smackenzie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
smackenzie) wrote2013-11-21 09:03 pm
smackenzie) wrote2013-11-21 09:03 pm
Entry tags:
in which maggie actually raises a navy
Maggie continued to try to get pirate captains to meet her and to talk and argue and discuss once they did. Several of them proved slippery and cagey and hard to pin down - paranoia was perhaps an understandable reaction to knowing there was a price on your head - and then she got a note that Bernade's brothel girl and the other working girls and boys at Madame Lilyet's were keeping their ears open for any news, so as to help her cause.
Bernade was still captain of the Cormorant and still sailed in and out of Port Doras. She was illiterate and so had to dictate all her correspondence, which was unsurprisingly written in a variety of hands with varying degrees of legibility. Maggie knew she should consider them both lucky that there were enough people in Port Doras who could read and write and were willing to pass notes between pirates.
Maggie let her crew repeat gossip and did not correct them when the facts got a bit out of hand or were ignored altogether. She was constantly amused to hear these tales about her repeated back to her stripped of many recognizable elements. She heard that she herself had killed the captain of the Aconite after he had run her through with his poisoned sword, and she laughed at every variation of her relationship with the priest. There were a number of stories told about the two of them, all no doubt invented by her own crew.
She spent her money wisely, paying bribes when she thought she would be granted an audience or if she could have men clear out of a room. She wore her finest, most impressive clothes to meet with fellow captains. She kept her sword sharp and her pistols primed. She walked into her meetings with her head high and her hat brushed, confidence and competence surrounding her like armor, aware every second that this particular meeting could be the most successful so far or could be the one that destroyed her plans utterly.
She wrote to the king-in-exile telling him of her plans. She did not expect a reply, even considering how long her letter would take to reach him and how long his response would take to reach her. If she was lucky, she would have gathered enough ships to begin sailing as a navy - hopefully to attract more once she could show some collective strength - before the king-in-exile had even planned what to do with her offer.
She was surprised sometimes at the reasons other pirates gave for joining her, once she had convinced them. She appealed to their vanity, their pride, their greed. And they responded with I-shall-prove-to-you-how-strong-I-am anger, as had Diono, with hints that they would take her navy from her, and oddly enough with recognition of the fear she could strike in the hearts of merchant sailors and simple people living along the coasts.
She had the Aconite to thank for that, and once she realized the power that ship's reputation held, she used it as often as she could.
"You have heard the stories about me," she would remind the captain who hesitated to follow her to naval glory. "I was cut with a poisoned blade and survived. I have never been caught. I have never been sunk. The survivors of my attacks do not live."
This was not quite truth - she still occasionally allowed the remaining crew of a boarded and plundered ship to be put in a rowboat and set adrift. She had to assume some of those men survived, otherwise how would stories of her maraudings reach the other islands, but she did not know for sure how many of them lived once she left them.
"My ship was boarded and my crew threw the attackers off. Even death cannot take me."
And the captain to whom she was speaking, a rangy redheaded pirate known as Herran the Stork, nodded his head and spat into his palm and shook her hand and sealed their deal.
And so it went, Maggie alternately cajoling and convincing, and more and more captains fell to her until one day she counted up the ships she had amassed and the men she would have at her command, and was surprised and pleased to count nearly sixty ships and over seven thousand men. She could not guess how that had come about, only that some men had had several ships under their command - including Diono, who had acquired ten - and she had approached privateers with letters of marque - pirates in all but name - who would be able to harry the Usurper's fleet under protection from other monarchs. She did not quite expect the privateers and the pirates to get along, but they were in some sense the same, and as long as they listened to her she did not much care if they listened to each other.
She was so pleased and so proud of herself that she went out and bought a ring, a gold band carved to look like a circle of leaping fish and set with round blue stones the color of the deep sea, and then she tried to gather as many of her crew as she could, to drink and dance and celebrate. They filled a tavern with their laughter and their boasts and their stories, and she promised them all glory and power and riches beyond their dreams. She would take her country back from the woman who had stolen it, she would restore it to its rightful owner, and she would have her land and her title and her name.
And then, because she missed him and he was not there to celebrate with her, she went off to find the priest.
He had grown more and more priestlike the longer they had stayed in Port Doras, and as Maggie danced through the streets she wondered idly if he would still wish to sail with her.
