Eleyna held her body entirely still, not drawing a breath, feeling the three cold pricks of Rot’s steel fingers on her throat. She was the Captain now. That meant that this was her ship, and she’d be damned if any half-wit First Mate could wrest it from her.
“Mate Rot. We are at an impasse.” She spoke with barely a whisper of air, so that her throat would not move. And yet her firm voice could be heard from the hold to the yardarms. The ship hung on the crest of a wave, waiting like Eleyna with bated breath. “The Captain has designated me his successor. But I also acknowledge that you have precedence, having served as Ancilla‘s First Mate with distinction for many years.” Though this was not precisely true, as everyone knew. Rot had always served with drunkenness, insubordination, and fits of erratic violent madness, but never with distinction. For the moment, though, with the aura of the Captain’s death still hanging in the air, it felt true enough that Rot seemed to believe it, and the steel hooks against her throat softened slightly in their grip.
“As well,” Eleyna continued, “We find ourselves in difficult straits. After the punishment of the battle, both the Eyetooth and the Ancilla will be a fair challenge to crew. So I propose this: We allow the Ancilla‘s crew the opportunity to decide on a Captain, and we abide by their decision. Either they pick one of us with a full and hearty voice, or, if enough dissent to form a crew, we will divide the men and each Captain a ship, setting sail our separate ways. And as a courtesy to your seniority, I would let you select the ship of your preference. Does that sound fair to you, Rot?”
Eleyna felt Rot hesitate, felt a tremor of doubt run through his hook fingers. She could imagine the calculations slowly working their way through the slow-turning cogs of his mind: surely at least some, if not all, of the crew would prefer him as Captain. In the worst case, he would have command of one ship, whichever of the two he desired. How could he fail? Eleyna could tell he was considering the alternatives, thinking of his most loyal allies in the crew, numbering how many others he would need to kill in order to assume full power.
“If this offer is not to your liking,” Eleyna said, assuming a sterner tone, “then you can pierce my neck, and Yelol will distance your head from your shoulders. And then neither of us will have a ship.”
That settled it. Eleyna could imagine Rot thinking, assuring himself. “Clearly the crew will see how I am the more fit Captain. They could never take some wet-furred kit of a girl as their Captain.” He slowly lifted his hand away from her neck, and Eleyna let out a tiny, inaudible gasp of relief. She had found the correct combination of threats and coaxing, appealed to Rot’s healthy appreciation of himself. Yelol relaxed his stance as Eleyna stood. She looked down at the lifeless body of the Captain, his chest awash in red. A wave of doubt washed over her. Perhaps her gambit had been unwise, but had she really any other choice? And what of the crew, who whom did their sympathies truly lie?
The Captain was dead. Now she only had to consider what came next.
There were so many of the dead. Most were thrown overboard, without no ceremony at all. There was little room for religion among the Ancilla‘s crew, only the ritual frisking of the body for any valuables, then the heave and shove over the railing. But with the Captain, that was different.
For twenty years the Captain had been terror on the western seas. Sailors whispered of him to one another in the dead of night, that in his ship’s wake the ocean boiled, that whales and kraken swam to his will, that he could call a typhoon with the gale of his haggard breath. He had been the Ancilla‘s avatar, striking blubbering fear into the hearts of even the most hardened of crews. And his men had feared him, respected him, and in their own way had come to love him. The Ancilla‘s crew, sailors of a dozen races and creeds, gathered on the quarterdeck for a quiet, respectful service, where each spoke words privately to his own gods, and each in turn felt replied to.
So every man looked up when Eleyna stood, startled by her brash assumption of the center of attention at a time like this. She began by silently pouring an entire flask of rum to the deck. As she poured, Eleyna saw a few men wince at the waste of good drink, but all remained silent.
“Men, at this time we mourn, and with good reason. The Captain was a model to us all, a pirate’s pirate, a man who truly lived the wind every day of his life. In his end the sea will take him and possess him, but during his life, he possessed the seas.
“The Captain would have wanted us to continue, and continue we shall. The sea will swallow our dead and bury them, and Ancilla will sail again. We face five hundred leagues across unfriendly seas, with the storm season upon us, and little time to spare. The Ancilla is sore wounded; the pounding of the last battle she won’t soon forget.
“Men, we face a choice. We have two ships, but not enough men to fully crew one. The Ancilla will sail again, but her hull needs patching and her masts must be reset. That process would speed up a fair slight if we were to cannibalize the Eyetooth, and scuttle her when we finish.
“This decision is not a light one, and we will need a bold new Captain with will to carry it out. The honorable First Mate Rot is such a man, and has offered himself up for this a service. But the Captain, with his dying breath, requested of me that I take on this burden. Still, he was perhaps not in his truest mind at that moment, his vision and thought obscured by death’s cloud. So I leave the decision to you, the crew of the Ancilla: who will you have as your Captain? The choice is yours alone.”
With that, Eleyna stepped down, and First Mate Rot took her place. “’Tis all like the lady says, ye scurvy dogs. Ye all know me, ye know I’m not such a one fer pretty words. But mark this: I’ve nigh run this ship on a dozen years, an’ I’ll not steer ye wrong now. Think on it, mateys.”
The service concluded, and the Captain’s sailcloth wrapped body was pushed off the plank to a twenty gun salute. The crew deliberated, chattering and sipping grog. Eleyna waited quietly, Yelol at her side, while across the deck Rot polished his hooks nervously on his shirt.
After a solemn, secret balloting, Maurice, the helmsman, delivered the verdict to the assembled crowd. “Arr, ’tis unanimous. Every hand an’ hook ‘as been counted. Fer the next Captain o’ the Ancilla, we be selectin’, most ‘umbly, the Lady Eleyna.” Maurice offered her a small tip of his cap, and some sort of awkward bow at the knees. Behind him the crew cheered, lifting grog bottles high and shooting pistols into the air. The First Mate was aghast, his hands and hooks hanging slack.
Yelol turned to Eleyna with a generous bow and a flourish. “Milady, the ship is yours.”
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