Chapter Text

Blue Sargent: John Paul Jones is a Pirate

“Is that man trying to get kidnapped?”

Blue Sargent looked blearily up from her rum, eventually following to where the sharp gaze of her crewmate, Adam Parrish, pointed. 

“Must be,” she snorted and took another pull. 

The fellow wasn't just out of place in the Crested Cockerel, he was out of place for all of Nassau, possibly this entire side of the ocean. 

“He's too pretty,” she added, looking at his broad shoulders, shining dark hair, and un-scarred skin.

“Too pretty by far,” Adam agreed, sipping more slowly at his own rum, watered down though it was.

The out-of-place man made an expansive gesture in service of the tale he was telling, made more so by the volume of drink they'd seen him put away, and accidentally dislodged his own coin purse from his belt, thanking patrons profusely as they handed him back one coin for every two they slipped into their own clothing. His grin was brighter than bright.

“He's got all his teeth,” Blue spat, disgusted.

“So do you,” Adam pointed out. “So do I, miraculously.”

“We wouldn't, if it wasn't for…” Blue trailed off, and Adam shrugged his concession to her point.  The man got back to his feet, down half his coin at least, and continued regaling his baffled audience with whatever tale he was relaying. Blue was fairly certain she'd heard “my father,” and “London,” and possibly parliament, but he was slurring his words too much to be sure about that last one. 

“Who wants to hear about the time I died?” the man exclaimed. “A round for all on me; you'll need it for this one!”

The tavern cheered, even the ones whose eyes had gone predatory. Blue looked up to the heavens, murmured a prayer in a language in which she had no name, and heaved herself off her stool.

“Don't,” Adam said flatly over the rim of his cup. She sneered at him.

“You're not my captain,” she retorted.

“And if there's a god above, neither is He, but I'm making my objections known, Sargent,” Adam replied, drinking down the rest of his watered rum. Blue ignored him, and the refill to her rum, and strode over to the suicidal storyteller.

She managed to get a place next to him at his table with a few well-placed glares, then planted her sharp elbow in his side.

“Oh, hello little cabin boy!” he said, eyes a bit glassy, turning to her. “Do you want to hear the story, too?”

The whole tavern went silent. Out of the corner of her eye, Blue saw Adam put his face in his hands.

“I've got a story for you, actually,” Blue said, sweet as could be. “But it's not for the ears of these dogs. Come take a walk with me.”

“Oh! Oh, forgive me, not a cabin boy at all! I hadn't thought any of the fairer sex present! I would much enjoy a walk, but I'm afraid I haven't allowed myself time for any brothel visits…”

He turned to the barman, paying for the promised round, then gathered his belongings as he continued to babble. Adam was now staring between his fingers in abject horror.

“But certainly I'll pay for your time for whatever tale you have to tell!” he beamed. “Gentlemen, it was a pleasure! I daresay I'll be back tomorrow!” 

A few of the men present took their hats off and pressed them to their chests. No one would be waiting on the widow’s walk of the Cockerel for this one.

Blue wasn't entirely sure what she was going to do with this man once she got him into an alley. She was pretty sure she was going to let him live, if for no other reason than the tavern full of witnesses who would, if pressed hard enough, say that she was the most likely murderer. Also, Adam would be insufferable. So she steered the still-prattling lordling into a little alley a few buildings over, planning primarily to give him a bit of a scare and hope that he'd learn not to flash his money while drunk in Nassau, of all places. 

“What a lovely day!” he exclaimed, gazing up at the bright, clear sky. “I don't know how I will ever return to London after having known warmth and light like this. Have you ever been to London, Miss… Where are my manners! I haven't asked your name, or introduced myself.”

The man took a step backwards to give himself enough distance to execute a sweeping bow.

“Richard Campbell Gansey the Third, at your service.”

He straightened up, brushing his forelock out of his eyes.

“And your name?” he asked, and smiled. Not only were his teeth all present, they were whiter than the sand at the shoreline and just as blinding. Blue considered punching him in defense of her eyes, if nothing else.

“You won't need it,” she replied, and pulled her knife, a gift from her mother, with a point needle-sharp and scales of pink abalone. It was the prettiest thing she owned, which might have contributed to her drawing it more readily than she should.

“Are you planning to kill me?” he asked, looking at the blade with interest. “That's a bit unfair. I know that story; I was about to tell it over the next round.”

Blue rolled her eyes and advanced.

“You're a fool to flash your gold in a place like this,” she said evenly. 

“Well, I have enough of it; it's no hardship if some of it goes missing,” he shrugged, pulling his coin purse and tossing it her way. She let it fall to the ground, only to have Adam’s familiar hand appear in her periphery to pick it up.

“I’m afraid that's her point,” Adam said, idly tossing the bag from one hand to the other. “If you've got enough that you can lose a bag like this, there's a father somewhere who'll pay that fifty times over to get you back. It's as though you're begging to be kidnapped and ransomed.”

The lordling frowned.

“I did say that I would pay the lady's usual rate--” 

Blue was swinging at him before she realized it herself, at least having the presence of mind to use the hand without the knife. Adam’s only reaction was to sigh as her fist collided with the angular jaw. The lordling collapsed like a canon-shot mast. 

“Well. This presents a new conundrum,” Adam said as Blue sheathed her knife and shook out her hand.

“How so?” Blue asked sourly. Adam gave her an unimpressed glance at her tone.

“If we leave him here, he's a dead man,” Adam replied, squatting down and slapping his cheek firmly, trying to rouse him. 

“So we won't,” Blue said when he didn't stir. She squatted down too, pulling the man’s left arm over her shoulder. “Get his satchel and help me get him up.”

Adam did so, scrambling to get under his other arm before Blue could drop him again.

“Do you have sun stroke?” he asked conversationally. With the difference between her height and Adam’s, the man slumped in her direction, looking that much more like a drunkard being helped back to his boarding house. 

Adam continued, “Because that's the only reason that leaps to mind for whatever we're doing right now.” 

“You said it yourself,” she snapped. “He was trying to get kidnapped.”

“ You said that,” Adam argued, despite that the words were his and she had merely agreed. Since he put his own hat on the man's head to hide his unconsciousness, Blue decided to table that part of the argument.

“Well, you said that his father would pay a king’s ransom for him!” she retorted, because she wasn't tabling all of the argument. Without the need for discussion or agreement, they started hauling the man back to the ship. 

“The captain is going to hate this,” Adam muttered. 

“You'll smooth out any splinters,” Blue said. “You always do.”

Richard Campbell Gansey III: Bosun Bill

Gansey lay flat on his back, kept his eyes shut, and listened. In the past five years, he'd learned how to feign unconsciousness so that people would speak freely around him what they would never do to his face. He'd also learned how to gauge which people were likely to wait for him to regain consciousness and which would assume he was dead or as good as and throw him overboard, and how long it generally took for someone to go from assuming unconsciousness to assuming he'd never wake up again.

Right now, he was really pushing the envelope for ever-waking-up-again plausibility, but he was learning so much ! 

First: By the footfalls on the dock, the sound of the waves, and the rather unceremonious drop over the rail onto the deck, followed by being picked up again and dropped a few more times, Gansey was on a boat, which was excellent.

Second: The two people who had both knocked him down and picked him up were Parrish and Sargent, respectively. Sargent was the small one with the exceptionally good swing, and Parrish was the eerily even-keeled one. Gansey believed Parrish to be something like the first mate.

Once on the boat, he’d been dropped near a cabin door.

“Go fix that third sail. There's a rip,” Parrish said flatly.

“I patched it yesterday,” Sargent replied.

“Then go patch something else,” Parrish sighed. “Grow a sapling in the Crow's nest, just do something not here.”

“I'm not letting you take the blame for this!” she snapped, and Gansey struggled not to smile at the fire in her voice, pleased to know that apparently it wasn't just Gansey who drew her ire. Parrish’s tone did not rise to meet hers.

“I'm not. I'm smoothing splinters, like I always do. Now go away so they don't wind up lodged in my ass instead.”

Sargent gave a huff and stomped off. Parrish gave a weary sigh, opened the cabin door, and shut it behind him.

Third: Parrish was talking to the captain. Despite his extensive eavesdropping practice, Gansey couldn't make out the initial conversation through the door, not until the shouting started. 

