FIC for amor_remanet, pt.2
Brag It Out with a Card of Ten
Pt. 2 of 2
Recipient: amor_remanet
Author: vulgarweed
Fandom: Good Omens
for summary, ratings, warnings, etc. see Part 1.)
One Week After This, and Still Quite Far, Yet Not Quite As Far
Rum had its advantages, Wensleydale thought. Especially when other men drank too much of it.
The relative calm onboard the Megiddo was marked only by honking, bearish snores, the flapping of the sails and creaking of the hemp and disconsolate squeaking of the fiddler, which gave little cover. Still the stolen pilot, now allowed a little more run of the ship and a little less flogging, risked his status by padding carefully down to the glum deck where the half-forgotten prisoner was held.
When the bookseller reached out to accept Wensleydale’s gift of pilfered rum and turtle soup, his wrists passed through his iron chains as if they’d only been made of thoughts, and Wensleydale blinked. Twice. Mr. Fell should have been bearing a good deal more of his captivity on his face and in his clothing-in grime and sleeplessness at least-and yet he was completely unchanged.
“Oh dear,” was all he said. “Thank you, lad.” There was no mistaking his glumness, though. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance they might have saved some of the…that there’d be anything to read on this barbarous barge?”
Wensleydale had only been hoping for some cheering accounts of London, but this could turn out to be more interesting. “Well…have you any knowledge of the heavens?”
Mr. Fell choked slightly on the soup. “As it happens, I do. Though it has been a while.”
With a flourish, Wensleydale produced some star charts from his depressingly ragged waistcoat. “Well, you see,” he lowered his voice. “This isn’t really my ship, you see. I’m not exactly here of my own will. In fact, you and I are pretty much in the same boat…”
“Yes, we are,” said the bookseller crisply.
“Figuratively speaking. As well as literally. I want to find my own ship.”
“But you are a, er, privateer…?”
“Pirate, Mr. Fell. Aye, that I am. I’m afraid so. That I did walk into with my eyes wide open.”
“It’s not exactly the healthiest of lifestyles….”
“I know that, sir. But all my oldest friends, even as children we played at it, and, well…”
“Hanging around with the wrong people,” said Mr. Fell with a faraway look in his eyes. “I know someone who, well, never mind-"
“But I don’t think they’re the wrong people at all,” Wensleydale said firmly. “This lot,” he waved his hand dismissively all around him. “They’re the wrong ones.”
“That much is certainly clear to me,” said Fell, with something like the most genteel of sneers. “Shall I tell you something? It wasn’t passage to Virginia I was seeking.”
“Oh really?” asked Wensleydale, scratching out a few last-minute corrections on his latitudinal calculations.
“It’s a person I’m looking for. One of your profession.” He looked closely at what the navigator was writing, and, forgetting himself, reached out his hand to take the quill - and corrected something.
Wensleydale felt numbers and degrees fall into place in his mind with a clattering clink like coins dripping into a wooden chest, satisfying and silvery. He stared at the paper for one moment, and at Mr. Fell for a longer one. “That’s a Mercatorlike cheat, that is.”
“Oh, I only met him once or twice,” said Mr. Fell. “But his great friend Dr. Dee I knew quite well, and he used to play with that sort of equation all the time.”
Wensleydale was now looking at his fellow prisoner in a whole new light; specifically the light of the slightly mad. For Mr. Fell was not particularly young, but he wasn’t particularly old either, and certainly not of a vintage to have played number games and parlour astronomy with any of the weirdest minds of the Virgin Queen’s day.
But there’d been that business with the chains, after all. And that strange thing that had happened to Captain Warlock and his sword.
“You’re not a normal man,” Wensleydale blurted.
“That’s a rather rude way of putting it,” said Mr. Fell flatly.
“I didn’t mean that, I’m that too, f’r’heaven’s sake,” said Wensleydale.
“Heaven has … nothing to do with that. Anyway, it’s not as if I’m some sort of…sorcerer or warlock, I just…”
“That’s the Captain’s name, you know.”
Mr. Fell dropped the quill. “That…is Captain Warlock?!”
Wensleydale laughed awkwardly. “Yeah…I thought you knew. That’s him, we’re on the Megiddo, and…”
The bookseller took a deep breath and wrung his exquisitely manicured (and now slightly ink-stained) hands. “But he’s…he’s…a perfectly ordinary man!”
Wensleydale doubled over in suppressed glee. “Oh, he’d feed you to the sharks piece by piece if he heard that! Worst kind of insult for his sort!”
“Oh goodness,” said Mr. Fell, hand to his mouth. “I have to get out of there then…I have to tell…oh dear.”
“I suppose you could get out of here any time you like then, couldn’t you?” said Wensleydale morosely. “And I’ll be stuck.”
“My dear boy, I don’t know why you think-"
“I’ll tell you why I think,” said Wensleydale. “Because my Captain, my real one, the one I’m looking for…is not an ordinary man either. You learn to see it, when you see it. And you get used to it after a while.”
“What do you mean?” Mr. Fell was looking at him very intently now.
“He has skills. Kenning. Indecent fortune. Powers, if you like. Lots of ‘em. But it’s a sore subject with him, see. Doesn’t like to talk about it, and doesn’t like to use it, though he will if he must. Pirate, y’know. It’s the pirate code; if ya got it, flaunt it. But all the codes are more like guidelines with him. Just if you meet him, don’t bring it up. I think he wishes himself normal, and it’s not his fault he simply isn’t. Suits me well when he’s around because it’s the sort of thing I’d prefer not to have to believe in.”
“Well, a spot of faith never hurt anyone, but-“ Mr. Fell broke off when he realised he was being studied like an exotic specimen.
“I don’t know about faith but I hope he might also be looking for me.” Wensleydale wasn’t sure why he’d admitted that. It was not a belief he’d allowed himself to rely on, nor to dwell on too much, for if he did, the image of Adam searching the horizon with his spyglass and inquiring at every pirates’ den and lair from Santiago to Siam brought with it the image of Brian at his side, squinting also into the unyielding sun, and that only made Wensleydale’s own eyes want to squeeze shut.
“I’ll stay, for now,” said Fell quietly. “There are two I need to find. You and your Captain are lucky to be only looking for one each.”
“Oh, he’s not the one I need to find most,” said Wensleydale conspiratorially. He owed Mr. Fell that much of a confidence, he supposed, though he couldn’t be certain why. “But that one’s on his ship, so…”
“Fortunate,” said Fell, his eyes very far away again-something in them both longing and calculating at once. “May we all be so.”
Hispaniola
“Fortune favours the bold,” said the blind old man at the rickety table. “and how about your fortune favouring me, then?”
Adam Young placed three coins in his hand. They were gold, like he’d promised.
There wasn’t any doubt the man could tell. “Her prices be higher than mine,” he warned in his quavery voice that hadn’t been the same since his throat was cut at Madagascar.
“I expect that,” said Captain Young. Dog growled at his feet, objecting perhaps to his confidante’s scent as much as his aura, which was as battered and leathery as his material component.
“Then here it be,” the man said, drawing from his filthy pocket a battered bit of parchment. A map-of the almost uncharted streams and byways and bayous to the North, on the mainland. “She’ll know ye’re comin’, of course. And that be good for you-ye don’t wanna be sneakin’ up on her.”
Adam nodded, and then made an assenting sound when he remembered that would have no effect.
“An’ you can ask her any question if ye think ye can afford it, if ye think ye can bear the answer…but for one.”
“And that is?”
“Cost extra.”
Adam sighed, and drew from his pocket another coin, and stared at it while he weighed its value. Definitely worth it to avoid a fatal mistake, no matter how remote the possibility might be. Besides, who’d begrudge a blind old man another doubloon he’d spend on grog quickly enough? He handed it over.
“Don’t even be thinkin’ of askin’ her how many nipples she has.”
Captain Young thought that had never been likely to occur to him before, but it was highly unlikely he’d get it out of his head now. “Is that…?”
“It be none of yer business how I lost me eyes!” the man shouted.
***
Back on the strand, Pepper and Brian walked beneath the palm trees, jugs in hand, laughing. Pepper’d been looking rather sleepless but not at all unhappy lately. Brian had been sinking further and further into his desperate dreams, hardly even bothering to clean himself off afterward anymore.
“I can tell you ‘bout this, can’t I, Pep?”
“I reckon, but I dunno what it is yet, so…” The snake on her shoulders that she wore like a sash drowsed and only made the occasional lazy swipe of its head at the rum jug.
