The First Sin

by Jessica Brawner

  I chuckled. "Spoken like someone who was never forced to do needlework and equally useless tasks because it looks good for prospective husbands." I took a bite of the chicken. It was savory, and his cook had done an excellent job. The meat melted in my mouth, and I sighed in appreciation.

  "While noblemen have many options open to them, noble women are expected to marry, bear children, and see to the oversight of the perfect home." There was bitterness in my words. But not so much now as there had been right after my father died.

  Charles looked up, startled at my tone. "But that’s what all women want, is it not? Is it so bad, children, a home?"

  "If that is what you want in life then of course not. Children and family can be very fulfilling for some women. But if you want something different, something more, only to be told constantly that you may not have it because it is not ladylike, or not appropriate leads to sheer misery." I took a sip of my wine. "But that's not actually my story. It could've been, but I took a different route to get here."

  Charles looked intrigued at this. I sat back in my chair toying with my glass of wine, watching as he studied me. "Now tell me something about you. How did you get here?"

  He smiled, shaking his head. "It's a simple enough story. Born in Italy to a merchant family. My parents were very religious and insistent upon a good education, when all I wanted was to go out for the guard. The more they pushed me to books, the more I ran for the training grounds. When I was of age, I ran away and joined a mercenary company and discovered I had a true talent for both pistol and sword-work. We were on campaign for some noble or another when I came across the Swiss Guard. When my contract with the mercenary company was up, they recruited me. I moved up quickly through their ranks." He paused to take a bite of chicken.

  "I'm sure my parents would be most amused to discover that the Swiss Guard values education as much as they did. Many of the members are themselves priests or lay brothers of some of the more militant orders within the church."

  I raised an eyebrow, tucking the tidbit of information away. "And you? Are you a priest, doomed to celibacy, or have you taken a more secular route?"

  He looked up, amused, surprised at the forwardness of my question. "I have taken no vow of celibacy. I choose to serve our lord through the strength of my arm rather than locked away in a cloister. Though, as you say, there is no shame in either. Now, I have been most open with my history. Please, share your own."

  I took a moment, pausing to compose my thoughts before answering. "You know bits and pieces of it already. I am the second daughter of the Count de Valois. My sister died under somewhat mysterious circumstances. The family believed it to be murder, but we were not able to determine who orchestrated her supposed accident. My father was killed on his way to Paris to entreat the king to open an investigation. As the remaining heir, the title fell to me. I was much more interested in my mechanic's shop and flying than I was in finding a husband or running an estate, so after two years of trying to do both I appointed a steward and ran away to join the English Air Corps.”

  Charles snorted with disgust. “The English?”

  “The English, with their history of strong queens, take a much more liberal view of what women are capable of." Taking a sip of wine, I stared into the glass, remembering.

  "When my time there was done, I put together a crew and bought a ship. And that's about all there is to it." I did not share how close a relation I was to the king. If Charles knew the French monarchy at all, he would know, and if he did not, then there was no need for me to tell him.

  The Crew

  “We need to go in now and get her,” Nina shouted, thumping her fist on the table.

  “And just how do you propose we do that? It’s a suicide mission,” Seamus shouted back. “She’s surrounded by an entire squadron of Swiss Guard, in the middle of a flotilla for all we know!”

  “She’d come get any one of us.” Nina glared across at Seamus.

  Seamus pounded his fist against the table. “She wouldn’t be stupid about it though. And I’ve a mind to live, thank you very much. An all-out assault is not the answer.”

  Tyler watched the crew, sitting back in his chair, listening and thinking.

  “She’s definitely not within range of the tracker the moment,” Marie said, in a much calmer tone. “If we can at least get within a mile of her she can call The Inara. But it’s not like that’s a stealthy option. They’d hear the engine coming and be ready.”

  “We also don’t know if she’s injured. She’s bound to be under heavy guard. Even if she can get on deck, she’s probably not in a position where she could call The Inara. And Marie’s right. The noise of the engine would alert them before she could get away,” Henri said.

  Marie looked startled, having not expected help from that quarter.

  David was propped up against a cushion in the corner of the room, face and arms covered in bruises and cuts. “What if we sneak The Inara to a point near the Blue Raven and signal her. Or send in just one or two people to get her out,” David offered, worry written large on his face.

  “I’m telling you it’s a suicide mission to go after her. We go in guns blazing and we’ll get mowed down, we go in stealthy and we’ll get caught.” Seamus said again.

  “I’m not leaving her in their hands.” Nina shot Seamus an angry look. “They’ll take her straight to the gallows as soon as they arrive in Rome.”

  “No.” Niccolò was pale and scared, but he stood up. “No. They will only take her to the gallows if she lives that long. Prisoners die in transport all the time. We must rescue her before they arrive in Rome or we have no hope.”

  Tyler took a deep breath. Leadership did not come easy to him, but he had learned from watching Jac. He had to keep the crew together, and he had to keep them pointed in the right direction. Standing up he said, “I have an idea. Let’s use all of your suggestions.”

  Five pairs of eyes turned to look at Tyler with incredulity. “All of them?” Nina asked. Tyler nodded. “Listen and tell me what you think. It’s crazy, but so are we. I think we can pull this off.”

