The Obedient

                Waves swelled underneath the barnacle-encrusted and limpet-colonised hull of merchant vessel The Obedient. They weren’t swollen in the traditional sense; there’d been no blunt force trauma to the water’s surface, and the ship’s doctor knew that applying an ice pack would scarcely have helped anything to shrink back down, but there was no other word for it. They were swelling in their own way, the way they’d always done it in inclement weather, and no amount of semantic disagreement would change that fact.
                Up on the deck, first mate Evie Primaris, of the Port Stevens Primarises, looked, without a concern in her head for the nomenclature of oceanic motion, out over the waters. They churned angrily in every direction, expressing their displeasure at the dark, heavy clouds that covered the sky, and The Obedient had no choice but to follow along with their irritated motions. She understood where both sides in the conflict were coming from, of course; she’d be angry too if she was in the sea’s position, getting all whipped up by an approaching storm, and it was fair of the clouds to look so annoyed at the response they were getting to their natural purpose. It was the horizon she pitied, for being stuck there, sandwiched between the two of them and always so distant. It must have been lonely. Maybe that’s why so many ships were intent on chasing it; it was an act of altruism and charity, an olive branch extended in all good faith.
                “Daydreaming again, Ms Primaris?” Asked Charles Chambers, as he swung past on a rope that dangled from the mast.
                “Ha! Not daydreaming, Mr Chambers, I’m just…” She paused automatically as Charles swung out of easy earshot. Casually she watched him soar around the mast, clinging to the end of his rope as it carved out a circular trajectory in the air, and probably wore a circular wound in the mast as well. “… following orders and looking out.” she finished quickly when he came close again.
                "Ah, having a maudlin ol' stare out to sea then, are you?" Mr Chambers spoke with a thick Irish accent, but Evie was fairly sure he'd never even so much as visited the country.
                "Aye, just as I was ordered." confirmed the first mate as Charles soared away again. Holding a conversation defined by the orbital period of a man on a rope around a mast had, at first, been a tremendous novelty for everybody aboard The Obedient. They would keep to their stations in opposite corners of the deck and each one would try to hold a separate conversation on their allotted segment of the circle, marvelling at Charles' ability to keep each thread distinct in his mind. This had, in time, grown tiresome, and the whole arrangement started to feel rather irritating and inconvenient, especially on those occasions where urgent action or quick correspondence was required. Those dark days in the history of mast-swinging had seen other members of the crew trying to sprint in a concentric circle around the mast, attempting to keep pace with the airborne sailor, or in extreme cases trying to leap and grab his ankles, so as to arrest his momentum and have a static chat. Neither technique proved to be particularly useful, and both resulted in ankle injuries to one party or another, which only led to deepening annoyance. But time, as it is wont to do, kept pressing onwards in the knowledge that even irritation would fade until, much like Charles himself, the whole thing came around full circle to feeling like just a part of normal life.
                "Good show then, Ms Primaris!" Laughed Charles. He must have been holding that laugh in for the other three quarters of a rotation, which was a testament to his dedication to duty. Nothing less would be expected of a crewmember aboard The Obedient.
                Evie checked the timepiece strapped to her wrist. It was an elegant carriage clock that required three separate leather belts along her forearm to keep it steady, but whatever inconvenience and permanent ligament damage was being done by the mass of it, it kept immaculately good time. The long and short hands of the clock were pointed up and to the right respectively, which Evie intuited, after some mental hurdles and involuntary poking out of the tongue, to mean that it was three O'clock. Or possibly it was L O'clock, she supposed, but having never heard of L O'clock before that felt quite unlikely.
                "Captain Nubuck will be expecting me for afternoon tea and scheming." she said to the sea. It crashed some wavelets into the hull, either in response or just because it felt like it. Leaning away from the railings, Evie carefully lowered her carriage clock arm and strode across the bustling deck of The Obedient.
                "Powder on deck!" yelled Squatting Thomas the Gunner. Standing upright despite his name, he emerged from the stairs to the lower decks, carrying a barrel of gunpowder over one shoulder and a loop of fuse over the other. Charles' legs soared past his nose, barely a hand's width away, but Thomas never broke pace.
                "Swabs underfoot." replied Swabbie Robbie, scrubbing away at the woodwork with his dictionary-hair brush. Dictionary hair, Evie had found out after several months of politely skirting the subject, was more commonly known as 'pages'. Like a finely tuned machine, almost as finely tuned as the carriage clock threatening to separate Evie’s arm from her shoulder, the swabbie's brush passed between Thomas' legs and feet as he stepped, neither one of making visible effort to accommodate the other but, equally, never making contact. “It’s a swabbie’s life for me.” he added, as if that were unclear to anyone.
                Cannonballs were handed from crewmate to crewmate in long chains of workers, while crates and casks of food and drink were lugged from the stores into the galley. Rails were polished and repaired at irregular intervals, stitches were made in the enormous main sail, and nets were secured to the edges of the deck. Wherever Evie looked there was activity, with tunes whistled or shanties sung all the while.

Oh the wind it fills the sails of cloth
Our clipper flees the ocean’s wrath
Beneath the keel swim sharks and eel
Who know no fear of sharpened steel
In the ocean’s spray we stalk our prey
A traitorous ship of fools, they say
So grab your flintlock, raise your sword
Lest you find yourself thrown overboard.

                It was an odd song. While it had the cadence and terminology of a traditional shanty, there was always an inescapable sense that it wasn’t about anything at all. Most of them told a story, or gave a warning, or framed a parable, or at least held a consistent narrative and tone. The shanties of The Obedient rarely held to those traditions, mostly because they were invented on the spot by some poor soul or other following the orders of Captain Nubuck.
                Through the complex ballet of perpetual motion, constant duty and pitch-perfect singing, Evie played her part in the dance and arrived at the door to the captain’s quarters, just as her carriage clock struck one-past-three. Right on time with the ringing of its polished alarm bells the door swung open, revealing Captain May Nubuck.
                “Haha! Right on time as always, Ms Primaris! Come on in.” she said, stepping aside so that the first mate could enter.
                “Thank you captain.” said Evie, as the door was closed behind her. On the other side of the thick oaken doors, the crew’s rhythmic marching and singing remained audible but muffled. “Does the afternoon find you well?”
                “Aye, Evie, it does. It’s always gratifying to hear the crew doing as they’re told. Increasing whimsy by 20% was no small order, but the crew are doing a glorious job of it. And it sounds like they’re all keeping up with ‘make this ship look as if it runs like clockwork, with every cog precisely timed alongside the others’ famously well too.” beamed the captain. It was possibly her favourite issued order of all time.
                “That they are, captain. You run a tight ship.”
                Captain Nubuck sat herself down on a wooden chair that faced onto a broad cartographer’s table in the centre of the cabin. Covering the surface was a sea chart that showed all of the Nautilean Archipelago, adorned with miniature markers showing trade routes, perilous underwater reefs and rock formations, and, of course, a marker for their eternal prey. Due to choppy waters earlier in the week, the tiny wooden ship which had previously represented The Obedient itself was currently lost somewhere in the hold, having fallen through a gap in the floorboards. A collection of nuts and dried fruits were serving as a delicious substitute.