“We gotta get him back, Pepper. I feel like I’m getting sick. Like I could die. It’s horrible. I stare at the horizon till I’m gonna go blind, and there’s never any ship there. And I hear footsteps an’ I’m thinkin’ it’s him, and of course it’s not, and…”
“Oh Brian,” Pepper said sadly. “All that mopin’s not gonna help.” She screwed up her nose. “And you kinda reek.”
“What else can I do trapped on a damn ship all day an’ night?”
“Well, he’s on one too, I bet! Better chance of findin’ him out there than on land.”
“I just don’t get…why Adam can’t…I mean, he always knows where we are!”
“Maybe he’s just too far…or something, how’m I supposed to know?”
“He didn’t tell you anything?”
“He just said it’s like somethin’s interferin’, that’s all. Somethin’ getting’ in the way of his sight.”
“Well, if he can’t do it, what makes him think this witch can?”
“Well, we gotta try everything!” Pepper shouted. “You think you’re the only one who cares? Jus’ cause you were swivin’ him or you wanna be, you think that makes you the only one ‘at loves him?”
Brian’s jaw dropped.
“You thought it was a secret?” Pepper laughed. “You thought I didn’t know?”
Even the bloody snake was snickering. Brian looked at it, his face flushing red, to avoid looking at Pepper, and he thought he saw gears turning in its chilly little reptile brain, and he almost thought he saw it go rigid with shock as if an idea had occurred to it. Well, it hadn’t been a very useful pet so far. Wouldn’t even eat rats like it was supposed to. Which was just as well, since Brian secretly liked rats.
***
They reached the hut in the swamp at twilight, as strange birds called from the ghostly, moss-draped cypress giants, and mysterious splashes and ripples from invisible creatures disturbed the stagnant waters fore and aft of their oar-strokes.
Dog had menaced away a particularly large alligator, and an apparent wrong turn had been mollified and corrected by Pepper’s ophidian companion appearing to get better directions in a hissing language from an obese cottonmouth drowsing on a log (the snake’s first obvious stroke of usefulness).
The yellow light of tallow candles beckoned through the universal grey of the darkening swamp, and a curved silhouette of a lady beckoned through the window, though hostile faces seemed to loom out of the gloaming all around them.
She had geraniums on her front porch. And belladonna.
The porch creaked unpleasantly as Adam and Pepper and Brian paced across its warped boards, but inside the house was the refreshing, and highly unexpected, smell of tea and gingerbread. Anna Thelma Nutter was a lot younger and a lot prettier and a hell of a lot more English than any of them had expected.
“Sit, sit,” she said cheerily, vivacious black eyes glimmering in the low lamplight as she poured mugs of something that might have once been tea, but with a good bit more of a kick to it. “It’s fate brought you here,” she said, glancing at something that suggested an index card.
“We’re looking for…,” Brian said nervously.
“Your lost shipmate, of course,” she said matter-of-factly, and drew out a bag from under her kitchen table. It rattled and clanked, and she drew open its strings.
“Is there something we ought to…er…”
For the first time the witch saw Adam, and her hand flew up to her mouth. “You,” she said. Her voice seemed to take on a sort of harmony in itself, like an underlining. “You, in my house.”
Adam scuffled the ground with his feet in his high shiny boots, looking for all the world like a nervous schoolboy in his great hat and coat and scarves and ribbons and swords and guns. “You don’t hafta…”
“Well, if ‘tis the end of days, then drink up!” Anna Thelma said.
“Er…?” said Pepper.
“Not that I think ‘tis, mind you. I may be the black sheep of my family, but I know the Book was a lot thicker than that.”
Pepper just hm’d, and looked down at Dog, who was sniffing the witch’s buckled shoe with some interest.
“An’ a fine specimen you are,” she said. Dog cocked his head, let his upturned ear brush her pretty ankle.
Anna Thelma reached in her bag and jostled little clicking things: seashells and crab claws and very old coins and strange wrinkled, brown roots, and little boiled bones. With a little gasp she jumped when she saw the snake peering intently over her shoulder.
“I don’t give away trade secrets, you!” she said, rapping the serpent smartly on the head with her fingernail. “Just how many of the Legions have come to my door?”
She turned to Pepper. “That’s no plain snake, you know.”
Pepper looked down at the table and blushed. “Er…I know,” she muttered. “He said he’d do anythin’ if I kept ‘is secret.”
“And did he?”
“Yeah,” Pepper said, with a little satisfied smirk. “He did pretty much everythin’.”
“Smart girl,” said Anna Thelma and tapped the snake again. Only the other male creatures were surprised when it turned into a lean, dark-haired man-shaped being who was already blushing himself.
“Well, I’m hardly the proper center of attention here,” Crowley muttered ruefully. “Don’t we have a job to do?”
“You should’ve told me,” Adam said.
“Take it out of my hide,” Crowley leered. “I know you can.”
“Men!” said Pepper.
“Not exactly,” said Anna Thelma, staring at a pattern of scattered bone-chips. “Brian, come here. Give me your hand.”
Brian edged forward and extended his grimy palm with a little embarrassment. The witch just tsk’d once and then matched the patterns there with the ones on her table, spot for spot and streak for streak. “He’s your navigator, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And your lover, yes?”
Adam blinked. “I’m getting a lesson in humility here,” he sighed.
Brian wasn’t quite sure how to answer that.
“I’m sorry, getting’ ahead of myself,” said Anna Thelma cheerily, ignoring his mortification. “Just not sure when in time we are right now.”
She peered close again. With his free hand, Brian reached into the pocket of his ragged breeches and drew out the bit of paper he’d kept there since Wensley’s disappearance: the last scrap of star chart he’d made. She snatched it from him and peered deeply at it, her eyes going unfocused.
“I still want to know why I can’t see it,” Adam said.
“I’m not understanding that either,” Anna Thelma murmured. “Unless…well if he’s here….and then…but that…and then…”
“Huh?” said Brian.
“There are ships, and there are ships…it’s all I see, ships. Under the sky….and there’s no reason…help me. I have to think…the Book…”
She put her other hand to her temple under her black hair and clawed a little as if she hoped to draw something out of her ear. Then her eyes flew open and she spun around to look at Crowley. “Give me a feather,” she said.
“Er…what?”
“Game’s up, serpent. You’re not fooling anyone. Now…please? I won’t ask nice again.”
“Wouldn’t do it if you didn’t,” Crowley muttered in a surly fashion and stepped back from the table. With a flourish to make it look like he wanted to, he whipped off his ridiculously frilly shirt, and unfurled a wingspan wide enough to knock dishes from their racks on both sides of the kitchen. He plucked an alula and handed it to Anna Thelma before winching them back in and trying to disappear-which was difficult, for Pepper and Brian and even Adam were staring at him incredulously. The witch acted like she saw that every day.
“You never did that in my cabin at night,” Pepper whispered.
“You didn’t ask,” replied Crowley.
With the feather in the pattern now, Anna Thelma seemed more at ease. “Well that’s it then,” she said to Brian. “You’ll find the one you’re seeking when you find the one he’s seeking,” and she nodded at Crowley. “Or the one he should be seeking when he’s not slitherin’ in the rum barrels or tossin’ with a pirate gal. And he’s the reason you can’t see, Adam. Got a bit of Heaven in your eye.”
Crowley’s eyes went wide. “You mean-“
“Aye, the other one,” said Anna Thelma. “Your enemy,” she said, making the word redolent of silk sheets and dripping honey.
Crowley sat down quickly, head in his hands. Brian looked at him with a newfound sympathy.
“And where will we find them then?” Adam said.
“Follow this chart. I read it in his hand, and I think you’ll find I read it in the wind.” On the back of the parchment scrap Brian had given her, she began to scrawl out a star chart. Her eyes were glazed and her hand was the only part of her that moved. From it she drew out, in hopelessly archaic hand, a number of degrees and finally a dithering blob that could have been an island and could have been a cloud. There were a few last scattered ink spots that could have been stars.
“East and north, by veiled moon and fairest winds. Follow your senses and follow my guide, and keep this close to hand,” she said, drawing up a mojo bag that already smelled witchy even though she hadn’t put anything in it yet. There were some roots and bones, scraps and shells, Crowley’s feather and, when she snapped her fingers at Brian imperiously, he reluctantly gave up his greatest treasure-a scrap of cloth from Wensleydale’s trousers. Though possibly not even Dog could have truly traced the navigator’s scent upon it, Brian had liked to pretend he could.
“And this’ll work?” Pepper said skeptically.
“If you keep this by the helm and don’t get in the way of it, it will,” the witch sniffed.