“Why in all the various hells would you let her do that?!” a rough Irish voice snarled.

“I didn't know she was going to punch him!” Parrish retorted. His accent was different from Sargent's, a slightly odd one Gansey had heard from a prisoner hailing from the barrier islands when he’d visited the colony of Virginia. 

“You're the smartest bastard on this boat, maybe on the whole island!” the captain exclaimed. “Sargent would punch damn near anyone for damn near anything!”

Gansey nearly laughed—at least he knew he wasn't meant to take it personally. 

“This could work out well for us,” Parrish attempted to explain, though his words sounded somewhat throttled and strained by a clenched jaw. “A ransom could set us for a fair bit. You wouldn't have to risk getting killed.”

“We could all be killed for this, Parrish! Not just me!” 

“We're pirates; that's always a possibility!” Parrish retorted. “We're good, we've got a great crew--”

“So you think you can outmaneuver a ship of the line? A hundred guns deep? Have you taught the boat to fly? ”

Their bickering continued, more personal than practical, and Gansey was a little alarmed that this Parrish was supposedly the best at smoothing the captain's ruffled feathers. He wasn't sure what that said for his own chances. 

Just as Gansey was growing truly frustrated by the wait, he heard, but only barely, footfalls, far too silent on a creaky deck.

“Are you done pretending to be knocked out yet?” a mild voice asked. “One usually wakes up pretty quick or not at all.”

Gansey reluctantly opened one eye to look at his interrogator, and found looming over him a lean man, skin far too pale for a life at sea, hair the off-white of bone. Gansey considered, then said, carefully:

“...I thought I might wait until the discussion was over. I'd be terribly rude to interrupt Parrish while he defends his lover to the captain.”

The pale man frowned, then peered at the door, then back at Gansey. After a moment, his face cracked open in realization, and he had to slap a hand over his own mouth. Once he'd settled himself down, the man held out a hand to help Gansey up, and when he took it, it was icy cold despite the heat of the day. The man put a finger to his own lips and led Gansey deeper into the ship, into the mess. 

Gansey sat when directed, and the man leaned against one of the walls and smiled.

“First, never let Sargent hear you say that. Second, never let the captain hear you say that.”

Gansey frowned.

“Is she with the captain?” he asked. “That seems a bit unfair, tasking a sailor to keep your lover out of trouble.”

The man groaned, marched over and sat directly beside Gansey, speaking slowly.

“Parrish is the captain's lover, you fool!” 

Gansey cleared his throat and tried to keep his surprise off his face.

“And… It's fine? To just say that aloud? Everyone knows?” 

The sailor tilted his head quizzically. Gansey debated whether to voice the rest of his thought, then decided that Noah was very pleasant. Perhaps it was better to clarify the situation with an audience of one than to try to piece the story together a bit at a time.

“I see,” Gansey replied. “I have, of course, heard of mates, and of course I've known men who preferred men or ladies who preferred ladies, as well as people who rejected the whole notion of lady-ness or manliness. I've just...”

Gansey smiled, took a breath, and started over.

“I'm not explaining myself well,” he said. “Is this relationship a relationship, or an open secret? A matter of convenience, protection?”

Gansey met the man’s eyes again. His face had gone grim, and between his pallor and his expression, the overall effect was rather ghastly.

“If you value your life,” the man growled, “you will never say that around Parrish-- the protection or convenience bits. I'd advise you not even to think it; that man can see things others can't, and if you offend his honor or the captain's, no one will ever find a trace of you.”

Gansey swallowed hard. It should have been more difficult to imagine mild-voiced Parrish being an efficient murderer than it was. Seeing he'd made his point, the man sat back, shook his head, and rose, rummaging and then placing a tin cup in front of Gansey and one in front of himself, pouring some strong smelling spirit for them both.

“When I say lovers, I mean lovers, not bedwarmers. Devoted as any church-wed man and wife and just as proud for everyone to know it,” the man said, all trace of menace gone as though it had never been there, just a passing cloud and not a tempest. “Oh, don't call either of them the other's wife, either.”

Gansey nodded. He knew himself to be more a romantic sort than a practical one, and a little candle of warmth lit within him. The couples he had known at court who had such preferences had to be very circumspect in how they went about such affairs, taking care who knew and who did not. Court intrigue over who was bedding who always put him into such a dour mood. Gansey found himself pleased, perhaps a bit irrationally in his own opinion, that this ship was a place where such maneuvering was unnecessary. 

But perhaps he could allow himself irrational pleasures at the happiness of others. After all, this was a pirate ship.

“Certainly; I only wished to clarify so that I could avoid causing offense,” Gansey replied. He lifted his cup. “Shall we drink to their health?”

Before Gansey could drink, the man caught his wrist gently, shaking his head. 

“No no no no,” he said. He moved the cup to Gansey’s other hand. “Okay, lift.”

They both raised their cups.

“Now say, ‘Na Zdravi,’” the man instructed.

“Naz Dr--”

“Na. Zdra. Vi.”

“Na Zdravi,” they said together.

“Now look me in the eye. Do not look away, it's bad luck. Now drink.”

Gansey managed to keep his eyes locked to the cloudy gray of the other man’s base as they both drank down a fruity brandy. After a moment, the strength of it hit him, burning Gansey’s throat like sea water, like not enough air, and he coughed. 

The man grinned widely, patting Gansey's cheek with his chilly hand.

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Richard Campbell Gansey the Third,” Gansey wheezed out. “Gracious, that was stronger than I anticipated. And yours?”

“Noah Peterka Czerny,” the man answered, pouring more of the brandy into Gansey’s cup. “Let's get some food in you so you don't get too drunk.”

Noah popped up again, singing in a language Gansey didn't know, and pulled out an iron pan from one cabinet, then after searching a larder, emerged with a loin of… Something? It sizzled when he slapped it into the pan, despite the lack of a fire, and the rich smell of venison filled the room.

Gansey wracked his brain, rubbing his lower lip with his thumb as he watched Noah roll the meat in the pan. The hot pan, without any fire Gansey could see or smell, cooking un-preserved venison, on a boat docked on an island which hosted no deer.

“Czerny,” Gansey asked after a moment, “is this boat the Greywaren?” 

Noah went very still. Gansey half-rose from his seat, palms flat on the table.

“It is, isn't it?” he whispered in delight. “I'd hoped, but everyone says that she's just a legend, a dream!”

Gansey stood, and, when Noah simply resumed his cooking, though not his song, lifted the lid on the chest from which Noah had retrieved the bottle of brandy. It was empty but for a bottle of sparkling French wine Gansey had developed a fondness for a few years prior but struggled to get, between all the wars. 

“‘Those who sail the Greywaren never want for food or drink; whatever her crew desires, she provides,’” Gansey murmured, reciting one of the legends he'd heard on the Thuringian from his naturalist friend Malory’s patient crew. “‘Her canons crack without need for shot or powder. If her mast is felled, a new one springs forth. Her boards are sticky with living sap. She is manned by spirits, by sirens, though none have seen a single crewman's face and lived to tell of it. Her colors are the skull of a two-beaked carrion bird, stark white on a field of darkest black, and out of the gaps where the eyes ought to be rises red smoke, like hell itself reaching to challenge the kingdom of heaven once again.’”

Noah paused again, then glanced over his shoulder and said, ever so softly,

“Is that what they say about us?” he asked. Gansey grinned.

“They also say that the boatswain is the illegitimate son of Peter the Great,” he beamed. “But that's just a rumor, isn't it, Noah Peterka?”

Noah stared at him, and for a moment, his gaze was black, black, murky black, the darkening black as one's air ran out, as one sank deeper and deeper still.

And then.

Noah burst out into bright, shimmering laughter, a rainbow in the sea spray.

“Is that what they say?” he giggled, tossing the venison loin once again, then setting it aside. “I'm quartermaster, not the bosun, but maybe mama was telling me the truth after all!”

Gansey, relieved, grinned back. He was about to ask after Noah's mother, her health, her stories, when Adam Parrish knocked on the frame of the entryway.

“Pardon the interruption,” Adam said quietly, gaze skipping off Nosh to Gansey and back. “The captain would like to--”

“ Gansey?! ” a voice exclaimed over Adam's shoulder. Gansey’s head snapped up, and while the face had far less baby fat, more scruff, the glacier blue eyes were the same.