                “By my reckoning we’re on course to make landfall at Mulligan’s Bay by nightfall. I’ve got a good feeling about this one, Evie. Surely The Callous Observer will be in the harbour when we arrive, and then revenge shall be ours.” she smiled, hungrily. As much as Evie wanted that hunger to be literal, she knew May too well for such a notion to hold true. Besides, she could see the plate of crumbs that told of a sandwich already consumed, and the ever-dwindling avatar of The Obedient on the map.
                “Here’s hoping, captain.” the first mate said.
                “Hoping? Not expecting? You have doubts, Evie, as ever.” observed the captain, taking a mug of tea from her specialised boiling apparatus. It was an ingenious mechanism devised by an inventor they’d met in Port Foulbreeze, which used magnified light from the tropical sun to heat water. A collection of mirrors caught all the light that flooded through the cabin’s rear window, and focused it onto a single lens that provided over one cup of hot tea per day. “We’ve followed every guideline for efficient and direct sailing provided by the Council of Good Sailors. There have been favourable winds and acceptable waters. We even got an accidental tow from that gull that got caught in the rigging.”
                “But we set off from Anatuga two days after The Callous Observer, May, having arrived there two days after them. It’s a game of cat and mouse, but the cat isn’t allowed to run until the mouse has already gone.”
                “The Sundown Trading Company Worker’s Union rules are very clear, Evie.” Captain Nubuck sighed, rubbing at her tanned and wind-beaten face. “When we make port from a journey of a week or more we are to allow the crew a full night off duty. That includes us; we’re not allowed to trade our wares until the next day.”
                “I know captain, bu-”
                “And it’s not efficient practice to sail without a hold of goods, so we have to procure more to sell on in the next port, and we can only do that after finding out from the port authorities where The Callous Observer was headed so that we stock up on the right things. We’re being as efficient as we can, and it’s all by the book.”
                “Yes, captain. But that won’t help us to catch up with them. If we’re always sailing fully laden and completing this… follow-the-leader trade route from island to island then we’re going to stay two days behind them forever.” Evie lamented, arms limp and defeated at her side, and not just because of the weighty carriage clock.
                “Bah! Have some faith in your captain, that’s an order.” snapped Captain Nubuck.
                “I have complete faith in you, captain. If you think that we’ll catch up to them at Mulligan’s Bay, then I think so too.” Evie said, sincerity and enthusiasm flowing freely from her where only doubt and logic had been before, and her arms raised energetically up to waist height. When a crewmate of The Obedient was issued an instruction, it was obeyed.
                “That’s better. How went your thoughtful staring out to sea with poetic observations about sea and sky?”
                “The sea swells angrily, but not in a medical sense, the sky is grumpy about the reception it’s getting, the horizon is lonely, and I speculated that this is why so many ships chase it.” reported the first mate, doing her best to summarise the more poetic points as concisely as possible.
                “Tremendous stuff! You’ve excelled yourself again, Ms Primaris. Now, please, sit with me and we shall determine our detailed itinerary for Mulligan’s Bay.” Captain Nubuck pushed a chair out next to herself and gestured towards it, just in case Evie had thought she’d been moving it as a leisure activity.
                “Of course, captain.”
                The horizon had found a friend by the time Evie and Captain Nubuck emerged from the captain’s quarters. The dusk sun had dropped down to pay it a visit, and proceeded to hide behind the broad, flat line twixt sky and sea as Mulligan’s Bay grew ever larger ahead of the ship.
                “Lower the sails!” called Captain Nubuck, standing with both hands on the ship’s wheel and one leg up on a custom-carved dramatic-posing platform. “We've a favourable current today! A good sign for chasing down our quarry."
                Evie didn't contradict her. Although it wouldn't have been disobeying an order, strictly speaking, it would have been insubordination, and that was almost as bad. Regardless, she couldn't help observing to herself that The Callous Observer was clearly not docked in this port. It wasn't so huge of a harbour or so densely moored that such a trading vessel could be hidden from view. Although each of two arms of the harbour, extending from headlands to create a bay of comparatively calm waters for docking, were appreciably lined with vessels at port, it only took a cursory glance to rule out finding their target here.
                "Rowboats away! Bring us in!" ordered the captain when they themselves were within the welcoming arms of the bay.
                With lengths of heavy rope running like umbilical cords to the mother ship, the rowing vessels paddled their way from The Obedient, heading towards the jungle of wood and stone that served as the harbour of Mulligan's Bay. Barely a pontoon compared to the major trading ports of the mainland, Mulligan's Bay was nonetheless an impressive display of community and opportunity, teetering on the edge of a jungle-covered island and flanked by rocky headlands. An ever-expanding town of ramshackle but functional wooden buildings spread out in all directions from the waterside, extending up the edge of the headlands and pressing into the end of the undergrowth. It was thanks to the improvised timber dwellings balanced precariously against one another that many could call Tibia island home, either for a short while or for years, no matter where they'd come from or which wreck they were fleeing. On a vast wooden sign that covered one whole side of the harbour authority building were written words in tall white letters: "Welcome to Mulligan's Bay, where everyone gets a second chance."
                Atop one of the mid-sized arms of the harbour, Captain Nubuck’s crew tied ropes to capstans with intricate, practiced knots. Arms tired from rowing became exhausted from hauling, and The Obedient drifted slowly into the moorings. Under the instructions of Captain Nubuck, the crew still aboard were singing a shanty about successful hunts that ended in Mulligan's bay, and those on the harbour were attempting to join in with a round while breathless from heaving.
                "Be not weary, my good people!" ordered May, noticing their red faces and sweating brows. With a Herculean effort, they all stood straighter, ceased their fatigued grimacing, and bellowed out the words with renewed vigour. That they were able to make such a stark change in posture and demeanour on the strength of nothing more than duty was a ceaseless wonder to Evie, despite the fact that she herself had felt it too. When you signed on to The Obedient you took an oath to follow any order, instruction or guideline to the letter, and that oath seemingly had a power that transcended mere human biology. Some would have argued that May Nubuck was squandering this power by applying it as she did, but that was for the philosophers to worry about. All that mattered to Evie was that her lifelong friend had a loyal crew.
                "Alright, everyone. Please unload the cargo and take it to the designated recipients, as per the manifest. Then, in accordance with workplace wellness guidelines and union rules, take the night and the next day off!" the captain declared, throwing both arms into the air and keeping one leg up on the railings of the ship. The traditional cheer of being granted one's union-won rights went up from the crew, and with aplomb they set about the onerous task of hauling crates of lead and granite from the hold.
                "You know, May, I think that choosing this particular cargo so often is really slowing us down when it comes to pursuit. We were quite low in the water as well." observed the first mate, as the hull gradually rose with every crate removed.
                "The Obedient does as she is told, Evie, you know that. If I say to stay afloat and achieve maximum speed then it will happen regardless of load."
                Evie was unconvinced until she'd been told she already knew it. In that instant, it seemed like accepted wisdom.
                "Oh, yes. I suppose you're right."
                “Yes. Yes I am.”
                Evenings in Mulligan’s Bay were, understandably, raucous for the crew of The Obedient. When a group of sailing women and men spent every moment at sea obeying the statutes, laws, guidelines, byelaws, codes, edicts, policies, recommendations and more strongly worded suggestions of Captain Nubuck, and the various organisations to which she belonged, they naturally had to let loose on their own time. Most often, this took place in Peg-Necked Pete’s Imbibery, the most lawless bar in all of Mulligan’s Bay. It was also the only bar in Mulligan’s Bay, but that detail wasn’t important to the crew.
