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Chapter Text

Eme had always known that her time in Nassau would not last forever. She was perfectly aware that the dual responsibilities she had accepted meant her life would always be lived only a hair’s breadth from discovery and disaster. She had arrived with weak and aching wrists and ankles; she had arrived with Captain Bryson’s blood still staining her hands. She had fought for her freedom on the Andromache, attained it and then been reduced to cargo once more by a pirate crew unwilling to forego the profits from the ship they would not have been able to capture without Eme and her fellows. Nassau then had been irredeemably hostile terrain, with its gold-hungry pirates, its vast sugar plantations in the interior and its trade boss born of slave-owning stock, who still facilitated and profited from the trade, under whom Eme must work and appear grateful for her freedom.

She had soon learned that Nassau’s stability and prosperity was necessary for the continuing success of Mr Scott’s operation, but if it were not, Eme would just as soon have seen it burn. When men had come through the tavern and spoken loudly, drunkenly, of the slaves they had captured and sold, when they muttered coarse, foul things behind their hands with their eyes on Eme knowing full well that she could hear them, when it had taken more than a week for Babatunde’s body to be brought back into town after he had been killed defending Eleanor Guthrie, when Charles Vane and Jack Rackham had plotted to capture slaves and put them to work rebuilding the fort despite the abundance of gold they had at their disposal to free those men and pay them for their labour, Eme had swallowed her rage. Time and time again she had swallowed her rage, making herself sick with it on more than one occasion.

Standing out here on the balcony with Madi, the warm air brushing by them and carrying with it all the sounds and the smells that had come by now to mean home to her, Eme could not deny that if the time ever came for her to leave this island, hateful as she found it, she would still mourn its loss. She had made herself part of Nassau, and as a natural consequence of this, it had found its way to being part of her. Upon Mr Scott’s passing, she had taken it upon herself to see that his enterprise did not fall away. For as long as Nassau survived, she would use it to provide for her people; she was resolved to do everything in her power to see it survive this crisis and any other that might follow. She may not live in Nassau for very much longer, but she did not expect she would ever leave it, and that, too, made it home.

She knew the source of this abnormal sentimentality in her; it was impossible to stand beside Madi in her grief and not be affected by it. Madi stood on the balcony facing the street, with Eme on her left and Kofi on the next balcony along to her right, but she was not truly looking. She did not really see. She did not fully understand what the name Long John Silver meant to the people on this island, even after Eme had done her best to lay it out clearly before her. She had been too close to the man and was far too close to the grief of losing him to appreciate the power and necessity of the myth. When Eme had said to her, Long John Silver cannot have drowned, Madi had taken it as a denial of reality, not the declaration of a new one. When Eme had said, They will not rally without him, Madi had turned away from Eme and looked over Nassau instead, her eyes glistening and her jaw clenched in anger. So she stood now, too caught up in the injustices of the past to see the future Eme attempted to place before her.

Without Long John Silver to rally Nassau, the task ahead of them was a much more difficult one. Truly, Madi herself ought to be enough to bring hope to the hearts of men and women seeking freedom. She was sharp, steadfast and unafraid, so much like her father even having grown into adulthood without him, and still young enough to have hope where his had faded into steady pragmatism. Madi and Captain Flint together, if they truly worked in concert, should easily be enough to unite and overpower the island, but Eme had long known there was no justice in the world. The rebellion demanded Long John Silver, and he was gone and drowned and lost to the world forever.

Eme stood beside Madi, looking where she looked and seeing what she did not, and explained quietly what would need to be done if the English were to be driven permanently from the island. Madi’s jaw slowly unclenched as Eme spoke, and her gaze grew sharper. Her eyes moved from building to building, from person to person, as she absorbed and reflected on Eme’s words.

“I will take this back to Captain Flint,” she said once Eme had finished, turning in her direction but still grimly looking out over the town. Only when Eme laid a hand on Madi’s arm did she turn her head and meet Eme’s eyes, startled and a little wary.

“He is a means to an end, ma’am,” Eme said. “Is he not?”

“Captain Flint is a true ally in this endeavour,” Madi said. “His intent is genuine.”

A new concern rose in Eme; her fingers tightened on Madi’s arm. “He is dangerous.”

Madi raised her eyebrows as though Eme had said something rather silly. “I am well aware of that.”

“I do not mean – ma’am, that man has destroyed everything he has ever touched. Men fear and respect him, but they also despise him. Truly, the hatred he inspires cannot be discounted in this.”

“I know,” Madi said with a gentle seriousness. “I know, and I am careful.”

Eme let her hand fall back by her side.

“He will be despised all the more now that he has turned against Billy Bones and all those he leads,” Madi said. “He did that in support of our cause, in full awareness of what he stood to lose by it. His vision and dedication makes this possible where otherwise it would not be.”

“Your father –”

“I have spoken to my father about Captain Flint,” Madi said firmly. “I have heard his opinion and respect his counsel. As he lay dying, he placed his faith in my judgement to do as I think best for our people.”

Eme bowed her head to the authority in Madi’s voice. Truly she was her father’s daughter.

“Now,” Madi said, and Eme raised her head again. “Eleanor was to set sail this morning and has not yet departed. She still intends to go?”

Eme nodded. “She is not pleased that her departure has been delayed.”

“And once she is gone –”

Eme nodded again.

“Yes,” Madi said. “Do what you can to gather allies together and inform them of what is to come. This will be a very different battle than the one we had anticipated, and we all must be prepared to flee if flight becomes necessary.”

This time Eme did not nod. She did not move at all.

“Eme,” Madi said, frowning now. “If Nassau falls, if it burns –”

“I will not flee this place.”

Madi looked at Eme with intense, burning interest. “Why?”

“I have claimed my place here. I have committed myself to our cause. I do not intend to surrender it.”

“No one can know what will happen here,” Madi said. “There are too many plans in motion and too many pieces in play to be assured of –”

“Yes,” said Eme. “And that is why I must stay. Someone must be here to hold it together for as long as is possible.”

“There is a point at which –”

“I must go now. There is much for me to do.”

Madi reached out and took hold of her not by the sleeve, as Eme had done, but by the hand. “Eme,” she said, her grip gentle and strong. “I understand what you are saying, and I know what it is you feel. But listen. So many of us will die in this. That cannot be avoided. It is our duty also to escape death where we can, that we might fight on and bring all our strength to bear where it is needed most. If Nassau falls, truly falls, you must not fall with it. You are loved, and you are needed. Do not lose sight of that in all of this. Never lose sight of that.”

All Eme could do was hold on tightly to the balcony rail with her left hand and Madi with her right. She knew she should speak, but no words came to her. She could reject such sentiments when they came from Babatunde, who had been a brother to her, and Imani, who was the truest friend she had in this place. How could she resist them as a decree from this woman, who was daughter to a king and daughter to a queen and had come to Nassau to lead their people to freedom?

Madi’s smile was at once affectionate and impossibly sad. “Do not come to meet with us in person if the danger to you is too great,” she said. “Someone will come to you if you are missed.”

“I am sorry,” Eme said, the words coming to her only once the best moment for them had passed. “That you lost him.”

Madi held onto Eme’s hand for a moment longer as her smile faded once again into melancholy. Then she let go, nodded gravely and turned to leave. Kofi followed quickly after her, casting only a brief glance at Eme before he went. Only after she had lost sight of both of them did it occur to Eme that Madi had not sought clarification as to which loss Eme offered her condolences for. I have lost more than you can know, she had said to Eme, without elaboration. Captain Flint has lost more than you can know. So too had Eme lost more than Madi could know, more than Captain Flint could ever imagine. They would all lose a great deal more by the time this thing was over, if it ever truly could end.

She went back inside and found Zuri lingering at one of the tables, feigning that she was cleaning it. There was nobody else upstairs with them, so the pretence was not strictly necessary, but Zuri was always thorough and careful in everything she did. She was quiet and dependable and still lived in fear of the day she would be returned to the fate they had so narrowly escaped when the Walrus had gone after the Andromache to retrieve her great guns and then again when Eleanor Guthrie had acceded to Mr Scott’s request to manumit and employ the women who had been aboard her.

Zuri stopped scrubbing the moment Eme approached her, standing up straight with a question in her eyes and the scrubbing brush forgotten in her hand.

“See that Imani comes here as soon as may be,” Eme said, standing close and speaking quietly. “Has anyone seen Miss Guthrie, or Max?”

“Neither,” Zuri said in little more than a whisper.

“Captain Berringer is still looking for Max?”

Zuri nodded.

“And Miss Guthrie?”

“Mrs Rogers was last seen in conversation with Captain Berringer. I have not heard anything more than that.”

“Right,” Eme said. “Here is what I need you to do as quickly as possible, while their attention is focused elsewhere. We need eyes on Miss Guthrie’s ship, if we do not already have them. I must be informed the moment she has left the island. Everyone who is willing to fight must be ready to do so at a moment’s notice. The stockpile must be prepared for transport, but it is not to be moved yet. Once Miss Guthrie has departed and Captain Berringer is indisputably in control of Nassau, then we will see about removing him, and the rest will fall. Do you understand?”

“Will the rest fall?” Zuri asked doubtfully. “There are so many of them.”

“We will not be fighting alone,” Eme said. “Make it known that Captain Flint and his men are to be trusted beyond question.” She continued quickly, before Zuri could protest as Eme herself had done. “This comes directly from Madi. Captain Flint has opposed the rebels in the interior in order to protect those enslaved on this island. He has done it at great personal cost and proven his worth to us. United, our people and his will take back this town and this island.”

“Captain Flint,” Zuri said. “Not Long John Silver?”

“Not yet,” Eme said. “Not quite yet.”

Zuri frowned and dropped her gaze, looking down at the table for a long moment before raising her eyes reluctantly back to Eme. “It will not be an easy argument to make without him, I think.”

“It is not an argument,” Eme said. “It is Madi’s word, and so it will be.”

“I will have Imani fetched,” Zuri said, dubious still but saying no more against it. “I will send Alora to the harbour.”

“Good,” Eme said. “I am going out, but I will be back here very soon.”

“Eme,” Zuri said just as she turned to leave. “The fighting … will it be soon?”

“Just as soon as we can bring it about,” Eme said. “Not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but soon.”

“And when it is done, we can go to the island?”

There was nothing Eme wanted more than to be able to tell her yes, but she knew that if she did, Zuri would likely believe her. It was bad enough to have given her false hope about Long John Silver; Eme would not stoop any lower than that and make any promises she could not keep. “When it is done, we will see where we are,” she said. “I will help you if I can.”

Zuri nodded. “I will see to Imani and Alora,” she said. “I will see you when you return.”

Eme took her hand and squeezed it lightly, watching and waiting until Zuri’s shy smile appeared on her face. “We will see it through together,” she assured her as soon as she saw it. “We will be strong together.”