  Grabbing a handful of tokens used for planning heists, Tyler laid out his plan. If there was cloud cover in late in the afternoon The Indiana would hide behind the clouds and Marie would spark the steel cables protecting ship from lightning in a sequence, hopefully alerting Jac to their presence. Marie, Henri, Tyler and David would man The Indiana for a frontal assault, while Seaums and Niccolò worked to tether The Inara to the bottom of the Blue Raven. Nina would sneak onboard to release the captain. If she was successful, they would re-call The Inara to the ship without issue. If she was not, they would signal the Captain that The Inara was nearby and hope that the Captain could formulate a plan for her own escape.

  Seamus nodded. “Seems workable, but folks attacking from The Indiana need to bail quickly. It wouldn’t do to get the ship captured.”

  Nina looked down at the strategy board impressed. “Not bad, Tyler. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  He nodded in acknowledgement. “Let’s go get the Captain.”

  Jacqueline

  Charles would try and surprise me with questions about the Miter, trying to get me to confess, or tell him something that I shouldn’t know. I in turn, questioned him, trying to discover where his loyalties lay – with the Pope, or with the Church. And did he equate the one with the other.

  After the thousandth question about why I had stolen the Miter I said, “Charles. I did not steal the Miter, but supposing I had, how would you suggest I make amends and still retain my freedom and that of my crew? Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

  He looked nonplused. “What do you mean?”

  “It seems unlikely that if I had, as you have suggested, stolen this object, that I could simply return it and walk away without punishment. So given that, what would you suggest?” I found that it bothered me, this lie rolling off my tongue to Charles, and this surprised and discomfited me.

  To cove
r my confusion I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

  “Ah, yes, you raise an interesting point. Someone must be punished. This is not a treacle tart filched from the market.” Charles looked troubled by this. “It is possible that penance could be assigned, and a show of contrition. Likely it would be public penance, and harsh, but that would be for His Holiness to decide.” He had set his hand down on the table beside his wineglass. Gently I touched the back with one finger, tracing a pattern along the vein.

  “And if it were returned anonymously – it seems unlikely that you will stop looking for the thief and simply improve your security. If it were me who had stolen it, how would you suggest I correct the error of my ways?”

  He flushed and snatched his hand away, changing the subject. A tale for a tale, I would tell him stories of my time with the English, or from my childhood on the estate. When the subject of The Indiana came up, I would tell him of our perfectly honest jobs, doing my best to avoid naming the crew.

  Through my walks on the ship I had determined that there were at least twenty crew members, with Charles in command. I did not see any way that I by myself could take over the airship. There were too many of them. My crew would be coming for me – they could track the same beacon that The Inara followed, but they had to be in range.

  Through my dinners with Charles I was coming to have a great deal of respect for what he had accomplished in so short a time. He had served in his original mercenary company and risen to the rank of Sergeant there during the conflicts between Venice and Florence. During combat he had saved his squad when their commander had fallen, by keeping them together and outflanking the enemy. When he joined the Swiss Guard, he was allowed to compete to join a cohort assigned to special missions for the Vatican.

  Though he would not speak of those missions, I gathered he had gained the attention of His Holiness through them and been assigned to the Pope’s personal guard. I was surprised to learn that his promotion to Captain had been a recent one. I found him to be charming and witty when the mood struck. I did my best to keep our conversations lighthearted and flirtatious; not showing how worried I was about what I might find in Rome.

  Jacqueline

  On the eighth day, Charles and I were walking on deck, a guard trailing behind. Off in the distance a flicker of light behind some clouds caught my eye. I turned to watch it for a moment. Charles noted it also. “Sheet lightning. We may see some rain tonight.”

  It did look like sheet lightning, if one didn’t know what to look for. I watched the series of flashes again. Marie was charging the wire structure around the grande poche in a coded series. I would be ready. Turning to Charles I said, “Indeed, it may rain. Perhaps we should go below.”

  There was a tap on my door at around midnight, then I heard the bolts click. I threw off the bed clothes and slid out of bed fully clothed dropping into a crouch next to the bed.

  Nina was holding one of Marie's new light sources. It glowed dimly in the darkness. I ran to the door and slipped out between her and the doorframe. She followed me up the stairs and pointed to the right where The Thorin was tied off to the Vatican ship.

  I heard shouting behind us and a bullet whizzed past my head. Ducking back into the doorway I heard Nina ask, "How many of them are there captain?"

  "Too many. There are at least twenty on board ship." I stuck my head out the doorway once again to get a look at the situation. There was a cluster of five men on the steering deck. I felt certain the men on watch were at the other end of the deck, behind us.

  "I'm pleased to see they didn't hurt you. We weren't sure what we would find," Nina said quietly. “I have one of Marie's grenades with me, and the electroshock device. And your spare knife.”

  I nodded, taking the knife and sliding it into the top of my boot. Nina handed the electroshock device to me as well and pulled out her pistol. The men on the steering deck were firing out towards where I assumed The Indiana was. I could see some of the crew in hand-to-hand combat on the main deck.

