Forged in Storm and Betrayal

The air in port always smelled like the bottom of a barrel. A thick, sweetish rot of fish guts and piss and spilled rum, so different from the clean, hard scent of open water. I stood on the quarterdeck of The Sea Serpent, my ship, and felt the stillness in my bones. It was a wrongness. A ship like this wasn't meant to be tethered to a dock, rubbing its hull raw against the splintered wood like a beast in a cage. We’d been here three weeks.

My boots, worn to the shape of my feet, were silent on the sun-warmed planks. I paced the short length of the deck, my hands clasped behind my back. It was a pose of command, one I’d practiced until it felt more natural than sleeping. From here I could see most of the crew. They were listless, draped over railings or sitting in small, quiet groups, mending clothes that didn't need mending. Their idleness was a mirror of my own, and it made my teeth ache. They were losing weight. I could see it in the hollows of their cheeks, the way their shirts hung looser. Our coffers were not just empty; they were a joke. I had paid the harbormaster with a silver locket that had belonged to my mother. He’d looked at it, then at me, and I’d felt a familiar, hot prickle of shame.

I stopped at the stern, resting my hands on the ship's wheel. The wood was smooth under my palms, polished by my own grip and the grip of the man who’d taught me. Even now, the feel of it was a comfort. Out on the sea, this wheel was an extension of my will. My decisions had immediate, physical consequences. A turn of the wrist, a shouted order, and three hundred tons of wood and canvas would obey. Here, my decisions were about how to stretch two casks of salted pork to feed thirty men for another week. It was a slow, grinding kind of failure.

I hated the land. I hated the feeling of solid ground, the press of bodies in the market, the way every interaction was a negotiation layered with history and obligation. The sea was clean. You either drowned or you didn't. Your enemy either sank your ship or you sank his. There was a purity to it, a brutal simplicity that I craved like a drunk craves his next drink. Here, I was just another captain with a crew she couldn't afford to keep and a ship she couldn't afford to sail.

A gull cried overhead, a sharp, mocking sound. I looked up at our sails, neatly furled and tied. They looked like shrouds. I wanted to see them full, to feel the deck heave and shudder as it bit into a wave. I wanted the spray on my face, the burn of rope in my hands, the terrifying, exhilarating moment when you sight another ship on the horizon and have to decide, in a single heartbeat, if they are friend or foe or prey.

I let out a breath and turned my back on the empty horizon. The stillness was making me reckless. I needed a prize. I needed a purpose. I needed to get my ship and my crew away from the slow death of this port. My knuckles were white on the wheel. The sun was beginning to set, casting long, ugly shadows across the deck and painting the filthy water of the harbor in shades of rust and blood. It was time for a drink. Maybe the bottom of a bottle held an answer the empty sea did not.

The tavern was called The Drowned Rat. It was a fitting name. The ceiling was low and black with soot, the floor was slick with things I didn't want to identify, and the air was a physical weight you had to push through. I found a small table in a dark corner, away from the one sputtering lantern that threw greasy yellow light over a game of dice. The noise was a low, guttural hum, the sound of men with nothing left to lose but the clothes on their backs.

I ordered a rum. It came in a chipped clay mug and tasted like varnish, but the burn was honest. I drank half of it in one long swallow, letting the heat spread through my chest. My eyes adjusted to the gloom. I saw faces I recognized—sailors from other crews, wharf rats, a few women whose trade was as old as the port itself. Everyone looked tired. Everyone looked hungry.

He slid into the seat opposite me without an invitation. I didn't look up at first, just watched his hands appear on the sticky tabletop. They were ancient, the skin thin as paper over a knot of bones and blue veins. A tremor ran through them.

"Captain," he said. His voice was a dry rustle, like dead leaves.

I finally raised my eyes. He was as old as his hands, with a face collapsed in on itself around a nose that had been broken more than once. His eyes were the color of weak tea, and they were fixed on me with a terrifying, pleading intensity. He smelled of salt and sickness.

"I don't have coin for beggars," I said, my voice flat.

"I'm not beggin'," he rasped, leaning forward. The movement seemed to cost him something. "I'm sellin'."

I took another drink of rum. "I'm not buying."

