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The moon was high and round when Jim said fuck.

The trade had gone well; people liked doing business with Olu and they knew how to be steered by Zheng. Everyone had come away feeling like they’d been the main beneficiary of the transaction. There was nothing to regret, and now here they were, walking down the beach back to the ship, Olu and Archie chatting while Jim stood there, mouth making shapes but no sound.

“What’s going on?”

There were probably kinder ways to ask it. Zheng had acted them a few times but Jim would stab her if she started with hey girl.

Jim stopped whatever they were doing and swallowed. “I’m late. I just realised. It’s been a while.”

Zheng had spent years heading up a fleet. She didn’t interfere too much in her crew’s lives, but she knew things happened. Sometimes those things happened when you didn’t have a doctor on board. She knew what to ask for and where to ask it. She could get a bosun healthy, recovered and free in less than a week. She’d done it before.

Jim was different. They were good at counting and everyone they’d fucked in the past year was on this beach. Maybe this was purposeful. Maybe this would be a celebration – Zheng had attended to those too, though they were rarer at sea.

“How are you feeling?”

Jim shrugged with tight shoulders. “Dunno. I was sick. I thought I’d eaten something bad.”

They didn’t eat badly on the Revenge and they all ate the same thing. Sometimes eating cakes and breads made Jim shake, but that was just them. It wasn’t enough to stop their aunt arriving, unless it was, and their nerves had been so thoroughly shot that it had echoed through their body. Stranger things happened on ships. Their first mate had turned into a seagull once if Swede was to be believed.

“You could make them start again. If that’s what you want.”

The suggestion made Jim snort. “What, with the power of prayer?”

Zheng looked at them. As far as she could tell, they’d been fucking men for years now. Sometimes she forgot about the nunnery stuff. Under her gaze, Jim seemed to shrink into the darkness, wrapping both hands around their sides to hide their belly.

“There are ways to make it happen,” Zheng said carefully. “It won’t be comfortable, but it won’t be worse than a bad month.”

Archie laughed loudly at something, but she and Olu were far enough away that the sound was sharp in the distance. Jim shuffled a little in the sand before they started walking again, slower than before.

“When I was younger,” they started. A wave they didn’t notice crashed against their boot as they made their way forward to the ship. “There were a few times. A couple of times. When women who were in trouble would visit from the village. Their husbands were shitty to them, or they didn’t have husbands at all, or whatever. They’d stay for a few days. Nana would say she prayed for them.”

“So you already know what to do.”

Jim shook their head. “Nah. I never helped or anything, I just – I washed their bedsheets, sometimes. It didn’t happen a lot, just…”

“Enough to remember.”

“Yeah. Enough to remember.”

Jim didn’t know how they were feeling apart from sick but at least they knew prayer wouldn’t solve this. Zheng wouldn’t have to start right from the beginning, explaining like she’d had to explain before to girls who’d grown up in towns instead of on farms exactly what had happened and how.

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to sleep.”

Zheng put a hand out to pull them up when the two of them got to the plank. They didn’t feel any heavier than usual. Nothing about them had changed except that they’d been sick, kept it from the crew, and found out they were late. Nothing about them had to change except those things.

Jim could pray. Zheng would make plans.

Roach’s cupboards were filled with herbs and spices. He was a better cook than a doctor. He hadn’t complained too much when four of them took over his galley to cook garlic shrimp, so maybe he wouldn’t complain when he caught Zheng rifling through his bottles and bowls and making them squeak together. The man liked soup. Zheng would cook it for him if it would keep him quiet.

The cupboards held no licorice or achyranthes root. Roach was keeping turmeric loose in a bowl at sea but he didn’t have a single herb that would actually fucking help. Zheng breathed deeply and scrubbed her hands. She’d go somewhere else. There would always be a place, no matter what port they were in, where she could get what they needed. She would find it.

The sun was barely rising when Zheng slipped from her cabin to Frenchie’s. He was bleary and sweet in the morning light.

