Steel

Captain Cooper didn’t take Jill’s stolen rapier from her, and Jill wondered if she really seemed so harmless that she could walk around armed and no one cared. Or if everybody knew that even with a rapier, Jill was alone here and couldn’t do anything to hurt them. She had no power. Still, she clung to the weapon like it was a life preserver and felt some small security by having it.

Rapier in hand, Jill wasn’t as frightened as she might have been, alone with the captain. But having the rapier didn’t mean anything—Jill was too exhausted now to use it. While she was pretty sure she could kick, scratch, and fight if she was in danger—for a little while, at least—beyond that, she was pretty much screwed, just like she thought at first.

The captain had a small room in the back of the ship, below the main deck. At least, it seemed small to Jill, but it must have been the largest quarters aboard. The simple wood-paneled room had a table with a bench in the middle, cupboards on two sides, and a narrow bed in the back. A small glass lantern hung from the central beam, giving only enough light to make out the corners on the furniture. They both had to duck when standing inside, the ceiling was so low.

Captain Cooper offered Jill a tin cup of water. It tasted stale, but it cleared the salt from her mouth and soothed the burning in her throat. Then Cooper kicked the bench, scooting it out from the table, indicating that Jill should sit.

Jill turned gratefully to the seat—her legs were trembling. But the captain stopped her. “Wait. There. What’s that in your pocket?”

The outline of the piece of rusted rapier was stark through her wet clothes. Startled, Jill set down the cup and pulled out the broken blade. All she’d been through, and it hadn’t fallen out. And still, her hand tingled when she held it. Like it was trying to tell her something, in a voice that sounded like breaking waves.

Captain Cooper held her hand out. Jill wasn’t sure she wanted to give her the shard. Then again, Cooper could just take it. Reluctantly, she offered it to Captain Cooper.

Frowning, Cooper held it up to the flickering light, turning it, front and back. With a handkerchief she pulled from the front of her vest, she scrubbed at it for a moment. Rust flaked away in a fine red powder.

The captain’s face grew drawn, lips pressing into a tight frown. If Jill didn’t think it was impossible, she would have thought the woman sounded nervous. “Tell me true now—were you on the Newark when Blane sank it, or were you on the Heart’s Revenge?”

“Neither,” she said. “I was on a tour boat, I fell over by accident—”

“And where did you get this?”

“I found it on the beach. I was just walking and saw it in the sand.”

“Found it—just lying there, you say? Then how did you end up in the water? We shouldn’t have found anyone, picking through Blane’s trash. Blane doesn’t give quarter.”

“I don’t know,” she said weakly. “I don’t know how I ended up there. I don’t know who Blane is.”

“Then you don’t know where this came from? Who it came from?”

“No.” Jill pursed her lips and grit her teeth to keep from crying. Tried to stand straight until she realized her legs really were about to give out—they felt like rubber. She sat on the bench. “It probably washed ashore—how could I know where it came from? It’s old, hundreds of years old.”

“Hundreds of years—” The captain sounded startled. “And where do you come from?”

“The Bahamas. I’m on vacation. We were in a boat, I fell off—”

“You must be addled.” The woman was pacing now, just a few steps back and forth across the cabin, and she wouldn’t look at Jill.

“I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t know how I got here,” Jill said.

Cooper held up the blade—just a broken scrap of metal. “You’re connected to him somehow. Through this.”

“How do you even know what it is, how can you recognize it?”

“I’m the one who broke it. It should have been lost forever, and now it’s back. Because of you.” She pointed the rusted scrap at Jill, who leaned away from it, her heart pounding. Which of them was crazy here?

“But how—”

Cooper shook her head. “No. No more. You aren’t making sense. Maybe you will after you’ve had some rest.”

“But my family, the tour boat couldn’t have gone too far, I wasn’t in the water that long—”

“Lass, there’s no other boat around for leagues. You lost your family, and you’re lucky to be alive.”

“Then take me back to the island, they’re probably waiting for me—”

Captain Cooper turned on her. “There’s naught but cutthroats and bloody pirates on that island. An’t no one’s family there, and if yours is then they’re fools and’ll soon be dead, like as not. You’ll stay here, where I can keep an eye on you.”

That shut Jill up. It also made her mind stumble. The Bahamas, an island of pirates? All those stories come to life? Maybe she’d fallen a long ways off her family’s tour boat.