"You'll want to buy this." He glanced around the squalid room, a furtive, bird-like movement of his head. Then he reached inside his threadbare coat. His hand emerged with a roll of parchment tied with a grimy piece of twine. He worked at the knot with his trembling fingers, his breath coming in short, shallow puffs.

I watched him, my curiosity a small, unwelcome flicker. Every port had men like him, selling maps to islands that didn't exist, to treasures that were just tall tales told to fleece desperate captains. I was desperate, but I wasn't a fool.

The knot came free. He flattened the parchment on the table with a reverence that was almost painful to watch. It was old, the edges crumbling, the surface stained with water and time. But it wasn't the age that made me lean forward. It was the ink. The lines weren't drawn in black or brown. They were a deep, dried-blood crimson. They looked less like they'd been drawn with a quill and more like they'd been scored into the vellum with a blade. Strange symbols, unlike any chart markings I'd ever seen, were clustered around a jagged outline of an island.

"The skin of a man's back," the old mariner whispered. His eyes were wide now, reflecting the dim lamplight. "That's what they say. Skinned it off him while he was still breathing, so the map would stay true."

I stared at the brutal red lines. It was a story I'd heard before, a piece of dockside lore meant to add value to a worthless scrap. Still, my fingers twitched.

"It's the map," he said, his voice dropping even lower, becoming urgent. "The real one. To the hoard of Mad Jack Jones."

Mad Jack Jones. The name hung in the foul air between us. Not a legend, not really. A historical monster. A pirate of such singular, bloody-minded cruelty that his own crew had mutinied and left him to die on an island they swore they'd never name. He was said to have amassed a treasure that could buy a kingdom. A treasure no one had ever found.

I reached out and touched the edge of the parchment. It was stiff and brittle, and felt unnervingly like old leather. My cynicism was a solid wall in my mind, but desperation was a rising tide, lapping at the foundations. I could feel the weight of my crew's hunger, the shame of the harbormaster's pitying gaze.

"Why me?" I asked, my voice quiet.

The old man gave a wet, rattling cough. "They say you're reckless, Captain. But they say you're fair. And you've got a fast ship." He leaned in so close I could smell the rot on his breath. "This map is a death sentence if the wrong man holds it. But for the right captain… it's everything. It's a lifetime of gold. Enough to make you a queen."

I bought the map. I gave the old man the last of my personal coin and the decent knife from my belt. It felt like a fever dream, walking back to the ship, the strange, stiff parchment tucked inside my coat. The air of the port seemed even fouler now, thick with a failure I was determined to outrun.

I called them to my cabin. Arwin, my first mate. August, the lookout. Silas, the bosun. The four of us barely fit. The space was dominated by my chart table, my cot, and the single lantern swinging from a low beam, making our shadows swell and shrink on the wood-paneled walls.

Arwin came in last, ducking his head under the doorframe. He filled the space, his shoulders broad enough to block the light from the passageway. He never seemed to look at me directly when we were in close quarters, but I felt his awareness of me as a physical pressure. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his expression already set in a familiar, guarded neutrality. Waiting.

I didn't waste time on pleasantries. I unrolled the parchment on the chart table. The crimson lines seemed to pulse in the lantern light. Silas leaned in, his weathered face creased with curiosity. August’s eyes were wide, shining with an uncomplicated excitement that made me feel very old.

Arwin did not move.

“Mad Jack Jones’s treasure,” I said. My voice sounded steady, louder than I intended in the small cabin. “This is the map. I bought it an hour ago.”

A sound came from Arwin’s throat. Not a word, just a short, sharp exhalation of air through his nose. A scoff. It was a sound I knew well. It was the sound he made before he dismantled one of my ideas, piece by piece, in front of the crew.

“You’re joking,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Do I look like I’m joking?” I kept my hands flat on the table, on either side of the map. I could feel the grain of the wood under my palms.

He finally moved, stepping forward to loom over the table. He didn't look at the map. He looked at me. His eyes were a dark, unreadable gray. “You bought a story from a drunk in a tavern. You traded coin we don’t have for a piece of tattooed skin that’s probably from a pig.”

“It’s real,” August breathed, his gaze fixed on the brutal red island. “It has to be.”

Arwin ignored him. His focus was entirely on me, a tangible force. “And what did this cost us, Chevy? The last of the food money? Did you sell the anchor?”

