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There are vast swathes of ocean, out in the distance of the sea, where you can sail for weeks without spying land. Water carpets the world from horizon to horizon; blue, green, grey, in tiny white tipped ripples or storm tossed waves, and a man can easily forget what it feels like to stand on solid stone. Out here, the wet, living sea may as well be a desert for all the good its water does for a mortal man. A ship with an imprudent quartermaster and too few great barrels of fresh water can see its crew die from thirst, surrounded by water that may as well be poison.
And in a place like this, where you can sail for weeks with no sign of land, you can sail for just as long without passing another ship at all. Trade routes from one corner of the empire to the other are far more careful than to send their ships out into the watery desert. Those ships that do lose their way, and there are plenty of them where there is nothing to guide you but the stars and the endless blue, are hapless and helpless. Perfect prey for pirates.
The crew of the Sorcerer’s Chalice, buccaneers and privateers and upstanding citizens of the British Empire, have just pulled a man out of the water. There is no ship for miles around, and the slab of strange material to which he clung to save his life is clearly not timber from any ship. But, while he is soaked to the bone, squeezing fistfuls of water out of his curly dark hair and the rags he is wearing as clothes, he seems in good health. He even seems to be in high spirits.
The crew of the Sorcerer’s Chalice hope to change this.
---
Left Ear Jansen hadn’t bothered to sound the alarm when he’d seen a dead body floating in the water. Only the captain and two of the ship’s mates were even below deck, so there’d not been much point. And once he’d realised the body in the water was a living man, ringing the bell would have only earned him scorn. By the time the sunburnt wretch was coughing up water on the deck of the Chalice the whole crew, eight men, were crowded around to leer down at him.
For his part, the man didn’t seem too concerned, but Left Ear knew they could change his mind. “Look here, boys!” he crowed, “We’ve found a mermaid!” There was a chorus of ill-intentioned laughs. “Why don’t we see if we can make it sing?”
The waterlogged man looked up from his prone position, wiping his lips and disturbing Left Ear’s rhythm by laughing along with the crew. “Ha, you’ll be lucky.” he said weakly. “I don’t even do karaoke.” He half straightened, propping himself up on his elbows. “Can anyone tell me where I am?”
His apparent lack of concern rankled Left Ear, but teaching poor witless idiots their last lesson was something pirates became very good at over the years. “Where y’ are?” he asked, grinning nastily. “You should worry more about how much trouble you’re in, little mermaid!”
Still unconcerned, the man looked around at the crowd of dangerous looking faces. He was pale underneath the sun burn, with long fingered hands like a musician, and he looked like he’d grown too tall for his weight. A long thin streak of nothing, there wasn’t a single pirate on the crew who weighed less than twice as much as he did wet. “I’m guessing a lot.” he said slowly. “Maybe just tell me what sea we’re in?” Left Ear let his predatory grin widen. “The name of the ship, then.”
Left Ear lunged forward and hauled the man up by the front of his shirt. “Ar, well, that I’ll tell ye.” he said. In three steps he dragged the man, as light as he looked, over to the edge of the deck and bent him over the balustrade to stare down at the churning water. With one hand on the back of the hapless fool’s neck, Left Ear pushed forward until his feet started to leave the deck. “That there is our Captain’s sea, and this-” he tapped sharply on the balustrade, “-is the Sorcerer’s Chalice.”
He paused to let that sink in. The Chalice was the most feared ship on the sea these past four years. But the stranger kept on struggling under him, reaching for balance. “The Sorcerer’s Chalice?” he asked breathlessly, no hint of fear in his voice. “Who calls a ship the Sorcer…oh.” Aided by the way his wet clothes slipped on the smooth wood, he twisted out of Left Ear’s grasp and stood. “Let me guess. Captain Fey?”
Left Ear grinned again, showing off his eight or nine teeth. “Knew you’d have heard of us. But I in’t Captain Fey. You wanna pray you don’t meet-”
“No, I know you aren’t Captain Fey, Captain Fey’s a lot prettier than you.” He looked Left Ear up and down. “Well. She could hardly be… um.”
