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qqueenofhades · 7 years

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The Dark Horizon: Chapter XLI

summary: AU. The Caribbean, 1715: Royal Navy Lieutenant Killian Jones and his brother, Captain Liam Jones, have just arrived to help pacify the notorious “pirates’ republic” of New Providence. But they have dangerous allies, deadly enemies, and no idea what they’re getting into when they agree to hunt the pirate ship Blackbird and the mysterious Captain Swan. OUAT/Black Sails. rating: M status: COMPLETE available: FF.net and AO3 previous: chapter XL

For a very long moment, Flint, Silver, and Emma did nothing but stare up at Rogers on the deck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, as he thrust the head back into the sack and put it aside like an ugly bit of bric-a-brac that he was removing from the mantel. It was silent enough to hear the continued caw and shriek of the birds in the jungle, as they must have all been desperately and collectively praying for the Walrus’ crew to decide now was a good time to return – but if they did, they would be gunned down like dogs by the regimented line of redcoats who had taken position at the railing with their muskets. Three of these were pointed at Flint, another three at Emma, and two at Silver, who seemed to have been accorded the least threat, but only slightly, on account of his missing leg. Nobody said a word. Someone seemed to have taken the gears and windings from the Watchmaker’s great clock, and stopped the world entirely dead.

“As you may see,” Rogers said at last, when no one else made a movement or a sound, “Captain Thatch has already made the fatal error of underestimating me. I assume you are not in haste to do the same. I do thank you for the recovery of six chests of the Spanish treasure, but by my account, there must be at least several more. Where are they?”

Flint raised his serpent’s gaze to the governor’s and said nothing.

“That, by the way, was not a rhetorical question.” Rogers raised a hand, and there was a shifting and clicking among the soldiers as they prepared to fire. “Where are they?”

“Gone,” Flint said. “I had them thrown into the water here. You’re welcome to jump in and find them. I think it’s only three hundred feet or so straight down, you can hold your breath.”

A faint, hellacious color crept across Rogers’ high cheekbones. “You’re lying.”

“Captain Flint, the liar?” Flint bared his teeth in a very, very misleadingly genial smile. “But why would I lie about something like that? Would anyone else do the same? I suppose you’ll have to go hat in hand to the Spanish, and warble some pretty tune about how you tried so very hard to recover all their treasure for them, but the barbaric pirates made it impossible. You can tell them whatever you like. I’m sure it’ll be a good story.”

The flush on Rogers’ cheeks deepened. “I am not the courier or the apologist to the Spaniards, Captain. And even you wouldn’t be so mad as to throw the gold away, so it must still be on your ship. Bring it up, and we can discuss terms.”

Emma and Silver glanced at each other, seeing as the six chests were in fact still in the hold, and could be handed over if they thought that would actually spare them from whatever grisly fate Rogers had subjected Blackbeard to. But saying so would mean that they publicly and irrevocably abandoned Flint, took the English side over his and left him to his fate, and all for the sake of warding off a fate that might be inevitable anyway. Emma could still feel the weight of her sword in her hand, the way she and Flint had been at the point of blows, but could not bring themselves to it. “Governor Rogers,” she blurted out, before she could stop herself. “He’s telling the truth. It’s gone. We threw it overboard shortly before you arrived.”

Both Flint and Silver’s eyes flashed to her at that, but Emma held her ground. Rogers had gone an ugly whey-white, lips a grim line, as Emma, sensing a weakness, probed further. “Perhaps you did not see the need to return all of that money to the Spanish empire completely untouched, did you? You used to sail as a privateer. It was the voyage around the world that made you famous, and which ruined your life. The entire point was to try to find a way to pillage a Manila treasure galleon. You wrote about it in your book.”

“Ah, yes. My book.” Rogers’ face remained a mask. “It’s good to know outlaws are such advocates of literacy, I suppose.”

“So,” Emma said coolly. “The costs associated with this invasion and occupation must be enormous. You’ve already said that you’re no friend of Gold’s, so I doubt he’s personally bankrolling it for you. You’re still an Englishman, the Spaniards are your enemies, and you never got over that voyage’s failure and what it did to you. So you were planning to repay your debts with a portion of the Spanish gold, and supposed they would either assume it had been spent by the pirates, or would have to shut their mouths and accept it as a condition of receiving their haul back. Weren’t you?”

Rogers’ gaze flickered slightly. “In the course of returning civilization to the Caribbean,” he said at last, “I have been forced to extremes, yes. None of which, I assure you, I enjoy. But your concern for my finances, Miss Swan, is touching but misplaced. Are you quite sure you want to stake your future on Captain Flint’s word that the gold is gone? Call him a liar, and we can consider pardons. My wife is fond of you. She would want me to save you.”

“Do you mean Eleanor? Eleanor is your wife now?” Emma wished she could say that she was surprised, though she wasn’t. “You married her?”

“I don’t recall that that is the topic of discussion.” Rogers leaned forward. “Flint’s lying, I know he’s lying, and I know you’re lying for him. This is your choice. Make it.”

Emma was silent for a long moment, as the tension hung over them even more thickly than the sweltering mist, the steam rising from the shore, the mountains, the sand. Then she said, “How did you find us here?”

“I had a man most familiar with Captain Flint’s thinking, the charts of the Walrus, and the possibilities for hideouts and places of refuge.” Rogers gestured, and someone stepped up next to him on the deck. “I believe you two also know each other.”

Emma had suspected it, but it was still a blow to see Billy Bones standing across from her, next to their enemies, arms folded and gaze defiant, though it momentarily wavered as he caught sight of her. She could almost believe that he, like Flint, had not wanted her to be stuck in the crossfire, but it had made no difference in swaying him from his stubbornly convicted course of action and whatever it would cost to make. “Billy,” she managed, wishing that Macintosh had not hit that particular tall, blonde, and cussedly stubborn nail so directly on the apparently impenetrable head. “I hope it was worth it.”

“Aye.” Billy did not look at Flint, as he clearly might have caught flames otherwise, but he glanced at Rogers. “Remember the condition I asked for. She comes aboard unharmed.”

Rogers looked at him just as unrevealingly, then back at Emma. “If you were planning to surrender yourself to the English crown and come with us to await proper address and retribution of your piratical activities, Miss Swan, this would indeed be the time.”

“Surrender myself to you?” Emma almost choked on the word. “After what you did to Killian?”

“I remember making it clear to both of you that that was the least desirable outcome in that circumstance for all of us. I gave you repeated opportunities to recant and take the generous settlement I offered.” Rogers’ eyes flashed. “Perhaps I should be unsurprised that you choose to spurn the final hand of mercy I am offering, in deference to your past friendship with my wife and your gentle sex, despite your ongoing treasonous actions and extensive connections with traitors. This is your very last warning, Miss Swan. Come aboard, or you will be treated the same as the rest of the Walrus’ crew and her captain. That, I need not add, is not a fate to aspire to. Is that clear enough for you?”

The ensuing silence was loud enough for Emma to hear her own heartbeat, rushing and thundering through her ears. It would be easy – terrifyingly so – to take the bargain, to step aboard to presumable safety, and sail back to Nassau and that future she so wanted. But Killian had taken that beating, suffered for hours under the devoted attention of Jennings and Rogers alike and not said a word or broken or betrayed their friends, and Emma was not about to cheapen that, or her own sense of integrity and devotion, for a return trip and a front-row seat to watch Rogers blast holy hell out of the remaining resistance and ensure he had enough nooses for all the hangings he would now have to conduct. She had made her choice long ago.

“No,” she said, as steadily as possible. “No deal.”

“Emma – ” Billy started –

“I’m sorry,” Emma said. “I am. You were my first friend in this world. You’re right that I have you to thank for sparing me and trying to get me ransomed. You used to be a genuinely decent man, Billy. Better than all of us, and for that to mean something. This, though. I don’t recognize this. I’m sorry you’re not going to get what you want, but it doesn’t seem as if any of us will.” She stepped back, solidly between Flint and Silver. “If you’re going to kill us, do it.”

Billy seemed briefly at a loss for words, before his eyes turned hard. “You’ll regret this.”

“Maybe,” Emma said. “But I’ll take that chance.”

Billy opened his mouth, turning to Rogers, but at that moment, everyone’s attention was distracted by the arrival of a large number of the Walrus’ men on the beach, storming down to see what the devil was going on with the apparent arrival of Blackbeard’s ship – only to realize, of course, that firstly, it was not Blackbeard, and secondly, they were most decidedly fucked. There were a few stares and shouts as both sides took each other in, and a moment of frozen silence. Unarmed except for the few weapons they had taken to guard against anything alive and hostile in the interior (and possibly coup attempts from the other parties) and completely exposed on the sand, with their only shelter being the Walrus’ small boats, the pirates were almost comically at a disadvantage, and Emma could see the split-second of realization cross Woodes Rogers’ face, the knowledge that he had a chance to end this once and for all, take down the pirates’ republic and erase them from the face of the earth, Nassau or no Nassau. Sam was dead, Rogers had just killed Blackbeard, and once Flint went down too, it was over. Hook and Vane could fight to the grisly end, or they could spare themselves the humiliation and give in. Not that that was likely for either of them, but it didn’t matter. This was it. The final hour.

“MEN!” Rogers bellowed. “READY! AIM!”

The redcoats raised their muskets, as flintlocks thunked and powder sparked, barrels trained on the defenseless pirates on the beach. A few of them had dived for the boats, but it couldn’t shield more than a dozen of them, and once the Revenge’s powerful cannons became involved, they would be blown into matchwood. Most of the Walrus’ men, rather than waiting to be shot where they stood, were either fleeing madly back into the trees, or plunging into the water, trying to swim back to the ship, where at least they would have more of a chance. But Rogers had no intention of letting them get there. “FIRE!”

The sound of two dozen rifles going off at once rocked the entire lagoon, a hail of hot lead hammering through the stifling air and down in blazing trails. The yelling was like the din of tormented sinners in hell, blood splashing darkly across the water and a few corpses already bobbing in the cobalt shallows. As Rogers shouted for the second detachment to step up while the first reloaded, Emma and Flint caught each other’s eye, knew there was only one chance of a single one of them getting out of this alive, and acted accordingly.