“ Ronan Lynch ?!” Gansey exclaimed, leaping to his feet. Adam’s eyes widened, then he stepped swiftly aside so that Gansey could crash into Lynch and vice versa, clutching at shoulders, taking in one another's leaner, more careworn faces while Adam moved to stand next to Noah.

“I thought you were dead!” Gansey cried, tears coming to his eyes. He hadn't seen Ronan since before King William (also the Third) had taken England’s throne. The Lynches had lost nearly everything when the puritanical Protectorate had come to power, and, as far as Gansey knew, none of their lands had been restored.

“Me?” Ronan Lynch cackled sharply. “Never! Not ‘til the sun goes out and the seas boil away, Dick Gansey thrice over! What the hell are you doing in Nassau?! Shouldn't you be in London, married to some Countess or Duchess or whatever the piss they're calling them these days, knee-deep in brats?”

Gansey made a face, nose wrinkling in abject distaste as Ronan described the very fate Gansey had just been mulling over: A politically advantageous marriage, cemented with efficient procreation, affection an afterthought if it was ever thought of at all. He stole a glance at Adam, whose face had tensed as Gansey had reminisced with Ronan, and caught him watching the interaction with concern and care. 

Ronan had never expressed interest in any of the fair maidens or wealthy dowagers who'd swooned over his pretty eyes and gasped in scandalized delight at his rough manners, had had little time or regard for anyone not his own family or Gansey. Apparently freedom, or this specific person, had changed that.

“So Helen is still carrying on the line?” Ronan laughed at Gansey, mussing his hair and smiling so broadly that he looked about to bite. “If that woman had been born with a cock she'd be king by now.”

Gansey winced harder. 

“ Please don't talk about my sister's theoretical--”

“Cock,” Lynch crowed, very much like the other, more agricultural use of the word. “Say cock, Dick, c’mon, and I'll die a happy man!”

Gansey groaned and covered his ears. Ronan hadn't changed much.

"Mercy! And please don’t call me Dick, you know I hate it!" Gansey pleaded. Ronan had driven away his tears rather effectively, as he often did. If someone was relieved that Ronan Lynch was alive and wanted to get emotional about it, Ronan solved that problem by making them (nearly) wish that he wasn't. 

"Oh fine, you great baby," Ronan relented, flinging himself into one of the chairs at the table. "But I'll describe it in vivid detail if you don't tell me what you were doing acting the fool that I know you're not in a pirate tavern on the wrong side of the damned sea!" 

Gansey had been so overwhelmed at the coincidence, one of the few things in which he did not believe, of strategically stumbling onto a boat captained by a childhood friend that he'd forgotten why he'd come.

"Ronan, I've found something," he said, and Ronan apparently remembered him well, because he leaned forward, already rapt. 

"I just need my notes, my papers, and I'll show you--" 

Before Gansey could panic over the whereabouts of his satchel, Adam Parrish was setting it on the table. He did not return the grateful smile that Gansey turned on him, reflecting only wary calculation and thinly veiled suspicion. He held Gansey’s gaze for three heartbeats, then stepped back. 

In their youth, Ronan had never flirted that Gansey had noticed, and in idle moments, he’d wondered what sort of person Ronan might prefer. Any time Gansey tried to bring it up, usually by mentioning the charms of this or that lady his own parents were considering marrying him off to someday, Ronan changed the subject. Ronan Lynch’s method of subject-changing tended to be abrupt and physical. One of his favorite subjects to change to was “why was Gansey in that fountain / lake / pond / trough wearing all his fine clothes?” despite knowing full well that the reason was that Ronan had picked him up and put him in it. Of all the sorts that Gansey had imagined winning Ronan over, he had not considered someone so… 

But then, Gansey didn’t know Adam Parrish, not really, so he accepted his bag with a respectful nod and resolved to unravel the Parrish riddle later on. 

He laid out scraps of parchment, a torn fragment of a tapestry carefully wrapped in muslin, compasses and sextants that had inscriptions in alphabets most mightn’t recognize, a spear tip, and, most importantly, his maps. He unrolled the largest, which covered the Atlantic, from the French Colonies in the northwest down to the Caribbean islands in the south, up to the British Isles and the continent in the northeast. Gansey traced a loving finger over a dashed line he had drawn from the old Welsh kingdoms down to the center of the colony of Virginia.

Gansey sat across from Captain Ronan Lynch, set a leather bound journal on the table in front of himself, and opened it.

“Tell me,” Gansey said, and with those words felt transformed, at ease as though the mess had become his own throne room, this audience of three a court all his own.  “What do you know about Welsh kings?”

The Greywaren, Her Crew, and the King’s Wish

Richard Campbell Gansey III: The Dreadnought

None of the men before Gansey interrupted him as he explained his theories. While England roiled with upheaval and intrigue over who should be king, who should be heir, rules regarding Protestant and Catholic, Anglican and Puritan, Gansey had been traveling. 

“Malory lectures at Oxford, but his real work is with the Royal Society. It's much less limiting, all manner of natural philosophies are studied, but that's not important. What's important is that he took an interest in monarchs who’ve vanished, and in particular, Owain Glyndŵr, or Owen Glendower to we Englishmen.”

Ronan glowered intensely at being referred to as an Englishman, but, miraculously, did not interrupt, so Gansey continued as he flipped through his journal.

“He was the last Prince of Wales who was… well, Welsh, and one of the last magician-kings of the Isles. The location of Glendower’s grave was kept secret, ostensibly since his sort of rebellion did tend to lead to desecration by one's enemies.”

“Whenever you said something was ‘ostensibly,’ when you were small, that usually meant that whatever the thing was, wasn't. So what is the not-ostensibly reason you're sneaking up on?” Ronan asked. 

“I don't think he ever died,” Gansey said. The room fell silent but for the sizzle of Noah’s cooking. 

“He'd be almost three hundred years old,” Adam broke the silence, his impassive face betraying no opinions on that statement in any direction. 

Gansey gave him his brightest, most joyful grin as he took the bottle of sparkling wine from under the table and set it on its surface with a thunk, leaning in and beaming at Adam.

“Are you telling me,” Gansey said, “that the crew of the Greywaren doesn't believe in magic?”

Adam’s lower eyelids drew in, slightly. While it was the only physical change to his expression and stance, a chill went up Gansey’s spine. 

“He’s got you there, Parrish,” Ronan muttered mildly, rising. He stabbed the venison brutally with a dagger to take it out of the pan, then savagely hacked it into quarters. This display of violence was still far less unsettling than Adam staring at him. Gansey tried to conceal his relief when Ronan tossed each mangled chunk onto mismatched tin plates, dropping one in front of each of them without ceremony. Gansey glared at him, trying to protect his papers from any juices. 

“What makes you think that this is the Greywaren?” Adam asked, drawing his own knife and cutting bite-sized chunks much more calmly. Gansey caught Ronan rolling his eyes.

“Probably the fact that I didn’t deny it was, Parrish!” Ronan exclaimed, brandishing his knife with a chunk of meat on it. “The cat is out of the sack, the bird has flown, the cows are gone!”

At least Ronan was now the target of Adam’s eerie glare.

“I didn't deny it either,” Noah shrugged. Adam set his knife down and leaned on the table, pressing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

Ronan made a face at Gansey, rolling his eyes in Adam's direction and shrugging.

“Stop that,” Adam said without uncovering his eyes. Gansey’s gaze snapped to Noah, eyes gone wide.

“Is he…?” Gansey mouthed silently, thinking back to Noah's comment about Adam's apparent ability to read thoughts. Noah frowned.

“If he was, what good would moving your mouth at me do?” Noah asked, perplexed. 

A valid point, Gansey thought, a bit embarrassed.

“I'm not reading anyone's god damned mind,” Adam sighed. “I just know my captain far too well. Fine. You're on the Greywaren, congratulations. If you think for a second of telling anyone what you've seen here, I'll kill you myself.”

Gansey glanced at Ronan, who shook his head no, then at Noah, who nodded his yes. Adam took his hands from his eyes and leaned back, gazing at the boards above them, and continued:

“This thing you think you've found, what do you propose to do about it, and how does it involve us?”

