image [https://i.imgur.com/15eGPa6.jpeg]image [https://i.imgur.com/DqimdvY.jpeg]

abaft – Toward the back end or stern of the boat.

THE LAST SHOT clipped the top of the mizzenmast, nearly killing the man up in the crow’s nest. Okoa heard the call from below, “We’re taking on water!” and was just about to call for men to work the bilges, and to rush down with oakum and tar and wooden wedges to stop up the holes. But it doesn’t matter now, he thought. We are below a skeleton crew, and cannot spare a man. We need every man on cannons. Our only chance is to—

“Mr. Okoa?” said Belmont, wrestling the steering wheel with Irwin. “We’re going to sink if we don’t—”

“Our only chance is to fight them off, hopefully wear them down. No other choice. Pray the Edinburgh can get here in time!” He called down to the cannoneers. “Ready guns! Ready them, lads!”

Another tall wave hit them, pitched them sideways, the water took Okoa’s foot and pegleg out from under him and he slid down the stairs, clinging to the railing. For a moment he was underwater and heard naught but the rush of water over his ears. Something hit him in his chest, something hard, some piece of debris slung about the deck. It sucked the wind out of him and he breathed water. Hazard corrected herself and he recovered, spitting up seawater, scrambling abaft to see if they’d gotten lucky, if the same big wave had taken out their pursuers. No such luck. Edinburgh was coming up behind the two brigs chasing Hazard, but their unlikely ally would not get here in time.

More shots were fired from the enemy’s bow guns. One of them nicked Hazard’s stern at the waterline, the others barely missed.

Then there came more thunder. It wasn’t from the sky. He knew the sound of guns but couldn’t believe it, because the Edinburgh had not fired, and their enemies hadn’t had time to reload—

Suddenly, one of the ships broke off. Over the next few minutes, Okoa saw them firing their rear guns, but nowhere near the Edinburgh’s direction. The Edinburgh herself continued on an easterly course, chasing the other ship, the one that hadn’t fired on her.

Is there another ship out here? Is it—

He didn’t dare let himself hope. But for the moment their two pursuers had broken off or become harassed by someone else, so Okoa looked south, towards the tiny islands beyond Bull Bay. If we can make there….if we can just make it to them…

“We may have a chance here, Mr. Okoa!” Irwin said. “Just one chance!”

“Ease off the wheel, Mr. Irwin! Broad reach to port—”

“God in heaven!” Belmont screamed. “What the bloody fucking hell is that?!”

Okoa ignored the militiaman a moment, then he looked at Belmont. His face was a horror, and he was pointing south, the direction they were going. From there came a large, swirling mass of foaming water, as though the sea was splitting before them. The moonlights and the lightning allowed him to see its sheen, a Monstrous Thing, easily five or ten times the size of a sperm whale. Black and many-tentacled, it swam through the water and sent a cascade of waves over itself. The wave it caused was towering, and it came at them head-on and they climbed it while arching seawater fell over them, drowning them, making it so that Okoa was temporarily swimming.

He said his prayers. Surely this was it this time.

Surely this was the end.

And then the water cleared and he was sloshed against the portside railing as the water nearly swept him overboard. He heard screaming. “Men overboard!” He tried to stand. A piece of the Leviathan was still swimming past, a thing with five or six tumorous growths on its back, translucent, with spherical white things swimming around inside them. It took him a moment to realize they were eyes. Enormous, bulging eyes.

The Leviathan tore through the water, heading towards the Edinburgh and the enemy ships.

“Men overboard!” someone shouted.

Okoa saw that it was Belmont calling out, his arms clutching one of the spokes of the steering wheel. He sagged there, drenched, spitting up seawater. Belmont was alone. Irwin was gone. Okoa stood and looked all around the heaving water. He thought he saw two or three men bobbing there, trying to swim before being sucked down. He never saw Irwin again. But he did see the second giant wave just before it hit.

____

“It’s him,” Vhingfrith said. They had just closed in on one of the brigs chasing Hazard and were preparing to rake her, until Vhingfrith spotted the familiar colossal lump rising up out of the ocean. “It’s him! He’s coming! Brace yourselves, lads! Grab something! Grab hold of anything you can!”

“Who?” Laurier said, holding onto the railing. Then he saw the surging wave coming their way. “Who is it, Ben?”