“It cost what I was willing to pay,” I said, my jaw tight. “Look at the men, Arwin. They’re starving. We can’t take a merchant ship; we don’t have the men to fight and we don’t have the wind to run. This is a chance.”

“It’s a fool’s errand,” he said, his voice low and cutting. “It’s a ghost story told to scare children. We’ll waste weeks of supplies we don’t have chasing a shadow, and we’ll find nothing. We’ll die of thirst in the doldrums or starve with this worthless piece of leather for a final meal.”

His logic was a cold weight in the room. I could feel Silas shifting his feet, his certainty wavering. Even August’s bright-eyed optimism seemed to dim.

“So we do nothing?” I challenged, pushing back from the table. “We sit here and let the ship rot? We watch the crew waste away until they desert or we’re thrown in debtors’ prison?”

“We find a better way,” he said. “A real way. Not this.” He gestured at the map with a contemptuous flick of his fingers.

The space between us felt charged, all the air sucked out of it. We had stood like this before, on other decks, in other cabins, locked in the same argument. Him, with his cold, hard facts. Me, with my gut and my faith in the turning of the tide.

“I remember the last time you followed your gut, Captain,” he said, and the word ‘captain’ was an insult. “Off the Black-Rock Shoals. You were sure there was a current that wasn’t on any chart.”

The blood rushed to my face. Silas looked at the floor. Ten men. Ten men lost because I had been wrong, and he had been right. It was a ghost that lived between us.

“This is not the same,” I said, my voice shaking with a rage I was trying to contain.

“It’s never the same, is it?” He leaned closer, his hands now planted on the table, bracketing the map. He was so close I could smell the salt on his skin, see the small, pale scar that cut through his left eyebrow. “It’s always a new, special feeling you have. A premonition. And good men pay the price for it.”

His words were for me, but he said them loud enough for the others to hear. He was undermining me. Deliberately. Publicly. It was a direct challenge to my command. My hand went to the hilt of the knife I no longer wore, my fingers clenching on empty air. I met his gaze, and for a moment, the map and the treasure and the crew ceased to exist. There was only the raw, unfinished history between us, laid bare in the flickering light of the cabin.

“But it’s a chance, isn’t it?”

The voice was August’s. It cut through the thick, hateful silence between me and Arwin, startlingly clear and earnest. We both turned to look at him. He was practically vibrating with excitement, his young face flushed in the lantern light. He had been a boy playing at pirates when he signed on, and in many ways, he still was.

“A chance for glory,” he said, his voice gaining strength. He looked past me, past Arwin, directing his words to Silas, who was still staring at his own boots. “That’s what we are, aren’t we? Not merchants haggling over pennies in port. Not beggars. We sail under the Serpent. We’re meant for more than rotting at a dock.”

He took a step forward, his hand gesturing toward the map. “Every man on this ship has heard the stories of Mad Jack. They say his ghost still guards the hoard. They say the treasure is cursed.” He smiled, a wide, reckless grin. “Good. I’d rather face a dozen ghosts than the harbormaster’s pity. I’d rather go down fighting for a king’s ransom than starve to death listening to the port bells.”

He looked from Silas’s face to mine. His eyes were shining. “Captain. This is why we signed on with you. Not to be safe. But to be bold. Arwin’s right, you take chances. That’s why we follow you and not him.”

The barb, so casually thrown, landed perfectly. I saw Arwin’s jaw harden, a muscle twitching just below his ear. He had made this a question of my command, and the youngest man in the room had just answered it for him.

Silas finally looked up. The worry hadn’t left his face, but something else was there now. A flicker of the old fire. The hunger for something more than just survival. He looked at me and gave a short, sharp nod. One nod. It was all it took.

I was trapped. Not by Arwin’s logic, but by August’s romance. He had handed me a victory I hadn’t earned, rallying the men to a cause I wasn’t even sure I believed in. But it was a victory nonetheless. It was a way forward. It was a tide to ride out of this suffocating port.

I drew myself up, pushing away from the table. I let my gaze sweep over Silas, then August, and finally, I let it rest on Arwin. He hadn’t moved. He was a statue of dissent, his big hands still flat on my chart table, claiming the space around the map.

“Well,” I said, and my voice was cool again, all trace of the earlier tremor gone. “The men seem to have made their choice.”

