PART I.
A mother's job is to teach her children with love.
In mother nature, this is in the guiding winds that blow one home.
She is in the snap of sails and the crack of wood,
She is in the sunrise and sunset, and the endless starry night.
In mother by birth, this is in the hands she holds her children with.
She is in the scolding smack, the loving embrace,
She is in the letters she writes for one's return.
But this land is run by a king
and no mother has a hand in the law.
The law does not teach and it does not love,
It only fears and blackens and hates.
And so, one must live outside in watery exile
And teach themselves
And hope that love will one day follow.
ONYX | PROLOGUE
If asked, he would have said that it was a game of chess. A series of moves, a back and forth in which his opponents had just as much a part as he. If he had blood on his hands, so too would they.
Though it wasn't a game of chess at all. It was a row of dominoes, lined up and waiting to fall. Each brick that fell was another act, another moment, that carried certain inevitability that led towards betrayal. And it was he who, without knowing it, had pushed the first brick over.
He hadn't known it until it was too late, until death had marred his deck and blood had spilled between his floorboards, that everything that had transpired had been entirely his fault. Had he not gotten caught up, tied up, in delicious dreams of thighs and lips and love, he would have noticed sooner. He would have been able to stop those dominoes from falling. He wouldn't have found himself caught off guard by a betrayal he knew was coming.
His boot clacked as he stepped down onto the dock, though the wood was somehow still wary below him, salt-softened and water-torn. Between each slat, water washed quietly. At this time of night, it was black and empty and surely full of sirens. Around him, lamps glowed orange. They hung from the other ships, along the docks and up ahead in the twinkling glimmers of Tortuga.
"Well, you were right, Captain," Liam mused, stepping down behind him. "The Spaniards are here."
"Don't call me that," Louis replied coolly, pulling down his captain's hat. "We're not pirates tonight."
"Sorry, Sir."
"Much better," he said lowly. "Besides, I'm always right."
Louis flashed Liam a wink and then pulled his collar high. It was a warm night, always was in the Carribean, but he never took a chance for his tattoos and scars to be seen on land. His jacket was leather and black and went down to his knees. Though he always wore black, it suited him. It was his colour, made him less seen - when he allowed eyes on him, it made him look sharp, deadly. Just like his ship, the Black Dagger, small but whip-fast.
There was always more power in being small and sharp. No one ever sees the pin needle knife in your pocket. It's what made Louis so deadly. He kept his face hidden and let his name do the talking.
He'd like to call himself the deadliest pirate alive, but there was one other person who was vying for the crown.
Captain Harry Styles.
And his brig, the Pearl Rose, was in this harbour next to the Spanish ship.
Which made things difficult.
Louis and Liam walked inland in silence, feet falling into step as the dock whined beneath them. Up ahead, a shadowy figure was sitting on a pile of crates at the edge of the dock. There was a lantern above them but their hat, leathery and worn, kept their face from view. In their hand, they held a pocket watch. It glinted in the light as though they were holding a flame.
Louis took another step and the timber below his foot groaned like it ached.
The figure looked up and Louis still could not see their face.
And then, as though they were expecting the two of them, they stood and started to approach.
"Are we sticking to the plan then, Sir?" Liam whispered as the figure drew closer.
"Of course," Louis whispered back. "Not like a Styles is going to keep us away from that ship. He doesn't even know what we look like."
"But he knows the name of our ship."
"Well," Louis grinned. "We know the name of his."
A lamp in the distance, dull and flickering, squeaked in the gentle ocean breeze; it was the same wind that touched just the wispy ends of Louis' fringe. The figure was close enough to see now. It was a man. His face, bulbous and blotchy, was half lit by a lamp to their right.
"Name, please," the man grumbled, pulling out a logbook.
"Jules," Louis said, coming to a stop. The man was a good head taller than him, and perhaps three times as wide.
"Jules-?" the man repeated as though the alias didn't fit in his mouth.
"Mercury," Louis replied breezily. The name rolled off his tongue easily, like he'd said it a thousand times.
He had.
"Jules Mercury?" the man questioned, lifting his chin. "That's a peculiar name."
"I'm a peculiar man."
