Sodalite & Aventurine

RUBY

RUBY

Two weeks later and Louis was sitting at the desk in his quarters. Around him, his room was a warm, musky swell of trinkets and books and bedsheets. He was never one to be particularly tidy and he was never one to let anyone else do it for him. Through his window, he could see Port Royal growing smaller and smaller in the distance. In front of him, on his desk, he had the maps that he and his sailing master, Niall, had trawled over for hours before setting course. The closest of Swan's treasures was on an island off of Southern Africa, which would take months to get to, so they'd packed up enough food and supplies to make it to Senegal along the way.

He wasn't reading over the maps though, he was four chapters deep into the book he'd stolen from the Spanish ship in Tortuga. At the time, he hadn't known it, but the book was about William Shakespeare. It was a retelling of his life and Louis was enthralled. He'd heard the stories of his plays, and some of the crew had taken to performing their mangled versions of them on the warmer nights. But he hadn't known much of Shakespeare's actual life and how there wasn't much left behind beyond hearsay.

It had been a quiet morning, leaving port and setting sail towards East. Louis had just gone out to check on his men mere minutes earlier and everything had been runnning. It always did. With this crew at least. It had taken him five years to assemble a group of them that were as much comrades as they were pirates. He didn't take anyone on that didn't know the meaning of hard work and loyalty. There were three rules he kept on his ship; respect your equals, respect those below you, and respect your enemy. Nothing good came from arrogance, as much as Louis' quick tongue might have them thinking, but there was a difference and a tact in letting people think you were arrogant and actually being it. At the end of the day, they were pirates. This wasn't a game you won by being better. You won by playing dirty and being two steps ahead at every turn.

A knock came on his door.

Louis recognised it, light and fast enough to be Ernest, one of the powder monkeys.

He had time for the kid after finding him emaciated and with one hand in Louis' coat pocket in Devon.

Louis got out of his chair and opened the door. Immediately, sounds of hollering filled his ears. Ernest was looking up at him with his arms crossed. "Uh, you might want to come out 'ere, Sir."

Louis had always told him to call him Captain or Louis, but the kid insisted.

"What is it?" Louis asked lightly, coming through the door to follow Ernest out to the deck.

"Stowaway, and not the good kind," was all he said.

"Not the good kind?" Louis grinned, bemused. "What's the good kind of stowaway?"

Ernest looked up at him quite matter-of-factly. "The kind that could be put to work, Sir."

"Interesting. Let's see what we've got, then."

They came up to Louis' crew who were standing in a crowd around the base of the centre mast, hurling jokes and insults. There was only one way to silence this lot so, grinning slyly, Louis leant down and pulled out the dagger he kept in his boot. It was thin and curled delicately around the crossguards, with a single ruby at the base.

He winked at Ernest and threw it at the crowd.

Ernest almost giggled as Louis' hand deftly extended and sent the dagger flying. It flew above the heads of the crew and struck the wood of the mast with a thrumming quiver. The crowd went quiet and looked over to where Louis and Ernest were standing behind them. Then they parted so Louis could move between them to where his quartermaster, Liam, was standing with his arms crossed over the stowaway.