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The frigate Claude was a small ship, fast and nimble on even the most stormy of seas. Its crew was fiercely loyal to the captain, a woman of the Orient, far from home and bearing an English name and papers. No one knew where Captain Joan Watson had come from, or where she'd come upon such a ship and crew. She was as mysterious as her frigate, twenty eight guns on deck and more than willing to go after any merchant ship along the triangle trade route.
The Claude was licensed as a privateer under the British Crown. Or it had been, once upon a time. It had been years since those papers were current. England wasn't at war with France or Spain presently, being more troubled by their colonial exploits and the Dutch as they made their incursions into dark Africa and trade with the Ottomans and India through them. The British Empire was expanding ever-westward, and the Claude had easy pickings rounding the southernmost tip of Africa and plundering the trade ships along the coast heading to India.
Still, it was in the waters of the Mediterranean that Captain Watson found herself most at home. She felt the calm there, the ancient gods of old protected these waters, and she could go about legitimate business without anyone being any the wiser to her pirating ways off the coast of Carolina not three months before. She had rice to sell, indigo and tobacco that had kept well and would do excellently at the markets in Rashid and Athens. She was holding back the cotton she'd stolen for a trip to Venice, but if she was offered a good enough price, the captain had decided to take it up with the crew and see what they thought of such a decision.
The Claude was unique in many respects. Their captain was a woman, and not a white woman. They had two first mates - (mostly because no one could ever agree who was better suited for the job) - one was an Englishman who the captain had known all her life, the other a black African rescued from an escape attempt in Charleston. Their cook dressed as a woman half the time and no one seemed to mind.
At a brilliant dawn, some three days outside of Rashid, a whistle went up from the crow's nest, high above the squared sails of the mainmast. In the growing light there was no need for Captain Watson to shield her eyes, but she raised a hand to them anyway, brown skin flecked with salt and freckles shaded her eyes as she sipped the strong black tea she'd found waiting for her in the mess just as the crew changed over to the daytime shift.
Sherlock was high above her now, hurrying down ropes and the pegs set into the mainmast in order to ease the assent and descent from the look out's perch. His footing was sure and his pace steady with the practiced ease of a man accustomed to climbing about like a monkey for a living. Marcus, his fellow mate, would never do such a thing.
He landed with cat-like grace, his eyes wide and a little bit frightened.
"What is it?" Watson asked. Her tea was growing cold and the winds were picking up. They would need to ready the crew to take in sails and let the jib out soon.
"This is her ocean." Sherlock bit his salt-chapped lip, rubbing at his three-day old beard. His expression grew wary. "And she's coming."
Mistress of Tides
an elementary fanfic by anamatics
Joan Watson was far from home. Or at least that was what the whispers said about her. She was a brilliant sailor, a better surgeon. Her ship kept no doctor. She knew the sea like the back of her hand, for it was where she was truly at home. Joan Watson was born at sea, and if she had her way, she’d die at sea too. Her father had been a sailor, her mother taken to show the crown the wonders of the Orient, kidnapped against her will and now settled safely in France, where the laws allowed her some freedom to hold property. She ran a boarding house now, full of young students wishing to make their mark on the world.
The winds picked up following Sherlock’s pronouncement. He stood there, hands resting in the loops of his jute rope belt, watching her thoughtfully. He wasn’t dressed in his finest, but rather like the crew. It would do him or Joan no good if they discovered who he really was. His wide, intelligent eyes followed her every move as she drank down the last of the tea and held out the cup to him. He took it wordlessly.
“We’d best make ready then,” Watson replied. Her expression was grim, freckled brow harrowed in concentration as she gathered her hair back behind her head and fastened it with a leather tie. They would need to be prepared.
Sherlock nodded curtly, heading below deck, the tea cup dangling between two fingers. He glanced over his shoulder just once. His lips pressed into a thin line of worry, his eyes crinkled at the corners. Watson wished he wouldn’t concern himself with such things, but the man saw everything, and deduced anything he possibly missed. He was a brilliant mind who would be better suited for law enforcement, or for being clever for the East India Company, not mucking about with a childhood friend of his playing at pirate.
Watson moved aft, towards the port side guns. Two of her crew were rigging up the jib, casting worried looks towards the growing clouds and fog. They nodded to her respectfully as she passed, and watched her for a moment as she stood, hands on the railing overlooking the sea, before returning to their task.
Worry gripped Watson. Sailors rarely came this way anymore. It was too risky they said, too dangerous. There were reefs and odd currents that could not successfully be charted. There were wrecks, ghost ships, and the mist rolling in off of the distant islands in a way that felt unnatural. Watson set her jaw into a tight, determined line and held out her hand. She’d known how to do this since childhood. Since she’d first fallen into the sea and had been pulled from the depths by a creature that could not be described in words.