Zuri nodded and shooed her away, still smiling a little. Eme made her way quickly downstairs and out the front door, not giving any of the men scattered around the ground floor of the tavern any opportunity to waylay her for either business or pleasure. No sooner had she set foot out in the square than a soldier came riding along in a great hurry, vaulting from his horse almost before it had come to a stop outside the tavern.

“Hey,” he said brusquely to Eme, clearly having recognised her. She recognised him too: Colin Thompson, who rode a horse like he had been born on one, famous among the governor’s men for his flowing golden locks, his marriage to a woman ten years his senior and his powerful antipathy for the ocean. “Captain in there?”

“No, sir,” Eme said. “He is not. Is there an emergency?”

“You know where he is?”

“He may be arriving here soon,” Eme said. “I believe he is currently seeking a meeting with the landlady.”

“And she’s not here either?”

“No, sir.”

“He’s not in there?” Thompson asked, nodding toward the governor’s house.

“I do not believe so.”

“Fuck,” Thompson said, mostly to himself. “Fucking fuck. Well, if he does come here, you tell him I’ll be back very shortly if I can’t find him elsewhere. I have an urgent report for him.”

“Sir –”

He ignored her, swinging back onto his horse and immediately urging it into motion. Two of Max’s boys – Girard, with the drooping black hair, and Percy, red-haired and freckled – scurried after him, playing at racing each other. For what was not the first nor the fourth nor the fortieth time, Eme wished fervently that even if Max could never be prevailed upon to join the Maroon cause, there could be some kind of alliance between them. Even if Eme lived here twenty years, she would never have access to the kind of information networks Max had, and Max, for all that she controlled the streets of Nassau, was largely powerless outside it. Eme knew better than to divert or attempt to win over any of Max’s informants, but the temptation never faded completely away. Or not temptation, necessarily, but almost a yearning – a frustrated conviction that enemies of a common enemy ought always to be a friend.

Whatever urgent news Colin Thompson might be bringing to his captain and whether or not Max would soon learn of it, Eme’s next task was vital and did not change. She spent twenty minutes walking through town, speaking to shopkeepers and labourers and layabouts and keeping a weather eye out for anyone whose attention was unduly fixed on her. If she was being observed, if her position was compromised, she could not play any great part in what would be happening next. She would not be able to meet again with Madi, coordinate logistics or seek out and deliver critical information. If she was watched now, all she would be able to do in the coming days was distract and disrupt whoever might be watching her.

She had real business to discuss with Mr Peterson, the butcher – or at least if she was challenged, she could say that she did – and so she stepped into his shop, taking a moment as she turned to close the door behind her to observe all those who watched her do so. Mr Peterson was a better man than his reputation suggested, and he loved all manner of gossip; he would not insist Eme leave his premises before she was ready to go. When she did leave, she would take very careful note of anyone outside who might still be watching.

Today Mr Peterson was not interested in discussing business. His brother Matthew Peterson, who had no fixed employment that Eme had ever been aware of but always seemed to be very well provided for, was speaking in low, excited tones to his brother and three other men, all five of them crowded together in the back of the shop.

He fell silent at the opening and closing of the door but then, upon seeing who had come in, only winked and beckoned her closer. “You’re one of the tavern girls, aren’t you?” he said, looking around at his audience as though he’d said something clever.

“This is Eme, not just one of the tavern girls,” Mr Peterson said. “And I know your mother taught you manners.”

One of the men, tall and thin with limp brown hair, chuckled and leered in Eme’s direction, only to be sharply elbowed by Mr Peterson. “What?” he said, indignant. “Fuck off.”

“She’s a tavern girl, not a whore,” said Mr Peterson. “Believe me, I know the difference.”

“You’ll want to watch yourself in there today,” Matthew Peterson said, bending down a little as though he bequeathed Eme a great secret. “Redcoats are going to be beside themselves.”

Eme looked at him with eyes artfully wide – a little afraid, a little intrigued. “Why is that, sir?”

“Four dead overnight,” he said, clapping his hands together in near-manic glee. “And not just dead, either. Ripped to fucking pieces, they were, and left out on the road as a warning.”

This time Eme’s reaction was not at all feigned. “Four redcoats?” she asked him, her voice pitching upwards out of her control. Thompson’s agitation, considerable though it had been, seemed inadequate if that was the news he was looking to bring to Captain Berringer.

“Not redcoats this time,” he said a little regretfully, letting his hands fall apart again. “No one knows who they are. Or no one’s saying. But four fighting men dead and strewn over the road, hours out of town.” He looked around at his whole audience, savouring the undivided attention they gave him. “One of them lost his face altogether.”

“What do you mean, lost his face?” another of the men said with a touch of scorn. He was a scraggly sort of man, short and carelessly dressed, his frown etching lines into his weatherbeaten face. “Left it behind at home, did he?”

Matthew Peterson’s eyes darted furtively around them. “You know,” he said. He lifted one boot very slowly off the floor, drawing everybody’s attention and holding it. Then he brought it slamming down onto the wooden boards once, twice, three times and four.

“No,” the tall man said. “You’re fucking with us.”

“Jesus Christ, Matthew,” said Mr Peterson. “You’re paying for my floorboards if you break them.”

“I’m telling you, he’s coming,” his brother said. “He’s on his fucking way.” He turned to Eme. “So you watch yourself, girl. You know what those animals in red are like. They’ll take it out on anybody, but your lot especially. You watch yourself now, and spread the word.”

“Might not be a Nassau by tomorrow morning,” said the last man, Mr Parrish, who seemed more amused than dismayed by the prospect. He was a great friend of Mr Peterson’s and a familiar face in the tavern, but that was all Eme knew of him. She had seen enough of his behaviour when drunk to know that it was as much as she wanted to know of him.

“I know where I’ll be spending tonight, then,” said Mr Peterson. “No man should ever spend his last night on earth alone.”

“Like you need an excuse,” Mr Parrish said.

Mr Peterson grinned. “Doesn’t hurt to have one all the same.”

“They ought to give you your own room in that place,” the short one said. “You practically live there as it is.”

Eme had intended to ask Mr Peterson about tomorrow’s meat and inform him that it was nearing the time for their prices to be renegotiated, but it was difficult to care about that, to think about it at all, when this might very well be the best – the only – opportunity to carry out the plan she had discussed with Madi, so far ahead of schedule that, if successful, there may even be a prospect of rescuing all those men who had been captured in the landing. If there was sufficient disturbance in Nassau to compel Captain Berringer to put off the hangings, if he was so provoked as to – “We will discuss matters of business tomorrow, then,” she said to Mr Peterson. “If there is still a Nassau tomorrow morning.”

Mr Peterson nodded absently, a smile growing on his face. No doubt he was already thinking of the night he intended to treat himself to. The man who had leered at Eme looked to her again and opened his mouth, likely intending to do so again, but Eme turned and all but fled the butcher’s shop, taking only a moment to look around her before hurrying back to the tavern. If Matthew Peterson’s information was correct, then very soon there would be a very large amount of strange behaviour in this place; hers would not stand out as any stranger than the rest.

News of the four dead men had not yet reached the tavern. Nor, seemingly, had Captain Berringer. There was no sign of Miss Guthrie, Max or anyone else of significance. Imani stood and beckoned to Eme from the half-open doorway to the back room, but her significance was of quite a different kind.

If Eme thought she had any real future she would consider making it with this woman, who always smiled to see her and was as clever and kind as any person Eme had met. Imani had been trusted by Mr Scott but not intimately involved in his operation, offering her assistance only when an urgent need arose for her particular skills with paper and ink and otherwise keeping their two ventures quite separate. After Eme had come to Nassau that distance had begun to diminish, and when Mr Scott was gone and Eme stepped into his shoes, it had disappeared entirely. As it had been ever since their very first meeting, when Eme needed help, Imani had been on hand to provide it. She was older than Eme by ten years at least, wiser and far more capable, not beautiful as men saw beauty but appealing in a way that seemed to bypass them altogether: strong and sturdy in her build, steady in her bearing and capable of expressing every emotion Eme knew through the merest twitch of her mouth.

Eme trusted Imani with her heart and her life, but there would be no future for any of them until it had been fought for and won, so she said and did nothing to encourage any greater attachment than was already between them. Her restraint did nothing to fool Imani, of course, but it laid down the rules for their relationship and Imani faultlessly abided by them. Eme wished, sometimes, that Imani might be a little more obtuse and a little less respectful of the boundaries Eme set for her. She wished, sometimes, that a future was a thing that could be built on love and love alone.

It was a relief now to walk into the back room and close the door behind her; it was even more of one to see the look of resolve on Imani’s face and know she was prepared to do anything and everything that needed to be done.

There was a great deal that needed to be done and no time to waste on anything but essentials. “Have you seen the black spots?”

Imani’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “I have not heard anything about –”

“No,” Eme said. “Not new ones, but those that have been delivered before. Have you seen them with your own eyes?”

“Yes,” Imani said, still with a faint frown on her face.

“Would you be able to write one?”

“Eme,” she said, her tone a warning. “That is a dangerous path to walk on.”

“Every path here is dangerous,” Eme said. “The difference between them is not in the danger but the destination.”

“Zuri says you have a plan. You and Madi.”

“I have discussed it with her, yes,” said Eme. “She is not expecting it to be implemented right this moment, but I have just heard –”

“The four dead men on the road,” Imani said evenly. “You want to claim them for him.”

Eme could have kissed Imani for saving her the time it would have taken to explain. She nodded instead, letting her relief and gratitude show only in her smile. “Can you do it?”

Imani took in Eme’s smile but did not return it. “What makes you think he will not claim them himself?”

Eme paused. She did not falter, only paused, but that was more than enough to raise Imani’s suspicions.

“Eme, darling,” Imani said. “Do not dive into water if you do not know the depth of it.”

For this plan to work, Nassau’s belief in the return of Long John Silver must be as high as it could possibly be. Eme wanted desperately to tell Imani all that Madi had said, but she knew well the skill of Max’s spies and Madi had already said aloud in Nassau that John Silver was dead. Eme would not add to the risk that carried with it by repeating it here or anywhere. All the rest, if overheard, would doom her and Imani and all they had built here, but if word got out that Long John Silver was not coming to Nassau, if word got out that he was gone…

“There was no black spot on the bodies,” Eme said. “If there had been, we would have heard of it by now, yes?”

Imani nodded slowly.

“This may be because none of those killed were the governor’s men or Silver’s particular enemies,” Eme said. “It may be because they were not planned kills, so he was caught by surprise and had no materials on him with which to write it. He may not be here quite yet; those killings may not have been his doing at all. But here is the truth of it. His followers only leave the black spots on the bodies of those they kill because they cannot come into Nassau and deliver them personally. They are strong elsewhere, but the governor has a tight grip on this town.”

“Or he would, if he were here.”

