Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Falling felt like freedom.

He snaked through the air into the water and did not look back.

Southern waters ran warmer than he should have been used to. He knew this in the same way he knew he should have been faster than he was, that he should have been able to go farther than he could, and that he listed toward the starboard side without meaning to. That is to say, he understood all of it as facts, as things to realize and catalogue and eventually overcome, and that none of it really, truly mattered, because he could turn himself downward and swim and swim and swim until blackness covered him and echoes from distant rocks and the even more distant sea-floor were the only way he knew he wasn’t about to smash into a wall.

It felt like freedom. He fell from the ship’s deck, the humans’ hand-prints shedding from his skin and scales, and went down, down, down.

He ran into nothing.

He swam past a startled shark and school of silverfish.

The sun faded, the dark greeted him, and the water cooled. He ran into nothing.

He stopped when his throat closed around frost and his fins stiffened too much to turn. There he stilled, vision black but ears open; there, he heard the twist of a creature intrigued by something warm-blooded and new; there, he drank in the drag and pull over his skin, the waters close to still but not as still as he’d grown used to; there, he relaxed, stretched out and weightless, his muscles screaming from too much too fast, his gills slow in the cold. Far from any depth a human could reach and largely empty, every small shift against him felt like a wave in shallow waters, felt like his mother ripped from him, felt like gentle fingers in his hair. He stayed as long as he could, wondering distantly and quietly at how the cold felt so strange.

Then the dark closed in and he saw candles extinguished without the sailors noticing and a tarp secured without reason and he began an ascent, marveling in his exhaustion at the lack of a ceiling.

The creature below him lost interest and continued on its way. It didn’t need him. It didn’t want him. It didn’t care in the least what he did.

That, too, felt like freedom.

He surfaced from the dark in time to watch a weathered hull disappear into the distance, cradling his arms and balling up to relieve the ache in his tail.

Did that count as looking back?

To make it clear what he thought, he turned and raced in the opposite direction.

(That was something he’d taken to, he supposed, something that was different from before cold waters could prickle his skin: watching himself, correcting himself, challenging himself, proving I can survive this to himself. In the dark room before the louder humans, he once held himself in the middle of his cage without touching the walls until unconsciousness took him just to see if he could.)

(It hurt awfully, but he could.)

When he happened upon the silverfish again, he darted through their school, sent them scattering in shining flashes. Ready and hungry, he lashed with his tail. Though he hit a few, they ran into nothing because there was nothing but water around them, and then they swam away.

It took him far longer than it should’ve, but eventually he caught them with his claws and slid them down his gullet and felt a little better.

We haven’t seen your type for many generations, the sea turtles with their algae-covered shells and slow glide tell him. They speak not in words, but in glances and twitches, as was the way of creatures that could not best their baser instinct.

He opened his mouth to sing a greeting for them, as he’d been taught by his mother and those like him. It came to him like knowing his dorsal wasn’t supposed to shudder with weakness so soon; that is to say, it stayed in his head and caught in his throat and he stared at them in silence until they moved past and beyond him, giving him more space than he thought they usually did. He remembered friendly nudges and, when his hands were smaller and claws duller, clinging to their shells as they ferried him under streaks of light and clouds of jellyfish.

When they disappeared, he prodded his throat and sides, a frown on his face.

A second time, determination in his chest, he opened his mouth. Notes, melodious and quiet, trembled through the water, a greeting whispered where it should have soared.

He frowned again.

Bringing before to mind, he spun closer to the surface and tried again.

His greeting rang out like a bell, too loud and too harsh. A flinch, and he decided to practice later, twisting away from the empty space he drifted in and putting his head against the current.

On his back, his dorsal fin shuddered and swayed, curving him to the right for several stretches. He didn’t realize until he found himself swimming with the current, his body instinctive in turning him in a circle.

That would not do.

That would not do at all.

It shook up his thoughts and made his teeth clatter, whole body wracked with shivers.

He looked down to find nothing below him. He looked up to find nothing above him. All at once, it was too big, too sprawling, too open, it was going to consume him and erase him and his heart raced and he turned and swam as fast as he could for shallower waters, eyes focused forward through force of will alone.

Being around anything alive made his throat close and vision swim, but it passed because he needed it to pass and it was one thing he couldn’t, and didn’t want to, afford. Shallow waters came slowly. He forced himself to pass those that swam his way: another shark, and a pod of dolphins, and white porpoises, and silverfish and trout and sea bass. Those he could not think of as food greeted him, saying, we have not seen your type for many generations, and, what are you fleeing from? because porpoises were soft creatures and the shark was not so far behind.

He whispered back, hello, and clicked his tongue in a series of starts and stops, long, short, pause, long long long. They tittered and clicked back with incomprehension and uncertainty, and swiftly took their leave.

The shallows were farther away than he thought possible.

A blue mountain rose as the first sign of progress. He dipped without thinking toward it, felt the way the water curved around its unyielding sides and stalled in its deeper crevices -- then he felt along its rough facade, caught his claw-tips on loose pebbles and salty grains, and everything in him that had rattled loose quieted. His muscles didn’t ache so much, and his fins felt sturdy. He felt in control of himself and his surroundings, and the texture amazed him, the rough scrape without metal’s bite. Before he knew it, he had curled loosely into one of its shallow holes and fallen asleep in a tangle of seaweed. He woke to swat away a smaller fish before rolling over and sleeping again, the sun from above warming his flank but the bumpy, uneven stone cradling him, safe and secure and alone, and he felt as if it could be before.

Not a good way to think, he told himself, whispering the words into cupped hands to hear the sound bounce back to him even though now there was sound all around. Those things happened. I can’t deny it.

Who cares? He replied. Who do I have to impress?

I don’t know, he muttered in the educated tongue, bubbles winding from mouth to surface, and dropped his hands to rub his forehead into the loose rocks of the wall. The scrap was pleasant, beyond pleasant, borderline ecstasy shivering warm and good down his spine. What if it makes me sloppy?

It won’t.

It could.

It won’t. Not again, never again. I’m smarter now.

Because I’ll remember.

Fine. Fine. Because I’ll remember.

The mountain made him feel smug, which was a nice feeling after so much swimming. Hah, he thought, I was right, the mountains are grander here, the one that pierced the clouds that they stopped at for fourteen days in his mind. He didn’t dare think who he meant to be smug toward. For two days and one night, he explored it - crawled from cliff to cave, rolled through loose rock and against hard stone, ate his fill of greens and fish, and in general, had a good time of it. He found himself catching fish just to hold them, quieted by the feel of their scales and fins, the struggle for life against near-certain death. It wasn’t a good thing to do, maybe, but he let them go at the end and followed as they fled, astounded and amazed at how much difference a creature smaller than his forearm could make in the water’s ebb and flow.

Glass didn’t move. Glass didn’t struggle. Glass was smooth, and clean, and warmed to whatever was pressed against it, and he realized with a jolt what he missed most was the texture of life.

That was when he left the mountain behind.

The shallows were full of all breeds and shapes of creatures: the mountain folded into a sprawling skeleton, a million tiny carcasses stacked one on top of each other. Living beings bred and ate and slept and swam all along it. A coral reef, he’d heard a human call it. For the first night, it was too much - he watched from the last tip of the mountain as turtles and stingrays and colorful fishes fluttered about. When he finally remembered what emptiness he’d left behind and where his scant options lay, he drifted over to join them.

We have not seen your type in many generations, the turtles tell him. You look ill. Are you ill?

No, he said (correctly, this time). I’m fine.

Transparent lids closed over black eyes and heads bobbed. They asked, will you join us? We are going to the north.

No, he replied, and said, “There’s nothing for me in the north.”

They hummed, slow and easy, wished him well, and returned to their scavenging. He brushed a hand across their slick shells as he passed, and wove his way between the reef’s white-and-blue-and-green-and-pink towers. A shrimp ducked into its hovel as he passed; he dug it out, if only because he hadn’t had shrimp in months. It was as delicious as he remembered.

An octopus, its skin startlingly orange and the rings along its arms a blue to match his eyes, tossed sand in his face for taking its meal. He swam on feeling much, much better, even though he had to brush tiny shells and sand from his hair.

Which reminded him. His hair.

Armed with a goal, he curved along the reef’s twisting corridors until he found the sharpest shell and, snatching it up, immediately set upon the disgustingly long mane that had become his hair. It was so annoying, so irritating, always in his face and dragging behind him -- no wonder he’d been so slow in the water! - and when the locks drifted away, he sighed in relief, his head much, much lighter. He’d thought about cutting the stupid tangle for ages, had promised himself it’d be the first thing he did when - when - he was out, but he’d been too distracted by freedom to remember what he planned to do when he was free.

Then he thought of someone finding the strands and connecting him to their reddish hue, and scrambled to gather them up and bury them in the sands.

A few stingray and one flounder scattered as he dug, the stingray admonishing him for ruining good sand with his fibers, but he whipped around and snarled and flared his fins and looked far bigger than them and they fled without further comment.

When he laid down to sleep, he brushed against a hidden rockfish. Its mouth gaped wide at him, its poisonous spines long and sharp, and it grumbled, ever unhappy as rockfish were, are you human? Get away.

He swiftly took his leave.

The coral was so busy. He coaxed a sea anemone to let him slide a hand through its tingling tendrils; he brushed along the sides of dolphins, declining their invitations for play but appreciating their ease; he flipped a sea slug onto its back to watch it curl up in distaste. He cracked lobsters on rocks and chased orange and white clownfish and perpetually swatted tetra from his eyes. Seahorses tittered at him. Clams bubbled. Every crevice and every plateau had a family or occupant, and as he went further in, the surface dipped closer. Soon enough, it took all his concentration not to pierce the water. Shining from directly above, the sun felt warm and nice and welcoming, and his memories told him how fantastic it felt to sunbathe in the pools the tide left behind, how he could stretch out and maybe nap and not worry about a thing. It’d been rare before, his mother’s warnings about humans ringing in his ears, but it was undoubtedly the best way to relax.

He angled himself to break the surface and stopped a hair’s breadth away. The water above shifted and turned, peaking and dipping in little ripples caused by all the activity below it and some of the activity farther away.

Humans hadn’t caught him because he sunbathed. They’d caught him because he’d been sloppy, and starving, and risked the ship for the flyfish that circled below it, and they’d seen him, and followed him, and pursued him, and he had to rest but their ships didn’t. If they’d never seen him, maybe he wouldn’t have been caught.

By and large - as he now knew better than he’d ever wanted to -, humans were blind to what lay below the surface. If he stayed below, they were less likely to see him.

Simple.

Deciding the warm-watered shallows were far too crowded for him, he made himself a bag from and for its best kelp, and left.

With nothing better to do, he followed echoing songs through the ocean deep.

We have seen your sort before, they tell him when he finds them, four massive air-breathers and one calf that kept close to his mother. They swim with another creature, or another creature swims with them, but the last one wasn’t within immediate view. They were old, and wise, and allowed him close as long as he would pluck the parasites from their bellies and scrape the green from their backs. After pushing her calf to the surface, one told him, we have seen your sort before, but she remembers your birth.

“She?” He asked, because whales always understood the educated tongue even if they could not speak it.

Then he spotted the one he heard but could not see -- because she was too big, and he’d thought her a mountain when he first approached, indistinct in the murky dark of the ocean. Her scales are like boulders, her arms thick as a ravine was wide, her head broad enough for two whales to comfortably lay side-by-side. He was, at most, the span of her eye. With his reflection mirrored at him in the deep black, square pupil, he felt small, and childish, and weak, and stupid.

Hello, young one, she whispered, her voice old as an island, and it crashed into him like a cliff crumbling into the sea. Do not be afraid.

The whales laughed as he lost his voice and fell back by the calf. The Leviathan hummed; above her, the surface waters were disturbed into waves.

You may join us, they say with clicks and a high, fluting whistle, but only until your bag is empty.

You may rest on my back, she says, her great head slowly turning away from him, but not forever.

He looked above him at the sun streaking through the surface, and below him at a stretch of darkness, and took their offer. He didn’t sleep on the Leviathan’s back, but he skimmed along her spine, brushed hand and flank along the crest and dip of skin solid as stone.

The great beasts didn’t always travel together, he learned. In fact, they’ve met only - only - ten years past, and when the calf grows, the whales think it’s time to take their leave from her side. It isn’t because she eats all the krill or because she would eat them. For one, she eats seldomly; for two, she feeds on shipwrecks and arrogance, gobbling any humans that cross her path along with their vessels. She was Mother Nature’s child, grown from when the sea was young out of rock and the unknown. Neil, for his part, had never met a Leviathan, and thinks it lucky the louder humans he’d been with hadn’t, either.

(He does not think about how he thinks about them, not with his cheek pressed to a bumpy whale’s back and joyous song reverberating around him.)

Relieved to have something closer to his size, the calf invited him to play. He tried to decline, but then he was bumped and nudged and pushed like a ball by a giggling youth, and the mother watched so closely that if he didn’t allow it, Neil thought he might be crushed flat against the nearest mountain.

You look ill, one said to him after the moon has become a sliver in the sky.

“I’m fine.”

You drift to the right when you don’t pay attention.

“I have a weak fin. I was born with it.”

You act odd.

“How?”

Like a human.

“I’m not.”

We know, another said. But you act like one. With your eyes, you look to the sky; with your hands, you hold and marvel. You are astounded by your own world.

In his chest his lungs constricted. He snapped his jaw shut tight. Irritation flicked his tail fin, and he resolutely did not cross his arms.

Watery eyes regard him with the sympathy the old have for the young, for their passion and recklessness that will burn them to nothing if they aren’t careful. Neil carefully does not snap at them to cut it out, the words belonging to a human with a haughty look on her face.

Where is your family? Asked the calf as he nosed along his side. Neil jerked away, leaving him confused and chirping in question. Swiftly, his mother took him under her fin and led him away to the surface for air.

He dropped the conversation.

(It was a very human thing to do, ignoring someone that speaks to you.)

The moon disappeared, and his bag has mostly been emptied. Typically the whales rested at the surface, the calf on top and the adults taking turns propping him up; Neil would sleep somewhere below them, a loose line of red in open water. It wasn’t the best way to sleep, and he jerked awake more often than his body appreciated, but there wasn’t much choice.

Then the moon disappeared.

He forced himself to sleep on the Leviathan’s back during that darkest night, his skin crawling at slumbering in nothing but sea water as the light fades. Since the first day, she hadn’t spoken to him or the whale. He prefered it that way.

Of course that meant after he woke and drifted down from the grove behind her largest spinal knob, she turned her head to catch him with one giant, glassy eye.

She said, You have a family.

He lost his voice again. This time, she didn’t look away, but waited, and he was certain she could wait until his scales dropped from his tail and his bones turned to dust if she felt the need to. Gathering courage, the whales swimming on without them, he replied, “I don’t. She was taken from me many moons ago.”

Months is the word he wanted to use, but didn't.

She wasn’t unimpressed - it would take something far greater than him to disappoint her - but she had no patience for a minnow’s game. Her voice raised a few octaves over her whisper, her great maw opened to reveal monstrous teeth and splintered planks. Immediately he had to fight away from her as it filled with water, his heart in his throat and tail beating fast.

Go, child. He was out of the pull, enough distance between them that he could see the webbed paws on her feet and the sharp talons dripping with inevitability. Hewas not near far enough away to see all of her, and still, her voice rattled his bones. And hope I do not find them before you.

That was an observation and promise he couldn't, wouldn't, think on, not as he raced away on fins that feel stronger but not as strong as they had been. Cloudy water obscured her mass, though he knows if she were on land, he would hardly be out of her reach. As he swims, echoing songs bid him farewell, and then shift into odes to persistence, and then they fade and he was headed back to nowhere because the ones the Leviathan wanted him to find are on a boat and he had never made it a habit to track boats.

Feeling disgruntled and oddly adrift, he asked the first shark that passes if she’s seen any boats. Big ones. A particular big one. The one he wants has light-colored wood, almost orange, and looks as if it’s seen better days. No, he doesn’t actually know what pattern it has on its base. He hasn’t actually seen its base.

She circled him once and then, certain of how bad he’d taste and not hungry besides, tells him she’s seen a few ships, and if he follows the sun when it rises, he’ll find the main current that the humans like to use.

Then she took her leave, not trusting any creature that asks about humans’ whereabouts.

He swam east.

The first time he spotted the hull of a ship, he almost doesn’t check its color before turning and fleeing.

The fifth time he crossed paths with a ship, it was all dark wood and red sails, and he thinks he might know where to go.

He raced down the direction that it came from.

He started to think about why he’s heading so close to shore while looking for a human ship at the same time that he finishes eating the kelp in his bag. It kick-starts something unpleasant in his gut and has him swimming in tight circles without thought or reason or the ability to stop, until he’s so dizzy and his side screams so much from being crunched up that he spirals into the ground and kicks up a cloud of sand. Laying there panting, gills working double-time and fear turning his mind to mush, he tries to think about why he’s scared when he hasn’t even found the ship, can’t imagine why, can’t barely think, and works on eating his bag to keep his hands occupied.

You’re thrice-damned stupid, he muttered to himself after he can swim in a mostly straight line, voice startling a small school of fish from his path. An idiot. An actual idiot. What a dumb fishman.

Nothing looked familiar, and no ships were in sight.

He settled down on a ledge at a drop-off, curling tight against the rough wall and tangling himself up until he couldn’t see out and, so he’d told himself aboard a ship to keep from swallowing the steel brush and let it tear up his insides, no one could see him.

A siren’s song woke him.

Its heady edges curled around his ears and threaded fingers through his hair. He shook off the call the moment he’d blinked into consciousness, uncurling from his huddle to peer warily in its direction. Sirens were territorial creatures at the best of times, and his exhausted, tense sleep hadn’t exactly been restful. A fight was one of the last things he needed or wanted. But as all he wanted to do was pick a direction and swim until the static came back into his brain, he pushed himself from the ledge and picked his way along the song’s outskirts.

As he swam, it deepened. Ah. So their targets were giving them trouble.

In the clear sunlight, he glanced toward its origins, and saw-- a ship. One of decent size but old make, its hull covered in algae and white barnacles. It had light-ish wood, he supposed. He couldn’t really tell.

Figuring the sirens were distracting its passengers well enough, he drifted closer until he could.

It was orange. Maybe. A gross, unclean orange, like a rotting octopus. Closer to tan than yellow, farther from brown than red. Why didn’t humans ever clean the bottoms of their ships? He couldn’t match such a dirty thing to the obsessively mopped deck.

Letting the sea’s slow pull and give hold him, he watched as the siren’s first morsels fell from ship to water. They were impressive creatures, sirens - when they weren’t getting in his or his mother’s face about hunting grounds’ not so clear borders, he admired their efficiency. No human caught a siren; it was too dangerous for them. If there was a next life, he wouldn’t mind being a siren. Better than merfolk, selkie or human.

A siren grew impatient with one resistant figure, her arm cutting between the two. He just about turned around to swim on when the shape of a struggling human struck him as familiar, and then the fact the two humans matched caught his attention, and then he swam the wrong way and told himself to stop but couldn’t, and snarled out the sense of family and belonging to, curved down and spiked up and dragged a siren from the surface to his preferred hunting ground.

The fight didn’t last long. They rarely did.

Objectively, he knew the fight didn’t last long, but it felt like it: one down, easy in her surprise; two more, rougher, but they were used to prey that did not fight; and the final, the one that stretched time the most despite its death before he arrived. The one with a human in its dying grasp, the one that took force to remove, the one Neil let drop without a glance because he knew what it was to suffocate and knew even better that humans did not do well with water in their lungs.

He’d suspected but didn’t realize just how obnoxious all the layers humans wore were in the water: it made the surface farther away than it should’ve been, and once they reached the top, harder to hold onto. Andrew was dead weight in his arms, coughing and wheezing like the pathetic air-breather he was. Warm air brushed by them, and Neil’s skin prickled from it. He hadn’t felt the air in two moons’ time. He wasn’t sure he missed it.

Eyes on the startled, blinking Aaron paddling not five lengths away, Neil said something into the man’s ear.

“Unfair comparison,” he gasped back, which was the only bit of the conversation Neil would remember.

His tail brushed the human’s legs as he orientated himself to hold position; tension lanced through Andrew’s back, but breathing was too much of a priority for him to do much more than that, not that Neil could imagine what exactly he’d otherwise do.

By virtue of who they were, the humans above exploded into noise. Neil shifted his grip on the one in his arms as he glanced up; four, six-- no, twelve, twelve different faces peered down at them, at least two fingers pointing and one hand waving. Neil realized with a sinking feeling he didn’t recognize all of them.

The humans exchanged shouts. Aaron at last ripped his eyes away from Neil to look upward and, presumably at something said or the lack of something done, flipped them the bird.

(Neil would never understand the meaning behind that phrase, he really wouldn’t.)

Soon enough they fastened a rope ladder to The Fox’s railing and tossed it down. With one last indiscernible glance at Neil and his brother, Aaron paddled to it.

Someone above shouted, “Neil!”

Nicky, Neil’s mind supplied. The one that had been waving.

“Get out of here.”

Neil blinked back to the one in his arms.

Andrew looked at him from the very corner of his eye, his head barely turned and, arguably, his attention on anything but Neil. Tension spread further through the pirate’s body, his brush with a watery death replaced with thinly restrained hostility. While Neil watched, his lip curled and he shrugged out of Neil’s grasp, his elbow narrowly missing his side.

“Didn’t you hear me? Get out of here.”

It didn’t make sense. No human told a merman to leave.

But without a body covering his front, the air worked to dry his skin, the shouts above increasing in alarm and argument, and he -- ducked, chest tight and teeth buzzing.

He swam down, down, down. The sirens’ corpses, one in shreds and all prodded by hungry fish, greeted him - he twisted from them and swam away, away, away.

Not too far away.

Maybe.

Not too far away by a whale’s estimate, maybe.

But.

He circled.

It was always a circle.

That night, he slept on a mushy nest of sand, sticky bubbles and kelp. A few fish whined at him for ruining their homes; he ignored them, and then, when one refused to cease its protests, ate one. The rest left him alone after that.

Sleep was not good. Between swaying stalks and stripes, between the taste of one fitful dream and another, he kept one eye on the barnacle-bottomed boat overhead, his fins snapped tight to his body.

Eventually, a smaller boat appeared next to the bigger boat.

More specifically: the loud humans dropped a lifeboat next to The Fox.

A glance around proved the shoreline not too far. Neil hunkered down deeper into the kelp grove, burying his damningly light-catching tail deeper in shadowed green.

Overhead, though the water gurgled the meaning, the loud humans were loud. They yelled. They yelled some more. They were insistent. They said--- one word in particular, over and over, with varying degrees of emotion. Neil didn't move.

A shadow preceded the body; Matt broke the surface, treading water with his clumsy legs, one arm hooked over the boat's hem. Neil frowned.

Matt let go of the boat and ducked down, his eyes open underwater. Looking for him. They were looking for him. Humans would always look for him.

Neil didn't move.

Eventually they gave up and hauled the lifeboat, humans included, back to the deck.

Neil moved only when the ship did, one sun rise later.

In its shadow and deep enough to see it as little more than a dark oval, he followed.

Here, fishy fishy fishy… Come on… If you hold still, I won’t miss. It’d be a shame for the both of us if I missed.

Admiral?

Yeah? What is it?

A raven arrived with the transfer point’s coordinates.

Put it on my desk. I’ll be there in a bit.

…

Yes, Jackson?

The King won’t be happy with damaged goods, sir.

Hah! Don’t you worry about our payment, Jackson; I won’t touch a single scale on his pretty little tail. So long as that heart keeps pumping, the King doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the rest.

…

Looks human, don’t it? The songs go on and on about their alluring eyes and how they’re crafted from sea foam and a wave’s crest. This’s the second best part about netting one: stick it in the side with a blade and see it bleed like the rest of us. The songs are horse shit. Fishy, fishy, come now, stop squirming, or I’ll pop those baby blues right out of your skull. Don’t need eyes for our King’s extra lives.

…

…

…

Well, I’ll be. Cheeky little bastard, isn’t he. What’s that? You heard I won’t touch your scales and you do that?

Admiral…

I’m coming, Jackson, I’m coming. We’ll see how long he can hold that. Must be mighty uncomfortable, a critter his size.

If Neil curled just right, the humans couldn’t see him.

(Sleep was not good in the midst of empty water.)

Above the calm sea, dusk meandered in. Tasks done, dinner taken and no magical creatures in sight, a First Mate, a sooth-sayer and a pirate dressed too well to be a pirate leaned against a newly set railing.

One hand running along the polished bannister, one hand around the neck of a brown bottle, Dan muttered, “I swear this ship’s had more holes patched than my trousers.”

“Doesn’t make either less flattering,” Renee replied, though she grinned while doing so. Dan eyed her.

“It definitely does,” Allison said while reaching for the rum. Dan surrendered the bottle without complaint. “We should’ve upgraded. We had the funds. We have the funds - I’ve seen the goblets and rings the Captain keeps stowed in his dresser.”

“His room’s off-limits. What were you doing snooping in his dresser?”

“Helping Renee find a misplaced map,” Allison said, and tucked a piece of beaded hair behind her ear. Dan eyed her, too. “We found it, by the way.”

“You found the goblets that were part of the betting pool on which treasures the Captain kept to sell last, you mean?”

“No, no, Dan. The map.”

“Hm.”

“The goblets and five coppers they netted us were a happy coincidence.”

“Mhmm.”

Mouth covered with a hand, Renee chuckled.

Shaking her head, Dan turned back to the sea. Behind her, the new recruits - Lily, or some such, a girl with curly black hair and a perpetual, crooked tooth grin, and her friends, Leon and Brian - passed with mouths as full of gossip as their stomachs were of Katelyn’s cooking. Their conservation fell away when they passed the three older crewmates. Predictably, it started up again the second they disappeared into the hold, and Dan was sure if she strained her ears, she’d hear words about myths and mermaids.

Under-breath, Allison growled, “I am not ready for another five months of mer-talk.”

“Do you think he’s still following us?”

“Dan.”

“You’ve asked that seven times in the last two days. I will dump this rum on your head.”

“I just can’t believe it. He shows up to save the Minyards, and then disappears without so much as a how-do-you-do!”

“Are you that surprised?” Renee asked, quietly.

Since she was right, Dan blew a raspberry at her.

On the other side of her, Allison rolled her eyes and took a long, long drink. After, she leaned a little heavier on the railing and drawled, “Maybe if we use Andrew as bait, he’ll nip again.”

“Oh, yes, I’ll take a stop at the siren school and ask if any wouldn’t mind volunteering for a re-enactment. What do you think they’d charge? One grown man per hour?”

“One man per ten minutes, more like.”

“Honestly, you two…”

Dan nudged Renee with her elbow, her smile lopsided. She was joking about trying to find sirens for hire. Mostly. “You’ve tracked ships for us before. Can’t you do that to him? Get us a little dot on a map to watch?”

Fingers laced over the railing, Renee’s kohl-darkened eyes settled on her, all traces of good humor gone. “I couldn’t do that to him, Dan.”

And if that didn’t chastise the First Mate something bad, she didn’t know what would. Nodding assent and mumbling an apology a moment later, Dan sighed and slouched heavier on the railing, her eyes once more skimming the sea’s uselessly unbroken surface. It was a beautiful sunset. She should’ve been getting drunk and paying attention to that, not getting drunk and being morose over someone who didn’t want to be found for a very, very good reason.

“For fuck’s sake,” Allison grumbled around the bottle’s mouth. Dan pointedly did not look at her. A few more seconds, and, more vehemently, “For fuck’s sake,” rum swishing as she took another long pull and, swallowing, twisted around to shout, “Hey! Hemmick!”

A pause.

“Ugh. I swear, I should be paid.” Allison cupped her free hand around her mouth and yelled, “Earth to Hemmick! Nicholas Hemmick! -- Klose!”

Within the next second, Nicky’s face appeared from over the crow’s nest. Even from the deck, the flush on his cheeks was red as the evening clouds.

He called down, admirably clear-voiced, “Horizon’s clear! What more do you want, Reynolds?”

Dan considered chiding him for skirting duty, but the hypocrisy was a little too much to swallow.

Allison didn’t have as much sympathy. “Get down here!”

This time, it wasn’t hard to tell Nicky had to clear his throat before replying. The flush on his cheeks had darkened. “I’m a little busy!”

“Uh-huh. At least Klose is. We all have watch duty, Hemmick! We all have to sit up there! That’s disgusting!”

“When we kept catching you in the galley, I didn’t make any comments about you and--” Nicky started, but cut himself off in the nick of time. Probably, Dan thought, due to Erik’s interference, if the way Hemmick’s face jerked downward said anything. Then again, she also thought someone from the southern port could see the cold fury that spread over Allison’s face.

“Get your ass down here, Hemmick, or I’m cutting the ropes and you’ll be trapped up there for the rest of your days. Bet Klose wouldn’t appreciate you as much when you both fry.”

Nicky groaned in a decidedly displeased, non-sexual fashion. He disappeared from view, presumably to straighten himself out, and reappeared to clamber down. A few moments later, face more amused than ashamed (again, Dan couldn’t blame him: privacy was hell to find with ten-plus people on one boat), Erik appeared to lean over the nest and watch what Allison had planned for his man.

Distinctly more disgruntled than Erik, Nicky hooked a finger in the bandanna around his neck and tugged it higher. The weathered fabric did nothing to hide the red splotch under his jaw.

“What is it?”

“You’re a decent swimmer,” Allison said, and shoved the bottle into Dan’s chest as she swaggered to Nicky. “I’ve seen your diving form. It’s pretty good.”

Suspicious but not sure how suspicious he should be, Nicky eyed her, fingers still playing with his bandanna.

“You called me down here to compliment my diving?”

“No.” Looping an arm around his shoulders, she pulled him toward the railing. He stumbled, eyebrows pinched together. “I called you down here to get you to practice.”

And with that, she fisted a hand in his shirt collar, another in his belt, and hauled him bodily over the railing.

Erik’s “Nicky!” and scramble to get down from the nest occurred simultaneously with Dan’s, “Allison! What the hell!” and, unnoticed, Renee’s silent surprise.

It took a moment to hear the splash Nicky meeting water made, but by then, a few other crewmates poked their heads onto the deck to check out the commotion.

“Someone fetch a ladder! Nicky’s overboard!” Dan yelled, shooting Allison a look. She received nothing but an upturned nose and rolled eyes in return.

Erik, pale-faced but practical, went to fetch a rope ladder.

“He’s fine,” Allison said, though it should be noted she only said that after shouts of indignation and betrayal came up from the sea. Both Minyards, Kevin and Jean appeared from the galley. One Minyard took in the scene, caught Dan’s pointed look at Allison, and started forward. “A little swim never hurt anyb--”

Andrew’s fist met her teeth, and she barely caught herself on the railing. Shouts erupted immediately, half between Aaron and Matt, half between Erik and Dan, all between Allison and everyone else, the new recruits wide-eyed and wondering at the explosion of in-fighting. Renee hastily put her hands on Allison’s upper arms, helping her up and away from Andrew while Kevin and Jean fell in to up Allison's chances for survival.

“Whore’s tits, Minyard, he’s fine,” Allison snarled at him, and he took a step forward.

“People have broken their necks from less,” Renee murmured, just for them to hear.

“Thought I made it clear you shouldn’t mess with my people, Reynolds,” Andrew retorted, grin and words sugary sweet even as Kevin and Jean yanked him back.

Rather than reply, she spat blood between them.

“The hell is going on out here?” The Captain demanded, Abby hot on his heels.

“Allison tossed Nicky overboard,” Dan replied, “we’re fetching a ladder now. He’s fine. Er, by the sounds of it.”

Although, just as she said that and the deck fell silent for Wymack’s long strides to the railing, it became clear Nicky had stopped cursing Allison as well as her mother and her mother’s mother in between his furious splashing. In fact, Nicky had stopped making noise altogether.

Hands flat on the rails, Wymack leaned over to look.

Half the crew edged their way into mimicking him.

Down below, Nicky Hemmick bobbed with the ship’s waves. Whereas one expected to find him shocked, indignant, frightened or angered (or all the above), he was dead silent and staring at someone else.

Half the crew’s eyes found the someone else, and couldn’t move away.

Neil looked first at Nicky and then up at them, his face as tense as it had been when he’d held up Andrew. The merman would have looked like any other - albeit naked - person helping a friend stay afloat if not for the black claws curled around Nicky’s sides and red scales that disappeared into the darkened water below. This time around, the crew didn’t immediately start shouting at him; breath, collectively, was held.