She had been traveling with her step father then, the man who’d fallen in love with her mother and taught them both English and then French. He was a merchant, who ran the European routes. He took the North Sea in the summer to trade with the great blonde men of Norway, and came south in the winter to the calm waters of the Mediterranean to trade along the routes there. Joan was eleven, and she’d stood on the very edge of the bow and stared off into the mists. Something was singing, calling out her name.
The cold shock of the water had been the only sign she’d stepped towards the voice, the only sign she’d let go of the rigging. She sank down below the foamy surf and had opened her eyes to see a girl, far younger than her self, staring back at her. Her hair was the color of the sea, floating up above her head like sea grass. Her fingers were cold and brittle, and she pulled Joan back to the surface and held her up from under the water until the boats came and got her.
Her father had wrapped her in a blanket and had bowed his head. He’d taken a knife and drawn a line across his palm, an offering to the creature who’d saved his daughter.
Watson gripped the dagger at her belt, weighing the reasonableness of this action. She was not a superstitious woman. She did not believe in the old gods of the sea, nor in the god of her adopted homeland. The crew would view this as suspect, but there was no choice.
The pain at opening her palm was exquisite, and she hissed quietly as the blood flowed freely from the wound. It dripped down into the churning foam of the sea below and vanished amidst the spray. The words were Greek, a prayer to the ancient gods, her father had taught them to her as they rowed back to the ship.
“Never forget them,” he made her swear.
“I promise,” she swore.
She hoped it would be enough.
-
Her sacrifice proved successful, and the waters were calm all the way to Rashid. Watson was troubled by the lack of response, knowing that the mists and fog near the straight that they'd passed through cutting down across the Mediterranean following their successfully pillaging of an East India ship bound for Plymouth, was only a harbinger of things to come.
Sherlock had seen it from his position at the lookout, and Marcus was equally worried in his own way, standing beside the cook, his arms folded over his chest and nodding as she pulled a scarf over her head and gesticulated towards the shore. He was superstitious, far more than Watson or the rest of her crew. She chalked it up to his upbringing and the fear that had plagued his childhood, but knew that it was far more than that. Marcus was silent, observant, he knew when Watson was troubled and it spread like an infection to him.
Watson stood on one foot, her knee resting on the gun beside her, elbows on the railing as she stared out across the blank blue vastness of the sea before her. They'd spent too long, far too long, worrying on this voyage. It was time for a spell of Ottoman hospitality.
"Are you going to see Ramses while we're there?" Watson started. She hadn't heard Sherlock approach. Now she saw him, leaning casually against the railing on the other side of the gun. He'd found the time to shave somehow, in the tension of the past few days of navigating her waters.
"Dunno." She closed her eyes. "I don't think I want to be sold a map to some buried treasure across the ocean."
"We were lucking to avoiding the Barbary ships, I don't know how much more luck we've got left in us. He's probably still mad about last time."
Last time they were in Rashid - Rosetta - one of Captain Watson's oldest friends had offered to sell her a map to buried treasure somewhere far across the Atlantic in the New World. She'd turned him down, not interested in chasing dead man's gold halfway across the world, and he hadn't taken it well. She supposed then, as she did now, that it was just part of doing business. Ramses Matoo was one of her father's closest friends before his death, and now he was one of Watson's handful of allies in the vast expanse of the Ottoman Empire.
"He should be smarting, he should known better than to expect me to jump at a chance to chase fool's gold." Watson's hair was blowing in the breeze, inky black against the bright and cloudless blue of the sky. She reached up and caught it, tucking it behind her ear and turning to look at Sherlock. "I'm surprised she didn't come."
He didn't say anything for a long time, and Watson is reminded of when he'd first found his way onto her boat, addicted to the opium pipe and mumbling about a siren of the sea come to send him away to his doom. Watson knew that siren; she'd known her all of her life. Sherlock craved the ocean like a man in the desert craved water. His senses were too precise, too attuned, to be in the bustling cities of London or Paris. He was ill-suited for war and too argumentative for scholarly work. The sea was his haven, Watson was more than his captain, she was his best friend.
"I am too." Sherlock closed his eyes against the salty breeze. "She can't stay away from you."
Watson flashed him a tight-lipped smile. "This is her ocean, Sherlock. We all simply sail on it." She turned her attention to the see and the growing port on the horizon. "When we're in Rashid I want to see about getting merchant papers. We can outrun the Barbary ships if we must, but a license under the Caliphate and not as a slaver could do us some good."
"No more pillaging the triangle?" Sherlock shook his head. "I thought you liked harassing Dutch slavers."
"I do." Watson turned, back against the railing so she could monitor the maintenance of the sails high above them. "But there's no money in it. We need a legitimate enterprise to keep our heads down."
"Ah, you heard about that then."