Flint shoved Silver in the back, toward the cover of the quarterdeck, then snatched a rope from the shrouds, grabbed Emma around the waist, and pushed off from the deck. They swung through midair, ducked as a stray round whizzed past their ears, and landed on the Revenge side by side, ripping their swords out, lowering their heads, and charging. Emma was all too aware of the fact that now she was the pirate attacking Billy from the Walrus, not vice versa, but it didn’t stop her. Flint went for Rogers, bound and bloody fucking determined to finish what he had promised he would, and Emma was left to face Billy across the point of a sword, just as she had at the very beginning. His blows were hard enough to make her arms tremble, as he was easily twice her size, but he still had that hesitance to commit himself fully, to fight her as viciously as he would have Flint, and she had to take advantage of it. Pirate. What she had become, how she had lived for years. Pirate. The lost Blackbird floated before her eyes, and the sight of her black flag with its swan and skull snapping on the Caribbean breeze. Captain Swan. All of it. At first only a way to provide for her boys, and now this. Going down fighting. Free.

In the disruption engendered by Emma and Flint’s attack on the Revenge, some of the Walrus’ men had managed to make it back to the ship, were clambering dripping over the railing, and sprinting to the cannons. The sound of the full broadside at point-blank range was absolutely deafening, throwing Emma bodily back against the mast, and the well-trained Navy gunners were already rushing to respond. Cannonballs thudded like foundation stones against the hulls of both ships, turning the world into a nearly beautiful mélange of fire and splinter and flying sails, and her own sword somewhere in the chaos, still slashing and hacking at anyone who came rushing at her. (That included some further of Flint’s men, swinging across to join the fight.) She and Billy had been broken apart in the onslaught, and she twisted her head around madly, trying to see where he had gone, before she finally caught sight of him. He and Rogers were teamed up on Flint, two on one, driving him hard, even as he fended them off with all his years of training and fury and skill. Whatever he might have decided on in regard to his own death, he plainly did not intend to go out quietly, or on his knees. He’d take them both to hell with him.

Emma hesitated, then braced herself to join him. But at that moment, there was an earth-shattering explosion behind her, she lost her footing, and covered her head with her arms as the Walrus’ port-side hull breached under the force of the Revenge’s bombardment. Water began to hiss and rush in, she heard Rogers yell, “CHAIN SHOT, TAKE OUT THE MAIN!” and the next instant, the distinctive scream was followed by the crack and crash of a direct hit. Flames began to lick across the deck as Rogers ordered a final volley, then whirled back to rejoin the fight against Flint – only to find that he and Billy were going great guns, hammer-and-tongs, and both of them had forgotten about Rogers entirely. Flint was climbing the shrouds, Billy hot on his tail, and as Rogers and Emma watched in mesmeric fascination, they reached the mainsail yard and resumed their duel. Both of them had lost their swords, so they were using knives and fists instead, breathless and furious, the anger of a thousand confrontations and betrayals come to full and inevitable boil. Even with the Walrus afire next to them, the ship where both of them had made their home and fortune, they did not for an instant swerve their attention from each other. Two had gone up, and only one would come down.

Emma knew she had to keep fighting, had to try to make it across the blood-soaked boards to Rogers, but she whirled around instead, searching for Silver among the roar and thunder of the Walrus’ unmaking. She couldn’t see him. Some of the men were trying to put out the fires, but with the mainmast down and the hull smashed, this was a losing battle, and the tough old bitch’s fate was already obvious. Men fell into the sails tattered and translucent on the water, spread-eagled and screaming, and then, Emma looked up just in time to see James Flint haul off, throw everything he had into a final blow, and send Billy Bones plunging from the yard and into the depthless blue hole below, with an almighty splash. Then there was another explosion, and she lost sight of him altogether.

Flint’s eyes caught Emma’s. She couldn’t tell what was on his face, if it was an apology for having had to do that to her friend, or final and searing vindication. Then the world lit on fire, and he was flying, and she was flying, and everything was flying, and the next instant, choking dark salt was all around her and she had no idea which way was up.

Panicking, thinking only of the fact that the water went down and down and down, Emma kicked madly, lungs burning, until her head broke the surface. In a few moments, Flint splashed up next to her, bleeding heavily from a gash across his face, and pulled her away from the roaring bonfire that had once been his ship, skeletal black beams collapsing even as they watched, outlined in fire from stem to stern. They made it to one of the boats, just barely afloat, at the same time a treasure chest smashed out of the violated hold and hit the water. Emma looked up through her curtain of soaking hair, spitting and scraping it out of her eyes, and saw Rogers catch sight of it as well, the realization that the rest of the treasure had indeed still been aboard the Walrus, just as he insisted, and that now, thanks to his own actions, it was all about to sink. The expression on his face was almost sexually satisfying.

Flint lunged for the chest as it began to go under, grabbed it with his free hand, and hauled it up onto the boat with a crash, making it swerve and dip. He and Emma hung onto the side, momentarily shielded from the Revenge’s guns by the bulk of the burning Walrus, men in the water to every side, debris bobbing and smoking. “Silver?” he yelled. “Did you see him?”

Emma shook her head.

Flint looked away, searching among the wet heads, as if to judge how far a one-legged man could swim. Whatever crossed his face in that moment, as ever, he kept it to himself. Then he turned back to her. “You hurt?”

Emma shook her head again.

Flint took a better grip on the boat, as the last remaining chest from the Walrus’ half of the treasure would be a considerable bargaining leverage (not that Emma remotely thought he intended to bargain with it), but at that moment, everyone’s attention was distracted by the appearance of a third ship in the channel. It took them a minute among the billowing smoke and mist, but they recognized it: the Rose, which Rogers must have ordered to sail as rearguard on the Revenge after he captured it. Emma felt her heart sinking through her stomach, and then both of them still further, at this sight of Navy reinforcements. The Rose was also lighter and fleeter than the Revenge, could range afield to pick up any escapees and haul them back to Rogers’ custody, and as the Navy frigate bore down on them, clearly not at all damaged and in full command of its batteries, its long nines were trained directly on Emma and Flint, exposed in the water with only a ship’s boat to hang onto, which would be no protection at all. In that moment, both of them realized there was nowhere to go, nowhere to swim for it, no way to make it to shore in time, and that the instant those guns lit, they were dead.

Flint grabbed Emma, shoving her face into his shoulder, as she tasted the rough wet cloth of his shirt, closed her eyes, and hoped it would be quick. And then the Rose’s guns boomed, they heard them and the echo of them, and yet, they were somehow still alive. As she jerked around, stared, and realized that the Navy frigate – which should have been moving to assist Rogers and corral any survivors from escaping – had just opened fire on the Revenge instead. As there was no way that the Rose men would not know that their commander and the governor of the Bahamas was aboard, that left, however utterly improbably, only one choice. Rogers was not the only one who had craftily stolen the enemy’s ship and slipped in under false colors, using them to put his opponents off guard. The Rose was under pirate control. Who, how, why –

“What the fuck,” Flint breathed, half to himself. “What the fu – ”

He stopped. Despite everything, almost laughed.

“Silver,” he said. “John fucking Silver.”

“What?” Emma really would prefer not to take such a second close shave with death, and Flint was not making any sense – there was no way that Silver would be able to escape the wreck of the Walrus, swim out to wherever the Rose was waiting, and then, as one crippled man, induce an entire shipload of Navy sailors to turn their guns on Rogers. “James, come on, we can still – ”

Flint grabbed for the treasure chest with his free hand, as both of them noticed that the one they had rescued from the watery fate of its fellows was the same one that he had broken the lock off earlier. He shoved the lid open, reached in and grabbed a sack, heavy with gold and gems, and slung it over to her. “For my granddaughter,” he said. “Get to the Rose. Find Silver if he’s anywhere around here, go back to Nassau, and save Hook and Madi and the bloody rest of them. Don’t leave any of them behind. This is your war now, Captain Swan. Good luck.”

“James – ” Emma tried to catch his arm. “You’re not – ”

“I’ll take the chest ashore, draw the redcoats off, give you a clean shot at capturing the Revenge and Rogers. After that – ” He paused, then grinned. Very softly, and very sadly, but the first real smile she had seen since their reunion. “I washed up on an island in the middle of nowhere once, brokenhearted and adrift. I made something of myself then, I’d say. If this is so again, it’s not been the worst of stories. I’m ready to find whatever is out there. To go.”

Emma opened and shut her mouth. She knew she did not have time for much, as the Walrus had burned almost to the waterline, they would be exposed to the Revenge again in moments, and she had to make it to the Rose (and hope they were right about its new allegiances) or she too was about to die. But she was not about to let go of one more important person in her life with nothing, and she leaned forward and kissed Flint on the cheek. “Give that to Miranda for me,” she said in a whisper. “Whenever you see her again.”

“Aye. I will.” For a moment, he looked almost young, among the smoke and stain and wrack and ruin, among the fire, among the fragments. The unmaking of Captain Flint and the Walrus, and James McGraw blown away on the wind to begin his new adventure. “And tell Silver that he – that he was right. In the end, we were friends by then after all. Save him.”

With that, he took Emma’s face in his hands, kissed her on the forehead, and then pushed her away hard, toward a floating barrel. She began to kick, clinging to it with one hand and hauling the treasure sack with the other. Flint watched her for a moment longer, then grabbed a broken plank and paddled toward the beach. Yells began to spread as the redcoats noticed him, launching the Revenge’s own boat after him, as Emma kept her head down and swam for all she was worth. The Rose loomed closer and closer, and then finally she grabbed the rope someone threw down for her, tied the sack on, and heaved it up. It hit the deck above with a very solid-sounding thump, and she wondered briefly just how much money was inside. But as for her rescuers, offering her a forest of helping hands as she climbed over the side, she recognized them. Men from the Walrus and the Jolie alike, and –

“Merida,” Emma said weakly, dazed and utterly bewildered and relieved beyond words. “Macintosh said you were in Nassau. Stayed behind to fight.”

