Four

Mary

Jack.

It was Jack.

He was taller than she remembered, slender of build, his face smooth shaven. His eyes were the color of the deep ocean, the exact same shade as Mary's, and his dark hair, which had always floated about his face, was long and loose but for a few small braids here and there. He'd tied an orange sash about the top of his head and lightly lined his eyes with kohl. And—for some odd reason—he'd decided to wear three belts at once, even though he only needed to hold up one pair of trousers.

But otherwise he was completely unchanged.

Except for the fact that he had legs . That was pretty different.

His mouth dropped open as she strode up to him.

"Littlest?" he breathed.

"Son of a Witch," she said again.

Because that was his Mer name. Jack's mother was literally the Sea Witch, aka the villain in every little mermaid story ever told. (Up to now, that is.) Aunt Witch did have a wicked sense of humor and her magic was quite powerful, but she'd never, to Mary's knowledge anyway, done anything verifiably evil. In fact, when Mary had been so desperate to be with Charles (bleh, Charles!) that she would have done anything, sacrificed everything, only Aunt Witch and Jack had truly been willing to help her.

The last time Mary and Jack had been together was when she'd chugged down his mother's potion to make her human, and then realized too late that humans couldn't breathe under the water and that she was far, far below the surface. (Oops.) Jack had been the one to get her Above in time. He'd gotten her safely to land. And then she'd never seen him again.

"What are you doing here?" she asked hoarsely.

He shook his head incredulously. "I could ask you the same question!"

They stood in silence for a long moment, their mouths opening and closing like two addled codfish, and then all at once, they threw their arms around each other and held tight.

"I can't believe it," Jack gasped against Mary's shoulder. "All this time, you were here, right above everyone's noses. Hey, you got an earring! Your father would be so mad!"

Mary pulled back abruptly. "Did my father send you?" The thought unsettled her. Even though her father been right about everything. About Charles, anyway. (She hadn't thought about Charles in a long time. She had to stop thinking about him. And she was going to do it starting... now.)

"No, no, your father thinks you're foam," Jack said. "There was a funeral and everything," he added pointedly. "We all mourned for you."

Mary bit her lip. "Oh. I'm—I'm sorry. I should have... I just couldn't..."

Jack drew back from her. "You couldn't face your family and the way everyone would look at you like you were just a silly little minnow who'd only been saved from a broken heart because you were a princess. I understand," he said. Because of course he did. They'd been the best of friends back in Underwhere, which meant he knew all about her complicated feelings about their family. Not to mention, he'd been the only Mer who was as fascinated by humans as she was. They'd entertained themselves for hours talking about what it must be like to live in the world Above. To walk on legs. To run. To feel air and sun on your face and not just murky water. To use your mouth to talk and sing and laugh and burp and kiss. It had all sounded so wonderful, even if it had just been pretend.

But then it had been real. For Mary, anyway.

She'd left Jack behind.

"I'm sorry," she said again. She couldn't imagine how she'd have felt if their positions had been reversed. "It's so good to see you, Jack, truly," she said. "I forgot how much I—"

Missed you , she'd been about to say. But that sounded like she hadn't missed him. She had . She'd simply... put it aside so she didn't have to feel it. Just like she'd put the rest of her old life aside.

Jack shrugged. "I won't say I forgive you for swimming off and forgetting all about me the moment you spotted a pretty human. But I am glad to find you all in one piece."

"Please don't tell anyone, though," Mary said urgently. The last thing she needed was for her father to find her. "Promise me."

"I promise!" he said quickly. "No one will hear it from me. But how did you manage to survive a broken heart?"

"It's a long story," she said. "And what about you? How are you even up here? Another potion of your mother's?"

"No, I'm—" Then, all at once, he was speaking in her head—in Merish. "I don't need a potion. All that's required to be human is for me to dry myself."

"Dry yourself," she repeated, momentarily distracted by how strange and wonderful it was to speak her first language again, to have words jump so neatly between two people. "Um, what?"

