The king and his men stole the queen from her bed . . .
Who: A nocorsetsplease and a seventeensir and anyone aboard the Britannia.
What: Elizabeth wakes up aboard a ship that isn't hers. (INTRO LOG~)
When: Backdated to November 8th
Where: Aboard the Britannia.
Summary: That the ship isn't hers seems to be the least of her worries. When wild assumptions regarding the ship's own gallant captain lead to misunderstandings, ( Read more... )
What: Elizabeth wakes up aboard a ship that isn't hers. (INTRO LOG~)
When: Backdated to November 8th
Where: Aboard the Britannia.
Summary: That the ship isn't hers seems to be the least of her worries. When wild assumptions regarding the ship's own gallant captain lead to misunderstandings, ( Read more... )
The call is not unfriendly, but it is meant to command attention. The dress and manner of her arrival bear all the hallmarks of a New Feather. He himself woke on a strange boat without a soul but that strange book to help him. ...That she was bellowing orders and calling for a report, he noted, but there were other issues to be dealt with first. She might well be from some strange world, as others were, where women sailed and commanded vessels.
"You are on board Britannia." He had almost said 'His Majesty's Ship' but had, in fact, stopped himself. This ship was not a part of the British Royal Navy. It belonged to no king. Merely to a captain and a lieutenant. Though his uniform might have added the words for him. "I am her captain, Horatio Hornblower."
The first order of business would be to see her properly dressed, he decided. He could send her back into his cabin, from where she had emerged. Thank God, he considered, he was an early riser and had quit it several hours ago. His sea chest would be in there, along with the clothes Jilly had borrowed herself not terribly long ago. They were not truly suitable for a woman, but it would be better than a simple shift.
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For a moment, all she could manage was a look of haughty surprise. "I am Captain Swann, pirate lord of the South China Seas and king of the Brethren Court, amongst whom I sail and command for--"
Her speech halted as her eyes fell away from him and along the ship, taking in her surroundings. This ship was not out at sea, but moored. The chill of the air began to register as her skin prickled with cold and slow coursing fear. His uniform was different from that which she knew, and yet there was no doubt in her mind that it was that of an officer in an armed force.
As her eyes traced the rigging of the vessel, hoping to take away what hands she had been carelessly placed, she locked on the flag.
British Royal Navy.
Do not go to Shipwreck Cove. Beckett knows of the meeting of the Brethren. I fear may be a traitor among them.
Had she been betrayed? How had she not noticed? Who had done this?
Even more pertinent, how could she have acted so rashly, announced all her piratical titles to a captain of His Majesty's Royal Navy?
"--oh God."
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And this captain pirate lord "king"... was a woman.
On his ship.
Horatio braced himself, never quitting his position on the quarterdeck.
His voice is more strained than he likes, his posture more tense. "You are in Luceti now, Miss Swann."
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Noticing that they were bare caused her too look down. Last she recalled, she had been completely clothed in layers of cloth from the orient, further guarded by leather armour with a jian and a cutlass for each hip. Yet the view that graced her seemed utterly bare. She was in no more than a slip! Her jaw dropped. What was she doing, dressed so indecently?
Her gaze flickered back and forth from her own body to that of the tense naval captain.
"I take it we're not in the Caribbean." Her voice was pithy. Her mind reeled as she retraced her steps.
Straight out of bed, out of the captain's cabin and onto the deck--
Out of the captain's bed, onto the deck.
Out of the captain's bed...
She narrowed her eyes and still took another step back away from him. Dear God in heaven, had she truly been abandoned, left to this?
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"We are far from it, I am afraid to say. And," judging by her voice, this would be another question, "far from England." Far from his beloved Navy, far from any place where the flag that flew from Britannia's mainmast might have had true importance, far from where he would have needed the guns absent on the deck, far from the familiar. "It is... an inconvenience to us all." Thinking, he modified that last remark. "Or, at least, to most of us. Those with sense. Or something to go back to."
He turns his head only briefly to look at her. He thinks of offering her the spare clothes that are in his cabin. A man's clothes, but they might be warmer than that shift. Yet that might presume too much. Perhaps he would do best to wait. Offer them when she asked for something more to wear or indicated that she felt the chill in the air. It seemed unkind to say anything about her state of dress yet improper to call attention to it, and he had not decided which he would rather risk being thought of as.