“Aye, well.” The red-haired Scotswoman mustered up a brave grin. “Couldna leave the thick-heided gomerel out here by his damn self, now could I? Get himself killed, for sure.”

“How are you – ” Emma stared around at them. “How on earth did you pull this off?”

“I’ll say for now,” Merida remarked, “that that John Silver is a bloody clever man. Too much so for anyone’s good, really. The rest, well, we’ve no time for. Captain Swan, if you’ll take command?”

Emma had to take that in for a moment, after how long she had been without a ship of her own, without any of this. She looked one final time for Flint, and saw a small black figure scrambling onto the beach, hefting the chest on his shoulder, and plunging into the trees, a detachment of redcoats rowing as fast as they could in hopes of catching up to him. Then he vanished, and there was only this, there was only now, and the Rose was hers, and it was time.

“Aye,” Emma said. Quiet at first, and then louder. “Aye. To your guns.”

---------------------

For a long moment, Killian simply stared. It seemed untrue, it seemed impossible, that Robert Gold should be standing here so casually, watching him with that air of studied unconcern, when it was the first time they had been face to face since that awful night in Antigua. When the Jones brothers were confronted and cast down, when Jennings had taken Killian’s hand and Hook had been born from the vengeful ashes. His voice felt caught in his throat, his world frozen in place, until he was briefly unsure how it could ever go on properly turning again. All his schemes, his visions, his ideas about what he would do when he was face to face with this man again, and yet he could recall nary a whisper of them. He could only stand there, waiting.

“Well?” Gold said. “Aren’t you going to greet me, Captain?”

“I – ” Killian’s tongue felt as heavy and uncooperative as lead. “The fuck are you doing – ?”

“Someone has to attend to the business of this place while Governor Rogers is away, wouldn’t you say? And considering the attempt made to sabotage my own power – which I am told you had quite a bit to do with – I supposed it was all just desserts.” Gold grinned, exposing a set of sharp canines. “Dearie, did you ever think a letter was going to take me down? As I said, I have David Nolan in my custody, and I intend to hang him side by side with Charles Vane at sunrise tomorrow. Planning to let him die for your mistake?”

“Vane?” England blurted out. “How the bloody hell did you – ”

“He and that wild pussycat of his managed to rescue Jack Rackham.” Gold sounded bored. “However, in the effort, Vane was captured instead. Rather like holding a brass penny and getting a golden doubloon in exchange, isn’t it? I am well aware that Vane is far more valuable to the pirates’ cause than Rackham, so it will be quite tragic for you to lose him. Make one wonder if the rest of your ragtag lot could hold together. Especially after Madi.”

“What?” Killian repeated stupidly. “What the hell have you done with – ”

“Nothing. Yet.” Gold shrugged. “She’s below – in this very fort’s dungeon, in fact. You and I can have a chat, as surely there’s quite a bit you wish to do to me, or you can go and fetch her out. I imagine it’s getting rather unpleasant down there. Your choice, really.”

Killian was still paralyzed, but at this, he became aware of a faint foul whiff on the air, smoke and saltpeter, which he had taken for some unpleasant side effect of the fort’s massacre – but surely Gold, a mid-fifties aristocrat with a limp, who was also not the most physically imposing specimen in the world, could not have carried it out on his own. He was also not the sort of man who would venture his person alone, and at that, it struck. “You brought your friend, didn’t you? Bloody Mr. Plouton, the two of you up to your ears together in this Star Chamber treason, and all the skill you both have in destroying men’s lives?”

“Treason? You’re using that word to me with a straight face?” Gold giggled, a high, eerie sound which did not suit him at all. “And our good Mr. Plouton never forces anyone to take a deal they don’t already want. Ask your brother about that, if you ever see him again.”

Killian turned to England, about to order him to do – well, he had absolutely no buggering, blasted, godforsaken idea what. The scent of smoke from below was growing stronger, and he understood just then that Gold had set it up this way on purpose. Killian could either stay here and fight him, though he was also sure that there would be some sort of trick or trap associated with that, or he could let him go run to Madi. Either way, Gold won. Get Killian to give into his revenge and stay to kill him at the cost of an innocent woman’s life and the disintegration of the alliance with the Maroons once they found out, the final proof that the only pirate they could trust was dead. Or Killian went to rescue Madi, and Gold himself weaseled off to hole up somewhere else, cause further trouble, and hang Nolan and Vane, which would likewise be the last nail in the coffin for their fragile coalition and fading hopes of success. Plouton must have brought a substantial private army with him as well, and Killian Jones and Edward England were, at the moment, exactly two people against the full fury of the most dangerous man in the West Indies, the careful puppetmaster and overall architect of his entire disgrace and downfall. There was nothing, nowhere to turn that Gold had not already thought of.

And yet. Killian wanted nothing more to draw his sword and run the stinking crocodile through from belly to backbone, wanted to cut him down right here and avenge himself in blood, know that Gold would not get away with this or anything like it ever again. But he already knew that he couldn’t. He didn’t know if this was the right choice, but he did know what was the wrong. He whirled on his heel, plunged into the passage that led to the dungeon, and began to run.

His eyes began to sting at once, his throat burning as the smoke intensified, a whiff of brimstone to it that made him think of hellfire, an oddly fitting metaphor considering everything. He knew he did not have long, and picked up the pace, battling through the dimness, toward the cells at the end. Could just make out something – someone – slumped against the bars, thought of Ursula on the Maroons’ island, putting her trust in him to take her away, and how he had broken it. He smashed at the lock with his hook, supposing that the bloody thing had finally proved to be good for something after all, and after a few more wrenches, got it to give. The cell door swung open, and Madi toppled out, semi-conscious and coughing. She tried to get to her feet, then fell hard.

Killian grabbed her, scooping her up in his arms and hoisting her clumsily against his chest, as he tried to spot any daylight among the billowing smoke. He thought he spotted it, put on a final burst of speed, and they somersaulted out through a broken hole in the stones, to the steep grassy verge beyond. They rolled and rolled in a tangle of limbs, until they finally crashed to a stop against the end of the wall, and simply lay there, hacking and heaving and bringing up chunks of sooty phlegm. Killian got woozily to his hand and knees, realized on the instant that that was far too much effort, and collapsed again, waiting for the chance to get off the world to present itself.

After this interminable recovery period, Madi finally spoke, her voice hoarse and choked with smoke. “You,” she said. “I was not expecting you.”

“I don’t imagine you were.” Killian tried another, slower attempt to get to his feet, which seemed more inclined to cooperate. “Do you – bloody hell, Robert Gold’s here, him and his bloody friends. He said they had captured Vane and they meant to hang him and David Nolan, he could have been lying, but – ”

“They have Captain Vane.” Madi sat up, also slowly, and spat a final hunk of soot. “And what are you proposing we do now?”

“My men are still somewhere around here, I have to find them before they head right into the middle of Gold’s evil bloody business.” At that thought, Killian lurched all the way upright and made a dogged effort to run back toward the bluff, as he did not want the Jolie’s crew to keep climbing, obviously under the impression that he and England were already in the fort and they needed to help take it, only to hit the waiting jaws of the trap. It was then, however, that he heard the rumbling in the ground beneath them, saw the smoke billowing from the rusted grates of the murder holes, and remembered the small fact that Gold had already set the damned place afire – the fire from which, of course, he had only barely rescued Madi. He hesitated, about to run back anyway – but then, it was Madi’s turn to grab him by the wrist, jerk him hard, and send both of them tumbling down the verge, just as he heard all the air suck out of the world behind them. In the next, the long-burning fuse must have hit the piled barrels of powder and shot inside the fort’s armory, and whatever other fiendish trick Plouton had provided to ensure it all was destroyed, because everything, everywhere, exploded.

Killian and Madi threw themselves under the thick sod berm of the foundation just in time, as huge chunks of broken wall cascaded past mere feet from them, crashing and roaring and sending up a plume of rock dust. The din was deafening, incredible, as Killian waited for them to be crushed at any moment, a big piece to punch through the earth above them and squash them to jelly. It felt rather like being buried alive, watching the light and air run out, waiting to die. He had, for so long, so very bloody long. Whatever was coming out of here, whoever, he did not know. Could not control it, or overcome it. Only wait, until it ended.

At last the thundering stopped, and once it had been more or less quiet for several minutes, Killian and Madi crawled very, very cautiously out of their hole. The air was hazed with dust and smoke and grit, but as they stood up and looked back, they could see that the fort had not just been destroyed, but completely obliterated, as if the great fist of a god had swung from the sky to smite it. A loyal governor would never have blown up his own fort, even at the advantage of denying its possession to the enemy, but Robert Gold was, after all, no loyal governor. This was the final stage of his plan, to take down the pirates and the British crown alike, until the only power left among the rubble, the only choice for it to rise again, was him. Star Chamber. The men who thought they could overthrow even the mightiest as they pleased, and craft the world again in their own image. This was it, then. It began, and ended, on Nassau, New Providence Island, and the hourglass was almost spent.

Killian might have been pleased that they had been so correct about Gold’s ultimate allegiance, and the games he had played to reach this point at last, but when that meant the world was literally blowing up around him, it was somewhat of a second priority. He and Madi picked their way down the hill as fast as they could, a dangerous obstacle course through sliding rubble and broken stones, as he started to hear gunshots cracking through the streets. Most of his men, if not all of them, would have been killed in the explosion, which he tried not to think of, and those sounded like well-trained, regimental gunshots. British Army gunshots, or so it would have been taken every care to appear, but it was not. Gold and Plouton making their last move, killing the remaining redcoats, anyone loyal to Rogers or the Crown or who might stand in their way. By this time tomorrow, Nassau would be the headquarters of the Star Chamber, Second Founding.

“What are we – ” Madi skidded to a halt, staring at the devastation to every side. Her lips were blanched, her gaze fixed. “How do we fight this evil? How is it even possible?”