Gansey smiled, tentative.

“I want to find him,” he said. “You've heard of the King’s Wish?”

“Whoever finds the King's grave can ask for and receive any favor they want,” Adam replied.

“Not finds,” Gansey corrected, “wakes. Whoever wakes the King from his resting place shall receive the royal favor of a wish.”

“Hard to divide a wish into shares for a crew. Why wouldn't you just commission a ship to take you?” Adam asked, then narrowed his eyes. “You said yourself you have plenty of money. You're clearly not stupid.”

Gansey was flattered that Adam had seen through his acting and was about to say so, but Adam was leaning in again, and the tightness of his jaw seemed to say that he had not intended it as a compliment. 

“I was right,” Adam continued in the tone of one who was very much not happy about being so. “You wanted to get kidnapped. Which means that there's a reason you don't want anyone to know you're looking. Why?”

Gansey glanced over at Ronan, who was looking at Adam. He met Gansey’s look after a heartbeat.

“You've got a clever man there, Lynch,” Gansey smiled. 

“The cleverest,” Ronan agreed. “Answer him, why don't you?” 

Even growing up, many couldn't tell when Ronan Lynch was angry or happy, joking or serious, because of the fact that his face defaulted to aggravation at its most neutral, but Gansey found that he could still read him well. Ronan was not angry, yet, but he was concerned.

“I am not the only one looking, Mister Parrish,” he replied. “There are at least two others that I know about, and one has threatened that anyone who takes a commission that isn't for them will no longer be welcome in any port in the Kingdom. Even if I did want to risk drawing the Greenmantles’ attention by co--”

Adam was no longer looking at Gansey, but at Ronan, whose already fair face had drained of color. Anyone with an ounce of sense could identify his expression as rage. Adam touched his wrist and got up. Ronan rose as well, and the two moved to whisper in the corner of the mess.

“Who else?” Noah prompted, drawing Gansey’s attention back. Gansey cleared his throat.

“A French merchant family, the Laumoniers. Supposedly a captain for one of the East India Company’s ships has deserted them, run off with the ship and her crew at the behest of a woman from one of the Greek isles as well.”

Noah tilted his head.

“Was it the Pauper Prince, by chance?”

Gansey blinked.

“Yes, how did you--?”

An anguished smile etched Noah's pale face.

“I used to be her first mate,” he replied, then raised his voice. “Captain, our good friend Barrington Whelk is also in pursuit.”

Ronan exploded into a torrent of curses in multiple languages, many of which Gansey was sure he knew solely for the purpose of being able to offend those who spoke no English.

“Lynch, what's happened?” Gansey asked, half rising as Ronan snatched up the fruit brandy, uncorked it, and drank it down. Adam put a hand on Gansey’s shoulder and pressed him back into the chair.

“Colin Greenmantle had the captain's father murdered after driving the Lynch family off their estate in Ireland,” Adam explained, “and Barrington Whelk cracked Noah’s skull, threw him overboard, and left him for dead.”

“That's… quite a coincidence,” Gansey said hoarsely.

Ronan, having cast aside the empty bottle, barked a harsh laugh.

“Are you believing in those now, Dick Gansey?” he asked. “Lost your faith?”

Before Gansey could answer, Ronan continued, clapping his hand on Gansey's unoccupied shoulder and addressing Adam and Noah.

“The man is touched by something. God, the fates, by the fucking fair folk, who knows? But destiny bends around him like wind around a mountain.”

Adam retracted his hand from Gansey’s shoulder quick as a man who'd been told he was embracing a leper and stared over Gansey's head at Ronan, still frustratingly unreadable to Gansey.  Adam began to pace the small mess like a trapped tiger, looking for escape where there was none to be found.

“You want this thing?” Adam asked. “Or do you just want revenge?” 

Ronan collapsed into the seat next to Gansey’s, throwing his whole arm over Gansey's shoulder and studying his maps and notes in earnest now.

“I can want more than one thing, Parrish,” Ronan replied. “You of all people should know I'm a man of many desires.” 

Adam stopped pacing and looked at Gansey and Ronan side by side, meeting Gansey's bewildered gaze since Ronan was not looking up.

“Fine,” Adam said, and it was very clearly not. “I'll send down Sargent when I see her and let her know you have something to tell her.”

As soon as Adam had stalked out of the room, Noah leaned forward and smacked Ronan upside the head.

“Ow!” Ronan snapped, and Gansey scooted his chair back to avoid being in the middle. 

“Have you taken complete leave of your senses?” Noah hissed. 

“ You have, if you think you're getting away with that!” Ronan snarled back. “I'm not afraid of Sargent!”

“That's not what I meant, but you should be!” Noah replied, and Gansey found himself nodding in agreement, touching his jaw. He had admittedly gone down a bit easy, but his collapse wasn't entirely for show.

“Mister Parrish didn't look best pleased either,” Gansey added.

“That's just his face,” Ronan grumbled. 

“Of course,” Noah said witheringly. “You throw yourself all over a very old friend you haven't seen in years, then entirely dismiss Parrish's concerns about your well-being in favor of that friend, arm around him, talking about your many desires.”

Gansey’s jaw dropped.

“Me?” he exclaimed, looking over at Ronan. “Parrish can't possibly think that I intend to come between you two.”

Ronan was looking at Noah.

“Parrish isn't the jealous sort,” he declared with the bravado of a man trying very hard to believe he spoke the truth and was failing miserably.

“He won't leave the ship, will he?” Gansey asked. “I should speak to him, clear this up and apologize for the misunderstanding.”

“Parrish won't leave; he hasn't got anywhere else to go,” Ronan snapped, voice harsh with anger but eyes averted with shame. “Just… Explain to me where you want us to go so that Sargent doesn't try to gut me with her little pink toothpick.”

Gansey looked to Noah, who just shrugged, resigned. Gansey cleared his throat, slid the abandoned plates aside, and found the map he was looking for.

“Glendower’s body would have needed to remain on this line, though I don't know how wide it is,” Gansey said, tracing the dashes with his finger. “Malory calls it a ley line. They turn up with different names in different stories, but there are patterns in natural geography and in man-made structures that follow along them, like roads.”

“How do you have a road that crosses the sea?” Ronan asked. 

“It's not a road-road; it's an invisible force, like the way magnetism makes a compass point North, but spiritual.”

“Does anyone know about them except for you and Malory?” Ronan asked.

“Whelk does,” Noah interjected softly. “Not by name, but he would get drunk and rant about how the King’s Wish lay on a straight path from the grave of a Celtic prince, but he wasn't sure where it began or ended. He had taken us off course when he tried to kill me, following some rumor.”

Noah got up, retrieving another bottle of liquor from the strange chest, keeping this one to himself.

“He talked about rituals and sacrifices, too. I should have paid it more mind, apparently. He told people that I was the one who’d taken the ship off course, that I was trying to mutiny, and that I'd fallen over the side when we fought, or so I've heard. I'm not sure what progress he's made in the years since, but if he deserted the Company so brazenly, he must think he has something.”

“What about the Greenmantles?” Ronan demanded. Gansey sat back, rubbing his lower lip with his thumb idly.

“They've been buying any ancient device they can lay hands on,” Gansey said, “and they've been so plain about it that they've attracted every grave robber and fraud east of the horn of Africa. I, on the other hand…”

Gansey picked up a few of the instruments from his bag: Fancy dowsing rods, peculiar looking compasses, an oddly shaped sextant.

“These are fairly reliable,” he explained. “I've tested them myself, they’ll get us there.”

Gansey was about to explain further, he did so love sharing his marvels with Ronan when they were boys, but Noah's face had blanched, looking behind them all.

“So. This is how we make decisions now?”

Sargent was standing in the doorway, staring directly at him with a face far more murderous than she'd worn while threatening him with a knife in the alley.

Blue Sargent: The Wellerman

“Where do you want these rum barrels?” a burly hand with a barrel over each shoulder shouted up to Blue. 

Blue, dangling with her knees hooked over the yardarm as she worked on the sail, sighed.

“Wherever Czerny wants them!” she shouted back.

“Can't find him!”

Blue groaned. Noah was like one of the ship’s cats; even if he was plain out in the open, if he didn't want to be found, he wouldn't be.