Eme could not help but smile again. There was no better partner than Imani for work like this. There was no better partner than Imani for anything. “Those of us who already live here have rather more options available to us than those residing in the interior, don’t you think?”

Imani had mirrored Eme’s smile, but it slowly faded from her face as she stood in thought. “The risk is –”

“I will do it myself,” Eme said. She remembered Madi’s words with a stab of guilt, but she could not afford to reflect on them now. This must be done, done properly and done quickly. “I ask nobody else to take such a risk implementing a plan that is mine.”

“Then I will not write it,” Imani said. Her voice was cold steel; her eyes were warm as the sun. “I will not write it and risk you.”

“You must write it,” Eme insisted. “The governor is gone and Captain Berringer is as deranged as any man on this island. Challenge him. Force him to step past what is reasonable, what is safe. Bring him down, and we will have Nassau.”

“The governor’s wife did not leave this morning as scheduled. She remains in Nassau. I assume you know this.”

“He will not listen to her.”

“Max is still here, and she will –”

“Where is she? I had heard the captain was looking.”

“Captain Berringer found her and had begun to interrogate her as to her whereabouts last night. Mrs Rogers interceded on her behalf.”

“Then now must be the time for it,” Eme said. “There is no walking away from this.”

“Let me think a moment.”

“Madi is here,” Eme whispered, low and urgent. “Captain Flint is here. They are poised and ready. We cannot be the weak point in this. We must not be.”

Imani gave her a long, careful look. “Am I to promise Long John Silver’s return, then, in this note?” she asked. “Will the men of Nassau rise up to stand beside him?”

Eme could not and would not say it aloud, but of course she had given it away to Imani. She always did. She felt too much, thought too quickly in her presence for those thoughts to be concealed. “It must come from him,” she said. “Nothing else could provoke Captain Berringer to such a degree.”

“This is a promise that can only be made once,” Imani said. “You know this. If it is broken, there will be no second chance at it.”

Eme nodded.

“But you want to make it now.”

She did not bother to nod again. Imani had not really been asking.

“I will see what I can learn in the next hour or so,” Imani said eventually. “If what I hear accords with your plan, then I will do it.”

A weight came off Eme’s shoulders; the strength of her smile strained her cheeks.

“But someone else must deliver it,” Imani said. “You cannot change my mind on this.”

“Imani –”

“I will find somebody,” she said, waving off Eme’s protest. “Leave it with me.”

It took a moment after Imani left for Eme to settle her thoughts and contain the nervous energy that threatened to take control of her limbs and send her running out into the street to declare war on Nassau, on England and the whole of the New World. Her role was not to act but to watch, wait and at all times be ready for whatever might come. Anyone at all might come by the tavern; anything at all might happen outside it. More than anything in these next few hours, Eme needed a steady head on her shoulders and a heavy dose of patience.

When she was ready, she walked out into the main room of the tavern and resumed her duties, her bearing perfectly demure and unremarkable. It would be better if Miss Guthrie was gone from Nassau before all of it started, but it would not take much provocation to bring Captain Berringer to such a state that she, like any other inhabitant of Nassau, would not be able to stand in his way once he had made his mind up to act. If she criticised his approach or attempted to obstruct him, that itself might be enough to send him over the edge.

Miss Guthrie’s presence might make the taking of the township more difficult, but it could not stop the inciting event. Nothing would stop the inciting event. Imani would create the black spot, and she would see it placed before Captain Berringer. Those with the courage to resist would begin to do so, to distract and destabilise his hold on Nassau enough that when the time came for Madi and Captain Flint to invade, two days, five days or a week from now, the town would be ripe for the taking.

And that, then, would be only the beginning.

Chapter Text

The gallows stood in front of the governor’s residence, its three empty nooses swinging in the breeze. Captain Berringer would be hanging pirates there before the day was out, three by three until his supply ran dry. All throughout its construction and even more so after its completion, the stark wooden structure had captured the eyes and the imaginations of all who passed through the square: Berringer’s men, pirate sympathisers and honest townsfolk alike. It stood as a symbol not only of law but of righteousness, of a new rule in Nassau whose power was absolute and inescapable.

That a small crowd had gathered in the square was to be expected on a day on which hangings were due. That they shrank away from Berringer as he approached the gallows was both right and proper. That they had turned their backs to the gallows and the governor’s mansion and instead stood staring at the front door of the tavern was of some concern to Berringer; the fact that the vast majority of his own men were doing the same was considerably more so.

As Berringer reached the centre of the square, Carter hurried forward from his position to walk alongside him. “We didn’t see who did it, sir,” he said, cringing a little as he spoke. “Howard was the first to notice, but we don’t know when –”

The black spot was hammered into the jamb with not not one, not two nails but three in a tight cluster, standing at odd angles so that anyone looking would know they had been hammered in separately, one by one – so that Berringer would know. The script was familiar; the charcoal smeared in the middle was fainter than he had seen it before but prominent enough that it was visible from a good twenty feet away. Three nails hammered into the front door of the tavern, and none of his men stationed in the square had seen it done? None of his men had heard it done?

Not fucking likely.

All eyes were on Berringer as he stood at the door and read what was written there. No doubt some would already know what it said. Some would know who had written it. Some would have seen it hammered into the door: one nail, two nails, three. After this was over, Berringer would find every single person who had stood by and allowed this, and every one of them would pay a price for their inaction. The gallows was built and stood ready. Once discovered, the perpetrators, whoever the fuck they might be, would find that under Captain Berringer’s command, justice was swift and final.

Too much leeway had been given. The governor had stepped too carefully, made too many deals and agreed to too many compromises. The incessant disruptions caused by his supposedly reformed wife and the insufferable, conniving, deceitful woman he had allowed onto his council were enough to drive a man to desperate deeds in and of themselves, but this? This was a blatant challenge, as good as a slap across the face, and Berringer would not, could not and must not let it stand. He was in charge here, he fucking ruled here, and anyone who still doubted it would not be able to do so for long.

He ripped the letter off the door, turned and walked back out into the square, planting his feet firmly and letting them all see him. Let the traitors and the criminals play their games under cover of darkness; Berringer was not afraid to stand in the full light and heat of the southern sun and show them exactly who he was.

“To the men and women of Nassau,” he read aloud, pausing after only that much to look over them all. They thought they were safe as one among many; every single one thought that if they stood and listened quietly, Berringer would take no particular notice of them. He took a moment to disabuse them of this notion, singling out those who seemed boldest and giving them his complete and undivided attention until, inevitably, they looked sideways or down to the ground and he could move on to the next. The rebels thought words could be their weapons, but words only ever had power in men’s minds. These wretches could imagine rebellion all they liked, lying in bed at night and dreaming of Long John Silver. The more comfortable the dream became to them, the more daunting the reality of it would become by comparison. The people of Nassau had already revealed themselves to Berringer as weak, and he had seen nothing to suggest that that would ever change. One by one, they dropped their gaze from him.

His point well and truly made, Berringer went on. “Change is coming to Nassau,” he read at the top of his voice, ridding every word of its mystique as he went. “Woodes Rogers has fled, and he has left his men behind him. Those men are disowned by England yet still wear her uniform, because they know without her they are nothing. When their illusion of control over this place is broken, they will have nowhere to go. They will have nowhere to hide. All they can think of to do is to hang men, to show you death and use it to frighten you, because what desperately frightens them is that Nassau will find its voice again – the voice that lives inside us all, that voice that refuses to be enslaved. The men and women of Nassau can only be held so long before their spirits rise again. Know this. We are many. They are few. Change is coming to Nassau. Long John Silver is coming to Nassau. The time to act is now. To fear death is a choice, and they can’t hang us all.”

Berringer threw the letter down into the dirt by his feet. The eyes of the crowd followed its passage. “The time to act is now,” he said, giving full voice to his contempt and disgust. “I am afraid of you. My men are afraid of you.” He looked around at them. Some met his eyes. Some did not. “Who among you will strike the first blow?”

The silence was absolute.

He took off his swordbelt, threw it down to the ground next to the letter and stepped over them both, his arms outstretched. “Here,” he said. “I am unarmed. No one will stand in your way. If the time isn’t now, when the fuck is it going to be?”

Here was resounding proof that words scribbled down and hammered to a door meant absolutely fucking nothing. Here it was, plain as day, right in front of their very eyes.

“None of you?” he said. “No one at all?”

There was a sudden murmur, a ripple of energy, and Berringer turned to see a man had appeared from around the side of the tavern – a horrible scarred creature with murder in his eyes, a hammer in his right hand and a sword in his left. He brushed by Wilson, who stared at him in surprise, raised his gun and then half-lowered it again, looking to Berringer for his cue.

No one will stand in your way, Berringer had said.

“Good of you to present unarmed,” the man said, not running but stalking forward impossibly quickly, his eyes fixed on Berringer and his teeth bared ready for battle. He had already halved the distance between them and showed no sign of slowing. “Good of you to offer a free run at you. I’ll be very glad to take you up on it.”

Berringer heard guns cocking behind him and to the side, but nobody shot. Surely he would not have to give the order. Surely not all of his men were so fucking stupid –

He stepped backward, stumbling, bending down for his swordbelt. He heard one shot, two, three. The man roared in pain and then roared again, but he kept coming, and Berringer turned back to him just in time for everything to end.

Chapter Text

The way Dooley saw it, life wasn’t all that complicated. It was hard for just about everyone, short for most and only really worth living if you went into every day knowing full well you were a good chance of dying by the end of it. On the account, there was no pretending otherwise. You fought or you fell. You lived or you died. You were lucky or you weren’t. If anything, fearing death just made it come on quicker.

Yesterday had been a real bitch of a day, a kick in the teeth and balls and gut all at once, and the day before it had been even worse. Dooley had had days like that before, and he was still here breathing. Maybe today would kill him, or maybe tomorrow would, but he was damned if he was going to let that stop him from living the shit out of the life he had left. He was a long, long fucking way from being done.

Right now, he was waiting. It drove him crazy to just sit and do nothing when absolutely everything was at stake, but the captain had a plan and by now Dooley knew better than to try and think past the captain’s plans. If there was nothing the four of them could usefully do to help right now, they were better off sitting around in the old abandoned house and waiting for the moment when they could. It wasn’t like any of them had woken up this morning hale and hearty after a long, refreshing night’s sleep.

“Murtaugh,” Schaal said, scratching his beard with his left hand. His right arm was in as firm a sling as they’d been able to make, but he still kept grabbing at that shoulder every few minutes and trying to push it further into the socket.

“Dead,” said Helyer, coughing and scraping a line in the dirt with the heel of his boot. “Shot in the water.”

“Rossbury.”

“Died at Underhill’s.” Another line.

“Will Buckley.”

