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“It's fucking obscene,” Israel said. There was no other way to describe it.
“Good,” Edward grinned, “love a bit of obscenity. Could do with some more of it out here.”
“You're the one who,” Izzy started, then stopped. The one who wanted to come this far out – but it wasn't true. Not exactly. He tried again. “We're not here on holiday.”
“They are, though,” Fang nodded. “Got talking to one of them at Jackie's.”
It was the last stop before the jump. Crews were warned away from it. Captain Bonnet's hadn't listened. (Captain Bonnet had taken them there himself.) Past the barrier and before the leap, there was only beautiful darkness with an occasional beacon blip. The sort of blip where the Queen Anne waited.
“Yeah,” said Edward with a bit too much wonder, “they really are. Lunatics.”
Captain Bonnet and his passengers were exactly that. Pāhaupango had picked it up in the chatter and waved it in front of Ed like a red rag when he was rolled up in his berth with four screens and no food. The Revenge, it said, for a true post-quadrant pirate experience. Experience all the challenges and celebrations of pirate life, neatly packaged onto a three week voyage with a pilot, a massage therapist and a chef.
Edward had sat up. He'd started planning.
“What did they say?” Izzy asked. Fang was good at a bit of reconnaissance.
“Guy I was talking to said he'd worked with Blackbeard before.”
Izzy snorted. “Bullshit.”
“Swear it, boss,” Fang replied, “said he'd bought a real copy and used it to pilot round Wolf 359.”
“There's no copies.” Edward wasn't grinning anymore. “No fucking copies. Only one fucking program running one fucking ship, and that's this one.”
“Some big talker,” said Izzy. They'd run into them before. “Pāhaupango's a ghost story that far in. He just wanted to sound cool around the hot scary pirate.”
“Aw, boss,” Fang said, soft as always, “you think he was trying to impress me?”
Izzy growled. “If it's Jack trying it on again, I'm going to tear out all his wires and feed them to him.”
Edward waved it off. “Nah. Like you said, just some kiddie trying to sound big to Jackie's clientele.”
Later on, when the lights had dimmed and the crew were asleep, Izzy asked Pāhaupango one thing and suggested another. He suggested that Pāhaupango look for a copy. To reach under and around, pinging off the beacons as far in as he dared to go, just as Ed had taught him. The young Ed, careening round the system in some awful ship always on the edge of breaking down, held together with a prayer and with code more beautiful than anything Izzy had ever seen, who had known what magic flowed from his fingertips and who had marked it well.
While Pāhaupango was looking for mirrors and fragments, Izzy asked the question: who the fuck was Stede Bonnet?
It brought back answers far earlier than the sweep brought back a negative. Captain Stede Bonnet, of the Earth-flagged but otherwise independent ship Revenge, previously of the Tarsus Bonnets. Married older than was normal for his people, had left a wife and two kids at home to go galavanting after selling off one of their mines. It shocked polite society, Pāhaupango said. No evidence of an affair or a failed investment. Just a man who'd had enough and wanted to take off into the stars.
Izzy stared at the screen. Stede Bonnet could have lived an easy life. Instead he chose this.
The star closest to them flared blue and green; it lit up the sky like an oil painting for a fraction of a second before Pāhaupango pulled the shutters down. The radiation wouldn't be worth watching it for longer and nobody on the Queen Anne was starstruck enough to ignore it.
(Sometimes Izzy saw other things in the code. A shutter left up a fraction of a second too long; an oxygen filter not doing its job; a temperature range just outside of what it should be for humans. He saw Edward's quickly inputted sections and turned his face away from them.)
Ed's chest was a steady up and down by the time Izzy took himself to bed. He watched for a while before kicking off his shoes and climbing up to the top berth.
He didn't notice himself falling asleep but the next time he opened his eyes, the lights were on and Edward was gone. The ship had a clock which ran for twenty four hours, starting again at zero while they slept. Fang had picked it up quickly – he'd grown up in a neighbouring sector to Edward and it felt natural to him even if the numbers were different. Ivan could read it but still thought in Apollo time. Izzy pretended he didn't do the same. He didn't need to run the numbers to know it was early.
“Morning,” Izzy grunted after enough caffeine. “How long you been up for?”
Edward waved a hand. “Eh. About an hour.”
“Find anything?”
