8
Captain Calico Pierce
C alico Pierce. Captain Pierce.
Gods, of course I’d heard of him. I’d read about him—how he left behind three of the fastest royal ships in the entire fleet, escaping with nothing but this little vessel, The Rebecca.
I’d read about how he’d cheated death not once, but twice, slipping from the gallows with orchestrations so brilliant they could only be called legendary. I’d read how he once saved Mad Rackham himself, the most feared pirate of the Nine Seas, by pretending to be the executioner, and no one doubted of his identity—until he took off the hood. And instead of pulling the lever to send Rackham to his death, he’d thrown five knives, each one hitting its target, taking down five guards in a single breath, creating the perfect distraction, allowing Captain Rackham to escape the noose and live to terrorize the seas another day.
And I had also read, how he was the greatest art thief piracy had ever known. Legends said that he had a secret island of unknown location where he kept every piece of art he had stolen over the years—just for his own amusement, like a personal museum.
All those years reading about his legends, hearing songs about him, and I never imagined he would look like… this. A towering figure with eyes that captured the soul of the sea and the clarity of the sky, with a piercing gaze only interrupted by a scar that slashed across his left eye, a mark of battles fought and survived. A man with hair rich and dark like polished tortoiseshell that fell in careless strands over his brow as if defying perfection on purpose. And all of that accompanied by a grin that spoke of a man who lived for the thrill, as though every moment was a game he was born to win. And he didn't look much older than me.
How could someone have lived so much in so little time? But then again, it wasn’t that, was it? It was not about little time, it was about me not having lived enough.
“We need to leave this port if we don't want to feed the fish, Cap’n. We will meet the others at Loro,” said the older looking pirate with the white beard.
And still, with his eyes locked on mine, Captain Pierce responded with unshaken calm, “Raise the sails and take the helm, Duke. Let's get out of here.”
The other two men started moving and doing things that I could not see because I was too stunned staring at the captain trying to understand why was I here, and how was I alive. And he was looking at me as if he was also trying to piece something together, and maybe it was the fact of why a matter of minutes ago, he was saving my life.
“And hoist the colours,” he continued, his voice loud and clear. “Remind them that they’ve been humiliated by the same pirates once again.”
And with that, he went straight to what looked like acrew'scabinthat waslocatedinthe stern of the ship.
“Wait!” I tried to follow him, but the ship surged forward with astonishing speed, as if it were powered by magic. I tried to grab onto the mast and failed desperately, falling to the wooden floor with both hands.
Suddenly, a pair of black boots appeared in front of me, and when I looked up, one of the other two pirates was offering me a hand. He helped me to my feet, and when I faced him, I saw a deep cut running across his brow. His face was all angles and depth—defined cheekbones that gave him a regal, almost brooding presence, softened only by the subtle curl of his beard.
I traced how a trail of blood from the cut traveled down his warm, russet-brown skin before the drop fell to the floor, staining his boots.
“Are you all right?” I asked, worried.
He laughed, and when he flashed a grin, soft and easy, I caught the glint of a gold tooth, gleaming like a secret he'd gladly share.
“I should be asking you that,” he said, his dark eyes holding a quiet storm, sharp and unyielding, as if he'd seen both the fury of the sea and lived to mock it .
Still laughing, he nodded towards where the captain went. “You can wait in the aft cabin until we reach the open seas, we are going to pick up a lot of speed.”
“Why are we going so fast?” I asked, stunned. After all, this was a little vessel and I knew it would be fast, but this was different, it felt like the ship was flying through water. As if immediate winds had blown at the same moment the captain spoke.
He looked at me confused, as if me not knowing the answer to that question was odd.
“The Rebecca is the fastest ship on the Nine Seas.” He looked up at the red velvet sails. “Those were a gift from Ventus to the captain.”
Ventus. The God of the Winds. These sails had the favor of the winds?
“Pardon?” I managed to breathe out, with my head up still facing the sails of the ship.
He chuckled again, grabbed me by the arm and started walking, heading us to the stern.
“We will arrive to Loro at midnight.”
He must have seen me too confused, because suddenly, he was explaining how they were a crew of eight members and that we were heading to some island called Isla Loro to get the others.
I had read about that small secret lawless island too, about how they lived under an anarchic system, free from punishment and prejudice. No man's land .
While we were still walking, the pirate at my side started pointing to the others. “That seadog at the helm is old Duke. Has been at sea too many years to need an introduction, I fear.” He smirked playfully. “He is the second in command.”