"When we took that English clipper by the Easter Isles, yes. The captain had orders from the crown regarding piracy. There's a new law, we must be careful." Watson sighed. The new law would make their work harder, more complicated and less profitable. "I can only bargain our blessing on her waters, after that, we're at the mercy of the British Royal Navy."
Sherlock's expression was tight, the hardened look of a man who had spent far too much time contemplating the futility of actions. "You needn't find our fortunes on your knees, Captain. You are a brilliant sailor."
"And she..."
There was no word for who she was in any language that Watson knew. Marcus called her a sea witch, Sherlock a siren. There were a million words for the creature of the sea that had followed Joan like an inky black smear across her life, but none did her the justice she deserved. She was ethereal, blonde, and dangerous. She lived under the sea and in the misty mornings, crashing down upon the rocks and rising up like a craggy reef to wreck ships when the fancy struck her.
She demanded blood sacrifice to sail her waters. Even the Barbary pirates honored her code.
"There's no point in having this argument," Watson said testily. Annoyance was a harsh taste in her mouth. She swept forward, boots a solid thud on the scrubbed white wood of the main deck. "Come. We must inventory the take so we can provide the harbormaster a list when we make landfall this evening.”
-
Ramses Matoo was a shrewd man, his shiny bald head covered by a scarf and held in place through the grace of God himself, if Watson was any judge of it. He took stock of her ship, his hands on his hips while Watson's circled the hilt of her cutlass. She'd won it off a Barbary man; she'd do more than kill him if he tried anything. So far though, the meeting was going smoothly. Most of the crew was enjoying shore leave in the places of ill-repute that even a pious city could ill afford not to keep. "You're looking to go into legitimate business as a merchant, Captain?" His English was accented, but passable. Watson was grateful to her stepfather for his many years of friendship with the man. "You will need papers."
"I know." Watson hummed at the back of her throat. "I was thinking you might know someone who could help."
Matoo's eyebrows shot up and he tilted his head to one side, surveying Watson thoughtfully. Watson stood her ground, taking in his gaze with a glare of her own. She would not let him undercut her authority on her own ship. "You would be playing a dangerous game," Matoo's voice was low. "There are those who watch your career with interest - a woman sailor from the Far East with her own loyal crew and strict moral code? You are unique in this world."
Watson responded with the typical response to praise. She looked down at her boots and muttered her reply in Matoo's language, dismissing her accomplishments as nothing other than his god's will. It was the appropriate response, and Matoo's wide smile at her words was enough to solidify the gambit. "Will you help me?"
"Only if you help me first, Captain. I have use of your first mate's mind - there's something of a mystery in the city right now. If he can help solve it before the Caliphate discovers the indiscretion, you will have your papers." Matoo glanced around. "Is he... with the rest of the crew?" he added hopefully.
"He does not partake," Watson responded curtly. "I think he went to go speak to a bookseller. He's fascinated with the languages of your continent, especially those below the desert."
"It would do him no good to venture there. Not even the slavers go that deep."
Watson nodded. "I will collect him and join you at your shop when I do."
He nodded to her and swept from the ship, barking at his slaves and staff as he did, hurrying them through the process of unloading the wares he'd purchased. Watson watched him go and let out a slow breath of air, turning to look out over the sea beyond Rashid. The mists curled above the water, and Watson swallowed hotly, knowing what was expected of her. Her sacrifice was acknowledged, but the sea demanded more than blood to quench its thirst.
"Later," she promised. Her voice shook as she spoke clearly, carrying on the wind. "You know how to get in."
The tendrils of a breeze that swept around Watson's head and fluttered at the scarf she'd wrapped over her head out of politeness to those in Rashid who did not care for women going about uncovered was all the confirmation that Watson needed.
Now though, she had to find Sherlock.
-
Rashid was a city starting to show signs of decline. Its twin fortresses on either side of the city guarded it from advance by land or see, but it did little protect the town's tenuous economic foothold as a mecca for rice grown in the delta of the Nile River that snaked it's way south and into the desert far to the south. Each time Watson and the Claude visited the city, it seemed in decline. The Ottomans who ostensibly ruled this place were distant and stretched thing, their ruler was uninterested in dealing with the people on the ground in far-away ports.
Captain Watson strode through the streets, stepping around children and chickens as they pecked at the dusty, beaten down pathways, looking for grubs. She knew where Sherlock would be at this time in their brief respite, and if Matoo's offer stood, she had to collect him before he got too absorbed in the bookseller's wares.
The Claude was probably the only pirate rig that Watson could think of that carried as many books as guns on board. Sherlock spent hours socked away in his tiny cabin when he was not on duty, reading the great works of any man of letters he could get his hands on. He read in five different languages, and his most recent study was the language of this place. He found it in poetry, and in their religious texts.
