soft as they should be. Doesn’t cup his face so much as drape fingertips there, a scoop of them, where water or blood might gather between- like the alcohol could hold itself in her bandaged palm and only swell up to meet his skin if she tilted the waves. Thumb pressed to chin and then a laying of knots by the jawline, to the cheek. She needn’t lean in, there’s not much of a gap, and still… Lets the weight of her regard cross all of it. Attention he told her not to give, the investigation as her eyes seek beyond his. “Where have you gone? Where is the man who wanted to protect me from myself? From all the others that want me to warm their bed?”  Presses the thumb, softly to urge the tip of a chin, an attempt to expose the throat.  “You knew what would happen to me. You made me your accomplice from the start. So why should I be the only one to suffer? Because I look like a lady? Because I dare to exist?” 

“I could choke you for it. Tell me I’m lying.”  The drift again, the skim against skin, as the cup of her hand lays at his throat this time.  

“Why do you think I left that letter with you? Why do you think I didn’t speak of yours? I didn’t know what was coming, but I wanted something to. I wanted to see what you would do. I wanted to watch you.”

And then it lifts away. Her hand, her attention. Inclines to offer space instead, draws back. See if he likes it without the warmth of her, of anyone who looks at him like that.  Presses her hands to curve around the glass. Holds it out to him, “First taste or last, which do you prefer?” Draws her arm back in increments, from pressing it just shy of him. “There’s a very limited window on your decision. Tick Tock.” 

The arm, the hand, the glass, are tucking closer to her. She could part her lips to drink it, but it’s to speak instead. “I’m here because you didn’t treat me like I was delicate in mind, in will, and I like that. I want that. I want more than that. Don’t imagine I don’t.” Curves a smile to him then that would match the shape of her hand grasping the glass, pointer to thumb. So she sets her free hand to it, presses to the corners of her lips and sweeps her thumb against the flesh, before dropping it. 

The glass edges closer, “Make me your partner, as I have been, as I should be. Drink. Indulge me.” 

❝ What I think matters not one iota. And there’s some credit to the slumming, isn’t it? Good for the spirit. Hardens one, it does. After all, look what it’s done with you, ma lapine. Seems like you woke up hungry to be a blade. ❞

By the stars, who’s this girl? This once-girl? Who’s this man that stands before her, knee pressed to the table edge, close enough to smell the blood on her? Who’s this person, with knuckles bruised expectant ‘round the chalice? Who’s this man waiting for the liquor, the soul, the dark dredges of it to pour? They have been people, once.

There had been: a house. Not the house, not fucking whitehall, but a house. No, that’s not it, either: two houses, one for each. There had been: his medals bungled to his chest, his postcards from foreign lands, his trove of souvenirs. Women, midshipmen, James: there had been memories stored off like gifts, profligate, careless; pressed between book pages he thought he’ll have a world of time to open later on. Plenty of time, plenty of hours to rifle through it. Name and  rename all he has loved and left, because there was still more to find, more to hunt down and seize your lips around. There had been: Patience’s ropes of silk. There had been: Ayla’s petticoats, Ayla’s childhood stories. He never knew what those were. Never asked. But there must have been, isn’t there always, a wish to relive them. A wish to keep what cannot be kept. A wish to make the world sacred again. There had been: Ayla seeing his letter in Godhavn, and keeping quiet. Him thinking that’s how young ones are. Him thinking it tastes like gratitude. And then, Ayla at his door, frame shaking and furring in the night. His coat on her, because she made him think of his sister, made him think of all those women he had seen when they were still girls, had never took anything from them but the sound of how they laughed, how they moved before they understood men are watching, aren’t men always watching? What is a man but a thing that watches? What is a girl, or a thing people call one, but a thing that’s split asunder: maiden, midden, before and after. Before the understanding, and after it. God, there had been that, that and that alone. The sound of their laughter. It had possessed him, cleansed him all the same. A part of him was still there, in that room of late boyhood, surrounded by Winnie’s or Isabella’s friends. Watching them move about, inconspicuous, inauspicious, too. Creatures under the willow tree, clear of the bitter bark. Ayla made him think of that. Had wanted to protect her, didn’t even ask himself why, didn’t even think: fatherhood. But it was there, wasn’t it? It had to be. The idea that it might happen. The idea that London would have that, for him, another love still in the cards. A love whose nature did not beget leaving; a love where leaving was, indeed, as people claimed, impossible. Ayla had been a thing before the understanding; or so he had thought. There had been: his hope that maybe, just maybe, something he looked kindly upon won’t blow up into ruins. There had been: her hope, still nameless. Her decision to trust him. There was none of that now. We had seen, Ayla, as through a glass darkly: now face to face.

Now? She touches that bottle like it’s the girth of a cock. Nothing of the willow, nothing of the silk. Perhaps there never was. Could Marc ever tell? Had he ever understood, actually, at the forefront and the break, anything about it all? He’d been wrong about Pantea, hadn’t he? Wrong about this journey, about life, about what it meant to lay down for it all: about what it meant to serve in line to the crown. Stay in sight of it, teeth unclenched. He knows more of crowns, now, and how to tear them asunder. But of things to love, he still knows nothing.

