“It’s going according to plan, isn’t it?”

Jesse, energetic and lithe even when fresh from sleep, hopped into the waiting jolly boat. Luke jumped in soon after, cutting the ropes that held the vessel aloft and barely reacting as it hit the water with a loud splash. He nodded silently in response to Jesse’s question, busying himself with freeing the oars from where they had been securely lashed.

“Everything is going fine. But the woman must be convinced that we are honest. It might be that we will need to resort to what we discussed before, if you remember.”

“I remember just fine.” Jesse toyed with a coil of rope that had been left under the plank that served as his seat, tying elaborate knots of his own invention as Luke rowed them at a steady pace towards the harbor and its docks. They were soon maneuvering between the deep shadows of the ships looming on either side of them, reading their names and glancing at figureheads somewhat absently in the growing heat. Luke focused his good eye on Jesse, who stared back.

“You can’t back out, when it’s been said.”

“Why do you sound so doubtful? You’ll take care of it, won’t you?”

“Aye, but I can’t have you sidestepping your way out of the bargain. And you have to do as I say, or everything will be a waste.”

“She can’t turn us down, after this one.” Jesse leaned over the side of the boat, looking down into the glassy bay. “But what will happen,” he continued, returning his gaze to Luke’s grim expression, “if you fail?”

The oars hit the water with resounding force.

“I will not fail,” Luke replied.

The Matanza, flagship of the Pirate King, was flooded in a silence broken only by muffled coughs and the creaking of timbers as it rode on the ebbing tide. It was a ship of dying men. Here on this cursed ship, Princess Dawn stirred from her terrible slumber. Alexander, whose breathing was so quiet she could hardly hear it, slept on in what had once been the Pirate King’s hammock. She had found a cot propped up against one wall, the weather-beaten planks hung with spare mementos of the ship’s conquests in the plunder lanes of the Pirate King—a medallion larger than her fist, a tattered map of the Eastern sea, a cracked mirror long since clouded by time and tarnished by salt air. Through her tears the night before, Dawn had managed to drag the cot near Alexander’s hammock, crawling onto the rough canvas and plunging into a dreamless sleep.

It was dreamless, but also restless. She woke several times in the dark, her heart pounding wildly, the unfamiliar surroundings jolting her from the cot and sending her reeling towards Alexander, who was too deeply entwined in the Fever’s embrace to even recognize her voice calling out to him. Everything she did, everything she said or felt, seemed slower than normal—her limbs felt like leaden weights, and only her heart remained quick. Its beating was a frantic march across the hours of that night, which seemed to stretch on into eternity. Her thoughts, her fears, moved through her consciousness in an agonizing parade.

I have failed you all…

“Orris…Orris…”

Marisa laid a hand on the cold, shining armor of her trusted guardian, who had apparently fallen asleep standing against the bolted door to Anna’s room. His arms were crossed, and his face was stern even in dreaming. Anna chuckled, reaching out to rap a fist against the jet black metal. “He is a sound sleeper, for a bodyguard. Shouldn’t he be…attacking…me…okay, put that down, I didn’t mean it!”

Orris moved his lance away from Anna’s neck gruffly, while Marisa shot him a mock glare. “Honestly! You wouldn’t hurt Anna, would you? After all the trouble it was to find her?” Marisa began walking down the carpeted hall, Orris and the reassuring metallic sound of his armor echoing close behind. Anna stepped along beside her, oblivious to the stares from passing servants. Marisa stopped one of the hurrying maids to ask them where the Regent might be found. The startled girl stammered that the Regent was known to have her breakfasts in the Throne Room, and with a trembling finger, pointed vaguely down the hall to a staircase.

“Things are falling apart here,” Marisa noted solemnly, as they descended the long staircase back to the castle’s ground floor. “The Princess locked aboard that ship, exposed to the Fever and in danger of dying from it…Gareth is slowly ripping at the seams. This is not good, Orris.”

“There is no other solution for this land other than to keep the Princess on board that ship. The disease will not cross the water, unless others from that ship set foot on land. The Regent would be wise to bargain well with the pirates, rather than risk the Fever seizing the country as it has seized Barinesh.”