He shrugged apologetically, but a horrified ripple ran through the assembled pirates. Before Left Ear even knew it he had his sword out and pressed against the stranger’s throat. He backed him against the balustrade and watched his eyes widen. “And who was it,” he hissed, “Told you our captain was a woman?”
The stranger cringed as far back as he could with the wooden balustrade in the small of his back and the sea far below. “I, er… someone must’ve told me… on land?” he said, staring up at the sky over the blade at his throat. “Do, do people not know she’s a woman then?”
Left Ear pulled his sword back so he could lean forward and whisper in the man’s ear. “No one told you on land. Reason bein’, anyone who knows the cap’n’s secret, we kill ‘em.”
“Oh.” Even now the stranger looked more chagrined than really afraid. “You must kill a lot of people… it must be a hard secret to keep, I expect, what with Captain Fey being such a fine lady as she is.” He was smiling in a placating fashion, but as he looked around at the pirates his face fell. “You’re going to throw me back overboard, aren’t you?”
“Oh, we’re going to throw you overboard, little mermaid.” Left Ear breathed, “But not before we hear you sing.” He drew his sword arm back, searching the sea blue eyes in front of him for the fear he’d become accustomed to. When all he found was annoyance and resignation, he resolved to make the bastard squeal –
“What is going-?” Captain Fey was on deck, having appeared noiselessly as she always did. When she spotted the stranger, and Left Ear’s sword poised to strike, her eyes grew wider than he’d ever seen in her. If Left Ear hadn’t seen her gut a man with a fishhook not three weeks before, he would’ve sworn that she paled. “Merlin?”
A grin broke across Merlin’s face, even while Left Ear held him, and he waved merrily to Captain Fey. “Ah,” he called, “captain, my captain!”
A look of thunder filled Captain Fey’s eyes. “What. The fuck. Are you doing on my ship?”
“There was a slight miscalculation.” Merlin answered amiably. “All the roads to Hell’s lowest circle were blocked by adverse weather… I figured here was the next best option.”
The captain glared, then her eyes fell on Left Ear. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, let him go.” She said, then gestured sharply. “No, throw him in the sea. No, let him go, I’ll throw him in the sea.” Hesitantly, Left Ear released his hold, and Merlin stepped away from the balustrade.
“Please don’t throw me in the sea. I’ve been in the sea for two days.” He wrung out the front of his shirt and dripped expressively on the deck.
“What the fuck were you doing in the sea?”
“…floating?”
Now that they were standing face to face, Left Ear could see that there was a distinct resemblance between the castaway idiot and their captain. Both had the same dark hair, Captain Fey’s falling in waves instead of Merlin’s loose curls; they had the same pale complexion, and behind the captain’s lashes, kohl smeared against the sun, they had the same piercing blue eyes. They even had the same high sharp cheekbones. Left Ear tried not to think the burgeoning thought that he had just tried to kill Captain Fey’s brother, but it was hard.
It got easier after Captain Fey hauled off and punched Merlin in the mouth, but only a little. Merlin reeled back and gasped. “Ahh… and bleeding. I’m now bleeding. Thank you, so very much.”
Captain Fey shook out her fist. “You’re welcome. Get below deck, find my cabin and wait there.”
---
The captain’s cabin in the Sorcerer’s Chalice would rival the flagship of any royal navy for opulence. The bed, flush against the wall, had four posts and a canopy. There was a writing desk that could have passed for a dining table, ornate wooden chairs, and a vanity over by the bed. Most all of the available surfaces were filled with silks, jewelled necklaces and pearl-handled pistols. On the wall over the vanity’s mirror hung a cutlass that any novice could identify as Toledo steel.
Merlin Ambrosius sat at the desk and dabbed at his split lip, running his tongue over the rough broken skin. He’d tried magically healing it, but somehow the spark just wouldn’t come. That didn’t mean he was entirely without magic, he knew – it could be just healing magic that was beyond him, or that he was only capable of small parlour tricks again. A hundred years in the future, he had once woken up incapable of any act of magic less than enough to move a mountain. So he’d forced himself not to fret, and found the most expensive looking piece of white fabric he could find to staunch the bleeding. It was a dainty white glove, and he had no doubt that Morgan was very fond of it.
As if thinking of her had summoned her, Morgan was suddenly at the door, with the man who’d tried to pitch Merlin over the side of the boat at her heels.