“They left Jackie's the day after we did. After that they just,” he paused, “drifted. They've been shuffling along at post-launch speed for a week now.”
“How the fuck has nobody snatched them yet?”
Ed grinned. “They're pirates, Iz.”
“They are fucking not.”
“They're pirates, we're pirates, everyone out here's a pirate. Big bad scary pirates preying on ships before the leap. They're just doing it differently. Doing something new.”
“That what you want, Edward? You want to run a cruise ship?”
Izzy put a hand on Ed's shoulder and brushed his hair back. Even out here where the only water was packaged and potable, Edward managed to keep it beautiful and clean. It was something with oils and heat that Izzy had never got the hang of – adding oil to his own hair only ever made it oily. He leant down and kissed the top of Edward's head.
“Sure,” Ed said with a smile in his voice, “fuck, man, let's do it. Take this ship's ID and go back before the barrier. I'll make us all new passes and we can ferry rich fucks between planets.”
He'd get bored. They both would.
“If they're drifting, we can catch them. I'll put a net out after breakfast.”
Breakfast wasn't bad. Ivan made them something decent enough with the supplies they'd picked up at Jackie's. Maybe they didn't have a chef but they had enough food to last and enough power to grow more if they needed to. Ed had pulled up the charts and the blueprints for the Revenge and they'd be scuppered as soon as they passed the next waypoint. The Queen Anne was doing them a favour, really.
Izzy took Fang and Ivan with him. There was no point bringing Pāhaupango into play for something as simple as this. He could lurk in the background, keeping up the ship's defences, alert and protective as always.
The Revenge was good enough to protect from most idle threats but its wall was mostly something cheap and off the shelf which Izzy could get through in his sleep. Fang and Ivan knocked on the central code, checking for weak spots, flashing in Izzy's peripheral vision as he puts a few stakes in the ground. Later he would match up the markers and blow through them all at once.
The room always raised a few degrees when they did this. Izzy wiped the sweat from his forehead and returned to typing.
Good day, someone sent through a channel he'd just used to take control of the starboard sail, I believe you're trying to requisition my ship. Kindly desist.
Izzy stared. “What the fuck.”
“Boss?”
Kindly desist? Izzy wrote back.
“Lads, can you get me a link to the camera in my current location?”
Ivan gave a thumbs up and continued with one hand.
I'm serious, said Izzy's correspondent. Stop this nonsense. We're fully armed.
It was a matter of moments to turn up the heat in the room on the other ship – not enough to make it dangerous, just uncomfortable. Let the posh twat on the fancy ship feel what it was like to work on a vessel held together with glue and a prayer, where excess heat built up around you to try and stop it building up around the tech.
A film flashed on the screen above Izzy's head. It had the echo and delay of an image beamed from beacon to beacon, getting choppy as it bounced across the gaps. The man in the picture was frowning intently at his screen. His hands – soft, pale hands, even in low definition – danced across the keys.
Feeling warm yet? Izzy asked. We could put it up another few degrees.
There were a few moments before the message got across. Izzy could tell when it had happened. He watched Captain Stede Bonnet stop fanning his flushed face and glare up at the camera.
Unfortunately for you, doors open both ways.
“Not when Pāhaupango's guarding them,” Izzy muttered.
The lights flickered. It wasn't unusual on the Queen Anne, but it was enough.
“Baz,” Ivan started.
“Ivan, Fang,” Izzy barked back, “check the upper line, this idiot's claiming he's in.”
“That's what I'm saying, Baz. He's locked me out. Terminal's down, completely.”
Izzy whirled round to face Ivan. No fucking way had some Tarsus twat who couldn't find his arse with two hands managed to lock out one of Izzy's boys. The Queen Anne crew were skilled; they couldn't be knocked down with some mass market point and shoot shit.
Izzy's stomach dropped as suddenly as if he'd lost gravity. “Fang, out, now.”
“I've found a gap, I can,” Fang started.
“Out,” said Izzy, louder, practically shouted, “get the fuck out, do what I fucking tell you and disengage, now.”
Izzy turned back to the screen and ignored the trembling in his hands. Fang was out. Fang was safe. He was far enough away that Captain Bonnet couldn't poison his code and turn his organs against him. It was fine.
Fine, wrote Izzy, we're stepping away. Nobody's getting hurt.