Then Nicky twisted in Neil’s grip and said something that those on deck couldn’t catch. The tension on Neil’s face broke into pure bafflement, and the merman dropped Nicky to dive under.

Despite again having to keep himself afloat, Nicky laughed.

A broad, pink-webbed fin broke the surface and heaved a bucket’s worth of water on him. Laughter turned to sputtering, and, the spell broken, Erik let down the rope ladder.

Wiping the blood from her lips, Allison looked Dan dead in the eye and huffed, “As you can see. He hasn’t disappeared.”

For a woman who didn’t want mer-talk for the next five months, that comment began a whole new tidal wave of gossip.

It took two more ‘rescues’ before Neil caught on to what they were doing.

When Nicky dropped over, Neil couldn’t fathom why the loud humans were tossing out their own, but then reasoned that Nicky always had been the butt of the joke. Maybe they were thinning out their weaker links since they’d taken on new blood.

When Matt fell not a day later, Neil believed him when he said he’d tripped.

When Jean fell…

“Can you blame them?” The former stowaway asked, one arm looped around Neil’s shoulders as they waited for the rope ladder to drop. He’d taken one look at the dawning realization on the merman’s face and didn’t even bother giving Neil an excuse. It was a good show of respect on his part, but it was the least Jean could give after dragging Neil away from his very important and boring job of scraping the underside of The Fox clean.

(It wasn’t as safe as the depths, but there was absolutely no way for the humans to see him exactly under their ship’s hull.)

Neil scowled.

“If you’d show yourself some more,” Jean told him, “they’d stop doing this.”

Neil shrugged one shoulder.

He contemplated his expression, then continued with, “I know it goes against everything in your nature and experience -- and I can read between the lines of any story, I know my grandmother regretted giving my grandfather her pelt more than anything in her life -- but, you can’t be so dense as to think they want to sell you. If anything, they owe you.”

It would take more than an acrobatic array of facial expressions to convey what he thought about that, but the way his scowl didn’t lighten probably informed enough of it.

The rope ladder reached the surface. Neil let Jean paddle his way to it by himself.

Though he sunk lower, just his eyes and hair above water, he didn’t completely disappear by the time that, half-way up, Jean glanced down.

I haven’t been here long, he called down, his voice a little off, a little more gutteral, a little more of a bark, a little more selkie, and those above him exchanged confused glances as they lost track of the language, but they take debts as seriously as their bets.

Below, Neil clicked his teeth.

We’ll see, he said with a turn and dive, and maybe, just maybe, he made a point to flash the long, imposing length of his tail.

He meant to forget the whole conversation and return to his job under the ship. So of course that meant he couldn’t catch a wink’s worth of sleep as he turned the idea - the implication - the anxieties - the possibilities - over and over in his mind.

At one point or another during his careful, cautious sifting through loud human related memories which involved distracting himself with swimming loops as much as it did anything vaguely close to reminiscing, he wondered: do they still play cards together?

Following that was an immediate thought of, I hope so.

After that, he cursed ever protecting a stowaway.

That next morning, the outline of a pirate with a familiar hat watched the sun rise from the railing.

If she caught sight of a red-spined, translucent-webbed dorsal fin breaking the surface alongside The Fox’s length, well. She commended herself on not telling anyone about it until that afternoon.

Needless the say, very little was done that day.

“What’s our plan, Captain?”

“Aside from courting mermen into being our personal escorts?” Abby patted Wymack’s shoulder with a hint of pity but not a shred of sympathy. When neither Renee nor Dan took the bait, Wymack sighed, stood, and dug a key on a leather string out of his pocket to unlock his dresser. “Before we left port, a crone sold Abby an interesting map. The script on its back reads that whomever reaches its mark before Halley’s Comet splits the sky will uncover a King’s ransom. The comet’s not due for another four years, and I can’t imagine this map being older than my father.”

Dan raised an eyebrow and attempted to exchange a questioning look with Renee, but true to her nature, she only smiled back.

Slowly, eyes back on Wymack, she said, “We’re trusting the word of a… crone,” very respectfully.

Wymack looked as put-upon about the task as she felt.

And yet, he unfurled the old, frayed map, its colors washed out and paper thin enough to crumble in a breeze, and looked at Dan as if he expected her to fall in line about this. “By Renee’s word, it’s legitimate.”

“There’s runes in its weaving,” Renee happily explained. “It promises truth for whomever reads it.”

“Sounds like a foolish thing for a treasure map. Couldn’t anyone read it?”

“I’m guessing it was made under duress, for the person causing the duress. That person must have… accidentally lost it.”

“Sounds cursed.”

“I’d like to think of it as a classic example of what goes around, comes around.”

Wymack, back in his chair, waved a hand. “Whatever the cause, a King’s ransom sounds promising. By our calculations, the mark’s in the heart of the southern isles. It’ll take some careful maneuvering to reach; the water’s far too shallow for The Fox. We’ll have to rely on private excursions.”

Dan gave the map due consideration, teeth worrying at her lip. It looked important. It looked damming. It looked…

“Wait. The mark?” She squinted, checked it over again, but found no red trail or convenient X. “What mark?”

Wymack looked at Renee.

“That’s also in the weaving,” she admitted, a touch abashed. “See how the stitching that starts here goes the opposite way of the rest? If you connect it to the merged forests, and then connect that with the only mountain painted with yellow…”

She drew an imaginary line with her finger across the parchment. Although she tried to follow, Dan found the conclusions to be stretched at best, and absolute bullshit at worst. Nonetheless, when Renee finished and her Captain nodded, Abby tilting her head side-to-side as if to say oh, sure, Dan sighed, crossed her arms, and rocked back to her heels.

“Good thing I trust you, or this would be the oddest thing we’ve done since...” Her face screwed up. It was not as long ago as she’d hoped. “Defeating The Raven.”

“There is room for doubt,” Renee said, because she was a generous person. “I’m not entirely sure if the blot near the cove was intentional or the artist’s poor quill quality. We may need to go ashore more than once.”

“We’ve three months’ worth of supplies. I won’t have this last longer than that.” The Captain grumped, then glanced at his First Mate. “It’ll be a good chance to get the new recruits in line. Pay especial attention to Jack and Sheena; for two street urchins, they idolize Kevin an awful amount for his time in His Majesty’s service.”

Dan scrunched her nose. Jack and Sheena were close to nightmares, quick with their hands or not, but in the end all she said was, “Aye, Captain.”

When she turned to go, Wymack cleared his throat. She stopped and glanced back.

“Neil won’t be a problem, will he?”

That surprised a laugh out of her. Trust Wymack to ask after they’d decided to stop chucking people overboard.

“Even though we don’t have to feed him anymore, Captain, I don’t think it’s possible for that merman to not be a problem.”

Wymack very carefully did not smile, nod, or give any indication he was okay with that.

Dan left with a bounce in her step to relay his commands, and didn’t worry about any more directives to leave the merman alone.

Behind her, heard only by the Captain and Abby, Renee rolled up the magical map, her smile gentle and cleverly mischievous.

“Who knows, Captain,” she said, which made Wymack groan. Those were never good words from Renee. Her clever smile grew, and she continued with, “Who knows, Captain. Having a merman on our side might be the knife up our sleeve that we’ve been waiting for.”

“That sounds as if we’re planning for something grander than treasure hunts.” Even, calm, and not fooling anyone left in the room. “I thought you gave up knives, Walker.”

Renee hummed.

“It’s worrisome, the not too miniscule matter of our bounty and its origin. People are going to get ideas. People are going to think we’re fearsome.”

“People can think what they will. It won’t change who we are, or what we stand for.”

Renee and Abby did not reply.

After the ship’s soft creaking settled into their ears, Wymack dismissed them both.

“If it’s revenge for his brother the King wants,” he told them on their way out, “let him come to us. As far as ships full of vindictive bastards go, we’re not far from the top of the ladder.”

Rumors of their search stemming from a magicked treasure map gifted by a crone somehow made its rounds in the crew, despite Dan’s clear explanation that they were to search the southern isles on a dead merchant’s faded notes. The reason she couldn’t give specifics was because when the merchant died, he’d bled all over the notes, and no, Nicky, you can’t see the notes, and yes, Kevin, this did mean they were going to have to deploy lifeboats and making excursions on land, and no, Aaron, you aren’t allowed to opt-out, what is wrong with you little monsters? Get to work! We have three months to scour a dozen islands!

While everyone dispersed, Dan took Renee aside and asked, “Alright. What exactly are we looking for, anyway?”

“A horse skeleton. It should look ready to gallop into the stars.”

“That sounds…”

“Poetic?”

Dan see-sawed her hand. Renee giggled, and broke off to find Allison.

It took less than three days to reach the first, and smallest, of the islands. Preparations were made: a few of the islands they could split and take two during the same day; a few they would need at least a week to comb; and still another looked to be nothing more than a volcano, and an active at that. They’d have to draw straws for who explored that one. No one could be sure if the islands were inhabited by people - neither Jean nor Nicky, of whom had traveled the region before, could say - so they prepared for that, too. They still only had two lifeboats, and there’d always need to be someone on the ship. Some of the crew wanted to explore unknown islands more than others. A fair, equal rotation was set up, which was to say, by the end, everyone was unhappy.

The only highlight to be found was that every day, someone reported spotting the merman.

Someone bet that someone else wouldn’t spot Neil more than them, while yet another bet Neil wouldn’t do more than break the surface with his fin on this day, or that Neil would do a jump on that day, and so merman-watching became a sport. When she thought about it like that, Dan had to admit it sounded terribly boring. It’d be pathetically wishful if The Fox didn’t, as Wymack had put it, have a personal half-human escort.

And yet, its novelty was taking its time in wearing off. Neil’s daily appearances, brief though they were, also spurred the newer recruits to ask the older for stories that they previously hadn’t believed. The story of The Raven’s sinking, rather than being regarded as an agreed-upon and modest retelling, came alive in the newer pirates’ eyes. As they whispered about it like a legend in the making, Matt, Erik and Katelyn grew uncomfortable, but there was little to be done about stories that breathed on their own.

In any case, they reached their first destination.

It wasn’t on the outskirts of the southern isles. It was in the circle that constituted the so-called heart, a rough stretch of land that Renee’s careful eye picked out from the map’s small clues. It meant navigation became hell and a half. Waters ran shallow without warning, sandbars and narrow ravines both sprouting and disappearing, and more than once they all flinched as The Fox’s hull scraped along sand. Fortunately, winds turned them away before they were beached, but it was a painstakingly slow process to pick their way to the isles’ inner circle.

And once they were there…

“I know it’s the smallest one,” Matt muttered, the formerly enthused lead for the first expeditiation, “but I didn’t realize we’d be looking into a kid’s sandbox. Dan, that’s an ambitious sandbar, not an island. We really don’t need to land.”

“The skeleton might be in the sands,” Dan replied, arms folded over her chest. She wouldn’t let her voice sound doubtful in front of the new recruits or Andrew’s lot, but she felt it, and she saw how Matt noticed it. “At least you’ll all return soon.”

Sighing, Matt finished packing the lifeboat with their standard packs (overkill for the spit of an island, but part of the regime) and clambered in. The pulleys squeaked as him, Aaron, Kevin and two fresh recruits, Brian and Alma, dropped themselves to row ashore.

There was no horse skeleton.

There was barely any sand to sift through.

There were a few crabs, one baleful-looking sea bird, and the saddest collection of withered palm trees Matt had ever seen.

Empty-handed, Kevin shrugged at one end of the island. Matt shrugged back at him around one tree, and motioned them to fall back. It took as long to reach the island as it had to search it; with the ship as motivation, it should’ve taken less time to reach their mobile home.

“Wait,” Kevin said, “Hold position,” which was the only warning Matt had before he stuck his oars straight down, turned the rudder and brought them to a rocking halt. He was just about to ask what Kevin meant by that when, by looking back, he found his eyes drawn to Neil.

Exposed to the shoulders, the merman watched them from well out of their arms’ or oars’ reach. It was the closest he’d come to more than one of them since he’d reappeared (and Matt could still feel the prick of his claws on his back and hard, inhuman strength under warm, oil-smooth skin). Alma let out a squeak. Neil’s eyes snapped to her, then to Brian; he tilted his head one way, and then the other, looking at each of the newer recruits with suspicion so strong Matt wondered if they’d met before. Typically, only little, weathered, old ladies of very small, closed villages could manage such distrust for new-comers.

When they failed to do anything more damning than look amazed at seeing a merman in the flesh, Neil drifted an inch closer and moved his gaze to Aaron.

“What are you searching for?” He asked.

Matt’s mouth dropped open.

Aaron stared, but recovered well. Too well, Matt would say. He was, maybe, a little bit jealous of the idea that Aaron might have known that Neil could talk.

“A King’s ransom.”

Neil frowned, his shoulders drawing back, and snapped his mouth shut.

Aaron let out a barely audible guffaw. “Were you expecting Andrew?” A beat. The merman did not move. “Too bad. Now your secret’s out. Be more careful, and you wouldn’t screw up as much as you do.”

Matt wanted to smack him for saying something so rude and dashing their chance at talking with Neil, that was a thing, that was something they could apparently do, why had Neil not talked before? Fortunately, rather than take Aaron’s word as representative for all of them, Neil’s eyes jumped to Kevin and then Matt, and he asked-- he asked! He asked Matt! Holy shit! That was awesome, Dan was going to turn green with envy! He was so going to bring this up at any opportunity for the next week! No, no, the next year. No! The next decade!

He asked Matt, voice clear as a bell and far too normal-young-adult for a merman to have, “What’s a King’s ransom?”

“Er,” Matt said first, then, “That is,” and shifted his weight, straightened up, slouched, and finally put all his sudden nervously excited energy into a bright smile at Neil for talking to him, “Treasure. Enough treasure to paint the ship gold, if we wanted.”

Neil’s eyes narrowed.

Matt faltered.

Neil said, “Your ship would sink if it were painted gold.”

Matt laughed.

Kevin cut in with, “We don’t know what it’ll be. The directions say a King’s ransom, but what King? A self-proclaimed King? A King of pigs? What if it’s leading us to pay a King’s ransom?” He said these things because he was a professional buzzkill, and also because out of the whole crew, no one was less fond of wild goose chases than Kevin Day. In his defense, this very much felt like a wild goose chase.

Neil’s face did the funny thing where it looked exactly like a human inconvenienced in a small but memorably annoying way. Which, Matt mentally amended, was because, apparently, he was basically human. The talking cinched it. Not that speech was a requirement to be human, but-- a little part of him always caught sight of the fish tail and thought, animal. Clever animal, an animal willing to rescue drowning humans, but like Renee said: merfolk were akin to dolphins. If he had a dolphin stuck in a tank for five months, Matt was sure he’d get attached to that, too.

But, no. Neil was human. Essentially.

The guilt at how they treated him was something Matt refused to entertain while the merman was no less than two boat-lengths away.

“Why?” Neil asked.

“Exactly,” Kevin growled, because of course he wasn’t surprised by their merman talking, he was an incredibly dense human being unable to appreciate the fantastical things in life.

“We’re pirates,” Matt said. Neil’s eyes snapped lightning-fast back to him. “Treasure hunting is part of the job. Even if we’re not sure where the treasure is, or what it might be.”

With a noise unlike a human’s (as if to prove Matt’s previous thoughts incorrect on thinking him basically one), Neil hummed. It was closer to the noises he’d made aboard the ship, a fluting sound that belonged to a bird rather than a half-fish. It must’ve, Matt thought, sounded beautiful underwater.

In the boat’s middle, Alma shifted and opened her mouth.

Neil instantly glared at her and, in a flash of red, disappeared back under the surface. The waters were shallow and clear enough to track him for a distance, though he moved fast enough that it was like tracking a merlin: more impression than substance, more awe than belief.

In his wake, he left a silent boat.

“That better not become a habit,” Aaron muttered.

“Are you kidding?” Brian yelped, swinging around to stare at the Minyard twin.

“I can already tell he’s three times as annoying when he talks,” Aaron groused.

“Aaron,” Matt warned, putting on his I am the leader of this exploration voice, even though the island was barely anything to explore and he hadn’t a slice of Dan’s authority, “if you jinx this, I swear I’ll let Dan sleep on her stomach for the next two weeks, and you won’t get any sleep through her snores.”

Kevin huffed and asked, “Can we keep going, now?” -- But Matt saw the glances he sent in the direction Neil disappeared to, and hah! No one could escape the merman’s mystery.

The annoyance of patrolling a glorified sandbar vanished. He couldn’t stop grinning. When Alma looked at him curiously, he said, “They’re gonna flip when they hear they missed his first words.”

“Second,” Aaron said, his eyes on the boat’s floor.

“What?”

“Second words. He spoke his first to Andrew.”

“--- And he didn’t tell us?”

Aaron shrugged.

Fair point, Matt thought, it was Andrew.

Wait.

“And you didn’t tell us?”

Aaron leveled an unimpressed look at him. “I had been coming back from a siren’s song. I was sure I misheard it.”

“Obviously not,” Kevin muttered.

Aaron shrugged again. The Minyard ability to not particularly care was, in Matt’s opinion, an astoundingly thorough one.

Matt was right.

They flipped.

The next island wasn’t far. When they reached it, Nicky made a demand for a re-selection of teams. Dan asked for his reasons. Without a speck of shame, he said, because whoever goes might hear the gorgeous Neil speak!

Erik found it amusing, which was more than could be said for Dan.

It was decided the teams would not be re-arranged because of possible mermaid sightings and speeches. Nicky pointed out that she was a biased person to make that rule, what with her being the leader of the next expedition. She told him to shut his trap and roped Allison, Lily, Leon and Renee into going with her.

Neither Neil nor the skeleton horse made an appearance.

Dan pretended she was mostly disappointed about the lack of treasure. Renee didn’t call her on it, but had her help pluck a delicate blue flowers from the top of the island’s hill.

The next stop required two lifeboats for one island and at least three days of searching, the beach giving way to thick jungle that peaked in the middle with threateningly dark rock. Fumes spewed from cracks at the barely sleeping volcano’s base. The pirates eyed a thin but walkable strip that led to the top, and drew straws on which party had to hike it. Decayed horses remained out of sight and out of reach, but vibrant fruits and small, monkey-like mammals came in abundance. Katelyn always checked for poisonous elements before allowing them to cook it, but they stocked up on variety as well as they could, figuring they might as well make the most of their sweaty, meandering adventure.

A new recruit proposed a bonfire and camp-out on the beach rather than immediately returning to the boat. Half agreed and stayed. Half did not.

Those that didn’t packed up spare fruits and coconuts and rowed themselves back to the ship with lanterns and the moon lighting their way. The water glimmered around them and lapped gently at the lifeboat’s sides, the sands below disappearing as they rowed farther from shore.

A shadow slithered from the corner of Kevin’s eye to under the boat; tense, he called, “Hold!” and jerked his oars down.

One jabbed into the thing; the boat rocked as the creature bucked and knocked into its side, and scabbards rattled as Andrew and Jean pulled swords.

When a disgruntled ginger broke the surface, hand rubbing at his head, Andrew tsked.

Swords were replaced. Neil eyed them all in the flickering lamplight, this time starting with Kevin, the offending oars, then Jean, and ending on Andrew.

“This time, you have the right Minyard,” Kevin said when everyone else failed to break the silence. Neil shot him a look, but maybe, maybe, relaxed.

He asked, “What does a King’s ransom look like?”

“Is that an offer to help?” Andrew returned.

Neil ducked underwater.

Jean sighed.

Neil reappeared on the boat’s other side, closer to Kevin. He was, for someone with Kevin and Jean’s height, within reach. That didn’t necessarily mean much: it would take longer for them to reach than for him to retreat.

“It was a question,” he said. “If it was an offer, I’d have made it an offer.”

“Sure,” Andrew drawled. “You’ve always been very upfront.”

“This King’s ransom,” Jean cut in, vaguely annoyed at whatever spat was happening with him sitting in the middle, “will be found by a horse’s skeleton. You wouldn’t know what that is.”

Neil’s nose crinkled, the corners of his mouth tightening.

“We could bring you a picture,” Kevin said.

For a moment, the merman contemplated this. He sunk until the water covered him to the eyes, and they flitted every which way but theirs.

With boredom weighing down his words, Andrew said, “We don’t have all night, fish-face. If you don’t want to help, leave us be.”

Neil tilted his head back to speak. “Give me something, and I’ll help.”

“Like what?”

“The yellow fruit.” He rose higher, his hands held to the surface as if it were something solid. “I want a bundle.”

“Have you ever tasted it?”

“No. But it looks good.”

“Glad to know you still think with your stomach first, brain second.”

Evidently deciding Andrew was of no use, Neil ignored him, and looked to Jean.

Jean looked back.

Kevin said, “The location’s instructions are vague enough, I wouldn’t be surprised if we found our imaginary treasure buried in the sea. It’d be good to have eyes looking down there, too.”

“This isn’t really our decision,” Jean said, stiffly.

“Oh, Moreau. You need to learn not to care so much about what the Captain thinks. The rest of us don’t.”

“I don’t have all night,” Neil quoted, the drawl an incredible impression of Andrew’s.

“We’ve eight islands left after this one. One bundle of bananas is going to net your help for all of them?”

“Bananas aren’t--”

“-- Hush, Kevin.”

Neil eyed them. “One bundle, one island. More for more land. Same even if there’s less.”

Andrew deadpanned, “Deal.”

“Get the picture,” Neil told Kevin.

They had to have Abby sketch one (and she was no artist, but at least she knew what a horse looked like), briefly explained why, and lowered the lifeboat back to the waters to show Neil before Abby could shake the Captain awake to stop them.

“I’ve seen half of those before,” the merman said.

“The Laughing Jackal kept horse meat? That’s against regulation.”

That got Kevin an odd look, but rather than reply, Neil crept closer, little ripples following his drifting, and stuck his hand out. The tips of his claws were less than a forearm’s length from the boat’s edge. Immediately Jean passed over the bananas; almost as immediately, Neil disappeared into the deep with them.

The three left behind didn’t exchange glances, but they did watch the dark surface until the only disturbance came from the ships. When they pulled themselves up, the Captain had a few stern words for them; after he finished, however, he admitted grudging respect for their taking unique opportunities by the horns, and permitted the exchange of fruity goods for Neil’s extra eyes.

In the early morning light, the trio rowed back to the island-- or, tried to. A spiny dorsal fin appeared alongside their boat, and then, once Kevin stopped its progress, an unhappy Neil surfaced properly.

“Scale out of line? Someone twist your fin?”

A soggy banana with tooth marks all along its outside caught Andrew in the shoulder.

“These taste disgusting. I want something else.”

Jean picked it up. Kevin looked to see what was wrong with it.

Andrew rolled his eyes.

“Try peeling it, moron.”

Kevin, taking it from Jean, helpfully demonstrated, and tossed it back, wiping his hands on his pants with the first signs of disbelief over what his life had become on his face.

Snatching it from the air, Neil frowned and ducked underwater.

“Keep going,” Andrew told Kevin.

After the oars started rowing, Neil reappeared in their wake.

“Well?” Andrew asked, without glancing at him. Kevin hesitated, but didn’t stop.

“Decent.” Neil muttered. “I still want something else for the next island.”

“Then you should’ve made that part of the deal.”

As Jean watched, Neil flicked water in their direction (not near enough to reach them) and disappeared again.

Islands four, five and six yielded no skeletons, more jungle, and even a little lava that snaked its slow, molten way to the shoreline.

Island six, the rumbling, smoking volcano island, intimidated. No one really wanted to go. Even though exploring became lucrative after Matt and Erik pumped everyone up with illusions of what they might find if this was successful, that they’d hauled a prince’s ransom from Riko but this was a King’s, and - for those not swayed from the feebleness of Dan and Wymack’s explanations of why they were looking for the treasure - Neil personally appeared for most of the trips to the islands, lava was… hot, for one, and noxious, for two, and no matter that a dog without legs could out-run its slow crawl, there was something about its powerful inevitability that straightened a person’s spine and told them to stay away.

Neither Andrew, Kevin nor Jean were on the rotation for volcano island, and that lowered the cheer for those who were into the pits.

It was simple observational fact that Neil appeared most, drifted closest and - a phenomenon a handful of the crew had yet to hear (mostly the new recruits, but also Katelyn and Abby) - spoke longest around those three. Outside of that trio, the merman had chatted directly with Matt twice, Dan thrice, and Nicky once. The merman-sighting betting pool gathered dust as sighting was the least The Fox’s crew came to expect, which would have been a development they’d take larger pride in if they weren’t so greedy for more.

“If we can’t have a King’s ransom,” Allison explained to Dan, who was horribly biased by what she thought of as budding friendship with the creature, “at least we could learn enough to write a book about something no one else has. That’d make us rich.”

“If anyone believed us,” Dan sniffed.

Allison shrugged. “It’s all in the marketing.”

Despite her entrepreneurial talk, the first conversation Allison had with Neil involved her shutting him down with a comment on the awful cut of his hair. After the second and third - long after Dan’s tenth - Allison stopped bringing up taking notes on what they learned about the ocean world altogether, to Dan or anyone else. It wasn’t as if Neil jumped at the chance to describe his species’ culture or habits. In fact, she complained, he specifically avoided any topic about merfolk.

(The name Seth was not brought up, but maybe the return of one from the deep reminded her of how another would not.)

And if Renee’s first conversation became her only conversation with Neil, and it involved little more than her asking him what fruit he preferred, well. Allison noticed, but didn’t ask. Andrew noticed, asked Neil, and then didn’t need to ask further.

Merman aside, the treasure hunt had to continue. Captain’s orders.

No one but Abby knew of Wymack’s solo chats with Neil late in the night. They were mostly to reaffirm the merman meant no harm to his crew. The merman freely admitted the trouble he thought humans were, and his being around The Fox was only until the season for him to swim north came.

Wymack suspected merfolk didn’t need to follow migratory seasons, but he let Neil have the lie.

After, Neil asked him, “Why do you fight the Crown?”

“You care about human affairs?” Wymack returned, wry.

“This one involves me,” Neil answered, stiff. “According to you, the Crown’s why I was caught.”

That wasn’t the entire story of what they’d said, but he let Neil have that lie by omission, too.

“I used to be a sailor in His Majesty’s navy.” He began, and took a moment to decide how much, exactly, he wanted to share. In the end, it was most of it: he didn’t have anything to hide, really. The crew knew. Anyone without a uniform that asked would know. It still took a moment for him to arrange tender, scraped memories into what Neil wanted: his reasons. “I captained the first ship the royal shipwright, Kayleigh Day, ever launched. I wasn’t a part of the first fleet they sent south, but I saw how the empire changed the people there. The agreement was that local law remained in power as long as they paid taxes and sent tributes in fidelity. One bad harvest, one bad year, and they’d send ships like mine to deliver diplomats and soldiers and anyone else who didn’t see those outside the mainland as human.

“So,” Wymack blew out a breath, Neil’s expression unchanging and eyes unwavering on his, “I lost nerve. I couldn’t stomach ferrying those people around, or fighting villagers who couldn’t afford to eat, let alone buy proper weaponry.”

“You left.”

“I left.”

Neil drew a slow circle around Wymack’s dinghy, but his eyes had moved to The Fox. She was, as ever, impressive in her reliability despite her old age and numerous patchwork repairs.

After stopping out of Wymack’s reach but directly before his path, Neil asked, “Did you take Kayleigh Day’s ship when you left?”

“That,” Wymack replied, the sea-roughened skin around his eyes crinkling up, breath huffing out of him in a warm gust, “would have been piracy. Practically, as some said, a declaration.”

“If there’s a skeleton here,” Matt said on volcano island, his bandanna drawn up to cover his mouth and eyes watering in the black fumes, “it’s cinders, and any treasure along with it.”

“Agreed,” Allison grumbled. “Let’s go.”

Without further ado, they packed back up and rowed toward their ship. A familiar dorsal fin heralded Neil’s appearance at their sides, but for once, they didn’t slow down their rowing.

“Sorry, Neil,” Matt told him, “no fruit from there.”

“The sands are shifting,” Neil told him, his long body trailing after him as he kept pace with them, “the sea will rise soon.”

Allison scoffed. Neil’s eyes moved to her, less of a snap and more a passive shift in interest.

She said, “That’s needlessly foreboding.”

He looked confused. Matt turned the words over, asked, “What do you mean, the sea will rise soon?” And, as soon as he said it, added, “Like an earthquake?”

Neil didn’t know if it was like an earthquake. His vocabulary was set in the water, not the earth.

“Right.” Matt said. “Sorry.”

“The waves grow,” Neil tried, frustration edging his voice as the conversation drew out, “and do their best to pull families apart and put you belly-up. It’s best to be in the deep while the sands shift.”

“Earthquake,” Allison said. “Definitely an earthquake. And tsunami.”

“Renee didn’t say anything about that.”

“She’s hasn’t been checking as much while she gathers.”

“Oh.”

“When’s this supposed to happen, Neil?”

Neil had dipped back into being a dorsal fin moseying along their boat, but he surfaced at his name. When he just looked at them, Allison rolled her eyes and repeated her question impatiently.

“By early morning,” he said. And shrugged. “Maybe. It won’t be strong. But you’ll want to get your ship out of that narrow ravine. It might tip.”

In the back, Jack, previously silent, bit out, “Are we seriously taking advice from a mermaid? He’s part fish.”

“We are long past that argument,” Allison replied, airy and unconcerned even as Neil curled his lip at the new recruit and rumbled with a low, displeased noise. “And don’t be dense. Neil’s clearly a merman.”

“Thanks, Neil.” Matt said with a smile. Neil’s rumble disappeared in a flash, his expression smoothing out as he looked away from Jack. Matt wondered briefly if he should be concerned with how Neil’s dislike for the new recruits persisted, but it didn’t really seem like a threat outside of their feelings. “We’ll move out by dusk.”

One blue eye watched him from its corner, the merman abruptly silent and blank-faced. Matt kept his smile, but after a moment, felt unnerved enough to focus on rowing and their encroaching home.

Although he kept pace with them under the surface until they reached the ship, Neil said nothing else.

Jack muttered, “He’s fucking creepy,” but Allison replied, “And yet, you make really good competition for top freak,” and Neil heard but didn’t glance over.

It took some hasty maneuvering, but they edged their way out of the isles’ heart’s immediate shallows by the time the ocean’s surface began to ripple. When the waves rose to rock their ship, though it was nothing strong, they tilted and swayed and didn’t catch on any underwater cliffs or sandbars. A ways from them, they watched as trees swayed, cracked, and fell.

All in all, it was over before they knew it, and - under Dan and Wymack’s insistence - pressed back in.

Island seven, and eight yielded nothing. Adventuring spirit shrank. Not even Matt mustered up much cheer for the constant on-and-off shore trudging they had to do, the tedious lugging of packs from one end of jungle to another wearing on them.

The only one whose profits grew was Neil, as he tasted oranges and coconuts and bananas and mangoes and, once again, managed to eat as well, if not better, than the humans aboard the ship. Dan was pretty sure Nicky tossed Neil extra fruit on the side, too, but-- so did she, so she couldn’t in good faith scold him for it. One night while she snuck into the galley to pilfer a pineapple, she ran into Katelyn. The cook waved off her apologies and admitted she’d been doing the exact same thing, which was why she hadn’t reported the theft to Erik or made records of it. She just lowered the numbers of whatever they hauled in with an expectation that half the stock would disappear within a day or two.

“Does Aaron know?”

“He doesn’t like Neil much. He thinks his brother gets on too well with him to be trustworthy, or… something.” Katelyn caught Dan’s amused grin, and cracked one of her own. “They’ll fight over anything as long as they don’t have to acknowledge they’re arguing. So, no, I haven’t told him.”

The First Mate barely understood how Katelyn managed to make Aaron Minyard more bearable, but it was undeniable she had him wrapped around her finger.

Island nine turned up barren of bone, but teeming with little people.

They lined the sandy stretch that stuck out from their densely forested island, their heads covered by furry dog masks that disappeared under their tunics. As they stepped from the jungle’s shadows into the light only once Dan, Renee, Matt and Kevin’s lifeboat was half-way out from The Fox, they were a little startling.

“Renee?” Dan murmured.

“It’s alright. I suspected they’d be here.”

“Who’s they, exactly?”

“Cynocephaly.”

Sure, Dan thought. Sigh-no-see-- aw, fuck it. “Who do they pledge to? Are we about to gain a lot of holes?”