“Thank you,” Adam said, having figured out some time ago it was best for him to mostly stay out of the way of this. For the first time in his existence, he’d actually felt he had little to contribute. That was probably about to change. “And now…how do we…pay you? A quest? The heart of a sea-priest or the rib of a ship from the bottom of the sea or a treasure-map from a maiden’s grave or a lock of hair from Davey Jones himself or the talking skull of a man that’s hung in chains, or…”
“You listen to too much pirate talk, Captain Young,” said Anna Thelma, looking the disturbingly handsome youth up and down. “And stop thinkin’ about that question you were told not to ask me.”
Adam gaped. With a swish of her skirts and a bob of her cleavage, Anna Thelma rose from the table and threatened to shut his mouth for him. “D’you have any idea how bad most pirates smell? I bet you don’t ‘cause you’re used to it. But you don’t. You smell very, very good.”
Adam drew in breath sharply, for so did she.
“Don’t you worry about my payment,” she said in a throaty voice. “It’s not going to hurt you. Quite the contrary.”
Judging by the sounds coming from her room later, it did not indeed, and Adam very likely had the answer to his forbidden question.
Pepper stormed out to sulk in the boat. Brian and Crowley just drank companionably, if a little tensely.
Two Weeks Later, on the North American Main
Wensleydale stood half-awake at the helm of the Megiddo, well aware of Pew and his gun nearby, reflecting on his latest conversation with Mr. Fell. Sure, the pirate code was fatally flexible…but weren’t they all? And were the stars not indifferent to it all?
There was the sea, green-scented and breathing. There was the overcast sky, telling him nothing.
And there were flares. There were three tall masts on the horizon, coming up quick, and there was his stomach leaping into his throat, followed closely by his heart.
There was no doubt about it, and that was why he lowered his head quickly and pretended to see nothing. For the ship was clearly his own, and her black flag distinctively belonged to Captain Young. The “ahoy” would not be friendly, for Captain Warlock had never been any more a friend of fellow pirates than he had been of honest tradesmen-and if the bottom was sure to be Wensleydale’s fate, better it be at the hand of his own friends.
For the pirate code was flexible and adaptable most of all in moments of need. And from his pocket, Wensleydale whipped the shiv he’d carved from a quill nib over his rare unsupervised hours from his pocket, and introduced it to Pew’s liver. With a defiant flair, he abandoned his post for the first time in his life, and ran down many flights of ladders to visit his only friend on board for the last time.
***
“AHOY!” screamed Adam. He had a cutlass in his hand and a look of death in his eye as he swung the Grog Blossom around to starboard. Close by his side, Pepper fondled pistols with both her small quick hands. Brian coiled his hands around the ropes of the ship’s riggings, keenly aware of belaying pins in all four corners of his eyes.
“Ahoy, what?” sneered the strutting Captain Warlock from his own much higher deck.
“I’ve come for what’s mine,” Adam said coldly, and his voice carried many, many yards from one ship to another. He stood firm, wind blowing his hair and coat.
“Why yes, I do have something of yours, I think,” Warlock drawled, as his crewmates drew up two prisoners from the hold.
Brian swore, and the snake on Pepper’s shoulders tensed at the sight of them, pulled up squirming and bound to the foremast.
“I take it that’s-“ Adam whispered to said serpent.
“Yeah, it’s hissss fault,” Crawly sighed. “Ssssstill…he meansss well.”
“Not what he seems, though, right?”
“Not by a long sssshot.”
“So then,” said Captain Warlock, approaching the two prisoners with a splendid curved Barbary sword. “Whose throat shall I cut first?”
“Honestly, I hate to admit it, but mine,” said Aziraphale.
“Oh, don’t be so modest,” said Wensleydale.
“No, really,” Aziraphale said glumly.
“Don’t even THINK it, you DOGFUCKING SHITSTAIN,” screamed Quartermaster Pepper, noting at last the ships had drawn close enough and watching Brian fumble with the grapple as best he could. With a bloodcurdling scream, she threw down the boarding plank, and was halfway over it in a bound and a half, until the Megiddo fired its cannon and blew her right into the sea.
“PEPPER!!” Adam screamed with all the force of his heart, not knowing how raw that scream could be until the moment when he needed it.
She sank and sank, weighed down by her guns and swords, until the snake who’d gone down with her gave a bubbly sigh and erupted from the water in man-shaped form still holding her tight, water spraying into the Megiddo’s warriors’ eyes from his mighty feathered wings, holding as his main weapon a kicking, clawing, sword-wielding harpy who’d taken out at least three men before he, Crowley, even shook the salt water from his eyes.
After that, another plank was produced from the Grog Blossom in the shortest of orders.
If Warlock had had a mind to kill both his prisoners before the Grog Blossom’s crew could react, that was well and truly thwarted, for Adam was upon him before he could enact it. The two captains were up and down the ship’s decks, swords clashing and teeth bared.
“Crowley!” Aziraphale cried from his disadvantageous position. “Rather showy! “
“Easy for you to say, angel-tits,” the demon growled, having found himself in a sword battle with the Megiddo’s 7-foot quartermaster.
“Wensleydale…are you….?” came a breathless whisper, and Aziraphale turned around from chiding his counterpart only to see his only ally being pinned harder and faster against the mast by another young man, a rather grimy one, who seemed to think only of tongues and their proper places in others’ mouths.
Pepper was backed against the rail, four to one, one arm dangling and bleeding, sword slowing.
Men circled in on the mast where Wensleydale and Brian and Aziraphale were, the latter two tied. And the angel was waiting for the right moment to break out and cause as little harm as possible.
Crowley had been doing fairly well with his rudimentary fencing skills from his days in Florence, until he slipped on the garish residue of someone’s brains and ocean spray and found himself facing discorporation at a fourth-hand machete (that had done no favours for its first three owners).
And Adam, well, he was still angry. More so by the minute, in fact. Fighting for the lives of his friends against men who valued none of the above, he started thinking, way back in his mind even as his sword danced and parried against Warlock’s, even as the ropes of the rigging swung to his hand at a thought and he danced nimbly across barreltops, of how the world could be better than this. And as his love and his rage grew and swelled together in proportion, the sky rose to meet him, in sheets of rolling pewter grey. A wind arose and the sea convulsed.
The squall hit both ships broadside.
There were little victories. Crowley kicked the man against him hard in the gut and rose, rippling and changing, casting maggots everywhere.
Aziraphale grew tired of the ropes and made them fall away at his and Wensleydale’s feet, taking out the bosun of the Megiddo with one great swipe of a wing and denying him last rites out of sheer spite, while Wensleydale and Brian, now joined at the hip, stared at him.
They could change the course with a blink.
But everyone was staring at Adam, who was the eye of the storm, literally. Rain lashed his hair and power lashed his eyes and gripped his fists as he faced down Warlock.
“IMPOSTOR,” he said in clear All Caps, as the human cringed a bit but still aimed his pistol. “YOU CANNOT KILL ME WITH A GUN. OR ANY MORTAL WEAPON.”
“Er…Adam?” murmured Pepper, who in her disadvantaged space still reached for a sword on the belt of a mesmerised pirate.
Lightning ripped the sky open, and a mast of the Megiddo with its top-heavy sail submitted at last to the wind, snapping and falling like a primeval tree, taking out at least two of the ship’s men.
Aziraphale looked at Crowley, sprawled at his feet, “We could…you know…”
“I know…but…” For Crowley too was terribly, fatally, helplessly mesmerised by the spectacle of Lucifer’s son in his furious glory, ready to take them all to the bottom rather than submit-as the pirate code demanded, but so did one far older.
Non serviam.
“I’m sorry,” Wensleydale babbled to Brian, hackles of the End rising, “When I said…I didn’t mean…I have no regrets…I mean…watch…”
With a blink Wensleydale nudged Aziraphale, and the angel burst forward shining, willing to take on the responsibility of miracle, if needed now-and still looking out for the blue light that could take him away from Earth and all that meant forever. Perhaps he and Crowley could hold back the storm, at least for a little while, but only if…
Brian’s eyes were huge and luminous as Wensleydale kissed him again and murmured, “I’ve had so much time to think, I know for sure I’d rather die with you than live without you.”
The sea threw up massive furious swells as Adam spoke with it.
And then the stern of the Megiddo erupted in cannon fire.
There was a third ship.
She was of Dutch make, tall and slim, and her name was the Angelfish, and she flew the Jolly Roger.
“AVAST,” yelled her Captain “Greasy” Johnson, who saluted Adam in a clumsy parody of the Royal Navy manner and was shouting something incomprehensible about Port Royal and a beating and a warning and a life debt.
And for the first time in many a year, the evil rot-toothed dogs of the Megiddo were well and truly outnumbered.
Re-inspired, the Grog Blossom’s wounded crew (and the Megiddo’s fifth columnists) took up the battle again, and with the added influx of a tide of happy, brawling Colonials from the Angelfish soon had Captain Warlock backed against his chain-shot-broken mizzenmast alone and dejected and facing…a rather menacing Wensleydale making threatening whipping motions.