Dawson shouted from the helm, “It’s him, boys! Here comes Ol’ Charley! Brace yourselves, lads! On your lives, brace yourselves! He looks bloody pissed!”

“Benjamin—”

“Not now, John! Grab hold of—”

“What the fuck is—?”

All around, the world became white and gold light, and it took them all a moment to realize what had happened. The clouds were suddenly dispersing, repelled like oil against water, and the three moons shattered like great eggs and their rocky components and dust were scattered across the sky, mottling the stars. Suddenly, the stars began spinning, like the whole World was turning fast on its axis, yet there was no sense of increased motion. The stars streaked into long, thin lines. White clouds dashed against the black ones in retreat. Two suns emerged, one on the east horizon and the other on the north. One of them dipped back below, like a thief being found out. The other one became smudged, like a water-damaged painting, and smeared across the sky before it too vanished.

All this happened while a Leviathan rose up out of the depths, tentacles stretched far to the heavens, and opened three or four mouths across its midsection and swallowed whole the two ships pursuing the Hazard.

____

The destruction was absolute. Oddsummers watched from the Edinburgh’s quarterdeck as the Leviathan pitched and rolled like a whale, and when it fell back into the sea the waters parted enough so that, briefly, he saw one or two shipwrecks settled on the seabed, and a stir of black, human-like creatures walking their decks, their eyes glowing purple, their flesh gleaming black and red under a final wrathful bolt of lightning.

Oddsummers held on while Edinburgh heeled. Watched one of his plaguemen go overboard. Once she settled, Edinburgh’s crew cried out jubilantly, and Oddsummers walked her deck calmly, from stern to prow, and stood holding the forestay for balance. He watched in fascination as the Leviathan rolled and rolled in the foaming water. The Sun rose. Their Sun. As did the Moon, now almost full. They rose together with the speed of a gull across the water.

And then, all at once, the water settled and so did the Sun and Moon and the white clouds piled high on the east horizon. Oddsummers was soaking wet. Water was still sloughing off the deck’s scuppers—it was in his boots and everywhere else. The ship’s timbers moaned. Planks from the destroyed ships floated in the water and scraped against their hull. Ten or twelve men floated in the water, dead, some of them tangled up in rigging.

Oddsummers looked south about two hundred yards, at the Hazard, bobbing up and down, her sails and rigging all torn and sagging. Oddsummers turned back to his plaguemen, their yellowed flesh looking particularly pale. Most of them leaned on the portside rail, necks craned, looking for another sign of the Leviathan, which had gone, and also looking up at the sky in disbelief.

But Oddsummers looked yonder at Port Royal, which appeared like a child’s play area and sandcastle destroyed after said child had a tantrum and stormed through it. At the center of the port town was that great three-legged creature, its monstrous arms still stretched to the sky, fingers elongating, branching off into more fingers, and more fingers still, spilling a yellow fog all over the area, blanketing it.

Oddsummers turned to his first mate. “Mr. Bainbridge, damage report, if you please.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Mr. Pullings,” he said to his quartermaster. “If you would be so good as to send up the red-and-white.”

The one-armed man winced. “Palaver, sir?”

“Yes. And drop anchor. I’d like to have an audience with the captains of those two ships yonder.”

“Sir…beg your pardon…but oughtn’t we have palaver farther on, past Bull Bay? Y’know, well out to sea? Them be pirate ships, sir, and we just helped them. If the authorities catch us out here—”

“Mr. Pullings, you are missing an arm, correct? Not an eye? Not your good sense? Look around you, man. What authorities are left in Jamaica? What ships currently dominate Bull Bay if not ours? There is not an ounce of sea but what we now own. I’ve no doubt the authorities will be about, but not at the moment.” He pulled his plague mask down from his face and looked at the smashed ships along the Turtle Crawles. “Just send up the red-and-white, Mr. Pullings. That’ll be all.”

“Aye, sir. Send up the red’n’white!”

Oddsummers turned back to face the Hazard, already limping towards them, as was the Lively. Doubtless, the captains of those two ships had questions for him. Which was only fair, because Oddsummers had questions for them, too.