He can’t look at her. Can’t really look away, either. The captain scrapes his chair back. His hand clenches on the sides of it, and he can hear the sound it draws out from both string and cushion, from screws and nails. With a jerk, he shakes off her touch as if she’d been trailing dirt. Trailing crusts of blood, Pippa’s blood, Pippa’s brain mashed to pulp, on his neat little oakwood table.

❝ Close your mouth, Ayla. ❞ He wills his voice not to strain, but his jaw is hinged too tightly for it. He wills a lot of notions, in and out, out and in. And the former admiral’s been running thin on willpower tonight. He’s been running thin on it all his life, to be precise. Whatever supply this mutiny exacts, whatever supply he needs to pare down to in order to see them all safe through the cliffs, can’t be squandered like this. Ducks and drakes, isn’t that it? Ayla is both. He could crush her with a touch. Perhaps, somehow, he already had. Christ’s sake, if only Dowling had seen sense. If only anyone, any damned soul on this ship, would see sense.

❝ Enough with the shake lurking. Your beggar’s cup is short of a coin, is that it? What are you making those eyes for? I was fool enough for one pair of eyes already, and the year’s not even up. What, haven’t you been put up to snuff with the rumour? It seems me and Montgomery have been tailing the same bed long before we fell in it. ❞ He laughs, rattles. The brandy must be worth its cap, for once, if he can think of her without screaming. If her name doesn’t lodge in his throat like a fish bone, a shiny river stone, a piece of his own rib.

A hand swats through the air. Staves it off, wind, thought, and skims the glass Ayla is offering. Skims whatever Ayla is offering. ❝ Well, know this: I don’t regret it. Every man should meet the thing he would die for. At least once in his life, you get me? Stare it in the face. Lose it, too, why not? They go hand in hand. But if you seem to think I’d twist my neck in this trap twice? Oh, beat the gun, love. ❞ In his throat he can sense a bone splintering, a snag on the lanyard. Doesn’t know if the ropes are worn down, already, or just starting to work. Whether at last, on the heights of it, into the straits, his heart has grown teeth. All that bite he never found; all that bite he never understood, except in increments, now crawling home. Perhaps something was waiting, inside him, for this. Perhaps this is what he should’ve been all along.

❝ Choke me? Suffer? Chit, you wouldn’t know suffering if it spread your legs. ❞

The captain’s eyes darken, harden. The more she speaks, the less light there is in them, in him. Like water under the washboard planks, the colour in the pupils swishes in and out.

❝ My partner? As you should have been? God, lass, in what story? Is that the play you fancy starring in? Do you want a knave in your marriage bed, Ayla Dowling? ❞ Another laughter, more meat to it, less bones. Estrada throws his head back, tight against the chair frame, and blinks until the ceiling blurs apart. Oh, Christ, it’d be funny, it’d be a real blast. If only he could make it funny. If only he could make it.

❝ And why the fuck not? It’s the very Victorian picture, after all. The wet dream of any proper debutante. But this isn’t London. Do you fail to understand even that much? We don’t dance by those rules anymore. Not for, and not against. Be a doll and try to follow. Nod if you agree, but do it without those fuck me eyes, cause they’ll get you nothing but a red face come tomorrow. Ladyship has nothing to do with it. I don’t trust you, Ayla, because I don’t trust people barely old enough to tie their laces. And I don’t trust people who would kill, even less endanger other lives, on the tail of a whim. Like that stunt you pulled with the island. What would happen, kid, if any of your many friends moved against me? Do you expect me to believe you wouldn’t murder us all to keep them safe? You amuse me. They breed them something different across the sea, by God they do. No, Ayla. There’ll be no partnership. The best you can do, for you and yours, is to keep the likes of Rowland peaceful and smart. Tell them to plot my murder all they please, after they’re off my ship. I’ll even let them disembark first when we reach mainland. A small courtesy. But until then... even spit the wrong way, and you’re all done for. We’ll throw you overboard without a bullet wasted. Dowling first. Boyne after. And I’ll finish with that deckhand lending his bed. Is that enough of a plan for you, partner? ❞

He raises from his seat. Crosses behind her, a swing of a step, and yanks the bottle. The captain’s head cocks to the door.

oh. now that’s just his luck. kane plasters a grin onto his face, knowing very well that this is the only way to handle this. talking always gets him everywhere, though right now he doesn’t quite care where that is exactly. despite their circumstances, he really doesn’t treat estrada’s authority with all that much—well, respect. when does he ever. maybe he should play the game, though; pretend, nod his head when needed, oh, i’m terribly sorry captain, i was just joking around. as if.

“stepped on some toes, i see.” no shame, captain or not, kane truly doesn’t give a fuck. the hole he’s digging is getting even deeper. he turns to face estrada properly, still smiling—kane never has the right face for the occasion. considers it a part of his charm. “don’t tell me you aren’t thinking the same thing. boyne, rowland, the lot of them, they’re bound to go against you. i’m just stating the obvious.”

”besides, believe it or not, i’m on your side in this. the hole?” he pauses. cants his head to the side, reaches out and taps a finger against marc’s chest (he’s crossed so many lines already, what’s another one). “we’re both in the same one. so we’d better start thinking how to get out of it.”

