A Pirate's Life For Us

Chapter 7 - Word Games

"What does it say?"

"I don't know. Do I look like Lucius?"

"Maybe a little. Around the eyes."

"Don't you read a bit, Jim?"

Jim snorted. "I read a little Spanish. Does this look like Spanish?"

"Maybe a little around the i's."

"Hilarious."

"Shut it. We have to figure this out."

Frenchie, Fang and Ivan were hovering outside the supply cage turned brig where Jim was locked up. They were all examining a slip of paper with writing on it that had been delivered by a friendly seagull.

"I swear to god, the bird landed right on the end of my lute while I was sitting on deck," said Frenchie. "Which means Buttons has to be alive," he shot a look to Jim. "Which means Olu is probably, too. And this...this was definitely written by Stede."

"How can you tell if you can't read it?" asked Ivan.

"When I filled in for Lucius, I had the leger. Stede had written in the first few bits of the book before he hired Lucius. His writing is all frilly, like this. With all the extra bits." Frenchie pointed to a spot where a letter did an impressive flourish.

"Should we tell Ed?" asked Fang.

"Don't be an idiot," muttered Jim. "We don't want him to know Stede is coming. He might get angry again. Best thing to do is let him surprise him. Might knock him properly out of this mopey violent asshole thing he's got going on."

"Are you sure? It seems kind of a mean thing to surprise him with," said Fang.

"Yes, I'm sure," said Jim. "Trust me. The first thing we want him to feel when he sees Stede is relief. Then he can get pissed off at him after we get rid of these fucking wolves Izzy has us surrounded with."

"Yeah, they're real mean. One of them already cut his mate's finger off. And it wasn't infected or nothing," murmured Ivan.

"Right. So. We need to find the book..." Jim was playing with the little wooden shiv in place of their dagger.

"Right, right!" said Frenchie. "There's a list of crew in the front of it. We can see if any of this is a name."

"But...we threw all the books overboard," said Fang.

"Not that one. After the English left with Stede and Ed, I hid it." Frenchie snapped and looked around. "Oh! Brilliant." He scrambled across the room, shouldered a barrel aside and tugged a board free. Out came bits of hard tack, a deck of cards, a bottle of rum...and the book.

"Frenchie you saucy little hoarder," murmured Jim, clearly impressed.

"Look, don't judge me. I didn't know any of you when I got on board. And my last ship wasn't exactly feeding us proper or paying our fair share." The Revenge was the best berth he'd had, by far. But old habits die hard. Squirreling things away in case things went south had saved his life more than once over the years.

Jim put their hands up and stepped back, a ghost of a grin still dancing across their lips.

Frenchie flipped through the book, scanning the first page that had a list of all the crewmembers, their daily wage and the port they joined the Revenge . Towards the bottom, in darker ink were four new names. "Ivan, Fang, do you know what your names look like when they're written?"

The two legacy Blackbeard crewmembers looked at each other. "Maybe?" said Ivan.

"Here, look." Frenchie flipped the book around.