“Captain,” she said. She nodded at Frenchie, then at the companion who was sprawled across him. “Quartermaster.”

“The fuck d’you want?”

“Another three hours in port. I have some business to attend to.”

Frenchie pushed himself up onto an elbow. “I thought you already attended to business yesterday.”

Zheng shook her head. “That was ship business. This is personal.”

“We’ve kind of got a schedule to keep to, mate. You know how it is.”

“I’d really appreciate the extra time,” Zheng said slowly. “For something personal. Medical. Which Roach doesn’t have the supplies to help with.”

Hands opened his eyes. He was propped up on pillows at the edge of the nook with one leg hooked over his captain. It was inappropriate but it wasn’t Zheng’s ship. She didn’t have to worry about it any more. If the captain of the Revenge wanted to allow his crew to fuck him until he got stupid, that was none of her business until it was.

“What’s he missing?”

“A lot.”

“Something you’d have a lot of on your ship, pirate queen? Can’t think what that might be.”

Zheng tensed at the test and the title from Hands. “You’re a smart man. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

Hands smirked. “Yeah. Go on then. Three hours.”

Zheng left the cabin to Frenchie asking questions and Hands teasing an explanation of the sort of thing women who’d been wives until they ran to a life on the waves might want. He’d probably get it wrong – he didn’t seem like a sailor who knew how to navigate a twat, as often as he had his mouth round one. If he did get it right, he’d think it true of Zheng but she wouldn’t kill anyone for it. Better for it to be thought of her than of Jim. She’d swallow the indignity of it so that Jim wouldn’t have to.

In her cabin she had money and more than enough of it. She’d been unlucky but she’d never been a fool, though her clockwork ghosts might disagree. She took her sword and a satchel. She had an idea of where she should look. If it didn’t work, she knew how to find the place that would.

“Hey,” Olu said, “going somewhere?”

It was a question, not an accusation. He sounded tired. He looked like he wanted something.

“Just into town for a little while. I forgot something yesterday.”

Olu nodded. When Zheng stepped forward to hold him, he was shaking like a sailor left ashore without a drink.

“I’m sorry,” he said into her hair, “I swear, fuck, I didn’t mean to, I wouldn’t do that, I swear.”

“It’s not me you did it with,” she replied. She stroked his back and let him cry. “How are they?”

Olu sniffed and stepped away. He stopped shaking and rolled his shoulders forwards. “We talked. They’re not mad at me, dunno why. I swear we’re careful, even more careful than you and me, I dunno how it happened.”

“Hey,” Zheng said, and snapped her fingers. “Jim. What do they want?”

“They said you could help.”

“I can.”

“They don’t want to be pregnant. Being pregnant’s rubbish. Especially on a ship.”

“They don’t have to be.”

“If there’s anything I can do – or Archie, Archie knows too – just tell us.”

“I will.”

It wouldn’t hurt to have Archie and Olu around to hold Jim and to comfort them. They were good at that sort of thing, even if Jim wasn’t. Jim would struggle and snap at them, and they would joke softly until Jim needed something else.

“Keep them safe,” said Olu. He put his hands on Zheng’s shoulders. “Whatever it takes. If it’s more expensive, I’ll pay it. Or Frenchie will and I’ll pay him back. If you need to make me the bad guy, do it. I don’t care. Just make sure whatever happens is the best way it can go.”

Zheng squinted up at Olu. “We’re making them bleed, not cutting off a leg. Although I guess that would bleed a lot too. We’re making them bleed a lot less than cutting off a leg.”

“I’ve never cut off anyone’s leg before. I don’t have the background for this.”

“Huh. Really? Because Archie and Jim have, and I have. Never?”

“When did you cut off a leg?”

“In Panama the first time over, one of my sailors got it trapped under a ship. It needed to be cut off before the bad blood poisoned her.”

“See, that’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. When I was a kid, you’d hear about times it went wrong. Always real quiet about it but we knew it happened. The bad blood.”