                "Hey Robbie! Order me to drink this rum!" demanded Long-Sleeved Lara, whose sleeves ran past her hands, over the table, and down onto the floor on the opposite side.
                "Lara,” started Swabbie Robbie, puffing himself up with performative authority, “I order you to pour that wet thing into your tum-tum."
                "No!" she cried in defiant reply, and they both burst into gales of joyful laughter. It was the same thing every time they went to port.
                From the bar, Peg-Neck Pete wiped over a tankard and shook his head, which wobbled unsteadily upon his thin, wooden, peg neck. Even when they were trying to cause a ruckus, the crew of The Obedient were barely half as rowdy as the other crews on their best behaviour. Swabbie Robbie had even obeyed the instruction to give Long-Sleeved Lara an order. Although it wasn’t great for the desperately swarthy vibe he was trying to cultivate in his establishment, their money was as good as anyone else’s. Better, if anything, because they were the only ones who paid politely and without argument.
                In a corner booth, reclined across the padded bench seat, Captain Nubuck kept a casual eye on her crew, with a drink in her hand and Evie by her side. On the table between them a collection of partially melted candles burned away, casting a dim and unreliable light over them and their plates of non-descript vegetable pieces. It was a favourite dish of the captain’s when on shore leave, because its nebulous and poorly-defined nature meant that she wasn’t really ordering something directly, so no-one was forced into obedience. After all, the wellness guidelines applied to her as much as anyone else, and if her job was to give orders then she needed to take a break from that.
                Evie’s own perspective relied rather less on over-analysis of the situation, and more on the mystery dish being half the price of anything else on the menu. She didn’t want to accuse Peg-Necked Pete of just shoving whatever leftovers he had onto their plates, but she also couldn’t trust a man without a throat to take a lot of care over food preparation.
                “It’s a real adventure this time, Evie. I can barely guess at what some of these shapes are.” observed May, gesturing around at her plate.
                “I’ve not encountered any wood this time, so that’s always a positive sign.”
                “Ah, it’s all good roughage. And it was, at least, some good quality oak.”
                “And I’m still confused as to how oak made it into his kitchen, let alone into our meals. But we’ll drive ourselves to lunacy if we think too much about it again. It’s a futile effort.” decided Evie, with a shudder at the memory of last time. The captain sighed.
                “Oh, I didn’t mean...” Evie tried, but May waved her words away.
                “Maybe the search for The Callous Observer is as futile as the search for answers about the oak. It feels like we’ve been chasing both of them for just as long as each other.” she said, pushing some of her mystery shapes around on the plate. “I was so sure that this would be the time. I really thought it would be moored up, and we’d finally be able to confront the Mediocre Western Trading Company…”
                “We’ll get them eventually.” Evie offered, while May took a drink. It was difficult to believe her own words.
                “Captain Nubuck? Of The Obedient?”
                May looked up, beyond the candles, to the man standing beside their table. He cut the usual figure of a retired sailor, all hunches, callouses and loose-fitting, tattered clothes. It wasn’t due to poverty or a lack of available new clothing, they just, for some reason, couldn’t get enough of tattered fabrics when it came to being on shore. May supposed she’d understand it when retirement claimed her. What did separate this man from the usual sailing retirees, however, was the wild flailing and lashing of his hair. It was as if he was standing in the crow’s nest during a violent storm, hair uncontrollably whipping this way and that, but the air inside the bar was perfectly still and calm. Only one man had such untameable locks.
                “Wild-hair Haroldson! What a treat to see you again! Please, pull up a seat if you like.” chuckled the captain, happily. Evie shuffled around a little to make room for the eponymous hair to perform its never-ending dance, and Haroldson sat himself down. Their serene drink was now a hive of motion thanks to the overactive follicles of Haroldson’s scalp, with strands of fierce red hair refusing to remain still for even moment.
                “It’s grand to see you again, captain. How goes the hunt for the Callous Observer?"
                “Not well, Wild-hair. Not well at all.” sighed Captain Nubuck.
                “How long has it been now? Six? Seven long years?”
                “Eight. Eight normal-length years since Mediocre Western wronged me. Eight years of chasing down Salazar Frieze to set things right.” she growled, stabbing her vegetable knife into the table’s dedicated rage-stabbing block. “We were so close this time.”
                “I’m afraid they left port a day ago now, captain.” said Haroldson. Although his demeanour indicated some remorse at that fact, his hair’s enthusiasm could not be constrained.
                “It’s closer than we’ve been in the past.”
                “I appreciate your attempts at comfort, Evie, but a day is a lot of time to make up.” lamented May.
                “If you don’t mind me asking, Captain Nubuck, what is it exactly that Salazar and Mediocre Western did to you?” asked Wild-hair. May looked up into his eyes with incredulity.
                “Did I never tell you?”
                “I don’t think you’ve told any of the crew, May.” said Evie.
                “Then why on Earth do they stick with me through this?”
                “Loyalty. The crew of The Obedient follows orders regardless of the captain’s reasoning, you know that.” answered Haroldson without skipping a beat. He also didn’t hop or step at beat, although his hair swayed to it for a while.
                “I must reconcile that oversight when the crew are back on duty.” decided May. “But for you, Wild-hair, I will explain it a second time. You see, before I had charge of The Obedient, I was a rank and file sailor within Mediocre Western. I’d sailed on ships before theirs, but serving on their vessels was my first real commission as an employable sailor. All over the archipelago we sailed, taking goods from here to there, from there to the other place, and the other place, often, back to here again. Somehow, despite all this sailing in circles and exchanging one box of things for another box of other things, the gold in our coffers kept growing. Naïve as I was, I thought that Mediocre Western was a reputable company, paying fair prices for the goods they bought and charging respectable rates when they sold them on. I thought they were just really good at being merchants.”
                She took a long, theatrical sip from her drink, while Evie took a theatrical bite of unknown vegetable and Wild-hair Haroldson indulged in a commensurately theatrical wait.
                “Of course, I soon found out that the face they present to the world is very different to the one that does the trading. They would claim anything, literally anything, they could see as long wasn’t nailed down. In fact, in some cases they did take things that were nailed down, because they’d just take was it was nailed to as well. An otherwise deserted beach? They’d fell the trees, strip the fruit and dredge the sand. A market before opening? The stalls were broken down for lumber and the canvases taken as exotic table cloths. A beautiful sunset? Stripped of its pigments to sell as dye, leaving the whole sky grey and dull.”
                “How did they…”
                “I don’t remember. But two years into my service I managed to come into some coin, thanks to an eccentric local carpentry mogul, and this allowed me to buy my own ship, The Obedient, on which I still set sail. I was able to extract myself from service to Mediocre Western but… but there was a hitch. You see, even though we were all in the employ of Mediocre Western, or technically we were their property for the period, there was also a need to swear loyalty to our captains. I still rue the day that I ever swore my service to Salazar Frieze. He got wind of my windfall, and left port before I could be formally dismissed, leaving his last order still applicable to me.”
                Out of the corner of Evie’s eye she could see Peg-Necked Pete checking all the windows, and then glancing back at Wild-hair Haroldson in confusion. Wherever the violent and highly directional draft was coming from, he couldn’t find it.               