He grinned. "It turns out, I'm half human."

Her mouth dropped open again. (It was doing that a lot today.)

He laughed. "I know, right? I'm still shocked myself, and I found out six months ago. I'd just come back from the market, and I was a little upset because someone—okay, I won't lie, it was Karen; she really had it out for me right after you left—called me a landlubber again, and then out of the deep blue sea my mother gave me a handful of potions, said that I didn't belong in Underwhere anymore, and told me a wonderful little story about how she once saved a human man from drowning—sound familiar?—and then she brought said man to a nearby deserted island, where the two of them passed a lovely few weeks together."

Interesting. Perhaps the fact that Aunt Witch had (apparently) fallen for a human was the reason why she'd been so quick to help Mary. But Mary had never heard of such a thing before. She'd always assumed she'd been the only one. The fact that the Sea Witch had not only fallen for a human but spent a few weeks with him was sort of blowing Mary's mind.

"No one noticed she was missing?" Mary asked.

Jack shrugged. "Those were freer times back then, I guess. And during those days with him they sometimes, you know, seahorsed around, and then nine months later, I was born."

"I didn't know that was even possible," Mary said.

"Well, apparently it is, because here I am. I can be in either form. When I'm wet, I have a tail. And when I'm fully dry..."

"You have legs!"

"I have legs. Tell me these aren't the best-looking legs you've ever seen in your life." He stretched a leg out for her to examine his calf muscle. "I find that I have a fine ass as well, and changes to some other body parts that my mother really should have warned me about."

"Oh, Jack," Mary said. "It's like you always wanted."

"We both got what we wanted," he pointed out.

Well, sort of. Mary wasn't exactly where she'd thought she'd be the last time she'd seen Jack, but this life suited her, she found. She had a job. She had a community. She had—

"Is everything quite well here?" Tobias said, coming up beside Mary.

Oh, ship. Mary had been so caught up speaking with Jack in Merish that she'd forgotten that—to anyone else—it would look like they'd spent the last five minutes silently staring into each other's eyes.

"Um, yes, everything's fine," Mary said. "I just need to speak with this man." There was still so much she wanted to know. "How long until the meeting?" she asked Tobias.

He checked his pocket watch. "Uh, ten minutes, assuming he's on time."

"That's long enough. Guard our table." With no other explanation (because she couldn't currently think of an explanation) Mary grabbed Jack's arm and dragged him bodily to the storage room. She shut the door behind them, and when her eyes adjusted—it was quite dark in there, with only a few splinters of light making it through a scattering of bullet holes in the door—she found that the room was filled with stacked casks of rum.

"Now we can talk," she said. "But we have to make it fast."

"All right, so tell me everything," he said. "How long have you been in Nassau?"

"A year!" she said cheerily. "I got picked up by a pirate ship, and I've been working my way up the ranks since then. I'm the quartermaster on the Ranger now."

"How wonderful! Bonn will be most jealous when she meets you."

"Bonn?"

Jack smiled brightly. "My true love. She's just out there, you know."

Mary frowned. "Out there? This isn't really the best place for a woman."

"You don't say." Jack scoffed good-naturedly, roughing up her hair like when they were minnows. "Bonn has a brilliant plan to become a lady pirate. That's why we're here."

Oh, this was going to be difficult to explain to Jack. Things were different in Underwhere. Gender roles weren't so sharply divided. "You see, up here, in this place, women—"

"Aren't allowed to be pirates," Jack finished for her. "Yes, I know. The no-women-pirates rule makes no sense, if you ask me. But as I said, she has a plan." He paused. "I'm a bit nervous about it, truth be told, but she's the love of my life, so what choice do I have? I have to go along with it."

Mary felt her teeth come together at the words love of my life . If her experience in the human world had taught her anything, it was that love—romantic love, anyway—was dangerous. She only hoped that, when Jack learned this, it wouldn't actually break his heart.

"Can't she just disguise herself?" Mary asked after a moment.