I reached out and began to slowly roll the parchment up. The dry, crinkling sound was unnaturally loud in the cabin. “Silas. See to the provisions. Whatever we have left, and whatever credit my name will still buy. We sail on the morning tide.”

“Aye, Captain,” Silas said, the relief in his voice palpable. He and August filed out of the cabin, leaving a sudden, ringing quiet in their wake.

Leaving just us.

Arwin straightened up slowly. He watched me as I tied the grimy piece of twine around the rolled map. He was still too close. The small cabin seemed to shrink, the air growing warm and dense. I could feel the heat coming off his body.

“You’re making a mistake,” he said. It wasn’t an argument now. It was a flat statement. A prophecy.

“It’s my mistake to make,” I said, not looking at him. I tucked the map into my coat. “First Mate.”

I thought he would leave. But he didn’t. He stayed there, watching me, his grey eyes narrowed. He looked from my face down to my hands, then back up again. It felt like being assessed. Weighed. Found wanting.

“The crew might have forgotten the Shoals,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “But I haven’t. When August’s pretty words run out and we’re lost with empty barrels, they’ll remember. And they’ll look to me.”

It wasn’t a threat of mutiny. It was worse. It was a promise. A promise that he would be there to pick up the pieces when my recklessness inevitably shattered us again. That he would be the one to save what was left of my crew from me.

I finally met his eyes. The space between us was no longer just the width of a table. It was a chasm, filled with the ghosts of ten dead men and the promise of more to come. I held his gaze, letting all the anger, all the frustration, all the defiant, desperate hope I felt burn in my eyes. I didn't need to say anything. He could see it. This was happening. I was taking this chance, and I was taking him and the whole damn ship with me.

He held my gaze for a long moment, his expression unyielding. Then, with a final, dismissive look, he turned on his heel and left my cabin, leaving me alone with the weight of my decision.

The dawn broke grey and damp, the air smelling of low tide and old fish. It did little to improve my mood. The Sea Serpent, however, was alive with a manic energy it hadn't known in months. The deck was a controlled chaos of my own making, men swarming over the rigging and hauling barrels up the gangplank. The sounds of it—the rhythmic thud of casks, the creak of the loading boom, the sharp, barked orders—were a familiar music, but today it felt discordant, strained.

I stood on the quarterdeck, a list of provisions in my hand that I wasn’t reading, and watched them work. Every man who met my eye gave a quick, respectful nod, some with a new light in their faces, the one August had ignited. The fever of a treasure hunt. Others just looked tired. They were all moving because I had told them to. Because I had bet their lives on a piece of tattooed skin.

Arwin was by the mainmast, directing the stowage in the hold. His back was to me. He hadn't spoken a word to me since leaving my cabin last night, a silence that was louder than any of our arguments. He moved with an economy of motion that was beautiful in its own way, pointing, correcting a man’s grip on a crate, testing a rope with a single, decisive pull. He commanded his space with an absolute certainty I both relied on and resented.

Eventually, he turned and saw me watching. He held my gaze for a beat too long before striding up the short ladder to the quarterdeck. He stopped a few feet away, leaving a deliberate, formal distance between us.

“The last of the water casks are coming aboard,” he said. His voice was flat, devoid of any inflection. It was the voice he used for reporting the weather. “We’re short three barrels from the manifest.”

“Silas couldn’t get more credit?”

“The chandler’s generosity has its limits. Same as ours.” He didn’t look at me, his gaze fixed on the men heaving a barrel belowdecks.

“We’ll ration from the start,” I said. “It will have to be enough.”

“It won’t be, if we hit the doldrums.”

“Then we pray for wind,” I said, my tone sharper than I intended.

He gave a short, humourless smile, but still didn’t look at me. “Prayer. Our new heading.”

I ignored that. “The powder?”

“Stowed and dry. I moved it. It was too close to the galley lanterns.”

He had countermanded my order. I had overseen the stowage plan myself, signed off on it. He would have known that. He had gone behind my back and changed it, a small, petty assertion of his own judgment over mine. I felt a hot flush of anger.

“I had it placed there for balance,” I said, my voice dangerously quiet.

Now he looked at me. His grey eyes were like chips of stone. “I prefer a ship that doesn’t explode over one that’s perfectly balanced. But she’s your ship, Captain. I can have the men move it back.”