Louis went to slip past him.
The man moved in front of him with the heavy beat of boot on wood. "Well, Mr. Mercury, you're still going to need to register your ship."
"It's not much of a ship," Louis said innocently, glancing back at the jolly-boat at the end of the dock. They'd left the Dagger two miles out, where these bloody dockmasters wouldn't recognise it.
"Well, it floats," the man replied flatly.
Louis sighed and looked indignantly up at the man. "What, no charity for a mere merchant trapped to the confines of a half-sunk dinghy?"
The man took half a step closer so he towered over Louis, and then he prodded Louis' jacket with his notebook. "No merchant would have the coin for this."
So this man knew the stitches of French finery. And here Louis was thinking they'd all be too thick, too lowly, to recognise a Bourguignon et Fils jacket.
He rolled his eyes and sighed again. He had no other option, really. Louis tipped his hat back, so that at least this man could see what it was to look in the eye of the fiercest pirate alive. He let him see the jagged scar below his ear, the circled S that always gave him away.
Then he dropped a pouch of coins onto the man's book and sauntered right past him.
Louis didn't bother looking back to see the shadowed look on the dockmaster's face. He already knew what it would have looked like, the hanging mouth and the furrowed brow. The shock of white that always pulsated through their skin.
It was the same look that Liam always gave him when Louis decided to lambast some bloke with his scar.
"You've got to stop doing that, Sir," Liam chided him quietly once they'd gotten far enough away, pushing his spectacles up his nose. "Soon you'll have posters of your face in every tavern."
"It's too dark for him to remember what my face looks like. He'll only know the scar. Everyone only sees the scar."
Liam twisted his lip and walked on in silence, because it was true and they both knew it. The S stood for sodomiser and it had been cut into him ten years earlier, when he was nothing more than a landsman in the Royal Navy, bloodied up and left for dead on the shores of Plymouth.
Still, Louis wore it defiantly. Proudly.
It was a mark that said he'd survived, and he'd lived a bigger life than any of these half-wit men who thought that Louis' proclivities meant he was somehow lesser.
His scar had lived on to become a thing of infamy, of nightmares, for naval ships.
The irony.
Louis and Liam walked calmly to the end of the dock, where it met the brush of palm trees and the smell of rum. Their eyes were set on the Spanish ship on the other side of the docks, but they could still feel the eyes of the dockmaster on their backs, so they jumped down onto the sand and in towards the glowing taverns.
Louis wondered if Captain Styles was in one of them, but maybe not. For a captain so ostentatious, so well known for his locks and tattoos and affinity for gold-laced jackets, Louis had never actually seen him in the flesh. Their paths had crossed many times, but Louis preferred to do deals in the dark and keep all his operations as stealthy as possible. Which meant that their paths crossing had only ever meant ships sharing harbours and the occasional cannon fire. There had been the one night off the coast of Bermuda where that cannon fire had almost been deadly, and it stuck in Louis' mind often, made Captain Styles stick in his mind too.
Louis mulled over the thought of Captain Styles as they walked. His boat was so close, was right there . Even in this light, Louis could make out the missing tail of the mermaid that headed his ship. Louis had been the one to take it off - the only thing he'd been able to take from Styles in Bermuda. It would be easy to sneak over there, jump aboard, take something else. Though Louis wasn't stupid; that would be a death trap. He could see men scouting the perimeter of the ship. He wouldn't make it past the first rung.
What he wouldn't do to just get one glance at the only pirate who'd come close to killing him.
Louis shook Styles from his mind; there was no need for him to think about rivalries and death wishes when he was here on a specific mission.
Rob the Spaniards.
They made their way along the path towards the taverns, so that the smell of alcohol became overwhelming and just a touch alluring, before skirting off the sandy track into the shadows of surrounding brush. They hid at the very corner of the first tavern, ducking below the window so that light didn't catch their faces. And so that rum wouldn't catch their tongues. It gave them a chance to look back and check that the dockmaster had moved on from the astonishment of meeting Captain Louis William Tomlinson. Clearly he had; he'd pocketed his coins and was sitting back amongst the crates from earlier.