“No quarter!” yelled Pepper, completely oblivious to her bleeding arm (and to Aziraphale behind her trying to convince Brian he shouldn’t handle bandages with his hands in their unhygienic state). “Feed ‘em to the sharks! Tried to kill us all!”
“Er…” said Crowley, who happened to be standing nearest to Adam, and knew perfectly well it wasn’t his place to make a case to Adam’s better nature. He tossed a nervous glance to the angel. This decision was going to mean a lot.
“Oh, I know,” Adam said. “But he didn’t, though. I wouldn’t’ve let that happen.”
“We could play a nice round o’ kick with ‘is head,” Greasy Johnson said. “Good ‘n’ hard, it is.”
Adam sighed as the clouds above his head paused most unnaturally. “But y’know, I used to think you were a right shite, too, Greasy.”
“Well, I am,” said the now-friendly rival pirate. “But ye did me a good turn back there, an’ so…”
“Yeah,” said Adam quietly. “Most folks are like that. You do ‘em a good turn, and they’ll do ye one back. So if we do ‘im a good turn and let ‘im live, then maybe someday…”
“Givin’ him too much credit, if’n you ask me.”
“Sure, but it’s better to give folks too much credit than too little sometimes. ‘Sides, I ain’t gonna make it easy. I figure if Wensleydale wants to flog him, that’s alright. And I was just plannin’ on maroonin’ ‘im. With some food and stuff.”
“He’s got a lot of gold down there.”
“Well, they can’t eat that. You and your boys can have it, Greasy, I got plenty and I got no trouble getting’ more. I got the best crew in the world.”
Crowley and Aziraphale shot each other a Look. It was one thing entirely for the Antichrist to have grown up a normal lad-if technically an international criminal--but this was veering into the territory of the Moral of the Story part of boys’ tales that hadn’t been written yet. (But would have to be based on something when they were.)
***
And that was what was done. Evening descended gently over the three clustered ships, and the clouds receded to do nothing more dangerous than form shimmering pink and orange borders to a glorious sunset.
Greasy Johnson and his crew were more than pleased with the spoils from the Megiddo, and offered to pitch in an evening’s work repairing the damage they’d inflicted on the captured ship, which by rights belonged to Adam now. It took far less time than they’d thought.
Outside the cabins near the Grog Blossom’s stern, taking a break from the repairs on Adam’s flagship, Brian gently peeled away Wensleydale’s torn shirt, and groaned in sympathy at the healing lash marks. He proffered a ceramic jar of a salve, though he suspected it didn’t have much to do with his true motive.
Wensleydale put up a token resistance to the attention. Briefly.
But once Brian got Wensleydale alone and in his small cabin, his healing caresses went far further than they’d needed to at first, and the sounds they made were no longer of compassion or pain but of something even more compelling.
And the sounds even carried upon the poop deck above them, where the repairs were still on going, though without any benefit of hammer or caulk or elbow grease in any form.
“I don’t think it had those baroque running lanterns before.”
“I suppose I got a little carried away,” Aziraphale sighed.
“Oh lord, heal this ship,” Crowley muttered sarcastically.
“Well, they are nice young people,” Aziraphale said. “For pirates, I mean. Not like that horrid…” and he shuddered.
Crowley whirled around quickly. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
“No, no,” Aziraphale said. “They thought they could get money out of me, but…”
“If they had, I’d hunt them down and tear them to pieces,” Crowley blurted, relief and rum speaking, and then a change came over his face in embarrassment.
Aziraphale wasn’t going to let it slide. “Really, my dear? Only because that’s your job?”
Crowley took a deep breath, bit a metaphorical bullet, and took Aziraphale’s hand. “Awfully soft hands you’ve got…for a pirate.”
“I’m not-"
“We’ll see about that,” Crowley said, and silenced Aziraphale with his mouth.
Neither of them saw the limping and slightly drunken Quartermaster Pepper watching them from the shadows, just coming from having gone to find Brian and Wensleydale and having walked in on them in a state of very active obliviousness to her presence. As mental images went, it was both disturbing and...well…
She had a choice here. She could make a scene. Or not. And, tightening her good hand around her rum bottle, she decided that she would.
Only not with them.
She strode boldly to the fo’c’s’le, where fiddlers were playing and men were dancing and singing, and Captain Young was leading a jolly round and making free with the rum for all hands, his face flushed and his eyes bright.
“Pepper! Pepper, my hero! Come and claim what’s yours!” he said, gesturing broadly at the chests of gold and jewels that some men were literally rolling in (while Dog rolled even more happily in a large slab of salt beef).
“I will!” she said, and she set her bottle down and marched straight past the treasure, and seized Adam, kissing him so hard and so long he half swooned backwards to the deck like a maiden in her corset, and she held him firm with her unbandaged arm.
***
“So,” said the Captain a little awkwardly the next morning, a jaunty red scarf tied around his neck to cover up some telltale marks. “Wensleydale, Brian tells me that…before all this happened…you were thinkin’ of goin’ back to land and all…”
“That was before,” said Wensleydale, his eyes darting constantly back toward Brian’s. “Life is too short, an’ all. I’m stayin’.”
“We don’t have that excuse,” Crowley whispered to Aziraphale, to a gentle elbow in the ribs.
“And Quartermaster Pepper,” he said formally. “I have a choice for you now. You’ve led this crew in battle for many years an’ many great victories an’ never asked for more’n’ your fair share, and you’ve always been loyal, an…”
She nodded impatiently.
“And so,” Adam said. “If you want…a command of your own…the Megiddo is rightfully yours.”
“I was thinkin’ you might do that,” she said, walking to railing of the Grog Blossom and looking up lovingly at the proud galleon with her repaired sails and her gleaming prow and her menacing cannon and her new Jolly Roger flying free in the sea-reflected sun. She stared at her for a long moment, and then looked back at Brian, and Wensleydale, and most of all at Adam.
“Nah,” she said. “It wouldn’t be as much fun all by myself. I like bein’ with you guys. And I don’t wanna be the big boss. It’s like cleanin’ people’s rooms for ‘em. And I’ve never done that in my life, and I won’t start now.”
Adam tried to take this with proper solemnity, but his boyish grin made the glint of sun on sea look dull. Brian and Wensleydale cheered unabashedly.
“Well, then…” he thought for a minute. “I could start a fleet I guess. But I know some captains ‘at’s done that, an’ it’s more trouble than it’s worth, I think. Keep it simple.”
He looked up at the tall masts for a second, and then the sky, and then the sea, and he whirled around and fixed his otherworldly eyes right on Crowley and Aziraphale.
“Oh my goodness, no,” Aziraphale said, blushing.
“Why not?” Adam said. “You’re not the greatest ever at bein’ an angel an’ a demon. I think you could make jolly good pirates with a little practice, though.”
“Hmmm,” said Crowley to Aziraphale. “I bet you haven’t been to the Mediterranean in centuries.”
“Do we have to decide…right now?” Aziraphale said, a little mesmerised by all the confusing rigging, and wishing Crowley hadn’t told him he looked rather fetching tied to the mast, for he’d been thinking it would suit Crowley even better.
“No, you don’t,” Adam said. “There’s still a lot of rum left.” (And there would continue to be, for Adam assumed there always was, and no one of the odd gathered assembly would ever be so tasteless as to make a joke about loaves and fishes, though there were a couple as might think it.)
“And we’ll never run out of sea,” said Brian, looking at Wensleydale.
“Nor stars,” said the pilot, looking for them in Brian’s eyes.
~end~
[1] The only arguable exception to this was Aziraphale’s old rare-book-hoarding rival John Dee, who was a very good mathematician. But then, he wasn’t so much a prophet as a champion celestial eavesdropper.
[2] And indeed she had been. Before Captain Young spent a lot of time thinking about the kind of ship he really wanted, that is.
[3] Captain Young sent his letters by dropping them into the sea in bottles. It wasn’t completely reliable, but it had a better average than the regular land post. The reason for this is probably that Adam thought it should work.
ETA: Now a multi-media experience!
Drawing: Piratical Pepper and her Pickled Pet by sanomi
Song: Drunken Serpent, a sea-chantey filk by blueeyedtigress
Thank you both! :D
ETA2: Now with a smutcake for dessert. Giftfic for use_theforce_em, a "deleted scene": The Quartermaster's Fair Share. (Pepper/Crowley, NC-17)
ETA3: Second helping of smutcake, in which the stock Happy Ending involves a couple more climaxes. Bent On a Splice. (Crowley/Aziraphale, implied non-explicit Adam/Pepper, NC-17)
Pt. 2 of 2
Recipient: amor_remanet
Author: vulgarweed
Fandom: Good Omens
for summary, ratings, warnings, etc. see Part 1.)
