Chapter Ten: A Toast To Damnation
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Tall Tom almost kicked open the door to Captain Maria’s cabin. That’s not to say that he did something almost-but-not-quite-as-dramatic, or that he nudged open the door with his foot. It was his full intention to enter the room with a big kick to put emphasis on whatever he was going to say next. But the captain had heard Tom approaching, and going by the foot-shaped indents on the door, Tom had a flair for dramatic entrances. So, when Tom had approached the door, Maria Abbott had deftly walked up to it and opened it at just the right moment for Tall Tom’s tall kick to turn into a big step into the room, in front of a faintly smiling Maria. 

 

“Can I help you?” the captain said. As a response, Tom held up the arm he was holding in his hand, still attached to Ace, who at this point was being dragged along like a particularly animate ragdoll, hanging on for dear life. Tom, however, realized quickly that this would not be a sufficient answer and also held up the orange. Maria wasn’t impressed. “What’s going on, Tom?”

 

Finally, Tom walked into the room, sat Ace down in a chair and put the orange on the table. 

 

“There was an orange,” he said, gesturing animatedly. The orange sat on the table, bobbing gently side to side with the movements of the ship, and Ace stared at it transfixed. They had no idea what was going on, other than that the orange was probably important, but for reasons that went completely over their head. Luckily, Captain Maria seemed to miss the importance of the fruit as well.

 

“It looks like there might still be an orange, Tom. I think we have several crates full of them in the hold.” Maria’s expression shifted seamlessly between mild amusement and mild annoyance as he looked at the orange, at Ace, and finally back at Tom. “I could’ve been in the middle of something important. Why do you have to come in here with Ace to let me know you’ve just discovered the importance of fruit? Or are you telling me that Ace, a newly minted pirate, has stolen a whole orange? Do you want me to set an example? Force him to eat it, perhaps?”

 

Tom rolled his eyes, took the orange and tossed it to Maria, who caught it deftly. “This isn’t just an orange, Captain.”

 

“It’s a wet orange. I take it back, Tom, you’re a geni--”

 

Realization dawned like a quick but late sunset, and Maria’s eyes grew wide. 

 

“Where’d you get this, Tom?” He looked at Ace. “Did he…”

 

Tom made a movement with his head that was both a nod and a shake at the same time. “Yes, but no,” it said.

 

“I don’t know how they did, but they must have seen it, and actually climbed overboard on a rope to fish it out of the water, captain!” Tom said excitedly.

 

“It was just floating in the water?” Maria asked Ace, who had just been staring at the orange until it had become their entire world, transfixed, its round shape the only thing that made sense. They suddenly realized that something was asked of them, and they looked at the orange, then at Maria, and then realized that the truth was probably a bad idea. Besides, what was a bit of lying among friends?

 

“Yes,” Ace lied. The advantage that Ace had over other liars, of course, was Ace’s brevity. Most liars will try to make their lie more elaborate. The more intricate the lie, the liar’s brain seems to go, the more difficult it is to poke a significant hole into it. After all, you can always spin more lies to explain away the holes in your story. This is, of course, completely false. The best lie is two letters long and consists of an ‘n’ and an ‘o’. The second best one is “yes”. It’s very hard to argue with someone who stares at you deadpan and just answers your question. 

 

“Do you know what this means?” Maria asked Tom. Sometimes smart people ask stupid questions. This wasn’t the case here. Maria knew full well that Tom knew exactly what this meant. But there’s something viscerally satisfying about saying certain phrases. Phrases like “Where do you think you’re going?” or “No, I’m your father.” Much like those, “Do you know what this means,” a sentence usually reserved for wild-haired professors and panicked climate scientists, is a singularly powerful phrase that is a great deal of fun to say out loud, and it usually lets the speaker do even more talking. Under different circumstances, Tall Tom would indulge Captain Abbott’s clear setup for a big dramatic speech, but the circumstances weren’t different, they were exactly what they were, which was to say that there was a young person in the cabin with them who might not know exactly what was going on.

 

Tom raised his eyebrows in a specific expression which meant “Are you sure you want to discuss this with the kid?” 

 

Maria Abbott raised an eyebrow in response. His response, which Tom could clearly read off his face, was to say “I’m not sure. I think that’s up to you, honestly. You’ve had more experience with Ace than I have, and I trust your judgement.”

 

Tom scratched his chin in such a way as if to say “That’s very kind of you, captain, but I’m not sure if it’s a good idea. They clearly don’t know why the orange is significant. We can’t allow ourselves to forget that they haven’t been a part of our crew for very long, and revealing everything is an incredibly dangerous thing to do. We don’t, after all, want to reveal our plans to someone who might turn around and stab us in the back.”