"Perfect," Louis whispered to Liam as a man swung open the tavern door and lurched outside. "Now we just have to make it onto the ship unseen."
Liam whispered back, grin in his voice, "Easy."
They waited for the drunken man to stumble over to the bushes on the other side of the building, and then slipped back towards the docks.
Getting on the Spanish ship was easier than expected. Once they'd snuck past the Pearl Rose, there were no other men to be seen, no night guards nor drunks. In fact, the entire place seemed eerily deserted.
They snuck onto the ship completely uninterrupted and made their way to the door of the captain's quarters. There were no lamps glowing on the ship, which meant that the Spanish had let their guard down and let everyone go and get drunk inland. That, or whoever was meant to be keeping watch had fallen asleep during their shift and the lamps had been snuffed out by the ocean breeze.
Liam picked the lock with ease and they made their way inside.
They were good at making work in the dark, so they didn't bother with lighting a lamp or candle. All these ships were laid out the same anyway, so Louis was perfectly capable of making his way around on sound alone. Still, the moon was high and it gave them enough light to see the captain's room at the end of the hallway lit up in navies and greys.
Through the wide window at the end, the ocean glistened dark and flat.
"They'll be in there," Louis whispered as he made his way towards the room.
Once inside, Liam clicked the door shut behind them and they started looking around for the one thing they'd come for.
The box of maps.
It was a small box, about the size of a book, containing a collection of encrypted maps from Captain Swan's voyages. The Spaniards had come into possession of them when they'd taken his ship, and they'd clearly come to Tortuga to top up on supplies before venturing out to return all of Swan's riches to their king.
Louis let his hands wander over all of the Spanish captain's belongings as he searched. He was confident he had the time to let his fingers touch all the fineries and the trinkets that the room was cluttered with. In another life, Louis would have lived like this captain. He would have lived within the confines of the law, acting as a mercenary such as this, or perhaps as the naval captain his mother had thought he'd gone off to become.
This Spaniard captain had ivory from Africa and golden elephants from India, but they weren't what Louis was most interested in.
He preferred the books.
There was a massive collection along one of the walls, where leather-bound books of all shapes and sizes stood in neat rows. Louis pulled one out from the shelf and drew a finger over the golden letters across the front. It was one of the few that were in English and read A Playwright's Journey , and even though Louis didn't have much experience with playwrights, it sounded interesting. It sounded like something he hadn't read before.
So he pocketed it.
"You're not going to have room in your jacket if you nick anything else, Cap," Liam quipped.
Louis spun on the spot to look at Liam, who was hunched over the lock of the desk drawers below the wide window. He hadn't even looked up, couldn't even see that Louis had taken anything.
He simply knew him too well.
"Mind your pants," Louis tutted, coming over to stand over Liam picking the lock of the bottom drawer. Though he made no effort of returning the book.
Liam unlocked the drawer with a triumphant hum under his breath before pulling away his tools and sliding open the drawer. They both peeked inside curiously.
"Is that-?" Liam asked, unable to quite get the words out.
"I-" Louis started before scrunching up his nose. "Horrifying."
Louis unsheathed the dagger from his belt and reached into the drawer. He hooked it through the thing and pulled it out with as much enthusiasm as a man on the plank.
It was a silk corset, and at a guess it would have been a creamy colour - had it not been absolutely drenched in the dull brown of old blood. There were puncture marks all over it, as though the person adorning it had been stabbed with something small and precise like a letter opener.
It wasn't the blood that got to Louis, though, it was the clumps of hair matted into the grommets and the hardware that ran up the back of the corset. It was dark and long and had bits of mud or worse clinging to it.
"Perhaps it's his wife's" Liam mused, half appalled half amused.
"Perhaps it's a trophy," Louis said back, carefully placing it down to the ground.
"Either way," Liam chuckled, "it's the closest you've come to a woman."
Louis gave him a look. Then he rolled his eyes and grinned. "You've always got something to say, Payne."
"It's the only way to keep up, Cap," he grinned back.
"Well perhaps you ought to hush, because that right there is the box we're after."
Louis pointed his knife back into the drawer, where sitting inconspicuously was a glossy onyx-laid box. It had Swan's stamp chiselled out of it and filled with gold.
