Mariana felt her head with her hands as a terrible headache passed through her brain. She had not expected this, nor had she expected to be this weak in front of an opportunity, but in any case, it had to be settled.
Suddenly she sensed a presence in the room, with hints of oak and leather aromas alerting her sense of smell; it was like Daniel himself had been there, sipping something straight out of the barrel. It was the unmistakable musk of his skin, that strangely clean and purifying note.
Mariana felt like she was going insane. He wasn't here, no, it could not possibly be him. This was distressing. There was no body to press her own into, no lips to fumble her lips onto, and yet her entire existence seemed to pull itself into this agonizing yearning.
She sighed. It had been too long since she had felt this love. Now, with him as an invisible memory within the room, there was no outlet for her feelings.
She unlocked her door and came to the deck.
The men had some good news for her.
Pirates were free to kill or be killed. Such notions of lawlessness did not concern privateers, but on the high seas, the line between those two professions got blurred quickly. Privateers had to eat, too, and with a hold that could only take so much food and water with them, they had to resort to taking ships by force and stealing some edible cargo.
This was their lucky day.
Some beginner pirates had been prowling around the edges of the area that was plagued by subtropical storms. They had raised the black too early, revealing all their proverbial cards. The nimble sloop was bobbing happily on the waves, trying to reach the Good Wife.
Mariana smirked.
Gods, such an easy catch!
She hollered for her crew to close in on the pirate ship. From this angle, it was not possible to see the threatening mouths of the guns of the Wife. The men had been diligent about concealing the whole armory, but the cannons were there, waiting with their hungry openings staring towards the northern horizon. The blades were sheathed, the guns were loaded and clean. These were the things that the pirates did not see.
They merely saw just another boisterous merchant with nothing but insurance guarding the hold and the treasures inside.
Mariana commanded her men to pull a little closer on the starboard side and then raise their flag.
She had not really put much thought into the design of the flag. Privateers always used a red base for their patterns; for pirates, this meant bloodshed without taking captives. Such an idea was the entire point of the privateering life. The public hangings of famous pirates tended to gather so much unwanted attention and bad publicity that it was better to have a designated villain killing the outlaws on the high seas. That was something that the crown could condone while keeping all royal hands clean and away from the actual bloodshed.
Mariana could be that villain in someone's story.
In her own tale, she was heroic as she unsheathed her scimitar and screamed into the sky. In her own tale, the pirates had done this to themselves. In her life and her fate - the only fate that mattered - she was purging the seas as she gave the command.
In any case, the skull with painted lips flew above them, signaling the terror the pirates had unleashed.
"FIRE!"
Cannons roared, splitting the gunwale of the pirate ship. The shock came in screams. One, two, then a third scream that was already the voice of a dying man crying and not just someone being surprised by the stealthy attack.
"AGAIN!"
The depressing part about battles on the high seas was that they never lasted as long as the captain of a bloodthirsty crew would have hoped. There was always an anticlimactic white flag, or a splinter that killed the enemy captain before the crew could respond.
This left Mariana with an agitated group of aggressive men. When that happened, it was better to hope for some good loot.
The white flag came up within the first minute of the merciless cannonfire. The pirates had not managed to get a single shot into the Wife. Not one bloody shot.
Mariana sighed. Hopefully, the ineptness of the outlaws had been one of drunkenness, and there would be some rum in the hold. That was good for calming down the angry crew.
They seized everything.
The captain of the pirate ship was a tiny man, but he seemed ferocious enough with his teeth audibly grinding throughout his episode of humiliation that Mariana suspected some kind of a trap.
No such things came up. They received some livestock and pickled goods, along with what was the cheapest and nastiest wine Captain Mariana had ever tasted. The crew was content with this.
She was not.
Searching the captain's cabin twice, she happened to find the log. There were plenty of reported pirate sightings, but only one caught Mariana's attention.
It was Daniel's ship, seen heading towards Griffin's Passage.
Her heart sank to the bottom of her belly. Oh, this was not good. What was Daniel doing? The Passage was in the western area of the ocean, and it was dangerous, awfully dangerous.
No, this could not happen. Mariana would never allow anything else to kill her true love. She would take his heart and soul, if he had a soul.
The other interesting thing about the captured ship was indeed its vicious captain. From the mastication he did with his jaws as Mariana interrogated him, it seemed like he was holding back an insult that would have provoked the privateer to the point of violence.
"Speak your mind," Mariana said. "I might show you some mercy if I am convinced of your honesty. Currently it looks like you're hiding something."
"You saw his ghost, didn't you?" The man stopped chewing air.
Mariana blinked.
"What g-"
"You know which one, skipper. Don't you? Are you saying you let him fool you?"
The pirate let out a dark chuckle.
"You don't have much going on in that pretty head, do you?"
That was it, that was his ticket to the bottom of the sea. But first - a thorough interrogation was in order.