"Oh, she's tried," Jack said. "But her bosoms cannot be contained. She's always found out eventually."

Well, that was the extent of Mary's advice.

"But perhaps our luck is changing now," Jack said. "Can you help us get on a ship? I've been doing my best to keep us in room and board, but we've recently hit a snag where we're going to need more in the way of capital."

"Uh," said Mary, "like how much?"

"Oh, not so much. Just a thousand pieces of eight."

"A thousand pieces of eight!"

Jack waved his hand, like this wasn't any big deal. "I only need about eight hundred and fifty more. And I'll get it eventually, I'm sure, but I can't come up with that kind of money as quickly as I'd like."

"So you're... not a pirate?" Mary asked. "You look like a pirate."

"Indeed? Thank you, thank you very much," he said, his chest puffing out a bit. "But no, unfortunately, I'm not a pirate yet. I acquire items using another method and sell them to buyers willing to pay."

"What other method?" Mary prompted.

"Shipwrecks," he admitted. "You'd be surprised by the number of ships at the bottom of the harbor. All around the island."

Ah. So he turned into a Mer, swam down, and salvaged shipwrecks. That was clever.

"That seems risky," she said.

"No riskier than, say, you pretending to be a boy on a pirate ship ," he shot back.

Ouch. But that was fair. "Speaking of all that," she said, "I go by Mark here. Not Mary. No one knows that I'm a woman except Tobias—"

A faint creaking from somewhere deeper in the storeroom stopped them. There was a light scraping, accompanied by a wheezing cough.

Mary and Jack froze, staring at each other in silent panic.

"Do you think," Mary asked in Merish, "there's someone in here with us?"

"Possibly?" Jack tilted his head, listening.

But the sound didn't come again. In fact, Mary reasoned, it could have come from the other room. There was so much going on.

Even so, she peered through the gloom. Her night vision had always been quite good compared to anyone else's—probably because of growing up Mer—but the storeroom was almost completely dark. She saw only the vague outlines of casks and an old blanket someone had tossed in there.

Perhaps she'd imagined the noise had come from inside the storeroom.

Mary crossed her arms. "Anyway. Why, pray tell, are you in need of a thousand pieces of eight?"

"So I can get married," Jack said. "It's complicated, but that's the gist of it."

"Be careful with that," Mary said. "Don't... don't let your heart get broken."

"We'll be fine," Jack said. "She's the one I'm meant to be with, I'm sure of it. But speaking of true love, what does that mean, I wonder, that your heart didn't break? Perhaps that prince fellow wasn't your true love after all? Or are you fully hu—"

"No, my heart obviously didn't break," Mary interrupted. "And to be clear, Charles was not a real prince, that was all a long time ago, and I don't even think about him anymore."

She tried so hard not to think about Charles. It was getting easier with time. But sometimes the hurt and humiliation of it all washed over her anew, and she felt like she was right back there, watching him declare his love to someone else.

Jack snorted. "If you say so. But I get it. I've been in love a few times since I came Above."

"Since six months ago?"

"I can't help it!" Jack said helplessly. "I simply adore all the different people I come across. Tall ones. Short ones. Buxom ones. Muscly ones. I love them all, and they love me."

"Ah, what a hard life you lead," Mary said wryly.

Just then, the door was flung open, and a small figure stood framed by the brighter light in the main room. Her shadow stretched across the floor and over the casks. Her eyes were narrowed. Her fists were curled.

"What is going on in here?" she asked hotly.

"My love!" Jack cried. "We were just discussing you."

Bonn—because this could only be Bonn—reached in and grabbed Jack by the arm and yanked him back into the main room. On his way, Jack grabbed Mary's arm, dragging her along with him.

The storeroom door slammed shut behind them. But we're going to stay here in the storeroom for a few minutes more, dear reader, because there had been someone in the room with Mary and Jack—a man, slumped behind the barrels—and once they were gone, this man opened his eyes.