But of course he would, she finally told herself, as she handed over coins for a bottle of good red wine to bring him. Of course he would. He said he would. He loved her and he said he would stand by her side as long as she needed someone to do so.
But he had also said that she would take him with her when she made her plans to build her navy, and in fact she had not done that, because he had not wanted to go. She had made her deals and conducted her affairs by herself.
But she knew he would be proud of her. She knew he would want to celebrate her accomplishment with her, for the simple fact that she had done something great.
And quite simply she wanted to be with him, wanted to kiss his mouth and touch his skin and feel his touch on her in return. She wanted to run her fingers through his hair, dark blond and longer than a priest had right to keep it, and she wanted to see his face and hear his voice when he spent himself inside her.
And perhaps she wanted to talk to him as well. Who could say? She could take a day to do nothing, and she would take tomorrow. They could talk of everything or nothing, and have a day of calm before she took to the seas again to gather her navy and rain terror down on those who would deny her what was hers.
The moon was nearly full and the night air was soft and smelled of the sea. There were a million stars overhead, glittering bright and cold. Maggie's whole future lay ahead of her, the destiny she was going to forge for herself. And closer than that and more immediate, an inn with cheaply-let, simple rooms, and a man sitting in a wobbly chair reading a book by the light of a single candle.
The priest opened the door to Maggie's knock. He looked surprised to see her.
"I have done it, priest," she said proudly. "I have raised a navy." She held out the bottle, handing it to him as she walked past him into the room. "You have missed all our celebrating."
"I should congratulate you, then," he told her. He closed the door. She turned slowly, taking in the room. She knew he was staying here, but she had never seen the place. He had always come to her, or she had found him and taken him to her rooms. There was a bed and the chair and a small table, a candlestick, a book, a few hooks on the wall. His clothes had been hung on the hooks. He was not wearing his boots. He looked oddly at home.
Well, she supposed he had been used to simple places and sparse furnishings when he had been an ordained priest with a church and a congregation. And this was certainly better than anywhere he had slept on the Black Lightning.
"I have no glasses," he said.
"When has that ever mattered?" she replied, grinning. She sat on the bed and then flopped backwards onto the mattress, her arms outspread and her hat tipping off her head. The ceiling was stained. She smiled at it. "I have a navy, priest. I will sail it to the Usurper's front door and I will take the throne from her and send her into humiliating exile as she sent me. I will have sixty ships at my command. Sixty ships and seven thousand men and women."
She was quite pleasantly drunk, enough to feel the aftereffects tomorrow but not enough to lose control of herself, and she wished to drink more. She waved her hand in what she hoped was the priest's direction, wordlessly and imperiously commanding him to bring her the wine.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I want you," she told the ceiling. "I want you to bring me the wine, and I want to drink it, and then I want you to undress me and kiss me all over, and I want you to stay all night in my arms and between my thighs."
"You are drunk."
"I am. I am happy. I am victorious." She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at him. "I am an admiral, priest. I have raised my own navy for my own ends - I have convinced pirates to follow me, men who would not even let a woman step foot on their ships, never mind tell them what to do - and I have made myself captain over all. Do you understand what that means? It means I found my power and I used it. It means - it means I am in command. I have something to bring the king-in-exile that will help him more than all my plundered gold ever could. I have cannon and I have swords and I have men, thousands of men. We sail under terrifying flags and our reputations will precede us and I will have my country back, I swear it to you, I will have it back and you will come with me, you will see it as it was meant to be seen."
He was standing by the foot of the bed watching her. He put the wine on the table and came over to her and sat on the edge of the bed next to her.
"I do not know if I wish to come with you," he said quietly. "I have been thinking."
"You are always thinking." But she said it with affection. He was all thought, and she was all action. They could make quite a pair. She sat up so she could see his face better, and so he could see hers.
"I am not a pirate, Maggie. I never was. And you know as well as I how much use I am."
"You sat by my bed when I was dying," she reminded him. "You would let no one in."
"And now that you are recovered?"
"You told me once you would sail with me whether I wished you to or not. I could make my own plans, you said, and you would make yours, and they would intersect."
"And you have made your plans. And I have - I have not made mine."
She brushed her fingers across his cheek. "Make them tomorrow. Think tomorrow. Tonight, just be with me. Drink some wine, take off your shirt, lie next to me." She leaned closed to him and pressed her lips to his. "Do you not want me, priest? You have never said no to me."
