…slam the bottle into his head as hard as you can.

You swing the bottle, and your pounding heart gives strength to your arm, letting it hinge up quickly, if somewhat awkwardly. You aim your strike at the man’s head, though no specific part, and the contents sloshes as it strikes his temple with the rounded base.

“AHHH!”

He lets go of you, of all of you, staggering back but not down, recoiling like a struck dog, but you feel no mercy. You heft the bottle again, swinging better and harder, clobbering him in the side of the head with all you’ve got and raging through your gritted teeth. Down he goes, collapsing into a heap still with arms about his head. You raise the bottle in both hands, by the stem, wishing to bring it down like an executioner’s blade and open his sleeping wretched head, but you stop. Sense returns, and the man who touched you looks no more a threat than a bag of wet flour, discarded upon the floor. The bottle clinks against the cobbles as you put it down nearby. Just like that, it’s over.

Only, not quite. As you turn and make your escape, you hear the sound of uncertain movement; his friends drawn to his cry or his fall and headed to intercept your path to freedom in their search for answers. The shelves of bottles, dimly lit by the receding lantern, begin to race past you as you run, and the hall that seemed so long to walk down is quickly crossed. In short order, you leave it behind and step around the boxes you passed before, stopping as the bald man’s shape materialises before you in the dark. Once halted, you take a step about him, pivoting like a dancer to side step his confused blockade, and quick march to the stairs and its exit.

“You ok?” It’s not directed at you, but at the man who groped you, still slumped and illuminated in a pool of light like some actor on a stage. “Guess not.”

You round the corner and begin to run up the wide stone steps, bounding in long strides that still only manage two steps at a time with every other leap. You don’t look back.

“Hey!” the bald man calls up after you. “Hey!”

You pause only for the door.

Once on the other side, you try and figure out what to do next, opting for the right path in order to get you from the cellar and what you found there. You round the corner and look down the long and familiar hallway, with its dark off shoot and the big dead ballroom at its end. As you pass its middle and the corridor into darkness and the far left wing of the building, you consider lying low in its shrouded embrace, but no one follows and no further calls can be heard. You continue on to the ball room, hoping to hide there and once more collect your thoughts and decide your path.

“Hey!”

You look back down the long hallway, heart sinking, and see the bald man striding down its length.

“I just wanna ask you something!” He begins to jog to you. What should you do? As you’re on the cusp of the ballroom anyway, with the foyer arch streaming in light, you step into the dark room and close the door.

What now? Where now? He was looking at your clothes before; could he be on the same crew as you’re supposed to be? Should you just answer his question? Can you? The last time you were cornered by a man in the dark it didn’t go well. You can still feel where he touched you. He was inside of you! The thought fills you with revulsion, softened only by the fantasy of him never waking up again. You wipe your face with your free hand, resisting the urge to wipe your crotch as well, and step back towards the foyers light as the darkness tightens around you. It’s a mistake, and one you realise when the door opens.

“Hey, I’m talkin to you!”

From where you stand, you see the merchant men still in the foyer all turn to you in unison, drawn by the shout of the man behind you. If you’d thought -if your mind was in the right place- you could have talked to him in the dark unseen, and slipped a blade somewhere quiet. Instead he tramps his way to you and the foyer light, where eyes can see your every move. You step towards him, hoping to intercept him where it’s still dark and perhaps lead him away, but such is the fierceness of his step that you end up stepping back yourself, losing any ground you gained and he comes to stop before you.

He pants slightly, one hand holding up his trousers, which seem to have been donned hastily.

“You-“ he takes a deep breath before continuing “-you new or something?”

Aware of the eyes on you, you answer “yes.”

“Who hired you?”

“Uhh-” Saying ‘the captain’ would be logical, but you get the feeling that would be a bad idea. There’s something in the way that he said it, as though who you answer with would determine his follow up question. You finally finish with a shrug and a “You know” as you buy time.

“Unacka?” Perfect.

“Yes!” You don’t know who he is, but you’ll take what you can get.

“He hammer out the terms? Or do you still have to fuck the captain?”

The pause is unavoidable as you process what he said. His words are phased in an odd way, as though both would happen; specifically, that you had either fucked the captain and negotiated with the person who hired you, or that you still needed to fuck the captain before negotiating with the person who hired you. In both cases, it left little doubt as to what happens between his captain and any new female recruits.

Your mouth opens and closes several times before you simply nod your head, hoping it would be signal enough to appease the man.

“Nice. Nice. Your deal like Bekka’s, or more like Pins?”

You figure that if you’re new then you can be excused for not knowing, and try to steer the conversation to a resolution.

“I don’t know, what’s their ‘terms’?”

“Ahh you know…” He fixes a sardonic sideways smile and looks you up and down. “Look, I know why you’re here.” The words alone double your heart rate, yet the ease with which they are said seem ready to disprove your fear. “You’re here to grab some good booze right? Fuck that inn.” Thank the gods. “Well, how about you an me go back and get some? I know that prick tried something, but you an me, we’re on the same crew, right.” He steps forward, putting a hand on your arm that you suppose is meant to be comforting.

You’re about to agree, if only for the chance to stab him in the dark, when his hand slips from your arm.

“You know what that means.”

He hooks a single finger on your top, at the button, and pulls its poor fit wide, giving him a good look right down your chest. You bat the material down with both hands, flicking his finger free (and thankfully not the loose button along with it), pressing it all against your skin to hide you back to decency. You take a big step back into the foyer as well, involuntarily, to get away from him. His smile drops instantly.

“Aw come on, there’s something I want to try.” He steps forward, and you several steps back. His face twists as though it had never known a smile. “Why you being such a frigid bitch!?”