Killian had to admit, he did not know. He had no idea. Even Woodes Rogers’ shrewd, cool, ruthless danger was safer than this, and at least he understood what Rogers was fighting for. The British Crown might be the devil, but it was the devil they knew, and there was that saying about which was the more preferable. And in it, Killian realized there was only one slender, vanishing, insanity of a chance. If the Star Chamber was going to turn on both the Navy and the pirates, then the Navy and the pirates would have to turn on it first. Lieutenant Killian Jones or Captain Hook? The answer at the very end, it seemed, was both.

“Do you know where they took Nolan?” He spun back to look at Madi. “You said you knew they had Vane, Gold wants to hang them together, they must be kept in the same place. Not in the fort, they meant to destroy that. Any ideas? Any?”

“No. I don’t know Nassau. I could not tell you its secret hideouts.” Madi spoke more or less calmly, though Killian could see the whites of her eyes. “What are you – ”

“In a minute, lass.” Killian started to trot, mind whirring madly. He could, he supposed, try Rogers’ office, the place where he and Emma had paid their first ill-fated visit to the governor, as Gold would certainly see the irony in using it to stage his grand takeover, and if there was one chance of stopping him, one small Achilles’ heel, it was in Gold’s arrogance. He would want the show, the display, the symbolism of the thing, taking down Nassau from its very heart, and with that, though it made his legs ache as if they too were about to fall off (in that case, Killian supposed, Silver could give him tips if any of them survived), he once more began to run.

He and Madi made it down to the streets, though they then had to keep low and move very carefully. Soldiers in blue jackets with a golden star on the sleeve, clearly Gold and Plouton’s special thugs, were patrolling the plaza where the gallows had been built, and more than once, Killian and Madi tripped over bodies that numbered both redcoat and pirate. Bloody hell, where are the Maroons? If Lancelot could get to them in time with reinforcements, it. . .well. . . their prospects remained as grim as absolute fuck-all, but still. Not that the slaves of New Providence would ever have expected to fight a foe this monstrous. Nobody had.

At last, Killian and Madi edged around the corner, glanced from side to side, and decided to risk the sprint of a dozen yards or so to the handsome colonnaded building that had served as Rogers’ residence and seat of business, and where (so Killian desperately prayed, because if not, they were out of bloody ideas) Nolan and Vane might be currently incarcerated. Just then, however, someone grabbed Killian by the shoulder, he whirled around and threw a punch with his hook, and thus only narrowly avoided inadvertently disemboweling a very filthy and very alarmed Jack Rackham. “Jesus Christ! It’s me!”

“How the hell was I supposed to – ” Killian tried to calm his racing pulse, to no success, as he took in the sight of him – no, them. Anne was equally dirty and road-worn, and both of them had the same desperate look in their eyes. “Let me guess, you’re doing the same. Trying to get to Vane?”

“Aye. The bastards grabbed him as he and Anne were rescuing me, we got away, but they took him. What the fuck is going on? Who are all these lunatics?”

“Robert Gold and friends. The Windsor’s here, on the west side of the island – he captured David Nolan and then sailed here, he means to hang him and Vane together.”

“I thought redcoats were the worst we were going to have to face in this fight.” Rackham scrubbed a hand over his face. “I sense this is the part where I’m mistaken.”

“Aye, but – I think most of my crew might have been. . .” Killian gestured behind them, at the smoke rising into the sky from where Nassau Fort had once stood. “I have a bloody mad idea, but it won’t work without at least some men. The Ranger is our last chance to find them. Do you think you can reach the ones who came ashore with Vane?”

“Could be,” Anne rasped. “There’s not many, though. Twenty. Thirty at the most. We can’t fight these fuckin’ monsters with thirty men.”

“Fine. We just need a few. There have to be some men aboard the Windsor as well, held in reserve, who aren’t part of Gold’s sick little scheme. Ordinary Navy sailors. As well, all the ordinary pirates Rogers is holding and means to hang, we can get some of those free too. We just need enough to run the guns on her and the Jolie.”

Jack and Anne exchanged a slightly stunned look. It was Jack who got it first. “They have sixty guns each,” he said. “Sister ships, both started life as Royal Navy third-raters, HMS Windsor and HMS Imperator. One captained by David Nolan, the other by Liam Jones. The latter, of course, now has become the Jolie Rouge, its captain has become Hook, and all because of what Robert Gold himself did to you. That’s our only chance. Getting the two of them to fight together, to reunite again after long last. But even if we do break Nolan and Charles out, even if we find just enough men to crew both ships, then we – what? All those guns are only good if we have something to shoot at. How do you think you can draw Gold down to the beach and into range, and the rest of his men with him? What can you offer up as bait?”

“That,” Killian said, with an utterly black smile. “That is actually the part of the bloody plan I am the least worried about.”

“Then what are you – ”

“It’s simple.” Killian turned to face them, spreading his arms. “Me.”

---------------------

The lagoon was on fire. Not literally, but nearly so, as the water was so thick with burning and smoldering debris that it was hard to tell the difference. The husk of the Walrus was on her side, splintered pieces and cracked masts standing wildly askew. It would take a while for her to go fully under, and in the meantime, she constituted a tricky obstacle. While it might be effective just to sail the smaller Navy frigate directly into the side of the larger Revenge, it would then leave them short both of those vessels to boot, and as Emma did not want to swim all the way back to Nassau, that difficulty had to be considered. Rogers was still striding the deck of the Revenge, and she had to find some, any way of getting to him long enough to take him prisoner and bring this to an end. But after what she and Flint had done earlier, anyone else trying to swing over on ropes would be shot out of the air before they could, and there was no other obvious method of getting someone close enough. Rogers had sent most of his men ashore after Flint, but there were still enough to make it chancy. So this was it, then. Whoever blinked first.

Just then, Rogers’ head turned, as if he could sense Emma staring at him from across the water, and their gazes locked. Their ships were not terribly far apart – a man with a strong arm could have thrown a rock from one to the other – and Emma could thus see the same realization forming in his eyes. That to end it, either of them only needed to capture the other, a chess player forcing the other into checkmate, but the moves to get there were nearly impossible to make on the overturned board. It was also clear that Rogers was wondering how the fuck his Navy frigate had ended up in pirate hands, but considering he had stolen the Revenge after luring it in by false pretenses, Emma considered that entirely fair repayment. But if –

At that moment, Merida sucked in a horrified breath, and Emma tore her gaze away – carefully, since anywhere she looked, Rogers might as well. It was clear, however, what had drawn Merida’s attention. A lone, dripping, dark-haired figure was climbing the side of the Revenge, just out of the sight of the soldiers on the deck, with a knife between its teeth. For a mad moment, Emma thought it was Silver, but it wasn’t. It was Macintosh.

It was clearly taking everything Merida had not to shout out at him, to stand there and wait to see whatever was going to happen. Indeed, she and Emma caught each other’s eyes, then affected to be looking at something else, shouting and waving, so that Rogers’ attention was diverted to them instead. Emma dared a split-second glance back, and couldn’t see Macintosh anymore. Then there was a thump, a crack, an outbreak of shouting, and he vaulted onto the deck, bull-rushed Rogers, and rammed him squarely in the chest. About six gunshots went off at the same time, Merida screamed, and Macintosh and Rogers hit the railing together, back-flipped in midair, and went overboard.

“GO!” Emma screamed, hauling on the wheel as hard as she could, heedless of the obstacles or the danger or anything at all. Rogers was struggling like a sea monster, kicking and thrashing and trying to break Macintosh’s grim-death grip, but the other man simply would not let go. The Rose skimmed over the water, Merida uncoiled a line and threw it to Macintosh as unerringly as firing an arrow, and he flailed out, got it coiled around him and Rogers both. “NOW!”

The immediately following moments were complete chaos. The pirates hauled as hard as they could, Rogers still fighting like a violent fish on the line, even as he and Macintosh were pulled bodily from the water and reeled in over the railing of the Rose, crashing down together in a tangle of arms and legs and curses. Six brawny pirates pounced on Rogers immediately, forcing him to his knees, as he flung a look of absolutely withering black dudgeon at them, clearly warning that they would have to beat any surrender out of him inch by inch. That, however, was not Emma – or Merida’s – main concern. Macintosh was sprawled on the boards where he had fallen, a slowly spreading stain of crimson beneath him. He managed a slurred, stunned, delighted smile when Merida knelt next to him and rolled him over, pulling him into her arms. “Hey. Lassie. Ye shouldna be here.”

“Ye stupid, stupid fat-headed fool.” Merida’s hands searched frantically for the wound, trying to stop the bleeding, but Emma could see at least three bullet holes. “I knew I couldna leave ye alone! The hell were ye thinkin’, don’t you – don’t you dare die on me, Alexander Macintosh!”

“That’s. . . good of ye.” Macintosh managed a crooked smile. “But ye ken, Merida Dunbroch. . . I never did. . . do what ye said.”

“No,” Merida said, cradling his head in her hands. “Look at me. At me, man, at me. I’m here.”

“Always have. Looked at ye.” Macintosh’s voice was slower, softer, farther away. “Wouldna rather go to the Almighty. . . lookin’ at anything else.”

He struggled to raise a bloodied hand, trying to catch one of Merida’s long red curls, as she bent to let him grab it, comb his fingers through it. “Mac,” she whispered. “Mac, mo ghaol, don’t.”

“It’s all right.” Macintosh raised his unfocused eyes to Emma, then flicked them around the deck, with the very last of his strength. “Cap’n. . . Swan. Have your own ship. . . again. You two lassies. . . do right by each other, eh? You and this other one. Otherwise I’ll. . . be. . .”

“You’ll be what?” Merida cupped his cheek as his head slumped into the crook of her elbow. “Mac, what? Don’t you dare be an arse to the end and never tell me what you – ”

He didn’t answer, a faint smile still frozen on his lips, as his eyes slowly began to reflect the sky. Merida let out a gasp, then a racking sob, bending over him, as Emma pressed her knuckles to her mouth, struggling to keep her composure. She did not want to begin to weep. Woodes Rogers was on her ship, Flint had given her the war, and she would not. She could not yet. She was not entirely certain if she could ever stop.