Oddly, the usually shy Neil allowed every fin lining his tail to flare above water. Dan glanced over, as did everyone else on the boat, but she didn’t know what to make of it.

“We won’t as long as we’re respectful.”

“I can’t say I’ve been trained in dog mask etiquette.”

“Honesty,” Renee whispered, so low Dan almost couldn’t hear her, and Matt and Kevin both almost fell out the boat leaning in to catch it. “Honesty’s most important. Be clear, be true, and they won’t harm us. We may have to pass searching this island up, however.”

“By the look of those muzzles, I wouldn’t mi--” Matt said, but Renee shushed him. Dan gave her a look for cutting Matt off, but then they were about to reach the sand peninsula's tip.

Neil continued to pace back and forth, back and forth, behind them. Dan did her best not to turn and stare.

Instead she stood in their boat as it banked in the sand and, before anything else, cupped her hands around her mouth and called, “Hello! We come in peace!”

“But what do you come for?” One yipped back, voice high, crackling and suspicious.

Dan faltered, taken off-guard with how realistic the masks moved. Renee cleared her throat, Matt gave her a nod, Kevin continued staring at the peoples, and she rediscovered her voice.

“In search of a horse poised to gallop into the stars.”

At her side, Renee winced.

The dog masks snapped their teeth and pinned their ears; a few snarled, and growled, and put hands on blades and spears. Very suddenly, Dan realized these were people in the sense that Neil was people, that the masks weren’t masks, and when Renee said cynocephaly, I suspected they’d be here, she’d meant in the sense that legends told of dog-headed people in the southern isles.

“A lie!” One barked. “We can smell it on you. You come to our home and lie?”

“It-- it--” Dan started, her stomach dropping, stopped, and restarted, “- not entirely, sir- er, ma’am-- no. We’re looking for the horse because it marks a King’s ransom.”

One human hand shot up to bid for his fellows to quiet. Slowly, they did.

“What need have you for a King’s ransom?”

In her chest, Dan’s heart began to pound. Did that mean they had one?

“Not… need,” she hedged. At her side, Renee nodded, the rest of her held very, very still. “Want. We want the King’s ransom.”

Black and pink noses twitched and sniffed.

One different from the first speaker asked, her fur a ragged, patchy brown, “Do you mean us harm?”

“No,” Dan said.

“Do you mean our home harm?”

“No.”

Fur settled. Ears swiveled, to their neighbors and then to the pirates.

“Do you vouch for them?” All humans turned to follow the black dog’s line of sight to see Neil, his pacing halted as he watched, out of the water to his shoulders. He kept still and a ways from the shallows, voice barely raised when he at last replied.

“Depends on what for.”

“We have not seen your sort in many generations,” the brown one said. Dan and Matt thought Neil wanted to roll his eyes, but somehow, he restrained himself. “We used to swim with your kind before they disappeared from these isles. The humans hunted them like we hunt boar, with fervor and passion.”

This time, Neil didn’t keep himself from scowling.

“These ones won’t do that. At worst, they’ll make a racket and accidentally stomp on your gardens before they leave.”

He wasn’t entirely wrong, Dan admitted.

The brown one regarded him for a second before turning and whining something to the black one. The others took up an exchange of barks and yips, all the natives seeming to converse and share their opinions at once. If one ignored the fact they sounded like a kennel full of upset hounds, it… no, it still was a strange sight to behold.

At last the black one stepped forward, his bare feet brushed by the tide. Again, those behind him tapered into silence.

“You have the day to search for your dead horse,” he barked. “If you aren’t gone by the night, we’ll feast on your flesh and give your bones to our children.”

Magical creatures were always so blunt with their intentions. Or, Dan amended with a glance to the huffy merman that had helped them get to this point, maybe that was just an alpha male thing. If these dog-headed people had alphas, anyway. She wasn’t sure she wanted to ask.

The tip of the tallest islands’ natives’ ears couldn’t have topped Matt’s belly-button, but they moved as a pack, a shaggy mass of black and brown and grey and speckled tan that crowded close the moment the pirates dragged their boat ashore. That may have been amusing on closer inspection, but the way they snapped their yellowed canine teeth and spoke in deafening yips and barks to one another made them more off-putting than anything else. It took careful steps to not knock one over, especially because even after being sniffed and checked twice over, their concept of personal space seemed non-existent. After three minutes of struggling to reach the tree line and far too many muzzles poked in places they shouldn’t, Dan finally snapped and shoved one back.

Tan and hardly three feet tall, she yelped, high and piercing.

Matt was at Dan’s elbow in a flash, not even caring if he checked one with his hip, but, feeling far out of depth and overwhelmed with their numbers, Dan hastily reached out for the girl (the pup?) and stuttered, “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t-- hurt you, did I?”

The girl looked at her with huge, hurt eyes, and fled.

The brown one with patchy fur, having somehow weaved her way up to a tree branch, cackled.

“Raari is fine, she’s always been a whiner. You must forgive our excitement. We don’t often get visitors.”

“It’s fine,” Dan said.

She cackled again. “You lie. But that’s alright. Humans are always rude creatures.” Then she pinned her ears and snarled something to the crowd, and, like magic, the locals shrank back enough that the pirates could make their way into the trees.

Behind them, Neil once more disappeared.

Matt marveled at the huts and burrows they passed, the dog-headed people’s homes an intricate network of caves and hand-dug dens that ran from one end of the island to, presumably, the other. A few locals laughed at him after overhearing the awe, saying they’d passed at least a dozen entrances. Meanwhile, because when he enjoyed something he apparently enjoyed it whole-heartedly, Kevin took to asking one grey furred and floppy eared boy everything he could possibly think of in relation to their day-to-day, their hunting, their culture, their history, and Dan could just see the two of them getting attached to one another. The boy, for one, grew so eager to chat that he dissolved into yips at the tougher explanations, and Kevin, oddly patient, always waited him out. Renee stuck close to Kevin for his boldness, her own interest obvious but her words kept to herself.

One dopey-eyed speckled native that spent the better part of the afternoon trailing after Dan told her, utterly sincere, “I wouldn’t eat you. At least, I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

Right, then.

They did much less exploring than they should’ve, but the sun barely began to set before Dan hooked her arm in Matt’s, gave Kevin an encouraging shove to get a move on, and hurried them all to the boat.

Neil waited for them along the beach, head pillowed on folded arms and body a quarter submerged in the low tide. His scales caught the light beautifully as waves washed over him, but what truly held the pirates’ eyes was his half-lidded contentment and lazy sprawl, pale skin darkened to a warm bronze. Off a ways, a miniature pack of children splashed and tumbled with one another; with how they’d look but not venture near, Neil had made his large personal bubble well-known.

Of course the moment they stepped out of the forest and saw the whole picture of a happily sunbathing merman, said merman locked up and tracked their movements with sharp eyes.

Catching look of the pirates’ cautious facing and possibly misinterpreting its reason, the black male that had spent the afternoon patrolling their boat with his spear shook the thick fur around his neck and told them, “That used to be a common sight, when both their families and ours spanned for miles. We were trading partners since before your sort knew how to cross the great waters. Nothing needed, nothing but what made life sweeter: they brought us fish and we gave them fruit. You humans ruin any good you find.”

They frowned to varying degrees, but didn’t reply.

“What of your horse?”

Matt said, “We didn’t find it.”

“I’m glad,” he growled. “It sounds like something good.”

Kevin ruffled his conversational partner’s ears before they left, his good-bye otherwise subdued.

Although they gave Neil a wide breadth, the merman snaked his way back toward the deep before they even shoved off.

Later that evening, in part due to the dog-headed people and in part due to flagging morale, Dan suggested to Wymack they give up the hunt and continue on to Troy as planned. The Captain’s mouth thinned and he gave it thought, but in the end, shook his head.

“Renee still needs certain materials.”

“Can’t she get them at the market?”

“No. They only exist in these waters.”

Dan frowned. She didn’t want to be suspicious, but the emotion curled in-between her ribs nonetheless.

Wymack eyed her expression, his own giving up any fight.

“Speak your mind, Wilds. You always do.”

She did. “Is there even a King’s ransom to be found, Captain?”

“According to Renee,” he told her. “Yes. There is.”

Then, Dan told herself, forcibly shaking away her doubt, there had to be.

They moseyed their way to the tenth and significantly more flat and less forested island. The new recruits were unimpressed and restless. The older crewmates were displeased but resigned. Allison, Nicky, Lily and Sheena went down with the first lifeboat, only to immediately be nudged by Neil.

“What the--?” Lily asked, but then Neil hooked his claws over the side and pulled himself not an inch from Nicky’s elbow, and she practically jumped out of her skin.

Nicky did not blame her. He also almost fell off his bench.

“Uh-- Neil?”

“Not them,” the merman said in a voice on the wrong side of human, the vowels raising too high and consonants clicked short too fast. He stared at Lily and Sheena, and then at Nicky. “Not them. The one that reeks of nature. And Andrew. Bring them.”

“You remember Renee’s name,” Allison shot back, quite possibly to cover up the fact his sudden appearance and very sudden intrusion into their choices rattled her.

He stared at her with a look reminiscent to his time in the tank, and dropped underwater.

“Wait!” Nicky tried, but the merman was gone. He did, Nicky noticed, leave claw-marks on the lifeboat’s softwood. “Oh. Shit. Well, that was weird as hell. But…” Nicky’s face screwed up. “He hasn’t steered us wrong yet.”

Sheena started up a protest when Allison huffed agreement and rowed them back to the pulley’s ropes, but she mostly quieted when leveled with a flat glare.

They exchanged new for old, though Nicky could tell Dan and Wymack both came very close to demanding he and Allison swap with them. Andrew’s blithe comment of this being nothing more than Neil having a fit over a funnily shaped crab made Dan back off with uncomfortably crossed arms. The Captain wasn’t so easily swayed, his dark eyes lingering long on each of the four in the life boat.

After what felt like forever, the rest of the crew gathered around and whispering amongst themselves about what would make a merman urgent or necessitate their sooth-sayer, the Captain tipped his hat.

“Come back to us,” he commanded.

Nicky gave him a salute.

“We’re not in the navy, stupid,” Allison grumbled, but mirrored him toward Dan when the First Mate looked ready to break and tell her to switch.

Ropes creaking and pulley clattering, Andrew, Allison, Nicky and Renee, armed with a bag of dried plants and rocks, their swords, one rifle, that expedition’s bag and their clothing, dropped down.

In the morning light, Neil’s flashing red scales and fin were easy things to follow. He refused to explain, and the silence in the boat stilled even Nicky’s tongue. It pressed around them, dripped between the oars’ steady rhythm and packed into the space left behind. It put a shiver down Nicky’s spine, and made his teeth want to clatter. He wasn’t going to take a whole expedition of the tension, but with the way Neil spun in tight circles when he edged too far and waited for them to catch up, silence didn’t seem like it’d last forever.

The tenth island looked flat from far off, and it remained so as they drew closer. A few palm trees stuck up here and there, the barest underbrush struggling to turn an otherwise white land green. It wasn’t big.

Still silent, Neil curbed around it. They followed.

(It probably would’ve been faster for them to hoof it and meet him on the other side, but Nicky wasn’t sure how well the merman would take them straying from his path.)

The island’s side was as unremarkable as its front. Sparse though they were, the palm trees hid The Fox as they rowed by. When they cleared to what Nicky supposed was the opposite side, a variance at last appeared: where the sea had carved its way inland, what should have been a shallow river bed ran far, far darker than it should have. Nothing else around it begged curiousity; it was, at first glance, simply a sink hole.

“Your horse is in there,” Neil said, and this time, Nicky jumped with a fuck, Neil! Warn somebody before you do that! as he popped up right at Andrew’s elbow. His jumping helped Allison and Renee feel better, he thought, because both gave themselves a shake and leaned toward the merman hanging on the side of their boat. Andrew looked at Neil as if he were intentionally hiding something from him.

“And what else?” Renee asked.

Neil’s eyes jumped between all of them, but at the end, he held his tongue and shrugged.

“I’ll have to lead you.” He said, voice tight and shoulders rigid. If he didn’t propose that-- even though it did, it sounded sketchy as hell. Follow a merman into a sinkhole? That was just begging to pander to the they’ll drown you legends. “Beach your boat.”

Allison and Nicky exchanged looks.

Are you believing this?

Fuck no. I don’t have a death wish.

They beached the boat.

He swam with easy up the short river, and let himself hover in the middle of the sinkhole. From up close, it looked like a portal to the night sky: Nicky could tell there were somethings shining at the black bottom, but he couldn’t possibly make out what from where he stood.

Neil twisted in a circle once, stopped, said, “I can only take two at once. Any more, and we’ll get stuck,” and then ducked to swim another while all pirates exchanged looks.

“We should know more before we go in the creepy black void,” Nicky tittered.

Allison hugged her elbows. “For once, I agree. And what’s he mean, he can only take two of us? Is he giving us a ride?”

“Seems so,” Renee murmured. “To what, I don’t know. I can’t imagine it’s something that would hurt us. At least. Not something he thinks could hurt us.”

Andrew didn’t say a thing, but stepped closer to the pond.

“Oi, wait, Andrew, we really need to talk about this,” Nicky said, taking one step after him but freezing as Neil surfaced to look at them. He barely glanced at Andrew, even as the man turned to look at them, too. Gods. It was like they were working in tandem.

“Who else?”

Renee took a step forward.

Allison grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her back. “Hemmick. Get in the pond.”

“I’m not letting you toss me in the deep aga--”

“Don’t boss him around,” Neil snapped.

“--n-- er--” Nicky faltered. Met Andrew’s eyes. Looked at Neil’s clearly uncomfortable expression. And, slouching, sighed. “Alright. Okay. We’re first, I guess.”

Neil backed up.

Andrew and Nicky got in the pond. It was less of an easing your way in, more an ice bucket plung.

Nicky’s teeth really did start to chatter. “W-why is it freezing?”

“Hold your breath,” Neil told them as he drifted closer, as if that wasn’t the scariest fucking thing to hear from someone fixing to drag you underwater, “and don’t let go of me until we’re there.”

“Until we’re where?”

“Nicky,” Andrew said, “take a big gulp, and hold your breath.”

Nicky did.

Neil snaked an arm around both their waists, pulled them together like they were the best of friends so they had to link arms over shoulders lest they be awkwardly crushed, and, in one sharp motion, dragged them under.

It was.

Not pleasant.

It was ice water and a morning’s surprising chill all at once, and Nicky definitely lost his breath within the first ten seconds. He couldn’t track the bubbles on their way to the surface, however, given how quickly Neil moved them; force pushed Nicky’s head down and he risked the ache from salt to open his eyes, watching as stone flashed by and red twisted behind them; the pirate’s ears popped and his head felt pressure grow behind his eyes; on the cusp of too much, Neil broke his dive and swerved into an entrance that looked no different from the walls; it grew tight, black and black and a gleam of silver or white, was that actually ice, and Nicky had a dead man’s grip on Andrew’s shoulder, and then they breached a surface and took gulps of frigid air that gusted back out their lungs as puffs of smoke. It made both humans choke as Neil moved them to a ledge, and both of them shook too much to haul themselves up without a little help from the merman.

Andrew just about kicked Nicky in the throat when he got up and pushed himself back, snarling, “Where the fuck did you take us, Neil?” with an anger and discomfort that bordered panic, a tone his cousin had never before heard, and then it crashed on Nicky just how stupid they’d been to take a dive without more than ‘there’s a horse’ as an explanation.

“Down the hall,” Neil told him, already drifting back. “He’ll keep you warm.” Nicky’s eyes widened. No, no, wait, shit, he was their ticket out, he couldn’t just--

“I have to get the others.”

In a flash, he disappeared.

Andrew cursed under his breath, shaking his hands out. When Nicky didn’t stand up to follow his stomping, he came back, curled a fist in his cousin’s vest, and dragged him up. “Come on,” he hissed, shoulders rigid and legs stiff from rage or cold or both. His own joints locking up, Nicky followed, arms hugged around his chest.

Down the hall meant running the air pocket’s length. A glance at the water running parallel their path proved the shining pieces he’d seen had been ice, which made absolutely no sense, and for a second, Nicky honestly wondered if they’d been left to die.

But, no. Neil wouldn’t leave Andrew to die with him. With the way the merman sometimes looked at the guy, Nicky thought out of all of them, Andrew would be the last Neil would leave to die.

(Erik called him a romantic with freaky kinks; that was a human and merman he was talking about, and anyway, Erik was sure Neil looked at Andrew like that because everyone knew Andrew slipped him the best fruit).

(This was so not the last line of thought Nicky wanted when left to die.)

Nerves made him run his mouth. This was undeniable fact, and he didn’t try to stop himself now. “What’s causing the ice?”

Unfortunately, Andrew was not a happy conversationalist under the best of circumstances.

“Magic.”

“And the light? How come we can see?”

“Magic.”

“That’s a cop-out answer!”

“It’s the true one.”

Nicky shivered. “I can’t believe Neil just left us. Just like that. This place is awful. What if we run out of air?”

“He’ll be back.”

“He didn’t explain a thing! Where are we walking now? What’s around that corner? A bear?”

Andrew rounded the corner. A bear did not maul him. Nicky retained a healthy skepticism of their chances of survival.

“Nicky.”

“It could be nothing. He might’ve just left us here to starve.”

“Shut up, Nicky.”

“My fingers are going to fall off, I’m never going to be able to hold Erik’s hand aga--” Nicky rounded the corner and stopped, body and mouth. With a small noise, the sort a man made after a catching sight of his child’s first steps, a breathy, quiet oh, Nicky stared at the horse that looked ready to gallop to the stars.

It wasn’t a skeleton. It wasn’t completely a horse.

Renee and Allison’s arrival echoed through the cave as gasps, splashing and curses; they were much faster and louder in their recovery, or else shock had simply slowed Nicky’s perception of theirs, and Allison was thorough in her disgust for Neil’s mother and his water-logged brains while Renee, presumably, kept her moving. In no time at all, the women rounded the corner as well and stopped dead on either side of him with their own stunned silence.

Andrew was the only one to edge closer, and even he didn’t dare touch it.

The beast was wide as a lifeboat, long as a church pew and whiter than the ice. Half horse, half fish, it had hauled its top half onto the stone ledge and left its tail to drag in the cold waters. It took Nicky a moment to look past his awe and notice its wrinkled muzzle and slow breathing, to see the grey hairs that crept to its black eyes and the thin, brittle quality of its long mane.

When Neil surfaced at its side, one hand running up its tail until he very nearly draped himself on the massive creature’s flank, it moved its head to whicker at him. The sound echoed through the cave, brief and inexplicably tired.

“Hippocamp,” Renee whispered. Nicky barely heard her, too busy taking in the scene. “The sea king’s steed.”

“Worth a king’s ransom,” Andrew said.

“Not a dead horse,” Renee said, and sounded oddly mournful. “A dying horse.”

The backs of his hands rubbing soothing circles where the creature’s neck met its shoulder, Neil watched them and only them. “He thinks he has another three years. Four, if he’s lucky.”

The hippocamp’s breath gusted from flared nostrils, and it laid its great head on the ledge.

“Halley’s comet,” Renee murmured.

Nicky twisted to jab an accusing, trembling finger at her. “How much, exactly, did you know about this?”

The cold could not be ignored. Their lungs would close up if they stayed too long in sodden clothes. The creature was a sad, dying thing, and Nicky had a healthy, persistent respect for the old; worth The Raven a thousand times over or not, he wished they hadn’t found the beast.

Andrew and Allison turned to face Renee, too, neither jumping to mitigate Nicky’s demand.

She looked between them all, her lips white with cold and tension, before settling her eyes on Neil and spreading her hands at her side.

“I suspected we’d find something from legend, but I didn’t know it’d still be alive.”

“Well, he is,” Neil said, ducked, and then heaved himself onto the ledge to curl closer to the thing, gills closed and breath held. It seemed like a move to keep them from asking him questions. It also seemed like a move to reach the hippocamp’s mane, which Neil immediately buried his fingers into and began to straighten.

Allison asked, “How much is it worth?”

“In magical supplies alone, enough to pay for a comfortable retirement in a Baron’s villa three times over.” She paused. Sucked in a breath, and clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. “Whole and alive? We could buy out half the king’s navy.”

“That’s tempting.”

“It’s not. We’ve been through this before with that red-tailed bastard-- we’re not taking on another living creature.”

“That’s not for you to decide, Nicky. We need to discuss with the Captain.”

“I don’t care. We’re not doing it!”

“It’s now or never,” Andrew cut in. “Unless one of you can swim down here by yourselves, that red-tailed bastard won’t be hauling another human down here.”

“How do you know?” Allison demanded. “You two chat about this beforehand? Plan it out, did you?”

“Because he barely had the guts to do it once. You think he’ll work up the courage for a second go-around?”

Nicky glanced at the merman that, for all intents and purposes, ignored them. The single-minded focus he had on the hippocamp lent credit to Andrew’s assessment.

And also made for his excellent second point. “How are we supposed to haul something that size above ground? How are we supposed to convince it to do anything?”

“Neil,” Renee said, and Nicky wanted to step on her foot because he just knew she had something to counteract his perfect points, “did he give you permission to lead us here?”

Neil stopped untangling the horse’s mane. His eyes damned them for being greedy creatures, or so Nicky saw, but he nodded.

Renee wrapped her arms around herself.

She licked her lips.

She asked:

“Did you convince him to?”

One furred hoof, large as a man’s head, scraped against the stone. The beast raised its head to snort at them, sway, and then drop back down. Fingers disentangled from its hair, Neil slipped himself back underwater and, after breath, reappeared at their side.

His eyes were for Renee.

“He’s dying. He’s outlived his children, his mates, and his herd. He longs to rejoin the tide and race again along a wave’s crest with all those who died before him.”

A pause which felt as threatening as the ice, the beat of silence wrapping icy talons around their throats.

“It’s his choice, and his choice alone, for what and why he gives his life.”

Renee, wisely, nodded her understanding.

Another deadly pause passed, but then Neil blinked and jerked his head away, a muscle on his jaw working as he turned over whatever he meant to say next.

“Fuckin’ freezing,” Allison chattered, and Nicky whole-heartedly and loudly agreed.

Even Andrew shifted boot to sodden boot, impatience creeping into his expression.

The continuation was this:

“He’ll follow you to your ship and let you pull him up if you want. If you decide to sell him, he only asks you slit his throat first. He says he’s too old to suffer further.”

Nicky’s throat made a complicated strangled noise.

Renee and Andrew held a conversation between themselves with eyebrow twitches and long stares, which was wholly unhelpful to the rest of them.

Allison let out a shaky, cloudy breath, and then straightened from her chilly hunch. Turning to face the merman, her chin jerked up a few degrees.

“Accepted.”

“Allison--”

“You can’t honestl--”

She cut them off with a steely glare. “If he’s serious, tell him to show up at dusk. Make sure he has his hippocampy affairs in order, that he’s made peace with himself, whatever other shit a half-fish, half-horse can do. If he’s sure, then we’ll take him.”

Neil tilted his head at her.

She bared her teeth at him. “Is that fucking clear, fish boy?”

“He understands every word you say,” Neil said. Blinked. Blinked again. “So. Yes.”

Somehow, the cave seemed to warm to a few degrees shy of glacier.

“Good,” Allison growled. “Now get us the fuck out of this ice box before my nose falls off.”

He did, Allison and Nicky first, Renee and Andrew second. It took a suspiciously long time for the second duo to re-emerge, but Nicky had resolved not to think about it or talk for at least a day to any of them for agreeing so easily, and he kept to it as Neil said he’d rather spend the day with the hippocamp and, merman-less, they hauled their thawing asses back to the boat.

When dusk came, the air warm and wind rustling through distant trees, a horse’s braying broke the quiet.

No matter who did and didn’t fully believe their tale, all of The Fox’s crew found faith as the great beast reared from the sea below them, its hooves throwing water and its head tossed back in a proud arc. True to its translated word, it allowed them to fasten ropes under its legs and around its waist, and it didn’t struggle free as they heaved it to the deck. For whatever reason, it didn’t seem to need water or air to breathe; laid out on the deck, its greying coat and thick ropes of muscle made it a marvel from another world, as if it were made from magic itself.

When the Captain approached it with steel drawn, it bared its neck and closed its old eyes.

It was quietly decided that they would sell it at the second largest and nearest southern port. Despite the humid weather and their worries, the body did not rot. It did bring a mournful and morose atmosphere to The Fox’s crew, and for the week it took to reach the market, laughter was sparse and choked.

The body did not rot, but it took days for the blood to cease running.

Neil did not show himself as long as the creature’s corpse laid on their deck.

Truthfully, the pirates didn’t look for him, either.

The hippocamp fetched a price that would buy a third of the King’s navy.

It felt like less than what the ancient beast was worth, but Wymack didn’t have the gumption to negotiate longer than he had.

They sailed out the same day they arrived, largely uninterested what the port had to offer. Of the two that protested, Jack and Sheena, the Captain told them to go, but if they did, they weren’t welcome back. They remained.

The nose pointed for Troy, white sails unfurled, and on they went.

“Andrew? Where are you taking those oranges?”

“Calm down, Wilds. We never paid our leech for the last island.”

“He hasn’t come to collect it.”

“I doubt that. It’s more likely whoever was on duty was too blind to notice.”

“...”

“Any other questions?”

“Not immediately.”

“Then get out of my way, Wilds.”

She didn’t, but he shouldered past her all the same.

The rope ladder’s wooden rungs clattered against The Fox’s siding as it unfurled from the railing; Andrew waited for the plunk! that signified it reaching its final destination, stuffed three oranges into generously roomy pockets, and began to make his way down.

The only thing to follow him was:

“Show your First Mate a little more respect, Minyard!”

-- Which he ignored.

Given the sounds he left behind on the deck, a few others turned out to grumble and groan with sympathy at Dan. With tasks finished, their earnings from the hippocamp heavy in their pockets, and the evening thirty minutes from darkening enough for lanterns, the crew loitered in doorways and on overturned buckets. Andrew put them out of his mind before he was half-way down the ladder.

Legs slipped through the second bottom-most rung and feet hooked around the sidings, he dug out an orange, scanned the quiet waters, and got comfortable.

It took until he contemplated fishing out his flint for a cigarette and some light for Neil to show himself. That was, Andrew had to admit, far longer than usual. The merman was upset.

The merman didn’t look upset. The merman looked blank-faced, if not bored, as he held out an expectant hand for the orange.

That, Andrew decided, was not going to work.

Straightening up to cock his arm back, he said, “Catch,” and chucked it at Neil’s head.

It bounced off harmlessly, though the merman made a show of jerking back, snatching it, and disappearing for twenty seconds. Andrew used the time to get out his flint and rolled tobacco, not looking up from striking a spark when Neil once more reappeared. This time, he looked about a tenth of how upset he had to be.

The spark caught and he took a puff. Regarding the merman with little concern, smoke a silver shiver in the air, he said, “Oops.”

Neil splashed him in the face.

Shaking dripping hair from his eyes, Andrew spat out the sodden paper and fixed him with a not-so-sincere sneer. “Figured you’d do that, you ungrateful mooch. That was my second best one.”

Neil stuck his nose in the air. “I could pull you in. That’ll ruin your sparker, and then you’ll be shit out of luck until this rust-bucket picks its way back to shore.”

“Is that right? Good thing Nicky’s boyfriend has one.”

Eyes rolling and anger regulated to the backburner, Neil drifted close enough to curl a hand around the ladder’s rope. If that meant squeezing his fingers between Andrew’s leg and the rope itself, at least he kept his claws from tearing any holes in the fabric. When he fell silent and kept his head tipped down to his chest, Andrew resisted the urge to throw another orange at him.

“What happened to it being his choice?” If derision lined his voice and had anything to do with how quickly Neil looked at him, so be it. “You gave a real touching speech to Reynolds. Sure, without you, that old beast never would’ve let us find him, and, sure, if you hadn’t convinced him we were humans worth helping, he’d still be peacefully waiting to die, but you did those things. You found him. You told him about us. You let him decide. You led us to him. You--”

“I get it,” Neil cut in, back to looking down and away from Andrew.

“So why are you sulking?”

“I’m--”

“You’re sulking. It’s obnoxious.”

“Well, sorry,” he muttered and yanked once on the rope. Andrew huffed out an annoyed breath. In the dark, the scales speckled along his arms and back glimmered, little bits of reflected starlight that made it quite clear what spoke to him wasn’t and couldn’t be human. In more than a few ways, he was something more -- in a few others, something less. It balanced out. Andrew would appreciate the equal field if he could think about abstract potentials and not how defined Neil’s jawline could be at the right angle (and the right angle being any angle).

Reaching out to thread his fingers through Neil’s hair was not a compromise.

Teeth and tongue clicking in what was by then a recognizable language, albeit one Andrew had no hope in learning, Neil adjusted his grip on the ladder until he had his cheek pressed against his leg, bits of his side and tail breaching the surface as he turned himself horizontal.

Fine. Fuck off. It was a compromise.

“I never realized how much our numbers have shrunk.” he said. It took Andrew a second to remember what they were talking about. “Hippocamps. Merfolk. Selkie. Sirens, even. These isles should be crawling with them.” He paused. He frowned. He continued. “Before the tank, it wasn’t as if I’d cared to notice what we passed. My mother and I, we traveled alone. Originally we’d been part of a larger group. Probably. I don’t fully remember it. But my mother said it wasn’t safe, that the numbers made us too obvious to humans, and we left.”

He paused to think.

Talking was, as far as he knew, a good sign. The morose note in Neil’s voice made his skin itch for tobacco, but he put that restlessness into scratching along his scalp.

Neil’s eyes drooped before he continued, but his tone hadn’t changed. “You have a distinction for creatures like me. It took me a while to pick out what it was.”

“Sirens are pretty different from lobsters.”

“Not really. You call them magical because they understand humans without being one, but they’re-- they’re as magical as squid. They’re just smarter than squid. That’s all.”

“What’s your point, Neil?”

“Humans stalked his herd for decades. He should’ve lost his family to disease, or predators, or bad luck, not… because you think his blood’s better than something else’s.”

“Most times,” with words chosen with as much intention as anything else he did - more than enough to be sincere, “it is.”

The rope under Neil’s hand creaked as he strangled it, eyes no longer half-lidded and tail ducked back below the surface. Briefly, Andrew felt it nudge against his boots. Briefly, it did again. The merman kept pressed close to his leg, but he was working himself into a fit between one breath and the next.

Where his hand rested on Neil’s head, Andrew gave a tug to bring him back. “Neil. Breathe.”

“Five moons,” he gasped, as if speaking the words carved his throat bloody, “I’ve been free for five moons, and only some whales remember seeing my kind. Where did they go? When did that happen?”

He shook like a sheet in a windstorm, all panic and fear and barely-holding-on. Andrew slid his hand to his nape and gave him a shake of his own; Neil buried his face into the pirate’s side, one hand twisted into the hem of his rough shirt, and keened, the sound low and pitiful and carrying. At the end, he took a deep breath and made it again. And again.

Eventually he tired himself into panting silence. On deck, Andrew heard the alarmed shuffle of boots and uncertain chatter of pirates pulled from their conversations. Lanterns held to shed light on them cast shadows in the water.

A few farther back from the railing demanded to know what was going on. One could be identified as Jack. Those at the railing and those who weren’t anywhere close to being new recruits didn’t answer him, and made no demands.

Andrew ignored them all, kept one hand to Neil’s nape and the other on his shiver-wracked shoulder.

Soon enough, lanterns and humans receded. The quiet night once more blanketed them.

Neil hiccupped once, and then visibly, forcibly wrestled his breathing under control. Eventually he loosened his grip on Andrew’s shirt, though he didn’t let go, and turned his head to once more press his cheek against his leg. His eyes were clear and dry, but also duller, the fire within doused.

“They’re dead,” Andrew told him.

His jaw clenched, the muscle jumping against his leg, but he didn’t reply.

“One of you can give one of us years more to live. Do you understand? No mere animal can do that. Creatures like you, rare as you’ve become, are worth a dozen men. That won’t change. You’ll always be hunted. If you meet another of your kind, they’ll always be hunted, too.

“But you escaped once,” he continued, and felt Neil still, “and you’re here now. If you want to squander your life by brooding around our ship’s hull, I’ll put you out of your misery and see that your blood, at least, is put to some use. If you don’t, if you’re willing to live even if it means a life as one of the last, then know you’re not entirely alone. The fools up there killed for you. They’ll do it again.”