❝ Huh. The obvious, is it? I suppose a man ought to be downright thankful, for having your honesty free of charge. I’d be forgiven for assuming you’re experienced with mutinies, then, and well-read in the hearts of men? The way their spirits bend, or flare, or flag? Men who have served under the red longer than your scarlet mother must’ve nursed you at the teat? ❞ He clucks, a jeer of a praise. It’s a sound you make to cattle, to kernels, not human beings. It’s exactly the sound this mongrel should expect.

His posture mirrors the tilt. Neck stretches, stills; doesn’t so much as breathe or swallow through. Estrada fixes the empresario in the scope. He wonders, for a second, if he wants to tear into this man, this meal, now or later on. Is there anything in this small-town shopkeep he can use? Is there anything he can use in any of them still left alive, and not declared to his side? Reason says, wait for the passage, wait for this final piece of the map to be all drawn up. Oh, reason says and stays many things. But reason is a tight leash, never a long one.

It all depends on who heard the challenge. And on a ship like this one, whose helm had been taken so new, so roughly, there’s always someone to hear the challenge. The question is left open ended, narrow ended: there it is, an ellipse in the turn of his lips. Dot, dot, down.

As he had so often before, a trademark, a tradesman’s mark, his fingers inch to the younger man’s shoulder. They dive into the junction, the lazaret between vein and bone, where he presses in. The flesh gives, as it should. He uses the leverage to push Keane down. Not fully, not to the floor; that’d be a tall order for this pack of muscles. But enough to make him pitch forward. Estrada clasps his hand into a fist, keeps the bite on, until the other’s chest is pressed into the railing. His own chest comes up behind him.

“I don’t believe in sin. It’s just rules made up by men, for other men, to judge them. To imagine themselves better for keeping to them or breaking them. I don’t believe in sin, and you need no forgiveness from me.” Funny, how she can hear it but doubts that he can; the way her voice is ground down, seems to come from below her feet. Wonders how it makes any sound at all, when her throat aches with the spilling of words or lack of them, from the water, from the swallowing down of something as mundane a concept as sin. 

Syllables float instead of stretch out, elongate by the scrape of them. How can it be.  How can she be standing at all… oh that’s right, she’s not. Had pressed herself into the chair as soon as it appeared before her, in her path. Only she doesn’t look quite so rigid as he does, nor so worn down. Funny. Funny. It’s all so fucking funny. To return from an attempt to save them all, with her best friend heartbroken, and her dear friend expiring. What use are words supposed to be. Why is she talking at all. Why did she start. To return from the pursuit of something, the hunt, to be hunted once more. Trapped, while the hunter pretends it’s a kindness, pretends no blood will be spilled or has. Well she has seen an animal in a trap, seen how bloody it gets trying to escape, trying to regain control- even if it is only in their own pain, their own hurt. 

Marcus Estrada stretches his palms out and she inclines her head. Looks to his face instead, for it’s a beat of distraction. Stops her placing her hands on top and provoking something with all the blood on them. With all the heat of them.  “Where shall I rest, Marc?” Doesn’t call him sir, or Vice-Admiral, wont call him Captain. “You’re always so keen to see me to rest, but never direct me to where or how. I haven’t got a place to rest, and you’ve got men in every nook that would see me pay for association.” And then the hands, the scatter of them on the table, the dance of fingertips as she pushes out the stiffness, the ache, turns them like a fan to conceal and reveal. “I’ve already bled for you today.” 

Reaches for the bottle instead. Drags it by the neck across the table, teetering all the way. only her fingertip pressed to the mouth. “You’re not foolish.” Less of a statement than a plea, only she can’t commit to that. ‘Don’t give me those eyes’. She wont. She’ll give him something different. “If you truly don’t want any more of this. You know not to threaten me.”

“If you truly don’t want any more of this.” Tilts the bottle this time, nail catching on the opening as she pushes, and draws it back to settle. “You would put Malachy Dowling in a cabin, and give him a steward, a minder, a friend, even me. And you wouldn’t hear a peep about it.” 

She has the grasp of it, the bottle neck, draws it to her lips and takes a drag. Keeps it for another, before sliding it across. Leaning the same. Encroaching past a mid-point. “It’s very theatrical, I’ll give you that. Whoever’s on scenery has a flair for it. And you’re very admira..ble. Only you’re wasting energy, when you could be using it for something else. Instead of making your loyalists march down stairways and look to the former Captain. Or trail after me, any one else you’ve got an eye for. It could be neat, no blood, no dramatics. How many friends do you think I have on this ship, through presumed kindness, not force? Use me. And I don’t mean the doe eyes at your door in the early hours. I mean the person who wants the same as you.”

❝ Forgiveness? ❞ His voice is heavy, mocking. It carries inside it things he never knew he could pick up, never knew he could carry. Knew? No: pictured. It’s not a thing of knowledge, it’s how the paint is cutting on. And when he painted his portraits, the ones without glory, without much gore, God willing, it wasn’t in this cold-blooded vein. He pushes his elbows on the table, pushes away the distance between them. Cleaves a greater distance with it.

