Elodie had only been to the Captain’s quarters every-so-often, and not for long. Only to deliver the most important missives—and so she would often do so through the wooden door or at the doorway. She’d never truly been inside, and gotten a chance to look about like this.

As was befitting of a captain in the Albionese navy, the quarters were rather lush, with a large bed, and bookshelves filled with well-cared for tomes that could easily be new, if Elodie weren’t certain that Captain Jennings had not been buying books recently. 

The desk, however,  that was the centerpiece of the room. A mammoth of red-oak from Oyeshima, it was covered in maps and letters. Captain Jennings sat at her large armchair, her elbows on the table and fingers steepled as she looked up at the five young privateers. 

She let out a large sigh. “Do any of you care to start talking about what exactly just happened back there? Or do I need to start asking questions.”

“That won’t be necessary, ma’am.” Kas removed his hat and stepped forward. “While we were out in New Aubrais, a group of Manoans came up to us and started harassing Carina.”

“I told them to run.” Carina toyed with her pendant with shaking hands, her eyes askance. “I tried to run too—but they caught up with me faster than I expected.”

“So of course, we had to rescue her,” Kas continued, glancing in Elodie’s direction. “We were able to track down the clues and we ended up at the mansion where the Manoans were gathering with their so-called king.”

Carina glared at him. “For all intents and purposes, he is a king. Dismissing him will be yours and the Empire of Albion’s undoing.”

She looked away, and her long fingers brushed past the painted silk hair-pin pulling back her hair. It was reminiscent of the flowers that grew on the Windward Island. 

“Then again, my brother will be the entire Sea of Gales’ undoing if he isn’t stopped.”

“So you rescued Carina, that explains the Manoans charging at us I suppose.” Captain Jennings nodded, steering the conversation back on track. “And Molly did warn us that the Foxtrot had been spotted around New Aubrais—I just hadn’t expected them to stay so long in-wait for us.”

She paused, contemplating the five of them. “So that takes me to my final question for now—Carina, what was it that you did, that managed to completely blow a ship to smithereens like that?”

Carina shifted and fidgeted, visibly uncomfortable. She clasped her crystal again, covering it with her hand. But between her fingers, the sea-like light shined through. 

“I suppose that’s part of a greater story, Captain Jennings.” She inhaled sharply. Then she squared her shoulders back and lifted her chin. “And my purpose for running away from home.”

“I see.” Captain Jennings laid her steepled fingers on their sides, and glanced down at her desk. “And now is the time to tell it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Carina nodded. “I want to tell it now to you—all of you,” she added hastily as she looked at Elodie and the rest. “I wasn’t truly sure if I could trust you before now. But you came back for me, when you could have easily left me in my brother’s hands.”

“I couldn’t leave you there,” Elodie found herself saying. “I know what it’s like, to be scared, to be taken away—and I couldn’t leave you like that.”

Carina smiled faintly—a ghost of a thing that disappeared as soon as she looked back to face Captain Jennings. “Right then. . . I should start at the beginning—“

“A very good place to start, I’ve been told.” Captain Jennings examined her fingernails. 

“Right.” Carina nodded and closed her eyes. “I wasn’t raised a princess, you know. I suppose I am one, if my brother is the king now, and our shared father was before him. But I didn’t really know either of them, growing up.”

She opened her eyes, and looked down to one of the maps left on the desk. Her fingers immediately found the Windward Islands. “My mother was one of the chiefs’ daughters, those who form the Federation of the Voyagers. Your people might call her a princess, but that isn’t our way, to pass responsibility in the blood.”

She looked back up to Captain Jennings. “My mother wasn’t the main wife of the last man who called himself King of Manoa.”

Distaste, a bitterness, entered her voice. “She was a concubine, a lesser wife to a ‘proper’ woman who was Manoan nobility, the mother of my older brother and my father’s heir.”

Her free hand curled into a fist. “My father quickly forgot about her the way he did the others who were like her, not Manoan, not special. Like they were some plaything, some vessel for his legacy, never mind that they were their own legacies.”

There was a fire in her eyes now. “My mother was a talented sailor, a navigator and a warrior who taught me the ways of a spear, how to craft an oar, how to live off the oceans and islands that are our birthright. And beyond the requisite gold that the man who called himself my father sent to our tribe every month for my upbringing, we didn’t care about him and I didn’t want to know about him.”

She then sighed, closing her eyes again and letting her fist unfurl. “We had enough to deal with, with the Empire of Albion taking our homeland. But it was exactly two weeks ago, the night before you found me, that my brother arrived with a gift and a proposition.” 

Her fingers trailed along the map, finding a space of open ocean before she nodded and tapped it. “He told me how the elders or something like that, his advisors had been part of some plan since Manoa fell, to one day reclaim their empire. And they decided that now, with my brother as their newly-crowned king, my father not even dead for a month, that they would bring it all back, starting with our capitol, Limuria.”

“That’s not possible, it sank into the sea centuries ago.” Captain Jennings’ voice was kindly, but firm. 

Carina shook her head. “I might have thought that, too, but you don’t understand the power our people developed.”

She lifted up the crystal. “This is just one of the keys to our lost city, and to the weapon that my father’s dynasty used to subjugate the Sea of Gales. And you saw just a small fraction of what it’s capable of.”

“The blue canon-fire,” Elodie murmured, recalling the unearthly and horrid sight.

Carina looked to her and nodded. “You understand.”

She then turned back to Captain Jennings, her expression more fierce. “My brother gave me this key, hoping I would rule by his side, his last remaining family—I guess none of the other concubines ever produced a child.”

Her eyes flashed, her lips quirking up in triumph. “I would not let another empire rise to subjugate my mother’s people. To conquer the islands of this Sea. So I left, I ran away—right into your ship and crew.”

Captain Jennings frowned and folded her arms over her chest as she leaned back. “Let me get this right, then. You are Manoan royalty, a princess in possession of an important artifact that will unlock a city of lost treasure and unforetold power thought to be left to only the men who tell tales. Your brother is the King of the Manoan people, leading them to look for the remaining keys, and he’s hunting you because you have the key.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Carina clasped her hands behind her back. 

“Well, isn’t that quite the conundrum?” Captain Jennings looked to Elodie. “But I suspect you may have been quite fortunate, to end up on our ship in particular.”

She then quirked her eyebrow—an unspoken question to Elodie alone.

That was when the realization of it all hit her. 

“The treasure my father found—you think it has to do with Limuria?” 

“The very same, I’d hazard a guess.” Captain Jennings nodded. 

“Because of the curse my father suspected was on it, or something that couldn’t be seen.” It was all coming into place. Elodie turned to Carina. “Then you and I—we’re after the same thing.”

Carina’s expression was stoic—mostly. She could not guard her eyes, turned vulnerable and pleading. “Are we?”

“We are.” Elodie strode over to her and clasped her hands into hers. “We’re both looking for that treasure, but not for the treasure itself—my mother went to look for it to keep it out of the hands of the Pirate King of the Black-Sail Fleet, and you want to keep it out of your brother’s hands.”

It visibly dawned in Carina’s eyes, and a smile crept up her face. “You’re right, then. I suppose we are the same.”

Elodie looked to Captain Jennings. “I suppose this doesn’t really change anything, does it?”

Captain Jennings squinted, her expression otherwise unchanging. “I suppose not.”

She looked away then, out the window at the twilight. “And yet, it seems everything had changed.”