____

The men were not singing and dancing like they had been after that first Long Night half a year ago, Laurier noted. After that first Long Night, they’d rejoiced when the sun came back. But not now. Now they realized it was only temporary, that any moment now the sun could simply vanish again, and another Long Night—or worse, an Altered Night—could return. The Lively pulled alongside the fifth-rate from her portside, and Laurier watched as Hazard slowly, slowly limped along her starboard. He had read the fifth-rate’s name as Edinburgh upon approach, and she did have that clear look of a Scottish make. His curiosity was running wild, his thoughts drawn back to whatever Dawson had meant by “Old Charley,” his eyes drawn north to what was left of Port Royal and the Behemoth standing among its ruins, and his emotions torn over Jenkins’s death and his obligation to Dobbs and Anne and Akil and all the others.

Port Royal has survived tidal waves and earthquakes before, he thought, looking upon the seaport. I daresay it will rise again. But who are its residents now?

John winced. The pain in his side was occasionally numb, occasionally excruciating. He’d stuffed it with powder to help stop the bleeding but he needed bandages, and soon.

When they extended a plank and walked aboard the Edinburgh, Laurier went first, followed quickly by Vhingfrith and a handful of pirates. They immediately stepped back onto the plank when they saw the sallow flesh of the plaguemen.

“Sacré bleu,” said LaCroix. “They’re all plagued.”

“What in God’s name…?” said Jaime.

A dozen sallow-skinned men, their cracked leathery flesh sagging from their bones, stood there looking like the crew of a ghost ship.

A man stepped forward. He wore a long black coat, black shirt, and black breeches, with thick black boots and a tricorne hat atop a plague doctor’s mask.

“If you’re a plague ship, you should’ve raised the yellow flag!” Laurier growled. “Who the fuck are—?”

“The Ladyman, I presume. And the Devil’s Son? A pleasure, a pleasure. I am Captain Bernardino Oddsummers. You know me—‘The Villain.’ Let us skip past the part where you deny who I am, skip past the part where you demand to know what I am doing here, skip past the part where I inform you that you’ve not yet said so much as a thankee for helping you, and just get down to business. Shall we?”

Laurier glanced back at Vhingfrith, who said nothing.

From the starboardside rail came Okoa, Belmont, and three armed crewmen.

“Ah, good! We’re all here! Shall we talk in my cabin? No? Yours, then.”

Moments later they assembled in the Lively’s captain’s quarters, which had been mostly tossed and robbed of all its books, paintings, and most of its furniture. Only the oak desk remained, probably because Woodes Rogers and his militiamen couldn’t figure out a way of getting it out in one piece. The denuded shelves sat lonely, collecting dust, and Laurier watched as Vhingfrith inspected them. But Laurier never took his eyes off the Edinburgh’s captain. He had removed his plague mask, revealing a handsome face with deep crow’s feet, light-yellow skin, and he walked around the large desk, looking over the charts spread atop them.

“How queer. You would think they would take these charts,” said Oddsummers. “If the thieves who came here had known how valuable these are…Is that an actual Sampson?” He picked a chart up off the floor and pored over it. “Man was a genius at cartography. Did you know there was a nine-year period when people actually believed the area of California was a massive island, and not connected to the New World at all? Everyone else was fooled because they found no river inlets, which would’ve suggested a connection to the mainland. But Sampson, he—”

“You’re not Oddsummers,” Laurier said, removing his shirt to tie his bandage around his midsection. Benjamin was helping him.

“I am, indeed, sir.”

“That man is halfway around the world—”

“In the Indian Ocean. And do you know that when I was in the Indian Ocean, most countries looking for me thought I was somewhere in the Pacific. And when I was in the Pacific, they thought I was in the Caribbean. And do you know why?”

Laurier said nothing.

“No? Neither do I. It wasn’t any cunning on my part, just dumb luck. Although my work with the French did make ol’ Louis happy, even if I never met him, and for a while the King did have his fleets spreading gossip that I was—”

“Why did you help us?” Vhingfrith asked, using scissors to cut off the excess of John’s bandage.

“Good question,” Laurier said.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Oddsummers sighed. He seemed to be looking for a chair to sit in, until he remembered. He walked to the rear window and opened it. “Sun is out. Good God, the feeling of its warmth! Bracing.” He looked back at them. Reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of cloth with a rough drawing of an inscription. He laid it down on the desk. “For your inspection, Captains.”

John and Benjamin both stepped forward. John lifted the cloth and inspected its strange letters, then shrugged and handed it to Benjamin who had a much different reaction. “Ben?”