It was Captain Vane, who was feeling pretty enlightened about many things he had not previously known, particularly that his own quartermaster was secretly a woman—and that somewhere out there, just in the other room, was yet another woman with designs on becoming a pirate.

"Good Lord," he breathed into the darkness of the storeroom. "They're everywhere!"

(Now wait just a minute, you might be saying to yourself, dear reader, and we wouldn't blame you. How is Captain Vane here? The last we saw him he was passed out in the captain's cabin of the Ranger , and he said—he said!—that he was going to stay aboard the ship and not go to the pirate meeting, because he didn't want to run into Bess, aka his ex–lady love. And yes. That's true. But then, after drinking some more, he decided that he really must see his Bess—he couldn't bear not to see her, in fact, so while Mary and Tobias were making their way to their little shack and preparing for the meeting, Captain Vane had cleaned himself up a bit and stumbled through the town to the brothel that Bess managed. But there he'd been turned away. He hadn't even been given the chance to speak to her. After that, Vane thought he could use a drink, and he decided also that he wanted to be present for this all-important meeting of the pirate captains after all. He was the captain of the Ranger . Not Mr. Read. So Vane had stumbled his way to the Scurvy Dog. But when he got there, the meeting hadn't started yet, so he'd had a few more drinks. Then he thought a nap sounded nice, so he'd found himself a cozy place in the storeroom to catch a few z's, and he'd been sleeping there soundly until he'd been awakened by the arrival of Mary and Jack.

So now he was very much awake, and his thoughts were whirling for more reasons than simply the excess rum. His quartermaster—Mark Read!—was a woman! A traitor! She'd basically been making a fool of him this whole time! Like Bess! Like all women! GAR!

But we've had quite enough of Vane's misogyny for now, so we're going to return the story to Mary and Jack.)

Back in the main room of the pub, Mary found herself face-to-freckled-face with a very irate Irishwoman, who looked like she was an eyelash away from clocking Mary right in the kisser. (That is indeed what Bonn was considering. We're kind of amazed she hadn't done it already.)

And that, dear reader, is the moment when the soon-to-be-infamous Mary Read met the already-a-little-infamous Anne Bonny.

"And who's this now?" Bonn wanted to know, looking Mary up and down. "He's a bonny chap, sure enough." But the way she said the word chap held a certain sharpness that made Mary's breath catch.

Jack attempted an introduction. "Um, Mark, allow me to introduce the love of my life, my bonny lass, the glorious Anne Bonny."

Mary might not have noticed at first glance, because the girl was wearing baggy clothes that obscured her figure, a large somewhat misshapen wool cap, and dirt on her face, but Mary had the impression that under all of that, Bonn was the sort of beauty who could make Lavinia jealous. Where Mary could be described as a box (by some people), Anne Bonny was an hourglass—and a fierce one at that.

"Mark who, exactly, if that is your real name?" Anne pressed, staring at where Jack had ruffled Mary's hair earlier. "And just what were you doing in the closet with my—my Jack?"

"Oh, darling," Jack said sweetly. "Are you jealous? How touching."

"Yes, what were you two doing in the closet?"

Mary closed her eyes. She'd know Tobias's voice anywhere. And when she opened her eyes he was standing in front of her, his expression a mix of concern and hurt—oh bollocks, she'd hurt him. It'd been rude and thoughtless for her to just grab Jack and run off like that, with no explanation. She was a fool.

"The meeting's about to start," he pointed out before she could voice her apology. "Would you and your friends like to sit?"

"Yes," she said. "Let's all sit down."

They retreated to their table.

Anne was still staring at Mary dubiously.

"I'm Mark Read," Mary said quickly. Then, because it seemed like a good way to restore the peace, she added, "I'm the quartermaster of the Ranger ."

Anne's eyes widened. "Are you now?" She glanced back and forth between Mary and Jack. "Well, that is an interesting development."

"Mark here is my cousin," Jack explained, "who I thought dead, but only now discovered alive and well."

"Your cousin, you say?"