Louis swiped it and flung the corset back into the drawer, lest someone notice the room had been rummaged through. He stood and slid it into his other jacket pocket. It was heavy, and between the book and it, Louis was significantly weighed down. He didn't like that feeling, but by no means was he going to give up either item.
"Shall we go then?" Liam asked as he slid the drawer back shut and stood to meet Louis' eye.
Louis scanned the room thoughtfully and then softly said, "Grab that book on the bed."
Liam looked at him incredulously.
"What?" Louis implored. "I've no more space in my coat."
"It's not that, Cap," Liam replied, not making any move to go over. "We're not meant to be noticed, remember. You'd be insane to take a book that's actually being read."
Louis rolled his eyes. "Sometimes the reward of a good book outweighs the cost of being seen."
"Wow, that's poetry."
"Why thank you," Louis said airily as he made his own way to the unmade bed. He plucked the book up and came back to Liam. When he got there, looking up at Liam who was a gold piece too tall to be eye level, he shoved the thing into his chest. "But I'm no idiot, Payne. It's the captain's diary which, as you know, is a great place to look if you want to learn about your enemies."
He turned on his heel and slunk out the door.
Behind him came the faint sound of, "But Cap, can you even read Spanish?"
Louis paid Liam no mind. There was no one on this ship, so he had the time to grumble over the fact that his crew consistently called his ability to pirate into question. He would have been killed by now if he didn't know what he was doing. And of course he couldn't read Spanish, but that wasn't the point. The point was one of his crew members surely could, and he'd easily be able to use the book to devise a plan to take down more ships based on what this captain said about his friends.
He pushed the door out to the deck open and didn't wait for Liam to catch up. No doubt he'd grab something of his own before slipping back out into the night. Out on the deck, it was quieter than before. The sound of the taverns had died down and the moon shone brightly enough for him to see, in the distance, men laying face down in the streets. It didn't shine enough to tell whether they were drunk or slaughtered, but that wasn't for Louis to worry about. His crew were still packed away on his ship, waiting for him to return so they could sail to Port Royal.
He made his way down to the dock and back around to the side that his jolly-boat was parked at. Strangely, though, the dockmaster wasn't at his perch. And there was another, different, man walking towards Louis. He was tall and lean and had dark curls falling to his shoulders, but his hat kept the moon from giving away his features.
He seemed in a rush, flying past Louis so quickly that he brushed the edge of Louis' shoulder with the corner of his own leather jacket.
"Excuse-" Louis started, spinning to call out the man, but he was already out of earshot. He was running past Liam, who was ten paces back and looking just as mystified as Louis felt.
"Who do you suppose that was?" Liam asked once he'd caught up to Louis. "Thanks for deserting me, by the way."
Louis shrugged as he watched the stranger disappear into the night and softly said, "I don't know, but he's certainly got places to be." Then he turned to Liam and smiled. "Should I start questioning your ability to get out of places by yourself?"
"On a Spanish galleon? Perhaps," Liam begrudged as they started walking down to the jolly-boat together.
"There was no one on it."
"That you know of, Cap."
"True," Louis supposed. He was about to remind Liam that he did in fact manage in the end but they came upon a curious sight. It was the dockmaster. He wasn't on his crate, but his foot was sticking out from behind it. Louis went silent as they came up on him, close enough for the rest of his body to come into view.
He was face down.
Louis swapped glances with Liam, and then he gently kicked the man's right foot.
It wobbled lazily and then fell back into place.
"I don't suppose he's..." Liam murmured, voice trailing off as he watched Louis lean down and tug the man's shoulder back to see his face.
There was a clean slash across his neck. Blood was still freshly pouring out.
"Dead? Yeah," Louis breathed as he let the man's face drop back to the ground with a thud. "Neck's cut."
"I guess we know why that man was in such a rush."
"Mm," Louis hummed as he cut the man's money pouch from his belt. No point in a man dying if not to line Louis' purse. "Strange he didn't rob him, though."
"Between this and the bizarre emptiness of that ship, the whole night's been strange."
"Quite true, Payne, I suppose we ought to hedge our bets and get back to the Dagger before anything else goes amiss.