So began Elodie’s life aboard the Albatross. When she’d heard that she would be doing work and chores for Captain Jennings, she had assumed that it would typical women’s work, cleaning and cooking and laundry. She knew that the Captain did not want her doing the particularly hard work, to keep her out of harm’s way. But she hadn’t expected the Captain’s true request. 

“You’ll be running messages, we’ve been needing more of that sort around here,” Captain Jennings declared when Elodie reported to her the next morning. “You’ll be checking in around places, checking for any messages that need to be delivered or reported back to me, perhaps even carrying any smaller packages.”

Elodie of course had been happy to do so. It only made sense to contribute—and it was quite similar to the work of running the house on Brighton Row back in Port Augustine. When she’d mentioned the thought to Kas, upon delivering a letter to him from the Captain, he informed her that this was likely on purpose. 

“Cleaning and the rest, that’s hard labour too,” he pointed out. He took Elodie’s hand, ensared it before she realized what was going on. “It leaves marks, callouses and the like that don’t go away so easily. You’ll want soft hands for the marriage mart, when we find your mother and everything goes back to how it was.”

There was some kind of bitterness under that, punctuated by how his calloused fingers brushed against her soft, pale ones. In particular, Elodie noticed that the hardest callouses were on his index finger—the one that would pull the trigger of a revolver. 

He met her eyes, and she wasn’t quite sure what was whirling behind the colorful hazel. “The marriage mart is brutal, especially for girls like yourself.”

“Girls of questionable repute?” Elodie laughed. “You sound just like my mother.”

“Your mother knew what she was talking about.” He was uncharacteristically somber, and he looked down to their joined hands. “It’s a good thing that the Captain’s protecting your chances. You shouldn’t take that for granted.”

With that, he walked away, as much a mystery as he ever was.

Still, he was good company, just as Ventus and Jade were. She found herself seeking them all out from time to time on the high seas, albeit for different reasons. She went to Jade when she missed the jovial camradaerie of girlhood, to laugh with another girl her age and talk about anything and everything.

To Kas, she went when she wanted to forget, to get caught up in the spell only a storyteller could cast. And he was always delighted to entertain, to bewitch—that is, until one of his strange moods overtook him, and he would leave. 

To Ventus, she went for the comfort of the quiet, and the trust that someone always had her back. What they had escaped together and the night of traveling alongside the narwhals had forged them together closer than chains made by the finest blacksmith in Port Augustine, or indeed all of Leonida. 

Life at sea became routine. So routine, and so isolated from what once was, that sometimes Elodie found herself forgetting why she was out here. But she was always quick to remember, when she looked around at the endless blue and felt the joy arc in her heart like the flight of the gulls and would wonder if this was what her mother missed, if this was why she drank so often. 

For all that her time on the high seas had felt as infinite as the endless sea and sky all around her, it had been only two weeks from when she’d been taken from Port Augustine to when the Albatross reached their target—the Windward Isles.

“They’re ours, or at least, that’s what the King would prefer.” Kas pulled his spyglass away from his eye and handed it to Elodie. “As for what they think, well—“

“They think the king’s as much of a bastard as Libertalia does!” Jade clapped Elodie on the shoulder, and she had to move quickly to catch the spyglass before she accidentally dropped it on the deck. Her expression turned more contemplative as she took in the smaller archipelago of islands, some floating above the waterline and connected to the water-bound ones via wooden bridges. “They’d rather be free of us, I suppose.”

It was an interesting contradiction about their lifestyle, Elodie found. Kas and Jade and Captain Jennings didn’t seem to hold all that much love for the King of Albion. But they were under his service, were a part of his navy as privateers. 

“So why were we coming here again?” Ventus was the one to broach the silence from where he perched on the siding behind the rest of them. 

It was funny, how over the course of the past two weeks, the four of them had found themselves drifting to each other. It was only natural, Elodie supposed. Nearly everyone else aboard was closer to Captain jennings’ age—a much older, more experienced sailor. To the other privateers, the four of them were just children, never mind that they were of-age. 