“Where did you get this?” asked Benjamin, looking astonished.

Laurier was now much more interested.

Oddsummers shrugged. “An ursula.”

“An ursula. You’re benandanti? A ‘Good Walker’?”

“Of a sort.”

“You’re a witch?” the Ladyman asked.

“Not really. That’s a misconception of our Order. Our methods are as varied as our ethnicities and nationalities, but our mission everywhere is all the same.”

Vhingfrith paced around the table. “Battle against malevolent forces.”

Oddsummers pointed at him like he’d won a prize and sat on the edge of Ben’s desk. “The goddess Diana guides us hunters, Hermes protects us on our travels.”

“What malevolent forces?” Laurier asked. His Corrupted hand touched the sword sheathed at his side.

Oddsummers’s eyes were drawn to it. “That hand. How did it come to be that way?”

“Answer the question.”

“I am answering the question. You had your hand removed by a creature summoned here to this Earth by malandanti. Bad Walkers.”

“What do you mean they ‘summoned’ it? Who are the malandanti?”

“Men and women who call out.”

“Call out to whom?”

“To whomever is listening out there.” He pointed up. “To the places between the stars, where there awaits great old things, still slumbering from a time before we men ever set foot on the soil God laid down for us. Long before even the dirt was even here, long before there was a sky under which dirt can rest.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Oddsummers tsked, and paced. “You know, I visited your father. Benedict. A decent man who did an indecent thing. To turn away one’s own son like that…” He shook his head.

Laurier stiffened. “You…”

“He’s dead, Captain. Dead and turned into soup. Tam. The other yellow-skinned men you saw on my deck, they’re survivors of the same Disease. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. They survived and I brought them here, all the way across the World, the West Indies, on the Edinburgh, after my last ship foundered in battle against two galleons of His Majesty’s Navy.”

“My father is dead?”

Vhingfrith was watching Laurier, but Laurier kept his eyes focused on Oddsummers.

“I’m a man of will, Captain Laurier. Not unlike yourselves. I took an iron-sick ship and crewed her with men barely fit to walk and I brought books of physic and medicine and I provided palliative care and attended every fucking ailment along the way. So yes, finding your father was a simple thing. Small. The most trivial. Insignificant.”

“Why did you…how do you know he’s dead?”

“Because I sat with him as the Disease slowly devoured him, turning his flesh into soup. Into Tam.” Oddsummers reached into his coat and pulled out a vial of some strange pink liquid. “Into this. Take a good look, gentlemen, because this is what awaits us all. This is our future—yours and mine. If not hanged by England or devoured by the Leviathans, then taken by the Disease and transformed into soup. To feed the creatures leaking into our World from another.”

He sat the vial down, and both Laurier and Vhingfrith stepped back from it. Something in his words made it seem as though everything he said was completely true.

Oddsummers sighed. Scratched his chin. Chuckled. “I was in England by chance, just looking for a way to recover myself. But while I was there, I decided to make the most of it. I’d heard stories, you see, about a man named Munt. Many in France know him, for he has something very special. I think you know what it is, don’t you, Captain Vhingfrith?”

Laurier turned and looked at Vhingfrith, who said nothing, but glanced at back John.

“It’s a thing that looks very much like the drawing I just gave you, doesn’t it, Captain? That’s because it is a rubbing of the very locket in Mr. Munt’s possession. He showed you that locket, did he not? Captain Levasseur’s locket. And he made you the same offer that he made to your father’s friend, Mr. Blakely, who was never seen again.”

Benjamin shook his head. “How can you know all this?”

“Please. Royal is—was—thick with spies. We’ve long known Munt was in the Caribbean but that he moves around a lot. Half a year ago, word reached certain years that Munt was often seen engaged with a half-black man, one with a strange glittering eye. And you had made quite the name for yourself writing all those papers on the ‘firmament’. It wasn’t difficult linking the two. And, of course, I heard about the supposed scandalous relationship between the Devil’s Son and the Ladyman. Who hasn’t now? I wanted to know more about the two of you. So, while I found myself stranded in England for a bit, I turned misfortune into opportunity and, well…I learned a great deal about you both.”

Laurier had had enough. “Say what you mean, Captain Oddsummers. Tell us what a benandanti came all this way for.”