A few of the nearby men pulled off their hats or kerchiefs, an eerie, shattering silence falling over the inferno, until Emma rose to her feet and turned to face Rogers, still on his knees with the six pirates keeping firm hold of him. He tilted his head back to stare at her coolly. “I am worth a good amount in ransom, and doubtless you are aware of my family connections as well. But I will not beg for my life from the likes of you. If it is blood for blood you intend, have done with it. You will have no satisfaction or sport from me.”

“I might,” Emma said, cold and quiet. “If I was different. If I was you. If I was the monster you thought I was, we all are. But as it happened, as we have always agreed, you’re worth more alive, and I intend that you remain that way. First, we will be returning to Nassau. Other circumstances and any potential future arrangements will be discussed at that time.” She jerked her head at the men. “Take him to the brig.”

Rogers was hauled to his feet again and marched off, as Emma turned to stare over the lagoon one more time. The Revenge had struck her colors when Rogers was captured, and she had taken enough damage herself that she was not in much fit state to pursue, especially the smaller, faster Rose. But Emma could not simply turn around and sail off, not yet. She kept expecting to see the trees to part, for Flint to reappear, even though she knew he was not going to. Yet the last thing he had ever said to her was to save Silver, the man he had insisted that he wanted dead for the longest time, and she did not intend to dishonor his wish in such a way. But searching through all the debris would take hours, if not days, and God alone knew what awaited them back on Nassau. If they didn’t go, if they let Rogers’ men recover their wind after this stunning defeat –

Emma bit her lip. She could still see a few of the Walrus’ crew in the water, but not many of them were moving, and Silver did not appear to be among them. If nothing else, his lack of a leg should have made him – or his corpse – easy to pick out. She looked up and down. If he didn’t –

And then, in the final miracle, she caught sight of something, or rather someone, in the boat that Flint had taken ashore with the chest. A lone figure, rowing through the burning water, as the men leaned over the side and shouted. Until a few minutes later, they had thrown another rope to haul John Silver aboard, he fell hard and headlong on the deck as if he barely had the volition left to catch himself, and Emma crouched next to him. “Flint?” she said. “Did you – ”

It took Silver a long moment to answer. When he did, his voice sounded strange, distant and formal. “Captain Flint will not be accompanying us.”

“You must have made it ashore during the madness,” Emma said quietly. “Didn’t you. You followed him. Into the woods. The redcoats after him – ”

“They’re dead.” Silver reached out, nearly put his hand into a pool of Macintosh’s blood, and pulled it back, sitting up with a grimace. “You may have my assurances on that.”

“And – and Flint? Is he. . .” Emma tried to steady herself for an answer she knew was coming, but very much did not want to hear. “Is he dead too?”

“Is Captain Flint dead?” Silver’s blue eyes, like the lagoon, had turned to something different, scarred and smoked and forever keeping hold of their secrets. “Yes, I daresay he is.”

Emma regarded him for a long moment, wanting to ask, to press for details, but already and utterly aware that she would get no more of them. She turned away to order the crew to make one more sweep for survivors, then to take the first heading for Nassau that they could, that they would likewise be sailing straight for as long as it took to return. When this had been done, when Macintosh’s body had been taken away to be sewed in sailcloth, she turned back to Silver, who hadn’t moved from where he was leaning against the railing, face raised to the sun finally beginning to break through the fog. “I’m told I have you to thank for this. The Rose.”

“Aye?” His expression did not change, though something flickered. “Does that surprise you?”

“Surprise me? No. Not exactly. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to know, now, how you did it.”

“Is that an order, Captain?” Silver spoke it with just enough respect to sound genuine, though his eyebrow raised. “No use in simply being grateful that I did?”

Emma regarded him for a moment, mulling any number of possible replies. Then she said, “The last thing Flint said to me was to save you. I’d like to be able to do that.”

“As in, you might not if I don’t cooperate?” Silver looked mildly impressed. “He did teach you well. And I know he was very proud of you.”

Emma glanced down, noting that Silver was using the past tense when speaking of Flint, but still refusing to break. She flicked her eyes up to his again. “Flint wasn’t the only one with a secret plan that he kept to himself all along. Was he.”

“No,” Silver said at last. “No, he wasn’t.”

“So why? What was yours?”

“I suspected.” Silver, having apparently decided to tell her, sat up straighter, pulling his tangled black curls out of his face. “That Flint did not intend to come back. As well, that Billy was going to attempt to split the crew and find takers for his incitement to mutiny. I lost my leg in the last one. I don’t imagine you can accuse me of not taking the prospect of another one very fucking seriously. But ever since Charlestown, everything that happened there and after, as Flint has come apart at the seams, I’m the one who has held the ship and the crew together. It was no accident. He was no accident. Long John Silver. The man who could say things, could concoct any tale, and other men would believe. It’s a strange and terrible power, isn’t it? When you used me to spread the rumor that Flint was alive, that he had returned, when I could have told you that he was already dead. See what you did, what I did? I made a dead man live for days, for weeks, so that folk would remember seeing him, speaking to him, knowing him, when he was only shadows and dust. It makes me a conjurer, of sorts. A necromancer.”

Emma folded her arms, watching him. Waiting.

“And yet,” Silver went on. “I knew it was not finished. Not yet. I had to be sure that if and when Flint finally began his last descent, there would be some way to get back, to escape it. Back to Nassau, back to Madi, back to – ” he looked at her straight – “Hook. So – ”

“You chose the men Billy brought with him.” Emma kept her voice level, even as she could only begin to grasp at the implications of this. “Told them to act in utter agreement with his plan to overthrow Flint, be willing to do whatever he suggested, as long as when the time came, you could count on them to rise up. Did you know Billy was going to approach Rogers?”

“Again. I suspected.” Silver could clearly hear the accusation in her voice, but he did not bridle. “I thought that was the most likely avenue he would take – and why would I stop him, when we needed Rogers to follow us, when we needed, in fact, to be sure that he would? If Billy went to him, there would be absolutely no doubt that both of them would chase Flint to the ends of the earth. All I told the men was that no matter what, they had to make sure that they reached us. They had to make sure there was a way for us to get back to Nassau. Whatever it took, they had to remember that. There were not so many of them that they could step aboard and openly start to fight – the redcoats would have outnumbered and overpowered them on the instant, and that would have defeated the entire purpose. They had to lie in wait. Choose their moment.”

“Rogers took the Revenge, then.” Emma closed her fists on her thighs. “By, ironically, the exact same stratagem. Pretending to make the Rose look abandoned and helpless, so Blackbeard would be gulled into a rash attack, and then caught off guard and taken. When you saw that, when you must have guessed something was happening – you still didn’t say a word?”

“Say a word to who?” Silver did not look away. “Blackbeard? What, tell him the one secret that could save all our lives in front of everybody on all three ships, so Rogers could hear it and turn on the men right then? Shout it to him over the water, perhaps? I’m sorry for what happened to him, but I am not responsible for his death. If Blackbeard had been meant to, he would have beaten Rogers then. There would have been no need for us to continue further out to sea, and thus for the plan’s existence. But because it did, we’re going back. To Madi. To Killian. Do you really wish we were not? I don’t think you do. That was the price. You might not have known exactly what it was, but you were more than willing to pay it.”

Emma opened her mouth, then shut it. “So your hand-picked group of mutineers found their moment,” she said at last. “When Rogers chose the Revenge to sail in here and catch us off guard, and to take full advantage of her superior guns. He took Billy with him, of course, and the rest must have promised that they would keep watch over the Rose. Then, when the odds were better, with most of the redcoats aboard the Revenge, they rose up, killed the remaining ones, took the Rose over, and had what you wanted all along.”

“And what you did. But if you’re going to blame me for not telling you either – I had no notion what had happened, as much as you did not. They could have taken the Rose. They could have been found out and killed. They could have decided to join Billy after all. Anything was possible. I set the pieces in motion, I could only hope they moved to the end.” Silver stretched out his shortened leg, unhooking the crude metal stump that served him in place of a foot. “And now the ship is yours. We have Rogers. We’re going back. So. . .?”

Emma continued to look at him. “What you said about not wanting to sacrifice Flint, was that just something – ”

“That was not a lie.” Silver’s voice remained quiet. “The last thing he said to you, so you claimed, was to save me. I would have done the same. Indeed, I made this plan for him, as much as for Madi. I knew he would lead us to the brink of destruction, and over it, and there might be nothing left when he had. I wanted there to be a way back for him as well. But he chose not to take it. He chose. . . what he did. Now both of us live with that. Don’t we.”

There was a heavy silence, Silver’s face drawn and introspective and haunted, until the question that had bubbled to Emma’s lips – did you kill him? – died unspoken. She had always had a sense of Flint and Silver as two halves of the same coin, with different methods but the ultimate and united aim, and had wondered if one could ever live, or truly be free or safe, while the other did as well. Or if such an organism must devour itself for sustenance, that only one could grow in the light and air, and the other must lie down in the darkness and wait to die. One’s star rising, the other’s dwindling, only existing in perfect balance for such a short time, and with an ever-increasing price to pay. Silver’s words from earlier still echoed in her head, that this particular price had been hers as well, that she would not change anything he had done if it meant, as it did, that she was going back to Killian now. And perhaps, after all, he was right. She did not know what that made her, and she was tired of trying to sort it out. She wanted to go home to the man she loved, and marry him, and lie down beside him, and sleep. Wanted to find what small tender shoot might spring up among the ashes. She wanted to be done. She wanted it so very badly.

And yet, she knew it wasn’t – or rather, that it was, and there was no telling what came now. Sam was dead. Blackbeard was dead. Flint was dead. Killian and Vane and Rackham might be as well, or at least in no position to offer further meaningful resistance. Woodes Rogers might be returning to Nassau as a prisoner, and there would be a high price to free him which he could already ill-afford, but he had done his job. He had brought down the pirates’ republic. Even if the scattered survivors formed some sort of new coalition or struck individual bargains, their entire world would never again be what it had been. Samson and the pillars of the temple had fallen together. There was only the question of what, if anything, would be rebuilt from the pieces.