Neil opened his mouth around a question, his eyes on Andrew’s.

He answered before it could be voiced. “That depends on which you choose.”

Neil’s laugh shuddered out of him, short and breathy. “Oh, it’s my choice.”

“How old are you, again? Five?”

“Two hundred and seventy-six.” Involuntarily, Andrew’s leg jumped. Neil’s eyebrows went up, then scrunched down, and -- “Moons. Two hundred and seventy-six moons. That’s… twenty-three years.”

Realization came upon Neil all at once; the smile to follow was so full of laughter and disbelieving mockery, Andrew gave the other’s hair another tug to cut it off.

Another puff of laughter nonetheless escaped, but he sobered up after, the exhaustion from too much emotion at once smudging his edges and lessening his tension as much as it made him seem frailer. When he kept quiet for a while, Andrew didn’t interrupt it. Rather, he took his hand from Neil’s shoulder and looped the arm once more through a ladder rung, boot-tips dipped a few inches more into the sea.

Eventually he made to move his other hand, too, but Neil caught its wrist as it lifted off his head and asked, “Does… Matt’s knee still jump whenever he’s dealt a good hand?”

Andrew didn’t often join their games, but he knew to say, “He continues to have a horrible poker face, yes.”

“Hm,” Neil said.

“There’s been distinctly less cheating in recent months.”

“Hmm,” Neil said again.

“The new recruits aren’t always invited.”

“Whenever they’re not,” he asked, and hooked his chin on Andrew’s knee, “is there a spot open?”

Andrew hesitated, realized he hesitated, and shoved Neil back with one hand to his face. Beneath his palm, he felt the grin -- between his fingers, tired eyes smiled at him. “Ask them, not me. Now back off, I’ve got a crick in my neck from talking like this.”

When he climbed up no less than an hour later, his other two oranges gone and citrus on his tongue, Dan Wilds greeted him with her arms crossed and her eyes worried. Kevin loitered at the mast-post trying to look as if he wasn’t. Nicky joined him and did a much worse job at not casting hopeful looks in Andrew’s direction. Matt, Renee, Abby, Katelyn and three of the nosier new recruits peered around doorways and corners, and in general were even more obvious than Nicky. Andrew stared Jack down until he frowned, bristled and backed off to the barracks.

While he started in on staring the other newer bodies into doing the same, Dan cleared her throat and asked, “So?”

“You’ll have to use more words than that to make a clear question,” Andrew told her.

She bristled, but didn’t back down. She knew she couldn’t make him talk if he didn’t want to, and she refused to let it intimidate her. That was respectable in some circles, Andrew supposed.

“Is he alright?” She asked, because she was also predictable. He appreciated that more, as it made talking with her not as much of a headache as it could’ve been.

“He’s fine.” Nicky shot a happy look at Kevin, who realized it gave his interest away and immediately turned toward perfectly tied lines to busy himself with re-tying. Andrew continued with, “He wants to play cards again.”

Dan’s stern expression stumbled.

“Cards?” She asked.

Andrew looked at her, and turned to pull up the rope ladder. With the way the First Mate’s hand reached out before retracting, he thought it a good idea; Neil wouldn’t surface again for the rest of the night, and that would just make Dan’s hurt feelings over not being a preferred conversationalist worse.

Why the merman didn’t talk as much with the louder crew members, Andrew thought was obvious. Neil was choosing whether or not he wanted to stay, and whether or not the cost was worth it. An annoyingly indecisive process, if you asked Andrew (which Neil did not, and Andrew didn't care to share on his own). That they took the cold shouldering personally didn't surprise him, but - if he had to be fair, which he never did, and wasn't, and thought in fairness of why they took it personally as an exercise in boredom alone - but, of course it obvious to him: it wasn’t his emotions getting in the way.

“Er. We could… try to finagle a game night on the ocean.” She said, which meant they would.

Andrew shrugged at her, ignored Matt, Katelyn and Nicky’s immediate hopping into ideas of how, and hauled the dripping rope ladder back to its place.

(Two days later, they folded their sails, dropped the life-boats with a four empty barrels and a loop of far too much rope in between, and Neil appeared, subdued and skittish, for a few hands. They let him have his silence, throwing insults and jabs at one another without lingering too long on where they hoped he would butt in.)

(It was the most boisterous, back-slapping, accusation-throwing, fun night they had in ages.)

(We have places to be, Wymack told them the day after, but once a week, they were allowed to stall progress for a game night with their fourteenth crewmember.)

Mourning the hippocamp meant they forgot urgency until they had a week’s worth of supplies before they starved, and three days’ travel to reach any town.

Hearing Katelyn say they only had potatoes and fish left woke them up. The ship moved even faster after Renee tempted the wind into helping and Kevin took it upon himself to inform every crewmate how lazy and sluggish they were being by not keeping the hold in order, as well as how the quality of their boots matched the quality of their ties, and if they didn’t shape up, he’d personally ship them out.

On day two of the three day travel, Nicky (who had become very attentive in the nest, as he’d be the first to spot land) squinted into his eyepiece at yellow sails and a blue flag. He called down a warning, but didn’t truly think much of the passing merchant ship until it became less of a speck and more of a powerhouse beelining right for them.

The ship named itself Charity, and under the blue flag, flew His Majesty’s colors. The ship proved charitable with its arrows and cannons, its crew a pack of mercenaries that screamed for The Fox’s bounty.

Wymack had them answer by littering the Charity with holes.

Fortunately, no boarding had to be done, and the Captain sank with her ship. Unfortunately, half mercenaries escaped onto life-rafts, and as The Fox sailed on, her Captain spied them release a raven that swiftly flew northward. Dan caught his eye. He had only grim predictions for their future skirmishes to give her.

Before any others could try their hand at looting their thrice-deep coffers, however, they reached Columbia’s shining shore.

Aside from them, two stout merchant ships and one brig had their anchors outside the river’s delta. Columbia was a modest port town that huddled at the edge of a green, well-farmed valley, its land divided in half with a wide river; its agriculture was its pride, and as the pirates disembarked for shore, it became clear the townspeople prioritized space for market tents over blacksmiths, shipwrights or rich peoples’ mansions. The inspectors for their ships spoke with a thick southern accent and were just as happy to discuss the local crops as they were The Fox’s origins. With no merman to hide and all gold locked away, tensions ran low.

Aaron, Andrew, Kevin, Jean and Nicky were among the first to take their shore leave, Erik and Katelyn forced to wait until the documents were updated. Armed with a list of supplies to seek, Kevin pulled the rest of them along to the largest market at the second day’s first light, despite the fact that out of all of them, he possibly suffered the worst hangover-inspired headache.

(Jean gave him a run for his money, but Kevin had determination.)

“Fruit stand, starboard-bound,” Nicky quipped, and laughed. Aaron groaned, but went for it. Andrew followed, but split off for the candied apples sold next to it.

“If someone hadn’t been throwing mangoes over the edge, we’d have had more left,” Kevin said.

“Really? That’s not too bad. I like it fresh, not pickled, personally.”

“There were more than one or two someones,” Jean muttered. “I shouldn’t have been surprised he kept helping you all.”

“Jean,” Nicky gasped, “you’re talking as if you’re not one of us.”

“I’m not. I’m an unfortunate passenger.”

“You completed a treasure hunt with us. Face it! You’re a pirate!”

“Never,” he snapped, “and keep your voice down. People are staring.”

By people, he meant one person. A woman with a wild shock of black hair that she tried in vain to pin back, her pristine clothing off-white and stark against her weathered, darkened skin. A bushel of apples hung from her arm, but she looked as if she’d forgotten where she was, nevermind what she was there for.

Nicky followed Jean’s gaze to her, grinning and ready to charm this suspicious person, and froze.

She took a step forward, her hand to her mouth.

“Nicky?”

“Hi, mom.” Nicky said; his two companions frowned at how meek he became. “Long time no see.”

“You’re back.” Her eyes went to and dismissed Kevin and Jean, but then Aaron returned with a slip promising three barrels of assorted fruits, and she took another step forward. “Are you all back?”

Aaron’s lip curled at her, but Nicky tangled his fingers in front of him and asked, “Do you want us back?”

“Even if you did,” Andrew interrupted, stepping neatly between her and his brother, his flat tone at odds with his candied apple that was missing a bite’s worth of its side, “we aren’t.”

“Andrew,” Martha sighed. “I see you haven’t changed.”

Andrew didn’t reply, or blink.

Nicky, sensing an end and wishing to postpone it, asked, “How long are you here for, mom? How’s-- you’re looking good.”

She smiled at him, all dimples and affection. He practically glowed. “I am good. We’ll be here for two months more, at the least. You should visit, Nicky, for supper or breakfast or whatever you’d like; you too, Aaron, Andrew. And-- you two. You’re friends?”

Jean kept silent while Kevin, with his best I’m an officer of His Majesty’s navy and I’m here to protect you voice, said, “Crewmates. We’re an exploration vessel for Mr. Harrington, simply stopping in Columbia for a quick supply run. You may not have heard of him; he’s from the northern mainland.”

“Oh, my,” she laughed, a pleasant, if generic, sound, “you must have seen so much. Really, you should visit the encampment. We’d love to hear all about your adventures.”

“You would?” At first hopeful, Nicky’s voice tipped into light confusion. “Is there-- I mean, is there a reason you haven’t been responding to my letters?”

Martha’s eyebrows twitched, but she waved away the emotion before it could be caught. “You know how hard it is for post to reach us, Nicky.”

He deflated, sinking back onto his heels. “Right.”

“Funny,” Andrew said. “No one else has had that problem, and our other crewmate has a mother without a home.”

Martha gave him a patient look. “We’ve been expanding,” she explained, as if that explained anything. “There’s many more sects just like ours all over the isles, and even the western mountains. I wouldn’t be surprised if your letters accidentally went to one of them.”

Nicky nodded.

The twins looked unconvinced.

“Dinner, tomorrow night,” she impressed, reaching out to take her son by the shoulder. “Bring your friends. Bring whoever you like. There’ll be plenty of food.”

“We’re busy,” Andrew said.

For the first time, she frowned. “Too busy for family? Cass would love to see you, Andrew. Yes, she’s still with us, her and Richard. Drake left for the navy a few years back, but everyone else who can be is there.”

He didn’t move.

“Is it Tilda’s accident?” She murmured. “We all know it wasn’t your fault, Andrew. That Aaron’s with you -- you two must have found the peace you left to look for.”

“That wasn’t why we left,” Aaron said, flat as his stare.

She winced. “A work in progress, then. That’s alright. The whole world is.”

Surprisingly, it was Kevin who said, “We do have business to attend before the market closes,” and, with a small look at the tension in the cousins’ bodies, added after a pause, “ma’am. I’m sorry to cut your reunion short...”

“No, no, it’s fine,” she sighed, and stepped back with a new, only slightly strained smile. “Dinner. Tomorrow. At the usual time, I know you must remember it. We’ll be happy to have you and any of your friends for a night, but please, no hocus pocus.”

With that, she took her apples and her leave.

Kevin and Jean turned on them with questions the second they were rowing back the ship, their slips for payment a thick roll of parchment in Kevin’s bag.

“No ‘hocus pocus?’”

“Sects?”

“We’re not visiting,” Andrew said. “It doesn’t matter.”

And yet, Nicky swallowed and, with a cautious glance at his cousin, said, “My parents-- er, Aaron and my parents, Andrew’s foster parents, belong to the New Agers.”

“Bunch of Blanks,” Aaron muttered.

Nicky’s expression grew tense. “Don’t call them that, please.”

Jean’s face said he knew what they meant and didn’t like it. Kevin’s said he hadn’t the faintest clue what they were on about.

Nicky explained, rowing temporarily forgotten, “They believe the time for magic is in the past. That the rarity of sooth-sayers and the threat the remaining ones hold over normal people, plus the disappearance of magical creatures and the threat they hold over normal people, proves anything gifted by the nature gods means to hold back mankind, if not outright enslave and kill us.”

“So blanking out magic is a mission objective.”

“If they knew my grandmother was a selkie, they’d have me hung,” Jean said, stiff, “and you want us to visit them for a friendly chat?”

“They’re family.”

“Then why’d you leave?”

Nicky shot another look at his cousin. Andrew stared straight forward and didn’t deign to acknowledge it.

Licking his lips and at last remembering to row, Nicky gave an uncomfortable shrug. “Each New Age sect moves towns every three years or so. To spread the word, and because-- well- anyway. One town had a sooth-sayer as a mayor. She hated having us in her town, but some people hated her policies and sided with us as a reason for why she was a poor mayor. She couldn’t throw us out without starting a riot. That’s the town Cass adopted Andrew at, too. Tilda said she had her hands full with Aaron, that she’d had to leave a baby behind for a reason.”

He stopped.

“Okay,” Kevin said after a few beats too long.

“She had a son and Nicky had a crush,” Aaron filled in, his voice black and not a little vicious.

Nicky wouldn’t look up from his boots.

“Like Jean said. New Agers kill any magical creature they find, and if a sooth-sayer doesn’t repent from their practice, they’re considered a magical creature, too. After two and a half years, almost the entire town had pledged to our sect. Those who didn’t turned a blind eye when they locked the mayor and her family in a barn and set it ablaze.”

For a moment, the group fell silent. They were minutes from reaching The Fox.

“Then Tilda died,” Nicky mumbled, barely audible, “and we didn’t have much reason to stay.”

On the way back to shore after the Captain doled out the necessary coins for supplies, everyone except Wymack and Abby going, Nicky asked Erik if he’d come with. Erik, who knew the most of Nicky’s origins after the twins, adamantly refused and reminded Nicky that there was a reason he’d left.

The discussion turned into an argument-that-wasn’t-an-argument. Erik left Nicky at the pier to cool off before he said something he regretted, and Katelyn asked Aaron, “What was that all about?”

“Family’s in town.” Aaron told her.

“Oh! Shouldn’t we say hi?”

“No.”

Katelyn frowned, but let it drop.

While everyone split into twos and threes for much-needed shore leave, Nicky sat himself at the end of a tavern table that wasn’t anywhere near Erik and sighed, wistful and sullen, into his mug. He alternated between staring into it and sneaking glances toward the door, until Aaron grew so sick of his behaviour, snatched Katelyn’s hand, and dragged her out toward the dance floor.

Kevin eyed him distastefully, too, and left to dance as well.

Nicky turned his doe eyes on Andrew, the only other one left at the table.

Andrew stared back, unimpressed and unyielding.

“They weren’t all bad. They weren’t always bad,” Nicky said.

“I haven’t spoken to them in ages, and she looked happy to have us,” he pleaded.

“What if they had another kid? I wouldn’t even know,” he moaned.

“They must understand we’ve seen the world, and magic still has a home in some places--”

“Some places?” Andrew asked, light.

Nicky winced.

“I… just miss my mom.” He mumbled, this time into his ale. “And dad. A little.”

Around them, drunks and wenches alike hooted and hollered. The tavern was packed. People were having a good time.

“That’s your problem,” Andrew told him.

Nicky laid his head on his table and, fiercely, missed Erik. “I know.”

If he split off from the tavern before it grew too dark and wasn’t to be found at any of the inns they stayed at for the next three days, well. He returned to the pier before they returned to the ship.

Erik tried to ignore him when he sidled up to his side, apologetic and strained, but a muttered, “Sorry. You were right,” made him sigh and give in to wrapping an arm around his shoulders to pull him in tight.

As the sun set and water bugs grew thicker, Dan counted them off, pausing to eye a new, ornate, and utterly useless dagger strapped to Alma’s side with vague distaste. At the end of the line-up, she paused, frowned, and looked through the bored, half-asleep pirates again.

“Where’s Allison?”

One Fox glanced at another. Allison was not among their number.

“And Renee? Where’s Renee?”

Another glance to double check that, no, none of them were Renee.

“I saw them at the central market earlier today,” Matt offered. “They were buying flowers. You know. For Renee’s supplies.”

“Never seen her use roses before,” someone murmured from the side of their mouth, and another stifled a laugh.

Try as she might to look annoyed, the twitching corner of her mouth betrayed Dan’s pride for what may or may not have conspired between her friends. They waited next to their boats for a few minutes longer, weight shuffled and yawns stifled, before she finally sighed and called, “Matt. Erik. Nicky. Katelyn. Aaron. You’re waiting here with me. The rest of you can head back. Day’s in charge until I return.”

The new recruits groaned, which of course made Kevin snap for them to pick up their feet.

When two blonds didn’t budge, Dan picked one to point at. “Whichever Minyard you are, get hopping. The boat’s not big enough for both of you and Allison and Renee.”

“Then send back Erik,” that one replied. “He doesn’t know anything more about this town than Matt, and he lacks the brawn for if there’s trouble.”

“Andrew,” Dan growled, “I’m not asking twice.”

“And I’m not going.”

They squared off for a moment, one immobile and one visibly nearing the end of her rope.

From the side, Katelyn volunteered to double up with Aaron. It still pushed the weight limit, but Aaron certainly had no complaints (by the glance Andrew shot her after Dan acquiesced, he did, but it went ignored).

The first boat left without Erik or Andrew, and the sun continued its descent.

When birds began their good-night singing from thatch rooftops, Matt pulled Dan aside and mumbled, “They’d never be this late.”

“I know.” She took off her hat to fan away the heat, the sleepless nights ashore catching up in shrinking her energy. Staying up to crawl through every bar Columbia had to offer had been worth it at the time. Now, she felt a little regret; mostly in how high her irritation climbed at the missing parties, the annoyance threaded with worry. “Something’s holding them up. And it’s not each other.”

From the loose group slumped in the boat, ever waiting, Andrew asked with an unusually carrying voice:

“Nicky. Where’s the New Ager’s camp?”

Lifting his head from Erik’s shoulder, he took a moment to look confused. “On the west side of town. Why? I didn’t think you wanted to visit.”

“I don’t.”

“Then… -- Oh! It’s on the river, yeah, but don’t worry, there’s no way Neil would swim that far inlan--”

Andrew cut him off as he stood, the boat rocking from the abrupt movement.

“What are New Agers?” Matt asked, both he and Dan openly staring at the exchange. “I kept hearing their name tossed around town, but it wasn’t too clear what they were around for. Folks said they’d improved their crop yield without any magic.”

“They’re here to champion progress,” Andrew said, and stepped back to the pier, “at the expense of a few.” Realization dropped Nicky’s mouth to a small oh, and he scrambled to follow, Erik hot on his heels. Aaron wasn’t too far behind, though he kept a much more level head.

Dread stiffening her spine, Dan put herself in his way; he very nearly shoved her back, but she demanded, “No. Renee’s not just your friend. You’re going to share what’s lit a fire under your ass, and we’re working as a team to fix it.”

“They’re a group, we grew up with them, they hate magic, and if they suspected Renee was a sooth-sayer, they’d ask her to repent.” Nicky babbled as, for the second time, Dan and Andrew squared off like two pissed bulldog, unwilling to give any ground to one another. The word repent snapped Dan’s eyes to him, though; behind her, Matt’s widened. “They’d want to explain their cause. They wouldn’t have-- they won’t hurt her, she’s just passing through.”

With a tone that brooked no argument, Andrew said, “You don’t know that.”

“I do! My dad’s the head of the sect, and he’s, I mean, he can be extreme, but they’d never harm someone on their first meeting. They’re not insane.”

Sharp: “Then why did you come back looking like they’d threatened to shoot your new boyfriend?”

Erik looked affronted at the very thought, if not the terminology. Nicky stuttered, stopped, protested, and finally shrugged, uncomfortable and a little shaken, “They’d asked about what we’d done. I… I told them about The Raven fight - I didn’t name Riko, I’m not stupid, I said they were the pirates - and, maybe, how Renee’s winds ripped one sail to shreds. I was caught up in the story, I wasn’t thinking, I--”

Matt gaped at him. “You told a bunch of magic-haters about your friend the sooth-sayer? You should’ve thrown in a cheery tale about our honorary crewmate, the merman, just to really tick them off.”

“I wasn’t thinking! I was just talking with my mom.”

“And Luther overheard,” Aaron didn’t ask.

“What’d he threaten?” Andrew did ask.

When Nicky hesitated, Dan redirected her rising and furious alarm at him. “The hell’d he say, Hemmick?”

“I didn’t like it,” he started, voice small, but a glance back at Erik showed he’d find no help there, “so I left. It wasn’t anything he’d have said before. I’d been younger, they’d kept me away from the conversion processes, but I know it wasn’t what they’d have done back then. He’d always been extreme, but I think how the movement’s grown has gone to his head.”

“Surprise, surprise,” Andrew sneered. Nicky flinched, arms wrapping around himself. “I warned you when we left that they were only going to get worse. People always do.”

“Renee can handle herself,” Dan said, possibly to stave off her own fear, “and with Allison, there aren’t many people who can make them go somewhere they don’t want to.”

“You might not have picked up on it,” Aaron said, “but this town’s eaten up the New Age’s sciences. Could Renee and Allison fight off an ambush when no one was willing to call the guards?”

“We’re going to the camp,” Andrew told Nicky, his hand snapping out to give the man a shove forward as Dan stepped aside, “now.”

He led, pace close to a run, and they followed, Matt posing questions in between hurried steps and receiving terse, dark answers from Aaron and, when Nicky couldn’t, Erik.

It didn’t take long to reach the river that ran through Columbia, and from there, it was an even shorter race to where cloth tents overtook wooden townhouses in number. The shift from one to the other was seamless; Dan noticed they’d entered the innermost New Age’s territory only as color was leeched from their surroundings, tents and knapsacks and clothing shifting to nothing but shades of black and white. The people came in the usual colors people came in, but their surroundings dimmed them, and Dan, at least, became conscious of the blue on her bandanna, the worn brown of her boots, and the yellow trimming on her deep red hat. The greyed people stared at the strangers racing through their camp -- a few appeared to recognize Nicky, but none welcomed them, called to them, or otherwise moved to intercept them. The Foxes were unapologetically loud in their arrival, and it baffled them.

There should have been more people, Nicky gasped to his fellows. There had definitely been more people the day before, even the morning before.

By virtue of his stay, he knew what curving path to take to reach the camp’s main gathering place. Lined with fireless lanterns that neither flickered nor dimmed, an off-white platform stood by the river bank. It boasted a podium, an unadorned altar stacked with grey books, and Luther Hemmick.

“The wonders the gods offer are tempting,” he declared, “but we mustn’t allow our baser natures to control us. Each of us are equally capable of harnessing the world.”

Around the platform, they found the rest of the New Age people. They also found a bruised and fuming Allison Reynolds, her ankles shackled in iron and her arms held back by two sour-faced, burly women. By one woman’s blackened eye and both their expression, Allison had given them hell for shackling her feet and not her hands.

Matt put himself in front and began to shove through the crowd, but he barely needed to bother once those gathered realized they were there; they parted like the sea before a sooth-sayer’s staff, their eyes widening and whispers beginning but none moving to stop them. A few whispered, that’s Luther’s son. It was a toss up on whether or not they sounded happy about it.

As if his gathering wasn’t being interrupted, Luther continued with his dry, relentless speech. “Power does not need to belong to the few. Those who attempt to subjugate their fellow men and women, no matter how well-meaning, are dangers to our freedom as individuals. In fact, I daresay those who claim to be for the people to be the most dangerous of all.”

They stumbled to the front in a burst, the crowd shrinking back behind them. It was too easy, Dan thought.

“Finally,” Allison snarled at them without regard for Luther’s words, her captors’ grip tightening as she jerked forward, her face full of fear hidden under fury, “the river! Get her out!”

Dan, Katelyn and Matt swiveled from her to the river.

Calm and unconcerned, Luther raised his hand. Before they could catch more than a glimpse of three figures standing waist-deep in the darkened waters, the crowd that had shrunk back surged forward, blocking their view and boxing them in. Struggling renewed, Allison cursed them all, pirate and blanks.

Dan saw a glint of metal from Andrew’s sleeve, hidden swiftly beneath a palm; she saw, too, Erik and Matt’s hands drop to their swords, and Aaron reach for his pistol. Around them, the crowd appeared to have no weapons, though they didn’t shirk at the sight of the pirates’. A woman that matched Erik’s description of Martha Hemmick stood among them, a frizzy-haired woman and tall, bespectacled man beside her.

Nicky, meanwhile, turned to his father.

“Dad,” he pleaded, “let them go.”

“You should know well enough that we will,” Luther replied, his expression faintly disappointed and highly disapproving, “as soon as she repents. We aren’t monsters. We haven’t harmed her any worse than she has harmed those around her.”

“Lying son of a bitch!” Allison raged.

Beyond the crowd erupted the familiar, desperate sounds of splashing and coughing; the painful mix a woman might make on finding air after coming within an inch of drowning, her lungs burning for oxygen.

They didn’t hear Renee’s voice, but then, they didn’t need to. For one, Dan felt certain she’d never beg for her life. For two, it sounded like all she had breath for was breathing. How long had this been going on?

“You’ve strayed before,” Luther was saying. “You may be my son, Nicky, but you’ve been corrupted. We can’t trust you. And we can’t trust your friends.”

Nicky shook his head, rambling denial tumbling from his mouth, his face ashen and shoulders shaking.

Andrew started toward the river; the crowd closed ranks in front of him, one man reaching out to push him back.

Dan blinked, and that man’s white robes bloomed red from the side. He stumbled back into his fellows. Another blink, and Matt crashed bodily into those who caught him, clearing back three men with the ease of those in a blind rage. Another blink, and Dan kept her eyes open, as it was her sword scaring and cutting people out of her way; without discussion, the men beelined for Renee, while Dan and Katelyn moved for Allison.

The New Age followers were largely civilians. Mostly scholars and scientists, those with weight gained muscle from years spent plowing land or hauling heavy materials, not fighting. That they willingly stepped in front of the blade as if their empty hands would protect them was more unsettling than it should have been, but it meant clearing a path was a struggle because of overwhelming numbers alone. It seemed worse for those behind her, but she couldn’t look back. Under different circumstances the way men and women fell before her would have given Dan pause, but then she heard the disgust they had for her protecting the gods’ whore, and whatever sympathy she might’ve had disappeared.

“They slaughter innocents for her magic!” Luther shouted over the screams and rioting anger. “It’s just as we feared! She’s bewitched them all! Kill them!”

Those who could fight, it turned out, were those in charge of the prisoners. They waited until she’d reached the edge of the crowd to pull their blades, three roughened guards with black leather armor and hatred in their faces. “I’ll take them,” she told Katelyn, who was no trained brawler and holding her own from the crowd far worse than Dan. She didn’t wait for a reply before rushing forward, and then the real fighting began.

In a flash, she had one down at the expense of leaving her back open. A club smashed into her head and she stumbled, fell. Before the other stuck a sword through her ribs, a snarling blur of violence smashed into its holder, and Allison’s fists laid into the woman’s face until it was more pulp than skin.

Dan kicked the club-holder’s legs out from under him, and did to him what his friend had hoped to do to her.

“Allison!” She hadn’t stopped even after the man’s skull caved. She looked to be in a frenzy, and Dan fought to drag her off the dead body, her own muscles aching and blood slicking her grip, “Allison, stop, he’s dead, he’s dead, it’s fine, Renee’s--”

Face wet with tears more than blood, Allison screamed at her to let go, that she’d gut Hemmick’s bastard of a father, that everyone else around them was the scum of the Earth; when Dan didn’t let go and the chaos around them shifted solely to the river bank, she finally collapsed in silent, sightless staring, and Dan staggered under the weight. Katelyn appeared to take over the shackled woman, and Dan passed her on with no little concern. But the battle was going on, and she had a sword, and she meant to use it.

It turned out the reason she’s been able to reach Allison without much issue was because most of the fighters went to intercept the others.

“Thanks,” Matt smiled grimly at her when she cut his opponents from four to three. He was beyond bloody, one hand bent to an unnatural angle, and as they fell back-to-back, Dan observed they didn’t have much fight left in them.

Aaron had his dagger, not his pistol, out - he must have fired the rounds and been unable to reload. Nicky, Erik and he kept close to Matt and Dan, and even then, they barely held round. Sheer numbers with murderous intent became a much larger force to reckon, and if they didn’t leave soon--

“Andrew!” Dan yelled, though she couldn’t find the blond in the mess and trusted only her gut instinct on where he’d be, “We have to go!”

“You aren’t going anywhere, you monsters,” a woman snarled, their blades clashing.

Dan grit her teeth and shoved her back. Another took her place with a roar and much, much more energy than the pirate held.

Not twenty feet away, a frizzy-haired woman held a pale, barely conscious Renee by the arm. Renee’s chest continued to heave, her eyes glassy and shudders wracking her frame.

“Andrew,” she said, “you don’t have to do this.”

“Drop her,” he replied through grit teeth, feet unwilling to move.

“I won’t,” she replied, and smiled, thin and saddened. “Not if this is what she’s done to you.”

Renee coughed again, legs weakly kicking out. Andrew tossed his knives down, the gleaming metal sinking into the river.

Cass watched him, her mouth a grim line.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, meaning that she couldn’t help him, that she’d let him spiral into the dark, that she hadn’t been there for him after he left.

“Me too,” he said, meaning almost the same thing.

Renee’s eyes snapped open and she wrenched her arm forward with the whole of her body; Cass cried out as she slipped on mossy rocks, as her former captive snatched a knife from the river and cut a clean slice between two ribs. Then she was down and Renee was up, and Andrew helped haul her out of the river, and if both of them were a little shaken, neither would mention it and no one else had the time to notice.

The knives were left behind them both.

Luther had disappeared into camp.

Camp was alive, awake, and awash with fear and bloodlust.

Columbia did not fare much better, its alarm bells ringing from the warning of one fleet-footed boy in a white tunic. Guards, startled from their dice games and lazy drinking, clattered into the streets on horses and on foot, torches in one hand and steel in the other. Dogs howled, horses screamed, and under it all, a handful of pirates raced to their boat.

They were met with a handful of guards. By the end, Erik had to be carried and laid out on the boat’s floor, and Matt limped to the post to untie its lead, half-jumping and half-falling in after shoving off.

Ahead of them, they realized in panting, terror-drenched silence, guards rowed for The Fox, the lanterns on the back of their boats swaying yellow and bright over the still waters.

“If we don’t cast off immediately,” Aaron said, voice level but just barely, “we’re sunk.”

“If they board,” Dan summarized, “we’re not casting off immediately.”

Unspoken, they realized: the Captain might suspect, but he won’t turn them away on a whim. That’d blow our cover.

Nicky muttered a curse through a nose clogged with blood.

Renee kept her silence, side-to-side with Allison.

Fast as they rowed, the guards had an incredible head-start on them. They weren’t going to catch up, and - if the guards were armed with bows - they couldn’t risk screaming out their presence to warn those aboard The Fox. The swaying lanterns held all eyes, attention narrowed to a point.

One lantern swung heavier than the others.

One lantern-- rather, one boat- upended itself into the water, its passengers’ shouts of surprise cut short as they crashed into the bay.

Its neighbor called for an explanation, and then it too capsized. The guards from the first struggled to stay afloat with their weaponry and metal armor, and neither parties could do a thing as the pirates’ boat rowed past for The Fox.

After they’d passed one man who demanded a gurgling halt! at them before almost sinking himself, a surprised laugh burst from Matt’s chest.

“Fuckin’ Neil,” he said, unbelievable relief and affection in his voice.

The rest, with hoots and whistles and a few grimly stretched smiles, agreed.

The Fox hauled her missing children up in record time, Dan shouting for an immediate cast off before they’d even reached the deck. The Captain didn’t question her, but rather echoed the order and threw himself into unfurling the sails along the rest. They pulled anchor before the guards scrounged up more boats, and - with a touch of Renee’s magic, dust and flowers cast with silence and no expression - they sped from the arbor as if His Majesty himself could be found in their wake.

After Columbia shrank to less than a blip of light on a pitch-black horizon, Allison propped her iron-clad foot on the galley’s bench and demanded, “Get these fucking things off me.”

They’d clipped a link in the back of an open blacksmith’s shop with paranoia in their throats over every voice that seemed to get closer so she could run, but it wasn’t until Renee borrowed Andrew’s lockpicking set that the chains truly came off. Allison rubbed at the reddened skin underneath while Renee set aside the kit, and for a few seconds, they sat side-to-back and simply breathed.

Renee kept herself very still.

When she thought she might have found a feeling similar to courage, or at least felt the lack of anything else that might stop her, she said, “Allison--”

“Seth drowned.”