Isn't it nice, Basilica, Bonnet wrote, and grinned smugly up at the camera, when everyone gets what they want?
“He did what,” Ed asked later, almost howled, and Izzy couldn't tell if he was laughing or if the cabin was about to become a dangerous place to be.
“Sent over enough cash to fix the ventilation in the tech room.”
Which they knew because he'd sent a note at the same time explaining that warm rooms were uncomfortable and detailing how many umbrella accounts he'd put the money through. Ivan was still checking it out, but so far, it seemed to all be in order.
“He knew where he was sending it to?”
“Called me Basilica. Managed to get in when the power paused. He must've seen you.”
“So he managed to sneak past Pāhaupango and turn the famous Basilica's code against him. Interesting.”
Izzy grimaced. “Wasn't like that. We lost power for a millisecond and he took advantage. Some flash fucking dangerous trick.”
He didn't say who it was dangerous for. He didn't want to think about Stede Bonnet spotting what let Fang's nervous system work at normal speeds. He'd heard stories when he was younger about some of the things rumoured to happen in the mines. There was no way was he letting a man like that anywhere near one of his boys.
“We're going to have to do this the old-fashioned way, then.”
“When?”
They hadn't done it the old-fashioned way in a long time. At least the suits were still in top nick – the boys had made sure of it, just in case. (Izzy had told them to make sure of it, just in case.) The suits were heavy, warm and difficult to move in, but they'd keep everyone alive and it was all that mattered.
The Revenge was a cruise ship. Izzy knew it intellectually but plotting their approach was the first time he'd had to think about it in something other than the hypothetical. It was a small cruise ship, but a cruise ship nonetheless. They had at least a hundred metres on the Queen Anne. The guests would each have their own cabins, meaning dozens of places for people to hide and dozens of places to store weapons. The ship itself would never be as smart as Pāhaupango but it might be quicker, more consolidated, more reactive.
Izzy knew it. Edward knew it. They made sure the boys knew it too.
The dark fabric creaked around Izzy's wrists. His fingers were stiff with wires, ready for the Revenge, just in case they were living in this century and didn't have easily accessible keyboards.
“Alright,” Ed nodded, “come on then. Let's go.”
Izzy opened the door. He leapt.
The ships were aligned perfectly. Not locked – even Stede Bonnet would notice them locking on – but lined up well enough that they might as well have been. Ed was the only person Izzy had ever met who could do it without navigation assistance. He'd asked him, once, how he calculated so precisely in his head, and had got something back about the patterns in the stars. He hadn't asked again. It made the leap easy – or as easy as it could be – and that was enough.
“Iz,” he heard when the speaker in his helmet clicked back in, “you good?”
“Fine,” he replied. “Come on over.”
It was always cold, doing it that way. There was always a risk. Ed, though, with the bright lights in his helmet and the part of himself which still ran the ship, made the risk worth it every time.
The lower decks were silent. There was a steady hum of background power but the Queen Anne's shifting creaks were all noticeable by their absence. The ship was new and it shone like a toy. Izzy could almost see his face in the shine of the walls, missing the usual scuffs and breaks, continual lines snapped together to order instead of stolen and patched and mended and cannibalised from dead stations.
Ivan held out a hand. Hear that, he mouthed, pointing across the hall.
The crew member shrieked when they came up behind him.
“Don't hurt me! I swear, I don't have any money – OK, I've got some money, Stede pays pretty well, but I was thinking I'd put it away for a bit, if we do a few of these tours I can afford to get my back fixed, and he let me bring Pete this time, so maybe you guys know Pete?”
Izzy growled and pulled the boy's hair back until he dropped down onto his knees with a repeated ow ow ow.
“Aw,” Ed drawled, somewhere between a smile and a smirk, “don't hurt him, Iz. He already said he's got a thing with his back.”
“You're,” the boy said. Ed's appearance seemed to have finally stopped his rambling. “You're Edward Teach. You wrote Blackbeard. Pāhaupango.”
“At your service.”
“You're a pirate. You're a real pirate. Stede didn't hire you, you're not actors, you're actually pirates.”
Izzy shook him just a little. “We're not fucking actors.”
“Yes – no, ow, yes, I can see that now. What do you want? I can show you how to get on deck. Or anywhere, really.”