Emma and Silver looked at each other for a final moment. The ghost of Flint hung between them, almost as tangibly as if he was really present, conjuring the memory of Silver’s words in the cabin. That Flint might not intend to give them a choice as to whether they had to sacrifice him, no matter how much they might both wish it had been different, and so it would remain. So he would. As if the man and the mantle of Captain Flint alike might be at rest now in the deep, like the Walrus, like Sam and the Whydah, like the legends that all of them would only one day be. Wherever that was, Emma hoped it was peace. Hoped it was quiet, and that there was sunlight on calm water, and Thomas Hamilton and Miranda Hamilton Flint had come to the shore to wait for him, their third part and their missing soul. That he saw them there, and smiled.

This is your war now, Captain Swan.

Good luck.

Emma dashed the tears off her cheeks, and turned her back on Skeleton Island. As Macintosh’s body was brought up, and she went, one last time, to send a man home to the sea.

-------------------

The night wind tousled Killian’s hair brusquely back from his face and sent his jacket flapping against his legs, as he did his best to affect as nonchalant a posture as he could. He could hear his heart hammering in his ears – if Gold did not go for this, they might as well start picking out a nice tombstone, not that they would be afforded even that luxury. Just be dumped in a pauper’s grave with no mark or blessing, after we strangled to death on the end of a rope. But Killian was wagering, once again, on the man’s arrogance. Gold would not be able to resist the opportunity to meet him face to face once and for all, to gloat, to feel assured in his final victory. Just get me enough men, Killian had told Jack, Anne, Madi, and England, who they had managed to find in the aftermath of the fort’s explosion. All the ones Rogers still has prisoner. Nolan and Vane if they could, but if worse came to worse, they would have to take the Windsor without its captain’s permission. They were, after all, pirates.

He waited a few more minutes, straining to hear anything from the eerily quiet streets, when he finally heard a measured crunch and tap. The footsteps, say, of a man walking with a cane, descending onto the debris-strewn sand, until the unmistakable silhouette emerged from the shadows. “Dearie,” the voice said at last. “I’m quite convinced you must have a death wish.”

“Or perhaps I just wanted to catch up with an old friend.” Killian’s own voice was just as sleek and dangerous. “Properly. We hardly had much time before your trick with the fort.”

Robert Gold smiled. “Ah. Yes. Tender sensibilities, Captain, of course. Exactly the case for a man like you. Or perhaps even you cannot help but being slightly impressed by my work here, and wanted, at last, to beg for mercy?”

“In your dreams, crocodile.”

“Crocodile?” Gold sounded amused. “I’ve been given plenty of epithets over the years, believe me, but I think that is a new one. Well, your idiosyncrasies of insult aside, I am a busy man, and so, it would seem, are you. Doomed, of course, but busy. What do you mean by this?”

“Just the truth. If you’re remotely capable of it, of course. You destroyed me and my brother on purpose, you made me into your perfect monster, so all the resources and all the money and all the time you requested from England to fight the pirate threat would be granted. All eyes on me. Everyone expecting me to be the enemy. They’d never once be looking for you.”

Gold did not bother to deny this, if at this point, there would be no real reason for it, and he was too proud of his handiwork to want to. “A story as old as the serpent in the garden, dearie,” he said instead. “As the saying goes, you can never be betrayed by your enemies. Only by your friends.”

“Aye, and Eve gets blamed for it.” Killian had not come here to argue theology with the evil bastard, but he couldn’t help himself. He thought suddenly of Milah, back in Antigua, who had saved him and tended him and fashioned him the brace, who would not leave her son behind since he was buried there, and the sense Killian had that Gold was responsible for his death. How, he did not know, or precisely what their relationship had been. But he wondered if perhaps it had been Gold’s son as well, and Milah had been sent into exile in the Indies rather than stain the governor’s reputation with her existence. Cruelly ironic, of course, that then he had followed her there.“That is likely your favorite part, isn’t it?”

“Are we talking of women?” Gold asked. “Specific ones? If so, Miss Guthrie – well, it is in fact Mrs. Rogers now – is presently the interim governor of the island, since her husband is away. Just as she’s always wanted. I had the chance to become acquainted with her in Antigua, when Captain Hume brought her and Sam Bellamy to me. I knew that she’d always make the choice to assist whoever would keep her in charge of this place, or tell her that at least, and indeed, she professed her willingness to fully cooperate. Good to find a woman of her word, isn’t it? So I am delighted to announce that Mrs. Rogers has, with the governor’s full warrant and authority, signed the possession of New Providence Island, and its seat of Nassau, over to myself and the Star Chamber. Guaranteed seats on the ruling council for her and her husband, of course. Generous financial settlement for Governor Rogers’ personal and professional debts. The removal of the English occupation, and the restoration of lawful commerce.”

With that, Gold reached into his jacket and removed the folded paper, unfolding it and holding it up as if for the presentation of a warrant. “Therefore,” he went on, “now that a strong and sensible agreement has been reached for Nassau’s future, you and your band of bilge rats can be safely assured that you play no part in it. I am told that Bellamy is in fact dead, is that true? Pity we didn’t get to hang him, but the universe will take its due in the end.”

“You,” Killian said, “were not fit to wipe Sam Bellamy’s arse.”

Gold laughed, but with less humor. “Yes, Captain Hume always did think you had a far too exalted opinion of that one. In either case, however, he is still not the purpose of this conversation. If you wished to agree and save us some difficulty, please, do so. Yet since I have already become well acquainted to the fact that you won’t, at least – ”

“Where’s Lord Archibald Hamilton?”

That caught Gold genuinely by surprise. “What?”

“Lord Archibald Hamilton. He was on the Windsor with Nolan, the last I heard, so either you brought him along here, promising to expunge his Jacobite activities from the record if he agreed to become your new figurehead governor – I don’t think you like Rogers much, he’s too smart and dangerous for your tastes, you need someone who more easily controlled, and everyone has known from the start that Hamilton can be bought. Or you likewise turned him in to the English authorities as a traitor, further proving how much they should trust you. Which one?”

“How civically minded of you.” Gold’s smile this time was the least amused of all. Good, maybe it meant Killian was finally getting under his skin. “As a matter of fact, Hamilton proved less amenable to cooperation than expected. He was sent back to London in chains.”

“Good. Could be Liam actually taught him something.” If he ever saw his brother again, Killian supposed, he would have to tell him that. “What about Nolan, then? Couldn’t resist the chance to humiliate him for daring to challenge you, I suppose?”

“Why, Captain. You can’t think that I’ll stand here and blithely fill you in on all my plans, now can you?” Gold raised an eyebrow. “I am, however, baffled by your apparent concern for his welfare. Please don’t tell me that Killian Jones, of all men, somehow still has sympathy and affection for the Royal Navy, or anyone involved with it. In fact, I’m surprised that you can’t see it. Though perhaps I shouldn’t be. You did not strike me as particularly bright.”

“That, then,” Killian said, “would be your mistake.”

“Is it?” Gold took a step. “We’re very alike, you and I. You from Ireland, me from Scotland, rose high in the ranks of the service to the English crown. But we didn’t start there. Born dirt-poor, mothers died early, fathers abandoned us. Had to make ourselves from the ground up, and against a system that would have liked nothing more than to see both of us bleed out in the dust. Whatever I had to do to become who I am – you hardly can throw any stones on that account, can you? You and Liam joined the Navy through deception and murder. You became Hook through more of the same. You know it, don’t you? So indeed. Isn’t it clear?”

“What is?”

“So as there are Flint and Silver, so too there are Hook and Gold. On the one side, an angry, disgraced ex-Royal Navy lieutenant, fleeing his old life and plotting his vengeance, taking on his new name, falling into that rage. On the other, the man whose name calls to mind what we are all after, in the end – money, largesse, treasure, riches – and who, while his methods may be the opposite, wants the same thing. Have you still not got it, Captain?”

“Are you honestly trying to claim that we’re on the same bloody side?”

“Aren’t we?” Gold’s eyes glittered ferally. “It’s not my fault you’re still too thick to see it. Haven’t I done what you could only dream of? I’ve torn down English power and rebuilt my own in its place. The Star Chamber is no different from the pirates’ republic. Unlawful by whose law? The English. Unwanted by whose interests? The English. Fought to disestablish by who? The English. We didn’t like what they gave us, so we changed it. Now you’re actually telling me that you want to stop what I’ve done? It’s the same thing you’ve been fighting for all along, but my version of it actually works. You think you’re the only one who’s ever lost something, someone they loved? I’ve done this, all this, so I don’t have to – ”

“No,” Killian said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“No.” He almost smiled, the spell of Gold’s words broken. “You can tell yourself you’re doing this for altruism, for love, for vengeance – anything you want. You’re not some great champion of freedom from tyranny, or justice for the downtrodden beneath the English boot. You’re building all the power you can simply because you love power, and because you love using it, and you love the sensation of playing puppetmaster with everyone’s lives, of pulling everyone’s strings. And why? Because you’re a coward. Because no matter how much power you have, it will never be enough for you. It will never be enough to think you’re free from the need, the compulsion to have more. So you’ll keep on burning and burning, and calling it a castle.”

Gold’s face went momentarily, entirely blank. Then it rearranged itself like the pieces of broken ice on a lake in winter, in jagged, unnatural edges. “You think so, dearie?” he breathed. “After everything you’ve done, you’ll dare to stand there and call yourself a better man than me?”

“No,” Killian said. “You’re right about that. I won’t. But I am a different man than you, and that bloody matters.”

“Indeed.” Gold smiled, the expression still strained and sickly. “So you still expect me to think you want to save David Nolan? I don’t think so. You’re lying, deflecting somehow, and when I find out what, dearie, I’ll crush you. Or I’ll just – what, pirate?”

“Nothing.” Killian kept grinning wildly. Only that he had heard something behind them, in the harbor, and when he turned his head just enough to look, it confirmed it. “Just that I know a few things about you, Robert. First is that, as I said, you love power for power’s sake. Second is that, as I also said, you’re a coward. I told you to come to this meeting alone, and I don’t doubt you did – with at least two dozen of your mercenaries waiting back there, to spring out and seize me or otherwise make sure you never actually risked your skin. Or for that matter, kept your word. I counted on it, in fact. So you can console yourself, later, with how very dense I am. How I never struck you as particularly bright. I’m sure you’re right.”