No one said anything. Had it been Buckley who had been knocked over when the longboat cracked in half up on deck? Dooley vaguely remembered seeing whoever it had been trying to climb back to his feet, but then something had been hit near him, somewhere, and next thing he knew Flint had been yelling orders and it had all been a frenzy. He’d seen – he didn’t remember seeing Buckley anywhere, alive or dead, after they’d abandoned ship.

“That’s yours, then,” Helyer said to Harmes. “Mark one down unknown.”

Harmes rolled his eyes and bent down to draw a line in the ground with his finger. “If they’re alive now, you know they’re hanged by nightfall anyway,” he said, sitting up straight again.

“Will Buckley, unknown,” said Helyer. “Next?”

“Bart,” said Schaal.

“Bart Hislop?”

“Hislop’s half-dead back on the island,” Schaal said, squeezing his shoulder again. “I’m talking about tall Bart.”

“Dead,” Dooley said. He remembered Wallace and Young using Bart’s body as a shield, scrambling to keep a firm hold on him while they ducked for cover in their longboat. It hadn’t bought them long. “Shot.”

Helyer scraped a crossways line this time. “Forty,” he said. “And –”

“There was another Bart, wasn’t there?” Schaal said. “Somebody’s brother.”

“Bartholomew Kelty,” said Harmes. “On the Revenge.”

“Lucky bastard,” said Helyer. “What I wouldn’t give to be sitting pretty on the Revenge right now.”

“No one on the Revenge can do anything now for our brothers they’re holding prisoner,” said Dooley. “You couldn’t pay me to be sitting on the Revenge when we’re in striking distance right here.”

“I don’t know what it is you think we can do for them,” said Helyer. “We’re a dozen men against hundreds.”

“Go and ask for a pardon, then,” Dooley said.

Helyer tensed and planted his feet firmly on the ground. “I’m no coward, Dooley.”

“Then why the fuck are you talking like one?”

“Blind Jim,” Schaal said loudly.

“Dead,” said Harmes. “Blown to bits.”

Helyer shot Dooley a resentful look, sat back again and scraped another line on the ground with his boot. “Forty-one.”

“Young Jim,” said Schaal.

“Who the fuck is Young Jim?” Helyer snapped. “If you start inventing –”

“Cook’s boy on the Defiant.”

“And you know the name of the cook’s boy on the Defiant how, exactly?”

“Because I was talking to McWilliams about Blind Jim last month, but I just said Jim, and he asked me which Jim.”

“Do you know what this Young Jim looks like, then?”

Schaal shook his head.

“Anyone know what he looks like?”

No one said anything.

“That’s a maybe, then,” said Helyer. “Unknown.”

Harmes sighed, bent down again and marked it crossways. He smothered a cough as he sat up again. “Twenty-five.”

“Jesus,” Dooley said.

“Like I said,” said Helyer. “The Revenge is looking like heaven right now.”

Dooley was on the brink of getting up and shutting Helyer’s fucking mouth for him, scrawny bastard that he was, when they all heard footsteps pounding along the path coming up the hill – a single man running at full speed. Harmes and Helyer stood up from the empty windows they’d been sitting in to stand with their backs to brick, pistols loaded and at the ready. Schaal sidled along to peer out of the doorway, holding his shoulder tight to his body as he moved. Dooley watched Schaal as the footsteps came closer, closer, closer. The second he let go of his shoulder and reached for his pistol, Dooley would be right there beside him.

“It’s Jones,” Schaal reported, looking back around at the rest of them. “Nobody in pursuit.”

Harmes and Helyer sighed in relief. Dooley told himself he was relieved by it as well. Just because he was itching for a fight didn’t mean he truly wanted one. They’d counted forty-one dead already, and twenty-five more who probably were, and they’d barely gotten started. Every man who’d survived to today likely stood for at least ten who hadn’t made it. The last thing that Dooley wanted was to make those numbers any worse than they already were.

Jones burst recklessly through the open doorway. He tried to grab onto Schaal to help him keep his balance as he stumbled to a halt, but Schaal stepped quickly away, turning to protect his shoulder. Jones staggered a few more steps to lean against the wall instead.

“Runner come from town,” he gasped. “Berringer’s fucking dead.”

On pure instinct Dooley looked around for Flint, or Silver, or De Groot, or Billy, or the fucking ghost of Hal Gates, to take his cue and go from there, but it was just Schaal, Helyer and Harmes in here with him and they all looked exactly like Dooley was feeling: absolutely fucking thunderstruck.

“Fucking hell,” Dooley said. “How?”

Jones walked over to the window and sat down, still fighting for breath and sweating like a pig.

“How?” Dooley said again, going and standing over him. “How the fuck does that happen?”

Jones shrugged. “He put out a challenge for a duel and lost it, apparently.” He looked up at Dooley, frowned and stood up again, so that Dooley had to back off a step to avoid butting heads with him. Then Jones just stood there with his hands on his hips, dragging in long, deep breaths.

Helyer came over to stand beside Dooley, and Harmes crowded in beside him. Schaal stayed at the doorway, watching out down the hill.

They all stood there waiting for Jones to explain, but Jones didn’t seem inclined to. Dooley edged in a fraction closer again. “He what?”

“Fucking hell, Dooley, I don’t know. He’s dead, and the whole town’s gone mad. It’s our fucking moment, mate. We can go in right now and save our brothers. We can take Nassau back. He’s dead.”

Dooley grinned, and Jones grinned right back at him. He was so fucking ready to fight. “Does Flint know?”

Jones shook his head. “I couldn’t find him.”

“Madi?”

Jones shook his head again. Dooley turned and saw that Helyer, Harmes and Schaal were all looking right at him. They were looking to him like he was – Jesus, how times had fucking changed from when Dooley had been the youngest and the dumbest to have a place in the vanguard.

“Yeah,” Dooley said. “All right.” The situation wasn’t too complicated. He just had to – yeah. “Where’s Joji?”

“He’s with Flint, isn’t he?” Jones said.

“How do you know that if you don’t know where Flint is?”

“Visscher said Flint’s with Joji.”

“What the fuck does Visscher know?”

“How the fuck should I know? Am I my brother’s fucking keeper? I don’t know why we’re standing around just fucking talking when –”

“Right,” said Dooley. “Here’s what we do. Gather up the vanguard.”

“We’re all in the vanguard now, brother,” said Helyer.

Dooley didn’t give him even a second’s glance. Flint never took any shit when he was giving orders, and so neither would Dooley. “We gather up all of the vanguard,” he said firmly. “That means find Joji and find the Maroons. Find out everything you can about what’s happening in Nassau. And for fuck’s sake, find Flint.”

“Me?” said Jones. “Come on, Dooley. How am I supposed to –”

The man who was giving the orders did not have to take anyone’s shit. “Schaal, Harmes, find Flint. He won’t be too far away, and the Maroons won’t be too far from him. Jones, you go and find out whatever else you can about what’s happening in Nassau.”

Schaal and Harmes nodded and hurried away. Jones stayed standing where he was. He hadn’t fully caught his breath yet, and he was fucking lazy to boot. “Who died and made you captain?” he said to Dooley.

“It’s Flint’s order in the first place, fuckwit,” Helyer said. “Get the fuck on.”

“Get the fuck on this,” Jones said, putting a hand over his crotch and thrusting pointedly at Helyer.

“I know you want me, but that’s fucking embarrassing,” said Helyer. “Buy a man a drink first.”

“You can stick your drink up your arse,” said Jones. “Get you nice and –”

Dooley grabbed a handful of his hair and dragged him backwards by it. “Moses, my friend,” he said right by his ear, twisting his hand around slowly. “Is this our fucking moment, or is it not?”

“What the fuck is going on here?”

And there was the end of Dooley’s command, thank Christ. Flint was standing in one of the open doorways, looking more than ready to kill one or all of them if the mood took him. Schaal and Harmes were standing a little way down the path from him, but there was nobody else. No Joji, no Madi, none of the Maroon men.

Dooley let go of Jones and gave him a little shove to go on with. “Jones says Berringer’s dead,” he reported to Flint. “He was just going to see what else he can find out.”

Flint gave Dooley a long look and then his eyes shifted to Jones. “And where does this information come from?”

Shit. There was something Dooley should have asked.

“Featherstone’s boy, captain,” Jones said. “Boy called Matthias.”

“Matthias isn’t one of Featherstone’s,” Helyer said.

“Curly hair, fat little face,” Jones said. “Dark lad.”

“Yeah, not Featherstone. Matthias is with the Maroons.”

“He’s a solid source, captain,” Jones said to Flint. “And something’s definitely happened in there. You can tell it from a mile away. You can hear it.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“Uh,” Jones said. “No.”

“I understand you were just on your way back to town.”

Jones gulped. “Yes, sir,” he said, quickly turning to go.

“Wait,” Flint said. Jones stopped. “I want you to find out if Billy has heard about this. If he hasn’t, see that he doesn’t. Understand?”

“Uh, captain,” said Jones. “How am I supposed to –”

“Work it out,” Flint said. “If Billy gets his claws into Nassau, we’re just as fucked as we were before.”

Jones’s eyes darted to Dooley, but it wasn’t like Dooley couldn’t do anything to help him, even if he wanted to. He didn’t really want to. “Yeah,” Jones said. “Yes, captain. I’ll just – I’ll go.”

He hadn’t been gone twenty seconds when Schaal caught sight of the rest of them coming up the other side of the hill: Joji, Madi, Kofi, Obi, Adams, Kennedy, Visscher and the two Maroon men whose names he could never get straight.

That wasn’t the vanguard. It was the whole invasion force. They were in for the fight of their lives, fourteen men and one princess against the whole fucking world.

God, Dooley felt alive. This was what he was made for. His blood was rising, and his hand itched for his sword. When Flint turned to him after having words with Madi, Dooley grinned at him, drunk on the prospect they had ahead of them. “He’s gone,” he said. “He’s fucking dead, and the governor out of town.”

“Let’s get the fuck on with it, then,” Flint said, with a nasty little smile directed Dooley’s way. “Let’s take back what’s ours.”

They all marched together toward Nassau, at the double and then some. Once Dooley had filled Flint in on the very little that Jones had said, Flint spent the whole rest of the time talking to the Maroons about key locations in Nassau and the strategies that might be used in its defence. Dooley knew Nassau just as well as Flint did, maybe even better, but he listened closely all the same. Flint always knew the right way to act and the right thing to say, and it was a complete fucking mystery to Dooley how he did it. Dooley didn’t always get it right talking to his own sworn brothers, who he’d bleed and die for. He wasn’t smart like Flint or Silver or even smart like Billy or Gates had been, but he wasn’t such a complete fucking idiot that he couldn’t see how things were changing. Silver was gone and Billy had broken away, and Flint needed somebody to fill the gap that they’d left. That much was obvious. What wasn’t obvious to Dooley was why it had ended up being him. He hadn’t volunteered, and nobody had voted. There was no way he’d win if it came to an actual vote. The thought of Dooley as quartermaster would make the lot of them piss themselves laughing.