As we approached the helm, my gaze locked onto the man steering the ship—Duke. His face, worn and weathered like the wood of the ship itself, I could tell carried the weight of countless storms and salt-ridden days. His skin was deeply creased, leathery from years under an unforgiving sun, and his features were shadowed beneath the brim of a wide, black hat. Long strands of salt-kissed hair fell from under it, streaked with the gray of age, yet his presence commanded power, steady hands gripping the helm as if he were an extension of the ship itself. His eyes, though pale as the distant skies, still burned with sharpness and purpose, a fierce blue that could cut through murky mist.
“He must have very good stories.”
“Aye. If you want to spend hours hearing him talk, ask him about the tattoo on his back,” he responded with a mischievous smile.
“That handsome fella over there is Efren Barone,” he said, pointing at the man who was tying the knots. He looked like perhaps was in his late twenties, with long blond hair and a red handkerchief tied to his head.
As if he noticed we were looking, he faced us and smiled with a nod. I could now see his light brown eyes and how his bronze skin was decorated with red ink drawings all over his torso and arms of something that, from here, I could deduce were tentacles .
“Show off,” the pirate next to me muttered. “He never wears a shirt, you should get used to that.” He sighed. “The Gods know I haven't yet.”
We continued walking, and because I noticed something in that last statement of his, I looked at his face and saw something like shyness as he looked down and cleared his throat.
“And I'm Jonah, the one with the fake fang made of gold.” He winked, and then whispered, “I always say I had a fight with a great white shark but the truth is, I ate a lot of sugar when I was a little boy.”
I laughed and offered him my hand when we reached the door of the cabin. “So nice to meet you, Jonah. I'm Donna.”
He shook my hand with a laugh. “You are a very strange pirate, Donna.”
“So I′ve heard.”
Jonah opened the door to the cabin, and I watched how he took a few steps back nodding behind me as if telling me to get in, and then he approached Efren to help him with the knots.
Determined to find answers, I entered the cabin.
Every corner was illuminated with the yellow light of candles and the little sunlight that came in through the small windows. I was perplexed by all the beautiful antiques these four walls hid, there were small objects scattered on all surfaces of the room, on the windowsills, and some on the floor. It looked like they were tools used by astronomers perhaps fifty years or more ago. There were globes of every size, some glittering with gold finishes, others pale and colorless. As I drew closer, I couldn’t resist the urge to trace my fingers over them. Some depicted the Nine Seas, complete with islands, reefs, and even tides—details I had only ever read about in banned books and had been taught were mere myths. Those globes, I remembered from the palace lectures, were called Romantic Globes. Anything tied to the Nine Seas, the forbidden islands between the Kingdoms, or the tales sung in ballads and written in poems, belonged to what scholars now called the Romantic Order.
Those who studied the stars and tides beyond a royal obligation, who believed in divine blessings and dreadful curses, in sea creatures and treasures hidden beneath the waves—those who wrote, painted, and crafted maps and globes inspired by such wonders—were the so-called Romantics. And once, I counted myself among them. I believed in everything, I wanted everything.
But I still dreamed every night for it to be real. I still begged the Gods to give me something, anything . So I supposed, deep inside, I was still one of them.
I was still that girl who dreamed.
But of course, King Thadrius made sure there was no trace left of absolutely anything related to the Romantic Order. Books, scriptures, and maps, were burned, and I could only get a couple of them smuggled when I was thirteen.
So perhaps those globes had been replicated merely for decoration, while the ones depicting only the Four Kingdoms of Marethys were the ones truly in use—the official ones, or so they claimed. The ones without color. The ones I was made to study in the palace. A world of Four Kingdoms divided by one ocean, one sea. Not nine.
In the south, the sunny and warm Kingdom of Dallene. In the east, Pearlspire, the Kingdom of colors, opportunities and artists. In the west, the Kingdom of coves and the bluest waters on the entire globe, Jévira. And in the north, the largest, the Kingdom of vile sovereigns, unjust laws, prohibitions and executions… and mine, Tidia. It was a different Kingdom before, with music in the streets and merchant ships constantly entering and leaving the port to exchange new wealth from other Kingdoms, but I never knew that reign, because I was born in the Tidia of today.
As I looked at my surroundings, I could see that the walls were adorned with paintings about the sea. They were all dark and gloomy, about storms and shipwrecks, but there was one that immediately caught my attention.
It was a fairly large painting, at least larger than the others, in it was a shore of pink water so crystalline that if you got very close to the canvas, you could see that what was really pink was not the waters, but the sand underneath. And when my gaze fell on the small plaque affixed to the painting’s frame, I smiled knowingly—because of course it was.
