The Pirate King Ch. 04

I heard the gasp go up behind me as I shot up into the air. I didn't give a shit. I was done holding back, done pretending to be harmless for the sake of their feelings. Let them see what I could do. Let them understand who they were dealing with. I climbed until all I could feel was the press of the sky against my skin.

Natch made it up a few minutes later, panting from trying to keep up with my pace. "What the fuck, Ghost," he asked.

I had nothing to say to that. I wasn't in the mood to play guess who I used to be, look at what I can do.

"You've been holding back on me."

"Are you surprised," I snapped.

He was taken aback. I think he expected my anger to be sated by the movements I had forced it to go through. But I had not forced my body to do anything; this had been the first time in a long time I had been what I was meant to be.

"No," he said softly, "I'm not."

I grumbled and settled back into the ropes. He let me be for a bit.

"Are you afraid of me, Natch?"

I don't know if my question surprised him; he didn't change his face if it did. "I don't know," he answered, and I could hear the honesty in his voice. "I don't know what you are."

A ghost, I thought. A son of the sea. The ocean itself. "Another of the Captain's whores," I heard myself say, my voice bitter and petty, "ready to be thrown aside."

Natch raised an eyebrow at that. "You know that isn't true."

I didn't. I had no response.

He sat quietly for a moment. "You know," he finally said. "When I first got to the ship, I thought that Cap had brought me on as a whore."

"What?" I turned to him, surprised. He wasn't looking at me, just staring up into the sky. This felt careful, somehow. It was pushing me from my own closely held anger. "Why?"

He looked so peaceful swinging there, the wind tugging at his hair, or maybe his hair tugging at the wind. He had his eyes closed. A ghost of a smile graced his lips. "Probably because he bought me from a whore house."

"Natch," I said. I looked him over, took in his young face, his graceful body. Bought, I thought. Not found at. Bought from. And two years ago... "How old are you?"

"Eighteen, I think."

I tried to keep myself neutral, mirroring his body language. He didn't need my sympathy; he'd gotten out alive, after all. "Sixteen is too young."

He smiled. "That's what the Captain said too."

"But he never..."

"No, no, he never laid a finger on me. Just bought me and brought me back to the ship. 'You're too young for this type of work, come kill people instead,' or some other such nonsense." He shrugged. "I tried to tell him I'd been doing it for ages, but that didn't seem to make him feel better." He looked over at me then, eyes wandering my face. I didn't know what he was looking for, so I just let him look. "He never would. He doesn't use people like that."

He used me, I thought. But that was different, so different that this, and I kept my frustration from my tongue. "Can I ask how you ended up there?"

The smile that had been on his lips twisted. "Got dumped. Grew up a bit too much for my dear old Captain."

I didn't know what to say to that, said so plainly in the air. I watched his words curl around the stars like smoke, watched them dissipate before I'd come up with any sort of coherent reaction. He had gone through something I couldn't imagine. I had nothing to offer him, not in the form of words.

But actions. Results. I could give him that.

"What was his name," I heard myself ask. Don't do this, I thought. Don't promise the boy something that you can't deliver. You're already stretched thin as it is, already off the plan you've made for yourself. But the sea inside of me demanded, and the question had already passed from my lips.

He looked like he wouldn't tell me for a moment. "Yarrick," he said, the name sounding like dust coming from his lips. "Captain Yarrick."

Yarrick. "I knew a Yarrick," I said. Natch went very still. "Spent some time in his cells." His gaze snapped to me, then. Yarrick was a bounty boy, shuttling prisoners to and from colonies for better cash. He prefered guys that scored big, major pirates or murderers, rapists, the like. I could feel Natch sizing me up, and could also hear his relief that I hadn't done work with the man.

"Who paid your bounty?"

"The crown."

"For what?"

I thought about lying, but what was the point? This boy had just given me his honesty; he deserved as much back. "Piracy."

He blinked at me. First in surprise, that I hadn't mentioned this before, and that they'd found me on a merchant ship; then I watched as the implications set in. I knew he'd be doing the math in his head; no petty pirate would be picked up by Yarrick. I shrugged away his gaze. "He lied to the authorities about who I was. I pissed him off plenty good while I was on his ship, I guess."

That was true. He'd probably saved my life, although he'd never known it and never would. He told them he'd picked me up in the east, back when the eastern pirates were the most vicious. Who cared about northern pirates, when the north was only populated with ghosts and then the King's Fleets? He got a bigger bounty, and I got to stay undetected. If word had gotten back to the sea that a northerner had been sent to the mines...

"You." Now Natch was sitting up. "It is you."

"What?"

"I remember you."