One Week After This, and Still Quite Far, Yet Not Quite As Far
Rum had its advantages, Wensleydale thought. Especially when other men drank too much of it.
The relative calm onboard the Megiddo was marked only by honking, bearish snores, the flapping of the sails and creaking of the hemp and disconsolate squeaking of the fiddler, which gave little cover. Still the stolen pilot, now allowed a little more run of the ship and a little less flogging, risked his status by padding carefully down to the glum deck where the half-forgotten prisoner was held.
When the bookseller reached out to accept Wensleydale’s gift of pilfered rum and turtle soup, his wrists passed through his iron chains as if they’d only been made of thoughts, and Wensleydale blinked. Twice. Mr. Fell should have been bearing a good deal more of his captivity on his face and in his clothing-in grime and sleeplessness at least-and yet he was completely unchanged.
“Oh dear,” was all he said. “Thank you, lad.” There was no mistaking his glumness, though. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance they might have saved some of the…that there’d be anything to read on this barbarous barge?”
Wensleydale had only been hoping for some cheering accounts of London, but this could turn out to be more interesting. “Well…have you any knowledge of the heavens?”
Mr. Fell choked slightly on the soup. “As it happens, I do. Though it has been a while.”
With a flourish, Wensleydale produced some star charts from his depressingly ragged waistcoat. “Well, you see,” he lowered his voice. “This isn’t really my ship, you see. I’m not exactly here of my own will. In fact, you and I are pretty much in the same boat…”
“Yes, we are,” said the bookseller crisply.
“Figuratively speaking. As well as literally. I want to find my own ship.”
“But you are a, er, privateer…?”
“Pirate, Mr. Fell. Aye, that I am. I’m afraid so. That I did walk into with my eyes wide open.”
“It’s not exactly the healthiest of lifestyles….”
“I know that, sir. But all my oldest friends, even as children we played at it, and, well…”
“Hanging around with the wrong people,” said Mr. Fell with a faraway look in his eyes. “I know someone who, well, never mind-"
“But I don’t think they’re the wrong people at all,” Wensleydale said firmly. “This lot,” he waved his hand dismissively all around him. “They’re the wrong ones.”
“That much is certainly clear to me,” said Fell, with something like the most genteel of sneers. “Shall I tell you something? It wasn’t passage to Virginia I was seeking.”
“Oh really?” asked Wensleydale, scratching out a few last-minute corrections on his latitudinal calculations.
“It’s a person I’m looking for. One of your profession.” He looked closely at what the navigator was writing, and, forgetting himself, reached out his hand to take the quill - and corrected something.
Wensleydale felt numbers and degrees fall into place in his mind with a clattering clink like coins dripping into a wooden chest, satisfying and silvery. He stared at the paper for one moment, and at Mr. Fell for a longer one. “That’s a Mercatorlike cheat, that is.”
“Oh, I only met him once or twice,” said Mr. Fell. “But his great friend Dr. Dee I knew quite well, and he used to play with that sort of equation all the time.”
Wensleydale was now looking at his fellow prisoner in a whole new light; specifically the light of the slightly mad. For Mr. Fell was not particularly young, but he wasn’t particularly old either, and certainly not of a vintage to have played number games and parlour astronomy with any of the weirdest minds of the Virgin Queen’s day.
But there’d been that business with the chains, after all. And that strange thing that had happened to Captain Warlock and his sword.
“You’re not a normal man,” Wensleydale blurted.
“That’s a rather rude way of putting it,” said Mr. Fell flatly.
“I didn’t mean that, I’m that too, f’r’heaven’s sake,” said Wensleydale.
“Heaven has … nothing to do with that. Anyway, it’s not as if I’m some sort of…sorcerer or warlock, I just…”
“That’s the Captain’s name, you know.”
Mr. Fell dropped the quill. “That…is Captain Warlock?!”
Wensleydale laughed awkwardly. “Yeah…I thought you knew. That’s him, we’re on the Megiddo, and…”
The bookseller took a deep breath and wrung his exquisitely manicured (and now slightly ink-stained) hands. “But he’s…he’s…a perfectly ordinary man!”
Wensleydale doubled over in suppressed glee. “Oh, he’d feed you to the sharks piece by piece if he heard that! Worst kind of insult for his sort!”
“Oh goodness,” said Mr. Fell, hand to his mouth. “I have to get out of there then…I have to tell…oh dear.”
“I suppose you could get out of here any time you like then, couldn’t you?” said Wensleydale morosely. “And I’ll be stuck.”
“My dear boy, I don’t know why you think-"
“I’ll tell you why I think,” said Wensleydale. “Because my Captain, my real one, the one I’m looking for…is not an ordinary man either. You learn to see it, when you see it. And you get used to it after a while.”
“What do you mean?” Mr. Fell was looking at him very intently now.
“He has skills. Kenning. Indecent fortune. Powers, if you like. Lots of ‘em. But it’s a sore subject with him, see. Doesn’t like to talk about it, and doesn’t like to use it, though he will if he must. Pirate, y’know. It’s the pirate code; if ya got it, flaunt it. But all the codes are more like guidelines with him. Just if you meet him, don’t bring it up. I think he wishes himself normal, and it’s not his fault he simply isn’t. Suits me well when he’s around because it’s the sort of thing I’d prefer not to have to believe in.”
“Well, a spot of faith never hurt anyone, but-“ Mr. Fell broke off when he realised he was being studied like an exotic specimen.
“I don’t know about faith but I hope he might also be looking for me.” Wensleydale wasn’t sure why he’d admitted that. It was not a belief he’d allowed himself to rely on, nor to dwell on too much, for if he did, the image of Adam searching the horizon with his spyglass and inquiring at every pirates’ den and lair from Santiago to Siam brought with it the image of Brian at his side, squinting also into the unyielding sun, and that only made Wensleydale’s own eyes want to squeeze shut.
“I’ll stay, for now,” said Fell quietly. “There are two I need to find. You and your Captain are lucky to be only looking for one each.”
“Oh, he’s not the one I need to find most,” said Wensleydale conspiratorially. He owed Mr. Fell that much of a confidence, he supposed, though he couldn’t be certain why. “But that one’s on his ship, so…”
“Fortunate,” said Fell, his eyes very far away again-something in them both longing and calculating at once. “May we all be so.”
Hispaniola
“Fortune favours the bold,” said the blind old man at the rickety table. “and how about your fortune favouring me, then?”
Adam Young placed three coins in his hand. They were gold, like he’d promised.
There wasn’t any doubt the man could tell. “Her prices be higher than mine,” he warned in his quavery voice that hadn’t been the same since his throat was cut at Madagascar.
“I expect that,” said Captain Young. Dog growled at his feet, objecting perhaps to his confidante’s scent as much as his aura, which was as battered and leathery as his material component.
“Then here it be,” the man said, drawing from his filthy pocket a battered bit of parchment. A map-of the almost uncharted streams and byways and bayous to the North, on the mainland. “She’ll know ye’re comin’, of course. And that be good for you-ye don’t wanna be sneakin’ up on her.”
Adam nodded, and then made an assenting sound when he remembered that would have no effect.
“An’ you can ask her any question if ye think ye can afford it, if ye think ye can bear the answer…but for one.”
“And that is?”
“Cost extra.”
Adam sighed, and drew from his pocket another coin, and stared at it while he weighed its value. Definitely worth it to avoid a fatal mistake, no matter how remote the possibility might be. Besides, who’d begrudge a blind old man another doubloon he’d spend on grog quickly enough? He handed it over.
“Don’t even be thinkin’ of askin’ her how many nipples she has.”
Captain Young thought that had never been likely to occur to him before, but it was highly unlikely he’d get it out of his head now. “Is that…?”
“It be none of yer business how I lost me eyes!” the man shouted.
***
Back on the strand, Pepper and Brian walked beneath the palm trees, jugs in hand, laughing. Pepper’d been looking rather sleepless but not at all unhappy lately. Brian had been sinking further and further into his desperate dreams, hardly even bothering to clean himself off afterward anymore.
“I can tell you ‘bout this, can’t I, Pep?”
“I reckon, but I dunno what it is yet, so…” The snake on her shoulders that she wore like a sash drowsed and only made the occasional lazy swipe of its head at the rum jug.
“We gotta get him back, Pepper. I feel like I’m getting sick. Like I could die. It’s horrible. I stare at the horizon till I’m gonna go blind, and there’s never any ship there. And I hear footsteps an’ I’m thinkin’ it’s him, and of course it’s not, and…”
“Oh Brian,” Pepper said sadly. “All that mopin’s not gonna help.” She screwed up her nose. “And you kinda reek.”