❝ I don’t remember asking for it. ❞

It strikes him, now, that he had almost held this creature close. Almost took her home. Where would he have put her? A solid marriage in London? Her balcony overlooking Hyde Park, while he went across it to tear Parliament throats? Almost sat down with Dowling over her, dished it out: Cap’n, I know you’ve got hell and hassle on your back, but you need to mind her. I’d be one to know, I’ve got one on my fucking hands too, the Stanley girl. It’s never easy work. But you need to stay on her, don’t let her tied up with... well, bloody fucking anyone on this ship, really. What were you thinking, Dowling?

What are you thinking, Ayla?

It strikes him he would ruin her, if he had to. Strikes him, too, that she can take her to bed. She’s certainly fucking selling it, clear as anything, clear as the worst thing he’s ever seen. If anything would make his stomach curl, curdle, is how close he is to it: the point of no return. Yes, it’s not much, to ruin a thing who’d consent, for a barter, a bargain made in blood. What would be the pleasure in that? No, a better question, a worse feeling: what would be the purpose? Pleasure has nothing to do with it, with him; not anymore. He’s chasing a ghost. People think Estrada doesn’t realize it, but he does     he’d understood he will be known only by her, defined by her, since that day in Godhavn. Next to his name, always an asterisk. Next to his heart, her shawl. Funny, how if he’d let it be known aboard, he could rack up more sympathy. Funny, how even this he is considering: cashing in his pain. There’s no end to it, is there? What he’s capable of; what he’s ready to. Such a wide fracture, between ability and desire; between what a man would carry down to hell, if he was pressed to, and what a man could hardly wait to do. Because he’s not just chasing a ghost. He’s chasing a war, a fuck you spat out in dark blood: with England, with fate, with all of it. While Ayla, well, they are chasing... what, exactly? Nosing his arm with a puppish nose, just hoping he’ll raise it? Hoping he’ll swing the order, let Dowling go?

It strikes him he can bait her with Montgomery. Bait him with her. It strikes him that this doe, this thing he’s spent a cold dawn freezing his arse off just to hear out their troubles, just to make sure she’s safe, is now nothing but an instrument to him. The line of her neck into an easel. The swell of her breast into a blade. No, there is no end to it.

❝ You’re on some high notions, Mrs. Dowling. Didn’t know you were much one for theater, but here we are, the two of us: both with a few tricks up their sleeves. I won’t do us both the disgrace of asking just what in God’s name happened to your cabin. And even without one, well, you’re up to slum a night or two, aren’t you? Why else would you have gone and put that ugly little show for? ❞

It strikes him he should at least wonder about this. About himself. Whether he would be ruthless enough to       ruthless, strong, is there any difference? He used to look at powerful men and laugh. He used to say, no, no, have at it. Keep your brawling, your elbowing, your slandering with mud. I’m on the sideline of this skirmish, the easy line of it. Don’t worry, I’ll swoop in to pick your bones when it’s all done; pay Villiers to write about it, pay someone else to make look it worse than it is. Scandal, sanctimony, Ludgate Hill? Nah. Not for me. What need have I for a higher goal? I am in love with it, with all of it: life, the fire itself.

No more. Perhaps those men had as little of a choice as he did. But whether they did, or didn’t, it scarcely fucking matters now: they were still fools. They were still playing on the wrong side of it all. Kings, princes? Wales, Halifax, Culloden? What need have they for it? There never was a silver mouth above York. There never was the Gods’ hand in Kent.

Would you understand it, Ayla Dowling, if I spelled it out for you? Or are you still so stained by the past, still stained by the awful fog of it all?

He stops the bottle mid-slide. Mid-motion, mid-section of her palm. Estrada raises it, drinks down. ❝ Bled for me? Do you mean to say you staged this? Sneaked out in the middle of the world ending, the sky falling, just so I can have my seat at the table? Isla, draw it mild. Me and your uncle would’ve always come to this. He still thinks he can redeem himself to London. Still thinks there is anything left to save in there. Me? Those who have come to my side? We plan to find the passage and then sell its route to the highest bidder. Get rich, drop off in golden ports, and then sail on. ❞

when: while the rescue party’s away where: the ship’s chapel with: @intrepidim

The proof is in the pudding, as it were. It was one thing to recommend the vice-admiral seek out his wise council and an entirely different one to see him make good on it. Is it poor form for a chaplain to express ( quite visible ) surprise toward the person that waits for him inside? Though, it’s poor form for a chaplain to bust his knuckles on bounty hunters jaws, too; so he twines his recently wrapped hands behind his back and prays it all comes out in the wash. Bids goodbye to the crew members he’d been chatting with since their convergence in the hall, waving them off to their watch shift on deck. Stay warm, lads.

Now, to the sight awaits him in the chapel. Estrada’s silhouette as commanding as ever; more so in the small, lamplit space. Laurents ducks through the doorway. “Vice-admiral,” He dips his head by way of greeting, “—please,” he gestures toward the small spread of seating. “Make yourself comfortable.”

His eyes turn the chapel upside down better than his arms, or indeed any of his lackeys ever could. The dark slant of them goes under the cushions, muddy the upholstery with the scorn they’re spitting. They graze the candleholders, drink in the flame, and then breeze indifferently to the heaped books, the rifling papers, the cranium luster of this place.

When the Captain’s pupils trace back to the priest, they’re sneering. Sprouted teeth, sprouted a newly minted contempt. Quite the fall from the good graces of the Benedictines, no? I bet you’re having a grand time, away from the safety and luxury you sacrificed so much to ensure.

