Steel

“Honestly, it was kind of a blur,” Jill said.

“Probably for the best. Where’s my crew? Who’s on watch?” Cooper whistled, and a figure appeared at the gunwales. A moment later a line came over the side, and the boat was secured to the Diana.

They waited for the rest of the crew to return, another long, dragging hour. Jill understood the captain’s worry. Logically, Blane was on the other side of the island and couldn’t reach them. Nonetheless, Jill expected to see the Heart’s Revenge blazing into the harbor at any moment, all its cannons firing.

It didn’t happen.

Back on board, Jill followed Captain Cooper and Abe to her cabin, where the two of them started pulling charts from a drawer. The group of them gathered over the table, a conspiracy bent under the light of a single lantern: Captain Cooper and Abe, looking grim and serious; Jill and Henry, who hadn’t left Jill’s side since they found her running through the forest away from Blane.

“We make for the Turks and Caicos, then on to the Lesser Antilles,” Marjory said, pointing, before Jill had even oriented herself. The maps were rough, the lines jagged, the labels scrawled in indecipherable handwriting. The paper itself was stained and wrinkled; these maps had seen better days. “We lose ourselves. Stay far away from where Blane expects to find us. We’ve got to keep this away from him. Let’s see it, then.” Cooper gestured at the broken sword Jill still held close.

The captain could have overpowered Jill, simply taken it, and left her behind to whatever fate. But she didn’t. Jill had kept the sword tucked away and safe during the escape from Nassau. Now she brought it into the faint, flickering light.

The swept hilt was simple and elegant, smooth steel bars looping to form a cage around the hand that gripped it. Quillons stuck out, perpendicular to the wire-wrapped grip. The blade was broad and strong, sharpened until light seemed to spark off the edge. It was fierce and perfect, until the end, which was a jagged, toothy stump.

Cooper reached into a pouch at her belt and drew out the six-inch scrap of rapier Jill had found on that long-ago beach, roughly cleaned, the edges dull. The length of steel trembled, pulling against her fingers, drawn toward the sword as it had been all along. The captain kept a firm hold on it as she brought it to the sword and lined them together.

The ragged edges matched. Cooper fit them together, and not a sliver of steel was missing between them. The scrollwork design that the rusted piece hinted at continued, shining, on the main blade. The sword, though, remained broken. The pieces matched, but didn’t fuse. The magic didn’t go that far.

The captain looked at Jill. “Many years ago, Edmund Blane betrayed me. We fought. I broke his sword and threw the piece overboard. I thought it was lost forever. Then you came along. Now I know that wasn’t the end of it and my job isn’t done yet.”

“How did he betray you?” Jill asked.

“He told me he loved me.” Captain Cooper ducked her gaze for a moment, and a wry smile played on her lips. “Ah, but that was just the start of it. It’s a very dark story, against all nature and reason. A difficult story to tell.”

The room was silent; even the groaning of lines and the wooden hull seemed muted. The others listened—maybe they’d never heard the story, either.

Marjory Cooper gathered herself to tell it. “There are places in these islands where folk practice dark magic—black magic and blood sacrifice. Blane twisted that magic. He told me he loved me, see, and we had a child together. A little girl. Wee Jenny.”

Jill’s breath caught. Abe sighed. “Captain, he—”

“Oh yes, Abe, he did,” Cooper said. “He made himself a sword and quenched it in her blood. All for the power it brought him, no matter how dark.” Her voice had turned soft, and her look numb. No feeling entered her telling of the tale. And how could it? How could she let herself feel it without going mad?

Then she straightened, smiled sadly, and was human for a moment. She nodded at Jill. “She’d be just about your age now, if she had lived. However you found it I think that shard of rapier called to you. Somehow, the blood on it called to you, and called to Blane. Somehow, because of who you are—who you might have been, who my little girl might have been—you’re bound to that sword.”

Jill looked at everything that had happened these past weeks through new eyes, which stung with the tragedy of it. Cooper had become a different person. She studied the sword in her hand, and now saw all that it symbolized. A whole history of betrayal. It was more than cursed. Turning it in the light, Jill could almost see a sheen of red on the blade, tinting the steel. How had she ever thought this sword could help her? How could any of it be possible?

Her voice cracking, Jill said, “I’m not your daughter, Captain.”

“I know, love. But I can dream that she’d have been like you, can’t I?”

Abe took up the story: “Blane is building a fleet—he would have every pirate captain under his sway. He would have them all swear allegiance to him by this cursed sword, and then they would be bound to him, and he would be a pirate emperor. The captain broke the sword rather than let that happen.”

“He speaks of a pirate alliance—but wants a pirate empire, and he’ll cut down all who oppose him,” Cooper said.

“And what will you do with the sword?” Jill asked.

“Part of me thinks I could use it to build a fleet to oppose Blane. But I could never use this power, knowing where it came from. How Blane does it—” She ended, shaking her head.

“But pirates aren’t meant to sail in fleets, are they?” Jill asked.

“Some of them have, like Captains Avery and Morgan,” Abe said. “But such alliances never last long. They’re alliances, not armies. A pirate ought only be bound by the articles he signs and the vote of the ship.”

“Except for Blane, who hasn’t any honor at all,” Cooper said.

“Blane thinks he can bind pirate honor up in an object, in a thing, like that sword,” Abe said.

/> “We should get rid of the damned thing,” Henry said. “Throw it into the sea, if it would really give him that power.”