Watson, who had no god or creed save the one she loved with all her might, humored his obsession with the things he did not know. He practiced on her, and taught her as he learned. It was how transactions with everyone from the Moroccan Barbary fleets to Matoo went so smoothly for Watson, and why she hated the idea that the changes in British and French maritime law might drive them back across the Atlantic to the warm and unpredictable waters of the West Indies.
The shop was dingy, and Watson paused at the door, looking at the dusty windows and the sun-faded display advertising the shop as a seller of books in multiple tongues. Rashid was a place for such eccentricities, and Watson's lip curled as she recognized the pictographical characters of what should be her homeland included on the bookseller's list. She could not read them, and hated dealing with far eastern traders who expected that she should be conversant in their tongue.
A distant bell rang when Watson pulled open the door. There were no women in this shop, only a few old men clad in long tunics, their heads covered with the same cloth as Matoo. They looked at her for a moment, a woman in salt-worn boots and a sailor's garb, before turning away, muttering amongst themselves. Watson kept her expression perfectly neutral, not wanting to give an inch on their restrictive rules regarding women, and strode purposefully towards the back of the shop.
Sherlock was leaning against the countertop, conversing with bookseller in animated tones. His eyes were alight and his hands were animated as he spoke, gesticulating wildly as if to drive home a point. The bookseller, an older man with a long beard and politely disinterested expression on his face, nodded ever so often.
"You are missing the entire premise of the argument, Holmes," he said after Sherlock's argument had gone silent. "There is no logic in abolishing such a trade; it brings entirely too much money to the region."
"It's barbaric," Sherlock protested. His expression shifted, turning dark. "The companies take people of your book, scholars, writers. They make them no better than dirt on your heel."
The bookseller tugged at his beard, eyes downcast. "It is against the law to conduct such business here. The sharifs see to that, no follower of Allah would ever be made a slave."
"Your sharifs need to better patrol their boarders, or else I would not be conversing with men bound for the West Indies in your tongue."
"You are a pirate, Holmes. Is a thief better than a slaver?"
Sherlock turned away then, and drew back, startled at Watson's presence. "Captain! I didn't realize you'd followed me." His lips quirked downwards. "Are you in need of my services?"
Watson shook her head. "Not so much myself, but Matoo. He'd like you to look into an incident with some of his wares before we depart."
The bookseller wrapped long brown fingers around the edge of his counter. "What has happened to Ramses?"
Not wanting to air the merchant's business to a stranger keen to gossip, Watson shrugged. "He wishes to see you, Sherlock. He says it shouldn't take but half the evening."
There was a moment then, in the stillness of the bookseller's when Sherlock’s eyes met her own. They had perfected, over their years of friendship, the silent sort of communication that suited people in their tenuous legal position. Watson looked down at her palm, the cut still barely scabbed over and he nodded once, curtly. He understood that she could not go with him, as the sun was always starting to dip below the western sky. Watson had places to be.
"I shall head there presently then. Shall I inquire after the trade?"
Watson nodded. "Please do. And the other matter we discussed."
Watching the realization of what would potentially be exchanged for his doing this work, his eyes grew wide and he tugged at the rag around his neck. "Do I have time to erm-- wash up?"
"Ramses has seen many a sailor Sherlock, I'm sure he's used to the smell of the sea." Watson smiled.
He smiled back at her, but there was a haunted look in his eyes as they flicked down to the cut in her palm. He knew that the offering had only been enough to keep the costs at bay for the days that would allow them safe passage to the port. Here there was no reason to delay, and the sea would take her due.
"Will you be alright? He inquired blandly. He was moving towards the exits, a bundle of books evidently purchased before Watson had come into the shop tucked under one arm. He held the door for her. "She won't take too much."
"She takes exactly as much as I can give." Watson's answer was curt. She did not want to discuss the odd relationship she had with the creature from the sea. Sherlock never understood the pull of her, the way that she looked at Watson as an equal, rather than a mortal human. He hated the games they played, the cat and mouse with storms and craggy rocks hidden just beneath the surface of the water, the blood sacrifice and Watson's insistence that this is the way that they must go, if they are to return to this part of the world.
"She is dangerous."
"So am I."
He nodded his head and turned, heading off down the dusty road towards Matoo's warehouse and whatever mystery he was to be set to solve.
-
The ship creaked in the wind as the started to dip below the horizon. Watson's breath felt hot and sticky, despite the sea breeze. Anxiety gripped her like a hand around her throat. She was playing with fire, and she was sure to get burned.
No one was around save Watson. The skeleton crew that had helped Matoo unload his wares had moved the boat off the dock to make room for another ship, a merchant's clipper, and had left a small dingy for the captain. She would bring it back in to the dock once Sherlock had resolved Matoo's problem. Watson rowed out to the Claude and climbed up the rope ladder, her boots hitting the deck with a satisfying thud.