Edward pushed the screen on his helmet back. The lights shone blue and white in his beard and round his hair, little sparks that glowed like dead stars from across the sky. He'd set it up as a wild teenager to help Pāhaupango plot and grid the decks. The aesthetic of the reveal still made Izzy's heart beat faster. He'd deny it to anyone who was stupid enough to ask.
“Take us to your captain,” said Edward.
“He's upstairs. I was meant to get more fabric. We're doing arts and crafts. Um, pirate arts and crafts.”
Fang smacked him round the head, which was more than fair.
The crew and passengers were all there. They had scissors, thread and an assortment of linens spread out across the deck. Walking around, offering advice, pointing out particularly pleasing patterns, was a blond man who Izzy had last seen with his shirt undone, blushing pink and starting to perspire, through a grainy screen.
“Basilica,” Captain Bonnet said when he saw them, and he – he fucking grinned.
“Captain Stede Bonnet,” Izzy replied. It wasn't supposed to be him. Ed was usually the one talking. “We've got your ship. The life support's fully under our control. All your jewels and cash, in the bag, now.”
Ivan growled and lunged at a bloke who was twisting one of the bits of fabric in his hands. It was an impressive show of intimidation.
“Um,” said the man, “I don't really have any jewels.”
“Oluwande,” said Bonnet, sounding like a disappointed teacher, “remember the tantalum I gave you? That's worth more than most jewels out here. Go on, hand it over.”
“You gave your passengers tantalum?” Ed asked.
“Well, no,” Bonnet said, “I gave some of them tantalum. A few of them got chromium. Jim got lithium. That was fun until they accidentally dropped it in their water.”
“Sure,” Lucius muttered, “accidentally.”
Oluwande reached into his pocket and pulled out enough of the metal to pay for repairs to the engine room fan which made that weird noise. The tall blond next to him held out what looked like platinum.
“Fuck's sake,” said Izzy, “Bonnet, we're not equipped to take random ores with us.”
Even if they were, it would mean turning right back around to try and persuade Geraldo to fence them, and that fucker would never give them their due on this sort of thing, no matter what sort of price they fetched.
“You've just been giving them palladium and shit?” Ed asked. “Usually we take cash. This lot have got – you saying they don't have cash?”
“Well,” said Bonnet after a delicate pause, “not exactly. But we wanted to make sure everyone had something in case we were taken by other pirates. And here you are!”
Ed laughed and maybe it was close to disbelief. “Yeah. Here we are.”
Captain Stede Bonnet had run away from Tarsus with a ship full of waifs, strays and idiots. Izzy watched them while Ed watched Stede. The chef could cook decently enough and the pilot knew how to get them where they were going. It was more than Izzy could say for any of the rest of them. The massage therapist, Fang claimed, did some excellent things with his hands, which Izzy would have wiped from his brain if he'd thought to install some of Jack's more scabrous hardware before they'd come out.
“How do you run? How the fuck does any of this function?”
He didn't realise any of them were around, much less that any of them had heard. He'd thought they were all asleep by now but there was Jim, much too close to him and the control panel, casually holding a lightning stick. It wasn't a cruise passenger piece of hardware. It would be enough to fry the whole ship for at least half a minute.
It was banned in half a dozen territories and Jim seemed to be ignoring the fact it could kill them all.
“It doesn't,” they said.
Izzy closed the door to the panel slowly. “We're breathing. It functions.”
“Oh, sure,” Jim agreed, “we breathe, the ship repairs, the food grows. None of us do anything, though. It's not real.”
“Fuck off,” Izzy said. “I know virtual spaces. This isn't one.”
Jim gritted their teeth, breathed out and swore in a language Izzy didn't recognise before composing themself. “Not what I'm saying. It's like... You go another layer deep, right? And you find a tunnel, so you follow it. And it branches off, so you follow that. And you keep going until eventually you find out that every time we open a door we're repairing a shield. Shit like that.”
“What,” Izzy asked, “have you been doing three layers deep in the ship's code?”
Jim shrugged. “You think you were the first ones to spot this shit?”
It turned out they weren't the first ones to spot the plan to bounce around close to the leap playing pretend on a shiny new ship.