“What else can I do trapped on a damn ship all day an’ night?”
“Well, he’s on one too, I bet! Better chance of findin’ him out there than on land.”
“I just don’t get…why Adam can’t…I mean, he always knows where we are!”
“Maybe he’s just too far…or something, how’m I supposed to know?”
“He didn’t tell you anything?”
“He just said it’s like somethin’s interferin’, that’s all. Somethin’ getting’ in the way of his sight.”
“Well, if he can’t do it, what makes him think this witch can?”
“Well, we gotta try everything!” Pepper shouted. “You think you’re the only one who cares? Jus’ cause you were swivin’ him or you wanna be, you think that makes you the only one ‘at loves him?”
Brian’s jaw dropped.
“You thought it was a secret?” Pepper laughed. “You thought I didn’t know?”
Even the bloody snake was snickering. Brian looked at it, his face flushing red, to avoid looking at Pepper, and he thought he saw gears turning in its chilly little reptile brain, and he almost thought he saw it go rigid with shock as if an idea had occurred to it. Well, it hadn’t been a very useful pet so far. Wouldn’t even eat rats like it was supposed to. Which was just as well, since Brian secretly liked rats.
***
They reached the hut in the swamp at twilight, as strange birds called from the ghostly, moss-draped cypress giants, and mysterious splashes and ripples from invisible creatures disturbed the stagnant waters fore and aft of their oar-strokes.
Dog had menaced away a particularly large alligator, and an apparent wrong turn had been mollified and corrected by Pepper’s ophidian companion appearing to get better directions in a hissing language from an obese cottonmouth drowsing on a log (the snake’s first obvious stroke of usefulness).
The yellow light of tallow candles beckoned through the universal grey of the darkening swamp, and a curved silhouette of a lady beckoned through the window, though hostile faces seemed to loom out of the gloaming all around them.
She had geraniums on her front porch. And belladonna.
The porch creaked unpleasantly as Adam and Pepper and Brian paced across its warped boards, but inside the house was the refreshing, and highly unexpected, smell of tea and gingerbread. Anna Thelma Nutter was a lot younger and a lot prettier and a hell of a lot more English than any of them had expected.
“Sit, sit,” she said cheerily, vivacious black eyes glimmering in the low lamplight as she poured mugs of something that might have once been tea, but with a good bit more of a kick to it. “It’s fate brought you here,” she said, glancing at something that suggested an index card.
“We’re looking for…,” Brian said nervously.
“Your lost shipmate, of course,” she said matter-of-factly, and drew out a bag from under her kitchen table. It rattled and clanked, and she drew open its strings.
“Is there something we ought to…er…”
For the first time the witch saw Adam, and her hand flew up to her mouth. “You,” she said. Her voice seemed to take on a sort of harmony in itself, like an underlining. “You, in my house.”
Adam scuffled the ground with his feet in his high shiny boots, looking for all the world like a nervous schoolboy in his great hat and coat and scarves and ribbons and swords and guns. “You don’t hafta…”
“Well, if ‘tis the end of days, then drink up!” Anna Thelma said.
“Er…?” said Pepper.
“Not that I think ‘tis, mind you. I may be the black sheep of my family, but I know the Book was a lot thicker than that.”
Pepper just hm’d, and looked down at Dog, who was sniffing the witch’s buckled shoe with some interest.
“An’ a fine specimen you are,” she said. Dog cocked his head, let his upturned ear brush her pretty ankle.
Anna Thelma reached in her bag and jostled little clicking things: seashells and crab claws and very old coins and strange wrinkled, brown roots, and little boiled bones. With a little gasp she jumped when she saw the snake peering intently over her shoulder.
“I don’t give away trade secrets, you!” she said, rapping the serpent smartly on the head with her fingernail. “Just how many of the Legions have come to my door?”
She turned to Pepper. “That’s no plain snake, you know.”
Pepper looked down at the table and blushed. “Er…I know,” she muttered. “He said he’d do anythin’ if I kept ‘is secret.”
“And did he?”
“Yeah,” Pepper said, with a little satisfied smirk. “He did pretty much everythin’.”
“Smart girl,” said Anna Thelma and tapped the snake again. Only the other male creatures were surprised when it turned into a lean, dark-haired man-shaped being who was already blushing himself.
“Well, I’m hardly the proper center of attention here,” Crowley muttered ruefully. “Don’t we have a job to do?”
“You should’ve told me,” Adam said.
“Take it out of my hide,” Crowley leered. “I know you can.”
“Men!” said Pepper.
“Not exactly,” said Anna Thelma, staring at a pattern of scattered bone-chips. “Brian, come here. Give me your hand.”
Brian edged forward and extended his grimy palm with a little embarrassment. The witch just tsk’d once and then matched the patterns there with the ones on her table, spot for spot and streak for streak. “He’s your navigator, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And your lover, yes?”
Adam blinked. “I’m getting a lesson in humility here,” he sighed.
Brian wasn’t quite sure how to answer that.
“I’m sorry, getting’ ahead of myself,” said Anna Thelma cheerily, ignoring his mortification. “Just not sure when in time we are right now.”
She peered close again. With his free hand, Brian reached into the pocket of his ragged breeches and drew out the bit of paper he’d kept there since Wensley’s disappearance: the last scrap of star chart he’d made. She snatched it from him and peered deeply at it, her eyes going unfocused.
“I still want to know why I can’t see it,” Adam said.
“I’m not understanding that either,” Anna Thelma murmured. “Unless…well if he’s here….and then…but that…and then…”
“Huh?” said Brian.
“There are ships, and there are ships…it’s all I see, ships. Under the sky….and there’s no reason…help me. I have to think…the Book…”
She put her other hand to her temple under her black hair and clawed a little as if she hoped to draw something out of her ear. Then her eyes flew open and she spun around to look at Crowley. “Give me a feather,” she said.
“Er…what?”
“Game’s up, serpent. You’re not fooling anyone. Now…please? I won’t ask nice again.”
“Wouldn’t do it if you didn’t,” Crowley muttered in a surly fashion and stepped back from the table. With a flourish to make it look like he wanted to, he whipped off his ridiculously frilly shirt, and unfurled a wingspan wide enough to knock dishes from their racks on both sides of the kitchen. He plucked an alula and handed it to Anna Thelma before winching them back in and trying to disappear-which was difficult, for Pepper and Brian and even Adam were staring at him incredulously. The witch acted like she saw that every day.
“You never did that in my cabin at night,” Pepper whispered.
“You didn’t ask,” replied Crowley.
With the feather in the pattern now, Anna Thelma seemed more at ease. “Well that’s it then,” she said to Brian. “You’ll find the one you’re seeking when you find the one he’s seeking,” and she nodded at Crowley. “Or the one he should be seeking when he’s not slitherin’ in the rum barrels or tossin’ with a pirate gal. And he’s the reason you can’t see, Adam. Got a bit of Heaven in your eye.”
Crowley’s eyes went wide. “You mean-“
“Aye, the other one,” said Anna Thelma. “Your enemy,” she said, making the word redolent of silk sheets and dripping honey.
Crowley sat down quickly, head in his hands. Brian looked at him with a newfound sympathy.
“And where will we find them then?” Adam said.
“Follow this chart. I read it in his hand, and I think you’ll find I read it in the wind.” On the back of the parchment scrap Brian had given her, she began to scrawl out a star chart. Her eyes were glazed and her hand was the only part of her that moved. From it she drew out, in hopelessly archaic hand, a number of degrees and finally a dithering blob that could have been an island and could have been a cloud. There were a few last scattered ink spots that could have been stars.
“East and north, by veiled moon and fairest winds. Follow your senses and follow my guide, and keep this close to hand,” she said, drawing up a mojo bag that already smelled witchy even though she hadn’t put anything in it yet. There were some roots and bones, scraps and shells, Crowley’s feather and, when she snapped her fingers at Brian imperiously, he reluctantly gave up his greatest treasure-a scrap of cloth from Wensleydale’s trousers. Though possibly not even Dog could have truly traced the navigator’s scent upon it, Brian had liked to pretend he could.
“And this’ll work?” Pepper said skeptically.
“If you keep this by the helm and don’t get in the way of it, it will,” the witch sniffed.