Renee’s mouth closed around her words, teeth clicking shut.

Allison continued as if she hadn’t stopped, her eyes on the red lines around her ankles. “He could’ve had his throat slit before he fell. I doubt it. He was too quick for that. I bet he drowned. I’d put money on him drowning if anyone would ever argue with me on it.”

But they won’t. No one could say Seth’s name and look her in the eye anymore.

That wasn’t the point.

Renee thought she might see the point, and leaned more against Allison’s back.

Against her cheek, she felt a tremble become a shudder become shaking sobs, Allison’s shoulders hunched in and her hand covering her face.

“I was sure you’d drown,” she gasped out.

Renee immediately pulled her close, gently hushed her as she folded into the smaller woman’s chest and, as she caught her breath, pressed her lips to Allison’s crown.

(Incredibly, no one disturbed them even after the air quieted and the morning broke through the night.)

The two left the galley together somewhere around bumfuck o’clock, as Allison oh-so-eloquently put it. When Andrew was the only one on deck, smoke curling up from his tobacco, Renee wished she could’ve been a little less surprised. But, she thought, it had been a long night, and Allison was fairly distracting.

Allison’s lip curled at Andrew’s silent watching, but she pointedly fixed her already straightened jacket and, with a quicker glance to check Renee meant to stay behind, moved past him to the barracks. His eyes followed her until she ducked into through the doors; then, all his attention rested on Renee. Mustering up a light smile, she offered him his lockpicking kit. He took it, tucked it into a pocket, and motioned her to the railing.

They stood there until Andrew’s tobacco crumbled to ash and he had to roll another one. Half-way through that, she finally told him, “I won’t ask.”

Everything she’d needed to know about how much and, most importantly, what that woman meant to him had been made clear in his inability to harm her. Anything extra became evident in how he’d waited all night to make sure he caught her alone, and the two and a half sticks of ash.

“There’s no reason for you to,” he said. He wasn’t wrong.

The sun was a sliver of vivid orange over a mottled green sea.

As she glanced down, she caught Neil looking up; his head was cocked, and, though too far to be exact, she thought him suspicious. When he noticed that she saw him, he straightened himself out and sped ahead of The Fox, visible until he rounded the ship’s nose.

“I know someone who could help him,” she murmured to Andrew.

“Little late to help that one,” he said, his eyes lingering where Neil had disappeared. She didn’t think he realized he did that. She wouldn’t be the one to tell him.

“I mean, someone who could help him.” She paused, tested her words in her head, and accepted there wasn’t much of a way to beat around the bush. “Help him hide. Help him live without having to hide. Someone who could turn him hu--”

“Don’t.”

She stopped.

Around the railing, Andrew’s knuckles had whitened. His jaw clenched tight enough to startle the end of his cigarette into falling off; forcibly, he relaxed, a slow, piece-by-piece process done through sheer force of will.

After, he said, “He’d hate it. He’d hate himself. He’d wake every day, look at his legs, and hate us for ever giving him the idea.”

“He’d do it if you made the proposal.”

“You always know someone,” he murmured, and she realized that for the first time in a while, she walked on thin ice indeed. “Where does your black book end, I wonder. Never at yourself.”

She reminded him, “I specialize simply in weather and tides.”

“A speciality doesn’t imply a limit.”

Danger or not, that made the corner of her mouth quirk up.

Andrew flicked the burned stub of his tobacco into the sea and turned to lean against the railing, head tipped back.

Renee watched him for a moment longer, and felt her smile dim.

Taking a step back, she lowered her eyes and told him, “She’ll live, whoever she was to you. I made sure to cut so she would. With a bit of magic, she won’t even scar.” With a bit of magic, she’d never have tightness in her chest; with a bit of magic, she could erase it; without a bit of magic, she’d always have a reminder of that night.

It was, maybe, cruel.

But Renee still felt it, water in her nose and ears and almost her lungs, the burn in her chest and terror in her mind, and what colored the memory of cutting down at least one of them wasn’t anything like regret. In fact, she easily named its opposite.

Chapter Text

“Captain,” Dan said after stalling on the other side of his desk for twenty painful seconds, her voice strained and terse and positively drained, “we need a break.”

“We’ve been at sea for two weeks.”

“We’ve dodged two packs of mercenaries in two weeks. The lesser mast still won’t hold wind after the last skirmish, and we need to rewire its rigging before we can hope to patch the posts. We lost all our vinegar jars when the last ship rammed us. It’s pure luck the damage wasn’t worse, and that we haven’t ran into any naval ships. Kevin swears he saw a kraken three days ago, and he’s slept maybe six hours since.”

“Something about losing half his fleet to one?”

“He’s driving us up the wall. Neil hasn’t been helping; he won’t confirm or deny what Kevin saw, and it’s making him all the more unbearable. Andrew thinks it’s funny and won’t intervene, while Nicky and Allison still can’t be in the same room without Allison bringing up his parents and what she’d like to happen to them.”

Wymack sat back, his old, chair creaking as he shifted.

“Matt’s knee has gotten worse. Jean’s been hunting for monkey paws and pretending he isn’t. The newer recruits don’t know what to do with themselves. When Kevin’s not pissing them off, Jean’s skulking around and scaring them.”

Dan paused, breath held, and released it in one gushing breath, dropping herself into the spare chair and burying her face in her hands.

“Frankly, Captain,” she said, words muffled by her palms, “I need a break. Columbia wasn’t much of one.”

“We’re three weeks from a port town that isn’t Columbia,” Wymack replied, gruffly apologetic, and paused to allow Dan’s responding groan to peter itself out. “And a month from Betsy’s village, which is, from what I can tell, what you all really need.”

“I don’t care if it’s Betsy’s village, a port town, or an active volcano, Captain, we need to get off this ship.”

“Wilds,” the Captain started.

She sat up and squared her jaw at him. “Don’t ‘Wilds’ me, Captain, I’m serious. Someone is going to end up dead. I’m not going to be able to stop it, because I might be the one to do it.” A pause. “Respectfully. Sir.”

His face said he fully understood how much she meant that, but then he sighed, sat forward, and shuffled the papers on his desk as if they could hold off a potential bloodbath.

Foot tapping impatiently, she tried her best to wait him out. It lasted for another twenty seconds, and then she opened her mouth with her finger in the air, and stopped only because Wymack smacked his papers down and said:

“Alright! I’ll talk with Renee and we’ll find somewhere to drop anchor that isn’t infested with sharks, literal or human. We’ll be roughing it.”

“That’s fine,” Dan said, a tentative grin drawing her mouth up. “That’s more than fine. We did it for two months with that meandering treasure hunt.”

“No more than a week,” he warned. “It’s past time we got to Troy. I heard rumors about the King beginning a witch hunt for his brother’s killers, and we need to lay low.”

“No more than a week,” Dan agreed, so eager His Majesty’s navy couldn’t dampen her spirits.

Wymack eyed her, stern.

When she stood up and practically bounced in place, however, he couldn’t keep up the doom and gloom.

“Is that all, Captain? I’ll fetch Renee.”

He shook his head and waved her out, “Dismissed, Wilds,” and turned away to keep his grin out of her eyesight. As she left, he stood to fetch his maps and Renee’s sands.

Not two days later, they beelined for an island that was, as far as anyone could tell, utterly useless for trade routes or cultivation.

Half sand, half cliffs and all overgrown jungle, the island welcomed The Fox with a bay barely big enough for a ship nestled between its two arms. If it was inhabited, no one came to greet them, and the pirates scrambled to unload supplies necessary for a week-long landing. Makeshift tents sprung up from old, ripped sails, tarp appropriated from its crates and tree branches misappropriated from the jungle, the island’s sandy beach swiftly converted into a patchwork of meandering, bow-legged men and women who were, above all, thankful to not have to look at one another if they didn’t want to.

Though they arrived early, the first day was subdued. People growled and grumped about who got the softest plot for sleeping and who they got to share it with, while others contemplated the jungle and then decided they’d explore it later, and still others found themselves more concerned about building a bonfire than helping with the tents. It wasn’t exactly relaxing - laughter remained rare, and the tension between individuals simmered under the surface - but it was different, and that was certainly a start.

Dan refused to let her friends’ attitudes spoil the first night. Once the bonfire was crackling, she snagged Matt’s hand and pulled him away from talking shop with Kevin to the tree line, slowing her pace only by necessity for his limp. She barely waited for them to pass the first line of palms to back him into one and yank him down for a kiss.

He made a noise of surprise against her mouth, and then melted into her with a laugh, because even with a knee swollen as a coconut and a pain that kept him up most nights, he would always be her overgrown goof.

“Oh, hello,” he grinned, glanced down, and whistled. She hit his shoulder. “Ow! What?”

“Sit down before you fall down,” she told him (she didn’t like looking up to reach his mouth, anyway); he obliged, and she took her seat on his lap.

“Dan!” Someone yelled.

There were hands under her shirt running up her back and warmth in her gut. She had one hand buried in thick hair and one toying with Matt’s belt.

“Dan!Dan Wilds!” The person screeched, and Dan dropped her forehead against Matt’s shoulder with a long, shaky sigh.

One hand on her back gave her a sympathetic pat.

They pulled apart. Matt put more effort into fixing his appearance and adjusting his pants than Dan, who was just fine with confronting this person with what they’d robbed her of. She trudged out of the tree line, frustrated and ahead of Matt by five paces.

The person proved to be Sheena, who eyed Matt, eyed Dan, and judged them both.

Dan swallowed the childish urge to shove sand down her pants and put on her best this better be good smile. “What is it, Sheena.”

“Andrew’s saying he claimed the best spot on the beach when Jack and me were definitely there first. And Aaron’s been taking the best bedrolls that he didn’t even help haul over.”

Matt, once again, gave her a sympathetic pat on the back.

She wondered how much it’d undermine her authority if she told Sheena to fuck off and then pulled Matt back to fuck off with, and admitted if left unchecked, the Minyards were bound to cause more issues than territorial pissing contests. Despite knowing that, it took a careful inhale and extra-careful exhale before she could say with a tone that gave even half of a shit about it, “Alright, Sheena. Lead the way. We’ll see what this’s about.”

It was just the first day. They had six more.

Sheena’s plan to bring in the First Mate backfired when she gave the soft-earthed, perfectly shaded plot to Andrew’s lot. She accused Dan of favoritism in her after-chat with Jack, which made Dan sigh loudly about people who interrupted things they shouldn’t, and Allison swore that she’d move her, Renee and Jean’s tent farther away come the morning with all the racket the rest of them made, to which Jean asked to not be part of their group and Renee sympathetically told him he didn’t have a choice in a round-about way that sounded to everyone, including Jean, as if he did.

Spot secured and tent pitched, Andrew tailed Kevin around the island’s perimeter as he double-checked how alone the crew really was. That’s what he said he was doing, anyway; it sounded to Andrew as if Kevin needed time away and refused to label it the breather that it was. Bruised eyes and the bird’s nest atop his head stood at odds with his obsessively ordered clothing, his boots shined to regulation and coat more uniform than messy pirate. Altogether, it told Andrew that Riko’s ghost haunted Kevin a little worse this week. Experience told him nothing but time would have Kevin resting easier.

A rum bottle accompanied their patrol. It would’ve been amusing to know how Kevin rationalized that one to himself if it weren’t so self-deprecating of a topic.

Kevin went from draining half of it dry to gripping its neck as a bludgeoning weapon within three seconds of hearing rocks shift unnaturally at their side. He probably thought the weapon potential made it acceptable. Andrew, having yet to replace Renee’s knives with something better than dented daggers, thought the bottle closer to a comfort blanket for Kevin Day.

“Who’s there?” He demanded of the craggly line against the shore. Andrew, buzzed and not fixing for a fight to let off energy, held up their lantern. At his side, Kevin growled, “Neil.”

“Oh, good. I’d hoped to see weird-ass animals while we were here. Some dreams do come true.”

Neil flicked a pebble in Andrew’s direction and refocused on Kevin.

“Are you here for another King’s ransom?”

“No. We’re doing patrol.”

Neil frowned in a way that said he was about to ask a ridiculous question. Andrew saved them all time by clarifying, “Mandatory vacation. We won’t be here longer than a week. Do merfolk not have vacations?”

“Not mandatory ones.”

“It’s a waste of time,” Kevin said.

“Is it?” Andrew mused.

“It is.”

“You accused Erik of stealing your boots two nights ago.”

“He--”

“-- Isn’t even close to your boot-size.”

“He was skulking around!”

“Erik Klose?” Neil asked. “Skulking?”

“It would have been wrong of me to discount him for his record alone.”

“The reason he thought his boots were stolen,” Andrew told Neil, ignoring Kevin’s protest, “was because he’d been so drunk he left them under your tank’s lid for, as he put it, even if he doesn’t have feet, he needs better luck than me in running away.”

Neil froze in his shallow, rocky pool. “You still have the lid?”

“The Captain’s sentimental, and no one thought you were coming back.”

He blinked. He turned that over. He relaxed, sort of.

“Of course, Andrew wouldn’t tell me where they were, even though he knew,” Kevin grumbled, back to the matter of his grief’s out-of-control outlets.

“I’m not here to be your babysitter,” as he picked a stray thread from his sleeve, “or to clean up after you.”

It’d also been the fifth time in three days that Kevin had done something similarly careless. Once or twice, maybe he’d throw the man a bone. Five? It wasn’t happening. He’d never learn, otherwise.

“So,” Neil said, drawing their attention back, “you’ll be here for a week. For no real reason, other than… relaxing.”

Kevin crossed his arms and made a rough noise of agreement. Andrew didn’t reply at all.

Neil turned that over, too, his tail fin curling into the air.

Without thinking too much about it, Andrew made his way across the larger boulders to the narrower, sharper ones, and perched on the edge of one that lined Neil’s pool. Kevin said, “The patrol--”

“There’s no one here, and you know it,” Andrew replied, not looking up from Neil’s slow crawl to his side, “so stop pacing, sit down, and drink like you want to.”

Behind him, silence. By the time Neil had curled himself against Andrew’s legs, Kevin had a seat on a flatter rock not too far away. After catching a curious look, he passed the bottle down to Neil. He took a sip, made a face, and nearly threw it back.

Kevin raised it at him as to say more for me, and returned to depleting it.

Neil asked about the ship’s back sail, as he’d noticed it didn’t catch the wind in the way it used to. A little light sparked back into Kevin’s eyes as he launched into the key post that their last skirmish had ruined, how much force the material could still hold, and how the rigging would need to be rewired to compensate until proper repairs. Neil off-handedly mentioned the state of the hull and rudder, and Kevin practically glowed as he realized he was speaking with someone who could track the underside in motion.

Somehow they began to argue about the advantages or disadvantages to barnacle colonies, what could or couldn’t tip a ship, what could or couldn’t tip a ship back up, and that was about when Andrew let the cadence wash over him, fished tobacco out of his pocket, and tipped his head back to watch the stars.

Kevin remembered the night, after. Andrew’s feet were numb from where Neil had all but sat on them.

In the morning, the camp woke to an aborted shout; when they left their tents with daggers and half-asleep squints, they found Katelyn with her hands to her mouth and, in front of her, a frazzled Neil.

It seemed he’d tried to enjoy the early sunlight by laying out on the beach near the center of their unorganized jumble of tarps and bedrolls. Katelyn, as half-awake as the rest of them, might have gotten up for water or to find a tree; when she’d tripped over a red tail attached to a man’s body, however, she’d spooked herself. Neil obviously did not appreciate the loud noise or the sudden attention.

And yet, even when most of them showed up to see, he didn’t disappear. If anything, he hunkered down with a baleful look at Katelyn’s stammered apology.

“Alright, alright,” Dan called, shooing those closest to her back to their bedrolls as if they had a chance at falling asleep again, “what’re you all gaping at? Nothing to see here! Get moving!”

Perhaps because of the peculiar beginning, their second day ashore went much, much better, and, at last, The Fox’ crew began to relax.

They found enough fallen trees and broken branches for a good, tall bonfire, and they began it - Matt instructing them from where he sat with his leg propped up - mid-way through the afternoon. It roared tall and unbearably hot, especially given the already humid weather, but it was something they’d all agreed they wanted done, so they damned the consequences and committed to the firey pit.

The consequence, it turned out, was a stout man with wild hair stumbling out of the jungle to blink at them through coke bottle glasses, his hands and arms streaked with dirt and ink. He looked so impressed and happy to see them, and not a little crazy, that they didn’t immediately run him through with steel. Instead, he received a place at the bonfire, a plate of seared sea bass, and a few questions on what exactly he was doing on an island in the middle of nowhere.

To their surprise, he didn’t beg them to take him with them. Instead, he proudly said, “I’m a surveyor! And I’ve surveyed this island to be worth quite a bit.”

“Really?” Matt asked, and tried his best to not sound doubtful. By Dan’s snort, he failed.

“Yes, really,” the man replied with a knowing but patient smile. He appeared less crazy with the dirt and ink washed off his arms and his hair finger-combed. He’d told them his name was Hernandez, that he’d caught a ride on a merchant vessel and that was why he was alone, and that he had a deed for the land to own it fair and square, but that they were welcome to stay (in part, he admitted, because there’s far too many of you for one of me to drive away). “Rubber trade is growing, as you probably know, and most of the trees in this area are key rubber producers. I’ll cut and sell this grove, and build the first stop for the route in its place. I’m going to call it Millport-- I come from a Millport, you see, my wife and kids are back there, but it’s far too inland to be much of a port.”

“Why rubber?” Dan asked, curious despite herself.

He pushed up his glasses and cleared his throat. The reason was near and dear to him, the pirates realized, and as most people with passion, he was a touch embarrassed by it.

Not enough to not tell them, though. “Have you heard of Exy?”

They shook their heads.

“The King’s uncle, Tetsuji, invented it, though he and her abandoned it after investing in ship-building. It’s an incredibly thrilling game! You have to keep on your toes the whole time, no matter the position.” He digressed momentarily into said positions and rules. Weary glances were exchanged around him. Maybe he was as crazy as they’d first thought. In the end, however, he pulled himself back on track and, with a big sigh, admitted, “It hasn’t taken off. In part because the balls have to be made from rubber, not animal skin.”

“Thus, the rubber.”

“Thus, the rubber,” he agreed, nodding.

Kevin asked, “Why invest in a sport that isn’t even popular? There’s no gain.”

“I haven’t a proper court, but I could show you a few reasons why,” Hernandez said, right on the edge of his seat.

Dubious, Kevin declined.

At the same time, happy for any distraction, Nicky agreed.

Hernandez latched onto the latter and, somehow, roped six of them - enough for a three-on-three, he claimed - into trying. Those lucky enough to keep out of his cheerful, determined range mutually agreed they had to watch, if only to see how badly their crewmates failed.

The ‘court’ was a roped-off clearing in the middle of the jungle, they had no armor, two balls, and four rackets, not six, so the goalkeepers improvised with net-wrapped sticks. When questioned on why he’d brought even four when he couldn’t play alone, Hernandez shrugged and said, “In case any of the merchants wanted to give it a go, of course.”

Of course, he was a little crazy.

The game wasn’t that bad, though. Matt despaired he couldn’t join: Abby had officially put him on bed-rest, which meant he had to be carried everywhere lest he throw Dan such puppy eyes that she melted from guilt. He really, really wanted to shoulder-check Kevin into a tree.

“You could do that any time,” Allison pointed out. “So long as you make sure the blond monster’s not around.”

“Yeah,” Matt said, “but not because I’m expected to.”

Kevin’s aim with a racquet matched his skill with projectile weapons. When him, Nicky and Andrew (who did not want to be goalkeeper, but was nonetheless very good at being goalkeeper) won the first match, he admitted to Hernandez that the game wasn’t all that bad.

Jean, on the opposite team with Renee and Dan, accidentally tripped him with his racquet during the second game. Rules and fair play went out the window from there, and soon enough everyone clammored to have a round in the brawl that masqueraded as a game.

Hernandez weathered it with fatherly amusement, and didn’t try to correct them. Much.

When they all stumbled back to their tents - Hernandez had his own hut in the densest part of the jungle, which was why they hadn’t spotted him before - laughter returned as an easily exchanged commodity. When Neil appeared and asked where they’d been all evening, quips cut off stories cut off explanations, and eventually they all dissolved into comments like did you see his face? priceless!, followed by peals of laughter. Neil looked on with amused bemusement, and then looked even more baffled when Kevin solemnly swore to teach him it during the next day.

Behind him, Andrew rolled his eyes, but didn’t warn Neil off from saying yes.

And, despite bumps and bruises, the pirates slept wonderfully.

By the third day, it was almost as if they hadn’t arrived ready to tear out each other’s throats.

They sang off-tune and challenged each other to cliff-diving. They began to explore in earnest. They played a few more hours of Exy, but after the last game strayed completely from the rules into a wrestling match, Hernandez decided for them that they had other things they could do, too. Like find fuzzy fruit, or weirdly shaped rocks, and badger Neil with both until he threw up his hands and swam off in a huff (Matt, the one to prompt that with a shell he swore humans used for calling one another long distance and tricked Neil into putting it to his ear to try, couldn’t quit laughing even after the merman left).

And yet, one thing hadn’t changed by the end of the day.

Though he sat by the fire, played the games, made the bets, and put in a good show at exploration and cliff diving, whether from one woman's hostility and blame (and the unspoken agreement from a few other less charitable parties) or the strained note in his cheer, Nicky always ended up shuffled to the edge of the group. Aaron, his especial target for orbiting, grew annoyed over the potential time for private moments with Katelyn being interrupted by his cousin, and began to - similar to the months right after they'd first left their sect with Andrew - outright ignore him. Erik stuck by, or tried to, but there hit a point where his smile dropped and he admitted he wasn't entirely sure what Nicky expected out of everyone.

The bruise and cut from a thrown rock that had downed him on the run from Columbia had faded, but there remained a bump at the top of his skull that Nicky's fingers unerringly found every time they kissed.

By the end of the third day--

He told them he was going for a walk, and took off before any could protest. But then, none did, aside from a worried look and single are you sure? from Erik, which he waved off with a smile and laugh that only sounded a little strained. He half-walked, half-jogged to the rockier side of the island, picked his way over increasingly large stones, tripped, gashed a palm open on a sharper rock, realized his eyesight wasn't the best, hated his clumsy feet, hated the throb in his hand, hated the blood that quickly stained his sleeve, and finally sat down on a low ledge's edge for a good cry.

Wringing himself dry usually helped. He went from holding it back to letting it out to staring, puffy-eyed and wetly sniffling, over the sea. He didn't feel much better. In fact, it was safe to say that he felt worse, like a shell scraped hollow or a used up rag. Plus, his hand hurt. The rawness would make rowing a chore at best and Erik frustrated at worst, and Nicky wasn't sure if he could face either of those possibilities.

"What's wrong?"

Nicky jumped, Neil's appearance at his feet startling him out of his self-reflecting misery. The merman looked like he regretted asking once Nicky fully faced him, and Nicky had a thought like, great, even Neil's done with me.

He tried for a wobbly smile and knew he came up short even before the regret intensified on Neil's expression.

"Nothing, I just-- hurt my hand. It's stupid, it'll heal, it's just..." He fished for an adequate word and came up with a mumbled, defeated, "annoying."

It really wasn't anything. It'd already stopped bleeding. Realistically he knew he hadn't been crying over a cut palm, but in that moment, everything else that led him to sitting alone on a ledge loomed too large to think about and he focused on being pissed at himself for letting a stupid gash be the thing to tip him over. Pushing at the skin around the wound and wincing at the hot itch that throbbed around it, he kept his stupid eyes on his stupid hands and expected Neil to leave him be.

When a, "Are they throwing you out?" reached him, he was so startled by the question as well as the content that he jerked his head up.

"What? No! They--" He paused. He thought. Tears pricked at his eyes again, and he sniffed to keep them back. "They wouldn't do that."

"Other humans do," Neil told him. "On the Admiral's ship, I heard it happen."

"Other... I mean, yeah, it happens, but what I did wasn't enough to throw me out. I don't think. Maybe. Oh, hell, what if it was?"

He wiped hard with the back of his hand across his eyes, but there was no use. Somewhere in him, he had tears left, and they were determined to roll down his cheeks and nose in fat drops, and he pressed both palms hard against his eyes because he couldn't believe he was crying again, and in front of Neil, and fuck, he was so, so stupid, why did they even bother keeping him around?

A hand settled on his boot, but he was too busy trying not to make an absolute bafoon of himself to look down.

"I don't think they'd throw you out," Neil told him, and even though his ears felt hot and the world far away, Nicky could hear the strained apology in his voice.

For some reason, it made him bark a laugh. "Don't know why they wouldn't. I really fucked up."

"With your parents?"

Without looking and despising the fact someone had apparently been gossiping with the merman about it, Nicky nodded.

"You hadn't seen them in ages." Neil said, quieter. "Why wouldn't you want them to know what you were doing?"

"Because they'd think I was messed up for doing half of it and not at all because it was dangerous, question why I hadn't used my opportunities to rid the world of more rabid beasts, and loathe what friends I have made? If not, you know, torture one of them. Another of them, by proxy."

A pause.

"But," Neil said, sincerity awkward on his tongue and tone far more contradicting than comforting, "it was your mother."

Nicky sobbed a laugh.

"I've basically been disowned. Which is fine, I don't want to see either of them again, but I-- I- gods, they said I was sick, for so long, and then they killed him, but I thought they'd missed me, you know, like I-- like I--"

"Missed them?"

"-- Yes!" Giving up on respectability, Nicky bowed forward, crumpling like paper in the tide. "Yes! Yes, like I'd missed them."

Neil didn't say anything to that, though he didn't take his hand away or disappear, either. He let Nicky have his time, and his tears, and, at the end, waited until he'd rubbed his runny nose and red eyes raw to say:

"I have something to show you."

Hollowed once more into exhaustion, Nicky attempted an interested noise. It failed.

Neil wasn’t having that. He tugged on Nicky's boots until the pirate said, "Ok, ok, one second," and he unloaded cards and wrinkled papers from his pockets and took off his boots and unclipped his dagger, because it would've been too stupid for even him to imagine the merman wanted to take him anywhere that didn't involve getting soaked.

True to the thought, Neil backed up and led him out of the rocky shallows, Nicky far slower on shifting stones. Eventually the water rose so he couldn't touch the bottom, and then Neil curved around him and raised an impatient eyebrow until he realized he was being offered an arm to hold and took it with a weak, "No ice caves, right?" Neil didn't tear off underwater as he had the time before, though; he kept to the surface and simply pulled Nicky (much) faster than he otherwise would have been able to go. If Neil's head disappeared underwater and Nicky caught some echo-y sort of calls being make, well, it didn't immediately mean anything to him.

They were on the wrong side of the island to see The Fox, but Nicky couldn't help looking for it. It'd been his home for, what, close to four years? And, really, it's been a better home than traveling with his parents could have been.

He wondered if Neil fixed to pull him to the ocean deep, but the sands below remained in sight. At one point Neil curved their trajectory to paralleling the shoreline, and Nicky spent the rest of the time wondering where in the world they were going. Neil leading them around without explanations seemed to be a habit of his. Nicky could only hope it remained a well intentioned one.

A shiny blue fin broke the water beside them, and Nicky squeaked, "Uh, Neil?"

But it wasn't a shark attracted by his blood and hungry for more. Sleek, rubbery, and color that of a cloudless day over a calm ocean, the dolphin broke higher on its second breach; a mirror copy appeared behind it, and one in miniature behind it, the small pod matching its pace to Neil's. For his part, Neil seemed utterly unimpressed with them - after one chittered at them, tiny teeth not six feet from Nicky’s leg, Neil shot it a glare, tail lashing more than necessary, and it veered off. The other two folded closer to them without missing a beat.

“Don’t let them get too rough with you,” Neil told him, which was Nicky’s only warning before the arm he’d been clinging to wriggled from his grip and a blue nose squirmed into its place. It startled him into floundering back, but the dolphin was persistent in acting like a life-raft, and gently bumped and clicked at him until he took hold.

He’d guess it was a mother with her child, but unlike Neil, he didn’t speak dolphin.

Luckily, the dolphin didn’t seem to expect him to, and really, the child only cared something was willing to scratch it under the chin and pay attention to acrobatic antics that Nicky swore its mother was beyond fed up with.

As for the one who’d introduced the groups: Neil was a there-and-gone blur racing after and then ahead of the toothy dolphin, tempting (or challenging) the creature into jumps and flips every other second. Neil was faster, but he couldn’t jump near as high as his competitor; yet, from Nicky’s vantage point of constant distraction with an energetic youngster, he improved with every breach, and did his best to learn how to fly.

Chafing was a serious issue with seawater-sodden pants, but as Nicky wobbled his way back to that night’s bonfire, his boots slung over his shoulder and his hair a mess, he couldn’t have paid it less attention. The exhaustion, finally, was a pleasant one.

“Nicky!”

“-- Hemmick, where have you been? Why are you soaking wet?”

Erik was at his side in an instant, his concern genuine and, for the first time in days, reassuring. Nicky let him put his arm over his shoulder and sagged into the warmth with a giggle that couldn’t have sounded drunker if he’d thrown back five mugs of ale. Those around the fire mostly frowned at him, and Allison looked poised to tell him something-or-other that was bound to be mean. Renee had a small smile from her spot between Allison and Jean, but she almost always had a small smile. He let his eyes skip over the two and refocus on Erik.

He knew his grin was doofy, but he cared about that as much as he cared about the gash on his hand or the seawater-inspired chafing.

“Were you hunting turtles like a loon?” Aaron asked him once Erik led him to a log and made him sit, the blond frowning and, maybe, shifting a bit closer to his cousin.

“Nope,” he chirped, “I was playing with dolphins.”

On impulse, he detached from Erik’s side to throw an arm around Aaron’s shoulders and ruffle his hair, which just about gave the man a conniption. Katelyn clapped as he howled about Nicky getting him wet and being a freak besides; when Kevin told them to knock off the rough-housing around the fire, Nicky jumped on him to deliver the same treatment. Kevin gave an indignant, startled squawk. Jean, for the first time since Nicky had met him, laughed.

He tossed out the idea of completing the circle with Andrew as borderline suicidal, but if he’d taken a moment to look, he might’ve seen the other Minyard was content enough watching.

(He didn’t think about how the Laughing Jackal had been a small ship of little importance, not an Admiral’s. He barely remembered Neil’s fly-away comment about hearing sailors being discharged.)

(It was a good night.)

Dan and Matt attempted five more times to find time for themselves.

The second time in the trees, they had barely traded a few slow kisses before an Exy ball flew from beach, bounced off a tree, and smacked into Matt’s head. If that hadn’t killed the mood, a soaking wet Kevin (he was attempting to teach Neil Exy, as promised) stomping through the underbrush to find the ball for upwards of ten minutes did.

The third time, Dan double and triple checked that they were deep enough into the jungle for no straggling pirates to find them. Matt’s hands were around her waist, her mouth was making its way down his chest, and then the tree they were leaning against quit being a lean-to and became a tip-over, depositing them down the side of a muddy hill and right into Hernandez’s path. He greeted them with some surprise and asked if they needed help back to the beach. They greeted him with much more surprise, and Matt admitted the fall had made his leg throb something awful again, so, reluctantly, they took his offer.

The fourth time, they nestled themselves into a secluded section of cliff. As it turned out, a merman had been hunting in the cracks, and the moment Dan managed to pull Matt’s shirt off, they were both doused with a wave of water.

“You move,” Dan was brave (and frustrated) enough to snap.

“I was here first,” Neil snapped back. “The best crabs hide in the rocks. Can’t you do your business elsewhere?”

Dan fumed.

Matt coughed. “You do know what, uh, kissing is, right? Is that only a human thing? That’d be really unfortunate, maybe someone can show you, it’s pretty gr--”

Neil splashed them again.

They left.

The fifth time--

They went back to the ship, avoided the Captain’s cabin, beelined for the empty barracks, and finally found some peace and quiet.

On another afternoon:

“Why the hair cut?” Allison asked the lazy stretch of skin and scales that routinely took up their beach’s best sand. “Longer suited you. People would’ve killed to have hair that nice. Not just people, I would’ve killed for your hair. It’s fine now, but it was obnoxiously perfect before.”

“It looked that way because it was,” Neil wiggled his claws at her, voice and face deadpan, “magic.”

In a lazy, tanning-friendly stretch of her own, Allison blew a raspberry at him.

