Rumors on the Tide

Previously: The Gambit - Between Kings & Corsairs 9

The passage from La Rochelle to Bilbao had stretched across several days that felt at once stolen and fleeting. The winds had held in their favor—steady, almost conspiratorial—and not once had they faltered or lost ground. Leclerc, by all reckonings, remained no less than two days astern. Enough distance to hope. Not enough to rest. Bilbao would decide everything.

There, in the press of dockside voices and the low murmur of taverns thick with smoke and secrets, their design would either take root or unravel. The first seeds had already been sown—whispers set loose in the right ears, hints cast like bait into uncertain waters. Now came the waiting, the testing: whether rumor could travel as swiftly as desperation required, whether men believed what they wanted to believe when the story was told well enough.

They had not wasted the crossing. Each day had been given over to rehearsal—words, gestures, silences. Ed had walked the deck with them, again and again, until every man knew their part not as instruction but as instinct. A misplaced glance, a poorly timed laugh, a hesitation too long—any of it could fracture the illusion. Credibility was not merely important; it was survival. If the lie did not live, neither would they.

The tension aboard the Queen Anne had settled into something taut but controlled, like a rope drawn tight and tested for strain. No one trembled, but no one was easy, either. The crew stood with them—more than that, they leaned forward into it. Ed had overheard them in low conversation: talk of wives, of children, of distant shores not marked by fear or pursuit. Men who had lived too long beneath the shadow of the noose now dared to imagine a life beyond it. A life without a bounty. That dream burned in them. It made them sharper. It made them dangerous in a different way.

Leo, meanwhile, had taken to his work with a precision that bordered on obsession. The finer threads of the plan—timing, detail, contingency—were his domain, and Ed did not interfere. He trusted him entirely. Trusted the way Leo’s mind moved, the way he could see paths where others saw only chaos. So he let him work, stepping in only when called for.

At night, though, they set it aside. Unspoken, but absolute. In those hours, the plan receded, as if it belonged to another life entirely. They spoke instead of what might come after—places with unfamiliar names, trades they had never imagined themselves taking up. It was almost absurd, at times, the quiet domesticity of it. And yet neither of them ever spoke of failure. The word itself seemed forbidden. They did not need to name it. Failure had only one shape, and it was final.

By the time they made port, the light had begun its slow descent into evening, gilding the harbor in a muted, deceptive calm. When Ed stepped from the gangplank and felt the solidity of land beneath his boots, it struck him—not as relief, but as a shift. As though something unseen had tightened its grip around him. This was it. No more rehearsal.

Fang, Ivan, and several others followed at his back, their presence steady, familiar. Ed turned to them, his voice low but edged with command.

“Eyes open. Ears sharper still. I want to know what’s already reached this place—every whisper, every lie that’s grown teeth.” His gaze moved across them, weighing, measuring. “Leo, Fang, Ivan, and I will be in the tavern. You know where to find us.”

A beat.

“Play your parts,” he said. “And play them like your lives depend on it.”

Because they did.

They dispersed soon after, slipping into the harbor’s veins—alleys, docks, doorways—where rumor thrived best in shadow. The wider they cast themselves, the more likely they were to catch the truth of what had taken hold.

Ed watched them go, then turned to Leo. And there it was—the part he had been avoiding. Tonight, Leo would not be his equal. Not in the eyes of anyone who mattered. He would be a captive, a man under duress, bent to the will of Blackbeard. And Ed—Ed would have to become that man fully.

He felt it already, like something bitter rising at the back of his throat. He did not fear the performance. He feared how easily he might inhabit it.

There was a tightness in his chest he could not quite master—a quiet resistance, stubborn and unwelcome. The thought of laying hands on Leo, even in pretense, unsettled him more than he cared to admit. It pressed against something deeper, something he had spent years burying beneath reputation and necessity. But doubt had no place here. Not now.

He forced it down, the way he had forced down countless other things, until it sat cold and controlled somewhere behind his ribs. What remained was the mask—hard, sharp-edged, merciless. The man the world already believed him to be. He met Leo’s gaze, holding it a moment longer than needed.

“Ready?” he asked.

The word carried more weight than it should have.