“…but I don’t have t’ like it.” he was saying in a low voice. Morgan didn’t look back at him, but spoke without modifying her voice so Merlin could hear her easily.
“Left Ear, believe me. Once I’ve finished with him, you’re welcome to try as hard as you like to kill him.” She kicked a chair out opposite Merlin and sat. “Just try not to bleed too hard on my deck when he inevitably kills the fuck out of you. Now get back to your watch, Mister Jansen.”
The man glared at Merlin but didn’t dare disobey his captain. When he was gone, Morgan launched herself back out of the chair and over to what was apparently her liquor cabinet. She pulled out a crystal bottle and poured a generous measure of something red into a cup that was probably real gold. She drained it without speaking and went to pour another. Merlin grinned.
“So.” he said. “His name is ‘Left Ear’? Really?”
Morgan grimaced into her cup and didn’t answer. “Is that because…” Merlin waved a hand next to his head. “You know, he only has one…”
“What do you think?”
“Of course. But the ear he’s got is the right ear.”
“Yes, so he lost the left ear in glorious battle. I don’t know, I never listen when he talks.” Morgan winced. “Merlin, is that my glove?”
“No. No, it’s not.”
“Fuck you, Ambrosius.” She hesitated, then gestured with the bottle towards a second cup. “Are you awake yet?”
Merlin shook his head gently. “Not yet.” He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in a thousand years. There didn’t seem much point when his body was lying asleep in some far cave. With neither a stomach, nor taste buds within easy reach, Merlin never really had to support his presence with food. “Have you found where you left me yet?”
Morgan drank again, then slotted the bottle back into the cupboard. “Who says I’m looking? Okay, Ambrosius, what are you doing here?”
“Floating and bleeding.” Merlin replied automatically.
“I swear to god, I will shoot you.” Morgan growled, but the active animosity was fading, and Merlin didn’t believe she’d really do it. This time. “Come on, what is it?” She slid back into the chair and looked at him sidelong across the desk. “Are you looking for Arthur?”
Merlin studied the leather surface of the desk. “I already know where Arthur is, Morgan. But he’s sleeping even deeper than me. He doesn’t even dream walk.” He shook his head, as if that would dispel the strange airiness that thinking about Arthur brought. “He’ll wake when he wakes. I just have to try to be there.”
Morgan rolled her eyes so hard she was probably going to strain something. Merlin smiled indulgently. She didn’t understand his devotion to a dead king, but she didn’t have to. “Fine.” She shrugged. “But there’s always something, when you turn up out of nowhere like this. Some battle you need to win for the glory of the empire. Or some teenage hero that needs your guidance. You don’t just wake up for no reason.”
She was rolling a drop of ruby liquid around in the bottom of her cup, but Merlin heard the question she wasn’t asking. Are you here for me? He knew it was possible. Even though his dormant mind usually only threw up a dream of consciousness when he felt he was needed to steer the course of Britain’s future, he knew Morgan was the exception to his own rules. The last time he’d walked in the world had been in the year nineteen twelve. He’d thought he was there to save the thousands of people on the unsinkable ship, but he hadn’t. One of the hardest things to learn about travelling through human history is that some tragedies have to happen. And so, when the ice had ripped its impossible fate into the hull of the ship, Merlin had dragged Morgan through the flooding corridors and ensured she made it safely to the lifeboat. In all the fear and crying he had seen her to safety, but even watching her step into the boat it was only the knowledge that he had already met her on the empty platform of a train station in nineteen thirteen that convinced him to let go of her hand.
Instead, he had returned to the deck in the wintry air, and had played the cello as the ship went down. He’d poured the little magic he had with him into the sound from its strings, and had touched each and every trapped soul on that ship with the knowledge he’d earned. This is death, little ones. It’s nothing to fear. Soon we’ll all be going home.
Morgan, of course, knew nothing of this. She lived her life in one direction, and sometimes Merlin envied her of it. He smiled at her. “Perhaps I just wanted to see your face?” She shot him a look of pure scorn, and he grinned wider. “Okay, that’s probably bullshit. Truth is, I actually don’t know. Usually I have at least an inkling… This time, I just woke up on a pool lounger in the middle of an ocean. And then you turned up.” He flicked a hand. “That sounds like a perfectly innocent coincidence to me.”