I was suddenly very uncomfortable with the way Natch's gaze bored into my body. I frowned at him. "I don't remember you."

"You had longer hair back then, and less scars. I thought it was you, when you ordered Finn like that, and when you fought down there." He sucked in his breath. "It's you, isn't it?"

I didn't say anything. This had become something I hadn't expected.

"It was you."

"I don't know what you're talking about." I did, but I didn't want to bring it up.

"Three and a half years ago, on Yarrick's ship. There was an escape." His eyes were huge. "It's fucking legendary, we talked about it for fucking year."

"I didn't."

"You're a legend, Ghost. Even to kids that weren't there."

"I didn't do anything," I said truthfully.

"You got Sneg out."

"Sneg," I told him, "got themself out."

"But you were there."

I shrugged. I had been, and I had made a mistake, and I had gotten sent to the mines. It was not a good memory.

"It was you."

"So what if it was."

"Fuck, Ghost." He collapsed back into the ropes. "I can't believe this." He was making me uncomfortable with how much of a deal this had become. "You were like a fairy tale for us."

"I really didn't do anything. I fucked up; Sneg almost got caught because of me."

"Not the way Sneg tells it."

I looked over to him. "You know Sneg?" I missed that funny kid; they'd had real promise. They were going to be on my fast list of people I wanted on my ship when I got one.

He looked away. "No. I mean. I used to. You know."

I frowned and settled back into my makeshift hammock. I didn't know, and I was frustrated by the whole thing. I hadn't set out to become some sort of folk hero for abused kids, I'd just not wanted to get sold to the crown. I told Natch that, and he kind of shrugged it off as the way these things go.

I supposed, as my legends go, this one wasn't really that bad. It was strange to be confronted by one so real. This was not supposed to be a part of my life anymore.

"Sneg," he finally asked. "They doing okay?"

"Aye." I told him. "They are." He smiled.

I looked at him sitting there, his eyes tracking the last of our voices spreading through the night breezes. I tried to imagine him three years younger, a world less free, and I couldn't do it. Tried to place him in those cells with me and found that it was impossible. Natch belonged here, his hair tugging back at the wind, his hands in the ropes.

He was strong, I thought. A child from the sea, if not a son of the sea. The ocean would care for him, if I gave him the chance. I still had something to offer him, I reminded myself. An easier offer, now, that we both shared the same enemy.

"I have plans to kill him," I stated plainly.

It was a fact of my life, one that I could share with little emotion. He turned to me, surprised, and I caught and held his gaze. "After I kill the man who killed me, I'm going to go find Yarrick and kill him." I looked over to Natch's suddenly stiff form. The anger that had flowed through me earlier still pulsed; it had never left me, would never leave me. It was the heartbeat that drove my life, always just under the surface. I let it's rhythm set my conversation, let Natch hear it's quiet drive. "I can hold off on that, if you'd like. Leave him for you."

I watched questions go to war on his face. He held them all in, pulled them back into his chest with the solemnity of years of practice, settling himself back to a graceful neutral. He was good at controlling his emotions, Natch was. Good at hiding things until he needed them. "No, Ghost. You've a better chance at reaching him, I think."

I nodded at that. Natch knew me, I thought. Better than anyone on this ship, perhaps. But I had one last thing to offer. "I could always come back and get you," I said quietly.

He turned to me, surprised again.

"It won't be any trouble. The wind will take me where I ask."

He frowned at that. "You make it sound like you'd have your own ship."

I shrugged and turned back to the night sky.

He looked over to me. "You can't seriously believe that you can just become a captain, like that."

"I'm already much, much more."

He stared me down, taking me in. I let him see me, all of me. The me that should be, the me that had been killed and rose from my watery grave, the me that had survived two and half years on land under the hands of brutal men and vicious work. I let the sea rise up within me, let it fill me until the beat of it was my entire being, my eardrums echoing with blood and whalesongs and the endless, relentless pounding of the tides, eternal and unforgiving.

"Gods all," he finally breathed. "Who are you?"

"A ghost," I told him, looking away and casting my gaze to the stars. "Nothing but a ghost."

***

We stayed up there longer than we usually did, past the night watch bell, past the velvet splash of the sky spilling over the whole of the world. Eventually, Natch shifted.

"We should head down."

"I think I'm going to spend the night up here." It would do good to clear my head, to spend time so close to the stars; I had missed their company, in the depths of the mines.

Natch frowned. "But the Captain -"

"Does not care where I sleep." The words came out sharper than I meant, and I sighed to get the rest of my frustration from my lungs. My next words were only tired, a resignation of the facts. "He does not care for me at all."