"You want so much," he said quietly. "A navy, a kingdom. Ships at your command, a king in your debt."
"Not tonight. Tonight I only want you."
words: 2148
total words: 37,535
Bernade was still captain of the Cormorant and still sailed in and out of Port Doras. She was illiterate and so had to dictate all her correspondence, which was unsurprisingly written in a variety of hands with varying degrees of legibility. Maggie knew she should consider them both lucky that there were enough people in Port Doras who could read and write and were willing to pass notes between pirates.
Maggie let her crew repeat gossip and did not correct them when the facts got a bit out of hand or were ignored altogether. She was constantly amused to hear these tales about her repeated back to her stripped of many recognizable elements. She heard that she herself had killed the captain of the Aconite after he had run her through with his poisoned sword, and she laughed at every variation of her relationship with the priest. There were a number of stories told about the two of them, all no doubt invented by her own crew.
She spent her money wisely, paying bribes when she thought she would be granted an audience or if she could have men clear out of a room. She wore her finest, most impressive clothes to meet with fellow captains. She kept her sword sharp and her pistols primed. She walked into her meetings with her head high and her hat brushed, confidence and competence surrounding her like armor, aware every second that this particular meeting could be the most successful so far or could be the one that destroyed her plans utterly.
She wrote to the king-in-exile telling him of her plans. She did not expect a reply, even considering how long her letter would take to reach him and how long his response would take to reach her. If she was lucky, she would have gathered enough ships to begin sailing as a navy - hopefully to attract more once she could show some collective strength - before the king-in-exile had even planned what to do with her offer.
She was surprised sometimes at the reasons other pirates gave for joining her, once she had convinced them. She appealed to their vanity, their pride, their greed. And they responded with I-shall-prove-to-you-how-strong-I-am anger, as had Diono, with hints that they would take her navy from her, and oddly enough with recognition of the fear she could strike in the hearts of merchant sailors and simple people living along the coasts.
She had the Aconite to thank for that, and once she realized the power that ship's reputation held, she used it as often as she could.
"You have heard the stories about me," she would remind the captain who hesitated to follow her to naval glory. "I was cut with a poisoned blade and survived. I have never been caught. I have never been sunk. The survivors of my attacks do not live."
This was not quite truth - she still occasionally allowed the remaining crew of a boarded and plundered ship to be put in a rowboat and set adrift. She had to assume some of those men survived, otherwise how would stories of her maraudings reach the other islands, but she did not know for sure how many of them lived once she left them.
"My ship was boarded and my crew threw the attackers off. Even death cannot take me."
And the captain to whom she was speaking, a rangy redheaded pirate known as Herran the Stork, nodded his head and spat into his palm and shook her hand and sealed their deal.
And so it went, Maggie alternately cajoling and convincing, and more and more captains fell to her until one day she counted up the ships she had amassed and the men she would have at her command, and was surprised and pleased to count nearly sixty ships and over seven thousand men. She could not guess how that had come about, only that some men had had several ships under their command - including Diono, who had acquired ten - and she had approached privateers with letters of marque - pirates in all but name - who would be able to harry the Usurper's fleet under protection from other monarchs. She did not quite expect the privateers and the pirates to get along, but they were in some sense the same, and as long as they listened to her she did not much care if they listened to each other.
She was so pleased and so proud of herself that she went out and bought a ring, a gold band carved to look like a circle of leaping fish and set with round blue stones the color of the deep sea, and then she tried to gather as many of her crew as she could, to drink and dance and celebrate. They filled a tavern with their laughter and their boasts and their stories, and she promised them all glory and power and riches beyond their dreams. She would take her country back from the woman who had stolen it, she would restore it to its rightful owner, and she would have her land and her title and her name.
And then, because she missed him and he was not there to celebrate with her, she went off to find the priest.
He had grown more and more priestlike the longer they had stayed in Port Doras, and as Maggie danced through the streets she wondered idly if he would still wish to sail with her.
But of course he would, she finally told herself, as she handed over coins for a bottle of good red wine to bring him. Of course he would. He said he would. He loved her and he said he would stand by her side as long as she needed someone to do so.
But he had also said that she would take him with her when she made her plans to build her navy, and in fact she had not done that, because he had not wanted to go. She had made her deals and conducted her affairs by herself.