“Thank you,” Adam said, having figured out some time ago it was best for him to mostly stay out of the way of this. For the first time in his existence, he’d actually felt he had little to contribute. That was probably about to change. “And now…how do we…pay you? A quest? The heart of a sea-priest or the rib of a ship from the bottom of the sea or a treasure-map from a maiden’s grave or a lock of hair from Davey Jones himself or the talking skull of a man that’s hung in chains, or…”
“You listen to too much pirate talk, Captain Young,” said Anna Thelma, looking the disturbingly handsome youth up and down. “And stop thinkin’ about that question you were told not to ask me.”
Adam gaped. With a swish of her skirts and a bob of her cleavage, Anna Thelma rose from the table and threatened to shut his mouth for him. “D’you have any idea how bad most pirates smell? I bet you don’t ‘cause you’re used to it. But you don’t. You smell very, very good.”
Adam drew in breath sharply, for so did she.
“Don’t you worry about my payment,” she said in a throaty voice. “It’s not going to hurt you. Quite the contrary.”
Judging by the sounds coming from her room later, it did not indeed, and Adam very likely had the answer to his forbidden question.
Pepper stormed out to sulk in the boat. Brian and Crowley just drank companionably, if a little tensely.
Two Weeks Later, on the North American Main
Wensleydale stood half-awake at the helm of the Megiddo, well aware of Pew and his gun nearby, reflecting on his latest conversation with Mr. Fell. Sure, the pirate code was fatally flexible…but weren’t they all? And were the stars not indifferent to it all?
There was the sea, green-scented and breathing. There was the overcast sky, telling him nothing.
And there were flares. There were three tall masts on the horizon, coming up quick, and there was his stomach leaping into his throat, followed closely by his heart.
There was no doubt about it, and that was why he lowered his head quickly and pretended to see nothing. For the ship was clearly his own, and her black flag distinctively belonged to Captain Young. The “ahoy” would not be friendly, for Captain Warlock had never been any more a friend of fellow pirates than he had been of honest tradesmen-and if the bottom was sure to be Wensleydale’s fate, better it be at the hand of his own friends.
For the pirate code was flexible and adaptable most of all in moments of need. And from his pocket, Wensleydale whipped the shiv he’d carved from a quill nib over his rare unsupervised hours from his pocket, and introduced it to Pew’s liver. With a defiant flair, he abandoned his post for the first time in his life, and ran down many flights of ladders to visit his only friend on board for the last time.
***
“AHOY!” screamed Adam. He had a cutlass in his hand and a look of death in his eye as he swung the Grog Blossom around to starboard. Close by his side, Pepper fondled pistols with both her small quick hands. Brian coiled his hands around the ropes of the ship’s riggings, keenly aware of belaying pins in all four corners of his eyes.
“Ahoy, what?” sneered the strutting Captain Warlock from his own much higher deck.
“I’ve come for what’s mine,” Adam said coldly, and his voice carried many, many yards from one ship to another. He stood firm, wind blowing his hair and coat.
“Why yes, I do have something of yours, I think,” Warlock drawled, as his crewmates drew up two prisoners from the hold.
Brian swore, and the snake on Pepper’s shoulders tensed at the sight of them, pulled up squirming and bound to the foremast.
“I take it that’s-“ Adam whispered to said serpent.
“Yeah, it’s hissss fault,” Crawly sighed. “Ssssstill…he meansss well.”
“Not what he seems, though, right?”
“Not by a long sssshot.”
“So then,” said Captain Warlock, approaching the two prisoners with a splendid curved Barbary sword. “Whose throat shall I cut first?”
“Honestly, I hate to admit it, but mine,” said Aziraphale.
“Oh, don’t be so modest,” said Wensleydale.
“No, really,” Aziraphale said glumly.
“Don’t even THINK it, you DOGFUCKING SHITSTAIN,” screamed Quartermaster Pepper, noting at last the ships had drawn close enough and watching Brian fumble with the grapple as best he could. With a bloodcurdling scream, she threw down the boarding plank, and was halfway over it in a bound and a half, until the Megiddo fired its cannon and blew her right into the sea.
“PEPPER!!” Adam screamed with all the force of his heart, not knowing how raw that scream could be until the moment when he needed it.
She sank and sank, weighed down by her guns and swords, until the snake who’d gone down with her gave a bubbly sigh and erupted from the water in man-shaped form still holding her tight, water spraying into the Megiddo’s warriors’ eyes from his mighty feathered wings, holding as his main weapon a kicking, clawing, sword-wielding harpy who’d taken out at least three men before he, Crowley, even shook the salt water from his eyes.
After that, another plank was produced from the Grog Blossom in the shortest of orders.
If Warlock had had a mind to kill both his prisoners before the Grog Blossom’s crew could react, that was well and truly thwarted, for Adam was upon him before he could enact it. The two captains were up and down the ship’s decks, swords clashing and teeth bared.
“Crowley!” Aziraphale cried from his disadvantageous position. “Rather showy! “
“Easy for you to say, angel-tits,” the demon growled, having found himself in a sword battle with the Megiddo’s 7-foot quartermaster.
“Wensleydale…are you….?” came a breathless whisper, and Aziraphale turned around from chiding his counterpart only to see his only ally being pinned harder and faster against the mast by another young man, a rather grimy one, who seemed to think only of tongues and their proper places in others’ mouths.
Pepper was backed against the rail, four to one, one arm dangling and bleeding, sword slowing.
Men circled in on the mast where Wensleydale and Brian and Aziraphale were, the latter two tied. And the angel was waiting for the right moment to break out and cause as little harm as possible.
Crowley had been doing fairly well with his rudimentary fencing skills from his days in Florence, until he slipped on the garish residue of someone’s brains and ocean spray and found himself facing discorporation at a fourth-hand machete (that had done no favours for its first three owners).
And Adam, well, he was still angry. More so by the minute, in fact. Fighting for the lives of his friends against men who valued none of the above, he started thinking, way back in his mind even as his sword danced and parried against Warlock’s, even as the ropes of the rigging swung to his hand at a thought and he danced nimbly across barreltops, of how the world could be better than this. And as his love and his rage grew and swelled together in proportion, the sky rose to meet him, in sheets of rolling pewter grey. A wind arose and the sea convulsed.
The squall hit both ships broadside.
There were little victories. Crowley kicked the man against him hard in the gut and rose, rippling and changing, casting maggots everywhere.
Aziraphale grew tired of the ropes and made them fall away at his and Wensleydale’s feet, taking out the bosun of the Megiddo with one great swipe of a wing and denying him last rites out of sheer spite, while Wensleydale and Brian, now joined at the hip, stared at him.
They could change the course with a blink.
But everyone was staring at Adam, who was the eye of the storm, literally. Rain lashed his hair and power lashed his eyes and gripped his fists as he faced down Warlock.
“IMPOSTOR,” he said in clear All Caps, as the human cringed a bit but still aimed his pistol. “YOU CANNOT KILL ME WITH A GUN. OR ANY MORTAL WEAPON.”
“Er…Adam?” murmured Pepper, who in her disadvantaged space still reached for a sword on the belt of a mesmerised pirate.
Lightning ripped the sky open, and a mast of the Megiddo with its top-heavy sail submitted at last to the wind, snapping and falling like a primeval tree, taking out at least two of the ship’s men.
Aziraphale looked at Crowley, sprawled at his feet, “We could…you know…”
“I know…but…” For Crowley too was terribly, fatally, helplessly mesmerised by the spectacle of Lucifer’s son in his furious glory, ready to take them all to the bottom rather than submit-as the pirate code demanded, but so did one far older.
Non serviam.
“I’m sorry,” Wensleydale babbled to Brian, hackles of the End rising, “When I said…I didn’t mean…I have no regrets…I mean…watch…”
With a blink Wensleydale nudged Aziraphale, and the angel burst forward shining, willing to take on the responsibility of miracle, if needed now-and still looking out for the blue light that could take him away from Earth and all that meant forever. Perhaps he and Crowley could hold back the storm, at least for a little while, but only if…
Brian’s eyes were huge and luminous as Wensleydale kissed him again and murmured, “I’ve had so much time to think, I know for sure I’d rather die with you than live without you.”
The sea threw up massive furious swells as Adam spoke with it.
And then the stern of the Megiddo erupted in cannon fire.
There was a third ship.
She was of Dutch make, tall and slim, and her name was the Angelfish, and she flew the Jolly Roger.
“AVAST,” yelled her Captain “Greasy” Johnson, who saluted Adam in a clumsy parody of the Royal Navy manner and was shouting something incomprehensible about Port Royal and a beating and a warning and a life debt.
And for the first time in many a year, the evil rot-toothed dogs of the Megiddo were well and truly outnumbered.
Re-inspired, the Grog Blossom’s wounded crew (and the Megiddo’s fifth columnists) took up the battle again, and with the added influx of a tide of happy, brawling Colonials from the Angelfish soon had Captain Warlock backed against his chain-shot-broken mizzenmast alone and dejected and facing…a rather menacing Wensleydale making threatening whipping motions.