But Jones had come running with incredible fucking news, and Schaal, Helyer and Harmes had looked straight to Dooley. He didn’t know what he’d done to make that happen, but fuck if the idea wasn’t starting to grow on him. He wasn’t kidding himself that Flint was looking at him differently today than he’d used to before. If Silver was here everything would be different, but Silver wasn’t here. Just like so many others who’d fallen along the way, Silver was gone and he was never coming back. What the rest of them were going to do, the ones who’d survived, was fight for Nassau and then keep fighting for whatever else they fucking wanted. Dooley wasn’t Silver, but he knew fighting and he could do shit for Flint that Silver could never even dream of doing.

Dooley had realised a long time ago that Flint wasn’t a man in the way most men were. He’d used to hate him for it. He’d used to fucking despise him for it, but he’d always known that it was the reason why the Walrus was the best ship to be crewed on. Flint couldn’t die, and the Walrus couldn’t die, and by now Dooley had stopped caring why. Maybe the Barlow woman really had made him immortal. Maybe it was a pact Flint himself had made with the devil or one of the wild and wicked gods who ruled where God’s hand didn’t reach. It didn’t matter. It didn’t signify. Anything Flint walked into, he would walk out of again. Anything he wanted, he got. Whatever fucking dark magic stood in place of Flint’s soul would take them to victory.

John Silver had died and Billy Bones had betrayed them. Featherstone had fucked them and Teach had sailed away, with Rackham and Bonny and his whole damn crew. Flint didn’t care. Flint put his head together with Madi and made a new plan, and he stood in front of everyone he had left, and he said they were still going to win this thing. Dooley believed him. Stand long enough at Flint’s side, and something of what he had rubbed off on you. Look what it had done for Silver. Look what he’d been and what Flint had made him.

They were nearly all the way to town by the time Jones finally came running back. Flint stood and listened to him, asked three or four questions, sought and gained Madi’s approval and then laid out the plan to all the rest of them. They would split into five bands: Dooley, Joji and Adams, Harmes, Jones and Visscher, Helyer, Schaal and Kennedy, Madi and her bodyguards, and then Flint and the other two Maroon men. They would go into town by five different routes, as quietly as they could manage, so that between them they would see as much of it as possible. They’d meet back in the square if that was possible and around the back of the tavern if it wasn’t. Flint repeated that half a dozen times that they were not to go looking for fights, nor join them unless desperately necessary. The town was chaos, and they weren’t to get caught up in it. They were coming with a purpose, and that purpose must be achieved.

So they walked into the outskirts of town together: Dooley with his pistol in his left hand, Adams with one in each like he thought he was Blackbeard, and Joji with his sword out already, curved and shining and wicked sharp. They weren’t allowed to raise hell, but if hell came knocking they were sure as shit going to be ready to answer the door.

Every few minutes, Joji kept stopping to stand and listen. Every time he did it, it pissed Adams off a little bit more. Dooley didn’t blame him for that – he was just as desperate to get on with things as Adams was – but the choice they had was to either go on without Joji or wait until he was good and ready. It was as simple as that. Dooley would rather eat his own right arm than walk away from Joji when battle was as close as this, so whenever Joji stopped, Dooley stopped along with him. Adams just swore under his breath and waited with them both.

Dooley willingly stood and waited with Joji every time, but he didn’t fucking enjoy it. He’d called Nassau home for a good twenty years – shit, closer to twenty-five by now – and he’d never seen it this empty before. He’d never seen it this still. He’d never heard it this fucking quiet. He could hear screaming, gunshots and bursts of shouting in the distance, but none of it sounded real to his ears.

“Come on,” Adams growled the eighth time, when Joji lingered even longer than usual.

“Wait,” Joji said. “Listen.”

“All I can hear is fighting we’re not permitted to be a fucking part of. What are we waiting for here? Let’s go.”

“Streets are clear,” Dooley said. “We can make it to the square in ten minutes.”

“This mystic shit gets really fucking old, Joji,” Adams said. “There’s nothing to –”

Joji nodded and set off again without saying a word to either of them, marching down the street with a spring in his step and the world’s sharpest sword in his hand, a living nightmare for any poor English bastard that might happen to cross his path.

“I’m going to kill him,” Adams said as he and Dooley had to jog to catch up. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”

“You’ll have to go through me,” Dooley said. He said it with a smile, like it was a joke, but he’d fought men who’d fucked with Joji before and he’d do it again. The two of them were all that was left of the vanguard when Dooley had first joined it. If anything happened to Joji, he’d lose a lot more than a friend and a brother. He’d lose all the years that only the two of them remembered. He’d lose McCreary and Walla and Michael and Cutting and that foul fuck Nicholas all over again. He’d lose Joshua, who’d come in years after but belonged from the very beginning, and Billy the way Billy used to be. It’d just be Dooley and Flint left from the old days, the really old days, and there was no way Flint remembered any of it the same way Dooley and Joji did.

That would be why they all had looked to him, Dooley realised. Dooley and Joji were all that was left of the old guard now, and Joji was too fucking weird to be any kind of in charge. Too weird and too mean and too solitary. Probably reminded them all too much of Flint. Sometimes Dooley would swear Joji could read Flint’s mind and Flint could read Joji’s, while they just kept Dooley around for his big dumb mouth and his big dumb muscles.

It wasn’t like that any more, though. It hadn’t been for a while. Dooley still had the big mouth and the big muscles, but he had something else too. He had seniority. He had standing and years of loyal service. He had what you might call a simple, functioning relationship with his captain. Maybe he’d finally done what all those old dead bastards had sworn he’d never do. He’d grown the fuck up.

There were no redcoats in the streets, and there was no one else either. No townsfolk, no workers, no decrepits and no kids. Every once in a while there was movement at a window, or someone peered around from behind a door, but that was it. The bodies lying here and there on the street weren’t in uniform. They were normal fucking people who’d either taken up a fight and lost it or just been caught up in one they couldn’t run away from in time. The meat of the fighting was clearly already over. Everyone who could hide would be hiding, and the ones who wanted to fight were either dead or dying or running out of people willing and able to fight them. They’d only come in time for the dregs.

Dooley kept moving forward, eyes side to side and glancing up to check the roofs, two steps behind Joji, covering him with his pistol. The first person to run directly across their path was an old man pulling a kid behind him and yelling at the kid to run, run, run. He didn’t spare Dooley and Joji a glance as they hurried past. The kid looked at them with her mouth wide open, stumbling as she was pulled on by. There were a few more after that – some bloody, some screaming, some stinking of piss and fear, all running like the devil himself was after them.

They turned a corner and Dooley saw his first redcoat, swarmed by four men and screaming out for help as they dragged him to the ground. None of the four men were armed, but it didn’t slow them down for a second. Dooley pulled out his sword, more than ready to join in, but Joji grabbed him by the arm and shook his head. He nodded back in the direction they were heading and tightened his grip. Dooley looked one more time at the fight, told himself again what it was they’d come to do, and walked away from it.

One street further along, and there were soldiers. Two of them came running, no guns but their swords drawn and already bloody. Adams shot the first and Dooley the second. Ten seconds later three more followed, turning sharp around a corner and charging on. Adams shot one with his second pistol and fell back behind Dooley and Joji. By that time Joji had already dealt with one of the other two, blocking a single blow then slicing him from shoulder to opposite hip. Dooley stepped up to the last one, drawing his blade and his attention so Joji could run him through. By then Adams had finished reloading one pistol but he didn’t bother with the other one, tucking it into his belt empty and drawing his sword with a flourish. Dooley couldn’t be fucked reloading his own pistol either. He was so fucking ready to fight.

“Where the fuck are they all?” Adams said as the three of them walked shoulder to shoulder down the street. “What the fuck’s happened?”

“Both sides retreated,” Joji said. He was covered in blood, his shirt soaked through, but he didn’t look wild at all. He watched carefully and listened carefully and talked as casually as if the three of them were sitting around a fire on the beach with nothing to do but kill time and talk shit.

“Retreated where?”

“The fort,” Dooley said. “If any of them have run then they’ll be in the fort. If Berringer’s dead, I don’t know who the fuck that puts in charge.”

“You know as well as I do that it’ll be Guthrie.” Adams said. “I’d bet my left bollock.”

“No one wants your left bollock, you twisted fuck.”

“I’ll take it,” said Joji. “Add it to my collection.”

Dooley grinned at the look on Adams’ face. “Joji, you’re scaring the man,” he said.

“Trust you to be a bollock collector,” Adams said, glaring sideways at Joji. “There’s something seriously fucking wrong with you.”

Joji only shook his head wisely. “If men wouldn’t bet their bollocks, I wouldn’t collect them.”

“Come on,” said Dooley, picking up his pace. “You want to be the last ones there?”

As it turned out, they weren’t last to arrive. They were first, and the square was empty. It was dead fucking empty, if you didn’t count the dozens of bodies stinking up the place.

“Jesus fuck,” said Adams.

“There,” Joji said, pointing his sword, curving and wicked and still slowly dripping blood. “Berringer.”

Adams was already gone, off stabbing all the redcoats one by one to make sure they were all the way dead. Dooley wanted to join him and take out all his energy on something, even if that something was men who already lay dead on the ground. Instead he went with Joji and looked where he had pointed.

He looked down at a caved-in skull, long fair hair soaked in blood, a limp and lifeless body that for some reason was lying on a sword still in its scabbard. “Fuck,” he said. “It really is him.”

Joji looked down at Berringer for a second then up to take in all the rest of the square. He rolled the body over with his boot, knelt and wiped his sword clean on the back of Berringer’s coat very slowly and carefully, like one of the many, many rituals Dooley was pretty sure he invented just to piss off the rest of the crew.

“So where’s the prisoners?” Dooley said, looking over at three empty nooses blowing in the wind. “There’s no way he could have hanged them before all this started.”

Joji stood up and looked at Dooley. He was very faintly frowning. “It will depend who started the fight.”

“We should –”

Someone whistled, and Dooley turned to see Flint coming up the road with his two Maroons. He didn’t seem surprised to see how things were, but then he never did. He took his time looking over the whole square, thinking hard and saying nothing. Joji took off and started patrolling, light-footed and sure.

When Dooley couldn’t stand waiting a second longer, he raised his hand and called out to his captain. “Captain! Berringer’s over here.”

Flint came over to stand next to Dooley and looked down at the body, still not saying a fucking word. Dooley never could really tell what he was thinking, so he didn’t try. He just waited.

It was a long wait. After he’d stared at Berringer for a while, Flint wandered off again and started inspecting the other bodies. What he was looking for Dooley had no idea. If Flint wanted him to know, he’d tell him. If he wanted his help, he’d ask for it. If he wanted to be left alone to stare dead man after dead man after dead man in the face, Dooley wasn’t going to argue with him about it.