“Shove off, Neil. Really, grow it out again.”

He sighed, shifted in spot, and said into the crook of his elbow, “I won’t.”

“Why’s that? Did it get in your face?”

At her derisive tone, Neil shrugged. Which meant yes.

“That’s just because you don’t know shit about haircare,” she told him. “Grow it out. I’ll show you how to tie a proper braid.”

Neil’s mouth turned down and his nose scrunched. He flipped himself onto his back, wriggled to make a comfortable groove in the sand, and, hands laced on his stomach, relaxed.

Allison tsked. At all of it.

“Waste,” she grumbled without heat, leaning back herself into the companionable quiet, “you’re an absolute waste of handsome.”

“Tail included?”

“Tail included,” she agreed. “Face like yours, I’d bet most would even forgive the smell.”

He clicked, noncommittal and uninterested.

On another night:

Legs in the ocean, smoke in his mouth, the evening of the fourth day found Andrew on the solitary side of the sandy beach, reclined back and contemplating the sky without a single thought on his face.

When the tide's steady ebb and flow changed in sound and another body dragged itself from the shallows to his feet, he barely paid it a glance. When he barely paid it a glance, it grew in confidence, surveyed its options for seating, and half-slithered, half-pulled itself next to Andrew; from there, it proceeded to roll onto its back and flop its human half across well muscled thighs. It paused. It squirmed. It rolled, its spiny fin scraping against Andrew's legs, and resettled on its stomach, head pillowed on folded arms. It paused again.

"Comfy?" Andrew drawled from his vantage point of not lifting a hand to help, teeth idly worrying his cigarette.

Neil huffed again and, with a noise of disgruntled dissent, once more began to squirm. He turned to his side, felt the press of bone against sensitive gills, winced, and kept turning until he was right back to the position he'd started in. Another noise of disgruntlement, a little chirp of displeasure, and Andrew contemplated kicking him off. But it wasn't --- bad, and as of right then, he felt no need for Neil to back off.

He turned the lack of a feeling over for a moment, the shape of it different from a true lack of feeling. Neil's hair stuck to his forehead in tangled tufts, all grace lost once taken out of water; his chest, scarred and bumpy and laid bare across his lap, rose and fell in a gentle cadence. Andrew's teeth clamped tight on his wrapped tobacco.

"You are a problem," he told the merman.

"Your legs are a problem," the merman told him, oblivious as always.

Neil squirmed again to prove his point, which dug hard fin against hard leg bone, his tail flip-flopping from water to sand and flinging both about without regard for humans that didn't appreciate having their legs crushed or sand in their shirt. Having enough of that, Andrew snapped, "Back off," and Neil did, immediately sitting up and tipping himself onto an unoccupied plot of land. Because of course he responded immediately; of course he listened and didn't question; of course he picked up on Andrew thinking actions and consequences over and, rather than interrupt, cocked his head and waited. Seawater continued to lap up against them both, and it took some time for Andrew to decide the consequence could be worth the action.

He didn't make a show of it. He simply went a bit deeper into the tide, the water well over his hips, spread his legs, and said, "Well? Come here."

Of course, Neil did.

He slinked his way between two knobby knees-- "No," voice tight, Neil froze, Andrew gestured for him to roll onto his stomach, relief silent as that fin pointed away from sensitive areas-- and settled against Andrew, auburn hair tickling his chin and the rest of him one long, zig-zag line into the ocean. He could already feel his shirt growing damp from where Neil laid. His shorts were a lost cause. His throat worked compulsively, and he found himself dry-mouthed.

Neil hummed from deep in his chest, the vibration running up from his throat, and Andrew refocused his eyes on the sunset.

"Decent," Neil decided, and gave an absent pat to one knee. "Suppose they're alright."

Andrew didn't reply.

Inch by inch, he felt Neil well and truly relax against him. The process began with fingers uncurling on Andrew's chest and ended with a small sigh, his eyes half-lidded and tail fin swaying in the tide. Most of all, Andrew felt him breathe, a gentle rise and fall that was half a beat too slow for a human's but one he nonetheless found himself trying to match. It was calming. It was horribly, disgustingly peaceful, a word which Andrew hadn't a grasp of but knew, instinctive as walking, that this came close.

"I discovered something," Neil said; rather, murmured, his eyes closed and body limp and what must have been thirty minutes gone by, his cigarette long gone into the waves.

Figuring it was enough, Andrew made an inquisitive noise rather than a proper word. His arms ached dully from keeping them both upright. It wasn't even close to enough reason to move.

The noise was enough, as Neil's eyes cracked open and he shifted. Again, Andrew swallowed. Neil said, "A human thing. Would you explain?"

He'd rather not, but he let himself make a noise of assent, because when Neil asked for something it took far more effort than it was worth to deny him.

Neil shifted again.

"You're clingy as a leech," Andrew told him as he began to lift himself up via Andrew's shoulders. "Never does a day pass without you wanting to sit on someone or something. You always get a stupid, pitiful look on your face when that thing doesn’t want to be rolled on, too."

"It's nice," Neil said back, far too close to Andrew's face. "I missed it in the cage. Now that I can do it again, I don't want to stop."

"Can't always have what you want."

Neil snorted, quietly. "Obviously. Now, my discovery?"

"Fine," Andrew said, and kept his eyes on Neil's. There wasn't much of a choice, considering how close they were.

"Can I kiss you?"

A beat.

After Andrew didn't reply, Neil repeated his question. It didn't change.

There were a few questions to address before that one. Andrew ran through a few in his mind: why kissing, why now, why the interest, why it mattered, if it mattered, why him, what Neil thought he was going to do, what Neil imagined he would do, who taught him, who told him, why they told him, where--

"Alright," Andrew said, and Neil did.

After, Neil's eyes very close and very blue and Andrew's mouth tingling, he narrowed hazel eyes and accused, "You've always known what kissing was."

Neil grinned, brief as a snake glimpsed in the grass, and leaned in for another. Chaste pecks on the lips, that was all it was; by miracle alone did noses not bump, and closed mouth did it remain until Neil pressed closer, slid himself upward, arms light around broad shoulders, and Andrew thought, Yes, definitely.

When he set hands on Neil's shoulders and pushed until their positions were reversed, he was met with confusion; when he nipped a bottom lip and swallowed the surprised note to follow, confusion faded fast; when he told Neil to stretch his arms over his head and grip the sands if he needed something to hold onto as he mapped his mouth and throat and jawline with his mouth, salt coating his tongue, he was rewarded with an arched back and high hum of pleasure.

When he caught the glazed look in Neil's eyes, the flush that ran from his cheeks to his chest, the rapid rise-fall of his ribs and open-close of his gills, he paused. Breathed. Found annoyance at the tide for its constant push and pull, and then forgot again as Neil spoke.

"Knew of it," voice breathless and once more on the good side of human, the words like a song, "doesn't mean I've done it."

The ugly, undeniably possessive side of Andrew imagined being Neil's first kiss.

"I can tell," he said, and forced himself to stop thinking about it.

Neil sulked. In his position, that meant he tilted his chin up, bared his throat, and looked at Andrew through half-lidded eyes.

Webbed fingers dug grooves into the beach; the tide refilled the lines with sand in seconds, but the learned reflex, the restrained nature of it, that Neil could have easily overpowered him and didn't even think to, of Neil taking what was offered without dreaming of more, made Andrew want to give him everything.

He needed to leave.

He pushed off Neil, who clicked a question. Ignoring it, he removed himself from the waters, dry sand sticking and scraping under his soles, and made for the trees. A confused, ragged voice asked him to stop. He did on instinct, and felt his heart, for the second time in the last month, brush against remembered anxiety. He wasn't built for feeling so often -- it wrecked havoc on his mind, and that he strained to hear what Neil had to say proved that.

"Don't go," Neil was saying, though he sounded as if he didn't believe his own words. "I can't follow. Please, don't leave."

His thoughts were in shambles. "I hate that word," he replied, still facing the trees.

For the brief moment of silence to follow, Andrew imagined Neil grappling with understanding what word he meant, or what emotion he targeted, and which he'd use his remaining time on. It was a satisfyingly familiar thing to imagine; it let Andrew forget for one moment that he was walking away from Neil.

Then Neil said, "Stay over there if you want. Anywhere we can still talk is fine." And there was no forgetting what creature would be such an idiot as to demand that, a bare minimum of contact and companionship.

You're really desperate, he thought. There was no telling which of them he meant.

He stood and watched the trees.

Neil didn't move or call to him again.

Tension lessened from his shoulders and chest. Piece by piece his thoughts found order, and the overwhelming feeling dimmed but refused to leave. Like a rock in his boot, it demanded attention without hindering anything, and it, like its source, was absolutely maddening. His lips felt chapped from the salt water, his throat dry in a much more literal sense than before. Neil continued to wait, apparently - honestly - foolishly - truthful about wanting nothing more than Andrew's mere presence.

Eventually he turned. Neil immediately raised to his elbows, gaze sharp and not actually hopeful in Andrew's direction. Neil hid hope like the paranoid hid themselves, coveting and lavishing on it the moment he thought no one was watching (and the trick being that he always thought someone was watching). Andrew, again, focused on the horizon.

He picked his way back to the coast. He sat so his feet were licked by waves, the merman a red and scarred line before him.

"When I need space," he said, "it's non-negotiable."

"Okay," Neil said.

Andrew checked the tone. Still no hope.

"I can't fix the world, and I won't start a crusade for your kind."

"I know."

No hope.

"Whatever you're looking for, you won't find it with me."

"As it is, I'm done searching."

No hope. Cheesy, and grossly, undeniably sincere. Andrew tightened his jaw until his teeth hurt, and flicked his eyes down to Neil's.

Neil, of course, looked back.

"What do you hope to gain?"

Slowly, attentive to every twitch of Andrew's body (there were none), he dragged himself from the sea. When he stopped, his gills worked hard to pull oxygen from the gentle tide, and he laid himself next to Andrew without touching, on his stomach and head turned away. Andrew watched him.

He didn't watch for long before he reached out to thread his hands through Neil's hair, fingers disappearing into auburn. When he began to pull back, a webbed hand raised to catch his, the tips of their fingers lacing together.

"This is enough," Neil said, quiet and sure.

Andrew didn't reply, but he didn't leave.

Kevin attempted to teach Neil Exy.

They modified it to make it water-friendly, but Neil found the racquet cumbersome and moved too quickly for anyone to block him. There was also the not miniscule problem of it being impossible to trip him.

Neil not only realized his advantages, but used them to their fullest. While everyone else ran short of breath, he popped up to grin, whistle-click what sounded suspiciously like an insult, and ask, “Wait, is that it?”

After Neil made him run back and forth between the ‘court’ without letting Kevin score a single point, Kevin gave in to what everyone else was doing and simply threw himself at the merman. Unlike everyone else, he timed his jump at the exact right moment and managed to catch Neil around the waist. Surprised, Neil rolled like a wild thing - Kevin held on, determined to prove something - and swam loops tight enough to make anyone dizzy. Kevin refused to let go. Eventually Neil beached himself, shoved at Kevin’s arms and head to no avail, and finally, huffing and puffing about gaining a leech, laid still.

When he glanced down, Kevin’s smug smile looked back.

Neil sniffed and turned his head away.

Kevin detached himself, told him, “Good game,” and, “Good try,” and, “-- Shit--!”

As Neil swiped Kevin’s feet out from under him and sent him crashing into a floating clump of sea algae, he snickered.

Standing in the sea, Allison glanced at Andrew, who watched from the shore. She thought of every time the rest of them had even implied harming Kevin (wrestling matches on the court didn’t count, evidently, but Neil’s frenzied run had taken them out of that), and how quickly Andrew responded.

Even when Kevin cursed Neil and struggled to his feet only for them to be swept out from under him again, Andrew didn’t so much as blink.

There wasn’t anything close to a smile on his face, but when Allison glanced back to Renee to confirm she was seeing this, too, Renee’s expression had softened enough that Andrew might as well have been grinning like a King. It was sickening how much she believed in the little monster. A few nights previous, she’d said Neil was one of the best things to happen to him.

But then Allison really thought about how Andrew watched Neil, took out the massive turn-off a fishtail had to be, and felt a little suspicious.

As soon as everyone relaxed, as was the way with any vacation, it was time to go.

They bid Hernandez farewell (he reasserted that he had a ship coming for him, and plenty of supplies besides; with enthusiastically he threw himself into his tree surveying, they didn’t press it), packed up and trudged back to the ship. While they’d been gone, the Captain had restrung the rigging and tightened the loosened sail as best he could. Dan wondered if he was annoyed that none of them helped, but then she heard him whistling under his breath as he worked over their new route to Troy, and knew that wasn’t it in the least.

Aside from a happy Captain, the only upside was a new bet circulating the gossip pool. Trying to catch glimpses and keep records of when Andrew Minyard snuck away to visit Neil distracted the crew from their post-vacation blues for all of three days, whereupon they realized Andrew didn’t hide his slacking off to chit-chat with Neil in the least, and that, whenever they did see the two, they either existed in silence or annoyed, biting commentary. They barely appeared to be friends. Neil wouldn’t quit bothering Andrew, and Andrew alternated between ignoring and mocking him.

The new recruits stopped watching by that third day mark. The older members, wiser to how Andrew really ignored people, kept the game alive.

(Andrew knew about it all, the bets and progress, from Nicky.)

(If they thought he was being obvious about slacking off, he mused, they were blinder than he could’ve imagined. He hadn’t changed his behavior in the slightest.)

(Well.)

(Some nights he blew smoke in Neil’s awed face, and some nights he kissed Neil, and some nights he imagined what it would take to make Neil fall apart, but that was more of a natural progression than a change.)

Three days into the remaining month’s worth of a journey to Troy, another mercenary ship found them. It was a big, darkly wooded brig, and it crashed through the choppy sea’s waves to follow them like a shark that scented blood.

Annoyed, the pirates forfeited their night’s rest and out-ran it.

Pleasantly, they weren’t bothered after that. Aside from two storms, both easily predicted and managed, their voyage was an altogether lovely experience.

“Perhaps it’s a case of ships in the night?” Dan purposed as Renee poured over the maps, grinding fish bones and spreading dirt every which way only to confirm, once more, that there wasn’t a single living thing bigger than a sea trout in their vicinity. “You know. Passing without note. And your dirt’s… dried out, that’s why it’s not picking up on anything.”

Head bowed, Renee murmured that, yes, that might be it. Tracking without a definite target was difficult. Maybe she hadn’t the right materials. In any case, they would soon reach their destination.

Word spread across the ship of their isolation. Rumors dogged the word of a potential curse, or nearby monster, or a myriad of other, far-fetched fears. Nicky decided to take matters into his own hands and, once he saw red scales winding close to the ship, he cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered, “Oi, Neil!”

Obligingly, the merman poked his head above water.

“See any dolphins?”

“No,” Neil yelled back, “and they wouldn’t want to play with humans if I did.”

A little disappointment flared at hearing that, but he had another reason for asking.

“What about anything else?” He pressed, and glanced to Jean as he joined him at the railing. “Any… whales? Big turtles? Er,” Neil’s head tilted, his frown saying he wasn’t sure where Nicky was going with this. “Anything… comparable to our size, maybe, or--”

“Anything big enough you wouldn’t want to eat it?” Jean added in an effort to help, and also to cut off Nicky’s growing nerves.

“Oh.” Neil ducked underwater as if to check for himself, swiftly appearing again with a deeper frown. “No. Not for the past six days, come to think of it.”

Nicky wilted at the railing, and craned his neck to shoot Erik and Katelyn, who loitered by the mast-post, a worried look.

“I’d thought something was off. The fish are unusually skittish.” Neil admitted. “I could do a perimeter check?”

“Don’t bother,” Jean told him, and pushed off the railing to find Renee.

But there was nothing to be done about it because there was simply nothing happening. It wasn’t a bad vibe radiating from a cursed source, and not a bad thing besides, if one ignored the fact the waters should have been teeming with life. There was absolutely no reason for humans or bigger creatures to be missing, and so there was nothing that bothered The Fox. It felt like a wish gone wrong -- like they’d collectively hoped to not be bothered by mercenaries so much, the powers that be decided to wipe out anything that could have given them trouble.

Still, they swapped their flag for blue, readied their papers, and continued on under an explorer’s guise.

It took until they arrived at Troy’s edge to discover what caused half of the disappearance act.

Troy’s walls, grand as they always had been and foretold to always be, rose sharply just beyond the shore, its doors sealed shut and its towers topped with scuttling lines of dark red-and-gold, crossbow-wielding ants. Flags flew proudly from its peaks, and its people could not be seen anywhere outside of it. Rarely did Troy look so ready for hostilities; never, in centuries, had war come to its doorstep.

But then, the ships lining its bay and the black uniformed men and women in black-and-red pitched tents outside the walls didn’t herald war. The protective trenches dug with wooden pikes facing the city, the patrol set along the walls, the barricade at sea, pointed to one thing. Troy wasn’t a large kingdom by any stretch: it favored independence, not territory, and had kept out of the King’s notice primarily for its complete lack of a tangible threat to His Majesty’s rule. The royal family had no reason to declare a formal war. One city, and the Trojan kingdom would crumble.

This was a siege.

This was why they hadn’t been accosted by naval vessels, or caught sight of any passing traders.

This was absolutely out of their league.

The pirates huddled on their deck after the warning call of His Majesty’s ships. Those that had been working on lines or cleaning had their hands frozen around tools as The Fox meandered closer to the blockade’s dark line of heavily fortified ships. They weren’t close enough that out-running them would be a problem, but they were well within eye-sight.

The Captain emerged from his cabin with a spyglass and strained set to his broad brow, his coattails catching the wind as he stood, silent, at the ship’s bow.

Behind him, a nervous ripple broke over the deck.

“What would they want with Troy?” One murmured. “It’s been peaceful for centuries.”

“The King’s power-hungry,” another proposed. “I heard he’s been salting and burning any villages that won’t pledge to the Crown.”

“This city won’t fall. They’ve supplies to last them years. He should pick an easier target.”

“Maybe he’s gone mad with grief for his brother.”

“I doubt that,” Kevin said. At his low tone, none argued.

Aaron turned to gauge his brother’s opinion on it all, but Andrew was at the opposite railing, bent almost in double to peer down at the waters. The ever-present distraction even at such a time made Aaron grit his teeth, but he went for Katelyn’s side, instead, without comment.

Dan, at Wymack’s elbow, her hand tight around her sword hilt, pointed out, “If we’re looking to lay low, Captain, I don’t think Troy’s our best bet. We need to get out before they catch sight of our ship’s name.”

Grim, Wymack nodded, and snapped his spyglass closed. He whistled to bring the crew’s attention to him, and motioned for them to turn The Fox around. The pirates fell back into place, though their eyes continued to stray to the red-streaked line surrounding Troy.

In the back, white-faced and vicious with fear, Jean gripped Kevin’s arm and hissed, “We’re leaving? Just like that?”

“What do you expect us to do, Jean?”

“I owe him. I will repay it.”

“As long as he’s behind those walls, he’s fine.”

“You know that’s not true.”

Kevin, lips thinned to a white line, could not reply.

Before Jean edged in another word, Andrew cut between them; a cold, level stare at Jean had the man release his death grip on Kevin’s arm and step back, though he looked no less rattled and restless about it. The cold look transferred to Kevin, and Andrew gestured for him to follow. He huffed about needing to get to adjusting the sails, but did, trailing after Andrew to the railing. Reaching it, they both leaned over the edge, and a moment of silence passed between them.

“What are we looking for?” Kevin demanded, his own anxiety over being so close to a full naval fleet at last kicking up his temper. “We’re wasting time staring at nothing. Was it Neil?”

Andrew, frowning, didn’t reply.

“He’s not there, Andrew.”

“He was trying to give a warning.” Andrew replied, his words curt. “In Morse - it was too quick, and partly code.”

They both knew Kevin had far more practice in the language ships used to communicate to one another as well as a healthy dosing of the naval code Neil had to have learned, but it was odd for Andrew to ask, and, even odder, “Neil knows Morse?” He’d long accepted that Neil was as smart if not smarter than the average human, but Morse meant he actively paid attention and worked at unraveling a language he couldn’t possibly need.

Then again, he had spent who-knew-how-long aboard a naval ship.

It was a pity Kevin wasn’t one for backpedaling from his comments.

Andrew grunted a wordless equivalent to obviously, and pushed away from the railing, the line of his shoulders even tenser than usual.

With attention on Troy and The Fox far from being anything close to a threat, they should have been able to leave without harassment. Unhappy and stubborn with his opinion, Jean refused to aid in turning them around, but they had enough extra hands that Dan didn’t pressure him too hard.

“Captain!” Nicky called from the nest. Half-way up the main mast’s rigging, Dan flinched, dread imminent.

Below, Captain Wymack looked up, his hands tight around the ship’s wheel.

Their watcher continued with, “We’ve an approach from behind! A crew of six or seven, no more. She’s quick, sir!”

Getting away without conflict would have been too easy.

“We’re explorers on a long term voyage,” the Captain reminded them, voice raised to carry. “We work for a Northerner. We’d hoped to stop at Troy for repairs after a bad storm, but that was before we knew about the siege.”

And so they left without argument. Not even the Crown could find fault in that.

They didn’t slow their retreat, but they didn’t throw their all into an escape. Neil’s rune-covered lid was hidden under gunpowder sacks and tarp; the cannons were unloaded, and the rifles dismantled; Renee’s materials and papers were stashed in unremarkable crates and half-empty fish barrels. Given their refusal to fold their sails, they had enough time to accomplish hiding the necessities before the royal vessel hailed them to halt. As Nicky reported, she was a quick and small one: sporting only one, broad rectangle of a sail, her hull narrow and long, her crew of six-to-seven gave her a boost with three two rows of heavy oars. Her Captain, a woman with Royal Commodore insignias on her black coat, boarded from a large plank that the sailors tilted from their deck to The Fox’s.

“You’ve a peculiar name on your ship, Captain Wymack,” the Commodore confessed with a smile that not even the blind would call kind. “All told, combined with her make, your crew matches the infamous pirates that sank The Raven.”

“Would you like to see our papers?” The Captain replied, stiff with what the Commodore hopefully thought to be offense at the implication of his crew being pirates. Wymack despised the Crown, but he knew how to pick his battles. It was what made him Captain, and what kept their motley crew from sinking. “I assure you, we’re no scoundrels.”

“Consider me assured,” she replied after a long pause, her eyes sweeping those gathered on the deck. A few pirates shivered - the look in her eye was nothing less than an executioner’s axe glinting in dim morning light. “But do you mind if I take a look around? Just to be safe.”

The Captain’s mouth twitched, but he nodded and swept his arm back in a wide arc. “Of course. Take your time.”

She moved alone through their ship, her deep red cloak dragging across their floors and making her shadow heavier than it should have been.

After she’d finished with the hold and gunroom, she waltzed back to the deck and contemplated the Captain’s cabin. By then, all of the pirates had gathered somewhere above deck, loitering in tense clusters around barrels or wrapped posts.

The Captain cleared his throat, his hands tucked under his armpits. “Commodore--”

“Lola,” she said, her voice a knife. “I prefer Lola.”

Wymack waited for her to finish, but otherwise refused to acknowledge her interruption, continuing with, “-- If you’d like to see any papers, I’ll fetch them, but I enjoy keeping my privacy where possible. Ships don’t allow for much.”

“No, they don’t. Hardly any space to keep anything hidden for long.” Then she hummed, and whistled, high and piercing. Her men, still aboard their vessel, did not move. The pirates tensed, their hands hovering on swords and daggers, eyes flitting around or staring in bemusement at the interloper. Then she asked, lethal eyes on Wymack, “Let’s have a chat, captain to captain. Is it David, or Dave?”

Dan barked a command to draw! while Matt and Erik dove to dislodge the plank. Steel rattled and the pirates closed a circle around the Commodore, who had a lazy smile on her face and nothing more than a knife in her hand. The Captain raised his hand for them to hold before they charged her, his other curled around his sword’s hilt. Something was wrong. Something was off. What Commodore walked alone in a pirate’s ship? What Commodore armed herself with nothing more than a knife?

“We don’t want a fight,” Wymack told her. She laughed.

No Commodore came armed with just a knife, it turned out. The Fox rocked, a terrible rushing sound arising from the side - and then wood creaked, and groaned, and bowed, and cracked under the weight of a thick, pale tentacle, the limb curving heavy across the ship’s bow.

“I like Davey,” she purred. “And it’s far too late for you to say you don’t want a fight. You killed the King’s brother. You must understand, that’s not something we can take lightly.”

Two more tentacles rose to strangle the ship’s back, the roof of the barracks crumbling like tissue paper. Again, the ship rocked, but Lola whistled again, high and short, and The Fox groaned under the pressure but held steady. It didn’t feel natural: it felt held up, or bolted down, the typical sway of the sea robbed by the great beast curled around it.

Kraken, someone whispered, or thought loud enough for everyone to imagine they heard it. Impossible, and impossibly undeniable. A kraken, under a human’s control? It could sink this whole fleet if it wanted.

But it didn’t want that. It wanted The Fox, and only Lola, smiling and giggling, held it back.

She waved her hand at them as if they were playthings, all her seriousness evaporating. “The looks on your faces are priceless. I wish I had a painter to capture them. Unfortunately, we’re on a schedule; the Admiral would like to meet you before we pack you off to the capital for a hanging.

“Oh, don’t bother arguing. But if you don’t cooperate, you’ll be drowned along with your glorified sailboat.”

“Don’t see much difference between dying now and dying then,” the Captain responded, his voice colored with anger, and his eyes trained on the tentacle nearest them.

“You’ll have a trial, fair and square.” Lola replied, still gleeful. “Who knows? You won’t get off, Davey boy, but maybe one of your crew will. Are you going to condemn them to death here?”

He hesitated.

She laughed again. “Predictable. What sort of Captain can’t make a tough decision?”

At last, her men boarded the ship, chains in their hands and contempt on their faces. Still, the Captain did not budge. No was murmured, or hissed, or snarled -- Jean and Kevin in particular shrank back, the latter even calling, “Wymack, you can’t! You promised!”

“Kevin Day… Isn’t it?” Lola tilted her head and pretended to squint at him, her knife tip tapped against her chin. “You’ve the best chance at the labor yards rather than the gallows. I don’t see why you’re complaining.”

A man made to lay his hands on Kevin, and found himself with an armful of a short, blond-haired, ferocious animal. The man dropped gurgling on blood, and his fellows backed up -- Lola, however, strode forward, her face alive and eyes dancing.

It was a brutal, fast-paced exchange. Neither gave ground, and the crew dissolved into chaos around them.

It ended because Katelyn, though shackled, shoved one man into a tentacle, and the beast attached to it shook. The Fox lurched, the plank rattled, and Lola found breath to whistle again. Her shoulder had a deep gash, her dark uniform glistening; Andrew, in comparison, favored his right side, his left as red as her cloak. Another tentacle slithered across the deck, the ship’s creaking raising in alarm as it began to sink, slowly, into the sea.

Voice cracking, Wymack called for order. Swallowing, he called for order again, with far more certainty and a sinking feeling of horrified deja vu. Half the crew did; the other half, save two, continued their fighting and shouting until the railing splintered and a part of the deck caved, and they noticed how fast the water level rushed to over take them. The whirlpool to follow a ship’s sinking would drown them if the kraken didn’t eat them. The kraken would most likely eat them if they didn’t drown. A trial, foolish as it was to hope about, abruptly seemed much more preferable.

While she held his attention with her knife, it took three of Lola’s men to wrestle Andrew to the ground. It didn’t help the Commodore’s cause that Kevin joined in the fighting, heading off sailors before they could interfere with the single-minded determination borne of absolute fear. The key came as one sailor in particular: Andrew caught sight of him and his attention faltered for one critical second, and Lola pounced on the opportunity to knock his head against the mast-post and press a knee into his back. With his pivot point gone, three muscle-bound rowers against one under equipped pirate meant Kevin lost his footing and similarly crashed to the deck.

When those two fell, the Fox pirates were all accounted for in iron shackles.

Taking a moment to regain her breath, Lola grinned with all her teeth at the one to give her the most trouble. “If you had an ounce of respect in you, I’d offer you a spot in our navy. As it is, I hope to have the opportunity to skin you alive.”

Andrew didn’t dignify that with a response, the curved cut of his mouth promising extreme violence at her first wrong step.

(He did not look toward Drake.)

(Drake did not look at him until he noticed his face without trying to beat him down, and twins combined with familiarity.)

(Under the Commodore’s eye - an important distinction - Drake did nothing but take note.)

The plank was secured between pirate ship and royal vessel, its plane far more level with the kraken’s helpful lowering. They were packed along the aisle in one long line, their chains locking them together and their weaponry removed.

Five minutes later, a thundering crack! turned their heads. Someone protested, weak and feeble; another choked back a gasp and sob; another yet, her hair a mess and bandanna askew, stood and cursed and yelled at them, but she couldn’t go far bound to the others and Lola’s men encouraged her to sit with sword hilts and threats on her fellows’ well-being. A sigh shuddered out of the Captain’s chest. He, like a few others, forced himself to watch.

The Fox folded in the kraken’s grip. Her masts smashed into one another and inspired crashing waves as they tipped into the sea. The ship they’d called home disappeared far before her time with an anguished wail, not a whisper. Her crew watched on, their chests hollowed out with her.

“I’d have let you sink with her,” Lola informed them happily, “but Riko’s killers drowning with that sad disgrace would have made for a poor story. The public wants proof the King can manage his waters. You’ll all have to be it.”

“A trial,” Wymack said, but his tone wasn’t hopeful or desperate, “by law. It wouldn’t be a kingdom without law.”

“Trials will happen,” Lola assured him without sounding the least bit reassuring. “How else would the public have their proof laid out for them? But, oh, I do hope the Admiral decides the King doesn’t need all of you.”

The royal vessel rocked with The Fox’s aftershocks, and more than a few couldn’t look anyone else in the eye.

By the time they reached the blockade’s line and passed smoothly through it, the sea had smoothed into picturesque glass behind them.

They reached the Crown’s Hand in what felt like a blink, its dark wood and red sails as unconcerned with their arrival as the sea had been with The Fox’s disappearance. The Raven had been the King’s jewel in craftsmanship and solitary power, but it was, in the end, simply one ship. By commanding the bulk of His Majesty’s navy, the Admiral’s ship seemed greater than Riko’s could have hoped to be. The Crown’s Hand sat in the middle of the blackened fleet, and as they were ushered to the deck, it became clear her crew bested Riko’s by leaps and bounds.

They lacked the uniformity of Riko’s, for one. They could adapt to any work, and they were prepared to take up their crew mate’s mantel should they falter. Most of all, they were loyal, the quality obvious in the glances and quips they shared, elbows digging into sides and mouth stretched lazily into smiles even as prisoners entered their midst. It wasn’t what a person might expect from the top of a navy famed for lacking individuality and free will. Lola’s men, unloaded onto the deck next to the pirates, matched the expectation with their straight lines and straight-forward eyes.

“Twenty… That’s even more than expected.” One man whistled appreciatively, his hair slicked back. “Did it again, eh, Lola?”

She grinned back, as knife-sharp as ever. “I get the job done. Call the Admiral, would you?”

“I’m sure he knows. But what’s that? You look a little peakish.”

Her grin grew. She’d bandaged the gash on her shoulder, but nothing more; the white gauze was already soaked through with red. In contrast, Andrew’s eyelids had drooped, his head bowed despite himself, his blood seeping down his left leg.

“Just a bit of fun,” she said.

The reason the Crown’s Hand’s crew strayed so far from the norm became apparent the moment her Captain emerged from his cabin. The relaxed atmosphere disappeared in a flash, every member snapping to attention.

Stocky, broad-faced and eyes like a calm sea that hid a kraken, the Admiral surveyed his prisoners first, his crew second, and finally, Lola. He waved for his crew to relax, and they did, immediately. His smile stretched his face into something worse than a knife or sword; it was a promise and a guarantee, and it would never lie.

A few pirates were struck by the similarity between the man's auburn hair, powerful jaw and eyes. He looked like an other-worldly creature. He looked, more than a bit, like Neil. But then the Admiral smiled at them like that, and the similarity passed.

“Lola,” he said, voice that of command without doubt, and of pride without delusion, “there’s twenty. You outdid yourself.”

“That a bad thing, Admiral?” She drawled, one hip popped out and hand on the other.

