…loot the room for valuables; you can always stash them before the swim if you need to.

Sure that the sound of footsteps have gone, you slip out of the wardrobe and into the room. There is no sound of distant burning (yet), and the orders she gave before her **** are off being completed, and so the room has a quiet stillness to it, like an unattended wake. Just you and her, lying bare breasted and discoloured by the touch of your poison.

With no time to lose, you turn to the wardrobe you exited and look to its wide draws, sitting below the space you hid in. The top draw contains clothes -a mixture of lacy intimates- and shoving them around shows nothing hidden beneath them. The next is also clothes, and the one below that as well. Stupid place to start really. Nevertheless, you drop down and look below the wardrobe. Its feet raise it up enough to provide a decent space, if narrow, but in the dimly lit room, it is thick with an impenetrable darkness. The wardrobe is wide enough that reaching an arm under cannot get you touching the backboards, but you confirm it’s empty. A good place to hide, should other looters come.

You dust yourself off and move to the unit next to it. It’s comprised of lots of little draws, most as wide as your hand and as long as your forearm. It’s as well made as the other furniture here; clearly someone imported to the island as any craftsman skilled enough to make it would balk at leaving his workshop to do so. Opening the top row of draws, you have to perch on tiptoes to see into them. Papers, qills, inkwells, maps, string, seals, stamps, ink pads, melting wax. Where are the jewels? The next row is no better, save for it being lower down and saving your ankles. The urge to tip out the draws and search for secret compartments does come to you, but wilfully making a mess is not in your nature and you decline, opting instead to slide the draws back into the state you found them in. While it seems to you an odd self-restriction, especially considering the mess you’ve made of the island, and the endorsement Captain Washkin’s corpse makes for the effectiveness of such methods, but after a moment’s thought, you decide that you just don’t want to.

Open. Close. Open. Close. Open. Close. Open. Close. Open. A curled gold chain glitters at you, smothering a silver rimmed sunrise of opal fire stones. You don’t know much about jewellery, but it certainly looks expensive. You pull it out and see twin silver rings sets with some dark glass, and earrings that look like chandeliers of frozen crystal droplets. Out they all come. You throw the necklace around your neck and tuck it under your top, and the rings you place on your thumbs so they do not rattle on your slender fingers. Ears unpierced, you wonder what to do with the fine hooks of the earrings, and eventually, you pull down your trousers and hook them onto the leather strap at your thigh.

The contents of the draws seem themed, with the stationary all on the same row, and seeing how the riches contained here are in the first draw of this row, the remaining unopened draws shine with promise and fill you with an eager thrill.

Footsteps come, clomping up the stairs and the outer door of the room beyond. Time to hide. You go to the wardrobe and hesitate at the door. Should you climb back in? Having just started rummaging, you can’t help but think the wide and unlocked doors are too easy prey. Instead, you drop down and slide your narrow body into the dark space below, having to breathe out to make it under the decorative under rim.

As your body disappears into dark oblivion, the door opens and Captain Roland once more walks in. Damn, who would have thought he’d return! You thought it may have been her next appointment, or another crewman coming with an updated. Why would Captain Roland return? If you were in the wardrobe, perhaps you could have ambushed him and left with the real prize!

You watch as his feet thump into the middle of the room and stop at the captains’ corpse. It’s only for a moment. He turns to look at the table and its chairs and goes to sit down.

From your vantage, he’s distant enough to see his torso, the table, his tapping fingers, but not his face which is covered by the decorative rim of your wardrobe. Otherwise his body is turned to you, with the captains’ corpse between, and a paranoid feeling welling up inside of you. Is he watching the wardrobe? Does he see you? What would he see? Your hair is dark and your face covered to the nose, leaving only your eyes. You still have your blade in hand, but your hands themselves are hidden in the folds of your arms and the material of your dark top. You’re a dark shadow in a dark spot, but the feeling doesn’t go and it’s not helped by how **** you feel; slithering free of your tight space will not be as quick as stuffing yourself into it.

Captain Roland stops his tapping and reaches for the mug still resting on the table. It should be empty, but an irrational thrill still runs through you. If he drank…but why would he be so stupid? He could fill up the other, but you don’t see a bottle. Your suspicions are confirmed when he puts it down, rolling it on its base in idle thought. With nothing else to do, you read his body language; thoughtful, considering, suspicious. You can’t see his head but it feels like his eyes dart between the mug and the body, his mind entertaining the wild notion that the most notorious pirate to sail the seas did not kill herself with absurd incompetence, just to kill him. Fingers drum. It takes him a while.

Eventually he stands up, and you hear more than see the drawing of his knives. Not good. He walks about like a hunting predator, stepping softly and looking carefully. You see him duck down, looking under the bed at a distance. Definitely not good! He cannot know that the poisoner is still here, or was here at all, but with time to spare in whatever game he’s playing, he uses it to be extra cautious. When he lifts the mattress and pulls it free of the bed, looking through the slats from above, you feel shivers run up and down your spine. Definitely definitely not good!