                “The last order was the most egregious theft of all. He took my time!” she slammed a fist down on the table, on the dedicated fist-slamming pad, which was next to the dedicated rage-stabbing block. A couple of gashes gave evidence to past confusion on which block was which. “You see, I had been appointed some months before to watch over the captain’s doorframe, which was prone to splintering and could easily have delivered to him a poking, stabbing or nicking wound. Between the hours of seven and eight p.m. every day I was tasked with giving the doorframe a thorough inspection, top to bottom, inside and out, to be sure that no splinter would stand a chance of mutinying against Salazar Frieze. The same Salazar I’d seen ‘gather’ tools that were just ‘lying around’ in the hands of local workers on Anatuga without a single mutinous whisper from anyone.”
                Evie’s mouth dropped open. Normally a forkful of her inexplicable dinner would have followed, but this time a forkful of shock fell out instead.
                “That’s what you do every day… at the door to your cabin…”
                “Exactly. Every day, Mediocre Western steals another hour of my time. So we hunt The Callous Observer until we can force Salazar Frieze to rescind his order.”
                “But your doorframe is metal plated, captain! It is impossible for it to have a splinter.”
                “You think I don’t know that, Evie? I’m the one who requisitioned the metal plating for the doorframe so that I could be sure of splinter safety! Also so that I wouldn’t need to waste precious crew time by putting someone on splinter duty. And yet, every night I inspect that doorframe, up and down, in and out, for a full hour, checking that smooth metal surface for small pieces of sharp, wooden debris.” revealed the captain, with a pained grimace on her face and a sleeve secretly dangling in the juices on her dinner plate.
                “My god, captain…”
                “A sorry tale indeed.” agreed Wild-hair Haroldson, his hair thrashing sympathetically in the perfectly still bar air. “And a great shame that so many years have been spent in the pursuit of this monster, Captain Frieze.”
                “Aye, but an order is an order, and rules are rules. We have a duty to the Sundown Trading company to make every trip profitable, a duty to our crew to give them time off, and a duty to ourselves to keep the travels safe. In the absence of any other extenuating factors, this pursuit is the best we can do.”
                A silence fell over the table as they all contemplated the extreme gravity and distinct lack of necessity that Captain Nubuck’s plight held. Both Evie and Haroldson knew that it was futile to tell May simply to stop, because that would be dereliction of her most fundamental values. But a smile crept over the face of the wild-haired ex-crewmate.
                “But what if, captain, a certain windfall were to come your way, similar to that which brought you The Obedient. Perhaps…” he dropped a small, leather-bound book onto the table “…the ledger of The Callous Observer, showing their planned trading routes for the next year?”
                Captain Nubuck very nearly spat out her drink in amazement. Instead, it ended up swilling into the back of her teeth, puffing up her cheeks with fluid pressure before sloshing back down her throat again.
                “Where did you find that?” Evie asked, amazed and in better control of her fluids than the captain.
                “Old Mr Brusque must have dropped it on his way back to the ship. And I really do mean that he must have done it, because I watched it happen. Quickly as I could I snapped it up, under the pretence of stooping to try to wrestle with my wild hair, and sequestered it away, knowing that if the chase was still on, you’d surely be arriving at any moment.” Wild-hair Haroldson beamed, his hair now flickering like the flaming halo of a conflagrated angel.
                “And you’re willing to let me have it?” asked May, shock and anticipation etched over her face.
                “It’s all yours, captain. Once obedient, always obedient. You were the best captain a sailor could ask for, and it’s only right that I do my best for you.”
                “Haroldson, I’d embrace you if it wasn’t still an arguable conflict of interest for me to hug an ex-crewmate.” cried Captain Nubuck, snatching up the book from the table greedily.
                “You’d be likely to get some hair in your eye if you did it, captain. I’d always advise against it, conflict of interest or nay.” warned Haroldson, looking Evie’s way just in case she’d been getting any notions.
                “This is a fantastic development, Mr Haroldson; we could head The Callous Observer off! Cut in ahead of their route and finally take our revenge upon them!” said Evie, watching wide-eyed as the captain pored over the ledger.
                “It’s genuine! Says right here in the cover, ‘If found, immediately return to Archimedes Brusque of The Callous Observer’. This is all the justification I need!” the captain yelped, bouncing on her chair in excitement.
                “But you’re off duty right now, captain. No following orders until you’re back on the clock, agreed?” asked First Mate Primaris, pointedly.
                “That… I am off duty, and I’m bound by the wellness rules not to work until tomorrow afternoon. But by following the wellness rules I’m obeying the rules, which is exactly what I shouldn’t do while I’m off duty…” May reasoned, counting something intractable off on her fingers, with sweat beading her brow.
                “Oh no, sorry.” Evie winced.
                “Rules paradox? Haven’t missed those at all since my retirement.” said Wild-hair Haroldson, shaking his head in sympathy at Captain Nubuck’s tragic paralysis. “A sad state of affairs for any sailor.”
                “Snap out of it, May. Worrying about following the rules is a form of obedience, so the only way out is to not care whether you’re following them or not.” Evie reminded. It was the mantra she repeated to herself every time they went ashore, for situations just like this one.
                “I… erm, yes. I suppose that makes sense. Thank you Evie.”
                The first mate nodded with quiet satisfaction at a job well done.
                The following evening, once everyone had been able to enjoy their allotted day of rest and recuperation, Evie stood at the stern of The Obedient, gazing out to the open waters as Captain Nubuck posed alongside her. As was traditional, one of the captain’s legs was up on the railings, so that a majestic figure could be cut for any bypassers. Barely an hour earlier the captain had re-read through the instructions in Archimedes Brusque’s ledger , ensuring that she had legitimacy in immediately raising the anchor and giving chase. For his assistance, Captain Nubuck had given Wild-hair Haroldson a precious, high-strength hair-tie with which, she hoped, even his unruly locks might be temporarily tamed.
                “It’s a light load today, captain.” observed boatswain Betty. She was looking down into cavernous hold from the deck, with its two shoebox-sized crates sitting perfectly in the centre. “I think we could stand to acquire another crate or two.”
                “There’s no time, Betty. Our hunt for The Callous Observer has a whole new obligation, so we must set off as soon as we are able.”
                “Aye captain. We’re technically able now if we abandon half the crew at port, so we can leave immediately.”
                Evie looked into May’s face, expectantly. The captain hesitated for longer than necessary, mulling her options over before answering.
                “No… no we should wait until everyone is here. Having the crew aboard is a part of being able to leave.” she finally admitted. “But hurry them along if you can, please. Come on, Evie. We must plan our journey.”
                “Aye, captain.” said both Avie and Betty, before following their respective orders.
                It was less than ten minutes before ropes were untied, lines were cast off, anchors were raised and kedging commenced. In the captain’s cabin, Evie and May felt the ship slowly drift into motion while they spread sea charts across the captain’s table. Archimedes’ ledger lay open on the corner, and they’d marked The Callous Observer’s route out using dried pieces of pasta and some quick-setting glue. The resulting web of dotted lines was now the focus of much attention from Evie and May.
                “They are taking a frustratingly efficient path around the archipelago.” observed the first mate. “The fusilli line is just about the fastest way one can get between Mulligan’s Bay and Plutarch’s Rest.”
                “Aye, but from there they take a turn towards the north for Cole’s Wrath. If we skipped docking at Plutarch’s Rest then we could gain a day on them.”
