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↞ Previously: A Game of Shadows 🏴☠️
The sea had grown watchful, like it knew the game of cat and mouse being played out on its surface. For three days the same faint smudge of sail had haunted their wake, too distant to threaten, too steady to dismiss. Whoever commanded it knew patience, and patience at sea was a dangerous thing.
Leontios leaned against the stern rail, the wind tugging at his coat. “Leclerc,” he murmured. The name fit the shape of pursuit.
The crew had stopped pretending not to notice. They muttered over charms, touched powder horns for luck. Izzy barked at them to keep moving, but unease had settled into every motion.
Edward, of course, looked amused.
Pirates, Leo was learning, thrived on misdirection. Where armies built walls, pirates dissolved into the sea. And Edward Teach, Blackbeard to others, did it with a kind of rough intuition that felt half craft, half gamble.
He gave his orders without flourish, sometimes only with a gesture. The crew seemed to understand him instinctively, their movements rough but efficient. He wasn’t the myth painted on tavern walls; he was simply a man who’d learned the sea’s moods the hard way.
By day, they trimmed sail until the Queen Anne’s Revenge rode quieter in the water. By night, the deck went dark, chains wrapped in rags, voices hushed to whispers. The world beyond the hull disappeared.
Once, when a shift of wind threatened their balance, Edward adjusted the ropes himself, barehanded, eyes half-closed. “She doesn’t like being rushed,” he muttered.
Leontios said nothing, but the line stayed with him. Ed didn’t command the ship; he courted it.
Leo kept to his own work: extra lashings, false lanterns, small tricks that cost nothing but time. The crew didn’t question him now; even Izzy only scowled and let him pass.
At night, when the ship slept, the work changed.
In the cabin’s quiet, Edward would lower himself to the bench while Leo knelt with cloth and salve. The brace lay disassembled between them, oiled and polished.
“Tell me when it hurts,” Leo would murmur.
“It always does,” Edward would answer, tone caught somewhere between laugh and sigh.
Neither spoke much after that. The silence between them said enough. The work was slow, testing, fitting, adjusting until resistance gave way. When Leo looked up, Edward was usually watching him, the lamplight softening what the world called ruthless.
No one else knew. The door stayed barred. Izzy’s suspicion hung like smoke, but he lacked proof.
Sleep never came easily after. Leo would stay at the table sketching refinements, noting angles and strain points in cramped Greek shorthand. Ántaxis, counterforce. A brace should yield just enough to endure.
By dawn, the lantern burned low.
“Ship ahoy!” came the lookout’s cry.
The shadow was still there, closer now. Edward appeared beside Leo, spyglass in hand. “Persistent bastard,” he said, without heat.
“What is he waiting for?”
“He's not. He can't catch us.”
Edward moved through the crew with easy familiarity, no grand speeches, no theatrics, just quiet confidence that steadied even the most jittery sailor. The orders were simple: adjust the sail, wet the decks, shift ballast. He didn’t need to outthink or fight the sea; he moved with it.
When night fell, he had a single lantern hung low off the stern, its light small and wavering. “Looks slower that way,” he said to no one in particular. “Let him chase the wrong pace.”
Leontios watched it swing over the water, faint as a will-o’-the-wisp. By morning, the horizon was clean.
The men cheered. Edward laughed, a brief, startled sound, more relief than triumph. “Looks like we’re still ghosts.”
Leontios allowed a thin smile. “For now.”
They ate late, the mood easier but not light. Izzy’s gaze lingered on Leo more than once, but he said nothing. The day bled into evening. When the deck finally quieted, Leo found Edward at the stern again, pipe unlit between his fingers. The sea stretched wide and dim, their shadow somewhere beyond the curve of it.
“You don’t sleep much,” Edward said.
“Not easily.”
“You think too much.”
“I prefer to call it vigilance.”
Ed chuckled.
Silence settled again, companionable between them.
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