❝ Always do, Father. Comfort’s my natural state—haven’t you seen? ❞ He remains stock-still. Feet rooted, they now point westward, heels at treacherous ease on the planks. On his thigh, his fingers begin to drum a broken pace. ❝ I do imagine you’ve picked the wrong benefactor, Laurents dear. Sohrab is wedged deeper in my head than you can imagine, and even if they weren’t, they’d still have sold you for an ashtray. Let us see you walk your chalks, now. What’s this bit I’m hearing, about you having worked at Salpêtrière? ❞  

lower deck; near private cabins / open to: everyone ig do whateVER u want with this

“so, what d’you reckon? how long until captaincy shifts back around?” the coin flips up and down kane’s hand, balanced over his knuckles; a family heirloom, believe it or not, he’s neglected it, though, it‘s filthy now, lost all it‘s shine. he’d throw it away but his fingers are so used to the weight of it, kane wouldn’t be able to pull the trick with a different one. 

his fist closes around the piece of metal. kane cracks a grin at the other. leans back against the wall, arms crossed in front of him, ignores the weight of the knife stuck into his belt. perhaps it risky, to go about without a gun—everyone seems to have emptied out the armory. but then he doesn’t really stick his nose out of his cabin these days, unless he absolutely has to. even now, there’s about ten steps separating him from the safe haven of his quarters. “nobody’s stupid enough to think there isn’t going to be pushback. dowling has way too many hounds ‘round here. miracle, that none of them haven’t tried anything yet.”

                                                        ⁎⁎⁎

He’s taking his sweet time with it. It’s only customary to do so, after all—enjoy the exact moment before you’re about to wring a man’s misery out. You’re meant to savor it, so he does. God knows there’s little else to savor now. Marcus swills the expectancy of cruelty, the building momentum of it, through his mouth. Like fine liquor, it goes down the throat, while Keane jabs on. There is little to do but catch him. Leg it out, now, when he’s finally got some rat in the net?

It’d be an insult to the chase, the chopping of heads and lessons, if he rushed through the deed. So Estrada hovers behind the coin-tosser. Waits until he’s meted out his point, oh, the full swing of it, and keeps his face deadpan. Only his eyes send a quiet signal to the poor sod Keane’s talking up to, down to. Let him know, and I’ll gut you. So the sailor, too, keeps mum. Marcus hopes his attempt at blank slates, blank countenance, is more flattering on him than on the other. His eyes deepen, darken, and         

Finally, the sailor squeaks. That’s his cue. Marcus shooes him off with a look of disdain, unreined, unrepentant, and then snaps his fingers right by the empresario’s ear. Would rip it off, he could; where does it come from, this brimless, brimful need for blood? And how did he become so good at hiding it? A polished mien creeps onto his face. Blots out all else.

❝ Are you having a blast, Mr. Keane, or is your back hurting from how deep you’ve just dug your hole?  ❞

“My — the captain, a past? How sordid. Really now, one pictures the good man materializing fully-formed,” Nour flicks their wrist, fingers spreading mid-air, “Springing out from some mythic wellspring of tedious heroes with stalwart dispositions.” A breathy sigh. Their hand falls. They palm Marcus’ cigar box, briskly drumming a pulse on its white rim. “Would you believe this excerpt of a legendary ballad — some years ago in an unnamed Irish hamlet, a debilitated mother was expecting a red-cheeked, bawling babe. Picture the shock when she gave birth to a man uniformed out of the womb, tall as a door and with the phlegmatic complexion to match. Not a thread of history to this newborn gentleman and rumour has it, my dear, the Royal Navy snapped up this phenomenon of the modern world within a breath and a half. Why, enough time for a sparrow to blink and miss an earthworm.”

Their eyes grow dark as coal tar. “Sheer goodness is simply… insipid. Mundane. The same tale for centuries, older than cuneiform.” An armoured insect crawls on the wall behind Marcus, silent scratch of barbed legs against damp wood. Barely conscious of it, their nails mirror the delicate motion. “I’d enjoy discussing our Captain’s unspoken past in further detail. Only ballroom gossip — we might even fit a waltz between it all, all the better match the mood.”

When Nour looks down, paper-thin curls of wood are nestled between their fingertips. Smeared to dust as Nour sits back, dithering between cigars and selecting the one with an embossed label facing front. “As always —” they flip the lid shut, raising a cigar to their mouth. “I appreciate your discernment in all things of luxury and commodity, Marcus. Might I pardon you to light it for me.”

❝ Draw it mild, now ❞, he cautions, tuts them as if they were a headstrong child. The usurper’s eyes drift sideways, mull over the proposal. Nour talks like a damned catalogue, everything dug from the ground with maggots still fastened, thrown onto the market stall. He can’t pick what they’re bartering. More importantly, Dowling himself wouldn’t. He’d never trust them.