                “Swap directly from the fusilli line to this path of conchiglie?” Evie’s finger moved from one pasta trajectory to another. ‘We’d have to come out wider here, towards the spaghetti, to avoid the currents into the island. It’d get us half a day at best by that time. How long does the ledger say they’ll be stopping at Plutarch’s Rest?”
                “It looks like… only a few hours. The tides will let them get in and out again within a day; those fiends are ignoring the rules of the union!” snarled Captain Nubuck.
                “Then they’re already gone, captain. They were gone from here a day ago last night, so they’ll have made it in and out of Plutarch’s Rest already. I’d guess they’re around here.” Evie said, pointing in a rough circle around the fifth and sixth piece of conchiglie. “We’d have to ignore their next two stops at least if we wanted to gain ground.”
                “Blast. Find me an answer, Evie!” demanded Captain Nubuck. It was one of the least fair orders the first mate had ever received, and the shock was severe. Simply ceasing to be tired, or changing one’s mood, or becoming thirty percent better at tying knots, was child’s play, the kind of easy order that any crew member could follow. But to just find an answer? It was brutally difficult to follow or see through to completion. Evie allowed herself a small frown at the captain to demonstrate her distaste. “This is our best chance at catching The Callous Observer, Evie! I have issued an order.”
                 “Aye, captain.” grumbled the first mate. “Let’s see… according to their plan, they’ll spend the night at the end of the conchiglie line, then they’re onto spaghetti, running northwest. Even at a full clip with a favourable wind and no stops, we’ll make minimal gains on them by chasing along their trajectory, captain.”
                “An excellent analysis of the situation, but that’s not the answer I asked for.”
                Evie gave Captain Nubuck the ‘I’m working on it’ eyes, and received in response the ‘not fast enough’ pursed lips.
                “I can’t make the ship go any faster, and we already have a practically empty hold. It takes as long as it takes for this ship to cover that distance at our top speed!” Evie snapped. “If we want to magically make the distance shorter then sure, let’s do that. Or why not just cross through Breacher’s Reef? That’d halve the distance. More than halve it. We just sail in a straight bearing north from here,” she said, sarcastically laying lasagne sheets onto the chart, “until we cut across their path in about… one day from now.”
                “That soon? It’s a plan. That’s the answer we needed, Evie.” Captain Nubuck clapped her hands together in excitement. “We’ll get Salazar at long last.”
                “What? No, captain. Breacher’s Reef is a death sentence for us and the ship, I was being sarcastic. You know as well as I do that the rocks and coral are hardly below the surface; there’s barely a navigable route through it at the best of times, even if you know where you’re going.”
                “Then we travel carefully and keep an eye on the waters.”
                The first mate’s mouth dropped open in futile despair.
                “You can’t mean that.” she said pacing through the cabin. “Breacher’s Reef is the single most treacherous water in the whole Nautilean Archipelago. The shipwrecks lie in towers and breach the waves, captain. Countless vessels have been lost to a collision with a scuttled keel. You’ve heard the tales of attacks, on even the mightiest galleon, by roving colonies of porpoises with nothing to lose.”
                “Shipwreck, rock or reef alike can be avoided with careful sailing, and the Obedient was built with a porpoise-proof hull. We all remember the dark times, a decade ago, when the porpoises were at their most desperate, Evie, and we will not be making the same mistakes again.”
                “But there’s also a storm rolling in!” cried the first mate, pointing out of the window at an enormous bank of obsidian clouds. They reflected all the fury that the sea had been feeling earlier. “And we’ll hit the reef at night, under a new moon. You know that’s when the were-octopuses emerge, their tentacles rising and writhing from the inky blackness.”
                “Superstition!”
                “Then how do you explain what happened on our voyage out of The Cape of Good Soup last year?”
                Silence fell in the cabin. Captain Nubuck was unable to hold Evie’s gaze.
                “Well… alright, maybe there’s some truth in it. But the crew are well-versed in seeing off tentacles, weathering storms, dodging sub-surface threats and operating without sleep. They’re ordered to be so! Please give me a risk rating for this journey, in accordance with the Sundown Trading Company Risk Mitigation Handbook: Captain’s Edition, with Foreword by Priscilla Holdsworth.” ordered the captain.
                “I would give is a B minus for safety, captain. Not worth it if there are other suitable alternatives.”
                “But there are not. It is mandatory for us to catch up with The Callous Observer as soon as we possibly can, in accordance with the honest plea within Archimede’s Brusque’s ledger. It would be a dereliction of our duty to it if we took longer. B minus is good enough for emergencies such as this one.” She pushed an open bag of tagliatelle towards the first mate. “Plot us a course, please, Evie, and I shall inform the crew. The end of our hunt begins now!”
                Evie took the bag of pasta and started laying a path. An order was an order; she had no choice.
                Another sunset scattered its red and orange reflections across the surface of the ocean, sparkling intermittently ion the coarse surface of the roiling waters. The heavy clouds, which had been chasing them since Mulligan’s Bay, had finally caught up, pushing winds ahead of themselves and whipping the waters into a frenzy of discontentment. It was another perfectly justifiable emotional response from the sea, whose surface wished to be left alone to reflect the sky, mirror-like, but instead found itself buffeted by air currents and cracked by rainfall.
                “That’ll do for maudlin staring, Ms Primaris. Fine work as ever!” shouted Captain Nubuck from the captain’s wheel, having to compete with the wind for volume. Everything on the deck was in motion once again, but this time it didn’t come from a wagon-train of crewmates looking busy. The gales were taking every loose end of rope, every hem of a long raincoat, and every exposed hair on a chaotic ride that rivalled even the hirsute stylings of Wild-hair Haroldson. “It’s a fierce one tonight, and there’s no need to leverage the power of poetry in the face of such awesome power.”
                “Aye, captain.” Evie grumbled back.
                “We’re losing light rapidly, captain.” yelled Charles Chambers. He’d made a valiant attempt at orbiting the mast despite the storm, but in such strong winds he had instead turned into more of a kite, gripping onto the rope with all the strength he had as he dangled over the ocean. “Suggest we light the bow lanterns.”
                “Make it so, Mr Chambers, and please get back into the vicinity of the ship. Shorten your rope if necessary. Swabbie Robbie? The decks are wet with rain! There’s grand work for you to accomplish up here.”
                Holding onto his swabbing hat with one hand, Robbie emerged from below deck, gave an acknowledging nod, and disappeared again in search of his brush and bucket.
                “It’s not too late to turn around, captain.” Evie pleaded, fighting against the wind to stand by her captain while the rain made a solid attempt to dissolve her. “There will be other opportunities to capture the observer in more favourable conditions.”
                “Evie, your concerns have been noted. Now I order you to get on board with the plan!” Barked the captain, who had listened to all the criticism she could take for one day. Evie felt, for the first time, a surge of rebellion in her gut as her eyes screamed disappointment at the captain. There was no way that she could condone this. No way that she would commit to a course of certain death. There was a time for disobedience, and this was it.
                “Aye captain. The plan is a good one, and we will see our way through it.” said her traitorous mouth. Evie stood there, wind tearing at her jacket and attempting to unlace her boots, dumbfounded. “I’ll take position on the stern and watch for perils in the lantern light.”
                “That’s the spirit, Ms Primaris!” cried the captain happily, slapping her bemused first mate on the back. “We’ll have Salazar this time.”
                The whole ship lurched sickeningly to one side, rolling under a savage gust of wind that carried a day’s worth of rain and a modest sea’s worth of salt water across the boughs. Evie almost failed to notice it, lost in the depths of her own mind as she tried to reconcile such involuntary acquiescence.