“We don’t need twenty,” he answered. “Ichirou asked for thirteen, plus the traitor. You know how I feel about dead weight.”

Eyes widened. They did not belong to any wearing a black uniform.

Lola hummed her understanding, and glanced over her shoulder at her captives. She asked, very reasonably, “Which ones of you killed the Prince?”

No pirate answered.

“Hurry, now,” she murmured. “Or I’ll choose six to spend the journey tied to the ship’s sails.”

“I didn’t.” From the middle of the group, Sheena’s words gasped out of her. “I didn’t, and-- and- he didn’t, and she didn’t, and-”

“Stop. You don’t know what you’re doing, fool,” Jean snarled at her in a low voice.

Sheena didn’t heed him. She rattled off the names of those recruited in the southern port, and finished with her eyes, pupils contracted in fear, flitting between Lola’s and the Admiral’s. She continued to say that none of them had a part in the Prince’s murder, that they hadn’t known when they’d signed on, that they were innocent, that the others hadn’t told them. Jack backed her up, and Alma, too, stammered a few words of assent.

The Admiral cut them off with a, “I appreciate you saving me time. Honesty’s a good quality to have.” Sheena gulped, then let out a tremulous, wobbling breath, her expression blooming into hope.

He continued with, “But for more than I like honesty, I despise traitors. Sink the deadweight, bring the Captain to my quarters, and lock the rest in the cells. Romero, see to informing the fleet: a quarter will sail with us come morning. We’re heading home, boys and girls.”

He left to a chorus of yes, sir and good to hear, sir, the crew immediately setting to their tasks.

The new recruits were no longer new to The Fox’s crew. For close to eight months, they’d hunted together, they’d explored together, they’d lived together. The Fox’s pirates, as a rule, did not give up their own; when the sailors reached to unlock them from the chain line, they all fought as if their life was on the line.

It didn’t matter how they fought. They were handicapped by shackles and numbers. It didn’t matter how they yelled. The sailors were not afraid of shutting them up with fists or hilts. It didn’t matter. Five were dragged from their line, heavier iron clapped on their ankles and their hands tightened behind their backs -- when it came time for the sixth, Renee blurted, “She’s lying. I’m Lily. Not her.”

Immediately the pirates’ protests became an even greater mess, one yelling over another’s demand that Renee, don’t you fucking dare! Through it all, only three remained silent: three were white-faced and staring, and one regarded her from the corner of his eye, his fatigue forgotten.

The sailors didn’t care much about who was Renee and who was Lily. Renee went willingly when they pulled her from line, and that was good enough reason to clap her in iron and arrange her at the railing.

“You have a plan,” Allison demanded, or begged, white-faced and staring. Beside her, Lily trembled, her lips forming on unspoken words.

“Renee,” Jean begged, or mourned, the resignation he’d long fought silencing anything else.

Lola laughed at her and him, and personally shoved Renee over.

There’s a kraken, he tried to warn them.

He recognized the bottom of one of the ships, and the coloring of the rest. He couldn’t find his voice; it was gone. As he should be, his instinct urged him. He’d been among these ships before. He could not, and would not, go back.

Come down, he tried to beg Andrew, the only one paying attention, the one that had always paid attention. He clicked and blinked and tapped on the water. Leave the ship. I’ll pull you to safety. I’ll pull you all to safety.

As Andrew continued to stare at him - he tapped back slow down - Neil nearly sobbed in frustration. It all made sudden, perfect sense: the humans kept it here, and out of pain and unmitigated hunger, it’d cleared the area of larger food. If it found Neil, it might just eat him, too.

How could he emphasis urgency? He tried what he’d seen on his first ship, the quicker beats that saved time.

Time. They had no time.

There’s a kraken! He shouted without the right words, throat constricted to nothing.

Then he felt it: the shift of a creature too large to be comfortable out of the depths, the current itself stalled by its bulk. He ducked his head down, and caught its shivering cries, the pitch too high for a human. It wasn’t its fault it was in the human’s grasp; it was in pain, unbelievable pain, and it only knew if it did as told, the pain might abate. Neil didn’t feel pity for it. In its pain, it would eat him. In following the humans’ decree, it would eat his family.

He couldn’t even take comfort in delusion: these humans wouldn’t waste the kraken’s time without reason. If reached, his crew had no chance.

He jerked back to the surface, but Andrew was gone.

Don’t leave, he thought, and choked on it. I can’t be alone again. Please.

Andrew hated the word, but Andrew wasn’t there.

He’d sooner die than leave them, but what if the humans didn’t let the kraken eat him? What if they put him in a box again? What if they decided not to hang him to dry but, rather, leave him to rot in the dark? What if they gave him no cubes or cards, and never tapped on the glass, and fed him only enough that his stomach was all he could think with? What if, what if, what if.

Andrew was gone. The kraken came in lurches and muted screams.

What if they did to him whatever they did to it?

He fled.

The kraken busied itself with the ship. At the end, it sank as low as it could, smashed the planks to splinters, curled in its nest of broken things, and sighed as pain left and sleep came.

He returned.

He swam over the kraken and after the smaller boat, mind blank beyond: are they there?

As they crossed the ship line and approached the one whose underside Neil recognized, the thought changed to: they must be there.

He hid under the hull, whole body pressed tight to its bumpy surface. It’d gained a few more streaks of algae, but it was in much better shape than The Fox had been before Neil arrived. These humans took care of their ship. Neil decided, then and there, that there was such a thing as too much care to give a ship’s underside.

He waited.

He worried, they must be there.

Did humans put other humans in cages? He’d heard the Admiral carve humans up, his own carved skin hidden as he listened. It’d seemed like a pointed gesture. He hadn’t cared at the time, too concerned with his own pain and capture. It had made sleeping hard. Then again, everything had made sleeping hard.

It didn’t seem better if his loud humans were carved up rather than caged. They didn’t have scales worth preserving.

You’re being stupid, he hissed into his palm, his throat opened now that it was too late. His voice rebounded to him, and it helped, a little. Think. Plan. There’s something you can do to fix this.

(He couldn’t think.)

He waited, and he worried, claws set to the ship’s hull to drag him back-and-forth, back-and-forth along its beam.

A human crashed into the ocean, sinking like a stone despite its struggling.

His loud human, the one that stank like nature and unnatural power, sank like a stone despite her struggling.

He was off like a shot from the hull; he snatched her and retreated to the ship’s back, the part where no one on board could see. Others from nearby ships would be able to see, but humans needed oxygen, and he swam as fast as he could but she still gasped on surfacing. She tried not to wheeze or cough, he could tell, but her eyes were all whites and it was hard, it was very hard for her not to make a lot of noise, but then she wasted precious breath to say, “Neil,” in a tone that made him frown because he hadn’t been kind to her before and she couldn’t still hold out hope he’d be kind now, but then he remembered, oh, right, he’d maybe just saved her life.

More humans fell from the ship to the ocean. He felt himself pale.

Renee sucked in a breath, and nodded at him.

He refused to let her go, so he took her with him. She buried her head in his neck; he let her, focused on who was falling.

Two, three, four more, one after the other. Not the ones who’d tapped on his glass or given him gifts or told him he would be in the dark for a while so he would know it wouldn’t be forever.

Five -- he darted up, let Renee breathe, let her say, “Neil, you need to--” before he started to pull them down and she sucked in another breath to hold.

Six. Including Renee, six.

He only had two arms.

Renee was heavier than a human should be. She had no free arms.

He brought them back to the surface. She steadied her breathing quicker, and looked at him with slightly-widened eyes, as if she understood but didn’t want to believe. As he watched her eyes, their faces very close, he saw her begin to believe, and contemplate a protest, and shutter into nothing, and then open into grim acceptance.

He thought - hoped - more would drop, maybe Andrew or Dan, maybe Kevin or Matt, maybe Jean or Nicky or Allison or Wymack or, for them, Aaron or Katelyn or Abby or Erik. He also hoped they wouldn’t, because he still only had two arms. But maybe, maybe, if it was them, he could think enough to figure something out.

At the end of her resignation, she tipped her forehead against his, her eyes closed. He held still, quiet and unnerved, and, most of all, glad he’d been right. They were here. He’d fix this. They’d fix this, him and Renee, which wasn’t ideal but was far better than him alone.

“I need to get to the ship,” she whispered to him. “I need my supplies.”

“A kraken is sleeping on your ship,” Neil whispered back.

“Better sleeping than awake.”

“Name another plan.”

“I can’t, Neil. Not right now.”

“How long?”

“We have until morning,” she told him. “They’ll leave for the capital.”

He thought about that.

“Isn’t it better,” he hazarded, “if this ship isn’t surrounded? Less opposition to deal with.”

Renee blinked her eyes open, and looked at him.

He thought about the Admiral carving humans up, and amended, “Better sooner than later.”

“No,” she said. “You’re right. I-- you’re right. It’d be easier. We only have one shot. We can’t waste it.”

He didn’t want to be right. He wanted, as much as he had ever wanted anything, even more than he’d wanted freedom, his obnoxiously noisy, two-legged family back.

“Can we get these chains off me?” She asked. “And go somewhere else to scheme?”

Those were better plans, even if they were temporary.

They had to pick their way across the fleet carefully, Renee holding her breath as he darted between ships. They had a few moments where she kneed him in the side because he’d misjudged how long a human could last underwater, and a few more where they were certainly almost spotted, but eventually, eventually, they reached the shoreline, and -- after swimming along its edge -- found a well-shielded inlet in one hillside, its rocky cliffs a jagged, short maze.

There, she had him pull a pin from her boot, and instructed him on what to do with the cuffs on her hands. They popped open, and Neil found his thoughts coming clearer. She worked at the heavier iron on her ankles while he kept watch at the inlet’s mouth, his hands buried in the rocky sandy and fingers slowly scraping against stone. Once those shackles, too, popped off, and she let out an explosive, relieved sigh - possibly to mitigate her or his fear. He didn’t want to say it worked, but he could think much, much clearer after that.

She still stunk like the earth, but with the sun high overhead and the cliffs protecting them from being spotted by anyone on a ship, Neil found himself inching closer to her until he had his tail curled around her back. She, thankfully, didn’t comment on it, though she did run one hand over his closed dorsal fin. When she left it there, a warm, solid weight, he didn’t say anything.

He had to ask: “Why do you need those specific supplies from the ship?”

“I kept some clippings from the hippocamp,” she said. He wondered if he suddenly minded her hand on his flank, but discarded making a deal out of it as too obvious. She seemed to understand anyway, which made him half-wish he had made a deal out of it. “They’re powerful. With them and some time for a ritual, I should be able to summon something big.” Teeth caught her bottom lip, an unusual sign of anxiety from a woman who held herself so still. “Or set something big free.”

Right. The kraken.

“You know what’s wrong with it?”

She nodded, but failed to raise her head from it. Her bangs, already drying, fell in her face. “I have an inkling.”

Skin prickling over what that meant, Neil kept his eyes to the inlet’s opening and voice level. Humans with potential were terrifying creatures.

“If you release it, it could turn on us.”

“How smart are krakens?”

It didn’t matter how smart krakens could be. It mattered how much pain this one was in and would be in, if it had any idea what was around it beyond something to break and eat.

Tail sweeping rocks aside before settling around her again, Neil shrugged.

“I’d hope, all considered,” she said, sounding very hopeful indeed, “it’d rather turn on them.”

Briefly, he deliberated on telling her to summon something rather than free something. But she had her mind decided, that much was obvious; her framing it as a discussion was courtesy, not negotiation. Noisy humans were always so stubborn.

You fit in well, he’d been told by one of them, you might as well be human.

(Kevin was an ass.)

(Neil did not hesitate to tell him so.)

(It didn’t, apparently, help his case, as it’d raised Andrew’s eyebrows and twitched a muscle in his cheek.)

“Not to send you on errands for me,” Renee said, bringing Neil back to the present of just her and him, “but if you fetch the supplies from the ship, I can collect what I need from the land and clear a space for the ritual.”

Separating didn’t sound good to him, but the necessity was undeniable. He also felt the need to clarify, picking the phrase he’d heard Matt sigh at Allison, “I’m not your dog.”

“No,” with a small, private smile, “you’ve got gills. You’d be the strangest dog I’ve ever seen.”

Not knowing what a dog looked like made fashioning a retort difficult.

He imagined a kraken instead. Specifically, the one sleeping on the ship’s remains, its limbs wider than him by several sizes and its beak wicked-sharp and lined with fangs.

It didn’t seem like much next to the images of the Admiral putting a knife to a human or a cage left in the dark, but it was worth considering. When he harrumphed his consent to the fetch quest, she laid out what she needed most and what would be helpful if found, and told him without being direct that he needed to be back before the night set in. That wouldn’t be difficult; either the kraken would wake, or it wouldn’t, but either way, he wouldn’t dally around it.

Krakens were not common occurrences outside of the ocean’s depths -- the sun burned their skin, and with their size, they lived as royalty in the darker waters. That wasn’t to say they were necessarily common: a youth recently thrown from his mother’s side as he grew too big for the area to support both parent and child, Neil had only met the one as they both searched for somewhere to go. Krakens weren’t good conversationalists. They didn’t, as a rule, enjoy company.

As Neil left Renee and made his way to this one’s resting spot, the best option he could think of was to find her items and leave. It was inevitable he’d wake the creature up. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to fight it. Rather, he hoped he wouldn’t have to dodge it. He was as fast as he’d ever been, and not a little arrogant about it, but it would still be a pain to keep track of all those tentacles.

The thought struck him as lazy. Had he gotten compliant with a full family to watch his back?

Yes, his mind told him, his mother’s hard gaze on his back.

But she wasn’t here, and wouldn’t be. They would be.

If one of the last Hippocamp’s remains was what it took, so be it.

The kraken slumbered where it had fallen, a haphazard sprawl of limbs and pale, wrinkled skin with splintered wood and half a ship peeking out from under it. Splotches of its washed-out coloring had darkened to an angry red, its skin bubbled up in wild, rashy streaks. It was a wonder it could sleep. Neil wondered if resting after completing the humans’ task was part of its binding, and thought it likely.

Fear made his heart pound because he would be a fool not to be nervous around a creature that could, and would, break him with one flick of an arm. Slowing, he coasted more than swam toward the wreck, eyeing the creature and water-darkened planks both.

It was a sad sight, both creature and ship. Two displaced things, both beyond repair in their own ways.

A ship was a ship was a ship, but as he curved around a tentacle and ducked through a cracked doorway without even having to think about where it led, something like an ache slowed his heart in its frigid crush. He’d never seen the inside of the map room, but that was just as well: its roof was caved in, shreds of paper drifting through shards of the light cast between snapped planks and splintered wood. Oil covered the base of one desk, dense and seeping down from shattered jars and an overturned lamp. A chair, missing two legs, was a heap in the corner. The drawers were askew, its hinges crooked. Nonetheless, it took a few tries to jimmy the door open; it would’ve been easier to simply smash the wood with his tail, but he was trying for quiet.

Incredibly, amazingly, the kraken slept on.

The first drawer was a bust of maps and ink. A tendril of the latter reached for him, and he shied away. He’d never personally experienced man-made liquid in his gills, teeth or hair, but he’d seen the pitiful creatures who had, and he would not tolerate becoming one of them.

The next drawer opened easier, broken-stemmed plants, scattered, fragile bones and unbroken bottles of dust littered within. He shuffled through them, but there was nothing that smelled like a Hippocamp, or matched the other materials she had named.

The last drawer refused to open. Its hinges were mostly intact, its lock in place. He scowled at it, tugged its handle, yanked on its handle, and finally drifted back to eyeball it.

Outside, the kraken slept on.

He forced air from his lungs to bubble out of his mouth, a little stream of discontent.

He checked the rest of the cabin, but the materials were nowhere to be found. Out of curiousity and procrastination (he’d always wondered, hadn’t he? A little bit of him had always wondered what it would be like to walk the deck like the others), he swam himself to the galley, another room he’d only seen from the outside: it was half-caved in by the pale tentacle cut through its side, kitchenware scattered along the floor and anything wooden in shambles. Just because he could, he perched on the side of a broken bench, tail wrapped under like a human’s legs might be. From there, he watched the kraken’s pale, burnt arm, the subtle pulse under its loose skin as blood continued to beat through it. Close to the head, the limb was thick as a killer whale. It was one of eight.

Taking a breath, fins flaring and closing, Neil went back to the locked drawer.

He almost smashed into it with his tail just to be done with it, but then the glint of a pin caught his eye and he thought about what Renee had instructed him to do with her cuffs. The drawer’s lock was different, deeper and better made, but he heard the same types of clicking and thereafter settled in to work at it.

It took a while. It took a long, long while. He counted to one hundred to convince himself it wasn’t taking that long, that the kraken’s weight was making time stretch, but then he was on his sixth run-through to one hundred and the lock still hadn’t opened. He jabbed the pin in with more ferocity. Nothing clicked, and nothing opened.

Right.

They didn’t have time for this.

He dropped the pin and backed up.

Darting forward from the opposite wall and twisting at the last second, he smashed the broadside of his tail into the door’s hinge. It rattled and cracked, the wood around it denting. He backed up, and did it again.

Around him, the waters stirred.

The door opened easily on its splintered hinges after he ripped at it. A bundle of white caught his eye first, a cloth bag next, a bottle of blood after that, and an empty jar last.

The kraken groaned as it woke, and the what remained of the ship creaked as limbs shifted around it.

He grabbed all the items and tore out the door, angling for the surface.

A whoozy moan followed him; it raised to a disgruntled screech, an accusation of compliance and thievery both, and the kraken lifted two limbs to chase after him, though he heard the movement more than he saw it, his eyes glued to the sun streaming in from above. He was fast. He was as fast as he had ever been. He was faster.

He was, as it turned out. The kraken didn’t regard him as something worth moving toward the light for, its mind no doubt fuzzy from sleep and whatever had caused the sleep, and he sped away from its limbs before they could grab him. When he breached the surface, he did so at such velocity as to be, briefly, airborne. The wind cut at him, a gull screeched at him as it took wing below him, and he dived back in with hope fluttering against his ribcage, nose immediately turned to Renee’s hiding spot.

All items were accounted for, and her search through the surrounding fields and forests had been successful. Under the crescent moon’s light, Renee marked the rocks of their inlet with the jagged ends of burnt sticks, the charcoal clinging despite the seawater’s spray and a slowly rising tide. Special care was given to the inlet’s mouth: this, she told him, would act as the natural beginning and end to their ritual.

He told her this wasn’t their ritual, it was hers, and she huffed a laugh.

He spent most of his time backed into a rocky corner, his tail one coil away from wrapping around him. If Sometimes she asked him to bring her something, her words muffled by her writing stick in her mouth, her hands full of white-blue scales and delicate horse hair. The blood was dashed against the largest rock. The inlet was, in due time, covered with runes. It should have taken her days to do it, and it should have been impossible for her to reach the top, but somehow, it wasn’t, and she did. He must have blinked and missed it.

Or her magic helped her, desperate for commitment.

For the first time, he began to truly understand what Andrew had meant by you, and those like you, are different.

She told him to get out of the rocky shallows, just in case her magic thought she meant him and not the kraken. She didn’t need to tell him twice - he swam farther than she probably meant, though he always kept her in his sight.

She knelt in the shallows, silent and ethereal, head bowed and hands clasped. Neil resisted the urge to pace in circles.

The empty bottle was last. It was the hippocamp’s last breath, she told him. He didn’t understand except that he did, the significance something old as the moon.

She murmured words under her breath.

Around them, the tide rose. It gathered unnaturally at their inlet; it lapped at her stomach, then her shoulders, then her chin. She didn’t stop speaking or kneeling, and he fought between falling back and ripping her away -- too soon, a wave surged forward and filled the inlet perfectly to the brim, submerging her below its churning waters. She’d drown, he thought. She needed to get up.

Without the air to jumble its meaning, he understood her words exactly. The terror to follow pushed him back, and he no longer worried about rescuing her. What was happening wasn’t natural, wasn’t something a human should be able to do, and nothing as insignificant as suffocation would interfere with it.

What she asked and what she offered, the tides accepted.

The world tilted, and someone else’s reality broke.

The deal made and ritual finished, the waters rushed out of the inlet as if the very ocean didn’t wish to associate with Renee Walker. Neil fought to keep from being swept away, but he couldn’t help the dizziness that washed over him once the world righted itself and Renee, whole and breathing air as a human should, stood at the cliff’s edge and watched him.

Far away, Neil thought he could hear a displaced beast’s anguish.

“You didn’t free it,” he accused as he clung to the cliff’s side, though what he witnessed told him to be afraid of her, to roll over and let her do as she wanted, let her take scale or blood or breath from him, and maybe, if he was lucky, she’d never look his way again.

She looked like she didn’t pity him, but she nevertheless understood the feeling.

“You can’t free something that’s been chained,” she said.

“I was chained,” he snapped. “I’m free.”

She shook her head. “You were caged by class and iron. Not by your heart and mind.”

“Fancy distinction for a simple human to know,” he growled.

“My coven leader tried to bind me with something similar.” Her eyes flicked to the moon, but returned to him in a blink. He tilted his chin up and refused to cower. “He succeeded. Even after the caster’s dead, the collar’s there, ready for a leash.”

He felt ready for a fight. He felt a shudder run from his fingertips to his tail-tip, and kept his jaw closed tight.

She took a deep breath, eyes closed, and then, eyes opened, smiled sadly at him.

“We’ll wait until they’re too far out to call the fleet. We’d best catch some sleep before we have to set out.” She paused. “I guess sleeping in the middle of the ocean won’t be a problem for you. It’s going to be a problem for me.”

In other words: they would wait until the next night to attack.

Neil hundred down outside the inlet, cheek rubbed against rough stone to remind him where he was, ears tuned to her until she climbed from the cliff bed to the grass over it, and, eventually, without realizing it, found sleep.

They set out after the ships sailed in dawn’s early light. Without any accessible boat, she had to cling to his back, and he had to stay precariously close to the surface.

Below them, the waters stirred, and a kraken abandoned its broken trophy to follow, its cries at being forced against its nature an unmuffled, ceaseless thing.

Ushered in by unimpressed, disdainful sailors and clanking in chains, Captain Wymack rejoined his crew at the night of the first day looking wane and rattled. The Crown’s Hand had two cells, and both were packed full of prince-killing pirates: when Wymack entered their midst, they parted less like the sea before a staff and more like a group forced to make room in a life-raft. Immediately questions on his well-being and threats against the Admiral arose, but he waited until the sailors dead-bolted their room behind them as they left to speak, and when he did, all he said was:

“None of you are to leave these cells before we reach the capital. Do you understand me?”

For a man unwounded and unbroken, he was deathly serious.

“They aren’t much for negotiation,” Matt hedged, spooked despite himself at his Captain’s state.

“I don’t care. Make them work for it. Force them to knock you out, or you don’t go at all.”

“Fighting’s one thing we can do,” Dan reassured, despite her own worriedly pinched eyebrows and the fact the Captain never, ever needed reassuring.

Wymack nodded, looked each of them in the eye, and, a little less Captain and little more terrified, nodded again. Then he half-sat, half-folded against the iron bars, and Abby fell to his side to pat him over and ask, quietly, what had happened.

Lola was as skilled with violent description as she was with her knife, apparently. When it came to low-life sea rats, Admiral Wesninski encouraged it. That was all Wymack would let them hear.

After the cells fell back into as quiet as the tense atmosphere allowed without breaking all their nerves, he also said, “He kept asking about the mermaid.”

“About--?” Nicky began, but cut himself off. “The mermaid that we lost.”

“Lost it ages ago,” Wymack agreed, his elbows on his knees and back bowed. “He wouldn’t believe me.”

“Skittish creatures, mermaids,” Dan murmured.

“Too fast to catch once they’re out,” Kevin echoed.

“Apparently the Admiral was the one to catch it in the first place.”

Side-to-side with Aaron, his side patched messily with ripped cloth and eyes no longer clouded, Andrew mused on all the ways to crack a human’s skull.

Later in the night, a sailor arrived. He had a musket in his hands, and eyes for the twins.

He gestured with the musket and told them that they were requested, and they best make their way toward the door, but that the rest of the pirates should stay back.

Aaron said, “You think I don’t bite, Drake?”

Andrew said, “Touch him, and I’ll kill you.”

The rest of the pirates did not budge from blocking the cell’s door.

Though chained and caged, there were fourteen of them, and one of him. He weighed his options, mouth twisted, and left.

Cautious glances were exchanged in his wake, but neither twins would meet their eyes. Nicky, as it turned out, also knew nothing. If the mood were better, he might have asked Aaron. As it was, he kept his peace. There were implications in Andrew’s wording, and the sailor’s late-night call, but it culminated simply into:

“Real pieces of work they’ve got running this rust-bucket,” Dan muttered.

“No good man stays long enough to reach this rank,” Jean added.

“Not as if you really know what they’re asking for you to give up,” Kevin said, “until you’re there.”

“Maybe, if you don’t listen to anything but your own pig-headed arrogance,” Dan returned.

Kevin’s mouth opened, but for once, he paused, and swallowed the words.

“What made you desert?” Jean asked, apropos of nothing. He sounded more defeated than demanding, fingers digging into his forearms and long legs drawn to his chest. He sounded as if he didn’t expect an answer, but he’d grown tired of not asking. “Why did you leave? I know you had family to go to, but what started it?”

What family? Dan wondered.

“He threatened to cut off my hand,” Kevin said, swallowing around nothing, “if I took the the promotion. I would’ve been a Commodore. In no time at all, maybe I could’ve taken Wesninski’s place as Admiral. That’s what the King’s uncle told us.”

“He told you and Riko?”

Kevin chuckled without humor, and looked in sore need of a drink. It was affirmation, and Jean laughed, humorless, along with him.

Jean started a word, stopped at the mah--, tapped his finger restlessly on his arm, and continued with, “Tetsuji never did know what his nephew was up to,”

“To be fair,” Kevin replied, “neither did I.”

“You knew,” Jean corrected him, “you just refused to see it.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Huge. It’s huge.”

Silence returned.

“Touching,” someone drawled from the other cell, and Kevin shrugged away a quarter of his tension while Jean snorted, grip loosened on his arms.

“We aren’t all going to start having heart-to-hearts, are we?” Matt worried. “I never wanted to know Dan’s deepest, darkest secrets. There’s a reason we never talk.”

“You two spend every hour of the day together, and yet, when it’s night, you whisper and giggle about your shared day again. Honestly, if either of you ever shut up, the rest of us might have actually caught some sleep. ” Allison retorted, the first thing she’d said but also sounding exactly as she always had.

Dan blew her a kiss from the opposite cell while Matt, his shoulder bumping Allison’s, gave a small grin.

“We’ve a long journey to the capital,” Wymack sighed, the fear from before fading and his typical surliness bolstered, “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to learn how all of you rankle each other more than you already do.”

“We can’t risk it sinking the ship.”

“It isn’t as if it can distinguish who we want and who we don’t.”

“Can’t you make it?”

“It doesn’t work like that. I give it directions. It follows it as well as it can in the state that it is.”

“Its body follows it. It’s fully aware of what you’re making it do. It’s been wailing since we set out.”

“I know. I feel it.”

“Can you?”

“Neil, please.”

Neil bit back further derision, told himself it wasn’t really her he was mad at, and returned his gaze to the ships ahead of them.

They’d waited until night fell to sneak closer, as Renee’s lungs rendered her absolutely useless at sea-based stealth. Now, however, they’d ducked and weaved and darted (or, Neil had, Renee hanging on) their way through the rear squadron for the their main target, the Crown’s Hand. At least thirty ships sailed alongside her, and that was barely a fraction of what had surrounded Troy. It seemed excessive for a siege on a walled city, and even more excessive for a trip home, but Renee quietly pointed out they probably hoped to use Troy as a way-station as they continued their march through the eastern lands, and Neil, if he thought like a human, had to agree.

Whoever controlled the kraken before them should have noticed their hold breaking, but if they’d tried to investigate, Renee and Neil didn’t know about it.

They did know they were courting danger by sneaking around hulls and hoping sailors wouldn’t glance down.

Don’t you have something that lets you breathe underwater? He’d demanded before the ships had even entered their line of sight.

Not with anything I could find here, she’d sighed.

“We’ll have it start with the other ships,” Renee murmured into his ear, adjusting how her arms looped around his neck. Even in the dark, her skin was too hot: she had the same weathered skin all the pirates had, but a day’s stretch under the hot sun while coated in water had left her hands and face a burning red, promising worse pain in the morning to follow. It couldn’t be comfortable. She didn’t, however, complain. “Have them spread out and disorganized. Then…”

Neil waited.

Neil prompted, “Then?”

“I could have it sweep away the men on deck,” she offered, dubious. “They couldn’t let our friends wander around like they pleased, could they?”

Stiffly, he said, “You don’t sound certain.”

“I’m not.” Her arms, again, shifted around his neck. They had to hurt from holding on all day, too. But still, she didn’t complain. “I don’t know if there is a plan that would let me sound certain.”

They both fell quiet, and thought the same thing: one chance at surprise. We can’t botch it.

Neil wracked his brain for options as the Crown’s Hand came into view. As before, everything in him begged him to flee; unlike before, he had a goal, and help, and the resolution that he wouldn’t leave them behind as he had every other creature in his life. The feeling filled up his chest, pressed his heart into a calmer beat, his eyes sharp and thoughts clear.

“If we tipped the boat,” he proposed, “I could ferry out the ones we want.”

Turning this over, Renee hummed deep in her chest.

After a long pause that had Neil glancing at the ships not far from the Crown’s Hand, she asked, “What if the kraken eats them?”

“Krakens don’t like the taste of human. If you don’t tell it to, it might not cross its mind.”

“Might.”

Neil shrugged under her grip. She hummed again, this time a little pointed. He deserved that, he supposed.

“It’d be a mess,” she said. “What we have planned, that’s absolute chaos. There’s no telling if they have precautions that could down it in a second if the kraken went rogue. They could die from drowning, from a panicked sailor, from falling wrong and being skewered by a board. We need to keep at least one ship intact to use afterward, too. I know you can’t carry us all.”

“Tip this one, then right it before it sinks.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” she said, “but I don’t know enough to say it absolutely wouldn’t work.”

He pressed his hands flat against the ship’s side, and glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

“There isn’t a plan with certainty.”

The corner of her mouth twitched up, the rest of her nothing less than determinated.

“I don’t know how long it’ll take for me to feel my arms again,” she admitted to him, “so I’d appreciate if you didn’t go too deep.”

He sniffed, a little insulted. Did she think he would’ve saved her if he planned on letting her drown later?

Evidently realizing his thought process, she smothered a laugh against his hair. He didn’t mind that as much after a full day of swimming together and a few dozen, oddly nonsensical chats about anything from clouds to daily scale-care (though rest assured, what she did to the kraken and the hippocamp and what she could do to him remained in his mind). She said, “Alright. Get ready.”

She closed her eyes and focused on something.

He ducked his head underwater and heard the kraken’s high-pitched displeasure shift to curious grumbling and, finally, settle on a vengeance-filled scream. It hadn’t realized its new master wouldn’t mind if it sank the ships it’d been leashed to for so long. Renee had been right: it did want to turn on its oppressors.

The scream reached every ear, audible in its ferocity. As the kraken breached in the middle of the squadron’s rear guard, its limbs lashing out with abandon, the sound carried across every ship, woke every sailor, and struck primal fear into every human heart.

It took less time for the waters to become choppy than for the sailors to realize what was happening; it took them far more time to regain their bearings and rush for cannons rather than swords, shouts and yells and a few screams joining the kraken’s anger. By the time the first cannon cracked, five ships had littered the ocean floor.

Unmoving from the Crown’s Hand, Neil and Renee waited as chaos unfolded around them.

The kraken weathered its blows with the impressively thick shield of pure hatred. It circled their ship with easy, disappearing underwater if one brig proved quicker with its cannons than another, only to reappear to shove the vessel into its neighbor. It was a child with sticks and dried leaves for playthings: it viewed the ships as things worth destroying, and took immense satisfaction in doing so.

The Admiral’s ship’s sails snapped taut, and it began to pull ahead of its kin. There was no hearing anyone over the cacophony of splintering wood and dying sailors, but Neil saw it flash signals as it left.

Hold -- fire at eyes -- pin it!

They didn’t have a failsafe.

Renee laughed when he translated, her own attention on whatever tied her to the kraken.

The two clung to their chosen ship’s hull as it broke rank to pull away. That it wanted to survive was fine: they needed it intact, and a few ships had grown terrified enough that cannonballs dropped too close for comfort.