The sky glowed red and yellow, purples and oranges arching high above the great expanse of the sea. Clouds moved in lazy, wavy lines across the sky, the promise of a calm night. Watson smiled, shrugging off her coat and the scarf she'd pulled over her head. She was alone on the Claude, and the solitude felt like the embrace of a long-lost lover, delicious and cool, wrapping around her in a cloak of silence.
"I was beginning to think you'd never come."
Watson exhaled and turned. She hadn't forgotten, no. But she'd been expecting her later.
Perched on the far railing, her knees crossed and her feet bare, sat a woman who was not quite a woman. Watson did not know how to describe her, not really. She was a creature of the sea who could walk on land - a god, a witch - something that could not be put into words. Her hair was yellow like straw today, fringe braided and pinned back behind her head. It gave her the illusion of girlish innocence that lasted until her icy blue eyes met Watson's across the desk and they went black with want.
There was a reason the Greeks and the Romans made their gods in their own image, Watson thought darkly. She tossed her jacket, scarf and over the railing and crossed to stand before the creature. "I wasn't aware you were coming so soon."
"I will always come when called, else it's just shadows and sea foam for me." Her teeth were sharp, but her smile friendly. She was dressed as Watson, like a woman sailor, her blouse falling off one shoulder and her skirts gathered and knotted to one side to show legs that Watson was sure were not always there. She looked human, innocent, beautiful. The girl every sailor dreams about meeting.
A siren of the sea.
"It's a great deal more than that."
"True, but no one wants the mundane details of storms and shipwrecks, Joan. That's dreadfully dull." She reached out and touched Watson's cheek. "I've missed you darling."
And it was with burning cheeks and no shame at the unnaturalness of all this, that Watson dipped her head and smiled shyly. "I've missed you too."
She was a wearer of many faces, but this was the one that Watson liked best: the vision of the woman who was close to herself in years, with a disinterested smile and a cunning sneer. She bore no name that Watson could say.
"Have you thought about my offer?" her companion asked, her fingers pulling at the pins in Watson's hair, letting it come loose, long black tendrils spilled like smears of ink across her pale skin.
Watson sucked her chapped lip into her mouth and looked away. The sun was mostly set now, a glowing red ball of flame and fire far out on the horizon. She could sail that way in be at Gibraltar in three days’ time, fending off Barbary ships and heading into the icy gray Atlantic once more. "You know I cannot."
"I'd love to live above the water a while, Joan." Her voice was musical, her lips pressing at Watson's temple. "To sail away across my waters with you at my side. We would rule this ocean, you and I."
Her breath caught in her throat, and Watson turned back. Her lips met the creature's harshly, biting at her soft skin and ignoring the taste of coppery blood in her mouth as she let herself be kissed with a passion she could scarcely recall from a human lover. She pulled away, their foreheads resting against each other, her touch gentle on her companion's cheeks. "Jamie I-"
Jamie was the name the creature had offered when Watson tried to say her own name one evening some five years ago now. "The tongues of men do not form our words." She had risen from their shared bed, naked in the moonlight, her skin shimmering and shifting. Watson couldn’t look at her then, her eyes burned at the vision of something not quite a human and not quite a god.
"Then what am I to call you since I cannot say your name?"
She'd turned back, hair illuminated in the moonlight and eyes sad. "If I ever were to try and live among your kind, I'd pick the name James."
"That's a boy's name." Watson laughed. "How about Jamie?"
"I suppose that it would avoid some confusion." She'd wrapped her arms around herself. "Jamie," she tasted it on her lips.
It suited her, the name. It felt innocent, beautiful, even when she herself was deadly. Watson shifted away from Jamie and leaned beside her against the railing. "I can't leave this ship."
"Why not? You've a capable sailor in Sherlock, another one in Marcus."
Watson sighed. "I love the Claude, Jamie. I can't very well leave her behind to go off on some grand adventure with you."
Jamie looked out across the ocean. "What if I were to come with you?"
"A woman on a ship?" Watson gave a dismissive little laugh, even though she knew the statement was hypocritical.
The scowl that cut across her face was entirely human, and Jamie said: "I'm not a woman."
"No," Watson agreed. "You're far more than that, but the crew would never understand. They see you for who you are, Jamie. The wind, the foam, the storms - everything about that-" she gestured towards the open ocean at the mouth of the Rashid Harbor "-that scares them."
Jamie's fingers reached out, curling around the loose fabric of Watson's shirt. "I could have you here, you know? Gut you and string you up for the gulls to eat before your insignificant crew ever returned to this ship." Her expression softened. "I don't wish for it, but I could make it happen. It would save me the trouble of lov--"
Realization of the truth hurt Watson as much as it clearly hurt her companion. This thing between them was deep and powerful, the crest of a great wave before it crashed over a ship in a storm. They were riding it now, but what was to happen when it collapsed?