                “Exercise caution, Evie. I need you by my side when we reach The Callous Observer.”
                “Aye, captain.”
                First Mate Primaris walked her way to the bow and began to climb down the exterior of the ship. The rain-slick wood of the hull didn’t make for the easiest descent, but there was enough rigging to prevent any calamitous failures of her ‘exercise caution’ instruction. A short outcropping jutted from the keel a few metres above the water’s surface, and with some careful wiggling of the skeleton, Evie managed to perch herself onto it. Both hands were wrapped around rigging to either side of her, and her feet dangled into the air above the waters. Shortly after settling in, the light from two lanterns began to spill over the water, shining through its rough surface as best they could to search for any hidden wrecks, coral hazards, or criminally devious sea-life.
                “In position, captain!” she shouted up. “Steady as she goes.”
                It was a few minutes before anything untoward became visible in the dying light of the day. Ahead, Evie saw patches of taller waves and disruptions in the water that told of something amiss beneath the surface. She was already soaked through from the driving rain, which had added the occasional ball of hail for the devilment of it all.
                “Slow now! Reef ahead, off the port bow.”
                “I see it! Lower the sails, slow us down. Bring us around to starboard.” Captain Nubuck echoed to the crew who, naturally, followed their orders to the letter. Evie felt the ship start to lose speed, and some of its more unsettling lurching calmed a little without the sails catching as much of the wind.
                Gradually, and fighting the storm all the way, the ship was brought around and they started to move away from the obstruction, but further into Breacher’s Reef. Dusk made a brief showing of itself as the sun went into hiding, but decided that it was overstaying its welcome rather quickly, instead ushering night in to take the longer shift. No longer were the choppy waters a series of ephemeral mirrors for the sky. Instead, they had disappeared into the darkness, ready to crash into the hull without observation.
                More intently than she’d watched anything else in her life, Evie stared at the patches of light her lanterns cast across the water, poring over them for any sign of impending danger. Every few minutes she would catch sight of something rocky and bark instructions up to Captain Nubuck and the crew; it was a testament to her captainship and the power of obeyed orders that the ship was so finely controlled at all times. There were a handful of near-misses with some of the sneakier reefs, and they had to fire a warning shot into the waters to see off a suspiciously loitering angler fish, but the first hour or two of darkness passed without significant incident.
                Straining her eyes to see through the churning waters, with rain flowing down her face and wind filling her ears, Evie was growing tired and cold. Her hands were sore from gripping wet rope, and her legs had long since gone numb. The thick white froth on angry waves cast shadows into the deeper waters, giving the illusion of movement and presence at all times, but Evie was convinced that she saw other silhouettes moving down there. Undulating motions of black on black promised her eyes that something was going on, but gave away none of the important details. It made relaying instructions a bit of a nightmare, in the first mate’s opinion.
                Ahead, just about off their course but still visible and unsettling, Evie saw something paler. Leaning her head half an inch further forward, as if that was going to help, she stared at the shape and tried to make out what it might be. Occasionally the silhouettes would move across it, as if wrapping around, and she felt an unease that sat heavily in her stomach. Then again, that could just have been hunger, so she didn’t give it too much stock. Finally, as the ship drifted closer, she realised that the pale shape was the prow of a sunken galleon, which must have been standing on end, as if it would sail directly upwards and breach the surface of the water.
                “Hazard to port again! Steer starboard to avoid!” she shouted up, her voice hoarse despite all the water that strived to push into her mouth. More dark shapes swirled and circled around the lantern light. She wasn’t sure if they were drawn to it or if they swam everywhere around her. The ship continued straight. “I said steer to starboard!”
                Still the ship maintained its bearing, until a heavy gust rocked them, and pushed them off bearing. In an instant, the sunken prow was no longer off their course. No orders were relayed above deck.
                “Captain! Steer to starboard! There’s a prow!” screamed Evie.
                “She’s in her cabin, Evie. Will be for another half an hour.” came Charles Chambers’ voice from above. “Looking at her doorway again.”
                “Oh for…” Evie spat. It was between seven and eight. “Tell her to get out here now or steer the ship yourself! We’re going to sink if we don’t change course or stop!”
                “It’s all I can do to keep the sails from being torn off!” Charles shouted back down. “We’ve no spare hands up here; the storm’s really giving it some welly.”
                “Get the captain out here then!”
                “Captain! We need you at the wheel!” bellowed Charles, a sentiment echoed by many of the other crew mates who had heard the order.
                In the doorway of her quarters, Captain Nubuck stared with fury and terror at her doorframe. The beaten metal was as pristine as ever, without any sign of splinter, burr, crack or sharp edge.
                “I can’t! This time is not my own and I have to obey. The captain must not get splinters.”
                “She says she can’t!” came the chain of shouts back, delivering the news down to Evie.
                “We’re all going to die if she doesn’t!” again, the news was transported by many mouths back to the captain.
                “The crew can steer with the sails.” replied the captain, via the whole crew. In the absence of any change in the ship’s course, Evie determined that the crew was less certain of sail-steering being possible.
                “We’ve followed you this far, captain. Will you send us beneath the waters for the sake of a pointless doorframe inspection?” shouts echoed toward the aft.
                “We don’t get to pick our obligations as we see fit.” the wave of voices replied towards the stern. Back and forth the shouts went, an argument by proxy involving the whole crew as the sub-surface prow loomed ever closer. The silhouettes were denser now. Arms and tentacles were wrapped around it.
                “Her duty to the crew is more important than following some two-year-old order!” growled the first mate as loud as she could. “Salazar hasn’t been her captain since she was deserted, and if she doesn’t realise that then it’s her problem, not ours!”
                The train of shouts rippled towards the captain. Staring at the metal doorway for the thousandth time, she felt her body tremble. Naturally, some of that was from the cold wind and rain. She could describe every dent, every hammer-mark, and every minute undulation in perfect detail from memory. She knew that there had never been a danger of splinters from this doorway, and even Salazar’s own had been well-varnished and low risk. Her mind turned to the union rules of the Sundown Trading Company and her own commitments to crew safety; she would be killing them all for the sake of this order, and that definitely contravened guidance on workplace wellness.
                “Please captain! Take this as an order if you must!”
                “I… I’m on my way!” Captain Nubuck cried. With a concentrated force of will she leapt from the doorway and started a pitched backwards sprint along the deck, her eyes on the doorway to her cabin at all times. No-one ever said the inspection had to take place up close, and these circumstances warranted exceptionalism.
                For those who could watch her flight along the deck, it was poetry of agility, dexterity and blind luck. As if the surface of the ship was part of her own body she deftly dodged around cannons, ropes, boxes of limes, barrels of lens-cleaner, and even the wild motions of Swabbie Robbie. Taking three steps at a time backwards she climbed the stairs up to the captain’s wheel, and grabbed it from the reverse side.
                “Hard to starboard! Brace everyone!” She bellowed, spinning the wheel and digging her heels into the deck. In a testament to her quick thinking about mirrored steering wheels, Captain Nubuck sent the ship heaving around, lurching the bow away from the sunken prow and towards clearer waters.
                “Yes! That should do it! No, wait!” Shrieked Evie, watching the tentacles heave beneath the surface and yank the prow outwards toward them like an ungainly, wooden rapier. Erupting from the hull came the sound of wood on wood, a creaking that became a tearing, followed by the rush of water. “It’s the were-octopuses!”