Adams joined Dooley after a little while, red-faced from the vigorous stabbing he’d been doing. “Have they retreated to the fort?”

Flint was twenty yards away, rifling through a dead redcoat’s pockets, but he answered before Dooley had a chance to. “So it would appear,” he said, rolling the dead man back over and standing up again.

“So we have Nassau,” Dooley said. It was too easy. He’d been ready for a fight, ready and willing as the devil himself, and he’d not been allowed one. He’d shot one man, Adams had shot two, and Joji had got both close-quarter kills. Dooley had actually gone and gifted him one. Fucking Joji.

Flint moved on to the next body. Adams gave Dooley an exasperated look. What the fuck was Dooley going to do about it? He wasn’t John Silver, and he wasn’t Joji. He couldn’t read anybody’s mind, let alone the captain’s.

“See the streets cleared of soldiers,” Flint called over without even looking at them. “See that our men keep their discipline. There will still be a fight to come. There’s been no sign of Billy yet.”

“Yes, captain,” said Adams.

“The prisoners,” Dooley said to Flint. “Don’t we need to –”

“It’s done,” said Flint. “Most are free and accounted for. A select few were taken and are presumed held hostage in the fort. There is nothing to be done about it at the present moment.”

“Clear the streets of soldiers with me?” Adams said to Dooley with a shameless, murderous grin.

“You go,” Dooley said, hating himself as he said it. Responsibility was one thing when it was placed fairly on him by his captain according to the articles he’d signed up to and the oath he’d sworn. That was duty, not sacrifice. Dooley wasn’t duty-bound to stay here with Flint; he could just as easily go with Adams and find the fight he was longing for. Something held him back from it, and it was steady and suffocating and all of his own fucking making.

“What’s wrong?” Adams said. “The captain said –”

“You go,” Dooley said again. “He was talking to you.”

“He was talking to us both.”

“Go,” Dooley said, like he had any right to order it. For a miracle, Adams turned and went.

Not half a minute later, Joji came jogging back to him. “Nobody is here,” he said. “Nobody at all.” He looked at Flint for a second then over to where Adams had gone and joined forces with the two Maroon men who’d come with Flint.

“I’ll stay here,” Dooley said to him. “Go hunting.”

“You won’t come with me, brother?”

“Brother,” Dooley said to him. “I would fucking love to.”

Joji looked from Dooley to Flint and then back again. His expression didn’t change, but after a second he nodded. “I understand,” he said. “You stay with him.”

After Joji and the rest of them left, Dooley went and sat up on the gallows, where dozens of his brothers had been intended to hang that very day. He looked at all the bodies strewn around the square and wondered who would ever have started a fight like this, where everyone in it stood to lose.

“Here,” Flint said eventually. Even now he didn’t turn to look at Dooley, just yelled over. It answered the question of whether he’d noticed that Dooley had stayed, anyway. “This one.”

Dooley got up and went over to him.

“Israel Hands,” Flint said.

Flint had all the time in the world to talk to Maroons, but he wasn’t one for explaining things to his own men. The name was familiar but Dooley couldn’t place it, so he had to ask. “Who’s that?”

Flint scowled and picked up the hammer on the ground beside the body. “This remind you of anything?”

Dooley had seen a hammer before, but that would hardly be what Flint meant by it. “Ah –”

Flint walked back to Berringer. Dooley followed him. Flint leaned over and dangled the hammer from the ends of his fingers, so the head of it rested on what had once maybe been Berringer’s left temple. It was red with blood and brains, and now that Dooley looked closely, he saw hair on there as well.

“Yeah,” Dooley said. “Right.”

“Right,” Flint said.

“So Israel Hands killed Captain Berringer.”

“Once was not enough for him,” Flint said. He sounded bitter – more bitter than usual, for no reason Dooley could see.

Dooley thought on it for a second but still came up with nothing. “What do you mean?”

Flint shook his head and once again did not fucking explain himself. “Those in the fort are not likely to turn the guns on the streets, but we must be awake to the possibility that they will. You understand me?”

Dooley nodded. “Yeah.”

“Even with the majority of our men freed, we do not have enough men to hold this town for any length of time. As things stand, if Billy comes, he will likely take it from us. He must not come into power here. It must be avoided at all costs.”

Dooley swallowed. Billy was – Billy had been Dooley’s brother for a very long time. He had turned on them, but it was still – it didn’t seem right. “He’ll come around,” Dooley said.

“He will not come around,” Flint said sharply. “He believes himself entitled to lead every pirate on this island. The slaves must be freed and freed now if we are to gather the force to oppose him.”

“He’s not here now,” Dooley said. “We came to help, and he didn’t. Nassau folk will have noticed that.”

Flint rolled his eyes up to the sky for a second. He didn’t look bitter now, or particularly frustrated with Dooley. He just looked fucking sad. “We must make sure they have noticed,” he said slowly and clearly.

Oh, yeah. That would normally be Silver’s job.

Dooley should say something about it, something about being sorry – or maybe not, maybe it was best not to get into it at all, just to carry on with the plan and not risk saying something colossally stupid about a thing he wouldn’t begin to understand. But to say nothing at all seemed – hell, it wasn’t like Dooley was new to grief. It wasn’t the first time he’d stood alone with a man who’d lost someone important to him and not known what to say. Maybe in this, Flint actually was a man just like any other.

After a time, Flint looked at Dooley again. Dooley didn’t look away or bring the conversation back to their plan for Nassau. If Flint was sad, let him be sad now, where nobody was here to see it who would use it against him.

They shared a long look, Flint and Dooley, and Flint had just opened his mouth to speak when he looked past Dooley and abruptly closed it again. Dooley only realised how open Flint’s expression had been once he had brought it back under his control, stiffened his back and stepped around Dooley to where Madi was approaching, her two lieutenants on either side of her.

“Captain,” Dooley called after him, not really knowing why.

Flint turned back to him. “If any of the governor’s personal staff or members of his council are found, they are not to be harmed,” he said. “Extract whatever information can be easily extracted, and then take them into custody. It is vital we learn who is in that fort and what they may be intending to do. If they have taken any hostages with them, we must be prepared for an exchange. That means we must know what we have on hand to exchange.”

Dooley nodded.

“If they are in the fort in sufficient number to be a threat to our hold on this town, then we must enter into negotiations as soon as may be. If Eleanor Guthrie is in that fort, she will serve as a bridge between the parties. If she is not, then at all costs we must find her.”

“Yes, captain.”

Flint’s nod was sharp, but Dooley wasn’t convinced it was a dismissal.

“I can’t believe it came to us this easily,” he said. “I can’t fucking believe it.”

“I wouldn’t believe it just yet,” Flint said, managing about half of a doleful smile in Dooley’s direction as he started off again towards Madi. “This is barely the beginning.”

Chapter Text

Tom was an old man by now, and set in his ways. He no longer attempted to tell himself otherwise. He had tolerated this period of peace and made the best of it that he could, taking up residence in an old hut to the east of town where he had long ago buried enough gold to see him through a good decade, if he lived it frugally. He carved strange sculptures out of wood and whalebone and spoke about them very slowly and at length if anybody came and attempted to dragoon him into service. By and large, after the first few weeks, he had been left alone. Reg visited from time to time, and so did Rachel once or twice a week, brightening up the lonely little hut with smiles and laughter and promises that if he was truly finished with the account, she would stay for good. Tom did not lie to her. She came by in the evenings with meat and fruit from town and left far too early each morning.

Being well familiar with the rapid rising and falling of fortunes that was so characteristic of Nassau, Tom and his pardon had settled in more or less comfortably to watch and wait for the cycle to begin itself again. Sure enough, just as colonial rule was threatening to become properly established on New Providence Island Flint had returned from the dead to make a bother of himself, Vane had gotten himself killed by Eleanor Guthrie and Rackham had sailed away with the key to Rogers’ prospects of success on the island, luring the greatest part of the English fleet after him as he went.

Flint, Rackham and Bonny were credited with the theft of the chest and the laying of the trap, but not long after their departure a different name had begun to dominate the whispers on the island. Hornigold, Flint, Vane, Rackham and Bonny were names of tremendous weight and significance in Nassau, but they were old names. They were giants of Nassau’s past; Long John Silver was its future. Long John Silver was born of Nassau in a way that none of them could claim to be. Long John Silver would be returning to Nassau once the governor’s fleet had been vanquished, and an almighty reckoning would come due. So the whispers went.

Tom heard all that was whispered, but he still called it Flint’s victory when Chamberlain’s fleet returned to Nassau battered, beaten and severely diminished. He called it a stroke of providence when war broke out between England and Spain and the bulk of it departed altogether, leaving behind only those few hundred willing to directly defy their king’s order. It had seemed inevitable by then that when Flint returned, he would have his final victory over Woodes Rogers and Nassau could once again call itself free. The problem with Flint, after all, had never been one of a lack of competence but rather where he chose to direct the overabundance of it that he had. He was a man with strange methods and even stranger ideas who accomplished things a man had no right to accomplish or even attempt. That he would return victorious from his impossible battle against the might of the Royal Navy and then be so comprehensively defeated upon his return to Nassau had never entered Tom’s mind as a real possibility.

The day after that calamitous landing, three of Tom’s old crew had come to visit him late in the afternoon, insisting that Nassau must rally without delay. That had lit the old fire in Tom’s belly, but he had kept his head and counselled his men to wait until the state of affairs was a good deal clearer and a plan could be properly formulated. Fire was man’s greatest weapon when wielded wisely, but when let loose its hunger could not be sated, and it did not discriminate between friend or foe when it feasted. So he said to the men who had come to him – three to begin with, and two more a little while later – and they had heeded his words. Tom had sent them all away to share the sentiment among their fellows, feeling half a captain again seeing how they jumped to obey his order.

Tom had no doubt that there would very soon be a fight in Nassau. The question occupying his mind was whether both sides would have a chance to win that fight, or only the one that was organised, disciplined and firmly encamped in Nassau and its fort. They needed to find out, and soon, how many of Flint’s men had survived their invasion and what shape they were in. Communication must be established between all those men who intended to renege on their pardons and all those who had never accepted one. An entirely new battle strategy would need to be drawn, approved and communicated with the utmost speed. In order for them to stand a chance of defeating Berringer and his men, with no naval support and no overwhelming advantage in numbers, a great deal would need to be accomplished very, very quickly.

Reg had come wandering by very late that night, stinking of wine, and reeled off to Tom a list of four dozen names he had personally spoken to on the matter, fully half of which had declared themselves unequivocally against any resistance or rebellion against colonial order in Nassau, to his great disgust. Drink had given him confidence; he had arranged for men to come down to the beach near Tom’s hut the next day for a meeting of those who were neither craven nor idiots, so that together they could decide how matters would proceed. He shared with Tom the rumour that Long John Silver had taken control of the Underhill estate and rallied all the slaves behind his name, as well as the rumour that Long John Silver had already been shot and killed by Captain Berringer, as well as the rumour that Blackbeard had come ashore with Flint and Long John Silver was already off in pursuit of Governor Rogers on the Revenge.