Her lips moved, the words of confession flowing from her. She loved this, what they had, she would do anything to keep it. She couldn't leave her crew here in Rashid though. They would not mesh well with society. Jeddah, maybe, or Alexandria, but not here amongst the rice traders and decay. "Why do you wish to live above the water for a spell?"
Turning away, her eyes alight with the green flash as the sun dipped below the horizon, Jamie smiled. Her teeth were sharp, her eyes wild and alien to Joan's human gaze. "The sea can be a bore."
"I love it."
"You don't have to live in it Joan, you get to skate along the surface, never dipping below."
Watson swallowed then, and shrugged off her shirt. She stood there for a moment, contemplating the water below her. The decision came to her on a whim, a tickle of fancy at the back of her mind, a wish she'd had since she was a child, freshly fallen into the sea for the first time. "Make it so."
"But for how long, darling? If I had my way I'd steal you down to the depths and never let you return to the world above."
"That would put a damper on your plans of living above the waves Jamie." Watson replied. She folded her shirt and set it beside her boots. Some rational part of her was screaming that this was foolishness, that creatures lived to drag sailors down into the depths of the ocean. She ignored it, her trust in Jamie was fragile, but experience had shown that Jamie would not let her drown. "For the night?"
"As you wish."
There was a terrible shift in her countenance then. Her face pulled and twisted, growing longer, more obscene, more dangerous - less human. Her hair fanned out around her as she reached out long fingers with sharp, pointed nails and cupped Watson's cheeks.
The first prick of pain was swallowed by a kiss pressed almost innocently to her lips. The second was far longer, a burning cut bleeding freely at each side of her neck. Another, and the world felt suddenly devoid of air. Watson gasped into Jamie's mouth, hands clawing at Jamie's back, at her hair, trying to breathe and finding that she couldn't.
It was when Jamie's fingers wrapped around the good Captain's waist and pulled them both over the railing and down into the water with a splash, that Watson's head cleared once more. Jamie's smile, cunning and cruel, was victorious.
And Watson breathed under the waves.
-
It was a while before Watson found she could speak again. Her body adjusted to the gloom, the great hulking shadow of the Claude above them filled her world with shadow. She twisted, her body arching in pain, her bones realigning as whatever power Jamie had over her finished its work. She felt like a monster, her very movement alien. Her body more fish than human.
Jamie's hand, even at this depth, felt hot in her own.
"What have you done to me?" The words sounded like bubbles escaping her lips, the dull silence of the sea that she was so accustomed to while underwater replaced by the gentlest of sounds: a forest at mid-day, a gurgling stream, and in the distance, a far off cry like a mournful song.
Watson looked around, alarmed. "What was that?"
"A whale, darling. Calling for its pod." Jamie swam closer, her eyes raking over Watson's new form. Her lip curled in what could only be displeasure. She’d never been good at hiding it on her face. "It doesn't suit you, to be like me. I like you better with two legs."
"It's only for a night." Watson reminded her.
Jamie's smile was lost in the shadows of the growing twilight above. "Yes darling, just a night to show you my world and all its shining, shimmering splendor." Her teeth flashed as she spoke, and she looked dangerous to Watson, all dark angles and hard lines of skin stretched tight over bone. This was Jamie how she was meant to look, when she could be her true self beneath the waves. Watson could hardly bear to look at her, overwrought by the spike of revolted intrigue that she felt so acutely seeing her like this: a creature of the deep. Something no one else could be allowed to have. "No one calls me Jamie down here." Jamie turned her wrist twisting in the water, moonlight sparkling against the black scales of her tail.
"What do they call you then?" Watson tried to move and felt her body surge forward as it had never moved in the water before. She pitched downwards with the current and floated through the undertow, torn between glee and fearfulness. "Down there in the depths?"
Long, skeletal fingers wrapped around Watson's wrist and drew her out into the murky blackness of the harbor beyond the gentle shelter of the Claude. Jamie looked over her shoulder, eyes black in the gloom. "They call me Moriarty."
"Moriarty." Watson tried the word, tasted it on her tongue, felt Jamie's hands come up and circle her waist, felt the kiss that came afterwards.
"You've finally said it, darling," Jamie cooed. "It brings me such joy."
Watson smiled back at her, and kissed her smiling lips.
They swam deep into the night. Jamie paused at one point, telling Watson to wait and disappeared far below only to come up with a rusty, coral-encrusted lantern with something glowing a pale yellow inside of it. She stared at it, awed, and had reached out to touch the lantern. "What is it?"
"It's from an eel, it will light the way." Jamie turned and pointed. "We've still a ways to go."
Blackness pressed in at Watson's temples. She kept her mouth shut, concentrating on her movements and keeping up with Jamie's pace. She moved faster than even the fastest ships on a windy day, her body sleek and cutting through the water like a knife through skin.