With that, he flung himself flat on the beach, rolling fast, as the night lit up with fire and thunder. The sound was like the Devil Himself rattling the bars of hell, trying to break free and wreak mere anarchy upon the world. Killian did not care, did not care about anything except the second report of guns – one ship fired as the other reloaded, so the broadside could be nearly constant. By the dazzling muzzle flashes, he could see the spectral shapes of the Windsor and the Jolie Rouge, which had been sailed stealthily ashore as far as they could come without going aground, all their lanterns dark and all their hatches shut, so there was no way to spot them before they started shooting. At this close range, the effect of the combined hundred and twenty guns, more than even a first-rater of a hundred and four would carry, was absolutely devastating. The entire beachfront was blowing to pieces, yells and howls from Gold’s men as more of them rushed to provide backup and were devoured by the maelstrom instead. Killian lay flat on his back in the sand for an absolutely eternal moment, stared at the stars in the brief flash he could see them before the heavens blew apart in cannonfire again, and laughed.

He barely remembered consciously getting to his feet, drawing his sword, hailing the boats that were launching, the ragtag remnants of the pirates that Jack, Anne, Madi, and England had been able to salvage from Nassau’s prisons and pits and everywhere else that Rogers had kept them, awaiting their execution at an opportune moment. They stormed ashore as both the Windsor and the Jolie kept firing to cover them, and Killian fought up the beach one more time at their side. He could also see a fair number of men in Navy uniforms with them, who must have come from the Windsor and decided that while the pirates were one sort of threat, Gold and his attempted conquest of the world was quite another. Added to Gold’s imprisonment of their captain under sentence of execution, the choice must have been clear. They were loyal to Nolan the way the Imperator’s men had been loyal to the Jones brothers, and would follow where he led.

Killian discovered that there were tears stinging his eyes as he battled up toward the road with some faceless young man in a blue jacket, until he had to blink them away ferociously. No matter what, no matter how it had come about, it was something he had never expected, to fight alongside a Navy sailor again and feel proud that he was. When they had reached the road and cleared a swath through the gold-starred uniforms rushing to stop them, he turned and realized to his shock that the man was Lieutenant Arthur Geoffrey, from the Halifax. Aye, David had picked up the survivors, they would have been on the Windsor, and Geoffrey had told him that Killian had tried to stop the killing of his men. Whether that mattered, whether any of it did, Killian still did not know, but he could not ever regret that he had.

The young man turned and recognized him in the exact same instant. For a moment, they simply stared at each other, haunted – as Killian had been before – by the similarity in their look and manner, their old position. Then Lieutenant Geoffrey’s throat moved as he swallowed. “Sir.”

“Lieutenant.” Away to the east, over Geoffrey’s shoulder, Killian could see a faint reddish glow. The dawn was breaking, the day coming, the world spinning on through this, toward morning. “As you were, sailor.”

They stood there, looking down at the blasted beach, the world turning from black to grey, the horizon from dark to pale, with the promise of that sunrise yet to come. The Windsor and the Jolie were visible in the harbor as the light stole over the hills, spilled across them. One flew the Union Jack and the other the skull and crossbones on black. One was still in Navy trim, the other scuffed and banged and tarred over. But you could see the same bones beneath them, the same mother. Sisters, aye? It made sense. It felt – no matter what Gold said – true.

A few minutes later, Killian and Geoffrey could see another boatload of men launching from the Windsor, and went back down the beach to meet them, as they jumped overboard and hauled up onto the sand. Among these, looking tired and thin and worse for the wear, captain’s uniform dirty and worn and torn with various delights of Nassau’s dungeons, was another man Killian recognized, and he felt his stomach twist with unexpected hesitation. “Captain Nolan.”

“Captain Jones.” David Nolan regarded him intently. “I’m told I have you to thank for my freedom.”

“I – told them to find you, yes.” Killian glanced away, unable to quite meet his eyes, as they started up the sand. “Where are the others? Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, Madi –?”

“We sent Madi to the Jolie. She should still be there, as far as I know. Edward England took temporary command as captain to oversee the attack, we supposed you wouldn’t mind. But there’s still no time to waste.” Nolan’s face was urgent. “Charles Vane. We couldn’t find him. Rackham and Anne went to continue the search. And as I recall – ”

“Gold said both of you were to be hanged at sunrise this morning.” Killian looked at the sky, now very decidedly past sunrise, heart skipping a beat. “Bloody hell.”

“Aye,” David said, and began to run.

It was a downright mythological effort to make it through the bombarded streets, the fallen men, the rubble of stones and splintered palms and broken pieces. Killian, Geoffrey, David, and a few others kept at it, though, none of them questioning this apparent combined decision by Navy and pirates alike to rescue one of Nassau’s most notorious and dangerous captains – indeed the only one, apart from Killian, that was still there or who might be left at all. They hadn’t seen Gold’s body among the debris, but then, they hadn’t had the chance to look very carefully, and try as he might, Killian could not quite believe he had been killed that easily in the assault. Some of those men had to have made it to him, pulled him out, forced him to play his final trump card, the last remaining threat. The plaza was just ahead, with that gallows that had seen so much traffic recently, and Killian and David sped up, as they skidded around the corner and –

A ring of men in gold-starred jackets guarded the square, standing shoulder to shoulder, muskets and bayonets outstretched in a bristle of steel, as a crowd pressed in. On the gallows, a soot-smeared and insane-looking Gold stood next to a man that Killian recognized at once as Mr. Plouton, the one from whom Liam had bought their freedom from bondage at such a high price, the death of Silver’s father and all his crew. All the connections snatched at Killian like cobwebs and shadows and smoke, but he still did not care. A handcuffed and battered-looking Charles Vane had the noose around his neck, the hooded executioner had his hand on the lever, the roll of drums was sounding, and in a moment – as Killian caught sight of Rackham and Anne racing down the alley from the other side – it would be too late.

In that very moment, a shout he only belatedly recognized as his own cracked the air.

“GOLD!”

Everyone turned to look at him, distracted from the imminent spectacle of Vane’s execution, as Gold bared his teeth in a savage smile. “Ah,” he said. “I was so hoping you could make it. We’ll fit another necklace for you as soon as this one is finished, don’t you fear.”

Killian looked around at the crowd. It was an eclectic bunch, mostly the citizens of Nassau and the stragglers from various crews, some freed prisoners, some survivors of the blast at the fort, several redcoats looking completely unsure whose orders they were supposed to be taking, and the general riffraff of looky-loos attracted to such an event. He glanced up at the window of the governor’s mansion, thought he saw a curtain flutter, wondered if Eleanor was watching, if hers had been the insistence that Vane be put to death rather than bartered back to the pirates for any hope of an agreement. Killian would not be surprised if she was already signing letters with the Star Chamber cipher, if she thought this was her final triumph. But the one thing in common that the crowd had, no matter their provenance, was their silence. They were edgy and anxious and trying to get a better look, but nobody seemed about to up and declare their defiance on the spot. Killian could see Charles Vane’s lip curling as he surveyed the scene, as if he was going to die a wolf before a crowd of sheep, who would then thus be scared enough to do what Gold told them. Who would agree to stop, to go away, if it just meant they did not have to care anymore.

The Star Chamber men shifted again, sensing potential trouble, as Gold and Killian stared each other down. Rackham and Anne seemed to be trying to edge unobtrusively through the crowd while Gold’s attention was distracted, to get to the gallows, but just then, startling all of them, Vane spoke. “Aye,” he said. “Hang me.”

Gold and Plouton looked briefly startled, as they had likely never heard these as last words before, and for a moment, everything stilled. Vane continued to regard the masses with depthless contempt, and a fierce, unyielding, unbroken pride. “Watch,” he rasped. “Watch this, you stupid motherfuckers. Watch me die, and think about what, if they’ll do to me, they’ll do to the likes of you. Cower and toady and suck their cocks if you want. It won’t serve you any differently in the end. Choose the collar you want to wear. I’ll choose this one, if it means you don’t. Fuck you. Fuck all of you. I’d rather die free than live kneeling. Fuck you if you won’t choose the same.”

Killian and Vane stared at each other over the heads of the crowd for a long moment as Vane smiled faintly. It’s Killian Jones the slave I’d put my faith in. Or am I wrong? The one thing they had always shared, despite their other differences – and yet, the deep-grained similarity that ran in them both, the wildness in its degrees, not terribly unlike after all. Killian had been about to rush the gallows and cut Vane down, but at that, crucially, he hesitated.

Gold and Plouton glanced at each other, as if aware that to take Vane up on his offer might be slightly more subversive than they had planned for, but equally aware that to back down would be just as ruinous. The silence held the entire square in thrall, as looks were exchanged and voices whispered, a current like leaves rustling in a gathering breeze. Rackham took a step, and Vane looked directly at him and shook his head. And then, as Gold – who had not noticed this – did the same to the executioner – the lever was pulled, the trapdoor dropped, and the crack as Charles Vane’s neck broke before everyone’s eyes was very much like a bolt from heaven. His legs jerked into the dead man’s jig for a few involuntary convulsions, then ceased.

For a few beats more, the communal stupefaction was unmovable, unbreakable, impossible. Then there was one furious hiss, and then another. A step was taken by the crowd, all together as if animated by one great ken, one beast with a hundred snapping heads, two hundred, more. The Star Chamber men lowered their muskets, preparing to blast sweet Jesus out of anyone who took another, but that did not stop them. Killian was shoulder to shoulder with David Nolan on one side and some unwashed lowlife on the other, as he could just catch sight of Rackham and Anne, pale and stunned and absolutely, transcendently furious. The standoff held for a split second more, but only that. Then someone yelled, “VENGEANCE!” and it broke.

The crowd charged the gallows as one, bashing and hacking and using whatever improvised weapon came remotely to hand, Vane’s body still dangling in its irons. The breeze from before had become a full-fledged gale, sweeping across the plaza like a force of nature, as everything burst apart at the seams. It did not matter what colors a man wore, or none. They rose.