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"In having a pirate as your prisoner, and having such a distance to sail, you find it inconvenient that the liberties you have taken with your prize must cease, do you?"
Her hands wrapped tightly around her body as her look remained as heated and accusing as her words.
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"I have no prisoner, madam. You did not come aboard this ship by my own doing." Though his statement did not make it difficult to take him as toying with her, avoiding any admission of his own guilt, for his words could be true but not a restatement to a lack of guilt had someone else brought her aboard. "There are no prizes to be found here."
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Not a prisoner! So by being made the Captain's strumpet she had acquired privileges! The thought made her feel utterly sick. How dare he be so dismissive of her, playing coy, or so it seemed.
"You are a cruel man, Captain Hornblower."
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The nature of her implications sunk in, and his eyes widened. He forgot not only how to breathe but also forgot that he needed to do such a thing. Had he been more aware of her now, more conscious of everything all about him, he might have objected to being called cruel, particularly in that tone.
"I would advise you, Madam," he drew himself up even more (if such a thing were possible) and his shoulders drew back further, "to regard your words more carefully. You make an accusation, Madam, that no man would take lightly."
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Fear was subsiding for anger. She saw how his eyes widened, how he straightened himself. Clearly this was not a man of guilty feelings, but guilty by what he had done. Her assumptions seemed proven by the way he spoke, the tone he used, as if cautioning her against bringing his actions to any light or attention.
She never was one to bite her tongue or bide time. Her jaw tightened and she lifted her head, taking a stance far more fitting of the rank she had acquired at the Brethren Court just days before. Where she had previously taken steps back, she took strides toward the quarterdeck upon which he stood.
"What pains would I find, Captain, if I should choose not to?"
She clung her folded arms together that they might not shake.
"Do you really take a pirate of the fairer sex to be so docile as to allow you what you please, simply because she is fair? I make my accusation with all my words behind it, Captain."
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"Miss. You've not been harmed. Look round you and you'll see this ship isn't even crewed. Look behind you and you'll find a very lovely pair of wings that'll hopefully prove you're in another world entirely. People come and go here, and no one controls when or where they turn up." A slight change of tone. "Moreover, Captain Hornblower is a man of good heart who doesn't have the slightest idea what to do with a woman, thus rendering your accusations utterly impossible."
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He sounded both relieved and ever so faintly annoyed at the same time. To hear Miss Swann's accusations countered was good, certainly, but he couldn't help but think that perhaps Archie went a little too far in that reply. Still, he knew better than to speak on that point just now.
His eyes went back to the woman, back still straight and body tense at being so spoken to. Yet there was nothing he could do. He could not defend himself. She would no doubt find a way to twist his words. He had no proof, save the evidence Archie had offered as to her presence in a world not her own. And he could not shout her down or threaten her without seeming to prove her right.
So he stood on his quarterdeck and watched.
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A frightened woman ripped away from what she had known to be.
She stared down the Lieutenant with all the confidence she could muster, a faint challenge residually clinging to the emotions displayed by her eyes. Yet an angled chin can only hold so much pride. Nervously, she looked over her shoulder and caught sight of exactly what outlandish attachment the Lieutenant spoke of.
Wings.
Feathery, off-white wings.
"Dear God in heaven."
This couldn't be the entrance to such a place. No, she'd long ago forsaken her admittance through pearly gates in a single fateful moment aboard a blacker pearl.
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If there was a soul who could, it was she that understood that death was not so dull. It was a rather clever thing, dangerously so, that enjoyed dangling devilish things over men that saw them not alive but something else entirely.
If there was a woman who could accept the unnatural and know it to be predictably unpredictable as such, it was she who had come to know the barbaric and thornier veins of the world in her travels.
If there was a sailor who could know that entire worlds existed, it was she who saw the locker of Davy Jones, her transport a rare green flash of light on the horizon. Places were terribly odd, thin veils separating the nearly inaccessible, and she knew them to be.
One breath, then another, less quivering. She gripped her shoulders, feeling the chill and finally noting things she had purposely pushed from her mind previously. The pain in her back, the feel of the sheath over her form clearly not a slip she would have donned, the absence of deckhands and the furled sails. The quiet of the shore, far gentler than the lady ocean she knew.
A less accusing question, and more searching, her voice softer and gentler.
"Was I brought here by either of you...sirs?"
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