The palisade of their arm flings out. Expectant, insouciant; he’s got little do but humour them. The once-admiral bends at the waist, the wrist, the wish for it. He lights up their cigar. God, he could do with someone giving him what he needs, for once: a dealmaker, a thing that can swing the tide decisively. There’s something half beyond the pale to the columnist, always, without fault, and it makes for a vicious arena even when Marc is on his best behavior. On days like this, it sets him on edge. But... fondly, somehow. As though they are some wayward sibling, some fox cub found on the front porch. After all, did Nour not humour him so many times before? When there was still joy in it? When the risks were only surface level, chipping a tooty, denting a name? His hand moves to his neck, touches away the stiffness in it. Bats off the eyes he feels have latched there, set up camp inside the joints, began to notarize every fiber in the muscle. Everything’s a tally; nowhere did he realize that quicker than on this ship.

❝ God, so be it. Do you want to curry favour with Dowling? Some aide-de-camp of his? I give you free rein. Waltz them, wrench their guts round your neck, have a party of it. It’s not like you can make them trust us less, can you? Just, for once, do tell me what you have in mind—before you get caught up in the poetics of it. ❞

( estrada’s quarters / the night of the mutiny, late / @intrepidim )

elias has often thought that he’d make a good scriptwriter. not a figurehead, no, not one to face outwards, to lead the rally cry. but to spin the words themselves, weave them into something to pull at the heartstrings, to fasten the knot at the throat? yes, he thinks he could become good at that. he thinks, given enough nurturing, he might have a sort of knack for it. 

which is to say: he knows how to pull out an emotion. coax tears and rage in equal measure. he knows how to move the hearts of men, in one direction or another. what he doesn’t know is when to stop.

he makes his way to the vice-admiral’s quarters with the fluidity of the drunk, even as he has never felt more sober. eyes too bright, smile too placid. he wonders, idly, what estrada’s rage will taste like. a blow to the jaw, perhaps, to set his head ringing, ringing, until it empties of all else. how lovely. or perhaps: he’ll fasten him on the spot, hold him down until he goes numb with it. the cool, blanketing weight of another to force him into sleep, force him into peace. it doesn’t sound at all that unpleasant, now, not compared to what he knows of waking life.

elias enters the room without knocking, without greeting. estrada is seated at the small table in the captain’s former room, the space made to entertain groups of the most intimate guests. papers lay about like abandoned thoughts. the steward approaches him, passes over the chair nearest, the chair across from the man. slides, instead, into the one directly next to him. sets his elbows on the table and leans into them, into estrada’s space, setting his chin in one hand and looking at him appraisingly.

“did you know pippa?” elias says, suddenly, in lieu of a greeting. not giving the man a chance to ask any questions, like: what the fuck are you doing in my room, because he has a piece to say tonight, and he intends to get through it before he gets whatever is coming to him. “the dead girl. she was so lovely, in life. i knew her in london, distantly– a friend of a friend, dearest of a dear one. too busy being lovely to spare me the time of day, but i’d never blame her for it, not an inch. an afternoon in her presence would have been an honor to me, frankly. though i suppose that’s off the table now.”

as he speaks, he drops one hand. traces a pattern in the wood grain with it, following the line of the table until he reaches vice-admiral’s own palm. traces over the lines there too, around the wrist, up the forearm. stares him down, eye to eye, like a deer to a lantern. “she was still warm, you know. even in all that cold. warm up until the moment she was taken from me. warm when she was laid down in the infirmary bed. might still be warm, considering…” he wonders if his eyes are glowing. it feels like they are. it feels like he’s on fire. “such a recent tragedy. i don’t suppose there’s been enough time for the blood to pool, you know? not yet. not in the wrists…” he taps the base of estrada’s palm. “or the elbows…” his hand snakes under the vice-admirals, until it reaches the hinge of the arm. presses once. “or…”

the hand holding up his chin suddenly falls, flickers like a leaf to land on estrada’s leg. slides down, down, curls under the flesh there, even as he never breaks eye contact. “the underside of the thighs. all the normal places for a corpse. but you didn’t wait that long, did you? couldn’t wait until her body was in the ground–”

he leans forward, boxing estrada in now, the fingers on his forearm digging in, the hand under his thigh leverage to pull himself closer to the man. “before you had to stage your fucking mutiny. a person is dead, and you couldn’t wait for her to be put to some semblance of rest, before– what, changing our sailing route? but no, no, of course not. the murder of a lovely thing isn’t enough to stop the plans from ticking along, no? not for men like you.”

It’s funny, how the steward slinks forward. Funny, how save for Sohrab, whose hand he had led across the deck and into the lap of victory, no one has touched him in quite some time. Before the mutiny. Before her. Funny, how the intruder didn’t even think to change a shift of clothes.  How he had gone through an afternoon without someone ordering him out of that coat is beyond the captain’s understanding. The mulch on his boots fastens to the floorboards. Funny, that, too. Not funny enough to deter Estrada from thinking, of course, the unending mental insignia: someone will have to clean that, come morning. Still     - it’s funny, the sight Elias cuts.

It’s a proper carry on, this one, until it isn’t. Oh, he nursed no illusions: he still remembers the boy took a shine to Dowling, a shine and a stiff one, who’s there to judge? Old Malachy could still draw the colts to him, that’ll likely never change, unless he gets himself a bullet wound smack in the middle of his head. No, Marcus expected the boy is here to give him a telling off. A how dare you, stamp of honour, stomp out. The rigmarole. Again: funny.