Don’t let it happen to Jim, he didn’t say. Olu would be a man mad with grief if that happened. He would take a ship from his best friend’s fleet and watch the sea turn red. He would turn away and think nothing of it apart from maybe that he’d made a ghost proud. Zheng wouldn’t kill Jim and she wouldn’t kill Olu. She would do the work that needed to be done.

“It’s too early for anything like that. They’ll be fine. I’ll make sure of it.”

Zheng kissed him and left. She had three hours. She wasn’t about to waste them.

The town wasn’t a city but it was big enough to have a church and a bawdy house. It was big enough for them to have heard of the pirate queen and small enough that none of them had met her. She could be Susan for a little while, looking for medicine for a friend (nobody would believe that it was a friend) and slipping back to sea. She could slip unnoticed amongst the people at the docks who came and went.

They had a pharmacy which sold laudanum and cobwebs in vinegar but nothing for the unwanted suppression of courses. The nervous mop of a boy behind the counter didn’t even seem to understand what Zheng was asking for. She got as close as she could without getting vulgar.

“You want a midwife,” he said eventually, half a question with his big brown eyes lowered so he wouldn’t have to look.

She agreed. A midwife would, at least, know where to go if someone wanted to stop her skills ever being needed.

“Go to Miss Ysabelle,” he said. “She’s got a little shop off the market. If she’s not there, one of her friends might be.”

Miss Ysabelle’s little shop was larger than the pharmacy and held several times as many items. She had linens, and medicines, and more sheaves of paper than Zheng had been expecting. In one corner was a taxidermied pufferfish overlooking a range of pamphlets. There were inks, too, and waxes she would’ve looked over if she’d had more time. It was unclear whether the time Miss Ysabelle spent not being a midwife was spent being a spice trader, a stationer or a medical supplies merchant, but there wasn’t a single surface in the shop which didn’t suggest at least one of the three.

“How can I help?”

She wanted to help. Zheng didn’t need to skirt around what was needed. She said what it was and hoped she didn’t sound desperate. It was difficult when she had to explain that someone dear to her had stopped and might die if they didn’t start again. That they might die trying to give birth on a ship in the middle of an ocean or might die before that, sickened by something growing inside of them that twisted their body in ways which didn’t fit. There were many ways to die on a ship.

Zheng held it together. She had to.

“Has your friend done this before?”

“No. They’ll do it now, though. We’ve spoken about it. They don’t care about the pain.”

“Have you done this before?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t give Miss Ysabelle anything more. Nobody needed to know the rest of the story.

There was pennyroyal and tansy in enough alcohol to drop a swabbie (take it out of the alcohol if you need to, Miss Ysabelle said, can’t have them throwing any of this up. Zheng had seen Jim drink and suspected it would be just fine). There was a pamphlet about what to do step by step and another one about how to avoid a similar situation. Zheng read. She stared.

“The church lets you publish these?”

Miss Ysabelle smiled and gave half a shrug. “Nothing to do with them. Father Vane doesn’t own the printing presses, much as he might wish otherwise.”

It was a reasonable price for two pamphlets and a medicine. It was more than reasonable to try to save a life. Zheng handed over more than she’d been asked for and trusted it would be used where it was needed.

She returned to the ship with her sword around her waist, her satchel across her shoulder, and more than an hour left before her deadline.

“Hey,” said Archie. Zheng couldn’t tell if she was faking being casual. “You get everything we need?”

“I didn’t realise this was a group project.”

“Of course it is,” Archie said, “we all put it in there, we’re all going to get it out.”

A snake cult wasn’t a farm, but presumably Archie had seen enough snakes going at it that she didn’t need the whole thing explaining to her. If she did, it would have to wait.

“Yeah,” Zheng said, “we’ve got everything.”

Archie jutted out her chin. “Cool. Yeah. We’re gonna look after them.”

“We’ll look after them,” Zheng echoed.