 

The captain nodded, which here meant “Yes, you make a very good point. On the other hand, they risked their own life on the second day of employment for a fellow sailor. They’ve literally proved their trustworthiness to us already. I can’t imagine them not being by our side now. But, as I stated before, I do trust your judgment a lot, so I think it would, for me anyway, make me feel a lot better if you made a definitive statement on the subject, keeping in mind the fact that I did hire Ace for a reason and so far, my intuition and ability to hire people that fit the crew has served us very well. So, cards on the table, what do you think?”

 

Of course, Ace heard nor understood any of this. They hadn’t been around people long enough to read a lot of the more advanced facial expressions, and Tom and Maria could give a masterclass in nonverbal linguistics, if they could be bothered. They’d learned how to read one another over the past few years, after all. But all Ace could do was look back and forth between them, hoping that whatever telepathic link between them would soon be broken even if it was just so someone would say something. The tension was becoming a physical force, and Ace was already not great with the stress and anxiety of interpersonal dialogue. 

 

Finally, Tom seemed to make a decision, and turned to Ace. 

 

“Spaniards,” he said resolutely. Ace hoped, deeply, in their heart of hearts, that this wasn’t all there was to it. You must imagine the existential dread they felt in the moment that, after the fear of first being thrown overboard, then dragged to see the captain, then sat down and made to look at two grown men making elaborate faces at each other for what felt like minutes, the only explanation they might be getting was the word “Spaniards.” Thankfully, they got more.

 

“We can’t be more than a day or two behind them,” Maria added, and turned the fruit around in his hands. “It’s barely been touched. We have to be close behind them.”

 

“What.” Ace said, hoping that this uttered word would be close enough to a proper question to elicit something more concrete out of either of them; 

 

“We’re right behind them, again, but this time we know they’re ahead of us and we can catch up to them. We won’t let the bastards beat us to the punch.” Tom said. He seemed fired up. Part of it was the way he’d said “Spaniards”. It wasn’t often you heard someone say a word as if they were trying to spit it out just to get the taste of their mouth. But there was more to it than that. He was clearly both bothered and excited, and Ace couldn’t help but wonder what it was the Spaniards had done, or where they were going, or what they had in their possession, that had both Tom and the captain so eager to catch up to them. As far as Ace understood, neither Spaniards nor the English were big fans of pirates, which was why there was a boxful of flags by the main mast, just in case the Siren Song needed to be a different ship for a bit. 

 

“Beat us to what?” Ace asked. 

 

“This is it,” Tom’s expression said to Maria, who picked up on it immediately. “Tell them now?” 

 

Maria made a decision and shook his head. “No,” the head shake said, because that’s what those mean. Even someone as oblivious as Ace knew what a shake of the head meant. 

 

“We’ll catch up to the Spaniards first. Hopefully we can show you. If not, we’ll tell you everything then.”

 

Tom raised an eyebrow, which didn’t say anything except show that they both respected the captain’s decision, but that they were also curious why Maria Abbott had told only half of the truth. Tall Tom was very protective of his crew, and he clearly considered Ace one of them. That was to Ace’s favour, of course, because if he’d known why Ace had been hanging off a rope of the side of the ship, he might have reacted quite differently to the entire situation. Oranges, Ace knew, weren’t going to be the half of it. 

 

Ace couldn’t help but wonder what the orange had actually done. The piece of fruit had proven to be a diabolical instrument of confusion, and if it hadn’t saved their life, Ace would’ve wished Callie had never given it to them. Ace could relate to it, they realized. They, too, felt like a small fruit drifting along the waves, no real direction except for the one the merciless sea decided for them in that moment. Also like a piece of fruit, Ace was just trying to keep above water, because below them, shapes were circling in the darkness. 

 

There were both real sharks, metaphorical sharks, and something in between, out here. And they had no idea what anyone wanted from them, other than, perhaps, a singular orange, and they’d done that much. They’d thought, at first, that Callie had used them to send a sort of message to the ship, but that hadn’t been it. They were being used but they had no idea how. 

 

Of course, none of that occurred to Tom and Maria. The both of them were well versed in each other’s facial language, but Ace was a new addition to the crew, and wasn’t an open book to most people to begin with. So trying to figure out why Ace looked constipated wasn’t something either of them were equipped to deal with. 

 

Instead, the captain walked over to a small cabinet, retrieved a large, unmarked bottle, and three cups. He put them on the table, next to a map that was covered in lines and circular markings from where glasses had been put on it, and poured for the three of them. Tom took his cup. Ace tentatively took their own. Ace had never had alcohol before but they recognized its powerful, pungent aroma. They felt the smell itself burn a hole through their nasal cavity, and they barely managed to keep from coughing. 

 

“A toast,” said Captain Maria Abbott, and raised his glass.

 

“To the Siren Song,” Tom said and looked at Ace expectantly.

 

“To… being a pirate?” Ace hazarded with all the confidence they could muster. It wasn’t much. Still, Tall Tom grinned his grin.

 

“To preventative piracy,” Maria smiled enigmatically, and all three raised their glasses with varying degrees of success, and took a swig. Ace coughed. Rum wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. But it would help with what came next. 

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