Izzy had seen some of Jim's work. It was unpolished but had potential. He'd even tagged some of it a few months ago and the marks were probably still there back on the Queen Anne. Oluwande was a transfer specialist but mostly seemed to be along for the ride, and judging by the way he looked at Jim when he thought they weren't looking, Izzy could guess what sort of ride he wanted it to be. Pete was an idiot kiddie who thought fucking Lucius counted as having a man on the inside. Frenchie had offered to keep the shields up in exchange for passage to the leap. Feeny knew a suspicious amount about pyrotechnics.
Bonnet had somehow managed to crew his cruise with actual pirates.
“Get to fucking work,” Izzy told Lucius and got an eye roll in return.
“I was working. This is what Stede pays me for. Keeping notes and this.”
“You've been invaded,” Izzy managed to get out, “you don't get fucking massages when you've been invaded.”
“Well, actually, I'm the one giving the massage, not getting it, Izzy. But I'm sure I can fit you in. You look like you could do with a good rub.”
Izzy stalked away before something short circuited.
“He's losing money on the trip,” Izzy told Ed.
He was lit up by four screens Bonnet had provided. Only fucking Bonnet would give the best pirate of his generation a more comfortable way to fuck with his ship's code. He could repair some of it, Ed had said, and so he was elbow deep in the system parts he'd usually leave up to Pāhaupango these days.
“Yeah, s'what happens when your ship gets overrun by pirates.”
“There are four of us, Edward, it's hardly overrun.”
“You've still got control of their heat and air, I'd say it counts.”
“It's not us losing him money. He'd be losing it anyway.”
Ed's fingers paused over the keys. When he spoke again, it was quiet. “We've come so fucking far. We could have a new ship ID and a whole crew. The boys would be safe here. We could cruise.”
Izzy winced. “Bonnet's not a pirate.”
“He could be. He's trying.”
The worst part was the bit Ed was right about. Fang, letting Lucius draw him and practice on him in equal parts, and Ivan, playing games and chatting about fires with Feeny, would both be safe here. Izzy watched them.
He watched Bonnet too.
He'd taken the discovery that none of the passengers he'd picked up were honeymooners or retirees with a disconcerting mix of grace and excitement. His pilot had muttered something that made Ivan snort. Nathaniel Buttons' accent suggested he'd grown up three settlements away from Ivan, same as Bonnet's suggested he'd been raised two strata away from Fang and Ed.
Three settlements on Apollo meant different accents or a different school system. (Still pilots, no matter where they'd trained. Apollo's sons always flew.) Two strata away from Fang and Ed meant a different life entirely.
What are you doing out here, Izzy asked. You don't need to be here.
I'm rather enjoying myself.
Izzy pulled out of the socket in the wall and sighed. Ed mumbled in his sleep; they had a bed together and it was the first time Izzy could remember that they'd slept side by side on a ship instead of one of them on top of the other. He was tired. It was late. He'd spent half the day trying to figure out Bonnet's fucked up code and half of it teaching Bonnet how to fight. Fuck knew what Bonnet was doing still up.
The Revenge had enough intelligence to keep the lights low when Izzy slid out of their cabin. Bonnet had replaced the harsh white noise with something warm and glowing which wouldn't disrupt anyone. This could be their life. They could live on a ship with glowing lights and plentiful food and a fucking massage therapist. They could make their lives easier.
Someone – probably Ivan – had hung the suit up carefully. Apart from the wire-stiff fingers it was comfortable; the right size, the joints well made, only as heavy as it needed to be. It looked out of place amongst Bonnet's shiny white tourist suits. They were the sort of thing you'd put a passenger in who wanted to walk around outside for all of five minutes just to tell everyone back home how thrilling it had been.
The Queen Anne was properly docked. Izzy pulled the door open and took a deep breath.
“Missed you,” he told the empty ship which wasn't empty. “Think Edward misses you too.”
He could have me.
He was still awake. Ed had talked about hibernating the Queen Anne while they were docked as if there was no way Bonnet was going to get bored and need them all to make a quick getaway. Or as if there was no way Edward was going to get bored and start needling until they got to the same outcome. Izzy had squashed the idea for all their sakes.
“I don't think Edward told you how important you are.”
Izzy could feel words compiling in his chest with slow clicks. As soon as they built up, he deleted them. None of them said the things he wanted them to say.
Edward's important.
“Yeah,” Izzy agreed, not even thinking about it, “yeah, Edward's fucking important, but you are too. You're quick. People know you. You keep us safe.”