"Your cousin!" Tobias said, his frown disappearing. Suddenly, his voice held an eager, curious note. "What a fortuitous meeting!" He held out his hand. "I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, sir. I'm Tobias."

Jack took the offered hand gently and held it in his own. "Jack Rackham, at your service."

He'd chosen Jack when they were kids, at the same time as Mary had chosen Mary. He'd liked this one story they'd read about a boy and a beanstalk. It was hard to say where he'd gotten Rackham, though.

"However," Jack went on, still holding on to Tobias's hand, "I prefer for people to call me Calico Jack." With his free hand, he gestured down at his shirt, which was, sure enough, made of blue calico. "I find calico to be a much better fabric for life here—it's light and breathable and comes in so many fashionable designs. I don't know why other people feel they have to go with heavy velvets and wools or those rough and boring linens." He motioned to Mary's shirt and shook his head disappointedly. "I think the calico thing is going to catch on eventually. So call me Calico Jack."

"O-kay," Mary said, prying Jack's hand off Tobias's. "Calico Jack is fine, I guess."

Anne took the opportunity to grab Jack's hand, now that it was free. "So, uh, Mark ," she said.

Oh crap. She definitely knew. "Yes?"

"Is Tobias your... paramour?" Anne asked.

"No!" Mary and Tobias said at the same time.

"We're not like that," Tobias insisted. "We're friends."

"He's my best mate," Mary agreed.

Tobias turned to her. "I am?"

The way he said it—that soft tone, the tilt of his smile, the faint surprise—made Mary's heart flutter a little more urgently. She shoved the feeling aside. "Of course," she said as lightly as she could manage, "and I hope you'd count me as your best mate as well. Considering I saved your life at least twice today."

"I do!" he said. "And I saved your life three times, I should point out."

"My life was not in danger from that banana peel," Mary insisted.

"Banana peel?" Jack arched an eyebrow at her. "Is that what they're calling it now?"

Her face flamed. "No! We're friends! That's all, I swear."

"Right." Anne turned her attention to Tobias. "So are you a pirate as well?"

He sighed. "Yes. Although some days I question the decision."

"Well, it's not like you really had a choice," Mary said. She clapped Tobias on the back as he scowled. "Toby's father is none other than Captain Blackbeard himself."

"Gawl!" Anne gazed at Tobias with newfound respect in her eyes. " Yer the son of Blackbeard! Only the most famous pirate in the blooming world! The Pirate King!"

"Pirates don't have kings," insisted Tobias, and Mary knew this was a seamount (aka an underwater hill) he would die on. "We don't need a monarchy. It's ridiculous to call him the Pirate King."

Jack cocked his head to the side. "If your father's the Pirate King, does that make you the Pirate Prince?" he asked.

"No," protested Tobias. "Absolutely not."

"Although some people do call him that," added Mary. "And some people call him..."

"Don't do it," warned Tobias.

"Baaaaabybeard." Mary brought her hand up to pat Tobias's basically-smooth-except-for-peach-fuzz-and-a-few-errant-whiskers cheek.

"Stop," Tobias said with a groan. "You delight in torturing me."

"I do," she admitted, her hand still on his face.

"You do?" Jack asked, looking back and forth between them.

"Aye, I see the delight," Anne said. "Maybe they should go into the closet together."

Mary quickly dropped her hand.

"Speaking of fathers," Jack said, clearing his throat, "do either of you know Ted?"

"Who?" Mary and Tobias asked at the same time.

"Ted," he said again. "It turns out that Ted is my long-lost father. All my mother was able to tell me was that his name was Ted, he has dark hair, and that he's a sailor of some sort. But there are a lot more people named Ted here than I expected. So far I've encountered a Ted Danson, a Teddy Roosevelt, and a Ted Bundy, but none of those fellows were a good match for my father."

"I'm sorry," Mary said, "I don't know anyone by the name of Ted. What about you?" She looked at Tobias.

"Sorry," Tobias said. "I know a couple of guys named Bill and Ted, but neither of them is a sailor."