Natch sat up. "How can you say that? After all that he's done for you, everything that he's risked..."

"All that he's done? He'd have me on land, Natch." I heard the rawness in my voice, the pain so close to the surface and I closed my mouth tightly, crossing my hands over my chest in an attempt to get any other words in my heart to stay.

"It was the best he could do," he said quietly.

I scoffed and turned away.

"You would rather stay? Do you really want to be with him?"

"Yes! Of course!" I had pulled myself up to glare at him for his insolent questions; now I settled back against the ropes. "I would do anything to stay at his side."

"Okay, okay. It's just." Natch mumbled the next bit, so I wasn't sure I heard. "You don't act like it."

"Excuse me."

"Sorry, Ghost." Natch backed off for only a moment before doubling down. "It's just that you've been the one spurning him, seems like."

I sat up fast, glaring at the small boy before me. But what was I to him? Natch wasn't afraid of ghosts. He shrugged off my anger and settled back against the ropes, arms crossed against my eyes.

"I have done nothing that wasn't warranted," I snapped at him. "He used me, he doesn't care about me past the noises I make and the control he can show. I won't let him hurt me again."

"What?" Natch reacted to that much more strongly than I'd expected. Maybe it'd been the pain leaking out of my voice, splashing its way over him. I'd wanted to keep this in, I reminded myself. Natch had enough on his plate. When I didn't respond to his reaction, he prodded me. "What is that supposed to mean?"

I didn't want to admit to the unreasonable thoughts that ran through my head, didn't want to share the parts of me that swirled angrily and painfully over themselves within my gut. But Natch was here, and it would be good to get this out. "He used me, Natch."

"What?"

"I said," I repeated a little louder, "the Captain used me."

Natch stared at me for a long moment, then leaned forward. "Tell me exactly what happened."

And I did, the whole story spilling from my mouth. Wicky, his words to me and his animosity. The Captain, how he had already chosen to not be with me. The way he had suddenly changed, the reasons he had given behind it. His commands to be loud, using my body to punish Wicky. How much that had hurt. How much it hurt, still, to think of him wanting only my skin and hands and not me. How I had ended it, telling him he was never to touch me again.

When I finished the story, I looked morosely over to Natch and found him staring back at me, his mouth open slightly.

"Yeah," I said. "And now he comes to meals, and to the deck, to torment me with what I can not have, even after -"

"You," he interrupted, "fucking idiot."

I stared at him, my jaw dropping. "Excuse me?"

But he ignored me. "He found a way to be with you, needed you that badly that he put his entire fucking crew in danger, and this is how you thank him?"

"What the fuck -"

But Natch was not letting me speak. "What he did with you that first night, that was outside of acting as the Captain. And he knew it. And Wicky knew it. And that should have been the end of it. Wicky is here to keep him in line, you know. Make sure we all stay safe, make sure he stays nameless. But he didn't end it, did he? He did it again, did it loud and proud and that's what you're pissed about? He could have given up everything for you. Possibly the protection of being nameless, Ghost. For you. And he doesn't care, didn't care so much. That's why he wanted Wicky to hear it, bet you a thousand kills. Not any power thing, not punishment. Proof of his decision to stand by you."

For you, Natch had said. By you. I looked away.

"Which," he continued, "the crew hates. So now he's almost cost himself his ship, had to fight himself a crew member just to prove he hadn't gone soft for you after you broke him so bad - "

A pit was opening in my stomach, sucking in all the anger I felt at the Captain and replacing it with a guilt so heavy I thought I might crash through the ropes.

"- and in the meantime he's been coming into the mess, asking your forgiveness, and you've been such a dick-"

"Forgiveness? Forgiveness? That was supposed to be forgiveness, coming to my place of safety and tormenting me with his, his," I stopped and buried my head in my hands. Of course it was. It always had been, and I'd always known it.

"I gave my word," I told Natch from behind my palms. "I can't undo this."

"You have to."

"I can't forgive him." I was working through all of this in my head, trying to figure out what all this new information meant. "He still used me."

Natch watched me a long time before speaking again. "I think," he told me, starting his descent, "that you will find that untrue." He paused. "I know him well. Better than you, and don't try to say that isn't true. I've never seen him like this, so torn. You can't be mad at him for keeping his crew safe, for being a good captain. Or for wanting you, despite all of that."

He was gone before I could come up with any more rebuttals.

I sighed and settled into the ropes. There was no reason to go down, not before the conversation with Natch, and not after.

Fuck everything.

There was nothing to do about it now. Tonight, I chose which ropes contained me. Above my head, the stars sang, and I let the ocean rock me to sleep.