On and on the news had flowed from Reg; Tom had listened to him for a while and then told him to take the bed for the rest of the night. He had walked outside to gaze out over the dark, endless sea and up at the stars that shone down on it. He longed to be out on the water with bright stars to guide him and strong Nassau men at his command, all unified under one singular purpose: to take whatever the fuck they wanted from the ocean and destroy whatever dared stand in their way. That was the account as it had been when Tom was in the prime of his life, but he feared it would never be that way again. Pirates were a dying breed now – or perhaps a new breed, young and unrecognisable to his old eyes – but Tom was determined to see out his days in the same way he had lived the very best of them. He would choose Charles Vane’s fate over Ben Hornigold’s, if he was given the choice of it. He would work for no master and ply no trade other than the one he had plied for the last thirty years of his life.

Tom only hoped that entering into battle for a free Nassau, even if ultimately a losing one, would be enough to free him from the shame of putting his name to the king’s pardon and letting Nassau go without a whimper. There had seemed an inevitability to it all at the time, but he had been hiding away in this hut for far too long now with nothing to do but reflect on his choices, and he had come to see it all with absolute clarity. That day had seen Tom at his weakest and his most easily swayed, and he had been far from alone in it. It had been nothing short of the most pathetic capitulation Nassau had ever seen, and if Reg’s two dozen objectors were anything to go by, it would not be easily overturned. It would require strength, spirit and a unity of vision rarely encountered in all of Nassau’s history. Nassau had often been strong but very rarely united, and if Flint’s strength could no longer be relied on, if the sun was setting on those few remaining of Nassau’s giants, then the load must be spread more widely. There was only one man that every faction on the island would follow willingly – willingly and eagerly, so it seemed – and so Tom would follow him all the way to the end of it. If he must accept a king, let it be a king of his choosing. Let it be Long John Silver, who had Captain Flint by his side, Nassau at his back and the governor’s men quaking in their boots.

Reg had anticipated that thirty men might attend the meeting he had organised down on the beach for the following day. When news of the fighting in town reached them, they had been only ten: Waldrick, Brennan and Tom, all of whom had been captains before putting their names to pardons, Reg, who had been Tom’s quartermaster so long that he had forgotten how to be anything else, three men from Tom’s old crew, two from Brennan’s and one from Waldrick’s. Discussion of how best to establish contact with Flint or Silver and coordinate an effort that would ultimately lead to victory over Berringer’s men abruptly ceased upon hearing that Berringer had already been killed and the victory was all but achieved already.

“The fort,” Tom asked the long, lanky Irish boy who had delivered the news. “Have the British been expelled from the fort?”

“Fuck, I don’t know,” he said, grinning. “Probably!”

When he would have run off again, Tom reached out and held him in place. “Either they have or they haven't, lad,” he said. “Probably does us no good.”

“You wouldn’t know good news if it kicked you in the face, old man,” Waldrick said. “Let the boy go, and let’s get ourselves fucking home!”

“If the fort is not taken while we have the advantage of surprise, it will be a long, bloody fight to take it,” Tom said, raising his voice to ensure he was heard. “That will be where we are most needed if we are to have true victory here.”

Reg nodded wisely. Waldrick scowled and Brennan scoffed, and their men followed their lead.

“I trust you remember what happened when Charles Vane –”

Brennan turned on his heel and started off towards town. All but Tom, Reg and Harry Pincherton followed him, laughing and clapping each other on the back as they picked up speed and increased in noise.

“We three for the fort, then?” Pincherton asked dutifully.

With ten men they might have been of use there, but Tom was not the fighter he had once been and Reg had never been much of one in the first place. Pincherton was handy, but his intelligence was of far more value to Tom than his sword arm. “Go on,” Tom said, nodding him along, and his conscientious sobriety vanished the instant he caught up with the rest of them, pushing down on his two crewmates’ shoulders and leaping into the middle of the pack with a long, wild whoop.

Tom and Reg followed behind the triumphant march back toward Nassau and through its deserted streets. Those ahead of them laughed and shook their fists at faces that peered out through windows or around doors at their passing, cheering all the louder when those faces shrank back in fear. Their ranks had swelled to double or three times their number by the time they were in the heart of town, most joining in the celebrations but a few stopping by Tom and Reg to fill them in on some of what had occurred. No two accounts were the same, but what was certain was that the fort remained in British hands and the bulk of Berringer’s men were presumed to have escaped there, along with key members of the governor’s council.

Tom had expected as much, but it was a blow to him all the same. Ten men coming in very late could not have wrested the fort from the hands of the British, but at the very least they could have positioned themselves between Nassau and the fort and stood in the way of anyone else who attempted to seek refuge there. Between the ten of them, they could have done something other than march into a town that had already been captured, celebrating a qualified victory they had contributed nothing to achieving.

Most of the men in Nassau’s square were already hard at work putting it back to rights. Where Tom would have expected to see jubilation on their faces, or satisfaction at the very least, instead he observed frustration and a subdued sort of wariness, and there was remarkably little chatter between them as they worked. The flow of people through the governor’s mansion was as heavy as Tom had ever seen it; everyone who passed in and out moved with direction and purpose. That might be desirable on the face of it, but it wasn’t natural and it didn’t sit right with Tom. Victory had been achieved, or so it seemed, but it had left behind it a tension he could feel in his fingers and toes.

In stark contrast to the general malaise of those working, Josiah Burgess and half a dozen of his men were stumbling about the gibbet half-drunk, attempting to hang already-dead soldiers on its nooses, laughing and cursing and getting absolutely nowhere. That was much more in line with what Tom had expected to find, and he took a perverse kind of comfort in it. Josiah, at least, could always be trusted to be vulgar.

“If you want to talk to Flint, he’s in there,” Josiah yelled over as soon as Tom started toward him, jerking his head at the governor’s house. “The devil himself, and all the devils he brought with him.”

“Fuck Flint,” Brennan shouted back from behind Tom. “Where’s Silver?”

Josiah looked at him with sudden, uncharacteristic sobriety. “You’ll want to talk to Flint,” he said. “He’s in there.”

Tom didn’t wait a moment longer. He walked through the front doors into the governor’s house, Reg close at his heels, and into a scene of somewhat restored chaos. There had clearly been a ransack, but it was being cleaned up and put back into some semblance of order by a few of the tavern girls – manumitted, employed and trusted by Eleanor Guthrie but now quite clearly in cahoots, if not with Flint, then with his latest allies.

Flint himself was standing behind the great table talking to half a dozen men about half a dozen different things all at once. There were Nassau men, of course, but also the black men Flint had brought with him. In the black men’s eyes there was no hint at all of elation, nor the tension Tom had seen in so many others – only serious, solemn, unmovable intent. Their woman stood at a little distance from Flint, flanked by two of her men, watching everything that was going on in the room with a careful, observant eye.

There was no sign at all of Silver.

“There’ll be a meeting of the captains in an hour or so,” said the man sitting at the door. A Walrus man, Tom took him for, but not one he knew by name. His calf was heavily bandaged and the bandage soaked through with blood. “If you’ve got any information to report, go on and report it.”

“To Flint?” Tom asked him.

“Unless you want to have a go at finding the governor instead,” the man said with a snort.

“Captain Flint has taken command, then.”

“My friend, he has taken Nassau. That not good enough for you?”

Another man Tom didn’t know came over then, young enough to be his grandson and then some. “Captain Tom Morgan?”

Tom nodded.

“Captain wants to speak to you.”

Tom exchanged a look with Reg and then went to present himself to Flint. As sure as sunrise, Reg would learn much more from moving around the house helping various men with their work than Tom would from a direct conversation with Flint. The things Flint avoided saying always held much more significance than any words that did come out of his mouth, and where those omissions aligned with his men’s mutterings was where closest attention would need to be paid.

Flint dismissed the men gathered around him as Tom approached, and all of them left but one. This one Tom knew and knew well: young Dooley, who had never been going to amount to anything and now stood proudly at Captain Flint’s right hand. It was no place for a lad like Dooley, any more than it had been for Billy Bones. Tom could only hope, for Dooley’s sake, that Flint would not require him there for long.

“Captain,” Flint said with a brisk nod.

“I haven’t been that for some while,” Tom told him. “I’ve no ship to call my own any more.”

Something hostile showed in Flint’s eyes at that, controlled but clear. “What’s the situation out there, as you see it?”

Flint was no superior of Tom’s by rank, and Tom was in no mood to report to him. “Where’s Silver?”

“Not here,” Flint said briskly, then went on as though it was a matter of no concern at all. “I will hold a captains’ council as soon as all essential matters have been taken care of here, within two hours at the outside. I would request your attendance, as one of Nassau’s most respected captains, at such a council.”

Flint was not a man who made requests. Nor was he a man to be argued with in public, and Tom had already learned what it was he did not wish to speak about. “Of course,” he said, and turned to leave.

“We will need to be united,” Flint said. Tom turned back around to him. Flint looked him in the eye and spoke with some force. “If we are to succeed in holding Nassau, there can be no strife among us.”

Tom felt the danger plain and clear. There was no reason for Flint to have concerns about unity unless Silver’s absence was more than a momentary one. Reports of the past two days varied greatly, but there was no doubting that a large proportion of Flint’s men had perished in the landing and more yet the following day. To have elevated Dooley to a position of such apparent significance, Flint must be running dangerously low on supporters. So the mighty of Nassau had fallen.

“We’re pirates,” Tom said to him. “I don’t fancy your chances.”

Flint’s expression darkened. Tom felt a grim satisfaction at it. He would fight at Flint’s side if he must, and take his orders if such was necessary for victory over the British, but he would do so as an ally, not as anything resembling a friend. He hadn’t the least intention of being caught up in the whirlwind that was Captain Flint, and it was best that Flint was made fully aware of that before they got any further along.

“Nassau works best when its men know what crews they belong to and what captains they answer to,” Flint said. “That is the life of a pirate. There will be disorder in Nassau only so long as its captains permit it to continue. If you no longer believe yourself to be a captain because you are not presently in possession of a ship, then I will certainly take that into consideration when planning what is to come next.”

Tom glanced at Dooley and saw in him a perfect reflection of his captain, right down to the very angle of his chin. That boy’s head had always been empty; Flint would fill it as he chose, and in time Dooley would be consumed and destroyed by him.

“I will attend the captains’ council,” Tom said to Flint. “I look forward to hearing your plan for what is to come next.”

Flint nodded stiffly, and Tom walked away. He looked around for Reg and could not find him, so he went out and moved among the men in the square, and then a little among the townsfolk, to ascertain as far as he could the nature of the situation they all found themselves in.