The ship sailed away from shore with Zheng, Archie and Jim on deck. Zheng tried not to look at them differently. She remembered what it was like to be looked at differently. She didn’t watch as Jim coiled the ropes, climbed the rigging or yelled out directions. She had her own job to do. Jim wasn’t delicate and even if they were, watching wouldn’t protect them. Jim had once left a bruise on the inside of Zheng’s thigh that had ripened over the course of a week and then smirked when they pressed into it. Jim was fine.

Dinner was light and varied. It was what Roach did when the Revenge was fresh out of port and sailing with fruit and vegetables that hadn’t shrivelled up. At some point in the past, Stede had demanded a cake that almost killed Swede, and Roach had let it but he wasn’t going to make the mistake again. When they ran out of what they’d bought, their plates were burdened with sauerkraut and other dubiously pickled vegetables. If Swede so much as sneezed, Roach would demand Fang dig something up from his bizarre little garden on the fo’c’sle. They were one of the best fed ships on the Caribbean.

Jim followed Zheng to her cabin after dinner. It wasn’t unusual; the four of them effectively had two sets of quarters, although Zheng slept in her own far more often than in Jim and Archie’s. Nobody would find it odd.

They sat on the edge of Zheng’s bed as casually as Archie had greeted her on deck. It was fine. However they wanted to do this would be fine.

“I got the medicine from a nice lady who also gave me a pamphlet on how to make sure I don’t end up in the same situation again.”

Jim snorted. “Stick to taking it como un hombre?”

“Funnily enough, not one of the suggested methods.”

“So how do you do it?”

Zheng shrugged. “Same as you guys. Lambgut if we’ve got one, spunking somewhere else if we don’t. I’m older than you, though. Don’t have to worry as much.”

“No fucking way are you old enough to…” They trailed off and squinted. “Are you?”

Zheng snorted. “Not quite. They’ve not stopped, just slowed down. It’ll be a few more years until we don’t have to worry about it at all.”

“Huh.” Jim smiled just a little. “Olu’s going to get hysterical when I tell him you said you’d be around for a few more years.”

Zheng punched them in the arm and then realised too late that her rings had probably made it more painful than intended. “Don’t you dare.”

“Ow! Hey, you can’t hit me, I’m pregnant.”

“You’ve got maybe another day you can use that for. Unless you want to use it for longer.”

Jim looked at her, eyes wide and pained. They didn’t look away before they leant forward and pressed their mouth softly against Zheng’s. It wasn’t something the two of them did a lot; they fucked playfully and they cared for each other, but kissing wasn’t a frequent occurrence. Maybe that would change if it was going to be like this.

“Fuck no. Let’s get this out.”

Jim drank a quarter of the bottle, holding it up to the light to check the measure. A quarter at night, a quarter in the morning, and again for another day, Miss Ysabelle’s pamphlet said. It didn’t say how long until it took effect, just to come back and see her again if there was no sign of resumption of courses two days afterwards. Seeing her again would mean talking to Frenchie about it and redoing a month’s worth of navigation. Zheng had to believe it would work.

Jim brushed their hair, brushed their teeth, brushed their nails and curled up around a pillow. If they were going to ruin any sheets, it would be easier to clean the dark linens from Zheng’s bed than the hard-won bright cottons that Archie, Jim and Oluwande shared. Blood would come out of linen without leaving behind a mark.

It was hard to tell if the sweat between Zheng’s chest and Jim’s spine was because of the heat or because of anything that might be going on in Jim’s belly. She didn’t want to let them go. She would have to, though, as the sun started to heat her cabin and the scent of breakfast came up from the kitchen.

“How’re you feeling?”

Jim muttered and wriggled. “Nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened yet. You’ve got three more doses.”

They took it and once again their expression made clear how unpleasant the taste was. In all the ports she’d visited, Zheng had never found one that people would drink without being desperate for its effects. The wider poisons might taste like almonds or like meat cooked for too long; poisons which aimed to keep their consumers alive tasted uniformly terrible.