But then he goes and mentions Pippa. The name is barely out, doesn’t have time to slide out from the stupid hole that births it, and Estrada’s body rears up. His nostrils flare. Around them, the colour goes out, seeps as if someone punctured it. On the table, everything stills. Underneath it, his lungs fill with something viscous. Like phlegm, like bilge water, he cannot think through it.

Oh, Elias Shaw, for this I will tear you apart.

❝ Make the plans stop? ❞ It’s a good thing the other drew so closely. This way, Marc can smell the sweat and ice on him, the grief coming in vapours. This way, he can curl his nose, a lever of disgust, and then laugh in his face. At all of it. Touch, and feeling, and litany too. ❝ No, no. No way about it, boy. The death of a lovely thing? That’s what makes plans tick into motion. That’s what makes the best of them succeed. ❞

The Arctic?, Pippa had asked. Tell me more, oh, please tell me more! He can almost hear it; smell it. It overlaps with Shaw, with the fucking grime on him. She was drinking champagne, they both were        Marc remembered how it put him in quite the tight spot, having to pour it for her. Risk her getting hot in her cup, or risk facing her wrath. Christ’s sake, the mouth she had. The temper. Ever since the nursery room: she was ten, twelve, and already could talk him red in the face. He had thought she could win over empires. He had wished she’d never have to.

The steward’s eyes stick to him like resin. It’d be just as easy to pop them. Like breaking a seal.

He settles for breaking him instead. ❝ But tell me        where were you when your friends legged it? Walked out to meet death, shake its hand? Brave, traitorous, the lot of them. Foolish, too. Don’t mistake me for agreeing. Yet also quite... efficient. It got all of us where we’re standing now. But you? What tight nook did you crawl into that night? You certainly weren’t in the surgeon’s room. Or the salvage party, perhaps? Did you go out of your way, made an awful run for it, and saved something in particular? No reports mention it. It’s like you never took part at all. ❞ His lips pull into a smile. They’re so chapped, and so drained of blood, that they feel the inside of a scar. The white-worm of it, unhealed. His voice is close to that. Close, worse. His voice is the sound the hull was making when the ice petrified, when their ship was stranded. A thing trapped, now entrapping.

The Captain leans into Elias.

❝ Watched all of it, did you? Wrote it down, too? The saga of some scruffy boy, a nothing from nowhere—and all the things he could not save. Please, kid. You bore me an awful sort. Go break into the pantry, rummage through all the sludge. Drink ‘til you can’t walk straight again, by all means. Foaming around the mouth at the first lick of good champagne. That’s how it gets you by the throat, no? The taste of what you’ve never had? Tip tap, then. Fuck off to Devon Island, if you’re keen on it. The tawdriness of courage. You’ve got the flapping of a fish about you; just as much slime, and just as little guts. That’s more like the poem I’d seen in you, way back when. Go spill your glass, or your guts, on someone else’s trousers. I’m not the man who’d think twice about it, now, before bleeding an apology out of you. ❞

location: the great cabin.  time: post-mutiny.  with: @intrepidim​.

“my dear captain.” all the proper titles, all the proper greetings — a slight curtsy and demure smile, a straightening of her spine and a fidgeting with her necklace. she wanted to be the only thing soft out here, even while the ice around them turned back to water. as silence began to creep its way back to the room, she let out a delicate sigh, as if she was the one with the weight of the ship on her shoulders, as if she was the only one here who sought to understand him. “we are simply having a dreadful time of it, aren’t we?” 

she spoke to him like she might her husband: oh, you grand and brilliant thing, look at this idea you have, let me support all you are. “if only there was some sort of news i might return to the other guests. sparkling words from our captain — something to raise our spirits. after all, even our dinners seem to have taken on a tragic quality to them, and tragedy can only hold our interest for so long… i trust you, i’m sure you know, but the others hardly recognize you yet.”

She comes to him with the steadiness of a ship’s chandler, a seasoned gait and a supply to match it. What will you buy today, her face says, even as her hands rifle anywhere but on the money purse. Shall it be turpentine? Varnish? Or just the usual repairs to pride     to purpose? His St. Helena in the fog.

He’d known Winnifred Hastings all his grown life. No, earlier still: boyhood. Was around sixteen when she’d first come to London, and was looking much the same, in the gist of it, the nub of sharp teeth, bets you call but cannot match. For all that the clothes on her were quite another sight. He remembers furs, silk hats that drooped like lambrequins. Remembers silver nets, feathers, plumage, until the rumour went that you could see the trail of her through every bedchamber she visited. Molting snake skins, molting whims.

He would take her down at Carlton, have her laugh the roughshod machismo out of soldiers. He’d show her the dregs, the faint residue, that still stood proof there’s a life outside England, or France, or the States. In return, she would set him up with new money, bloodless money. There were some places not even his father’s bills could reach: what you needed was clean gold, the kind that shines like a newborn’s forehead. It was Hastings’ friends that gave it to him, back then. It strikes him, now, that neither of them had loved the things they had to do for it. No, perhaps never. But that’s all there was, no? Noblesse oblige.

So how can he explain it to her, now, that everything he’s doing is against it?

