Ace scoffed. “You didn’t know your own name until you were sixteen?”
Zander nodded, smiling. “No one ever had need of my real name before then. I began factory work when I was ten, taking my brother John’s place at the textile mill when he started his apprenticeship. But to my memory, no one ever asked me for my name. To my siblings, I was Z. To my mother, Darling. To my father, Boy. That is, until the day my apprenticeship started, and my father brought me a document to sign with the name ‘Alexander’ printed on it. When I told him he’d printed my name wrong, he looked at me as if I’d lost my head.”
Ace threw back her head and laughed, prompting Zander to laugh as well. He’d never really considered how funny it was.
The sound of shouting pulled Ace and Zander from their shared moment, and they looked over to see two of the younger crew members—deck hands named Jurgen and Raphael, brothers hailing from Germany—brawling at the edge of the crowd. Ace simply sighed and watched as nearby crew members pulled them off one another, laughing. She and Zander then fell into a comfortable silence as they continued to watch the crowd.
“And what about you?” he asked her finally.
“What about me?”
Zander gestured to the boat, the crew, the sea. “How did you become a pirate?”
Ace smiled and took a drink from her cup, looking out at the crew fondly.
“I suppose I’ve always been a pirate,” she said. “Not in name, of course. But I spent my childhood on the sea with my parents.”
“Must have been some childhood.”
“Aye, it was. Not one’s typical upbringing, I suppose.”
Ace paused, shrugging. Zander smiled and gestured for her to continue, making a show of settling into his seat so she would continue. Smiling, she did.
“My father was a merchant from Spain. My mother grew up among the maroons in Jamaica. She learned how to build boats—sloops like this one, and smaller boats as well—from my grandfather. She and my father met when he was looking for someone to repair his vessel. She told him he’d be better off scrapping his beat-up old schooner and buying something more well made. He agreed, and he stayed in Jamaica until a new vessel could be made for him, all the while courting my mother.
“A few months later, they left Jamaica together. They built a life on the ocean as merchants, and they were good at it. Eventually, they had me. We were a team. I often pretended I was a pirate, but my childhood was regular in many ways. I had a bedtime, reading lessons with my father, chores, all that. But I grew up with homes all over the world—Jamaica, Spain, Virginia, Portugal. But above all, the sea was my home. It was all I knew until I was twelve years old.”
Zander considered Ace’s accent, which he’d never been able to place. It was a beautiful mix of inflections. Listening to her now, so calm and close to him, her voice was almost hypnotic. He made an effort as she spoke to keep his expression composed, lest he start grinning like a maniac.
As for Ace, she was wondering what had gotten into her to make her share so openly with a brand-new recruit who’d barely gotten his sea legs. Despite her misgivings, she continued talking, strangely comfortable with this supposed stranger.
“It was around that time my dad got sick,” Ace continued, her tone changing subtly. “Doctors told him it was the ocean air that affected him, so my parents took their savings and bought a house in Spain, away from the coast. They started stuffing me into dresses and parading me about like a little lady. But I have never been a lady. I will always be a pirate.”
She said the final words with an edge of bitterness that belied there was more to the story, but Zander didn’t push. As she gazed out onto the deck, he could sense some old pain behind her eyes, and he didn’t want to force her to relive it. But he wanted more. After two weeks of silent looks and playful nicknames, she was finally opening a door to herself, and Zander couldn’t let the moment pass just yet.
“And what is a pirate, exactly?”
This made Ace turn and look at him, a thoughtful expression on her face.
“A pirate can be many things,” she said. “A villain. A deviant. A treasure hunter. But in the end, a pirate is just someone who doesn’t fit. They don’t fit into the roles others make for them, the expectations—whether it’s their family, or their friends, or goddamned high society. Take this group, for instance.” Ace gestured toward the main deck. “Most of us don’t want to be rich. We aren’t looking for fame or fortune, and we certainly aren’t out for blood. We just want to be… free.”
“And are you?” Zander asked. “Free, I mean.”
Ace looked at Zander, and he saw a hard determination in her eyes befitting a pirate captain.
“I live for no man. And I’ll die for none.”
4
With his first official pirate raid out of the way, Zander began to feel more at home on The Valerian. He no longer felt like a fish about to be swept up in a fisherman’s net, but like a man with a job to do. He came to anticipate each day and its routines, came to value his own contributions to life on the sloop. He felt purposeful, needed—like he belonged.
He was, by all appearances, a pirate through and through. But there was still a piece of him that didn’t yet believe it, that was waiting to wake up, to be booed off stage.
It was therefore unsurprising when Ace approached him one morning and offered him a way out.
It was eight days after Zander’s first raid. The Valerian lay docked off the coast of Florida. Zander was finishing his watch as the sun crested the horizon, lost in thought amidst the silence of the sleeping vessel, when he heard footsteps on deck.
Seeing Ace, he startled slightly. They’d grown more familiar since the night of the raid, even approaching friendship. But that didn’t stop the familiar nervousness from kindling in his belly at the sight of her, dawn’s light reflecting softly in her eyes.
“Captain,” he said, standing from the place he’d been lounging on the forecastle.
Ace grinned. “You don’t need to call me Captain, Chicken Leg. I think you and I moved past ‘Captain’ before you ever stepped foot on this sloop.”
She gave him a pointed look, and the nervousness in his torso writhed into a sudden flame as he realized she was talking about the kiss they’d shared. He grinned back, moving to stand beside her as she leaned against the railing, gazing out at the water.
“I suppose we did,” he said. “So… what brings you out so early, Ace?”
Ace sighed, and her playful expression grew more guarded.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she began, her eyes cast down at the water just below them.
Zander straightened, suddenly more nervous than before.
“In three weeks, we’ll be leaving the Caribbean and sailing for Portugal,” Ace said. “It will be a long journey, and months before we return to this part of the sea.”
She paused, picking at the sleeve of the blue jacket she wore. Finally, she whipped her head sideways, so she was looking right at him.
“I’ve been watching you, Zander. I can tell you aren’t sure about your place here.”