Morgan snorted. “Mm, no one could make that up.”
“I really don’t know yet, Morgan. It actually feels like something’s wrong.” Merlin let his eyes slide closed, falling back into that haze where he could usually find answers. “I think… that I’ve come too soon. No, not – there is something to be done, I know, but it’s distant in the future. I think I’ll wait for years this time, not days. There’s something, some reason I need to be… older, and closer than I’ve been before. This time I can’t sit on the world and pass out wisdom, I have to be a part of it.” He opened his eyes. Morgan was watching him.
“And somehow that translated to ‘lost in the middle of the ocean’ to you?”
He scowled good naturedly. “No one’s perfect. Besides, I probably knew you’d be along.”
“Right.” She said in a tone which clearly implied what she thought about Merlin’s forward planning abilities. Merlin was about to ask if she thought she could do better in her thousand-year sleep, but Morgan was still looking at him like he’d presented her with a riddle. “Is that how you always do it?” she asked. Merlin blinked to realise that she hadn’t had that kind of insight into his thoughts before. All the world behind him, and nonlinear time lines could still catch him out. “Merlin, do you ever know what you’re fucking doing?”
“Sometimes.” he said honestly. “But I rarely ever wake up knowing. I’ll know it when I see it.”
Morgan let out a faint huff of surprise. Merlin knew that was the only reaction he would get from her. Even working her way towards drunk, she liked to keep herself secret. Merlin suppressed the urge to explain further, just how it all worked. He knew what he knew because Morgan had explained it to him, a long time ago in nineteen thirteen – on the empty platform, waiting for a train that he wouldn’t manage to catch. He swallowed and the moment passed.
Morgan was shaking her head. “What do you plan to do until you see it?”
Merlin leaned forwards, both hands on the table. “You’re going to invite me to sail with you.”
Morgan leaned forwards too, earnestly mirroring his position. “Piss off!” she said, in his tone of voice. Merlin shook his head.
“I can lead you to the Isla Siempre Verde.” he said simply. Morgan was silent. She looked at him steadily for a while, and Merlin looked back. There were some things he did wake up knowing. Always useful things that got him where he was going – he found it easier to follow his instinct. Morgan lifted her chin.
“Isla Siempre Verde doesn’t exist.” she said neutrally.
“I think it does. I just don’t think it was gold Captain Mission buried there.”
“Then what?”
“I couldn’t begin to guess. I hope it’s something nice.”
Morgan’s features were a carefully blank mask, but her eyes shone suspicion. “But you think that it’s valuable enough to barter for passage? Possibly for years.”
Merlin spread his hands. “What can I say? I’m feeling lucky.”
Morgan leaned forward, pulling herself halfway across the desk. “You’re feeling…”
Merlin leaned the rest of the way to meet her, their faces inches apart. “…lucky.” he whispered.
---
Four months later they found the Isla Siempre Verde. When they discovered what was buried there, they sank the island beneath the waves, and not a man among the crew told a soul that they had found the place.
---
Morgan only sold Merlin to American slavers twice, and to cannibals once, but by this time Merlin had discovered the lower and upper boundaries of his magic, so he didn’t hold it against her. He did barter her hand in marriage for a new ship, though, when the Chalice was wrecked beyond repair. The Siege Perilous was the most seaworthy vessel she’d had the pleasure to steal.
---
When Merlin was arrested for piracy, Morgan chose to disrupt his execution, but only because she was in the area.
---
Three years to the day after Lefty Jansen dragged a sunburned waterlogged castaway out of the sea, a new cabin boy joined the crew of the Siege Perilous. Morgan had the boy pegged as a girl in disguise within a day, but Merlin saw her first for what she was – a young woman in search of her destiny, and with a will strong enough to steer empires. Or to quietly redefine an epoch. She spent a few evenings naming the stars with the ship’s first mate, and when the time came for her to leave the Perilous, she felt like she understood the world a little better for those late nights of illumination. The next day, Merlin Ambrosious was not to be found on the ship or off it. Morgan didn’t spend too much time searching for him.