Bring me my pistol, I'll load my gun

And Lyne took it into hand

And she shot the cheating Rancent

His blood soaking into the sand

Racent's Captain saw it happen

He applauded her for what she'd done

And he made her his new first mate

Aboard the afear'd Burning Sun

- A Byhill nursery rhyme

He would have sat at his father's desk and mulled over the letter some more if not for a knock on the door. Giersa, or Perre, he thought, and spun around to tell them off for going into the captain's cabin. But it was Alez, returned from the party down below. There was a red flush to his cheeks and he'd gotten rid of the fancy clothes from the dinner. He looked nicer, Jori decided, though he wasn't sure if he'd ever seen Alez this drunk or having trouble walking in a straight line towards him. How on earth did Alez even make it up the very narrow set of stairs up to him? So he got up and offered Alez the only chair in the room.

"Did you find a new name?"

Alez took it, his gaze falling onto the horn. "That's new." Then his eyes met Jori's "I'm thinking it over."

Sometimes he had an inkling that it would be a long conversation coming. They weren't in the kitchen with things for him to fidget and cut with so he settled for leaning against the wall of the cabin, resting bracing his left foot up against the wood and all the weight on his right side. "Don't change it on my behalf. I never had any problem with your name." Which was the honest truth. Alez maybe some oddball of a name but he didn't have any enmity with it.

"No, I want to." Alez punctuated this with both hands cutting the air in front of him.

The alcohol made his voice higher, Jori observed. But he went along with it anyway. "Alright. Did you not like any of the ones offered to you?" Knowing his men they would have offered a myriad of names from different countries. Perhaps even from Yichan, but he doubted Alez would have recognize any of the names.

Alez gripped the arm of the chair to steady himself. "My sister used to read books to me, a long time ago. I don't think I remembered when she stopped. But there was a nice story she read to me awhile ago."

"Oh?" Marget seemed to be the collecting type not the reading type. By collecting, Jori meant all the people who had art to have them, not to appreciate them. Similarly, she would have all the first editions in a study, just to do needlepoint and stare at them. Alez was swaying slightly from side to side where he sat. Maybe it was best that Alez slept in his father's bunk. At least for tonight.

Alez was trying to meet Jori's eyes but kept glancing somewhere up or to the side of Jori's head. "Do you know the story of Lyne and the Burning Sun?"

All this time Alez had kept a steady note in his voice, except for the fidgeting and swaying. So Jori surprised himself by being the one that shifted in curiosity. He had not heard that particular story in a while. It was one of those stories that seemed to be quite universal. Even the far reaches of Yichan had their own Lyne though by an entirely different name. The Captain of the ship was never named, the ship itself though, the Burning Sun, that name remained regardless of distance or tongues. "The ship? Or the person?"

"Person?"

Lyne had inspired quite a few sailors to take up the name though none were as successful as the original. "I've met several men called Lyne. Maybe the story your sister read you was a woman. It makes more poetic sense, her shooting the cheating husband. But back in the day, and to this day even, some Captains would not let a woman on board their ship. Let alone be his first mate. The song may referred to Rancent as a cheat but Jori often thought the singer implied more.

"Is it a good name?"

"Lyne? Sure. But it is quite far off from your own name. Don't you want to shorten it? Al?" No one should make such drastic decisions while drunk, and he watched as the gears in Alez's head churned at the possibility of being referred to as Lyne. The name didn't fit him for some reason. Maybe it was because Jori had been introduced to Alez as Alez and not as Lyne. It could be that Jori himself was just being picky.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"No."

"Alyne?" Jori suggested. They had all night, though he could hear the faint tremors of the boat moving away from the docks. It was usually best not to stay for long after a heist. He did not want anyone doing spontaneous searches on the Plucky.

"It doesn't sound right."

Now those were his thoughts, Jori rolled his eyes. If Alez did not like his name, he could just shorten it to Al. "Aly," Jori offered, jokingly.

But Alez blinked and said, quietly, as if tasting a long lost memory. "I remember my father called me that."

He wasn't one to come between a son and his father and whatever experiences they shared. "Aly then." Though he wondered if Alez-now-Aly would remember their conversation. In any case Aly was no longer looking at him but at the horn on the table. "I don't remember this being here," he stressed. "I was in this room for ages and ages. I remember everything."

"Even the pages?"

Aly shook his head. "Not all the pages. Only the ones with legible handwriting. There's a way to quickly memorize things. My father taught me. He'd take me to meetings and I'll peer over shoulders and look over books. Then I'll tell him who's doing well and who isn't."

No one suspected a child, thought Jori. He wondered if Jori was chosen because he quickly grasped whatever it was that was being taught by him. Or if it was clear favoritism. Either way he suspected Marget didn't like it. He didn't need to have a sibling to recognize clear signs of rivalry.