The challenge was there, naked and plain. Make me. Make a scene. Show the crew that your First Mate questions your most basic orders. Show them the crack in the command. He knew I wouldn’t. He knew I would let it go, because the stability of the ship—the crew’s faith in us as a unit—was more important than my pride. He used my own pragmatism against me.

“Leave it,” I said, turning away to look out over the grimy harbour. The tide was beginning to turn. We would be leaving soon.

He didn’t move. He stood behind me, and I was so conscious of his presence I felt I could trace his outline against my back. The heat of his body seemed to cross the small distance between us. I could feel him there, a solid wall of disapproval. We stood in silence for a long time, the sounds of the crew filling the space our words should have occupied. He was waiting for me to dismiss him. I didn't. I wasn't sure why. Perhaps some perverse part of me wanted him to stay, to share the weight of this departure, even if he was the heaviest part of it.

“The men are restless,” he said finally, his voice closer now. He must have taken a step. “August has them dreaming of gold plates and silk shirts.”

“Better that than dreaming of the gallows,” I said, my jaw tight.

“Dreams don’t fill your belly when the hardtack runs out.”

He moved to stand beside me at the rail, his shoulder nearly brushing mine. We were side-by-side, both looking out at the port, a captain and her first mate presenting a united front. It was a lie. The space between us hummed with it. It felt like the air before a lightning strike, thick and charged. I could smell the faint scent of tar on his hands and the clean, salt-and-wind smell of his skin. It was distractingly familiar.

“This is a mistake, Chevy,” he said, his voice so low it was almost lost in the wind. He used my name, and it landed like a stone in my gut.

I didn't answer. I just gripped the wooden rail, my knuckles white, and watched as the last of the lines were readied to be cast off.

The ship sailed for three days under a sky the colour of a bruise. The initial excitement of the crew had settled into the familiar, monotonous rhythm of a long voyage. The wind was steady, pushing us south-east, and the only sounds were the groaning of the timbers and the endless rush of water against the hull. I found I couldn’t sleep. The narrow confines of my cot felt like a coffin, the darkness pressing in.

I pulled on my boots and a coat over my shirt and went on deck. The air was cool and tasted of salt. The moon was a sliver, casting a weak, silvery light over the sleeping ship. A single watchman stood at the bow, a dark silhouette staring out into the blackness. But there was another light, a warm, flickering glow from a lantern near the base of the mainmast.

It was Arwin. He was sitting on a coil of rope, the vast expanse of the mainsail pooled around him on the deck. In his hands, he held a sailmaker’s needle and palm, stitching a neat, tight seam along a tear near the clew. I stopped in the shadows of the quarterdeck stairs, watching him. His hands, which I had only ever seen clenched into fists or wrapped around the hilt of a sword, moved with a quiet, practiced grace. The needle, thick as a nail, dipped and rose through the heavy canvas, guided by his sure fingers. He didn’t look angry or sullen. He just looked… focused. Alone.

I walked across the deck, my boots making no sound. He didn’t look up until I was standing over him.

“Shouldn’t the sailmaker be seeing to that?” I asked.

He finished a stitch, pulling the waxed thread taut with a grunt of effort before he answered. “His hands are good for ropes, not thread. He makes a mess of it.” He glanced up at me, his face half in shadow, half in the warm lantern light. “Can’t you sleep either?”

“The ship feels too quiet,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say.

He nodded, as if it made perfect sense. He went back to his sewing. I watched the needle’s rhythmic movement. Dip, pull, tighten. Dip, pull, tighten.

“That tear,” I said, my voice softer than I intended. “It looks like the one we got at the Shoals.”

He stopped. His hands went still on the canvas. He didn’t look up, but I saw his shoulders tense. The Shoals. We never spoke of it. It was a black hole in our shared history, a place our conversations always skirted.

“The wind was different that night,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “This was just a bad tack. That was… something else.”

I sat down on a crate near him, pulling my coat tighter. The memory was suddenly sharp and cold. The shriek of the wind, the cannon-crack of the rigging snapping, the screams. Ten of them.

“I can still hear the mast,” I said. “The sound it made before it went.”

“I hear the bell,” he said. He looked at his hands, turning the sailmaker’s palm over and over. “The ship’s bell, ringing on its own. Just kept ringing.”