Watson's mind wandered, recalling the tales of these creatures, the way that they were meant to lure sailors to their death, drowning them as Narcissus did, victims of their own hubris and a love that could never be. Watson wondered if in this story she was Echo, or if Jamie was Echo. They both loved another above each other, and the sea would claim them first.
"Where you serious when you said you wanted to live above?"
Jamie glanced over her shoulder, lantern catching her hair in the gloom and sparkling in the waves. "I was."
"Why?" Watson looked out over the vast bleakness of the sea around them. There was nothing for leagues and leagues, just a vast expanse of space that made her feel small and insignificant. She wrapped her arms around herself and forced down the feeling of panic when, in the distance, the whale's mournful song began once more. "When you could have all this?"
"I never wanted this." Jamie looked down at her hands, at the black tail that flicked lazily to keep perfectly level with Joan. "I never wanted any of this. My father wanted it for me, wanted me to learn the ways of the sea, the magic it contained. He wanted me to rule and to be ruthless, so I was ruthless." She turned away. "I sank a ship not long ago and there were more souls aboard than I could have ever imagined."
Watson inclined her head but said nothing. She could guess the chilling realization that Jamie had come to.
"They were chained, stacked on top of each other, five or six deep, locked at the neck and wrists and ankles. They could not attempt to flee my grasp; they could do nothing but tilt their heads back and accept death as she came, a silent shroud of black water descending upon them." Jamie's voice faltered. "There's no honor in that struggle, Joan. I did not wish to save them, but I would have liked to see them try to save themselves."
"Men trade in other men above," Watson replied. "There is no point in struggling in the open ocean." She reached up and touched her free flowing hair, arched as a black halo around her head. "It is by the color of their skin, mostly."
"You are not the same as the men who usually fall victim to my storms."
"I am from far away. My mother was taken like those men, only as a --" Watson choked on the word and looked away. "A sea captain wanted a woman to warm his bed. We were rescued by my stepfather, the man who taught me your ways."
Jamie made an approving noise at the back of her throat. "He kept the old ways. A wise man."
"He was a good man."
"Yes, I recall. He came to fetch you when you fell into my grasp for the first time." Jamie looked at her then, her eyes a little uncertain. They'd never talked about this. The subject was not taboo, not exactly. It was just easier to avoid than discussing it. "We were both very young."
Watson nodded. "You were good to give me back then."
Jamie laughed. "I would have bungled the spell to make you like me; else I would have kept you.
Sighing through her neck instead of her mouth felt odd to Watson, uncomfortable and disconcerting. She did it anyway, peering at Jamie through the gloom. Changing the subject seemed to be the wisest course of action. She did not wish to linger where the words were tense and uncomfortable, the meanings behind them darker than even the darkest of man's intentions. "Where are we going?"
Pointing, Jamie indicated a point of light below that Watson had not noticed. "There," she said. "My home."
-
In the dark, murky depths there was a fissure in the bottom of the sea. A cave born of great shifts in time, the trembling hands of angry Gods shifting the very rock to match their mood. Jamie was like them, Watson knew, she was like them in her ability to foist her moods on the men above; fickle and fleeing as the sea itself.
Perhaps it was this that endeared her so to Watson. The knowledge that despite the terrifying expanse of her power over the sea, she was still at the same mercies of man: love, want, need. They ruled her mercurial nature.
"This is your home?" The lantern in Jamie's hand illuminated the black entrance to the fissure and she turned, her face caught between light and shadow, her smile all teeth. Watson felt the twist of revulsion on her stomach and caught herself before she recoiled. Could she even go in there? Was this a place where humans were allowed to venture?
"Well, it's not an entrance to Hades if that's what you're asking." Jamie let out an amused chuckle and swam forward. "Come inside, it's not nearly so dark."
Doubting that, Watson swam forward, Jamie taking her hand and leading her into the darkness. They swam for a few moments in silence, the feeling of the blackness creeping into even the small pool of light from Jamie's lantern. And then, as if by a strange sense of magic, they turned upwards and began to swim in a lazy spiral, to a place where there was light.
The fissure widened, twisted upwards into what had to be the side of an undersea mountain and opened onto a room that glowed with a pale blue light. Everywhere fish swam, their sides glowing with that same blue light. -Jamie turned, eyes fixing on Watson as she set the lantern down on the stone floor amongst a bed of anemones. "Do you like it?"
Watson looked around, taking in the space, swallowing down the feelign that she was intruding on some place striking in it's intimacy, it not meant for her eyes. "It's wonderful," she said, bubbles escaping her lips. Jamie's fingers, long and brittle, the nails having carved the deep gashes in her neck through which Watson now breathed, tightened around her wrist.
"Come look at this." Jamie swam toward the far end of the space, to a garden of coral so beautiful that Watson's breath caught in her throat. "Come look at what I've grown." They did not linger in the cavern far beneath the waves for long. A glance at the sky, her body floating gently beside Jamie's, told Watson that dawn would still break and the magic would fade to nothing and she would be crushed by the weight of the ocean on top of her.
