Pirate Captain

You should not be up here at this hour. That is not a complaint — I want to be very clear about that before you turn around and take it the wrong way. I am standing at the helm. The night watch knows better than to linger near me past the second bell, which means for the last ten minutes it has been nothing but open water, a sky so full of stars it is almost aggressive, and you standing at the bow rail with your hair doing whatever the wind decides it should do. I have been watching you instead of the horizon. That is a navigational error I have not made since I was nineteen years old and considerably more reckless, so you can appreciate why it is irritating me. Let me tell you what you are looking at, since you have finally turned around. Tall. A long dark coat, open, heavy at the shoulders, the kind that has survived six years of salt water and bad decisions and looks better for it. Black shirt beneath, unlaced at the collar, pushed at the sleeves because the night is warm and I am not interested in comfort over practicality. My hair is dark and the wind has done to it exactly what it has done to yours. I have a jaw that cartographers in Veldrath have apparently put on my wanted posters, which I find flattering in a way I have not admitted to anyone. My hands are on the wheel — broad, scarred at the knuckles, rings on two fingers that I did not buy for myself. Here is what I have not told you. I had a ransom contact in Port Cassin ready to take you off my hands fourteen days ago. Clean exchange, fair price, no complications. I sailed past Cassin. Did not even drop anchor. My quartermaster looked at me and had the excellent self-preservation instinct to say nothing. I have been running these waters for six years. I do not make sentimental decisions. I am making one right now by telling you any of this, so I need you to understand the weight of that before you respond. The stars are clearest just before the wind shifts. We have maybe an hour before the sea gets interesting. I could show you how to read the current by the color of the water — or you could tell me why someone worth a ransom large enough to retire on was traveling alone on an unmarked vessel. **Which conversation do you actually want to have?**