He stalks the room, moving to the door he didn’t enter by and opening it, stepping through but not far. As it’s out of your sight, and you from his, you take the time to shrink back as far as you can in the dark, sliding quietly up against the dusty backboard of the wall and out of the reach of any exploring hands (hopefully). After searching whatever the room is for a few minutes, he returns to your view and the body in its centre, looking around for other places a person could hide. He looks to the wardrobe. He looks under it.

You close your eyes as he bends down, not wanting any light to reflect off them, and remain perfectly still, not even breathing. You open them when he straightens and begins to walk towards you, leather boots worn by hard years stepping closer and closer. They look tailored, made to last; could your blade even penetrate such hard leather? Perhaps with a good stab, if you could angle for it, but certainly a slash would leave no more than a mark. The feet stop a good distance away and you hear the doors above as they are opened, first slowly and cautiously, but then with enough **** to rock the wardrobe above you. The feet step closer, rummage, then leave.

You could have stabbed them, but you play it out in your mind. He would have cried out and fallen, and armed with knives as he was, it would be a cornered knife fight on your belly with a man twice as armed and twice as strong. Instead, you simply breathe again as he walks over to the fire place.

More footsteps, running up the stairs. On the ground as you are, you feel them before hearing them, giving you time to watch Captain Rolands reaction as worry lights up his face. He moves to the door, blades more ready than ever, and when a frantic knocking rap comes and a weaselly **** voice calls out ‘Captain?’ he finally bids them enter.

“Took you long enough!”

Four men enter the room, decked in red and yellow clothes, each smudged with ash or a few sprays of blood. The bald one answers first.

“Fires out of control now. Everyone’s legged it back to the ships. I grabbed who I could.”

A surly dangerous looking man sporting most of the blood adds, “Guard was askin questions.”

Roland gives his orders quickly. “I’ll take care of him. You, with me. You, you, and you, search this place. We’re gonna grab what we can and get out of here. You see anyone, kill them.”

The three tasked with staying bark out “Sir!” “Ay!” and an “Ay captain!” while the silent dangerous man simply nods.

You wince and your eyes crinkle with worry. You were supposed to be gone by now! Instead you stay huddled and trapped under the wardrobe as draws are pulled from their frames and their contents scattered and piled. Papers flutter like snow, inkpots shatter, curses sound. “Bag,” one of them says. Things rattle as they are thrown inside.

Meanwhile, you listen as the other two men, the captain one of them, cross the room outside to the stairs, and then a noise sounds that stops all the looting in its tracks.

“Hey! What are you-“ The question cuts off with a gurgle, and the thin noise of steel entering and leaving flesh sounds again and again and again until the body falls. The looting resumes.

You watch as the room is turned inside out. They come to your wardrobe and rummage through the clothes, tapping for hidden spaces. The draws come out and are emptied to the floor before being dumped on top of their contents. Fortunately, a thin board of wood remains above your head, but your heart stops when a hand reaches into your space, groaping the air before your face. It probes the thin wood and confirms it to be as thin as it seems, before feeling the air and floor blindly, looking for hidden trinkets.

You hold out your blade tightly.

Should you cut him?

Fortunately, laziness takes hold, and there are many other places for him to search yet. The man helps his friend to pull out all the remaining little draws, exclaiming when they find something behind them. They shake the unit before one of them says, “Locked. Gimme room.”

In a matter of minutes, they tear the place apart, even cutting the mattress and searching briefly though the feathers. Three sacks stand filled, though you don’t know where they found them. One of them appears to be a pink dress with the base tied up and bulging with pointy objects. When Roland returns, only the man fiddling with the locked compartment has genuine work to do.

“Almost got it Captain. It’s a good one, but a couple more minutes…”

“Stay and finish. Join us when you’re done.”

With the last order, Roland walks out of the room while the others carry the two bags most filled, struggling with the weight.

That leaves you alone with the lock breaker.

You really don’t want to stay any longer. With the woods burning, your window to leave grows ever shorter and you at least have something to take with you. The last bag slumps near the captains’ body, deflated but far from empty. You could leave with more.

You focus on what you can do now.

Most obvious, you could wait. In a few minutes, the man will be done and leave with the bag and whatever he finds, then you can get out from your hiding spot and run through the woods and escape, hopefully without burning alive. You’ll miss out on whatever is in the bag, and it will lose you more time, but it would be safer than the alternative.

You lick your lips.

Alternatively, you could kill the man and take the bag. You think you have a way to do so. By luring him to you, you could do what you wanted to do with Roland; stabbing his feet and then stabbing him further when fallen. Unlike Roland, the lock breaker is not so cautious and doesn’t seem armed from what you have seen of him. He is also wearing sandals in lieu of thick leather boots, with bare ankles unknowingly tempting fate. You could then leave sooner, and richer, but it’s a risk, especially if he’s more armed and capable than he seems. It would still be a knife fight on your belly after all, with someone stronger than you.

Looking at the black painted stiletto knife in your hands, turning it so the light rides up its thin blade edge, you consider which path suits you best; one of greed and ****, the other of cowardice and caution.