“Hold, then. Anywhere,” she called down.

She’d made it up to the crow's nest several minutes later, and to any untrained eye, she appeared to be looking out to sea, perhaps for another ship. In reality, she had both hands on the mast, communing with all the boards of the ship, as alive as any tree in the forest, checking for any weak spots she needed to coax into growing stronger. It was probably her favorite of her jobs on the ship, and it settled her worry over how Adam’s conversation with Ronan would go.

It wasn't as if this was the first high-born fool who’d made assumptions about her in a pirate town, so Blue was consternated by her own actions. There was no reason she could pinpoint that Richard Campbell Gansey the Third had gotten her temper so foul so quickly. She hated that Adam was likely downplaying her role in the whole mess, and was probably managing to make a case for the kidnapping being a smart business decision, really. She hated that it was probably working. 

“Beg pardon, Sargent!” a different sailor called up. She took her hands off the mast and leaned over the rail. “Merchant ship just came in, wants to know if we’re going Kingston way, they've got letters.”

“Not decided yet, need to consult the other three. You seen the Captain or Parrish in the last half hour, Mister Crooks?” 

“No, Captain's not in his office, either. Didn't want to check his quarters in case they'd been arguing,” Crooks replied. Blue could sympathize. No one wanted to be in the middle of Ronan and Parrish when they were arguing, and most definitely didn't want to interrupt when they were reconciling. 

“Nothing I haven't seen before,” Blue sighed. “I'll track them down.”

Blue kissed the mast and made her way down the ladder. Eventually, after being waylaid by several more crewmen who actually needed instructions from Adam, Ronan, or Noah. She answered what she could, put off what she couldn't, and finally managed to make her way down. Ronan and Adam's quarters were blessedly empty (just because she'd seen it before didn't mean she was eager to see it again), and after a few false starts, she finally ran into Adam, nearly literally.

“Where the hell--” she started, then stopped. Adam’s careful mask was crumbling, fine fissures spreading as he tried to hold himself together. His hands were curled so tightly that his knuckles had gone white.

“What happened?” Blue growled, stepping very close so that they wouldn't be overheard. Adam's mouth thinned, shaking his head. 

“Captain wants to see you,” he murmured. “They're in the mess.”

He forcibly uncurled one hand to gently pat her shoulder and carefully moved past her. 

Whatever the hell had happened, she was not happy.

She hovered near the entrance to the mess, just in time to hear Richard Campbell Gansey the Third declare that his instruments worked and would “get them there.”

The first of the three of them who had joined the Greywaren was Blue herself. She’d stopped over at Kingston to meet some of her more distant family, listening to their prophecies. She got the same one as always about how her true love would die, but also, a rare one. 

“Follow the black bird, Maura’s daughter,” her aunt Charity, who she’d just met, instructed her. “Your tree is the tallest of three, with a harp tangled in her branches. Tell the sour man that vengeance sent you to keep what's his in one piece.”

Sure enough, Blue encountered a raven in the branches of the allspice tree outside Charity's house, holding a spirited croaking argument with several grackles. Upon seeing Blue, the raven led her to the docks, landing at the top of a gangway, so up Blue went. 

There was a rumpled pile of clothes reeking of alcohol that contained within it who she now knew to be Ronan Lynch. The raven landed on his shoulder, eliciting a half-hearted, uncoordinated flail. Blue kicked his leg lightly.

“Where's your captain?” she asked, squinting up at the flag, a deep blue harp on a grey field. 

“ I'm the captain, maggot, who the hell wants to know?” he snarled. Blue frowned at the mast, placing her hand on it, and felt… Life. Impossible life, sleeping just under the surface.

"Vengeance," Blue answered, and he went so still that she thought he might have passed out. When she turned to check, possibly kick him again, he was looking up at her with bloodshot eyes the blue of a lightning strike.

“Just the woman I wanted to see,” he replied. 

Noah came next, then Adam, and the four of them made decisions concerning the ship, her routes, and her scores, when to fight and when to run, and they made them together.

Except, apparently, this time. She stepped into Noah's view and he looked suitably alarmed by whatever he saw.

“So. This is how we make decisions now?” she asked. Gansey the Third looked from her, back to Noah, then over to Ronan. 

“I don't think that any decisions were reached--” he started, and Blue wished she'd punched him harder, or several more times, especially when Ronan cut him off.

“You tell me, Sargent,” he replied mulishly. “Because I don't remember you and Parrish consulting me or Czerny before you decided we were in the hostage business and bringing a stranger aboard my ship.”

“Not a stranger, though,” Noah interjected quickly, turning pleading eyes on her and doing his best impression of a puppy who was at least partially to blame for a mess, but also truly sorry about it. 

“Fast friends, are you?” Blue sneered at Ronan, who wasn't fast friends with anything. Glaciers moved more quickly than Ronan Lynch on the path from the animosity he held for strangers to the outermost borders of friendship. 

“Old friends,” Gansey the Third piped up. “I didn't realize that you were part of the same crew, but I've known Ronan for years. I thought he'd died, so seeing him again, well, I got a bit carried away. I would never presume to dispute your authority, and I can only apologize for disrupting the normal order of things.”

Blue held Gansey the Third’s gaze. Noah, Ronan, and Adam all had blue eyes of one sort or another, and her own were the rich brown of iron gall ink, but his were a mosaic of greens and browns and golds. 

“Is that what happened to Parrish?” she asked Ronan, still staring down Gansey the Third. “Your old friend disrupting the normal order of things?”

Noah stood, taking Gansey the Third by the elbow and hauling him up from his chair.

“We should let the Captain and Sargent speak alone,” Noah declared loudly. Gansey glanced to Ronan’s dagger, still in his hand and being used to prod at cold venison, then to the pink-hilted dagger at Blue’s hip, and looked deeply concerned about their possible roles in future debates, but let Noah herd him out of the mess without protest.

“Go find Parrish,” Ronan called after Noah.

“I will not!” Noah's voice called back, and Ronan hissed through his teeth, rubbing at his eyes. Blue made as much noise as possible dragging out her chair and sat heavily.

“Your old friend,” she said, flat and bitter.

“I had a life before you started kicking me while I was down, maggot,” Ronan retorted, but it lacked his usual bite. “What did Adam tell you?”

“That you needed to see me,” she answered. “He wouldn't say how you fucked up.”

“It's a misunderstanding. He'll get over it,” Ronan said, then gestured at the things strewn across the table. “Gansey wants to go after the King’s Wish. Says he knows how to find it.”

Blue pressed her lips thin to avoid saying something that would light the powder keg of one of their arguments. 

“And you want to, too, now,” she said. “Hell and damnation, Lynch.”

“Did you have another score planned?” Ronan snapped. 

“Besides selling Gansey the Third back to the Second or First? No,” Blue answered. “But we came here to rest and restock, so I hadn't been looking hard. Your friend just fell into my lap.”

“You mean his face fell onto your fist,” Ronan corrected. “This is already a lead on the biggest of hauls, Sargent. Maps and instruments and all.”

"Why this? " Blue asked. "What haul could be that good?"

"A wish," Ronan replied, and that gave her pause. Blue knew far too much to consider most things impossible. 

"A bit hard to divide a wish into shares," Blue said. Ronan chuckled.

"That's exactly what Parrish asked," he smiled bitterly. Blue drummed her fingers on the table.

"You want to tell me what happened there?" 

Ronan scowled at her.

"I was surprised to see Gansey. He's all always had this… thing."

Blue paused mid-finger drum and glared at Ronan. 

"Going to need more than that, Lynch," Blue growled, "because right now it sounds like you've cast everything you, Noah, Adam, and I have built here in favor of a pretty rich man you used to know and whatever 'thing' he has, I'm not sure I want to know. Find the words."

"Gansey is my oldest friend," Ronan said. "And the 'thing' is that magic finds him. Fortune finds him. If Gansey needs or wants something, he only needs to ask nicely, and the world provides."

"Including the Greywaren," Blue said. Ronan only shrugged. 

"He was trying to get kidnapped, and you happen to find him, happen to bring him right to us without him ever even saying the name," he pointed out, needling Blue with her own role in the situation which angered her so.

"Including you, " Blue said significantly. "The world just hands you over as well?"

Ronan blew out a brandy-scented gale of frustration.