“Treasure.” He opened a desk drawer. “Oh, look! The fools left some wine. Not very thorough, were they? But then, perhaps they believed the old superstition that it’s bad luck for a ship to be left without wine.” He pulled out a bottle and popped the cork. To Vhingfrith, “May I?”

Vhingfrith said nothing and Oddsummers took it as consent and drank straight from the bottle.

“Treasure?” Laurier said. “But you’re a fucking Good Walker. Your whole point is to serve Mankind and be rid of—”

“There are many ways to serve. Some of them allow you to serve yourself along the way. We mean to put an end to the firmament, but while we do, is there any harm in a hunter such as myself turning a profit?” He shrugged. “I came here with many different plans, any of them could have worked—one of those plans included possibly allying myself with Lord Hamilton, possibly even Woodes Rogers, using a portion of his fleet to sail the Indian Ocean. But Hamilton rejected my offer by sending men to the graveyard in Port Royal to kill me. Ah well, his loss, your gain. Now all the profits are potentially yours.”

“What profits?” John demanded.

“And what do you mean, put an end to the firmament?” Ben asked, stepping forward.

“The second question first. The benandanti have long had their prophecies about such an event as the firmament. And we even know who turned this World upside-down like this. Faith, you can believe it was the work of malandanti. Others knew it was coming. Avery, Madsen, Teach—they all saw it coming.”

John had been pacing, but now swung back to Oddsummers. “Blackbeard is a malandanti?”

“He’s…something else entirely. He is interested in an upset of the established order, while we benandanti wish to set the World aright. It will be a long struggle, a long, terrible war against those forces. But I shouldn’t want your help in all that—after all, you’re pirates! We will handle that part ourselves, in due time. But in the meantime, I’ll answer your first question. What profit, you ask? Why, Levasseur’s treasure, and what else?”

Laurier tilted his head, and chuckled. “So, you want in on what Munt’s cooking, too.”

Vhingfrith touched his shoulder. “John…you know?”

“Munt told me. When last I was in Nassau. He offered me a portion of the treasure if I came to save you.”

Vhingfrith looked confused. Wounded. “So…you weren’t actually…”

There was a moment of uncertainty and mistrust that transpired, unspoken.

“When Levasseur was executed,” Oddsummers said, ignoring their private quarrel, “he tossed a necklace with a locket into the crowd of people watching. He claimed there was a puzzle to be solved, a kind of map to his treasure. This is that locket’s inscription, or part of it,” he said, holding up the cloth rubbing. “Levasseur’s treasure is a blasphemous amount of money. But it’s money that belongs to the French government. They want it back and they’ve hired professional sailors and treasure hunters like me to find it. King Louis is very close with the benandanti. And we’ve gotten close to finding Levasseur’s treasure. We think.”

“Then why haven’t you gone after it?” Laurier asked. “If you have a rubbing of the same inscription—”

“Which I paid well for. But it is incomplete. I knew I was coming here to find Munt and the Devil’s Son, but just in case I couldn’t find them, I purchased the next best thing. This here rubbing. And to be sure I could find the Devil’s Son, I came looking for the Ladyman. And to make sure the Ladyman could be reasoned with, I spoke with Benedict Laurier, who told me of your return to England to try and convince him to go into business with Arthur Vhingfrith. You sounded most agreeable to me, your father erred when he turned you away a second time.” He looked over at Benjamin. “Where is the locket, Captain Vhingfrith? Please tell me those devils didn’t take it when they arrested you.”

“Munt has it,” he said.

“You’re certain?”

John said, “I saw him in Nassau not two weeks past. I assure you, he still has it.”

Oddsummers took a final swig of the wine and put the cork back in. “Then what are we waiting for? I think my ship ought to lead the way, since both of yours seem ragged at the moment, but I’m not averse to falling back to cover our tails in case—”

“Who said we’re going anywhere with you?” Vhingfrith said.

“Yes,” John said. “Who said?”

“I did. And you will. Because you’re both tired. Still bleeding, in fact,” he pointed to their various injuries. “I doubt either of you could kill a man fresh as me. Your ships and crews are diminished. Hazard herself may sink within the hour if we don’t hurry to repair her. My sickly crew may look haggard, my dear captains, but they know how to drive oakum and tar into a ship’s wounds. And since I now know where Munt is, I could easily beat you there, for my sails are not so torn as yours.”