“We’ve got a lead on Elodie’s mum.” Jade leaned against Elodie and smiled reassuringly. “An old friend, one who sailed with Captain Vance a few times. Wasn’t part of the crew when—well, you know that part—but he knew your old man, and he might know a bit about the treasure that your mum’s after.”

Elodie said nothing, instead pressing her lips together as she lifted the spyglass to get a better view. 

The islands were lush, with several peaks overflowing with the most vibrant green she’d ever seen. At the tops of those peaks, smoke blended into the clouds—evident of the fire sleeping within the islands’ heart.

“The islands are beautiful, it really is too bad that we won’t be staying long,” Kas drawled, lifting a hand with a fingerless glove covering it to his chin. “I wouldn’t mind retiring in one of the King’s colonies here. Would be close to paradise, I think.”

“As if you could give up the seas and skies,” Jade laughed, hitting him in the arm. 

To this, Kas only rolled his eyes. 

Elodie lowered the spyglass and handed it back to Kas. “Thank you.”

“For my lady? Anytime.” He even bowed, more of a mockery than the real thing. 

It was Elodie’s turn to roll her eyes, punctuated with a heavy sigh. 

The light fall of boots to the deck alerted her to turn around and see that Ventus had leapt down from his perch. 

“Are you guys just going to keep standing around and yapping, or are you going to get ready to disembark?”

“He has a point.” Kas sighed, and placed the spyglass in the internal pocket of his sleeveless emerald-green jacket. He then clapped a hand on Ventus’s shoulder. “We should go prepare, thank you for reminding me, friend.”

“Uh, you’re welcome.” His ocean-eyes widened, but he didn’t shy away from the contact or dismiss the endearment. 

“And I should report to my mother.” Jade stood up straight, but lingered around Elodie. “Chin up, we’ll find answers soon.”

All Elodie could do was smile and nod as she was left with the horizon and her own thoughts. 

She would be meeting with one of her father’s old comrades. Someone who knew her mother, her father, and Captain Jennings, and had survived the whole thing. Beyond just the premise of having another clue to where her mother had gone, it was tantalizing. What kind of stories could this man tell her about her mother in her prime, about the father she never knew?

It occurred to her then that maybe she should have been asking Captain Jennings about these things. Then again, it wasn’t like she saw the Captain all that often since her first few days aboard the Albatross. And those times had been strictly business, with the receiving and delivering of messages, as was her new job. 

The Captain was usually quite curt with her too. Sometimes she might ask a few questions, as to how Elodie was adjusting to sea-life and such—but then her dark eyes would grow sad and the woman would dismiss her.

Maybe that was because of how Elodie looked like her mother, when she was younger. Maybe it was because she was a reminder of the friendship that they had once shared, only to be cruelly ripped apart by the Albionese navy. Maybe it was because she was the evidence of what had driven them apart. 

She also recalled that Captain Jennings had mentioned in the upstairs room of the One-Winged Parrot that Keira had seen her briefly, when she’d first left Port Augustine but before she’d disappeared from the Sea of Gales entirely. When she had met her old friend, she’d only done so to intercede on Elodie’s behalf—but not to catch up with or reconnect with said old friend. 

Her mother would speak with such fondness of Captain Jennings—but there was bitterness in it too. They had both made deals with their own devils—a gilded cage or a chain—all to escape the gallows that claimed Elodie’s father and the rest. Perhaps the difference between those devils were still too great, after all this time, to be overcome. 

Elodie released a sigh she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She supposed none of it mattered now, anyway. The past was past, and whatever the two women had shared, for how they both lingered on it, was destroyed. 

She had to focus on the problem incoming—the business of her father’s greatest treasure and the bounty on her head by the Black-Sail Fleet. The answer to it all lay with her mother.

Elodie wondered what she would have to say to her, when they finally found her again.