"He's my oldest friend! Ronan repeated. "He's the first person I ever cared about who isn't my own flesh and blood."

"So that's it?" Blue asked, torn between anger and bewilderment. "It's you and your Gansey now? What about Adam?" 

"What about Adam?!" Ronan exploded.

"Do not raise your sorry drunkard voice at me, Ronan Lynch!" Blue shouted right back. 

"It's not like that, me and Gansey," Ronan snarled, but quieter. "If Parrish wants to play the scorned wife, he can, but it's not because of anything I've done!" 

"So there's no reason for Adam to be upset?" Blue pressed him, because she couldn’t reconcile the degree to which Adam had looked about to break apart with Ronan’s description of the events that led to it.

"There's no reason for Parrish to be jealous. He can be as upset as he fucking likes. But I can't leave Gansey at the mercy of any idiot crew in Nassau. The Greenmantles are after this thing, Whelk is after this thing. Are those people you want to have possession of a wish? Their tainted hearts’ desires?” Ronan seethed, getting up from the table and pacing furiously. 

“You care about the good of the world now?” Blue asked, because Ronan was notoriously myopic about the things that he cared about. He cared about his ship, his crew, his brothers, the home from which he was exiled, and his revenge. He cared about Adam and whatever they had between them. Which he cared about most depended sometimes on the day, usually on the hour, and, on the worst days, could change wildly from minute to minute.

“It’s the only one that you and Parrish and Czerny and the rest of those dogs up there get to live in!” Ronan answered. “And Gansey is smarter than me, and a better person, so if he thinks it's important, it's fucking important!” 

Blue leaned back, lacing her fingers together behind her head.

“I'll talk to Adam,” she said. “Only because it seems like we're doing this whether the rest of us want to or not, and I don't like our odds without him."

She didn't wait for Ronan to answer, and he seemed to have run out of words anyway. Blue got up, took a breath, and left the mess to go find Adam. 

As soon as she stepped into the sunlight, she was assaulted by Gansey's too-pretty face and too-fancy voice.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Sargent--"

Blue looked out at the sea. She could ignore him, keep looking for Adam. Hell, she could keep walking, hop the rail, and just jump into the water. Swimming forever towards the horizon sounded preferable to another conversation with Richard Gansey.

“I know you're probably very busy, and I realize that I'm likely the very last person you want to speak to--”

Blue rounded on him and was in his face-- well, under it-- in two strides.

“ Then why is your mouth moving? ” she shouted at him. The sound of work,of sailors shouting and boots moving across the deck, came to a dead stop. She grabbed his arm, looked to the crew, and called out,

“Less eavesdropping, more working!” She did a quick scan of the deck and did not see Parrish in any of his usual places. 

She dragged Gansey all the way to the stern and gave him a shove.

“Well?” she demanded. “Talk.”

Gansey straightened up, tugging on his waistcoat to neaten it.

“I understand that you don't want me here,” he started, “but you must understand that I didn't know that your ship was--”

She gave him a very sharp look and took a step toward him. While she doubted that anyone other than the crew might overhear, she needed this man to understand that he needed to keep the name Greywaren off his tongue if he wanted to keep it.

“--this ship,” he finished. “I didn't know that this was Ronan Lynch’s ship, or that he was even alive.”

“But?” she prompted. His shoulders sagged.

“He is my oldest and dearest friend. No one knows me better. I don't want to leave him again.”

Blue glared.

“Do you really think that's why we're angry?” she asked. “We're angry because you showed up here and you took over!” 

“That's not fair,” Gansey protested.

“Isn't it?” she asked, planting her hands on her hips. “Do you know what Lynch said to me? About you? If you need or want something, the world provides.”

Gansey’s cheeks reddened.

“That is an oversimplification at best and nonsense at worst.”

Blue prodded him in the chest.

“I don't think it is. You've been on this ship for mere hours and already you've got our captain wrapped around your little finger and our ship going where you ordered!”

“I haven't ordered anyone to do anything!” Gansey threw his hands up. “Parrish wanted to know why I was trying to get kidnapped; I told him. Lynch asked me my plan, what I'd found; I told him. I didn't order, I didn't even ask!”

“You didn't have to!” Blues snapped back. “We're going to look for your King. That's one wish you've gotten already. But know this: The people who are taking you there, me, Parrish, Czerny, we have clawed and fought and worked for everything we have. You'd do very well to remember that. You've got your passage. Be careful what else you take from us.”

Gansey looked like he had more to say, but said instead,

“I don't know what to say to you to make this right.”

“‘Sorry,’ perhaps?” Blue sneered. “‘I'll pay more mind to how I use my mysterious power to control the most uncontrollable man on the planet going forward’?”

“I,” Gansey replied primly, “cannot control Ronan Lynch, and have no mysterious powers. I am sorry that I have given you that impression and that I have made you angry. I'll say as much to Parrish as well.”

Blue shook her head.

“Steer clear of Parrish. I'm going to try to smooth things over with him so that he doesn't go find another ship to navigate for. I know you've got your fancy instruments, but that is my dearest friend, and I won't leave him behind.”

“He wouldn't…” Gansey hesitated. “Czerny said that they were devoted. ‘As any man and wife,’ he said. Why would Parrish abandon that over something so trivial?”

Blue closed her eyes.

“Lynch said Parrish didn't have anywhere else to go,” Gansey added, sounding less than lordly for the first time.

“Lynch just tells himself that because he's scared shitless of Parrish leaving. Parrish could survive anywhere and make it work; he's had to do it before and can do it again. But Lynch just showed the three of us that, whatever it is about you, it’s more important than anything we might want,” Blue said. “I've got to go find Parrish. Don't get in the crew's way.”

She turned her back on him and went to search for Adam. The door to the captain's quarters was shut, and Ronan’s raven, the same one who had led Blue to the Greywaren in the first place, was frantically flapping and pecking at the door. 

“Lynch isn't in there, Sawbones,” Blue said, shooing her aside, but the moment Blue opened the door, the bird flew in and landed on Adam's shoulder, croaking and clicking and plucking at his hair before taking his earlobe in her beak and biting hard. He gasped in a deep breath, then swore and slapped his hand to his now bleeding ear. 

There was a rucksack, presumably full of his meager belonging, beside him. Blue narrowed her eyes and put her hand on his face. It was terribly cold.

“You're not supposed to do that alone,” Blue admonished, sitting beside him on the bed. “What the hell were you even looking for?”

Not everyone on the Greywaren had strange talents, but Blue and Adam's were strange enough for at least ten people. Blue could commune with trees, which apparently included the Greywaren, and Adam could enter a sort of trance which allowed him to navigate and guide the ship with uncanny precision by sending his soul out of his body to go look in places between life and death. It was a dangerous trick. He could stop breathing, in which case he had to be hurt, made aware of his body again. 

“The same thing I always look for,” Adam sighed, pulling a rag from his rucksack to press to his bleeding ear. “I was trying to find which way to go.”

“It seems like we don't have a choice,” Blue said bitterly. 

“Sure we do,” Adam said. “It just might not be here.”

Blue looked at Adam, who was staring straight ahead, almost the same as his trances; only he blinked, and breathed, and only looked like his soul was entirely elsewhere.

“That's it?” Blue asked. Adam didn't answer. “Parrish.”

“What use is a navigator when you've got a rich, handsome, well-schooled friend you adore who fate will place wherever he wants to be? The way Lynch talks, as long as Richard Gansey is aboard, the ship’ll steer herself.”

“Even if it did, this is still your home,” Blue said, “and if you abandoned ship every time Ronan Lynch did or said something stupid, you'd be a merman by now.”

That got a huff of a laugh out of Adam.

“I'm not abandoning ship. Whatever the right path is for me, I'm supposed to be on the Greywaren when she leaves port.”

“So why are you packing, then?” Blue asked. “Surely whatever goose chase this is will take long enough for you two to make up again.”

“It's different, this time,” Adam said. “It's fine. I knew that I wouldn't get to keep this forever. I'll see if Noah will let me stay with him; otherwise, crew quarters are fine.”

Blue tipped to the side and put her head on Adam’s shoulder.

“Come stay in mine instead,” she said. “Otherwise Lynch might try to get me to bunk up with Gansey, and I have my limits.”