Driven into the light and with all attention on you, back and back as he approaches, you look for an escape, elevating yourself with a final step backwards, onto the first step of the grand central staircase. The merchants are looking at you. The front door guard peeks in at the entrance with brows furrowed. The maid is still in the other room and has abandoned her work to watch, and the bald man had stopped advancing, as though the step was sacred ground. ‘Why you being such a frigid bitch?’ What do you even say to a man who asks that?

“And what is it that you want to try?”

You follow the woman’s voice, bellowed not with a shout, but with a personal intensity that commands attention, turning on your feet to look up the stairs. Captain Wendy ‘Go’ Washkin stands by the banister, leaning on it with paper crumpling in her hand, and watching every inch of the room with a sweeping gaze. And it can only be Captain Washkin, though you have never seen her before; she stands with feet slightly spread and clad in high leather boots, decked in a frilly white shirt that’s covered in a long flowing coat coloured red and tapered with laced gold. More than any dress though, her eyes are blue and intense enough to make it the first thing you notice, framed in a long mane of gold blond hair that spills about her shoulders where it’s not tied at the back. While not the time to gawp, her face had both a hardness and a softness to it; lined little by age, but furrowed with grim days and hard sea winds. It’s all plastered under expensive makeup set by skilled hands, giving her an ageless appearance while leaving no doubt of her seniority over you, in all areas.

There is a fine sword at her waist and a deadly grace to her stance, needing only the shift of her hips to draw your eyes to both.

“Hm?” Her hum sounds dainty and elegant. In the still room, it carries like a fog horn.

“Errrr.” The bald man steps away. “Nothin…mam.”

She turns to a man behind her, so hidden by her presence that you had not noticed him. “Yours I trust?”

He steps forward, showing off his garish coat of red and yellow stripes by pushing it back to rest his hands on his hips and the long knives sheathed there. He squints at you both, eyes settling on you.

“Who the fuck are you?” with no pause at all, they shift to the other man “Nicome; who the fuck is she?”

“New hire Captain, brought on by Unacka.”

The man, who is shorter than the woman beside him, though stockier, turns his ruddy face to you and looks you up and down. “Eh, well. Wait in my quarters. I’ll deal with you in the morning.”

He turns to go, but the form of Captain Washkin keeps her eyes on you. You look down, hoping to look cowed and innocent, and not at all like an assassin here to kill her.

“Why are you here?” She watches you like some treetop owl, and your attitude only make you feel like a mouse under her attention.

“She was here to-“

“Not you.” She cuts off the bald man. Though you can’t see her, looking down, her eyes feel as though they never moved from you. “Her.”

You swallow, “I was here to, to grab some booze mam.”

“There’s plenty at the inn; why are you here?”

Sweat prickles your brow and your back below the stolen top. You hope the merchants behind you cannot see the stained hole in its back.

“Not…not the good stuff, mam.”

There is a pause, and then the sound of scraping steel sends a shiver up every hair on your back.

“What are you doing? I’ll straighten her out later.”

Captain Washkin ignores Captain Roland, and you look up as you hear her thudding down the stairs towards you. The fine blade is in her hands, with its long rapier point levelled towards you. She doesn’t have to descend much before it’s at your throat.

“A new recruit that you’ve never seen before joins your crew, and the first thing she does is come to this building, where anyone would tell her she has no business, and where this islands two biggest bounties just so happen to be located? And that’s not at all suspicious to you?”

You don’t know if the question is directed at you or Captain Roland. You hold your hands up and out, making no sudden moves save for their shake every time the sword brushes the fine hairs of your neck. Captain Roland, finally caught on, begins to walk down towards you as well.

“I…I…” Words don’t come as quickly with steel at your neck. Why is your mouth so dry? You swallow again and again.

“You…you…are a liar. I can tell.”

She smiles mockingly, slowly moving the sword over you, playfully swinging its point across all your vital organs. The room watches it avidly, though none more so than yourself, and as it hovers over your side, its flat edge taps your hip, the sound of metal on meat and material coming in a light slap, then down to tap your thigh, the metallic ting of metal on hidden blade sounding for all to hear. Captain Roland walks up behind you and roughly feels where she landed.

“Ahah.” He makes it sound like his discovery when his fingers feel out the strap and the blade. He reaches into your pocket and draws it quickly, looking at the black painted stiletto in the lantern light.

“I think we should talk, don’t you?”

The question is directed at you, but Roland responds anyway. “Damn straight.”

He grabs your arms and twists them to your back, marching you up the stairs. Behind the woman you’re here to kill.

Damn damn damn! This could have gone better; much better! If it wasn’t for that bald bastard! No, if it wasn’t for that hairy one that touched you!

At the top of the stairs, Roland turns around, looking down at the foyer.

“What’s the matter boy? Can’t tell when someone’s here to kill me!?”

The bald man looks shaken, with the tan draining from his face. “No. I-“

“Go scrub the fuckin deck! Now!”

Roland sounds angry, matching his unfortunate reputation. Despite being a short man, he’s definitely taller than you, and from the iron shackles of his grip, considerably stronger too. You’re marched through the set of double doors at the top of the stairs, and see the captain drop the map on a large table, set low enough that Roland forces you to walk across its surface. Cabinets, chests, and paperwork pass in a blur, and soon you’re tossed into a second room beyond the first, this time separated by only a single door.

You’re thrown down to the wooden floor, defenceless, with two armed and angry pirate captains looking down at you. This isn’t a position you ever wanted to be in, but you’re in it now.

All you need to do is get out of it.