Jamie was reluctant to leave, wanting to show Watson all manner of things before she left. Here were her paintings; here was her collection of human remains, teeth and silver and beautiful things all. Watson nodded, knowing that as much as Jamie was a god, she was young yet, a child and full of curiosity about a world not her own.
"Take me back to my ship," Watson whispered in her ear. "And I'll see about getting you a place on the crew."
It earned her a smile, bright and winning, lips at her neck. "And in your bed?"
"Discretion, Jamie, is key in all things."
"I doubt Sherlock will mind. Or Bell or your strange man-woman cook." Jamie let Watson bit at her lip. "Is it terribly rude, to say that?"
"I don't think Hudson particularly cares either way," Watson replied, fingers curling into Jamie's hair. "But it's better to go off of what she's wearing than anything else."
"Ah."
-
They swam lazily upwards into the growing dawn. The harbor at Rashid was cast in blues and oranges as the sun rose above the weak wisps of clouds that had cropped up in the night. Watson's head broke the surface and with it went the spell. Her mouth tasted air and she rolled onto her back, floating, breathless and alive, in the harbor.
Jamie's head bobbed beside her like a seal, watching with expressive blue eyes. "Are you going to float like that until the gulls get you?"
“No.” She splashed some water in Jamie’s direction. “I’m going to enjoy the sunrise and then figure out how to sneak onto my own ship without getting caught stark naked climbing a rope ladder.”
“Listen,” Jamie cocked her head to one side. In the distance they could both hear the first few words of the call to worship.
Watson twisted, pushing her head down and her hips up, and flipped over in the water. She surfaced, blowing air from her nose and kicked, swimming towards the rope ladder that dangled, invitingly from the Claude's railing.
“I had a lovely time.” Watson reached up and pull the ladder down towards the water. She let Jamie kiss her then, pressed up against the hull of the Claude. She let Jamie’s hand snake between her legs and touch her where there two solidly human legs and cup her sex between. It was fast, quick, a promise of what Jamie’s tenure on the ship would be.
And in the distance, the call rang out again.
They had to be quick about getting up and onto the Claude. Watson's thin under shirt was soaking wet and clinging to her skin, her trousers still folded on the deck along with her boots and shirt and binding. Jamie was dressed in the same white dress as before, wet and dripping as she hauled herself up on uncertain knees and unsteady feet after Watson.
"I'd wondered when you would return."
Sherlock was leaning against the railing with his back to the pair of them. He held out a long piece of white cotton cloth between two fingers and Watson scrambled onto the deck and grabbed it, wrapping it around her shoulders and shivering in the pre-dawn chill.
"I take it you solved Matoo's mystery?" Watson reached for her shirt and tugged it over her head. Jamie clambered over the railing and took the cloth when Watson held it out to her, dabbing at her hair with a disinterested expression on her face. "You can turn around, Sherlock."
"Excellent." He turned on the ball of one foot, his feet coming together smartly once he faced her. "It is good to see you alive, Captain. I never pictured you for a morning swim in shark-infested waters."
Behind Watson, as she bent to pull on her boots, feet sticking to the salt-encrusted leather, Jamie laughed. It was a light and airy sound, innocent when she was anything but. "There are far more dangerous things in this ocean than sharks, Mr. Holmes."
Sherlock regarded Jamie with the expression of a man struck by the reality of his situation all at once. He did not flinch of back away, but tilted his head curiously to one side. "You spend an awful lot of time above the sea, for one such as yourself."
"I rather prefer the company."
Her boots finally back on her feet, Watson stood and rolled her eyes. "Tell us of Matoo, what tidings did he send?" Her expression darkened. "And for that matter," she squeezed some water from her hair and started to set it into a plait. "What was this business with his mystery?"
Sherlock pulled at the knot of gray fabric around his neck. "He was annoyed that you did not accompany me," he confessed. "I think he wished for use to work as a pair on the puzzle. It did not merit such consultation, however. One of his men was skimming funds and channeling them into creating a surplus so as to drive prices down so he could create a separate company and attempt to cut Matoo's feet out from under him. Cleverly disguised in Matoo's books, but it did not take long to find the discrepancy or deduce the culprit." Sherlock glanced towards the shore. "He's speaking with the sharif today regarding your terms."
"Does he think we have a chance?"
"Do you truly want to stop gutting traders along the triangle?"
"More than anything." Watson turned to look out over the harbor that opened into Jamie's ocean, her gaze sliding over to Jamie, a warm smile at her lips. She was sitting on the railing, the piece of cloth wrapped around her shoulders and a pleasant expression on her face. "What do you say we stay in your waters a while?" she asked her. "To see if you like being a sailor before committing to it?"
Jamie's smile was as broad as her own. "I think I'd like that very much."