"Oh well," Jack said. "I had to ask."

"When is this blooming meeting going to start?" Anne asked, drumming her fingers on the table. She glanced around. "There's Captain Crunch, and Captain Hornigold, and Captain Obvious. Ooh, and over there's Captain Ahab. And behind him, Captain Morgan."

Wow. The woman really knew her pirate captains.

"And is that Captain Vane?" Anne added. "Ach, but he looks like he's been hitting the bottle hard."

Mary and Tobias swiveled around to look. And yes, sure enough, there was Captain Vane. His hat was on backward and he was sloshing rum onto the floor, but it was him.

"What's he doing here?" Mary hissed. "I thought you said he was staying on the ship."

"He was!" Tobias insisted. "I don't know. I guess he changed his mind."

Mary sighed. If she'd come to learn anything about Vane since she'd been aboard the Ranger , it was that he was unpredictable.

Just then, as if to prove her point, Vane spotted her.

"Why is he smiling that creepy smile?" Tobias asked out of the side of his mouth.

"No idea," she said out of the side of hers, but Vane's gaze was making the back of her neck prickle.

Then the captain turned away and yelled for more rum.

"Does this mean we can go?" Tobias said hopefully.

"Not a chance."

"You know who's not here, though? Captain Blackbeard." Anne looked at Tobias like it was his fault somehow. "Where's your pa? Isn't he the one calling this meeting?"

"He's often late," Tobias sighed. "He likes to make an entrance."

As if on cue, Mary became aware of a noise growing in the street, raised voices and bells ringing.

Anne jumped to her feet and started to roll up her sleeves. "This is it," she said. "Wish me luck."

"Uh, darling," Jack said. "Perhaps, since there's been this new development, we can try an alternate plan."

She scowled. "You mean like a plan B?"

"What's plan A?" Mary wanted to know.

"Uh, Bonn here is going to challenge Blackbeard's quartermaster, Caesar, to a duel, beat him—without harming him, of course—and then ask Blackbeard to make her a member of his crew, after which, she will reveal the truth about her, uh, sex."

"Her what now?" Tobias asked.

"Aw, Jack, don't go blabbing," Anne said.

"Oh, dear God." Mary had never heard a worse plan in her life.

"I've never heard a worse plan in my life," Tobias said. He looked really and truly alarmed.

"What, you think I can't handle it?" Anne cocked her head at Tobias. "Do you want to go, Babybeard?"

"Don't call me that," Tobias said. "And no. But you shouldn't fight Caesar. He's a good man. It would make him feel bad to have to kill you."

"I guess we'll find out," said Anne.

Just then the noise from outside spilled inside as the door of the Scurvy Dog burst open and a flood of pirates entered, filling the room, all speaking and shouting at once.

All four of them—Mary, Tobias, Anne, and Jack—tensed. Especially, Mary noted, Tobias.

But none of these men was Blackbeard. Or Caesar. Or anyone else from the Queen Anne's Revenge .

"What's going on?" asked Mary, but her voice was drowned by the hubbub.

Something , she thought with a sinking feeling. Something was wrong.

She climbed up to stand on the table, put a hand to her mouth, and gave a sharp whistle. The men in the bar quieted and turned to look at her.

"What has happened?" she asked.

"It's Captain Blackbeard!" cried a big ruffian near the front of the crowd.

"Yes, and what about him?"

"Jonathan Barnet got him. That pirate-hunting bilge rat! He killed Blackbeard." There were actual tears in the man's eyes. "He's gone to the great beyond."

"Blast!" burst out Anne. "Of all the rotten luck!"

There was a clatter next to Mary—the sound of Tobias dropping into his chair. His face had gone ashen. He looked like someone had punched him in the gut. "Toby," Mary said.

Tobias's mouth opened like he might say something. But nothing came out.

"The Pirate King is dead!" someone cried. Then all the assembled men in the room slowly turned and bowed to Tobias. "Long live the Pirate King!"