                “Hull breached!” yelled boatswain Betty, who took a dim view of sea water rushing into her cargo hold.
                “No, no, no! I was too late!” cursed the captain. “Get that breach repaired!”
                “It’s too big, captain.” said the boastswain, her eyes full of fear at the inability to follow an order. “We’ll never plug it in time.”
                “We can’t let loose the lifeboats in this storm. They’ll sink before The Obedient does.” declared Squatting Thomas the Gunner. He was indulged in one of his all-time deepest squats, holding onto a rope with all of his might to keep the sails in place.
                “The Obedient will not go down!” May shouted, leaping onto the deck and rushing towards the cargo bay. “Not on my watch.”
                Down stairs that had become a waterfall, the captain thundered below deck and into the cargo hold. It was already ankle deep in water, and the additional weight causing the ship to list towards the ruptured side. Just as the boatswain had said, there was no amount of pitch or planking that would seal such a scuttling. Jagged planks of splintered wood where the complete hull used to be gave evidence of where the prow had struck, and it seemed that the whole sea was trying to get aboard and hide from the storm.
                “No stowaways, as per Sundown Trading Company rules!” barked the captain, incensed at the intrusion. She wracked her brain for what could be done, coming up empty at every turn. If only she’d not been such a stickler for orders, and had seen sense about the door frame sooner. She cursed herself over and over again for her short-sightedness, her dogged insistence on inspecting that metal for splinters for so many years, all at the behest of a traitor captain, and stamped a foot in the filling cargo hold. The power of obedience had got her so far, but cost her everything. “If you were only a part of my crew I could order you to stop this!” she wailed in frustration. “They’re the real obedient not you…”
                Captain Nubuck stood with water now up to her knees and stared at the breach. The Obedient had always obeyed when she told it to steer, or demanded that it didn’t roll in a storm. It had never cracked when falling from a titanic wave, nor had it beached when waters became too shallow. Why should this time be any different she wondered to herself. And then she asked it of herself. She found no answer. There was no reason not to try.
                “Obedient! I order you, as your captain, not to sink this day! Fix this breach and stay above the water by my authority!” she boomed. Above deck, the crew gathered around the topside hatch of the cargo bay and listened to her, just in case they were being asked to do anything. Unwavering faith in her leadership started to show signs of wearing thin when they heard her shouting at wood to not have a hole in itself anymore.
                But the rushing of water stopped. Where there had been a jet of salt water mere seconds before, there was nothing. The hull breach was there, as open as ever, but the water was held out by forces unknown. Or maybe not forces unknown, but the force of unquestioning obedience.
                “Help me to bail this out!” Captain Nubuck ordered to her crew above. In moments there were able bodies with buckets running up and down the stairs, returning the tourist seawater back to where it belonged.
                “Squatting Thomas! Arm the canons and prepare to fire on any were-octopus you might see.”
                “Aye, captain!” he said, dropping his rope and rushing for his store of dry powder and fuses.
                “Rope! Remain taut as Thomas would want you!” The captain shouted. Immediately it ceased being whipped by the wind, and became as rigid as a steel cable. Prancing her way to the bow, and standing above First Mate Primaris, Captain Nubuck placed one foot on the rails, and snatched a flintlock into one hand. Any porpoises would have her to answer to.
                “I let you down, Evie, but never again. Let’s get out of this reef.”
                “What about the hull breach?”
                “It’s been dealt with, now where do we go?”
                Evie was confused as to how such a severe breach could have been repaired so quickly, but it wasn’t the time for follow-up questions.
                “The only way is forwards, captain. We’re more than half way through.”
                “Then maybe Salazar is still in our grasp. Keep up the good work, I’ll be here this time!”
                The night over Breacher’s Reef was punctuated by cannonfire, barked orders, and small arms being discharged into schools of menacing fish. Under the deluge of storm rains, gunpowder flashed and sailors battled against a wind that tried to tear their ship apart, but The Obedient held strong under Captain Nubuck’s insistent orders and First Mate Primaris’ navigational yelps. It took another two long hours, but eventually, battered, exhausted and thoroughly chilled from the rain, they emerged on the other side of the reef.
                “No sign of anything more beneath the waters, captain.” sighed Evie, sagging into the rigging. “I think we’re through.”
                “We’re on the spaghetti line?” asked Captain Nubuck.
                “Aye captain. The Callous Observer should be around here somewhere…”
                “Any sign of them, Mr Chambers?” the captain shouted up to the mast.
                “I see lights, captain! Off the starboard bough, approaching rapidly.” cried Charles Chambers, telescope in one hand. He still swung on a short length of rope courtesy of the storm, and was therefore spinning at an incredible velocity.
                “Then we head their way! Hard to starboard! Get up here, Evie, we need you on deck.”
                Arms barely functional from holding her still in the rain for so long, First Mate Primaris painfully hauled her way up the rigging and up to the rails, where Captain Nubuck’s hands took her under the armpits and heaved her up.
                “You’re soaked, Evie. A sailor could catch their death of cold like that. Be warm enough.”
                Somehow, Evie felt the sensation of warming fire around her whole body, and slowly the chill started to be driven away.
                “Aye, captain.” she said softly, with mounting confusion, as the sails were raised and the ship started to pick up speed. Captain Nubuck leapt back to the wheel and pitched them around to face the lights in the distance. With the wind tearing across its decks and snagging in its sails, The Obedient cut through the waters with urgency scarcely before seen.
                In a few short minutes The Callous Observer, their quarry for eight years, finally came into view with their own eyes. Evie’s heart thumped away in her chest as she readied weapons and steeled herself. None of them were pirates, and very few were competent combatants aside from the captain and Squatting Thomas, but as per Sundown Trading Company directives they had all the necessary tools to repel a boarding. There was no reason those tools couldn’t be used to instigate one instead.
                Twice their size and thrice as decadent, The Callous Observer loomed like a wooden island in the waters. They had lowered their sails now as The Obedient approached, apparently ready for some kind of confrontation, but no cannons were fired. Lantern lights were flashed at them, in some kind of code that Evie didn’t recognise.
                “They ask our intentions.” said Captain Nubuck. “Flash our own lanterns back. Two short pulses.”
                “Aye, captain.” said the first mate, doing as instructed. There came no more light from The Callous Observer. Instead they waited in the darkness for whatever Captain Nubuck was intending to do.
                As the storm started to abate, The Obedient approached closely to The Callous Observer. There was no jeering, no shouting of battle cries, and no warning shots from any kind of firearm as the two ships came together; it was nothing like the stories they’d heard in port about piracy and boarding action from other, more adventurous crews. Instead it was like two strangers approaching in the street to wait in line for the same well. As they pulled alongside, ropes were thrown from The Callous Observer down to The Obedient, and secured around capstans on the smaller ship, lashing them together so that a boardwalk could be lowered. At the top, standing up straight like an academic invigilator, was the bushy-bearded man with a grand tricorne hat that Evie assumed to be Captain Salazar Frieze.
                “May Nubuck. It’s been a while.” he said, without ceremony. His crew stood silently by, watching.
                “Salazar! I’ve hunted you for eight years, and now my time is finally here! Rescind your orders!” Captain Nubuck bellowed, striding to the base of the boardwalk.