  From the hold I heard boots, many of them running our way. Nina heard them too. She held up the grenade and gestured down the hallway. I nodded and primed the electroshock device. We flattened ourselves against the wall. An unfamiliar silhouette in the doorway would surely alert the men coming up from below. Nina pressed the button on Marie's grenade and rolled down the hallway. She grabbed my arm and we ran.

  Tyler came up behind us also running. I heard the barking of pistols from the doorway and felt something scream past my left ear. Looking back I saw Tyler flail and fall to the deck. The crew of the Blue Raven wasn't far behind us. I ran back to help Tyler to his feet. He was bleeding profusely from his left shoulder. I threw his uninjured arm over my shoulder and helped him to the railing. Nina, ahead of us, reeled The Thorin in closer to the ship. We threw Tyler inelegantly and ungently into the webbing. I heard him groan in pain. Nina jumped after him to make sure he was secure. "Come on Captain!" she called back to me.

  I was standing on the railing preparing to jump when hands grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled, toppling me backwards onto the deck. I heard the ominous click of a revolver and felt the cold metal pressed to my temple. "Don't move." Charles's matter of fact tone did more to convince me than anything else would have.

  "Get out of here!" I shouted. Charles slapped me angrily. Nina cut their tether ropes and pushed off. I could vaguely make out Tyler clinging to the webbing on The Thorin. She looked back at me and shouted, “Petunias!”

  That was certainly not what I was expecting to hear as a battle cry, and it gave me pause.

  Charles was furious and came storming into my quarters. I let him shout for a few minutes. This was the reaction of someone thinking with his heart, not someone using his judgement. When he was finished I looked him in the eye. "If our situations were reversed, and for some reason I held you captive, taken from the marketplace for no valid reason, would your crew come for you?"

  Charles looked at me mouth hanging open poised to respond. He shut his mouth. "It's not the same."

  "Really? You kidnapped me, held me against my will, and are taking me to Rome on false charges. And you expect them to not try and rescue me?"

  "I have a perfectly valid reason.” He glared at me, anger simmering beneath the surface of his gaze.

  "You think you do, but my crew doesn’t know that. Though to be fair I imagine they would try to rescue me anyway. We take care of each other." I stood watching Charles as he paced back and forth like a caged tiger.

  "I must take more extensive security measures from now on. I have let my feelings for you cloud my judgement on this. That will not happen again.” He squared his shoulders, but I could see the conflict within him.

  "You will do what you feel you have to do. What you should be doing is letting me go, since you have no proof."

  He scowled. "I have been told that there is proof in Rome"

  Looking at him levelly, I replied. "For your sake you'd better hope so."

  At that Charles's stormed out, slamming my door. I thought he had forgotten to lock it, then I heard the 'snick' of the deadbolt. I slumped in my chair feeling defeated. It was the middle of the night, but after all the excitement I couldn't sleep. Looking down I noticed the blood on my hands and clothes. Tyler's blood. If he died it would be on me for taking this job. A captain is responsible for the lives of her crew. Pouring water from the pitcher into the basin on the bureau, I did my best to wash the blood stains from my hands and shirt, scrubbing them angrily.

  Why would Nina yell Petunias of all things?

  Jacqueline

  An outright assault didn't work, I mused. Perhaps I should try seduction. I was still trying to puzzle out Nina’s cryptic flowers. Clearly it was a message. It was a callback to when I had been thrown off The Indiana over Paris; naked and drugged. Later, the crew had laughed when I told them that the first thought I’d had while falling was ‘petunias’. But what did Nina mean? That I should jump off the ship? Over P
aris The Inara had been close enough for me to call. It had caught me from below. Was The Inara somehow below me? I hadn’t seen it in the fight.

  Charles had once again invited me to dinner. Seduction wasn’t really my strong point, but I had nothing to lose. I took my time getting ready, twirling my hair up and pinning it with my jeweled hairpins and tucking the shirt in as best I might. Pinching my cheeks to bring some color to them, I examined myself in the mirror.

  The bruise on my temple had faded to a green, unhealthy tinge, and I pulled a lock of hair out to cover it. I was tired, and it showed. I did my best to compose my features into a pleasant mask. My vest was still damp. I debated putting it on anyway, but decided that the loose shirt was more provocative, so left it off, wearing just the shirt and flying pants.

  Charles greeted me courteously enough at dinner, but I noticed that his pistol was never far from his hand. He noted my changed apparel but made no comment. "Tell me Jacqueline, what is this device." His finger hovered over the trigger button on Marie's silver needle grenade, its bulk filling his hand. I flinched then remembered that it had been discharged the night before.

  "It is an impressive device. You saw what it can do." I said lightly.

  Charles scowled. "I had ten men that we had to pull needles out of. All of them slept like the dead well past midday."

  I smiled and nodded. "I will point this out to you. They only slept. This could have just as easily been loaded with something lethal, but that isn't how my crew works. We don't kill people without cause."

  "A pirate crew with ethics," he said sarcastically. "I will keep that in mind when I go up against them again." He shook his head in frustration. “Miter or no, you are a notorious pirate – reputations like yours are not built on fantasy.”