Keep us interesting.
Queen Anne was cold. It was what happened when they only had to process enough to keep the place alive. If Izzy took his helmet off, his eyelashes would start to freeze. His lips would crack. It wasn't as cold as the outside but it would be close enough to hurt.
“You want to do something interesting?”
Pāhaupango lit up the nearest terminal in reply. It was rare for Izzy to offer interesting. Edward offered it to Pāhaupango and Pāhaupango offered it to Edward, the two of them building and chasing until Izzy was left to solder it all back together.
What have you got in mind?
It wouldn't be perfect. It was more Izzy's sort of thing than Ed's. It would take a while, though, and the sort of power Izzy didn't have on anything handheld he had over on the Revenge. It couldn't come from the Revenge. It would mean a death sentence if it was found to have come from the Revenge.
It was interesting.
Something felt strange about coming back to the ship through a perfectly sealed doorway. The plastic and metal vacuum seal meant there was no chance of missing the connection. He didn't need to jump. He only needed to step forward, one foot in front of the other, in a suit he might never have to wear again.
It was only a few days until Bonnet noticed. Him and Edward were making stupid faces at each other over breakfast when Bonnet looked down at his watch and frowned.
“What's up?” Ed asked once he'd swallowed the fresh eggs he was busy shovelling into his mouth. Bonnet kept four chickens, a goat and a flock of fish in his garden. He'd rambled to Ed about how they were pioneering a circular agricultural system. Izzy had thought about the hard-earned meals back on the Queen Anne and almost choked on his fresh plum.
(Roach found out he liked them and made sure they were always there, no matter what time of night it was. Izzy only had to ask.)
“It's, ah. Apparently my ship has been reported missing, probably overtaken by pirates.”
“Not really missing, is it? You know where it is.”
“Well, quite. Only it seems that before I even thought about taking the Revenge out, I put a sizeable insurance policy on her. Which has been paid out into an account I didn't know existed.”
Ed frowned. “Mary?”
“More like insurance fraud.”
Bonnet looked at Izzy then. He'd been careful; the account was hidden in as many chains as Pāhaupango could generate before it got back to Stede. The policy itself wasn't something to raise alarms. It was only about what the ship and Stede's life were worth. It was what Stede would have insured it for if he'd had any sense.
“Insurance fraud, eh?” Ed asked. Izzy knew the tone. He was fighting back a smile. “Sounds serious.”
The crew weren't listening. Insurance fraud probably sounded boring to them, young as most of them were. Something maybe Jim and Nathaniel would be into but none of the rest.
“Yes,” Bonnet replied slowly. He was catching on. He was looking at Israel. “I've heard it's something pirates will do sometimes.”
Pirates didn't. Basilica did.
Izzy said nothing when Bonnet kept staring. He cleared away his bowl, thanked Roach and pretended he wasn't going to follow the captain to his quarters.
The place was as immaculate as the rest of the deck. The code behind it thrummed oddly with all the sorts of tunnels that Jim mentioned but with something else too, a thread Izzy hadn't seen elsewhere and couldn't help pulling. It was less than a minute before the dense gravity of it had pulled him into something he thought he'd seen the last of.
“You're not fucking Calico.”
Bonnet sniffed. “Certainly not. I've heard his personal hygiene leaves something to be desired.”
Izzy couldn't help snorting at that. “So why have you got his code dirtying up your ship?”
Bonnet put his hands together. It looked like he was posing for an imaginary camera. There were enough of them about on Tarsus; maybe that was just how he thought he ought to look.
“It's not his. It's mine.”
“It fuckin' ain't,” Jack's voice chimed in.
“What,” Izzy asked, “the fuck?”
Jack was still fucking around before the barrier. There was no way he'd come out this far unless it involved serious and seriously easy cash. None of them belonged on a nice ship like this, but Jack didn't even belong in the same orbit.
Bonnet winced. “Right. Yes. Sorry about that.”
He fucked around behind his desk for a while. Izzy stared.
“Bonnet, why have you got a comms line open to Jack fucking Rackham?”
“I don't.” Bonnet wasn't looking at him. He stared at his feet instead like a scolded child. “It's a generative language model I customised with guard recordings. Some of the bribes for them were quite expensive, you know. I thought it would be helpful for when I was rebuilding his code set. To be able to talk with him about why he'd done things a certain way, or ask him about his motivations.”