Gold began to look alarmed. Coward. Began to stare around for the soldiers he must have paid to protect him, why they had not yet rushed in to swoop him away. Coward. It was David Nolan that Killian fought next to this time, as the hammer of muskets firing echoed over their heads as they ended up back to back, swords out, fighting their way to the gallows. Coward. Gold was actively trying to run now, but did not dare leap off the platform to all the hands that clutched and clawed furiously for him. As Killian and David battled up the stairs together, Gold yelled at the nearby redcoats, “I’m the governor! The governor! Protect me, you – ”

“Sorry.” David swung back the blunt pommel of his sword, and struck Gold an almighty blow over the head with it. “You’ve just been sacked.”

Killian went for Plouton, who had made it farther, but not much. The entire plaza, and the streets, had degenerated into no-holds-barred madness, and Killian was absolutely sure he saw more than one redcoat shooting the Star Chamber men instead of the pirates. Then as some of them were trying to get away, either to enact a tactical withdrawal or get a better shooting vantage, there was a second uproar from the outskirts. The next instant, Killian saw a phalanx of slaves armed with pitchforks and threshing knives and scythes and sugarcane machetes run past him, yelling various war cries at the top of their lungs in half a dozen African tongues – but among it, he could make out a name. Indeed, two. Felt it strike through him like a blow.

“BLACK SAM!”

“WHYDAH! WHYDAH! WHYDAH!”

Killian looked to see, as he knew he would find, Lancelot waving in another surge of slaves – no, free men, there were only free men here. Him and Vane and all the other former slaves, all of them, dead or living, past or present, who had broken their chains and risen. He was so proud that he thought his heart would break, and it ached as if it already had. God, Sam. God, I wish you could see this. God, I wish you were here.

And then – it might only have been his imagination, some fevered dream in the heat of battle, as men died, as men lived, as the sun blazed down, as it was only brightness – but Killian did not care. Heard a familiar voice whisper back to him with a smile that could be heard, I see it. I see you. I’m here. I never left you. I never will.

-------------------

The calm after the storm was almost unsettling.

It was over. It was finished. It was done. Gold and Plouton had been captured, the Star Chamber men killed, the English ships destroyed apart from the Windsor, the redcoats and the Navy sailors either deserting their orders or actively following David to help the pirates. Eleanor had also been taken prisoner, the doors of the governor’s mansion smashed down and the place ransacked, all of Rogers’ requisitions and orders and papers piled in the square and burned in a great bonfire. The victory was too blood-soaked to be truly joyous, everyone as close to tears as to laughter, and Killian found he could not endure it. He took a bottle of rum, climbed up to a small promontory overlooking Nassau, and gazed out to the west, to the lengthening sun, and sat down, legs too shaky to hold him up. They’d done it. They had, objectively speaking, won. But there was absolutely no way to understand or predict what the future held from here, the world changed, the stars fallen. It remained a dark mirror, inscrutable and opaque.

He drank steadily. The sunset blurred through the tears in his eyes. Then to his surprise, he heard footsteps crunching up the verge, and tensed, reaching for his sword just in case – it would be a long time, if ever, until the instinct to fight was not the first one that came to him. But it was David Nolan, jacket off, cravat untied, carrying his own bottle of rum. Upon seeing Killian, he stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll find my own spot.”

“No. I could. . . stand the company, mate.” Killian took an unsteady swig, wiped his mouth with his tattered sleeve. “I. . .”

David paused, then nodded, sitting down next to him. The sun slipped away over the western sky, bringing soft purple twilight whispering in its wake. For the longest time, both of them remained silent. Then David said, most unexpectedly, “My father-in-law is dead.”

“What?” That roused Killian from his reverie. “I – I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” David’s eyes flickered sidelong to him. “I told your brother, in Boston, but I don’t remember if I told you. My wife, Mary Margaret, is Leopold and Eva White’s daughter. Leopold White being a wealthy merchant in Charlestown, and the man who – ”

“Emma was a maidservant in his house, aye.” Killian’s throat went slightly dry. As he was well aware what had happened to Charlestown recently, he was unpleasantly obliged to ask. “Flint and Vane, did they – ?”

“No.” David shrugged. “It was before. Illness. In any event, as my wife was his only child, all his wealth, holdings, and merchant business has passed to her. I assisted Liam in Boston partly because Mary Margaret was never at ease with the way her parents treated Emma, banishing her from their house when they learned she was pregnant. But now that we are the controlling interest in one of the Carolinas’ largest shipping concerns, you will of course understand if I inquire about your plans to return to piracy.”

“I have none. You may trust me on that.” Killian continued to stare out to sea. “I’m not sure anyone else does either. Bellamy, Vane, Flint, Blackbeard – all the powerful captains, half of them are dead, at least. Possibly all of them. The pirates’ republic is finished. Nassau as it was is over. I suppose civilization won in the end after all.”

“Perhaps,” David said. “But you see, that was not quite the reason for my interest. Leopold’s will also left us with a good deal of investable assets, and I think I see a way for Nassau to exist again. Differently, aye, but we all change. If Mary Margaret and I were to purchase its business and enterprise, to fund its rebuilding and reorganization, I think that would be sufficient to stop the English from continuing to treat it as an outlaw territory. They also owe you a debt, whether or not they will admit it, for stopping Gold and taking down his monstrous society, his destruction of their power from within. Nassau could thrive again. It’s possible.”

“So you – ” Killian blinked. “You and your wife would become the financiers for the island, let us trade and live as free men? I doubt you’d stand for your profits to be gotten by piracy.”

“As you said,” David pointed out, “the pirates are gone. The men who remain want what all men want. To make a good living, to be treated fairly, to provide for their families, and to hold their heads high and to know they have been heard. On the ships and captains that I would employ, they would find those things. Your brother always inspired me to be the sort of captain that I was. I do not intend for that example, in either case, to go to waste.”

Killian was briefly at a loss for words, stunned and touched and more than a little heartbroken. Wanted Liam to see this, as much as he had wanted it for Sam. “Aye,” he admitted at last. “If that was truly what you were offering, you’d have plenty of takers.”

“I hope so.” David took another sip of his rum. “So there you have it. I’d appoint someone to remain on the island and manage our interests, of course. Do you know anyone suitable?”

“I can give you a suggestion.” Killian sipped his own rum. “One, actually. A woman named Max. I think you’ll find she’s more than competent for the position.”

If David was startled by this recommendation, he gave no sign, only nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll take it under advisement,” he said. “As well, Gold and Plouton will be sent to English jails for trial and imprisonment, and there will be some sort of money from the English crown in gratitude for the service. I think it is only right that it should go to you.”

“I don’t want their money, mate.” Killian shook his head. “I don’t want anything else from them. I just want Emma to bloody come back, and for us to settle down somewhere, at last. I don’t think it will be Nassau. There are too many scars here for both of us.”

David paused, then nodded. “If there’s anything that Mary Margaret and I can do to make that easier for you, I hope you’ll ask. You saved my life. Your brother is why I am the man I am. Emma was done wrongly by our family in the past. We owe it to you. I hope you can let us start to make that up.”

Killian had been about to refuse again, but stopped. Looked at him for a long moment. The moon was beginning to rise over the water, huge and lucent as a fat pearl, and the wind smelled of battle and broken things and smoke and char and death, all the ghosts that would never be chased away now or in years, but who might, one day, be persuaded to lie down and take their ease. Then he raised his rum bottle, as David did the same. They clicked them together, and in the quiet of the night, they drank.

-------------------

The Rose returned to Nassau the next morning.

From the harbor, Emma could see the scale of the damage, the bombarded ships, the blasted fort, the seeming impossibility that anything, anywhere, could be as it had been before, that anyone had survived. It seemed almost quiet, warm, lazy, a day in deep summer where the world was at rest. No flag flew, no one was fighting. She still had Woodes Rogers prisoner, and meant to ransom him at some point, but she was uncertain as to who. Not that it mattered. It was not her main concern, or even registered beyond a vague sense of obligation. There was only one thing and one person that she cared about right now, and everything else dwindled to nothing before it.

She, Silver, Merida, and a few of the men launched the Rose’s boat, rowing ashore with pounding hearts, not knowing if they were walking into a trap or an abattoir. They had seen the Windsor and the Jolie at anchor, but the ships themselves meant nothing. The beach itself was littered with ruins and bodies, flotsam and jetsam, and Emma’s heart turned over. She and Silver climbed the sand as fast as they could, Merida behind them, a pale and silent wraith of herself, but still there, still trying, somehow, to carry on. “Killian?” Emma shouted. “Killian?”

“Madi!” Silver looked as if he had not meant to, but could not hold it back. “Madi!”

For a moment, for one final moment, for what felt like forever: nothing.

And then, two figures appeared out of the sunlit glow, just as tired and scarred and sunburned as them – and then, as they laid eyes on them, just as stunned. Until the world held its very breath, and nothing moved – and then rushed onwards again, and broke.

Killian broke into a full-tilt sprint down the sand, as Madi followed somewhat more tentatively – but as she reached Silver, as they stretched out their hands and caught each other’s fingers, a smile broke across her face to dazzle the world. For his part, he looked like a man in a dream, knowing he did not at all deserve the woman before him but realizing all at once how desperately he wanted to try. That, however, was all that Emma had time to notice before she was in Killian’s arms, and his mouth was on hers, and they were whirling around and around, and she did not care about anything but the stars.

They staggered backwards into the shallows of the glittering blue water, wrapped into each other, kissing again and then again and again, faces pressed together, mouths starving, tears flowing freely. Killian put her down, but only to kiss her again, and Emma pulled him to his knees as the wavelets broke over their shoulders, as they bobbed in the outgoing tide, as the sun blazed down. As they did not let go of each other, and did not think they would again, and in the wind, among the ash and smoke and rot of the old world, there came at last, like the stolen notes of a half-heard melody, the first and fragile, broken, beautiful whisper of the new.

#captain swan #cs ff #cs au #the dark horizon #black sails #second part of the two part finale #epilogue shortly #ack oh my god it's done #what #wow #ahhhh

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