He handed them the bottle. Neither of them took it.

“The firmament phenomenon will boil on, and shall never end except by the light of the benandanti. But this global catastrophe presents itself many benefits in the meantime. Disorganized fleets, mass starvation, countries diminished, the people panicking and unfocused. A more perfect storm of chaos I cannot imagine.”

“To do what?” John asked.

“To make ourselves aggregable. To combine our forces and ravish these seas like no pirates in history. To create a thalassopolis, a city-nation at sea. Libertalia.”

John winced.

“Libertalia?” said Benjamin skeptically. “That’s just some pirate’s fairy tale, a myth of Madagascar.”

“That’s where the idea started, but that’s not where it is. Blackbeard’s paradise for pirates is all around us, but it needs funding to solidify. Gold. Lots and lots of fucking gold.” Oddsummers smiled. “And there’s the Colonies. Such rebellion waiting to foment there—or, at least, so I’m told. I’ve never been there but word has reached back to me from educated men who have. Imagine it, a entire nation of rebels.”

John was fascinated, despite himself, and despite all his doubts about this man. “Libertalia is real? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Libertalia is a dream, but like any good idea, it grows more real every day.”

“You’ve met him? You know Blackbeard? Is that where you heard this?”

“Libertalia is Captain Teach’s dream, he first spoke its name into the Universe, but now its promise spreads across the Caribbean, down the West Indies and even up in Havana. But who will build it first? The Pirate Kings? Black Caesar? Teach himself? The benandanti? You?” He splayed his hands like he was offering a gift. “All of us?”

“I don’t understand,” Benjamin interjected. “A moment ago you wanted to save the World from malandanti and the firmament, and now you want to use piracy to fund a new pirate nation?”

“We already have the Republic of Pirates,” John said.

Oddsummers scoffed, “The ‘Republic of Pirates.’ Little more that a loose conglomerate of ne’er-do-wells who protect their own territories and claims, and then slap a name on their ships and sometimes vote on things while calling themselves Kings. Men are kept in line by laws, not blood pacts. Papers, official seals, organized government, these things grant legitimacy.”

“We have our own port haven, our own fortress,” John said.

“Nassau is not a strong enough fortress for them. You need something more substantial. More than a haven. A castle. A city. You need something tangible so people can see it.”

Benjamin stepped forward. “You still haven’t answered my question, sir. Why would you want to build a pirate nation here? Why this—thalassopolis, you called it?”

“An empire at sea. It’s existed before, in ancient times. I can again.”

“But—with Levasseur’s treasure?” John shook his head, not understanding. “You’ll build Libertalia as a thalassopolis with it?”

Oddsummers, seeing that they weren’t going to take the wine bottle, placed it back inside the drawer. “I asked your father why you returned to England to speak with him. He said you came to ask him for a favour, on behalf of Captain Arthur Vhingfrith. It seems Arthur Vhingfrith needed money, and was hoping you could arrange a venture between himself and your father. Your father rejected the offer and cast you out a second time, ashamed of what you’d become. But you learned back then, didn’t you, that without money there can never be meaningful enterprise? That was Arthur’s lesson to you.” He laughed. “You pirates. You can talk about freedom and truth and liberty, but you cannot fucking cohere into a true fighting force to make it happen. And you never will. Not. Without. Fucking. Gold.”

John looked to Ben, who was staring at Oddsummers.

Ben said, “Levasseur’s treasure. You want it as an investment?”

“The benandanti hold sway in some King’s Courts, but not many, and not nearly strongly enough. For this battle against the dark forces of the firmament, we will require laboratories, materials, ships for trade and exploration, a safe haven to conduct our work—”

“Your séances,” Benjamin said. “Your sorcery. You want funding for dark arts.”

Oddsummers said, “I’m going topside now. I’m going to order my men to help your crews with repairs to your ships. You can try to kill me or work with me. We sail within the hour to New Providence. Assuming, of course, we don’t get ourselves another Altered Night. So…stay close, my brothers. Don’t want to get lost in the night, and this game has only just started.” He walked out of the captain’s quarters, leaving them to stare at one another and stew on how they had few other options.