Two ships flanked the Crown’s Hand, and soon enough, they had the distance to see that the handful left behind had no hope in beating the kraken. The Admiral knew that, Neil thought. That was why he was running. By all respects, the tactical retreat should have worked: though it didn’t tire, it was one beast against thirty-odd ships, and Renee tersely told him that it felt more like a bruise than a living creature.

Their ship and her escorts left the chaos behind, the night swallowing up sight but not sound.

Neither Neil nor Renee could say they altogether minded the sound, but they didn’t say anything. They stuck to the hull, and kept an eye out for those who might spot them.

Miraculously, none did.

Around them, it finally grew quiet. Renee’s breathing was measured and practiced, her eyes squeezed shut.

“Are you alright?” He whispered.

“It doesn’t have much time left,” she told him.

It hadn’t had any time left the moment a human bound it, Neil didn’t say. He simply asked, “Does it have enough?”

A pause. Then, she nodded.

Together, they waited. The night drew on, the waves against the three ships the only noise.

Above them, a man - the Admiral - began to recount damages and recalculate their path.n

On their left, a deep red tentacle curved up and smashed down, soundly crushing the back of the black and red brig.

On their right, another repeated the process.

Sailors abandoned ship. The Crown’s Hand bristled with iron pikes and swords, and the Admiral stood tall at her helm, his eyes cold as his escorts lagged and, slowly, began to sink.

(Below them, a creature was dying.)

“Back up,” Renee said, then shouted, “Back up!”

Neil gripped her arm, turned, and sped in the opposite direction.

No sooner had he done so than the ship lurched. A tentacle knocked into the ship’s broadside, over-compensated in its exhaustion, and cracked into its hull. Sailors fell from what appeared to be the gunroom, bones and bodies broken on the rough waters and in the kraken’s beak.

“It’s eating them,” Neil hissed. “Get it to stop!”

“I can’t,” Renee replied, strained, “It’s barely alive, I can’t keep a hold on it.”

The ship tipped again as the kraken smashed another limb into it, water flooding onto its deck. The Admiral was still visible, still commanding, an immobile force that spurred his crew to climb riggings and plunge pikes and arrows into the kraken’s skin. It was horrifically silent under the abuse; it simply raised another limb, and, rather than push the ship, crashed it down on the helm.

It crushed the Admiral. It also crushed the Crown’s Half’s front half.

No, no, no.

“Neil,” Renee whispered, far away and strangled, as if she was dying with the kraken, “you need to find them.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he snapped, tail lashing. Sailors dove from the ship, but the kraken was there to scoop them up or break them in half; if not it, then a falling mast or smothering, heavy sail did the trick. All around them, men died. Nowhere could see the pirates, but they could already be dead. “We can go together. Hold on tight.”

She let go.

She let go, and pushed off him; he spun and caught her before she sunk, everything in him like a fish in a net, squirming and thrashing in the air until it exhausted every option.

“Neil,” she said, very calm and very rational as everything living around them died, “I’ll weigh you down. Someone or something will try to kill me, and you’ll be stuck on the defensive.”

He refused to let go.

He thought of those he knew better, but -- she was his, too. This wasn’t fair, her making him choose.

“Let me find a boat to take us home,” she said. “You find them, and I’ll find a life boat. There’s at least six, they can’t have all capsized.”

They would all be full if they weren’t capsized.

She remained steady in expression and conviction, and pointedly kept herself afloat with her legs.

“Do you really think,” she said, “Andrew would let them die this easily?”

She said that because she knew it would convince him.

He, fool and stupid fish that he was, let it convince him. Releasing her, he spun and shot to the sinking ship, and refused to look back to watch what became of one lone human in the middle of a turbulent sea.

The Crown’s Hand had built strong, sturdy cells for its prisoners.

Its prisoners didn’t appreciate that.

“We’re fucked.”

“Hey, now. Try to stay optimistic.”

“Oh, my bad. We have… five minutes until the room’s full, and then we’re fucked.”

“Maybe less, if the beast takes out a wall.”

“What happened to finding a silver lining?”

The boards around them shuddered, the ship keening in its last moments above water. The two port holes, barely big enough for one man’s head to fit through and one sporting a nasty spiderweb crack, were helpful in determining their placement: that was to say, that they were well and truly under the surface, the murky, night-dark water overtaking their room.

“I’d prefer a quicker death, personally.” Nicky squeaked.

The door held, but water seeped through every crack and seam, and especially between its bottom rail and the sill. The level rose past Matt’s shins to his knees; on those short as the Minyards, the water brushed their hips.

“Hey!” Dan yelled, shoulder bashed against her cell’s door. She’d been at it for a while, as evidenced from the wince she now suffered every time she tried again. “Let us out! Come on! What happened to a trial?”

“I don’t know if there’s anyone left to deliver us,” Abby, her throat working around a thick lump, said.

The rushing water almost drowned her voice out. Even if they escaped from the cells, their hands remained bound and the iron around their ankle had a chain too short for anything like running, much less swimming. Glances weren’t exchanged - everyone, tense and attempting not to panic, kept their eyes on doors, whether it be their cell’s or the dead-bolted one leading to their corner of the hold.

At the side, between cell bars and Aaron, one pirate’s open tension and hostility demanded space, but there was, quite simply, none to give.

The room had sported a few questionable stains of bloody origin, but nothing of use to escape. The Admiral was thorough about his captives remaining captive, which contributed much to their imminent doom.

The water rose to a Minyard’s mid-stomach. Aaron swore. Katelyn, taller, feebly asked if he’d like to get on her back.

But that was a slippery slope toward acknowledging desperation, and there was no telling what panic would do to fourteen people in cramped quarters. Rippling between them was that knowledge, and with it, anticipation sharp as a knife’s edge.

Conscious of their precarious peace, Aaron declined her offer.

“Can’t believe this,” Allison muttered.

“Can’t believe what?” Matt asked, voice strangled.

“Drowning because of a kraken attack. Drowning in a cell, while a kraken attacks. These awful cuffs. That slop they gave us and pretended was edible. Take your pick, because I meant any of this.”

Her voice rose and, forcibly, leveled. She kicked at the water, but of course, the water went nowhere.

Outside the porthole, a massive shadow drifted by. Outside the door, the screams were, at least, gone, smothered into nothing as the ship sank underwater. Around them, wood creaked and shuddered and refused to give in.

“If anyone has any heart-felt stories they’d like to share,” Nicky piped, “our time’s been cut a little short, but I think we could fit a few in. Here, I’ll start. Kevin, I’m sorry for drinking half your stash after Columbia.”

In the back, sputtering. “That was you?”

Nicky cleared his throat and said, “Erik helped.”

“-- Nicky! I was there for you!”

“How’d you stow away, all those months ago?” Dan asked Jean, her shoulder and forehead pressed against her cell’s bars, her chest heaving. Behind her, Wymack had his hand on her shoulder -- he had to stop her before they all went mad from her useless railing. “I’d always wondered. Was it Knox?”

Jean nodded.

“Knew that boy was too nice,” Wymack murmured. With a spot of wry humor, he added, “I’m never contracting him again.”

“He was very good at his job,” Kevin said, his face twisted up as if he couldn’t decide whether or not to be disappointed. Then, thoughts jumping to others they’d met, he wondered aloud, “Did Hernandez’s merchants ever return for him?”

“I hope so,” Dan said. “But I doubt it. Bet they were going to Troy. Who knows where they are now.”

Jean leaned harder on the back wall. He’d been dead-set on repaying Jeremy, but: “I wouldn’t mind seeing that merman again.”

All eyes went to the main door, as if the mention would summon the one person they knew who wouldn’t be threatened by drowning in a locked cage.

The door bulged in its middle from the outside sea’s pressure, but remained closed.

“I might--” Aaron began as the water reached his chest, cut himself off with a look toward his brother, and then continued, voice tight, “-- take you up on your offer. Katelyn.”

Katelyn murmured, alright, and stooped to let him clamber on.

The room’s tension took a notable spike, the lid on panic as pressurized as the door. The remaining air swiftly warmed in its stagnance. Dan resumed her attack on the bars, timed with Wymack and Erik’s help.

Silent and still, Andrew watched the cracked porthole. It was only after the water reached his shoulders that he ripped his eyes from its murky view to look at Nicky, then Kevin, then his brother, lungs expanding for one slow inhale and an even slower, sighing exhale. Around them, the room continued its shuddering and groaning, the walls seeming to close in as boards warped and threatened to break.

Sudden as the kraken, the main door did not so much rattle as burst: a few shouted and jumped back as water gleefully flooded through the larger hole, and a few more screamed and began prayers to gods they’d abandoned all their lives, the rushing water pushing them back and up even with their irons.

Then Dan cut over the noise with, “Neil!” her head brushing the ceiling, and those with the facilities to do so focused on their cell doors.

In front of Wymack, whose boots barely reached the floor, the merman worked furiously with the door’s lock. He shot up to breach the narrow sliver of surface; though a few half-choked around gratitude, he locked eyes with Dan and she told him, “Pin. Get a pin.”

“Two pins,” Andrew said from the other side, and Neil’s head whipped around to find him. Relief cracked across the merman’s face, but it disappeared along with him as he darted back through the door, once more a flash of red.

Words were exchanged, half-garbled with mouthfuls of water and interrupted, for a few, by coughing. The pressure was leveling out, and staying afloat became a challenge their legs and arms didn’t want to cooperate for.

By the time Neil returned, most were on their last gasps of air. A few had already drifted to the floor, though hands knotted in neighbor’s shirts and legs kicked furiously.

Dan took her last breath and dove down, eyes forced open as Neil presented her with a narrow metal rod. Where he’d found it was a question to be asked later; she set to her cell’s lock, struggling for the correct angle and trying very, very hard not to shake with adrenaline.

The other rod went to Andrew, who mirrored her. Neil’s claws hooked around the bars for one brief touch, his head whipping back-and-forth between the two groups. Bubbles eddied from Dan’s mouth, her attempt at wrestling away from adrenaline a failure as her thin metal rod snapped. She abandoned the larger part for the nub stuck in the lock, Wymack ducking down to watch, open-eyed, at her side. Across from them, Andrew remained steady, careful, and just as handicapped with the bad angle.

Neil eyed the cage, assessed it as he’d assessed his, backed up, and rammed the broad side of his tail into the door’s upper corner. It shuddered; Dan flinched back, her burning eyes squeezed closed, and clapped a hand around her mouth to keep from gasping.

Neil did it again, and again. The metal tore at his more delicate side fin. When the hinge finally gave with a muffled screech, its edges ripped into the webbing. Neil didn’t care -- he reached in and snagged Wymack’s outstretched, who in turn wrapped his chain once around Dan’s wrist, jerked his head to get her to do the same to Kevin, and on, and on, hands quick and clumsy, until six were in a strung in a line and Neil hauled them out like a grotesque, badly cut paper chain.

He could not hesitate to look at Andrew. Desperately trusting he would have the door open by the time he returned, Neil made to pull whom he had out and up.

And they did make it out, and up, the surface looking the same as the depths to oxygen-deprived minds. Shaking hands and weak arms scrambled for drift wood and abandoned crates, Wymack hissing through grit teeth as, once he breached the surface, Neil left him to dive back down. The Captain kept his hold on Dan’s arm, however, and with strength borne of near-death, pulled until she, too, clung to a log.

Around them, a handful of sailors did the same, scattered and bleeding and uninterested in the captives beyond their initial surprise.

Below them, a water-logged lock clicked. Andrew shoved it open and reached back for Aaron; they’d mirrored their fellows once they realized what they’d have to do to all make, and they feared, in that brief moment, that Neil wouldn’t return. Or, worse: he’d be too late.

They made it to the room’s door by using the bars and floor, but their irons were too heavy to imagine they had a chance at swimming for the surface. Yet, determined to die trying, Andrew shoved off from the floor and hauled Aaron after him, their feet tangled in links.

Their fears weren’t unfounded. Neil almost was too late.

He came from nowhere, dug claws into the back of Andrew’s shirt, and clipped Katelyn and Matt with his tail as he struggled upward. Seven people weighed with iron was no simple feat.

But he had determination, and fear, and loyalty beyond blood, and a Minyard that wasn’t such a bad swimmer after all. They managed.

They broke the surface one by one, Andrew first to latch onto Dan’s crate and, after him, Aaron and Katelyn and Matt and Allison and Nicky and Lily, Neil ducking to give boosts where necessary. He ended up having to personally support Nicky and Allison, the available drift wood already over-crowded and threatening to capsize. Up-close, Nicky couldn’t fight back his wobbly grin at how Neil’s eyes flicked between all of them and the merman muttered a count-off under his breath.

Eight, nine, ten, eleven, pause, a slight sigh that Neil couldn’t possibly know he did, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

This time, the Captain was the first to laugh: joy edged with soul-crushing relief, surprise and disbelief and wonder with just a hint of hysteria. It was very not-Wymack. It made Abby ask, “David, are you alright?”

“We’re alive,” he gasped. “Out of everyone aboard that cursed ship, out of the Admiral's finest, we made it. This is our second chance.”

The laughter didn’t spread far (Wymack’s died quite quickly), but the relief did.

“Can you two find something else to hold onto?” Neil asked those on his arms. “I need to find Renee.”

Unfortunately for him, that made Allison hold on tighter.

(He wanted to go to the one he trusted most, the one that would always be there for him. He loved them all but there was a ranking system, there had to be, it was a simple matter of being alive, of late night smoke breaks and mid-afternoon slacking and hands willing to reach for him. Blue eyes stuck on blond hair, and hazel eyes stuck back, but it wasn't so much modesty as necessity -- they weren't yet at a complete head count.)

Eyes wide, she asked, “She’s--?”

“She said she would be,” he said, quieter. Allison’s knuckles whitened around his scaled arm, but after a terse second, she nodded her understanding. Drifting further from the group, Neil bared his teeth and snarled at a one-armed, whoozy-eyed sailor clinging to what must have been part of a door. Startled, the man floundered backward; he didn’t sink, but it was a near thing, and he trailed blood as he struggled to get away from another magical creature, the pirates on his arms inconsequential.

Nicky and Allison took the door, kicked their way back to the loose cluster of shipless pirates, and Neil disappeared for what he called a perimeter check, his trajectory tilted to the right.

Two boats bobbed within sight, shadowed figures hunched within. They were undoubtedly protective of their life-rafts, though who they had to protect them from aside from the pirates remained unclear.

But as they were pirates, and taking boats was something they did, they had good reason to worry over protection. Especially when a pissed off mermaid appeared at their boat’s side. A black-uniformed, hunched woman the two sailors thought belonged to the other’s crew through vague questions and vaguer answers proved to be one of the pirates, as she swiftly shoved one off the boat while the merman lurched up, snagged an arm, and dragged down the other.

He drove the two to the deep with claws on tender flesh and a sound bash to their heads. When he resurfaced, Renee had a soft, fond look for him.

“I heard you found them,” she said, her voice deceptively light for how far she leaned over the lifeboat’s edge.

He almost asked, Where’d you get the uniform? -- but then he thought, There’s plenty of bodies to take a uniform from.

So he nodded, his throat tight despite the water’s calm.

“We’ll need the other one, then,” she hummed, and sat back just in time to keep from tipping.

Neil glanced to the other one, not too much farther off, and thought he could fetch it once they were all together again. It turned out the life-raft lacked oars, having been something they had to flip over to save from sinking in the first place. That was alright. He could push a boat, easy.

He couldn’t as easily accept how Matt cheered, or how Allison’s breath shuddered from her in a wave, or how Dan whooped and reached to give Renee, so serene one would never believe she’d done all she’d done, a high five. Something hot pushed at his ribs at Katelyn’s half-sob into a smiling Aaron’s neck, and Nicky joined Matt in badly singing a victory tune, Erik laughing as he contributed the back-up. He tried to swallow, and couldn’t, as Wymack stated his and Abby’s old bones needed that boat, and demanded Renee get out of that offensive uniform as of yesterday. Jean breathed like he was tasting air for the first time, and Kevin theorized on what they could use if not oars to get them out of here before the sun rose. Lily reached for Renee’s hand and quietly broke down in a mix of gratitude and guilt; Renee assured her that it was fine, it was fine, this was how she’d planned for it to go.

You planned for a kraken? Matt laughed.

Well, Renee amended, with some improvisation.

Cold fingers wrapped around Neil’s wrist. He didn’t realize until then he’d been shrinking back, the feeling overwhelming him, narrowing his thoughts to why, why, why, where is the problem?

Seeing Andrew didn’t immediately dissipate the feeling, but it made him stop trying to disappear.

If it even made him sidle closer and knock their shoulders together, his hand folding over Andrew’s, no one commented on it.

They commandeered the other lifeboat with little trouble, and fashioned makeshift oars out of longer planks. They also fished up two water barrels, a soggy sack of potatoes, a few sealed jars of pickled fruit. and a torn section of sail, just in case. Fetched from the ocean bottom by their water-breathing crewmate, they picked the locks on their shackles and let the iron sink without anything less than a collectively satisfied good riddance. If any sailors thought they’d fight the pirates off for the supplies and boats, Neil’s flashing tail and quick claws were enough to dissuade them.

Though it took two and a half days to reach the shoreline, they didn’t mind beyond the obligatory complaints. They were alive. They were free. The Admiral was dead, the Commodore was dead, they weren’t, and their appreciation for that blocked out what negativity long days of rowing could’ve brought.

(Lily had asked, as dawn broke, what about Brian and… Alma, and--?)

(Neil didn’t glance at her, his arm hooked on the edge next to where Andrew sat and tail contributing so as to keep Kevin from huffing at him.)

(As silence met her trailed question, Renee had said, quietly, I’m sorry.)

(That shut Lily’s mouth with a click and had a few pirates glancing down, but relief at at least it wasn’t me, at least it wasn’t you was a powerful thing after their near-drowning experience.)

When they reached the shore, a ways from Troy’s siege and any other living creature, Nicky and Matt knelt to kiss the ground. Dan and Erik made disgusted noises at them before dissolving into giggles. Allison and Renee, fingers intertwined, sat themselves on the beach and stretched their legs, Allison quipping that Renee would need a miracle to turn her sunburn into a good-looking tan. Jean and Kevin hauled in the boats, ever steadfast about order and organization, but the ghosts of smiles could be found haunting their faces. Abby took Aaron, Katelyn and Lily into the nearby brush to look for useful plants, while the Captain surveyed his weary crew and decided to kick back for a nap under a tree. Andrew ignored Kevin’s bid for him to help with securing the clearly safe lifeboats, and sat himself waist-deep in the shallow water. Neil, looking much more comfortable and happy for the reprieve, let his tail trail over Andrew’s legs and his head tip against his shoulder. At the most obvious junction of skin and scale, Andrew's hand curled, possessive, protective and granting, for at least one pirate, absolute reassurance.

It garnered a few glances and one, “Are you two a thing?” from a surprised, not-sure-if-he-liked-it-or-not Nicky, but when Neil only clicked his teeth and threw him a decidedly human gesture with one finger and Andrew didn’t react at all, the matter was shelved for another date.

The King would hear of his Admiral’s defeat before too long. They needed a ship. They needed to fetch at least some of their treasure from where The Fox fell. There weren’t many nearby options with Troy under siege, and it was a worry that needed addressing sooner rather than later.

But everyone agreed with glances and stilled tongues that it could wait. For right then, they took their time to breathe in fresh air and hard-won peace.

Home. The feeling had been home.

Chapter Text

The first time they asked, Neil laughed at them.

When they didn’t laugh along, he stopped.

He asked, “Really?”

He said, “You wouldn’t.”

His mouth thinned to a hard white line, and he disappeared under the sea’s blue-green cover for two consecutive days. No offers of fruit, cards or companionship persuaded him to return.

(The first time wasn’t a them so much as a proposal made by a grim-faced Captain Wymack of the infamous Redemption. After half a decade aiding eastern and southern kingdoms in establishing sovereignty from the Crown, with their white sails and cream-colored ship and its smaller, leaner sister, the Blue Vixen, the Fox pirates were swiftly becoming a thing of legend.)

(As it should be. The two vessels were master shipwright Jeremy Knox’s pride and joy, as well as an unofficial gift from the city of Troy for the pirates’ support in breaking the King’s siege seven years prior.)

The second time they asked, it was between Neil and the Blue Vixen’s Captain a week later.

This was done because he still wouldn’t look Captain Wymack in the eye, and they were running on a bit of a schedule.

“No,” he told her, his closed throat making the word at once clipped and blank.

Unlike Captain Wymack, Captain Wilds took in his expression and didn’t press further. Instead, she sighed, scratched blunt nails through her rat’s nest of curly hair, and said, “That’s what I told him. I agree with you. It’s not right of us to ask you to do this.”

A muscle jumped in Neil’s cheek, another strung tight in his neck. His eyes searched Captain Wilds’ face.

She gave him a lopsided smile, and waved a hand at him.

“Go on, then. Haven’t you got perimeter duty?”

He left, but didn’t disappear.

The Fox pirates were known for their way with magicks. They were known to be fierce, and cunning, and unforgiving of those that took advantage of the weaker, but those were qualities every criminal turned vigilante boasted about: the real trick, villagers whispered, is in their magicks.

(They said it like that, too. A person could hear the extra constant in the hard bite of the word.)

Some said they had a kraken at their behest. Others said a swarm of sirens. Others, still, a herd of hippocampi. Those with overactive imaginations claimed all three traveled with the Foxes’ ships, and that was why none stood in their way when they appeared within a spyglass’s view.

The King stands in their way, a man might reply in a busy port tavern after too many drinks, his resignation at life’s injustice weighing down his shoulders.

Just you wait, a woman, her smile sharp and eyes sharper and her arm around a white-haired woman’s shoulders, could say.

When they asked Neil a third time, it was an absent comment on efficiency and practicality during the sister ships’ traditional and traditionally combined game night. Neil eyed the Blue Vixen’s First Mate, Kevin Day, but didn’t say anything.

The fourth time they asked, it began with, “What would you make you comfortable? What back-up plan or failsafe?”

“Not doing it,” he replied, terse, hands tight on a cream dinghy’s sides. After a run-in with a water dragon that breathed hot steam rather than fire, the merman’s left cheek and arms had bubbled up into permanent burn scars. In the morning’s low light, the rough skin atop broken scales cast him with sharp, jagged shadows; like the rest of them, all far older than they thought they’d live to see, he looked as dangerous in stillness as he was in motion.

The Redemption’s First Mate, Matt Boyd, sighed. At his side, Nicky Hemmick gave him a told you so look.

Unamused, Neil told them, “Stop asking.”

Matt consented with, “Alright.”

Nicky asked what he thought they could do, because it wasn’t as if either of their Captains were going to give up on this. As they shouldn’t, he added. It was important. The Crown had to be stopped, on land and at sea. They’d been everywhere, and how many merfolk had Neil met?

“Less than a dozen,” Neil had begrudgingly replied, though he knew the exact number: ten, six mermaids, four mermen, three barely old enough to crack open a clam on their own, four others young enough to roll their eyes when their parents claimed the world had once been full of merfolk. It’d been an unusually large group for the southern tropics, only three of them not related to the others. They were fine with that. They were happy to be alive. Their isolation and refusal to leave the area, they said, was the reason for their longevity.

According to them, he was the danger. They’d been quick to accuse him of smelling like and wishing to become a human. Neil hadn’t felt much regret over not staying more than a day in their bay, though he thought, occasionally, about how they’d acted more fish than merman.

Matt gazed at him but kept his mouth shut.

Neil scowled back and snapped, “I know.”

It was mostly the King’s fault. It was, one might say if one had an agenda, entirely the King’s fault.

The Foxes had an agenda.

To be fair to them: Neil was also a Fox.

The fifth time, they didn’t ask at all.

They had dropped anchor a day’s walk from port. While most pirates took their four day shore leave in town, one dallied in the rocky shallows.

Or so Aaron would say if asked where his brother was, except that Andrew Minyard never dallied: he idled, at best, and more often, simply waited.

When the creature he found he waited for most showed up and chirped, “I found a nice cave,” he raised an eyebrow back, waded further into the chilly waters, and drawled, “You want congratulations for it?”

“Until you find a nice cave, I do,” Neil replied, reaching up to tug Andrew down. The two met half-way, the human stooped in back and knees, the merman’s paler skin out of the sea. Against warm lips, Neil murmured, “How about it? Yes or no?”

It took a moment, but then: “Yes. Let’s see this cave.”

A pleasant hum reverberated through Neil’s throat, and he dropped down to weave the way to deeper waters. Once mobility wasn’t a question, Andrew snagged his dorsal fin and let him lead around the coast’s peninsula to its steeper, rougher cliffside.

The cave’s entrance was a tight fit for one, never mind two, but they made it. A dark, dark tunnel opened to a cool, wetly glimmering inside: the waters grew abruptly shallow, its stone bedding smooth, and, far away, a caved-in portion of ceiling provided indirect sunlight.

Andrew sat himself on one of the bigger rocks, head tilted back to appreciate the lonely beauty of an untouched, forgotten space. Blue and grey rock striped the walls, streaks of reflected light favoring one side of jagged outcroppings more than others. The wind passed above and never dipped down; the pool, if they weren’t here, would never be disturbed.

It made the space intensely private and, consequently, intensely intimate. By the simple act of being the cave’s only two occupants, Andrew felt like they might as well be the only two creatures in existence.

Neil, by now practiced in closing his gills and leaving the water for hours at a stretch, nudged legs apart and pushed himself in between them, one arm hooking across Andrew’s shoulders as he nosed into the soft underside of his jaw.

“Nice cave,” he conceded, eyes drawn to the long line of Neil’s back as he tilted his head to the side.

Teeth grazed his ear. Told you was a warm puff against it, and made him shiver.

When he set a hand on Neil’s hip, he hummed; when he dragged nails up his back to tangle in his hair, Neil sighed; when the hand pulled Neil off his neck and lips finally met, breaking the cave’s peace and quiet was a foregone conclusion.

The fifth time, no pirate asked Neil to help.

As far as Andrew was concerned, the choice laid entirely with Neil. He knew the conditions and plan. If he didn’t accept, he didn’t, and they found some other way to accomplish what they wanted, or they moved on. While they were together, he headed off every attempt Neil made at talking about it. It simply wasn’t Andrew’s problem.

(And no matter the choice Neil made, Andrew refused to take part in leading him to it.)

But when Captain Wilds returned with her crew from their shore leave and grumbled obligingly at Andrew, “I didn’t see you once. All four days? Seriously? What have you been eating?” she jumped when Neil appeared at their dinghy’s side. Though he’d tried on a variety of outfits selected by giggling crewmates, he wore them only when specifically told to; without a shirt or coat or bandanna like Andrew, the purpled, teeth-shaped bruises littering his jaw, throat and collarbones were obvious. No matter what human gestures and phrasings he picked up, Neil had yet to discover a sense of modesty or, really, shame.

“I’ll do it,” he said, his eyes unwavering from hers. “But you won’t seal the top.”

She hadn’t expected him to agree. She hadn’t truly wanted him to agree.

She shook herself from staring because Captain Wymack would want to begin preparations immediately and she had to make sure, “You’re positive?”

With a small jerk of the head, he nodded.

She took a long, slow inhale, and let it out all at once.

“Alright.” Five others, old and older faces, shared her lifeboat. She looked toward them, straightened her shoulders, and told them, “Ladies and gents, prepare yourselves. For the first time, we’re sailing north.”

They had to double back to buy a raven trained to fly for the empire’s capital.

Kevin recalled the remaining Prince Moriyama’s private address. Wymack composed the letter, a proposal as well as the Foxes’ terms and conditions, and sent it off with the bird at morning light.

Four months later, King Ichirou Moriyama received a catch nearly a decade in coming.

“What happened to its fin?” A courtier tittered as she tapped on the mermaid’s glass. She startled back when a powerful line of scaled muscle smashed where she prodded, and giggled nervously to her wife.

“He looks ragged,” the King said to the mermaid’s chief seller, his black panther-fur cloak heavy on his shoulders and red-accented jacket crisp across his chest. Ichirou was a study in detachment: cold eyes, cold words, cold countenance, an untouchable presence at the head of an unbeaten empire. Though he looked a very young twenty, he’d looked twenty for the past twenty-five years. As the rumor and the merchant’s own observation told her, it was only in recent times that he’d seemed to age a little past youthful prime. “How did you say you caught him, again?”

“I assure you, he’s in perfectly fine health,” the seller replied. A merchant of southern repute, the capital didn’t know her name but her goods remained excellent in either sphere. She had delicate hands but skin weathered into tan leather; a permanent product of her beginnings as an exploration vessel’s nurse, she said. “Perhaps the crowd is making him nervous. And… perhaps, we could conclude our business in private?”

The King regarded the mermaid. The mermaid regarded him back, its face blank and body coiled in its tank’s corner.

It wasn’t much of a crowd: the merchant’s hired muscle to bring the tank in as proof of her find before a tenth of the King’s court.

After a moment, the King raised a gloved hand. His council and advisors reluctantly left, though his uncle and royal guard remained. His eyes didn’t dare the merchant to find something amiss with keeping them around so much as told her they wouldn’t be leaving, and if she did have an issue, she wouldn’t be receiving payment for the magic she brought to his door, and might lose her head besides.

Her hired muscle, numbering nine, also remained.

(The tank, you see, was quite big.)

“We found him in eastern waters,” the merchant told the King. His uncle, the Prince, made an interested sound; her eyes moved to his. “We weren’t sure what tales about a mermaid’s benefits were true and what weren’t, so we made certain to keep his scales intact. He’s been out of the sea for… oh, ten months, already.”

A short, deadly silence passed between them.

“Red scales come from the north,” the King said. Before she could respond, he continued with an aloof, “And he’s far too calm for ten months out of the sea.”

Taking a step back from the tank, he raised his hand again. He would not tolerate a lie, and he had no reason to care for the life of a merchant of southern repute.

His guards’ scabbards clanged as they drew steel. Outfitted in the best armor, the three of the merchant’s muscle that startled into drawing daggers had no hope of beating them. Still, even those without blades drew to the tank’s side and braced themselves to go down fighting.

The guards, however, did not cut them down.

Instead, they fell on their King: a blade through the back and out the front here, another into his neck, and still more at his dropped corpse. Anticipation for a mermaid had made Ichirou predictably careless in checking his guards' faces, and even more reckless about who he didn't wear his sword around, a combination fatal for him but a boon for his enemies. The guards were black-cloaked buzzards at a scavenged feast, a pack of dogs scrabbling for a piece of meat. The tallest withdrew first -- under his helmet, he smiled, a fiercely won, grim curl to his mouth. Years ago, the King’s orders and fascination with magical creatures had him shipped from a southern village to a cruel northern navy.

Ichirou, for the first and last time in his life, fell. His death was swift. It left a mark of surprise in his young face.

Abby’s breath left her in a rush, and legs shaking, she fell back to Wymack’s side.

“I really didn’t think that was going to work,” she told him. “What kind of nurse becomes a merchant?”

“The sort willing to lie to a King’s face,” he replied.

When the Trojans disguised as guards finally backed off, the dead man’s uncle stepped forward. Tetsuji crouched at his nephew’s side, his aging face disdainful.

“Messy,” he tsked. “A poor end to my brother’s line.”

One of the pirates with a dagger waved it in his direction. “You want to join him, old man?”

He brushed fingers over a glistening onyx raven pin, then wiped the blood on an unstained piece of cloak. Standing, he replied, coolly, “No, I’d rather not.”

He didn’t look at the mermaid. He was fairly certain he’d be gutted if he did, and his reign as King had just begun.

“That’s good,” a white-haired sooth-sayer said. “It’s always best to remember what you have to lose. Forgetting one’s mortality doesn’t bode well for one’s health.”

“Don’t forget those reforms on tributary requirements,” Captain Wymack said. “And eradicating the royal price on magical creatures’ heads.”

Captain Wilds openly mused, “Who’s next in line, again? Some bloke by the name of Hatford? Doesn’t seem like a bad choice for king.”

“There’s no choice in kings,” the King told her.

“It looks like we just made a choice here,” another pirate replied. Even after all these years, Tetsuji recognized him. After all: he’d raised Kevin Day like a son.

(Hopefully, he would be a better King than a father.)

In his tank, a merman’s lips cut a smile fit for a shark. It reminded more than a few of an Admiral, but only for a moment. It wasn’t, after all, ever to be aimed at them.