Adam put his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. 

“I'm sure Lynch will find room for him,” he said, “but I'd like that, if you'd have me.”

She stood up and grabbed his rucksack, then offered him a hand.

“We working folk have to stick together, Parrish, so that these rich boys playing pirate don't get us all killed.”

Blue Sargent: Randy Dandy O

Once Blue had gotten Adam settled in her quarters, she went back topside to see what still needed to be done. A trip back to the mess revealed that Lynch, rather than studying the maps or notes that Gansey had left below, was still drinking, getting closer to drunk, and closer still to useless. She left him to it, tracking down Noah in the hold, inventorying their supplies.

“Parrish going to be staying with me?” Noah asked, not looking up from the ledger of turning around. This was another of his odd gifts; he always knew who was behind him, even if they hadn't said a word.

“With me,” Blue said, hopping onto a trunk Noah had just closed and perching there, “so you might get Gansey instead. Sorry, but it's that or bloodshed.”

“He's not bad, really,” Noah said.

Blue tipped to one side, groaning like the boards in a tempest, but Noah just ignored her and kept to tallying, adding:

“Earnest enough, anyway. Likeable, certainly, and clever.”

“So likeable and clever that he gets more say than Adam and I put together,” Blue grumbled, well aware that she was pouting.

“If you're going to get angry at Gansey every time Ronan Lynch does something foolish, then Gansey never stood a chance,” Noah pointed out, finally looking up at her.

Blue sighed. This trunk smelled comforting, like it had tobacco in it, sweet and rich, not unlike the irritating way in which their newcomer spoke, and the exact opposite of how she felt.

“That's almost word for word what Gansey said. Which is infuriating.”

“Because he's right?” Noah prompted, opening the next trunk. “Ugh, those have gone off. Or Sawbones got into them.”

“More hardtack?” Blue asked, and Noah nodded. “I can fetch more before we leave.”

“I notice you haven't admitted that Gansey was right,” Noah smirked.

“Not for a thousand of anything you care to name,” Blue retorted. “Who do you think’s going to steer?” 

“Probably Lynch, if he sobers up long enough, and if you really think Parrish won't,” Noah shrugged, nudging her knee with his own. “You're both taking this awfully hard. Parrish, I expected, but why are you so angry about going after this score of Gansey’s? Is it just because it's him?”

Blue shoved over enough so that Noah could sit next to her.

“You know how long it took to earn Lynch’s trust,” she said. 

“And how long it took him to earn yours,” Noah prompted. “I do.”

When they'd found Noah, nearly dead, floating like driftwood in a calm sea, Blue and Ronan were still circling one another like angry cats most days, the crew walking the razor’s edge between doing what Blue commanded when their captain was too drunk or too much under the weight of his sorrows to be of much help, while trying not to do anything that he'd be angry about when he came back to himself. 

Then they'd hauled Noah aboard, waterlogged, half his face a dreadful mess, and Ronan had shut himself into his office, then returned a half hour later with strange containers of unguents and tinctures that somehow brought the wraith of a man back from the brink of death in mere days. Noah Czerny had settled something between her and Ronan and the rest of the crew, steady as the tide and calm as the moon. He plucked the ever-changing burning fuse from the powder keg that was the Greywaren’s crew politics and pinched it out. 

From that point, trusting Ronan had been easier. Before, he was just baggage that came with the ship she'd come to love, like a dear friend with an obnoxious spouse, and she imagined he felt much the same about her. Once Noah had arrived, and they'd set their bickering aside to ensure that he lived through each night, that he healed hale and whole, she and Ronan grew to understand one another better. It was nearly a year, but by the time they picked up Adam during a stop at the islands near Carolina, Ronan asked her straight out if she thought that taking Adam on was a good idea.

Her guts felt twisted up from the humiliation of the fact that Ronan’s trust meant so much to her.

“When you sail with someone for a while,” Blue continued, struggling to put words to her feeling, “you feel like you've got a sense for what they will and won't do. Even someone as wild as Lynch. I never thought that he could be so free and easy as I sat him with Gansey. I never would have thought that he'd put an old friend, reappeared out of nowhere, ahead of the safety of the crew. They were estranged long enough for Gansey to think Lynch was dead. Gansey could be with the Greenmantles, or Whelk, or whoever the hell is in charge of England this week. He could be leading us all right into a trap.”

“You don't believe any of that,” Noah commented, “about Gansey setting us up.”

“No,” Blue answered, “but I thought about it. I considered the possibility, because it's important, and I'm angry that Lynch didn't, because he's supposed to be the captain. He's supposed to care about more than just what he wants.”

Noah nodded, taking off her hat and petting her hair. She leaned into it; Noah's cold fingers always felt so good on her scalp when she had been working hard under the sun, or when her head hurt, or when she was angry like she was at present.

“Why aren't you angry at me?” Noah asked, a bit cautiously. “I was in there with Gansey and Lynch. I could've demanded a stop to the conversation until we were all there.”

“If you thought the conversation was a negotiation, then tell me and I will be,” Blue said, “but I think you thought it was just a conversation until Lynch went and made the decision out of nowhere.”

Noah planted a kiss on her crown.

“I think you think too well of me,” Noah said gently, and hugged her tightly. “I think… Perhaps you could extend some of your good graces to our captain, and give Gansey a chance to earn them, too.”

Blue heaved one last sigh, reclaiming her hat.

“If he stays out of the crew’s way, and he doesn't mess with Adam, and he doesn't get us all killed, I'll consider it,” she said, getting back up. “I'll leave you to your counting.”

“I've got a good feeling about this one, Blue,” Noah said to her back as she went back to face the day.

She expected to see the crew working away, and they were, singing as they did. What she didn't expect in the slightest was that Gansey was out there as well. He'd abandoned his waistcoat and was coiling line like he'd been doing it his whole life, and every time Anaïs, the crewman leading the song, finished the call, he responded, bell-clear and cheerful as he worked away, 

“To be rollicking randy dandy o!”

Something in Blue lurched like the ship, still in dock, had crested a rogue wave.

She'd probably stood up too quickly, was all.

“Mister Gansey!” she called out over the chorus. “A word!”

Gansey - Anne Louise

“Beg your pardon, miss…?” Gansey approached the woman who appeared to be directing work on the deck. She was tall and broad, dressed in calico and leather that had been etched with runes he would love to study, but some other time. 

“Anaïs,” she said, once she'd apparently decided the awkward silence had gone on long enough. “Who might you be?”

“Gansey,” he replied, presuming that no one here knew or cared about his father or grandfather, so really that was the only bit that mattered was the bit he wanted to be called. “I've been a deckhand before, care to put me to work?”

She looked skeptical, flicking his cravat and regarding his waistcoat.

“In that, Mister Gansey?” she grinned. Gansey laughed and grinned back, undoing his buttons one by one.

“I have excellent news, Miss Anaïs,” he replied, then leaned in and whispered, like he had a grand secret to share: “they come off. Surely there's something that needs to be done?”

“Always,” she agreed, and set him to task after simple task.

He had missed this so, working under the sun. He slept far better when he'd put his body to work. So much of his life was spent thinking about doing and never getting to take action that when it was time to sleep, his mind insisted that he had done nothing at all and hadn't earned any rest. Miss Sargent had told him not to get in the crew's way, but she hadn't said he couldn't help, so he intended to do so until someone told him to stop.

He didn't know the first shanty the crew broke into, though he'd pick it up soon enough, but the next few he did, singing along as everything he'd learned in his travels came back to him easily. He was a little surprised when Miss Sargent called out to him; he'd expected her to avoid him for at least the rest of the day. Still, he looked over to Anaïs for her permission to leave his task and jogged up to Miss Sargent.

“Hello,” he said, unable to tamp down his happy grin at getting his blood pumping. “I'm at your service.”

She rolled her eyes, but she did not punch him, so that seemed to be an overall improvement. He followed as she guided him back to that same mess room that they’d been in previously. His maps and papers were all still there, but Ronan was not. In his place, several brown and green glass bottles littered the floor. Miss Sargent kicked at them, then sat at the table.

"I need you to explain your maps to plan our route and prepare the crew," she said shortly. Gansey sat, cautiously, near her, but not too near. 