They washed together, the sort of wash Oluwande called pits and bits, before dressing for breakfast. While most of the crew ate their spiced oats and fruit with the sort of enthusiasm even Roach would be flattered by, Jim picked at theirs, the same motions repeated without progress. Eventually Archie reached over and stole the cashews and the guava from Jim’s bowl. Jim squawked indignantly but let it happen.

The sun shimmered hot and fat over the sea and everything in it. It was a day for sweating as they swabbed the decks, checked the rigging and patched the spare sail. Zheng distracted herself talking to Hands about the latest rumours they’d picked up at port. The noseless prick who’d murdered her crew was running scared – as he should – and had run out of his daddy’s money. They needed someone to pretend to be royalty looking for a strong privateer to invest in, and Frenchie said he knew just the guy.

Zheng barely noticed when Jim ran to the edge of the ship to throw up over the rail but Roach did.

“Hey,” he yelled, “hey, first you refuse my delicious breakfast, now you spit bile all down the side of our ship? Go! Sleep! Away from the crew!”

“I’m fine,” Jim yelled back, “Izzy, tell him.”

Hands stared at Jim for just a moment too long before answering. “Get some water, then get back to work. Should know how to avoid drinking like that at your age.”

It was an easy excuse to Zheng, who let it be rather than unsheathe her sword for the implication Jim had been careless. Jim was fond of Izzy and wouldn’t like to see him run through again.

Jim got some water. Jim got back to work.

Zheng wasn’t watching when the fight started. It still wasn’t a knives out fight by the time it caught her attention, just the sort of scrapping you saw between kids at the docks who were figuring out where they stood in the hierarchy of underlings. Jim hit Archie slightly too hard – Archie shoved back and they sprawled, arse first, onto the deck, slapping up as Archie climbed on top of them. There was a pause. Something turned. Jim nodded, slight enough that they could’ve been protecting their face from the spray of waves. Archie groped the deck and then there was a cannonball in her hands and then it was crashing down onto Jim’s stomach and then Jim was wheezing, howling, grimacing, clutching at where it had been and cursing and commiserating in Spanish and Timucua.

Hands was down there quicker than Zheng would’ve thought possible, yelling and pulling Archie up like a scruffed cat.

“It’s fine,” Jim said and sucked in a breath which suggested otherwise, “we were just messing around.”

“Like fuck you were.”

“I told you to go away,” said Roach. “See what happens?”

“He’s right,” Hands said. “Fuck off to your cabin and stay there. I’ll have someone check on you later. The rest of you sad excuses for sailors, back to work.”

Zheng wasn’t a sad excuse for a sailor. Nor did she answer to Quartermaster Hands. She slipped away.

Jim wasn’t in her cabin. They were in theirs instead, the one they shared with Oluwande and Archie, curled up on their side and breathing deeply.

“What was that?”

“I asked her to do it.”

“Yeah, I figured, since Archie and Olu aren’t up there on deck tearing chunks out of each other. Why?”

Jim turned to look at her. “The medicine wasn’t working. This will.”

They weren’t entirely wrong. There were violent ways to make it happen and this was one of them, imperfect as it was. Even if the medicine was working perfectly and just hadn’t made it happen yet, Jim getting a cannonball dropped on their belly was consensual and presumably hadn’t broken anything. Zheng took a breath and left it alone.

“How’s it feeling?”

“Sore.”

Sore was nothing bad. Most months were fine for Zheng, but she remembered sore. As a married woman decades ago and far away, sore had been a blessing every time. Her ships weren’t a democracy but she knew how to share that sort of blessing in just the same way Jim’s Nana had.

Jim didn’t object to being picked up and carried from their cabin to Zheng’s. They were tired, they said, and rolled over when Zheng asked them to. They didn’t want to talk. They didn’t want to move. They wanted to be looked after for a while, even if they didn’t say it, and Zheng could do that. She lay them across her bed with pillows and blankets and kept an eye on them in between reading letters.