Silently, Anna contemplated this. She had heard what Luke had told the Lady Jal, just yesterday. A cure for the Fever…did one even exist? And she had winced visibly at Orris’s talk of bargaining with the pirates—his tone held no mercy, no belief that the pirates were anything more than ruthless savages. In fact, Marisa seemed to doubt their integrity as well. It was understandable of course…the pirates ravaged coasts and ruined lives. They were not trustworthy. Anna could not judge them from her own eyes, eyes that had seen them in jolly moments and in their fierce loyalty, eyes who had looked upon their leader as father and protector. But looking at the pirates, at the people whose home she had shared and whose livelihood was all she had known, it was difficult to fear them as the others did. And it was impossible, it felt, to ever loathe them.

As they reached the bottom of the narrow staircase, a rather loud conversation rang out from not too far away. The Throne Room was near, only a hall from where they were, and Anna could hear the Regent’s cool voice echoing on the stone walls. But there was another voice, one that was familiar…

She gasped. Turning to Marisa, she took her sister’s wrist and tugged her urgently toward the source of the voices. “My brother…Luke is here. He is speaking with the Regent. We must hurry.” Marisa’s expression was somewhat confused.

“Your brother…?”

Anna looked away for a fraction of a second, and then turned her eyes back to that of her twin. “My brother, Marisa. The Pirate King.”

“I cannot grant you this ridiculous boon, boy. The Kingdom will never be indebted to one such as you. Imagine, the history books telling of a day when Gareth forged an alliance with its most notorious enemy! It makes no sense.” Jal was standing, facing Luke in the mid-morning light. The soldiers were on the Green, some doing drills and some mustered and waiting for orders. All the strength of Asphel was poised and waiting to defend itself, or rise up in attack. Nevertheless, Luke stood straight and tall before the Regent, arms crossed stubbornly over his chest. Jesse stood behind him, one hand ever near his cutlass. The distrust in the room was a thick, heavy fog.

“Then your Princess will die, along with my men, and along with her Prince of Barinesh. You would let the heir to the throne die in that cabin, hallucinating and slowly rotting from the inside out? You are no kinder than the most murderous of my men. Lady, you can call it even.”

“You have no right to speak this way! It was you who caused all of this! If you had not come barging in, telling her of Alexander’s illness, luring her to your ship—”

“For a Regent, you aren’t very smart, are you? I thought you Royal types were supposed to be a little less thickheaded than this. Once again, it was her choice to go running headlong into that cabin. I played by her rules, I sent my own sister there to stand beside her, to take her to the Prince in good faith. And you may accuse me, rightfully so, of being able to stand cruelly by as my enemy chose to impale themselves on their own sword, but you could never expect that of Anna. There is no one with a gentler heart.”

“I find it impossible to believe that anyone in your company could be possessed of a ‘gentle heart’. You are all cutthroats, villains, merciless savages! This is a plot, a plot against the Crown, and I will not stand for it.”

Luke laughed his hard laugh, and it chilled even Jesse, who had known him all his life. “And what do you plan to do, to save your Princess? Will you board the ship and risk sure infection, to enter that room and carry her dying body back to this castle? Will you let the disease spread through these lands from the very woman destined to someday rule it? You amaze me. It is a wonder you did not choose to be a pirate, you would have made a very good one.”

The slap was loud, a thunderclap in the middle of the marble room. Jal, hand still raised, palm still stinging, was breathing heavily as though restraining herself from further retaliation. The guards posted at the entrances and on either side of the throne readied their weapons, awaited an order. Luke merely stood, turning his head slowly back to face the incensed Regent, a terrible smile playing across his unperturbed features. Jesse stepped back, a small step, but a step nonetheless. This man before him, was it truly his brother? Was it truly the same Luke whose shoulders he had ridden on as a child, who folded paper boats with Anna and set them afloat on the tide? For that Luke seemed very far away now, as the brother he had always known began to laugh cruelly, heartlessly, there in the hall of their enemies. The laugh rang out, a relentless blade, swift and unforgiving. It was empty, and yet full of an unfathomable darkness all the more horrifying for the fact that it had not always been there.

As Luke laughed, Jal slowly let her hand drop back to her side. She shook her head quickly, as if to shake from her thoughts the anger that had caused her to act on her remorse. And she looked a bit shaken herself; a hairline crack had been splintering the foundations of her resolve. It was then that Luke turned to Jesse, briefly, that cold predator’s smile still lingering on his face. Jesse understood; they had already spoken of it, many times before. Luke spoke to Jal once again, bitingly.