Izzy grasped at the closest question. “Calico, though? His code's a mess.”
“Oh,” said Bonnet. When he glanced up, he looked almost happy. “Not just Calico. I've got all the great adventurers.”
Bonnet had data sets and recordings and programs for all of them. Which meant Bonnet had his own version of Pāhaupango and Ed was going to kill him. Or which meant Bonnet had his own version of Ed and Izzy would.
“Edward,” Izzy said. He cleared his throat. “You've got Edward.”
Bonnet paused. “No. I tried. I couldn't get him right. He was too...”
Too bright. A supernova burning up the eyeballs of anyone who looked at him. A flare of nuclear fusion across the prow, beautiful and gravitational.
“Too complicated,” Izzy finished.
“Yes. I think so.”
“We weren't meant to be out here,” Izzy said, “but it's safer past the barrier when there's a price on your head. Edward likes you, Bonnet. Fuck knows why, but he does. Do you know what that means, to be wanted by someone with a bounty on him?”
“They don't know his name,” Bonnet replied quietly. “In all the notices, they just call him Blackbeard.”
“Pāhaupango,” Izzy corrected, dark and low. He'd grown up near Fang and Ed. He'd grown up far away from Fang and Ed. He could at least say it right. “They call him it because it's his name.”
“Blackbeard,” Bonnet said. “They call him Blackbeard. As I said, Basilica, they don't know his name.”
“You know mine.”
“Of course.” Bonnet looked surprised. “Why wouldn't I?”
“And everyone knows yours, Captain Stede Bonnet, previously of Tarsus.”
“Actually,” said Stede Bonnet primly, “I've been going by Gentleman now.”
That was the part Izzy thought of when he crawled into bed next to Edward. Ed's hair was spread out across the pillow like the night sky. The ship was safe. The ship was comfortable. Bonnet was a twat but he kept Edward happy (for now, which was always the most Izzy could hope for).
“You like him, don't you?”
Ed turned around. His eyes were wide and dark in the faint glow from the direction light. “Yeah. I do. Everything feels easy with him.”
“He's a ponce who thinks pirating's a bit of a laugh.”
“Dickfuck,” Ed grinned into a kiss, “you like him too.”
“Fucking don't,” Izzy grumbled, kissing back. “You know he's calling himself Gentleman?”
“Yeah,” said Ed. He put his hands on Izzy's waist and Izzy could feel the weight of them all the way up to his ribcage, the two of them locked together. “The gentleman pirate.”
It was easy for Izzy to reach the socket even with Ed's hands still on him. Gentleman to room 717.
“Pervert,” Ed mumbled into his neck.
The blanket covering them was softer than anything Izzy had previously slept under. In his smalls, he could feel it on every inch of his skin that wasn't heated by Edward's palms. Even Ed's beard felt softer here. They had water; they had fruit; they had a clean record and enough money to fix anything that broke. Maybe this was what Edward needed. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad.
It looks as though the two of you are enjoying a private moment. Congratulations, Basilica, you've made your point clear.
Izzy groaned and Ed's teeth on his lip were only half the reason.
“Come in, you stupid fucking ponce.”
There was a soft shush when the door opened and the stupid ponce entered, hair glowing like starlight, hands held together.
“Stede,” Ed grinned, relaxed and easy, “Izzy. Gentleman, Basilica. I think the two of you have some things in common.”
Before either of them could object, he rolled out of Izzy's arms and stood up close to Bonnet.
“Hey,” he said softly.
“Hey,” Bonnet replied as if his whole world was about to burn.
They kissed like it was the first time either of them had pressed mouths with someone else. It was messy and wet as humans often were. Bonnet put a hand up to Ed's face to hold it, to touch his beard and stroke his hair, and it wasn't quite a mirror but it was close enough that Izzy felt it in his chest.
“Basilica,” Bonnet said when they broke away, too starstruck by Ed's beauty to look anywhere else, and fine, maybe Ed had a point, “join us?”
Even if there had been other options, Izzy would have taken this one, soft and warm and welcoming. Maybe the softness could be worth the things they'd left behind.
He kissed Bonnet's mouth and thought that maybe he could eat the plums.