                “Come aboard, if you wish. I would prefer to talk to you directly, rather than shout along a piece of wood.” he said dispassionately, before stepping back from the plank and out of view. Clenching her fists, Captain Nubuck turned to her crew.
                “We board, but we do not fight. We will be guests on their ship, and therefore…” she sighed “… we will be held to their policies and customs. It is their place of business and according to Trading Company rules we must respect that.”
                A small chorus of ‘Aye, Captain’s came back to her and, in polite single file, the crew calmly marched aboard the vessel they’d chased for close to a decade.
                May and her crew embarked onto the broad, bare deck of The Callous Observer, lit extensively by dozens of burning oil lanterns. For the captain herself, it carried a wave of memories from a darker time. To her right she tried not to see the doorway of the captain’s quarters, the progenitor of her suffering. Everyone else looked around more freely, and saw that while the ship itself was a work of art, there was very little aboard the deck to suggest decadence of taste or ostentation. Instead, it was a bare and minimalist viewing platform, with telescopes on tripods positioned at regular intervals along the railings.
                “We saw your approach through Breacher’s Reef. A dangerous course.” said Captain Frieze, emotionlessly. “I observe that you nearly sank yourself.”
                “It takes more than a reef to bring down The Obedient.”
                “Apparently so. Now, why is it that you’ve been on my heels for all this time, May? Not a social visit, I presume?” he asked. Still, he was bolt upright with his hands crossed behind his back. Evie looked into the man’s face and wondered whether he’d ever displayed a feeling in his life.
                “I demand that you rescind your order for me to inspect the captain’s doorway for splinters for one hour every day, between seven and eight p.m. You abandoned me at Straggler’s Redemption and never cancelled your order.” growled May, her whole body tense with restrained anger. “I am my own captain, and your orders should hold me no longer. They almost cost me my ship.”
                Evie reached out a hand to comfort her friend, but the captain shook her head.
                “No, Evie. You observe callously while we are here. Like everyone else.” she said. The First Mate looked around and saw that, indeed, every member of Frieze’s crew stood with a plain, blank expression. They watched on without blinking, but showed no readiness to do anything upon any provocation. It was like a graveyard for statues, and Evie didn’t care for it.
                “Aye, captain.” she said, obediently but neutrally.
                “That’s why you came here? And why I stopped? You want someone who is no longer your captain to remove an order they placed on you ten years ago?” Salazar asked, apparently wishing for nothing more than clarity.
                “Yes. That, and, to return this.” she dropped Archimedes’ ledger onto the deck. It landed in a puddle. Mr Brusque looked down at the book and shrugged, but Evie could tell that he was biting the inside of his lip.
                “Thank you. I will not be rescinding my order. I am here to observe and to trade. If I were to remove that order than I would be interfering, which is not observation.” Captain Frieze announced, flatly.
                “Then I challenge you to a duel!” roared Captain Nubuck, whipping her flintlock into her hand.
                “You would duel me sooner than simply ignore the order?” asked Salazar. Something in his tone said that he knew the answer to the question already, and was asking for sport.
                “You know the rules. Back to back, ten paces, turn, and fire.” said May, darkly. Captain Frieze shrugged, pulled a pistol from his own belt and walked to the centre of the barren deck.
                “Is this really necessary, captain? He’s right, you can just ignore the order. He’s not your captain anymore.” Pleaded Evie, as callously as she could manage.
                “He knows who I am, and what he did, Evie. I need to do this for myself.” Captain Nubuck replied, dripping from the rain, exhausted from the night, but alive with adrenaline. “This is my revenge.” she said, shortly before a gunshot rang out across the ship.
                "Honestly, I could really have done without that." Captain Nubuck relayed, looking down at the bleeding wound where Salazar’s bullet had entered her abdomen.
                Locked in place by obedience, Evie could do little but observe, callously, as Captain Nubuck dropped her to her knees and pressed both hands to the wound.
                “You cheated!” she winced, as blood and rainwater started to trickle onto the deck.
                “You’re bound by the rules, May, not me. I never cared about them at all, as you may well recall. Now, in accordance with the conditions of severance of a Mediocre Western Trading Company contract, any ex-employee who sets foot on a company vessel is considered to be back in the employ of the company, as is their crew. I therefore order you to lay down your arms, and submit to my authority.” Salazar said, with all the warmth of a subterranean cave system.
                “I… I don’t want to… I’m sorry everyone.” muttered Captain Nubuck. “Lay down your arms.”
                “Union meeting!” screamed Evie, before the order could be obeyed.
                “No meeting without my say so.” commanded Captain Frieze, but Evie held up a hand to him. “Union rules state that no captain my dictate the timing of a meeting. We are free to discuss matters of our own as and when we please, now huddle up everyone.”
                Salazar’s crew watched on without comment as the sailors of The Obedient crowded into a tight huddle and muttered among themselves. Captain Frieze considered that he could reload his pistol and shoot Evie in the back, but he’d left his dry powder in the cabin and it would take too long to fetch it.
                “Captain Nubuck! By unanimous decision of the Sundown Trading Company union we have decided that the captain must remain fit for duty during any mission, trading journey, or similar adventure, and must not change the objectives of the mission without due notice to the crew, except under exceptional circumstances, by definition.” Evie declared, hands on hips. “Since your contract with Mediocre Western has stood for ten years and is unchanged in all that time, it is not exceptional. You must therefore continue with the mission as stated and you must, under any and all circumstances, remain fit for duty! Laying down arms or bleeding out are entirely out of the question!”
                A smile cracked across Captain Nubuck’s face as she took one hand away from the wound. The flow of blood was slowing.
                Captain Frieze’s mask of stoicism finally broke into incredulity at the declaration.
                “You know that’s nonsense, don’t you? You can’t just order your captain to be well any more than you can order a ship not to sink.”
                “Your observations were not so good after all then, Salazar.” said Captain Nubuck, before discharging her flintlock squarely through his right eye.
                Gasps rang from the crew of The Obedient, but not a word was uttered from Captain Frieze’s sailors, as the tall, statuesque man flopped over backwards. The first mate of The Callous Observer shrugged, and turned his attention back to Captain Nubuck. There could, after all, have been more events to observe.
                “Thank you, Evie.” May said, pushing herself back up to her feet. A gaping hole in the captain’s waistcoat and abdomen told of Salazar’s shot, but there was no longer any blood to see. “I’m finally free! I have my hour back!”
                “Any time, captain.” said the first mate, remembering her decorum and observing the miraculous recovery without emotion.
                “We should be going now.” May declared to both crews. “Picking a new captain is Mediocre Western business, and we have no more work to do here.”
                To general assent from both groups of sailors, the crew of The Obedient clambered back down the boardwalk and cast off the ropes from The Callous Observer. With the sound of wind in canvas and wooden creaking, the two ships began to drift their separate ways in the blackness of the night.
                “Where to now, Captain? I think this is the first time we’ve ever been able to choose our own course.” Evie asked. “Maybe towards a shipwright while Doctor McStevens takes a look at, you know…” she suggested, pointing towards the hole in May’s abdomen.
                “Probably a good idea, yes. The nearest shipyard is north of the spaghetti line, at Journey’s Culmination, so set a bearing for there, please.”
                “Aye, captain.”
                With wheel and sail Evie and the crew brought The Obedient around to face north, and began pressing onwards to repairs. They were dead set against the wind, but the ship had been given an order, and as always it obeyed.