It did not take long to make an assessment. The townsfolk – those of them who had survived and dared now to leave their homes – were growing quickly distraught. They had been told Long John Silver was coming to save them, and not only was he nowhere to be found, the victory the pirates had had in Nassau had not even extended to its fort. They had heard that Berringer was dead but the governor was not; word had quickly spread that Eleanor Guthrie and the majority of the governor’s council were gathered now in the fort and plotting to take back the town. There were whispers of a coming war among the pirates themselves. The bodies of those who had died still lined the streets; so many others suffered from their wounds and had no help in treating them.

The victory had been won, but it was far from consolidated. Tom did not say Flint could not do it – the man was quite literally capable of anything – but it would take time, good fortune and extraordinary effort where the people of Nassau had expected a quick and decisive conquest. They had not been awaiting the return of the old tyrant Flint but the formidable new saviour that had been promised them. Tom knew of the mutiny against Flint and the murders that had brought it about, of course, as well as the multitude of other complaints levelled against him, but he had never seen this level of antipathy toward Flint in Nassau town itself, among the common people as well as those who held more personal grievances. Flint had taken control of the situation and command of Nassau, but Nassau wanted someone different than those who had gone before. Nassau wanted Long John Silver.

When those Flint had chosen – captains, he insisted on calling them – came to sit in council with him around the governor’s table, Tom knew that unity in Nassau would be a far, far harder victory than that achieved over the governor’s forces earlier that day. The chaos that had swept over Nassau had left its mark on the eight captains crowded around the table. There was a good deal of defiant energy and a distinct lack of deference in the room, which was not helped by the fact that the Maroon woman, though she took no seat at the table, was over by the door openly observing the proceedings, along with Dooley and the brute who never left her side. Tom knew what every man at the table was thinking, because he was thinking it himself: here was the Barlow woman all over again. For a man who had never once been seen to make use of a whorehouse, Flint made no secret of his predilection for living under a woman’s thumb. It had taken him this long to find another one he liked; he would not easily let her go.

“Where’s Silver?” Josiah Burgess asked without preamble, before Flint had even drawn breath to speak.

Flint sighed. “Gone.”

“Gone?” Woodall echoed, his voice pitched high and disbelieving. “The fuck you mean, gone?”

“He fell from the ship.”

“He fell from the ship,” said Josiah, a trace of mockery and more than a trace of spirits in his voice. “So is he dead or not?”

“He was seen hitting the water, and he went under,” Flint said. “We retrieved all those we could, and he was not among them.”

“So he might still be –”

“He is gone,” Flint snapped. Silence fell around the table.

“Well that’s a fucking disaster,” said Evans after a time. “This leaves us absolutely fucked.”

“It doesn’t,” Flint said to him, resuming his studied calm. He looked around at all of them. “If we act quickly, we can consolidate here and fortify against any hostile actions that may be taken, either by Woodes Rogers, if he returns, or any other party seeking to move against us. We must be united in purpose and clear in our objectives. Don’t tell me that Nassau’s pride and strength is contingent on the arrival of Long John Silver. Nassau was made and taken and held before him, and so it will be after him. We are more than enough as we are.”

“Good luck convincing them out there of that,” said Brennan, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest.

Flint brushed that off. “Gather your crews together,” he said. “Set realistic expectations, and then meet those expectations. We will be hunting inland for the time being, but we will be hunting. We will bolster our numbers with slaves that we will soon make free, as well as any men of Billy’s who see sense and come back to join us.”

Another heavy silence fell over the table.

“They will not like risking their lives to free slaves,” Tom said, to have it done with. There were some quiet murmurs of support from around the table. More than a few heads turned to look at the Maroon woman. She looked very steadily back at them.

“I don’t give a fuck if they like it,” Flint said with weary indifference, directing his words not to Tom but the whole table. “Our survival depends upon it. Rogers’ men will not be sitting idle in that fort. Billy and his men will not sit idle on the Underhill estate. Rogers, if he evades Teach’s pursuit, will not be sitting idle at sea. If your men tell you they don’t want to take up arms to free slaves and thereby ensure our success on this island and beyond it, you tell them to come and make their arguments directly to me.”

“So we’re just going to do this without Silver,” Waldrick said.

“We are.”

“I don’t –”

“If you were not here, we would do it without you,” Flint said. “If Burgess were not here, we would do it without him. If Morgan were not here, we would do it without him. If Dooley were not here, we would do it without him, and if I were not here, you would do it without me. Silver is not here, and we will do it without him, because it simply must be done.”

“Captain,” Dooley said from the doorway, holding a piece of paper in his hand. “There’s a message from the fort. A prisoner exchange, just like you said.”

“Gentlemen,” Flint said, rising to his feet. “I will see you back here this evening, where you will be free to raise any of your own concerns, or those of your men. We will be moving before first light in the morning.” He turned and went with Dooley.

“Fucking hell,” said Evans. “Some council.”

Josiah spat directly onto the table. “I liked him a hell of a lot better when he’d sailed into a tempest and died.”

The Maroon woman had left the room with Flint and Dooley, and her man with her. Two of the tavern girls came in soon after, carrying mugs of ale and then bringing in a platter of hot meat and roughly cut bread. Tom knew they were there to observe the reaction of these so-called captains who would be leading the pirate contingent of their fighting force, so he watched them very carefully in turn. Conversation came to a standstill as they worked and resumed only once they had departed the room again.

“Fuck this,” said Waldrick.

“They won’t do it,” said Josiah. “I wouldn’t do it, if it was me. None of them are under articles any more, so I don’t know how the hell Flint thinks we can give them any kind of orders. I don’t know how the hell he thinks he can give us orders.”

“Because he’s the one who knows what he’s doing,” Woodall said glumly. “That’s how he’s always done it. He shows us all up, brown-nosing the Guthries and taking prize after prize after prize, and that puts him at the top of the tree. He makes himself indispensable, and that makes him completely fucking insufferable.”

“And what exactly is he going to do if we don’t fall in with him? Fight all of us as well as all of England? He’s already declared war on Billy Bones and all his men, and Billy’s the one who put us in this position in the first place. Without all them out there, Flint would have come back to a broken fucking island, and this is the thanks they get. He’s going to go ahead and do his damnedest to break it anyway.”

Tom cleared his throat, and they looked to him. “If we do not stand together, we will fall,” he said. “If Flint is denied command, then who will take his place?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” said Woodall. “You’re all talking like there’s an alternative, but from where I’m sitting it’s Flint or nothing.”

“Silver was the fucking alternative,” Waldrick said. “Long John fucking Silver, giant of Nassau.”

“I don’t think he fell from the ship at all,” said Brennan. “I think he said or he did something Flint didn’t like, so Flint did to him like he did to Gates. Tyrant to the fucking bone.”

“Billy,” said Evans. “Billy Bones is the alternative.”

“Billy and his men are more use to us than every slave on every plantation on the island,” Waldrick agreed. “They’re good Nassau men.”

“Bones ain’t got what Flint’s got,” said Cooper, finally speaking up where Tom thought he’d been half-asleep. “He’s doing good work, I’ll say that for him, but Flint only got here two days ago and Nassau’s fallen already. Flint can do things no other man can do.”

“If he’s God’s gift to Nassau, then he can convince my men to go risk their lives on the plantations,” said Josiah. “Don’t see what it has to do with me.”

“I’m going to go to Underhill and bring Billy back,” said Waldrick. “We can’t be fighting among each other if we’re going to stand against the British. I’d take Billy’s men over three times their number in slaves.”

“You’ve said that,” said Cooper. “But –”

“How are we going to get sugar if we don’t have slaves?” Woodall said loudly enough that every head turned his way. “How’s this island going to get money if it doesn’t have sugar?”

“Well, we won’t have these slaves,” said Josiah with a dark grin. “Say the black bastards from Africa are our brothers now. Say we agree on that, we set them free and we all rise up together and overturn the natural order of things. You’d think the redcoats might be grateful for a bit of work that keeps their heads on their shoulders.” He grinned even wider at the looks on all the others’ faces, then spat again onto the table.

Brennan started to chuckle, low and long.

“Tell me you wouldn’t like to see that,” Josiah said, looking from one man to the next. “Tell me you wouldn’t like to crack the whip on Rogers yourself.”

“I just don’t see why that Maroon woman should get a say as to how we run our own fucking island,” said Woodall. “It’s the Barlow woman all over again. Let her sit down with us herself if she thinks she’s going to rule pirates as well as her own kind.”

Cooper shook his head. “She’ll rule her own people and see to it they follow Flint. That’s the way of it.”

“Not a fucking chance,” said Waldrick. “Why would she fight for us? Why the fuck would any of them fight for us? Half my men were as good as slaves on merchant traders, and when we signed them on with us you know what they did? They took revenge, like any man would. Either slaves are men like you and me, or they’re not. If they are, they’ll come after us as soon as they’re free, and they’ll take their fucking revenge. If they’re not, they’re worth nothing to us anyway.”

“If it’s a choice between Bones and Flint, I vote Flint,” said Cooper. “You’re daft if you don’t. Bones and his resistance promised us Long John Silver, and look how that’s turned out. Bones is the one who made it all hang on Silver, talking him up like he’s going to walk in and click his fingers and make Nassau a paradise. Fuck Long John Silver, mates, and fuck Billy Bones. We all know Flint’s the one. He knows he is. You’re a liar or an idiot if you haven’t known it all along.”

“Flint wants to fight England,” said Evans. “Let him. Let him take his slaves and his Maroons and the dregs of his own crew and sail out and wreak havoc on the fucking British. What do we lose? Just let them out and let them go. They only need Nassau as long as they don’t have anywhere else to call a home port. Let them fucking go.”

Josiah nodded wisely. “Give Billy Nassau and Flint the rest of the fucking world. Then we’re sitting pretty.”

“I’ll tell you what we lose,” said Woodall. “We lose the slaves. We lose the sugar. We lose the only real income this island makes for itself.”

“He’ll take every fighting man out of Nassau to march on the plantations, and the English will come out of the fort and take back control,” said Waldrick. “Mark my fucking words. Then we’re right back where we started.”

“Side with Bones then,” said Cooper. “He’s been scrounging around in the interior for months, and what does he have to show for it? Flint’s been here for two days, Berringer’s dead and we’re sitting in council in the governor’s house. I’m not saying I like the man, but it seems like all of you are closing your eyes to everything he can do.”

“My eyes are wide open,” said Woodall. “It seems I’m the only one who can see all this for what it is.”

Tom got to his feet. There was work to be done, and he was tired of dancing. “A vote.”

“Aye,” said Josiah, following suit. “That’s the Nassau we fight for.”

One by one, the captains stood.

“For Flint, or against him,” said Tom. “All those in favour?”