"I thought my sister missed me. She would write you know. She'll write and write about what we'd do when I visit her. Then she'd stop for awhile and then she'll have a new letter explaining what it was she was having a problem or another. Money problems," he clarified, and rubbed his temples. "I think Edmund was willing to help in the beginning but he told me that we weren't giving her any more money after awhile. I thought he was miserly. But I suppose a broken clock is right twice a day. I miss her. I miss what she used to be. I don't know why she lives in this kind of house surrounded by all these things and all the display cabinets. I don't recognize her."

"People change."

"You're not listening to me," Aly insisted. "She was nice! She raised me and all my other siblings and she was... nice." He took several deep breaths, each one heavier than the last. "She really was."

Pigs could also fly, Jori thought. Though he wasn't one to judge a child for being selfish, children were being children. "May I ask where your mother was?"

"She was ill," said Aly. "With every child she got worse and worse. I don't think my father insisted on a big family. But we had one anyway and—" he gripped the armrests. "I suppose another family visit isn't worth it? I wasn't close to most of them you know. I was the one who was good with numbers."

So it was favoritism. "What happened to your father's business? If, again, you don't mind me asking." He kept his tone polite even as he knew the alcohol was loosening Aly's tongue.

"All those merchants turned on my father. Because he had some inside knowledge, that's what they said. It was me though. Then, well, it was probably a bad idea for me to take over his business. Not to mention, you know. I was a good prize."

"You're not a prize."

"Thank you." Aly leaned his head back against the chair. "Did you ever meet a witch?"

"You'd have to be more specific."

"I met one, when I was at a fair with Marget. She doesn't believe in them. But at the time I had money to spend and I really wanted to know."

The conversation felt very familiar, Jori thought and decided to sit on his father's bunk to wait for whatever explanation came out of Aly's mouth.

"The woman told me that I would love a man who did not make his living on land. She said something more but I'd just gotten a proposal you see, and I made all the wrong connections. I shouldn't have married Edmund. But everyone insisted."

Aly's voice was trembling now and Jori had to bit back a groan. So Aly was that kind of drunk, the one that talks to much and gets upset by the past they remember. Well, he could commiserate, but he would probably need to be drunk as well. So he gestured for Aly to join him on the bed and pulled from under the bunk one of the bottles of wine his father kept under there. It might have spoiled for all Jori knew, but when he popped it open and gave it a tentative sniff, he did not smell any sourness.

"Would you like a drink?" he said, and took a swig before Aly took his. "You're not the only one with regret you know." It took Jori several more chugs of the wine and time before he could finish that thought. But Aly seemed to have sobered by then, or gotten to the point where the alcohol numbed all thoughts and feelings. He was quiet by Jori's side as Jori recounted the horrible night when the Plucky sailed into his village with no crew or captain onboard.

"I was supposed to be a tavern keeper," he muttered to the bottle. "I had a tavern. It was ready. She was beautiful. I was going to call it the Plucky Sailor. Or something like that. I don't even remember what the sign says anymore, only that I was happy to hold it in my hands. Then the Plucky just comes sailing in and I'm set on this wild goose chase."

Aly's reached forward to take Jori's free hand. "You're sort of a tavern keeper on the Plucky."

"It's not the same. You have regularity on land. Not so at sea."

"I thought I had regularity on land," Aly said. "I married for it. But look where it got me." He waved around the cabin but there was a smile on his face when he met Jori's gaze. "It's not a complaint, this is an improvement."

The wine was extraordinarily strong because all Jori could remember was that he had been looking very closely at Aly and that they somehow could both sleep crammed on the same narrow bunk. This was not a thing he was willing to do again when he woke up the next morning as everything hurt. He was not made to contort in such unnatural positions. But when he threw open the door he could see that they had sailed far enough from Byhill that he could breathe in a sigh of relief.

This was short-lived as there came another announcement brought to him by no other than Giersa. "Say, Jori. Captain. How many stowaways do you tolerate per visit?"

Giersa had someone with them, and Jori frowned at the bright sun and then at the unfamiliar face. "What?" He did not tell his first mate to go recruiting, and certainly not at Byhill!

"There's enough family resemblance," Giersa said. "You didn't go around singing praises of the Plucky to Ellis here did you?"

"Ellis?" Jori stared at the boy, then at the closed door where Aly was sleeping in Amard's bed. "Were you following us?" he demanded, and wanted to pull out his hair but it was too early and the light was hurting his eyes.

"Yes, Captain," said Ellis and he looked entirely unrepentant. Jori wondered if the same expression could be replicated by Aly.

"I can't deal with this," Jori muttered. To Giersa he said, "You deal with this. I'll sober up."

He found a profound pleasure in the surprise look Giersa gave him, "You drank?"

"Yes, Giersa, I was celebrating, what else do you do on a ship when you want to be merry?" To Ellis he said, "Does your mother know?"

"I don't care," said Ellis, and Jori's headache tripled in its intensity.

"I'll talk to you later," he said, and while he meant to point in a semi-serious manner it was ruined by how shaky his hand was.