____

They did not careen. They could not afford to waste the time. They worked on Hazard first because she needed it the most. Spare rigging and masts were brought up from the Edinburgh’s belowdecks, the plaguemen commanded a wide berth in moving the materials and Hazard’s crew were only too happy to give it to them. Useless bits were thrown overboard—busted rails, destroyed casks and barrels, a cannon that had taken a hit and would never fire again. All three captains removed their shirts and waded through the cold waters in the bilge to take turns either working the pumps or pulling out chipped or destroyed pieces of wood and hammering new sets into place. Men were pressed tight down here, LaCroix had to cling to rafters and shout orders down to the carpenters doing his repairs.

Shot plugs were used to stem the flow of water. And yet it only got deeper in the bilge. One of the pumps came apart, it had taken a glancing blow and needed repair. Meanwhile, Hazard sat low in the water. And lower.

And lower.

Desperate times called for it. They did some fothering of a sail, by sewing pieces of rope fibers, yard, and twine through a spare sail, giving it the look of a quilt before rolling it up tight, increasing the density of the sail. They used the crane Laurier meant to use for the diving bell to lower the fothered sail onto the hole on the outside. Although not watertight, it would slow the leak and give more time to repair the hole.

Hours went by. The sun rose higher.

LaCroix found troubling gaps in the planks, and worried the structural damage could be far more severe. To be safe, the Frenchman organized teams to wrap cables around the ship and tightened them using the capstan, closing the gaps between the hull planks.

Someone finally found the boy that had saved Captain Laurier’s life during all the fighting, he was brought before the Ladyman and questioned. The boy said hardly spoke, other than to say his name was Jack. To Laurier, Jack looked starved and about to snap in two. Laurier thanked him for his courage, and asked if he would like to be taken back to shore by boat. The boy need only look at the Behemoth before he mumbled that he would sooner stay.

“Do you have any sea legs whatsoever?” John asked.

The boy shook his head. The Ladyman looked him over. There was something about the lad that he found oddly familiar, some small part of him used to playing the impostor. The lad was hiding something, there was some other reason he’d been hiding aboard the Lively, John was certain, but he let it go. At times the boy looked up at him with reverence, with eyes like glass, and a brittle soul equally delicate.

He could not explain it.

“Do you think you can work a bilge pump? It’s easy, the lads can show you how. Mr. Dobbs, show this lad how to help with the pump.”

“Aye, sir.”

The bilge pump was repaired and now they were finally making headway. They did some of the repairs while within sight of Port Royal and the Behemoth. The Monster covered the ruins in a yellow cloud. Men and women stood at the rails at times, gawking at the sight of such destruction. Port Royal, the modern-day Sodom and Gamorrah, was at least partly gone, and with it the strange fever dream each of them had had about freedom, about running away from England’s teat. It had been the first true civilization they’d built. Perhaps each of them realized Port Royal had been the umbilical cord still keeping them attached to England, and now it had been severed.

They were alone now. Exiting their mother’s birth canal, cut loose, utterly abandoned.

Some of the repairs they did after sailing half a day away. It was near dusk when they finally finished for the night. They were becalmed, on waters so smooth they looked like glass, not a wave to be found.

They waited to see if it would be another Long Night.

When dawn came, the men on all three ships rejoiced. Edinburgh took the lead, with Hazard in the middle and Lively beside her and just slightly behind. The weather changed drastically on the third day, with wind and storm clouds and rain moving in fast. They availed themselves of these winds and sailed close-hauled for a day, pausing only to make repairs now to Edinburgh and Lively. Hazard held strong, some of her cables around her middle needed to be tightened again, and some planks split and needed replacing, but all that could be easily done.

They stopped at tiny islands here and there to careen. Then moved on. Then stopped again on a small, nameless island and careened one last time for repairs. The men went into the woods to chop down trees, the carpenters and the smithees took long shifts to properly carve the materials they needed.

All this time, the three captains stayed mostly aboard their own ships, constantly keeping their eyes peeled for any sign of enemy sails on the horizon. Whenever they did palaver, they spoke of little more than repairs and speculations about whether or not this was going to be a Long Night.

They sailed like this for six more days—stop, repair, and then go, stop, repair, and then go—and saw only a small packet ship on the horizon. But its captain must’ve noticed they were sailing pirate latitudes, for it sailed away forthwith. The three pirate vessels remained unvisited again until they came within sight of New Providence.