We were quiet for a long time. The only sound was the creak of the ship and the distant sigh of the waves. He wasn’t looking at me, and I wasn’t looking at him, but I felt like we were seeing the same thing. The splintered deck, the water pouring in, the faces of the men we lost. He had been the one to cut the mast free before it tore the ship apart. I had been the one at the helm, trying to turn us away from the rocks I hadn’t seen until it was too late.

“You did what you had to,” I said, the words feeling thin and useless in the vast night.

He finally looked at me. The lantern light caught the grey of his eyes. The anger I was so used to seeing there was gone. In its place was something older, a weariness that seemed to settle deep in his bones.

“So did you,” he said. “We both did. Didn’t make a damn bit of difference to them.”

He picked up the needle again, his movements less certain now. He stabbed it into the canvas, missing the hole he’d made. He swore under his breath and pulled it back. For the first time since I had known him, he looked clumsy. He looked like a man who was carrying something too heavy.

I didn’t know what to say. The space between us was no longer a battlefield. It was a gravesite we were both tending. I felt an absurd impulse to reach out, to put my hand on his arm. I curled my fingers into my palm instead.

He sighed, a long, rough exhalation of breath, and set the needle down. He looked out at the dark water, away from me, away from the sail. The moment was over. The quiet was just quiet again. The distance between us had returned.

The next morning broke grey and damp. The air was thick with the smell of low tide and the nervous energy of imminent departure. I stood on the quarterdeck, nursing a mug of chicory that tasted like dirt, and watched the crew scurry across the deck like ants. We were waiting for the tide to turn, making the final preparations to cast off.

Arwin was on the main deck, directing the men as they secured the last of the loose gear. He moved with a restless energy, his voice sharp as he barked orders. The quiet intimacy of the night before was gone, paved over with his usual gruff authority. It was as if it had never happened. I wasn't sure if I was relieved or disappointed.

“Haul on the main-brace!” I called out, my voice carrying over the deck. “Let’s get her sheeted home before the tide’s fully turned.”

It was a simple order, one a cabin boy could follow. But August, who was coiling a line near the mast, seemed to hear it as a personal summons to glory. He dropped the rope and scrambled toward the brace, shoving another, more experienced sailor out of the way. His face was flushed with a kind of desperate eagerness. He looked up at me on the quarterdeck, a wide, self-satisfied grin on his face, as if to say, See? I’m the one you can count on.

He grabbed a line. The wrong one. Instead of the brace, his hands closed on the peak halyard, which had been carelessly left uncleated. Before anyone could shout a warning, he put his whole weight into it, heaving with all his might.

The effect was immediate and chaotic. The gaff, the heavy spar at the top of the mainsail, swung violently upwards on one side, while the other remained fixed. The sail bellied and then sagged, a mess of slack canvas. The line August had pulled went singing up through its block, tangling with the throat halyard and a dozen other ropes until it was a knotted catastrophe high on the mast. The entire process of setting sail came to a dead, ugly halt.

A collective groan went through the crew. August stood frozen, his hands still on the rope, his face a mask of dawning horror.

Arwin was on him in a flash. He didn't run; he moved with a slow, predatory stride that was somehow more frightening. He stopped directly in front of August, his shadow falling over the boy. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to.

“Did you think that was a decoration?” Arwin asked, his voice lethally soft. He pointed a thick finger at the tangled mess above them. “Did you think we hang our laundry up there, you witless sod?”

August stammered, his face turning a blotchy red. “I… Captain Chevy said…”

“The captain gave an order to a crew of sailors,” Arwin cut in, stepping closer, forcing August to crane his neck to look up at him. “She didn’t ask for a brain-dead farm boy to play grab-ass with the halyards. Now the tide’s turning and we’ve got a rat’s nest in the rigging that’ll take an hour to clear, because of you.” He jabbed a finger into August’s chest. “You are useless. Worse than useless. You are a liability. Get out of my sight before I decide to use you to scrub the hull. From the outside.”

The cruelty of it was surgical. It was designed to strip August bare in front of every man on deck. I saw the boy’s shoulders slump, the last of his bravado shriveling under the heat of Arwin’s contempt. He looked utterly broken.

I couldn't let it stand.

“Arwin,” I said. My voice was calm, but it cut through the silence on the deck. Every head turned toward me.

He didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes fixed on August’s miserable face. “Captain.”

“That’s enough,” I said, walking to the edge of the quarterdeck. “He made a mistake. It will be fixed.”