“Old woman, you have no chance. This country has no chance. It has no choice but to fall to its knees and beg. But not to worry. I won’t ask that much. Asylum, Regent, for my men and myself. Freedom to sail these waters without threat, and two of your best ships to accompany us to the Oracle, as well as to wherever else we may need to sail in order to find the cure. Your men may crew those ships, and my men will crew my own. Matanza, we will leave here in your harbor under your jurisdiction. And…”

Jesse stepped forward. Luke laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder, and in a quieter tone, threw down his final bargaining chip.

“My brother…will remain there as well. He will join the Prince and Princess in the cabin. An eye for an eye, Regent. My brother for your precious Princess. If you lose, I lose.”

“You are mad! To condemn your own brother to his death, to ask him to risk himself for your own worthless life, like a soulless pawn!” Jal was looking at Luke incredulously, her eyes flitting from Jesse’s face to the Pirate King’s vicious smile. But there was nothing in that smile that spoke of games and mindless bartering. Luke was completely serious.

And Anna knew it too. She cried out, from where she had been standing just inside one of the doorways leading into the room. Running, the tears already beginning to sting behind her eyes, she threw her arms around Jesse and tried to pull him away. Luke whirled on them, seizing Jesse by an arm and trying to wrench Anna away with the other. But Anna would not let go.

“I can’t let you do this! How could you? How could both of you…? We were supposed to stay together! We were supposed to do this together! You came to bring me home, you came to take me with you, not to leave Jesse here! Luke! How could you?” She was frantic, injured, in shock and disbelief. Luke faltered. He let Jesse go, let Anna go as well. For the smallest moment, he looked down at the floor.

“Annie. Anna. Please…trust us.”

“Trust you?! To let Jesse go into that cabin and die?!”

“No! I will not let Jesse die, you know I would never! He agreed to this. We both agreed to this. Please, don’t make it any harder than it already is!”

Anna sobbed, burying her face in Jesse’s shirt, her hands curled into fists. Jesse silently held her, his voice quiet when he finally spoke.

“Sis. Luke…wanted to be the one to go into the cabin. He planned to offer himself, if there was no other way to convince the Regent to let us go for the cure. It was a ridiculous plan. Who would lead the men, if Luke went into that cabin? He is the Pirate King. The men will follow no other. It must be me.”

“No! No, this can’t happen! Jesse…! Luke…! Think of father, think of what he would say…!”

But Luke and Jesse were as adamant as the night they sent her into the treasure vault to protect her from the battle raging outside. They were as adamant as any time they had chosen to exclude her for her own sake, when they had decided between themselves that only one must be protected at any cost, and it would be Anna. She recognized this in their expressions, expressions as unforgiving as stone, and she could sense the familiar drone of her own defeat. Her arms slackened around Jesse, and she turned to Luke with her blue-gray eyes. But before she could open her mouth, Luke immediately cut in.

“Don’t even say it, Annie. Don’t even try. It will NOT be you. It can’t, I won’t allow it. I would rather kill you myself than let you go into that cabin. You must live. We came here, to make sure that you live.”

“Protecting me, brother?” Anna laughed quietly, so quietly it was barely audible. “Why must you all protect me, as though I had no spine, as though I were fragile glass or crumpled paper? But I should have known. You…you are all the same.” She turned, and walked away, past the window where an uproar seemed to be rising like a buzzing cloud in the air. Luke reached out with a hand, Jesse made a move to stop her, but it was as though their spirits had all run dry.

Anna turned on her heel, just once, and in her eyes was a terrible grief. She looked as though she had something more to say, but it was at that moment that the glass of the Throne Room’s windows shattered behind her, and the fragments flew through the air to land with a horrific crash on the marble floor. Anna screamed, Jesse ran forward with his cutlass ready, and Luke did the same. Jal was instantly engulfed by the guards on either side of her, protected from the rain of broken shards. In the hall, Orris pulled Marisa behind him and rushed into the room; Marisa, however, followed as well. But they were all too late. There was a flash, and then a blinding light flared, disorienting them all. And swinging back through the jagged window panes went Stella the Bandit Queen, with Anna firmly in tow. The kidnapping had been a rousing success.