But she knew he would be proud of her. She knew he would want to celebrate her accomplishment with her, for the simple fact that she had done something great.
And quite simply she wanted to be with him, wanted to kiss his mouth and touch his skin and feel his touch on her in return. She wanted to run her fingers through his hair, dark blond and longer than a priest had right to keep it, and she wanted to see his face and hear his voice when he spent himself inside her.
And perhaps she wanted to talk to him as well. Who could say? She could take a day to do nothing, and she would take tomorrow. They could talk of everything or nothing, and have a day of calm before she took to the seas again to gather her navy and rain terror down on those who would deny her what was hers.
The moon was nearly full and the night air was soft and smelled of the sea. There were a million stars overhead, glittering bright and cold. Maggie's whole future lay ahead of her, the destiny she was going to forge for herself. And closer than that and more immediate, an inn with cheaply-let, simple rooms, and a man sitting in a wobbly chair reading a book by the light of a single candle.
The priest opened the door to Maggie's knock. He looked surprised to see her.
"I have done it, priest," she said proudly. "I have raised a navy." She held out the bottle, handing it to him as she walked past him into the room. "You have missed all our celebrating."
"I should congratulate you, then," he told her. He closed the door. She turned slowly, taking in the room. She knew he was staying here, but she had never seen the place. He had always come to her, or she had found him and taken him to her rooms. There was a bed and the chair and a small table, a candlestick, a book, a few hooks on the wall. His clothes had been hung on the hooks. He was not wearing his boots. He looked oddly at home.
Well, she supposed he had been used to simple places and sparse furnishings when he had been an ordained priest with a church and a congregation. And this was certainly better than anywhere he had slept on the Black Lightning.
"I have no glasses," he said.
"When has that ever mattered?" she replied, grinning. She sat on the bed and then flopped backwards onto the mattress, her arms outspread and her hat tipping off her head. The ceiling was stained. She smiled at it. "I have a navy, priest. I will sail it to the Usurper's front door and I will take the throne from her and send her into humiliating exile as she sent me. I will have sixty ships at my command. Sixty ships and seven thousand men and women."
She was quite pleasantly drunk, enough to feel the aftereffects tomorrow but not enough to lose control of herself, and she wished to drink more. She waved her hand in what she hoped was the priest's direction, wordlessly and imperiously commanding him to bring her the wine.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I want you," she told the ceiling. "I want you to bring me the wine, and I want to drink it, and then I want you to undress me and kiss me all over, and I want you to stay all night in my arms and between my thighs."
"You are drunk."
"I am. I am happy. I am victorious." She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at him. "I am an admiral, priest. I have raised my own navy for my own ends - I have convinced pirates to follow me, men who would not even let a woman step foot on their ships, never mind tell them what to do - and I have made myself captain over all. Do you understand what that means? It means I found my power and I used it. It means - it means I am in command. I have something to bring the king-in-exile that will help him more than all my plundered gold ever could. I have cannon and I have swords and I have men, thousands of men. We sail under terrifying flags and our reputations will precede us and I will have my country back, I swear it to you, I will have it back and you will come with me, you will see it as it was meant to be seen."
He was standing by the foot of the bed watching her. He put the wine on the table and came over to her and sat on the edge of the bed next to her.
"I do not know if I wish to come with you," he said quietly. "I have been thinking."
"You are always thinking." But she said it with affection. He was all thought, and she was all action. They could make quite a pair. She sat up so she could see his face better, and so he could see hers.
"I am not a pirate, Maggie. I never was. And you know as well as I how much use I am."
"You sat by my bed when I was dying," she reminded him. "You would let no one in."
"And now that you are recovered?"
"You told me once you would sail with me whether I wished you to or not. I could make my own plans, you said, and you would make yours, and they would intersect."
"And you have made your plans. And I have - I have not made mine."
She brushed her fingers across his cheek. "Make them tomorrow. Think tomorrow. Tonight, just be with me. Drink some wine, take off your shirt, lie next to me." She leaned closed to him and pressed her lips to his. "Do you not want me, priest? You have never said no to me."
"You want so much," he said quietly. "A navy, a kingdom. Ships at your command, a king in your debt."
"Not tonight. Tonight I only want you."
words: 2148
total words: 37,535