“It’s a mistake that costs us the tide,” he said, finally turning to look up at me. His face was stone. “A mistake that shows a lack of discipline I will not tolerate on this ship.”

“And I will not tolerate my first mate dressing down a man like he’s a dog in front of the entire crew,” I shot back. The chasm between us was suddenly wide and public. “It’s poor form, and it sours the men. August. Go help Silas with the anchor detail.”

August looked from me to Arwin, his eyes wide with fear and confusion. He practically fled, scrambling toward the bow.

Arwin and I were left staring at each other across the deck. The crew, silent and watching, were a sea of faces between us. His eyes were flinty, his jaw set in a hard line. He had been publicly contradicted. I had taken the boy’s side over his. The fragile truce of the night before, the shared memory of the Shoals, was shattered. What was left was the old, familiar antagonism, now sharper and more jagged than ever. He gave me a look that was pure ice, a look that promised this was far from over. Then, without another word, he turned his back on me and began shouting orders for two men to climb the mast and clear the mess August had made.

The work took the better part of an hour. An hour of shouted orders, mostly from Arwin, and the slow, painstaking work of two men high above the deck, untangling the mess of rope in the gathering wind. I stayed on the quarterdeck, watching, saying nothing. I had made my point. He had made his. The crew worked with a sullen efficiency, keeping their heads down, their comments muttered too low for me to hear.

Finally, the halyards were clear. The mainsail was properly set. The tide was at its peak, a restless grey water slapping against the hull, urging us to be gone.

“Weigh anchor,” I said. My voice felt loud in the quiet that followed the work.

The capstan groaned as the men began to walk the bars, their feet thudding in a heavy rhythm on the deck. The chain came up link by painful link, rattling in the hawsepipe, dripping mud and harbour filth. I felt the vibration through the soles of my boots. The ship began to drift, a slow, ponderous turn away from the land.

The gap of water between the hull and the stone of the quay widened. One foot, then ten, then fifty. The familiar smells of the port—stale beer, coal smoke, rot—began to thin, replaced by the clean, sharp scent of salt and open water. The ship caught the outbound current, and the deck canted beneath me. It was a feeling I knew better than the feel of solid ground, this lurch and slide into motion. A surge of something moved through my chest. It felt like taking a full, deep breath after being underwater for too long.

We were moving. We were free of the grasping stillness of the land, of the debts and the whispers and the waiting. Ahead of us was only the sea, a vast and indifferent expanse of possibility. The crimson map was locked in my cabin. Mad Jack Jones’s treasure was no longer a drunkard’s tale; it was a destination. A purpose.

And yet, a cold knot tightened in my stomach. The same feeling I’d had at the Shoals, just before everything went wrong. The sense of having committed to a course from which there was no turning back. I gripped the rail, my knuckles white. The grimy, familiar buildings of the port shrank behind us, becoming a smudge on the horizon. We were utterly on our own now. A ship full of men, a questionable map, and a first mate who I had just publicly undermined.

My eyes scanned the deck. It was a habit, accounting for my senior crew. I saw Silas at the bow, his weathered face to the wind. The sailmaker was checking the tension on the new stitches in the jib. My gaze moved past them, seeking him out. I found him near the port rail, separate from the others. He wasn’t doing anything. He was simply standing there, his arms crossed over his chest, his large frame braced against the roll of the ship.

And he was looking at me.

He hadn’t been a moment before, I was sure of it. But he was now. It wasn’t a glance. His head was turned fully in my direction, his gaze fixed on me where I stood on the quarterdeck. The distance between us was maybe forty feet, but it felt like nothing. It felt like he was standing right in front of me. His face was unreadable. The anger from before was gone, but there was no softness in its place. There was nothing. Just the flat, grey intensity of his eyes. His expression was completely blank, and it was the most unsettling thing I had ever seen. He just watched me, his body perfectly still, as the ship carried us further and further out into the deep water. I could not look away. I felt pinned by his stare, by the sheer weight of his attention. This was what the rest of the voyage would be. Just this. This silence, this distance, this feeling of being constantly watched by a man who I knew better and less than anyone else in the world. He gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod, a gesture so small I wasn't sure I had even seen it. It was not a sign of truce. It was an acknowledgement. Of what, I didn't know. But it felt like a promise.