❝ Rest easy, Lady Macbeth      I won’t ask you to clean my mess for me. ❞ The smile is donned, but doesn’t reach anything else. Marcus draws back to the window hull. ❝ Though there’s something to be said, here, isn’t it? About your art with a sponge, with a brush? About how good you’d be at twisting it inside out? ❞ He speaks without turning: a strategic misstep, perhaps, a thing that goes against the tenets of manipulation. Or perhaps it’s exactly the opposite. He wants her to know he’s not playing his hand.

The Captain’s eyes stay trained to the waves. The sea, the open sea. His fingers seize into a fist. ❝ You can tell them whatever you want. Weave a story, muck the whole thing up, it’s all the same. None of them will understand anyway, will they? How a life could look without England’s long shadow hovering like a crow to the dead. I’ll have to show them, first. We’ll have to. What do you say, Winnie? Will you kill the past with me? ❞

( estrada’s quarters / after the mutiny / @intrepidim )

“evening, marcus,” she says, and the choice of name, the greeting is– it’s a choice, certainly. as is her getup for the evening: a commitment to the shedding of pretenses, starting with her clothes, which she’s replaced with a pilfered set of crewmen’s trousers and shirt and vest. her arms crossed, loose, behind her back, and her chin cocked up. it is important that she comes to him tonight not as a woman, but as a blank slate. something that could be brought to an equilibrium with him, if not quite equal; some version of herself that might hold the kind of power she’s never been able to sort out through all the hoop skirts and petticoats, that feminine sensuality never a tool for her as much as a confusion projection from an outside source, her body less woman than weapon, a tool with a use to an end. that end being getting her from point A to the fucking jackpot, which means, tonight: fuck the corsets. she’s got work to do. and she means to be taken seriously for it.

so she’s hoping for a visual leveling at play in her choice of dress. less level is her eyeline, as she smirks down at estrada where he’s sitting at his desk, enjoying the moment of being above. unceremoniously she plonks down a bottle in front of him, directly on the papers he’d been shuffling through. condensation from the glass leaks onto the parchment, spots the table. it’s the most expensive fucking thing katja could find aboard the whole ship, and she knows he’ll recognize it for what it’s worth, if not for what it means for her to have it. that she’s been everywhere, because she can get everywhere. 

“nice to finally meet you. i’m mathilda goddard, and i’m a fucking genius at this,” she gestures, vaguely, to the air around them. to an idea of criminality, of revolt, of against the grain. “so use me or don’t, but i’m going to become someone’s nuisance soon– now’s your chance to make sure it’s not yours. also, i want a gun. and maybe a title.”

The ‘marcus’, now, that one he could’ve let slide. These things happen, in the rapids of power-shifting, in the clang of the chessboard turning over. People get restless with their liberties. Want to push it, don’t they, even past a reasonable breaking point. It’s the only ways they can remind themselves they’ve still got a spine on: dulls the confusion, the bedlam of it all, and adds an iron winch to the backbone. Too many good commanders, good leaders of armies and temples, fail to learn this lesson  -    lives and voyages are lost to it. Insubordination can be just as useful, in the long run, as the most dogged obedience. So he thought when he saw Katja Sorenson, the world’s most useless translator to date, advance into his room like an ink blot spreading. Ah, what the hell? Let her play the old harry, if that’s the only thing she can do; it’s not as though Marc can throw them overboard without facing quite some opprobrium.

So he latches his arms together, spares a frown. But then the chit is up in his fucking face. Look, there—she’s just gone and bunched up the letters. He would have this posted as soon as they reach the next port of call; there’s dozens of it, hundreds, maybe, that need to reach all throughout China and Hong Kong. Further, still, inside India. He can hardly spare the time to write them all over again; and barely trusts anyone with what he has to say. What he has to sell. All of Britain’s secrets; all of Britain’s ghosts.

His lips pull back, ready to tear into her. Then the Captain’s eyes peal to the label. It’s a cognac, no, it’s the one bottle. The stash that has the power to call the game. He knows he has stored this away himself, when the going got bad. When no one, and nothing could be trusted with such a thing at hand’s reach, mind’s reach     - not even his own. Not with the long nights, the long hours he spent waiting for the sky to pitch into his window.

He kept it hidden because he understood, early enough into his naval days, that every ship needs not only anchor, but also an amulet, an amphora. It got them through the Euphrates, a lifetime ago. It got Parry out of his own share of doom, when the leads stayed close for three consecutive springs down Baffin Bay. The right spirits, at the right time, could mean everything. This ichor might’ve drawn the entire stranded crew from a stalling point, a self-defeatist jaw, and launched them on the working path once more. Thankfully, there seemed to be no need to: yet.

If only he could’ve stored women and saints just as easily. The other two notions most men would kill for, kill because. But up until now, no saints were captured, and no women had been allowed in the arctic so profligately ( he’s gotten some fucking clue as to why ).

The fact that she took it meant she tracked down the key. Not only the key, but also the lock; often there’s a double question to it, a lining to the seams. His arms spread out: speak, then. You’re here to bargain: do it. ❝ You’re already my nuisance, chit. I’ve got you so far up my arse I can taste the smoke on you. Now, that is not much of a start to set us off, is it? So I’d suggest you bring up two glasses, then sit the hell down. If you want to act the iconoclast, go ahead and call me Marcus. Call me fucking uncle for all I care. But be a fair sport and inform me      how the hell should I call you? And, even better: why? ❞