“No quarter!” yelled Pepper, completely oblivious to her bleeding arm (and to Aziraphale behind her trying to convince Brian he shouldn’t handle bandages with his hands in their unhygienic state). “Feed ‘em to the sharks! Tried to kill us all!”
“Er…” said Crowley, who happened to be standing nearest to Adam, and knew perfectly well it wasn’t his place to make a case to Adam’s better nature. He tossed a nervous glance to the angel. This decision was going to mean a lot.
“Oh, I know,” Adam said. “But he didn’t, though. I wouldn’t’ve let that happen.”
“We could play a nice round o’ kick with ‘is head,” Greasy Johnson said. “Good ‘n’ hard, it is.”
Adam sighed as the clouds above his head paused most unnaturally. “But y’know, I used to think you were a right shite, too, Greasy.”
“Well, I am,” said the now-friendly rival pirate. “But ye did me a good turn back there, an’ so…”
“Yeah,” said Adam quietly. “Most folks are like that. You do ‘em a good turn, and they’ll do ye one back. So if we do ‘im a good turn and let ‘im live, then maybe someday…”
“Givin’ him too much credit, if’n you ask me.”
“Sure, but it’s better to give folks too much credit than too little sometimes. ‘Sides, I ain’t gonna make it easy. I figure if Wensleydale wants to flog him, that’s alright. And I was just plannin’ on maroonin’ ‘im. With some food and stuff.”
“He’s got a lot of gold down there.”
“Well, they can’t eat that. You and your boys can have it, Greasy, I got plenty and I got no trouble getting’ more. I got the best crew in the world.”
Crowley and Aziraphale shot each other a Look. It was one thing entirely for the Antichrist to have grown up a normal lad-if technically an international criminal--but this was veering into the territory of the Moral of the Story part of boys’ tales that hadn’t been written yet. (But would have to be based on something when they were.)
***
And that was what was done. Evening descended gently over the three clustered ships, and the clouds receded to do nothing more dangerous than form shimmering pink and orange borders to a glorious sunset.
Greasy Johnson and his crew were more than pleased with the spoils from the Megiddo, and offered to pitch in an evening’s work repairing the damage they’d inflicted on the captured ship, which by rights belonged to Adam now. It took far less time than they’d thought.
Outside the cabins near the Grog Blossom’s stern, taking a break from the repairs on Adam’s flagship, Brian gently peeled away Wensleydale’s torn shirt, and groaned in sympathy at the healing lash marks. He proffered a ceramic jar of a salve, though he suspected it didn’t have much to do with his true motive.
Wensleydale put up a token resistance to the attention. Briefly.
But once Brian got Wensleydale alone and in his small cabin, his healing caresses went far further than they’d needed to at first, and the sounds they made were no longer of compassion or pain but of something even more compelling.
And the sounds even carried upon the poop deck above them, where the repairs were still on going, though without any benefit of hammer or caulk or elbow grease in any form.
“I don’t think it had those baroque running lanterns before.”
“I suppose I got a little carried away,” Aziraphale sighed.
“Oh lord, heal this ship,” Crowley muttered sarcastically.
“Well, they are nice young people,” Aziraphale said. “For pirates, I mean. Not like that horrid…” and he shuddered.
Crowley whirled around quickly. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
“No, no,” Aziraphale said. “They thought they could get money out of me, but…”
“If they had, I’d hunt them down and tear them to pieces,” Crowley blurted, relief and rum speaking, and then a change came over his face in embarrassment.
Aziraphale wasn’t going to let it slide. “Really, my dear? Only because that’s your job?”
Crowley took a deep breath, bit a metaphorical bullet, and took Aziraphale’s hand. “Awfully soft hands you’ve got…for a pirate.”
“I’m not-"
“We’ll see about that,” Crowley said, and silenced Aziraphale with his mouth.
Neither of them saw the limping and slightly drunken Quartermaster Pepper watching them from the shadows, just coming from having gone to find Brian and Wensleydale and having walked in on them in a state of very active obliviousness to her presence. As mental images went, it was both disturbing and...well…
She had a choice here. She could make a scene. Or not. And, tightening her good hand around her rum bottle, she decided that she would.
Only not with them.
She strode boldly to the fo’c’s’le, where fiddlers were playing and men were dancing and singing, and Captain Young was leading a jolly round and making free with the rum for all hands, his face flushed and his eyes bright.
“Pepper! Pepper, my hero! Come and claim what’s yours!” he said, gesturing broadly at the chests of gold and jewels that some men were literally rolling in (while Dog rolled even more happily in a large slab of salt beef).
“I will!” she said, and she set her bottle down and marched straight past the treasure, and seized Adam, kissing him so hard and so long he half swooned backwards to the deck like a maiden in her corset, and she held him firm with her unbandaged arm.
***
“So,” said the Captain a little awkwardly the next morning, a jaunty red scarf tied around his neck to cover up some telltale marks. “Wensleydale, Brian tells me that…before all this happened…you were thinkin’ of goin’ back to land and all…”
“That was before,” said Wensleydale, his eyes darting constantly back toward Brian’s. “Life is too short, an’ all. I’m stayin’.”
“We don’t have that excuse,” Crowley whispered to Aziraphale, to a gentle elbow in the ribs.
“And Quartermaster Pepper,” he said formally. “I have a choice for you now. You’ve led this crew in battle for many years an’ many great victories an’ never asked for more’n’ your fair share, and you’ve always been loyal, an…”
She nodded impatiently.
“And so,” Adam said. “If you want…a command of your own…the Megiddo is rightfully yours.”
“I was thinkin’ you might do that,” she said, walking to railing of the Grog Blossom and looking up lovingly at the proud galleon with her repaired sails and her gleaming prow and her menacing cannon and her new Jolly Roger flying free in the sea-reflected sun. She stared at her for a long moment, and then looked back at Brian, and Wensleydale, and most of all at Adam.
“Nah,” she said. “It wouldn’t be as much fun all by myself. I like bein’ with you guys. And I don’t wanna be the big boss. It’s like cleanin’ people’s rooms for ‘em. And I’ve never done that in my life, and I won’t start now.”
Adam tried to take this with proper solemnity, but his boyish grin made the glint of sun on sea look dull. Brian and Wensleydale cheered unabashedly.
“Well, then…” he thought for a minute. “I could start a fleet I guess. But I know some captains ‘at’s done that, an’ it’s more trouble than it’s worth, I think. Keep it simple.”
He looked up at the tall masts for a second, and then the sky, and then the sea, and he whirled around and fixed his otherworldly eyes right on Crowley and Aziraphale.
“Oh my goodness, no,” Aziraphale said, blushing.
“Why not?” Adam said. “You’re not the greatest ever at bein’ an angel an’ a demon. I think you could make jolly good pirates with a little practice, though.”
“Hmmm,” said Crowley to Aziraphale. “I bet you haven’t been to the Mediterranean in centuries.”
“Do we have to decide…right now?” Aziraphale said, a little mesmerised by all the confusing rigging, and wishing Crowley hadn’t told him he looked rather fetching tied to the mast, for he’d been thinking it would suit Crowley even better.
“No, you don’t,” Adam said. “There’s still a lot of rum left.” (And there would continue to be, for Adam assumed there always was, and no one of the odd gathered assembly would ever be so tasteless as to make a joke about loaves and fishes, though there were a couple as might think it.)
“And we’ll never run out of sea,” said Brian, looking at Wensleydale.
“Nor stars,” said the pilot, looking for them in Brian’s eyes.
~end~
[1] The only arguable exception to this was Aziraphale’s old rare-book-hoarding rival John Dee, who was a very good mathematician. But then, he wasn’t so much a prophet as a champion celestial eavesdropper.
[2] And indeed she had been. Before Captain Young spent a lot of time thinking about the kind of ship he really wanted, that is.
[3] Captain Young sent his letters by dropping them into the sea in bottles. It wasn’t completely reliable, but it had a better average than the regular land post. The reason for this is probably that Adam thought it should work.
ETA: Now a multi-media experience!
Drawing: Piratical Pepper and her Pickled Pet by sanomi
Song: Drunken Serpent, a sea-chantey filk by blueeyedtigress
Thank you both! :D
ETA2: Now with a smutcake for dessert. Giftfic for use_theforce_em, a "deleted scene": The Quartermaster's Fair Share. (Pepper/Crowley, NC-17)
ETA3: Second helping of smutcake, in which the stock Happy Ending involves a couple more climaxes. Bent On a Splice. (Crowley/Aziraphale, implied non-explicit Adam/Pepper, NC-17)