"Oh, I thought…” Gansey looked over his map, thankfully free of venison juice. Someone had removed the plates and the meat and left everything else as it was. “Won't Parrish be plotting the route?"

"Parrish's current opinion is that your instruments,” and here, she flicked a specialized astrolabe for emphasis, sending it sliding over to him, “have replaced him." 

That was Gansey's good mood, ruined.

"I have absolutely no idea why everyone on this ship seems to leap to distant, improbable conclusions with the same degree of hesitation as a starving man leaping upon a banquet,” Gansey said, doing his very best to keep his tone civil, but he could not quite keep his gestures anything less than emphatic. “Why would he think that? A compass can’t steer a ship! A sextant can’t operate a wheel!”

Miss Sargent crossed her arms and leaned over them on the table.

“No, they can't,” she said, “but until you showed up with them, no one else could plot a course anywhere near the way Parrish can, and more importantly, no one else could make Lynch light up like that at all. To Parrish, those were the two things that he brought to the table. So now he's unhappy, Lynch is unhappy, and Czerny and I are just trying to figure out our route and schedule so that we can move on with our lives."

There was so much to be concerned about in that statement, but Gansey really didn't know where to begin. Ronan's sorrow after his father's death was familiar, but Gansey wasn't sure what to think about Parrish's reaction to Ronan's joy. Surely it would be a good thing? His wandering thoughts were apparent enough that Miss Sargent knocked on the table to bring his attention back to herself.

"Just tell me where we're supposed to go first,” she said, then, with a visible swallowing of her pride, added, “please.” 

Gansey took out a leather roll from his satchel and produced a divider, carefully spreading its points between two small moles on the inside of his own left forearm. Miss Sargent raised a skeptical eyebrow. 

“That seems very precise,” she said. Gansey shrugged.

“It’s an easy way to keep my notes encoded, should they fall into the wrong hands.” 

She plucked the instrument from his hand and carefully set it on the table with the points towards her, then took out her dagger and notched the table edge to duplicate the measurement. 

“And here I thought you’d decided not to stab me,” Gansey smiled. She handed the divider back and put her blade away.

“People tend to lose weight on voyages,” she said. “Just because the Greywaren provides food doesn’t mean people keep it down if they’re prone to seasickness. Besides, you might fall over the side, and then where would we be?”

Gansey tried not to think about that.

“A fair enough concern,” he said, and put one tip of the divider on a town on the tip of the Florida peninsula, then walked it five steps East-South-East. 

“I believe that there is a tiny island here,” he explained. “Lloches Tristwch, ‘the refuge of sorrow.’ The retinue that buried Glendower didn’t want to risk their information on where they’d buried him to be seized by the English on their return to Wales, so they sealed it all in a chest and buried it here.”

“So our destination is not on the map,” Miss Sargent muttered, chewing at her lower lip.

“I know it’s not ideal--”

“No, it’s good. Not on your very special map means it’s unlikely to be on anyone else’s, which means that no one else is likely to have found it. I like our odds a bit better now, as we’re not as likely to run into a man-o’-war that the Greenmantles bought. Finding it might be a bit tricky, but these waters are pretty deep; should be an easy sail.”

Gansey’s excellent mood returned, bright and beaming. He usually considered himself more even-keeled than this, but then again, he rarely had to work nearly so hard for praise, and Miss Sargent’s seemed the hardest of all to obtain. It occurred to Gansey that Ronan might have a point regarding how easily Gansey usually attained things. 

“So… what now?” Gansey asked her. “What can I do to help? I should really go back to the inn and pick up my other belongings, I’ve only got my books and papers in this bag, no change of clothes--”

Miss Sargent sighed.

“You can come with me, I suppose,” she said, rising. “I have to go pick up more hardtack, ours went off.”

Gansey rose as well.

“Why would you need hardtack given all the…” he gestured around the room. Miss Sargent hesitated.

“All of this… it hinges on the captain’s talents. I’m surprised he hasn’t… you really don’t know?” she asked. “He said you knew him better than anyone.”

Gansey frowned.

“I knew him in our youth,” he explained. “I haven’t seen him in a long time. I’m not sure what treasures he’s encountered since he’s been sailing, so I’m not sure what talents you mean.”

He couldn’t help a wry smirk as he added,

“Unless all the swearing was magic spells all along, and he’s only now getting them right.”

Miss Sargent let out an odd little sound, a sort of yip, her hand flying to her mouth. Gansey pressed his advantage.

“He does speak Latin, but I suppose his powers could be in the inflection of how he phrases each ‘fuck.’”

Miss Sargent burst into laughter, her eyes crinkling up as she let her hand fall away and stopped trying to hold back. 

“Oh, Mater Theia, ” she giggled, and Gansey had never felt more clever in his entire life, and he felt brilliant, luminous; no argument or rhetoric or thesis he could put together would ever match this moment. He stood there, basking in the sound, and waited until she settled down. 

"I'm not in the habit of telling anyone's secrets," she said more seriously, but the color was still high on her cheeks, and her lovely dark eyes were still bright. "On a ship, it's a very, very poor idea to rely on any one person's abilities for survival. So we make plans for when our plans fail. C'mon, we'll grab money from Czerny and fetch your things." 

Czerny doled out the money that had been allotted for the purchase, and Gansey picked up his waistcoat from the rail and put his arms back through it, though he did not bother to button it this time. Czerny had grinned brightly at them both.

“It’ll be good for Sargent to be seen with you, Mister Gansey,” he glared, mock-serious, as he gave her the coin. “I’m given to understand that many fine Nassau folks think that she has murdered you, and that your pretty corpse is currently being nibbled to bits by the fish.”

Gansey had laughed at that, looking over at Sargent.

“I cannot think of anyone by whom I would rather be dispatched, Mister Czerny,” he replied, and the color of Miss Sargent’s cheekbones warmed again. Every time he thought that today could not improve, it did so, ascending inch by inch toward some pinnacle that was apparently far beyond his mortal imagination. 

The walk down the gangplank looked different with his eyes open, and Gansey quite liked walking it under his own power. Halfway down, it occurred to him to ask:

“I beg your pardon, Miss Sargent, but on the off chance that anyone asks the name of the ship on which I’m travelling…?”

“The Monmouth,” she replied, “captained by Matthias O’Neal.”

Hearing the name that Ronan had chosen for himself, a tribute to his beloved younger brother and to his father made Gansey’s chest physically ache. His hand flew to his heart without his permission, and he attempted to disguise the motion by adjusting his waistcoat. 

“He misses his father, and his brothers,” Gansey murmured. Miss Sargent looked up at him, then nodded.

“Is it any wonder he’s so glad to see you?” She shrugged as they reached the dock and made their way back towards town. “He doesn’t have very much left from before.”

Gansey nodded, and then nodded harder still when she added:

“That’s part of what scares Parrish, I guess. None of the rest of us were around for ‘before,’” she mused. “I think Parrish thinks Lynch misses it so much that he might throw away all he has now to get a tiny piece of it back.”

“Oh,” Gansey breathed, more softly than the realization that had prompted him to speak it. “I never thought of it that way. But then, I suppose I’ve never lost anything close to what Ronan Lynch has lost.”

Miss Sargent nodded solemnly.

“I’ve never been involved with someone who’s lost so much either,” she added, “so I suppose it’s easy for me to say that Parrish should know that Lynch cares about him too much to do that to him.”

“And to you,” Gansey felt compelled to inform her. “His first thought after Parrish left the room was that the plan would need to be solid in order to pass your scrutiny. He clearly respects you a great deal, even if he shows it in a very… Ronanesque way.”

Miss Sargent ducked her head, hardly necessary given her diminutive height, but appeared pleased with the compliment. 

“All right,” she said. “Remember, in town, it’s the Monmouth and Captain O’Neal.”

“But you are still Miss Sargent, correct?” he asked, just to be certain. 

“I am,” she said, “or just Sargent, or the carpenter, should it come up. And you are still Mister Gansey?”

“Just Gansey,” he replied, praying that he didn’t embarrass her or himself as they navigated the crowds of Nassau. She tilted her head up at him, face shadowed by her hat.

“Is that all?” She asked. Perhaps she meant a title, or some other nickname, he wasn’t sure, but he replied the only truthful way that he knew:

“That’s all there is.”