The Poison Lightning extended his hand to me. I took it.

When I was safely to my feet, he pressed the handle of my blade into my trembling fist.

“You saved my life.” The words were a whisper on my lips. Did he know that I thought he was going to rape me? I thought briefly about apologizing but decided against it. If I was going to lead these men, I couldn’t be weak. At least not in their eyes. I gripped the sword’s handle but didn’t sheath it. “Thank you.”

The Poison Lightning didn’t acknowledge my thanks. Instead, he made a V with his fingers and pointed to his eyes. Then, he swiveled his hand to all the area around us.

Yes, I understand, I wanted to say. Keep a sharp eye, because danger is near. But I knew better than to talk.

The sun’s rays breached the cool fog as I crept along behind The Poison Lightning with my blade held at ready. I thought about all I’d been taught over the last month. Between Jack’s teachings and Solo’s helpful tricks, I’d learned much. Apparently not enough yet to keep my sword in my own sheath. If the situation had been less sinister, I would have shaken my head, but be it as it was, I didn’t. An odd feeling washed over me from nowhere. I furrowed my brows. The top of my head was beginning to burn when I felt it.

I stopped. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose like hackles on a cur. For a moment, I strained to see into the fog, but it was useless. The sun hadn’t been out long enough to burn it off yet. I closed my eyes.

Solo had described this very thing to me. The none-too-distant memory of his harshly-accented Polish words sang in my head.

“It’s called the sixth sense, Red,” he offered as he clanged his sword against mine. I lifted my blade and attacked again as Jack looked on, offering pointers on footwork and posture from where he sat on an overturned box.

“Mrs. Rackham, remember your balance. Hold your arm like I showed you.” Jack demonstrated by curling his arm behind him at shoulder level.

“Like a masquerade dance,” I agreed without looking directly at him. Still, I lifted my arm as he did.

Solo’s piercing stare never left my face. “When a man—or woman—means to kill you or do you harm, something in your body senses it before they even make their first move.”

I drew my breath in slowly through my nose as my sword flew on its own. “Is that so?”

“Be aware of your surroundings. Know what is what and what is where—” Solo jabbed at me. I stepped to the side, behind a curtain of rigging. Solo’s lips tilted into some semblance of a smile. “So that everything around you, boxes, rigging, masts, cannons—they become your ally.”

I tilted my chin.

“But never forget to feel for your sixth sense.”

I froze as the icy steel of Jack’s blade pressed into my neck from behind.

My recent memory fizzled as I took in my environment. This was real, this was now. I tuned out the fear and the heat and let the creaking boards and slapping of the sea water against the helm soak into my senses. Then, there it was.

The sound of someone’s baited breath.

The infinitesimal scuff of a boot, creeping along the deck.

The sound of someone’s thundering heartbeat.

Or is that mine?

Still as a marble statue, I listened.

Jack’s voice, far away, exploded like a cannon. “Intruders! They’re on The Black Otter!”

Like the clap of thunder before a downpour, Jack’s booming voice unleashed a cacophony of clanging steel, cursing, growling that filled the sky over the sea.

I spun on my heel and let go a roar as I drove my sword into the gut of the breather behind me. The fog began to melt away like frosting from a cake, revealing a gruesome scene that played out like a bloody stage play.

Our eyes met and I tried to ignore the blade of his own that was arched to deliver a death blow and perhaps split my skull in two, had I not delivered mine first.

I yanked on the handle as I’d seen Jack do, but it didn’t budge. Instead, the man gripped the blade with his hands and whimpered. I yanked again. His turban fell off and rolled across the deck.

“Lodged in the backbone.” Solo’s voice was a welcome respite from the howls around me. “Like this.”

He pressed his booted foot next to my stuck blade and pushed hard against the man. My first kill slunk to the deck with a groan.

The blond former-prince only smiled. “Your first kill.”

I nodded. Now I’ve done murder.

“They boarded us.” He held my sword lightly in his hand and swept the bloody blade across his britches. “If you didn’t kill him, he would have killed you. And thought nothing more of it.”

“Solo! Behind you!”

The Polish prince-turned-pirate whirled and slashed the approaching pirate across the throat with my blade. He turned back to me, tossed my sword, and offered a gleaming grin before sprinting back into the melee. “Remember to slide your feet if you engage an opponent,” he called.

I spotted Jack locked in combat with a pirate near the rigging. Holding my sword before me, I made haste to my husband.

The buccaneer’s hand circled Jack’s throat, but he couldn’t seem to tighten it to a death grip. Jack appeared oblivious to the fingers that clawed at his neck as he held his rival at bay with the jeweled cutlass pressed beneath his chin. They danced beneath the rigging, each trying to gain an ounce of ground against his opponent to finish him off.

I must help Jack, but how?

With wild eyes, I glanced about.

I remembered my first training scenario with Jack and Solo aboard The Black Otter. Each were fighting each other, demonstrating proper dueling technique, before they turned and charged at me. Unsure of what to do, I had started up the rigging. The splintery ropes bit into my hands at once and my muscles burned. No London debutante’s hands were meant for climbing salty, worn rigging.

Solo and Jack both stopped cold. “Darling, you never go up.”

I let my husband pluck me from the ropes. “Why not?”

Solo laughed a throaty laugh. “Well, we can go up. But not you, Red.”

That comment hit me hard. Who are these men to say that I am part captain but unable to climb my own rigging? So when the sun went down, each night without fail, I went up. Up the rigging, more and more each night. My palms blistered and slowly callused and the climbing got easier.

The Arab pirate and Jack danced beneath the rigging in what looked to become a dance to the death. I studied the environment. The only place to go was up.

I clenched the bloody blade between my teeth and began to climb the ratlines. The coppery taste of enemy blood turned my stomach, but I fought back the swells of nausea. The ship pitched and rolled as a monstrous wave built just off the starboard side of The Black Otter. I ground my teeth onto the metal and held on to the rough rope so tightly that my fingers went numb.

The wave rose over the gory mess of pirates and crashed down like a divine hammer. My body snapped this way and that, like a water drop shaken from a dog’s fur. Finally, I opened my eyes and looked down. The force of the wave had torn Jack and his nemesis from the other’s grasp, and each lay on the deck. Jack’s jeweled cutlass lay between them.

The brown pirate moved first.

I pulled the blade from my teeth. All sense of fear had taken permanent leave. Jack was in trouble.

The rogue wave appeared to have sapped the will to fight from all the deck as his long fingers fumbled with Jack’s sword. I stared at my target and pointed my blade toward the deck.