“The Heartbreak Harbor. Oil on Canvas. 1730.”
This was an anonymous painting from five years ago.
“Do you like it?”
I immediately spun at the voice that came from behind me, accidentally dropping one of the globes to the ground with my arm. It broke into pieces, and I had to take a step back to lean on something and not lose my balance again.
“I'm truly sorry, I didn't mean to,” I said, facing Captain Pierce.
He was sitting in a leather chair, with his boots up on a big table full of maps and ink blots and letters. His face showed indifference as he raised an eyebrow, looked me up and down, and then to the floor, to the mess I made.
“Forgive me,” I insisted, as I bent down to pick up the broken pieces.
He finally got up from the chair with a sigh, that even from down here I could tell was one of annoyance, and crouched under the table. He was now next to me, both of us kneeling on the wooden floor of the cabin—me trying to gather the pieces, and him, studying me as if he still couldn't figure me out.
“What kind of pirate doesn't know how to swim,” he said, picking up a broken piece from the floor. “Apologizes.” He grabbed another piece. “Not once, but twice .” Another piece. “And bends down to clean what they accidentally dropped?” Another piece.
He was looking into my eyes, and something about that question made me whisper, “Me.”
He kept facing me in silence and I took it as a sign to continue speaking and try to get the answers I came seeking.
“You knew Dara.” It came out more like a statement than a question, because somehow, I was afraid that he didn't have an answer to give me .
“She was part of my crew. One of the many people who worked for me undercover at the court of Tidia.”
He must have seen the sadness and questions in my eyes because he immediately answered my internal doubts, “She couldn't tell you because, otherwise, both of you would have ended up dead.”
I looked at the floor, at the broken pieces in my hands, as if they were the ones I needed to fit into the puzzle I was trying to solve.
“Can you please tell me what is happening?” I breathed out with teary eyes.
“Dara was looking for a specific map that we knew King Thadrius owned and I have wanted for years. When she finally found it, she told us there was no way to get it out of the castle unless we all went in. So she said something about a wedding being officiated, and of course, that would be the perfect day to enter without raising suspicion.” He took the pieces of the broken globe from my hands and stood up, placing them on the table.
“Dara told us that the bride was the daughter of an executed pirate and that she would give her the map, with the only condition that I would bring her with us.”
A map? Dara didn't give me anything.
I got up from the floor abruptly. We were at opposite sides of the table now, looking at each other as if we knew exactly that we were craving different things, him a map, and me more answers.
“You have something that belongs to me, I believe?” he said, smiling, extending his arm across the table before me. I looked down at his open hand and thought how to take advantage of the request.
“Why didn't I die in that church?” I asked him seriously.
He let out a laugh as he dropped his arm and began to walk around the table slowly.
“You really don't know, do you?” As he approached me, I had to raise my head so I could keep looking at him in the eyes. “You don't remember stepping onto that island? Is that how it works?” He tilted his head and moved even closer.
“What are you talking about?” I took a step back.
“The Heartbreak Harbor,” he whispered, trying again to close the distance between us.
“What?”
“That is how you lived. The sea saved you. Thalassa saved you.”
I shook my head as I took more steps back. It couldn’t be. That was a legend. It couldn’t be true.
It is, Lady Love.
What was happening?
“That's why I threw that knife at you, and that's why I carried that jar of sea water with me,” he said, still approaching.
My back hit the wall.
“It was the perfect distraction. Hit the target next to The King, focus all the attention on him.” Captain Pierce stepped forward and leaned his arms on the wall behind me.
“Now, where is my map,” he demanded.
“Dara knew? She told you? ”
Why didn't she tell me?
He shook his head in disbelief. “Of course she told me. The real question here is, how did you not know.”
“Because it's a myth!” I said fearfully, pushing him off me. “It is not true! It wasn't supposed to be true!” I kept hitting him in the chest with my hands until he suddenly took both of my arms and put them behind my back.
“How could you not know! Is that how it works? Is that the real heartbreak? Thalassa trades your memories of the island for her protection?”
“Get off me!” I began to move, desperately trying to get my arms out of his hands, moving my head from side to side.
Suddenly, his face shifted in disbelief, and releasing my arms, he whispered, “You.”
With his right hand, he took my jaw and moved my face, carefully exposing the left side of my neck. “You are Balboa's daughter.” He chuckled with a questioning smile. “That is why Dara wanted me to take you with us, is it not? You must know." He moved my face again so he could look at me, and then asked, “How do I get to The Vile Phantom?”