When the light started to fade, Zheng lit a candle Archie had left in her cabin a couple of weeks before. Jim stirred.

“Think it’s time for the next dose,” they muttered from underneath the blankets, then stumbled, half asleep still, when they fetched the bottle and drank.

“Has it started yet?”

Jim undid their laces, put two thumbs under their waistband and pushed down. Even by the candle’s light Zheng could see the dark smear that had stained their smalls and their thighs. Blood had dried in their hair. There would be more to come.

“Huh. Yeah. I guess so. Does that mean I can skip this tomorrow? Because it tastes gross, man.”

“The leaflet said to drink it all.”

Jim slumped. “Guess I’m drinking it all, then.”

It would be a problem for tomorrow’s Jim. The one who was in front of Zheng laid across the bed and stretched until they gasped sharply and pulled their knees up to their chest. Zheng stood and took the candle to the cupboard. She pulled out a blanket which could’ve been rags with a few more wears and folded it with one hand. It would absorb the worst of everything that was going to happen if Jim stayed here.

Jim met the time swearing and grunting. Zheng held their hand when it was needed and regretted not having picked up some opium when she could, especially when Jim leaned over the side of the bed to spatter vomit against a perfectly innocent rug.

They grew pale as the sun set and the waning moon claimed the sky. It was a familiar sort of slaughter pale Zheng knew many times over. The sheen of sweat was no surprise.

“Hey.” She poked Jim’s foot. “You alive?”

Jim shook their head a little and made no sound.

“Fine, little ghost. Move your hips up so I can put another blanket under you.”

She pulled off Jim’s smalls and used them to wipe up most of what was still happening. They were bound for the wash anyway. Jim didn’t move their hips so Zheng moved them instead and threaded the blanket that was barely still a blanket underneath. She pushed down on their belly, a tight massage to keep things moving, and they twitched as things progressed. It would be done before the morning dose was needed.

Jim was napping when Archie and Olu came in through the door, talking quietly about chores they’d done and food they were carrying. Roach had made some sort of fish and palm broth for Jim. It was easy on the spices with its rice cooked for long enough to turn it half to porridge.

Olu stopped when he saw Jim prostrate and bloodied.

“They’re fine,” Zheng reassured him as best she could, “just tired. It’s been a long day. Someone dropped a cannonball on them.”

“They asked for it!” Archie protested, “For the,” she made a fluid motion from her navel downwards, “and the, y’know.”

“And it worked,” Jim muttered into a pillow.

Olu remembered to put the soup on the table before rushing to them and gathering them in his arms. He kissed their forehead and held them while they complained about it and made a half-hearted attempt to swat him away.

Archie elbowed Zheng. “You got any water? I’ve only got soup. Don’t think I should clean their cunt with soup.”

“Don’t clean me with soup,” Jim said in a tone which made their opinion on having their cunt souped incredibly clear. “I’ll clean myself.”

“No you won’t,” Archie said, “move your arse.”

She gathered up the sodden blanket and moved it to the pail Zheng had left their smalls in. It splashed against the sides with a thick, wet sound. Jim’s eyelashes fluttered as if they were half asleep already or somewhere else entirely. Zheng knew they had dealt with blood and flesh before, but they wouldn’t have to deal with this. She would make sure it was sorted before they rose.

Archie pulled off her boots – Zheng had managed to teach her that much. She pulled off her boots and pulled a blanket over herself and Olu and Jim. The blood would only stain it as much as was regular.

“Here,” said Zheng, “eat the damn soup. You need it.”

Jim raised the spoon and took it greedily. They’d lost fluid and not drunk enough to replace it. It was good for them to drink. Zheng watched them as she took off her clothes for the night. They all knew the bed could take four of them; it had done so before. Four of them would be tight and warm but they would fit. The bed smelled bad already but they’d dealt with that sort of thing together too.

Zheng snuffed out the candle. Lit by the waning moon, with Olu’s arm around them and Archie laying on their thigh, Jim looked up and smiled.