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As Logan rowed, he focused only on keeping the strokes of the oars consistent and steady, on the progress he was making, the distance he was covering...
Not on the chaos now fully holding reign onboard the ship he was leaving behind him, and not on the other small vessel that had just disembarked from it, now following just as steadily in pursuit to prevent his escape.
Logan had known, almost upon waking, exactly where his captors had brought him. From the rolling motion of the boards beneath him and the sounds of the waves against the hull, it had been quite obvious that he was on a ship at sea. And while it was of course quite impossible to guess his precise location on the water without consulting maps or charts, he had known just as easily which vessel it was that had taken him. Rumors had been circulating for weeks now that the notorious pirate frigate the Deception had been spotted in waters off of Teruma's northern coast. While that, in itself, wouldn't have been enough evidence to draw such a conclusion, war with Dolumet was looming on the horizon and large segments of the navy were being mobilized on both sides—there was no logical reason for a pirate vessel whose crew and captain were wanted by both kingdoms to risk being spotted so close to land, not without cause.
And yet.
And yet, here Logan found himself, and it unfortunately wasn't the first instance of the Deception and its captain interfering with affairs between the two kingdoms. Though the last time had been long ago...
Shoving thoughts of past sorrow from his mind, Logan focused once more on simply rowing.
Escaping his bonds hadn't been particularly difficult, but the greater trouble in escape lay in not allowing himself to be recaptured. He had been fortunate enough to catch a glimpse outside from the sparsely manned gun deck, revealing that they were within easy view of land, otherwise his attempts might well have been futile. He was still, no doubt, several hours of hard effort away from shore, and his arms, unused to the labor of rowing, would soon begin to tire, but he wasn't going to allow that to stop him. Where he was destined to make landfall he couldn't begin to guess, but he imagined his chances would be much better regardless when the alternative was being held captive onboard a pirate ship.
Particularly one whose captain had...a history of ransoms and kidnappings gone south.
Speaking of the captain, the second boat was slowly gaining on him. There were two men rowing it, giving them a clear advantage. Only the fact that the third man onboard was occupied with frantically bailing water from its depths held them back from overtaking him easily...
(Logan swore to himself as he maintained his pace. He should have thrown the other oars overboard, but there simply hadn't been time. He had managed to sneak away with a loaded pistol before making for the boats, and he had hoped that blowing a hole in the bottom of the other boat would be enough to discourage pursuit. Apparently, he had been wrong.)
And, as the other boat slowly gained on them, Logan's hopes dwindled further as he saw that one of the men rowing it was the Deception's captain himself.
The pistol was spent and he hadn't the means to load it again, but he had stolen a knife and a sabre as well. If the other ship caught up, he wasn't going down without a fight. He had no intention of allowing these outlaws to use him for their purposes...
Whether those intentions were as simple as ransom or something far more sinister.
"Tell me, Remus," he had overheard the captain ask while he was sneaking about in preparation for leaving the ship, "how did an assassination attempt turn into a kidnapping?"
The exchange had intrigued him, not just for what it implied, but also for what it confirmed. Because Logan's last recollection prior to waking onboard the Deception had involved being accosted—himself as well as his entourage—on his return from his weekly visit to the university. Their assailants had been two roughly-dressed men, both of them expensively armed and well-trained, giving the lie to their presentation as a pair of workmen or petty robbers-
(Though certainly not trained as assassins, as evidenced by both his survival and their captain's displeasure. A mistake on their part, or perhaps a choice they had made hoping for greater profit from his ransom than from his death?
Either way, Logan was determined to make them regret it...)
The name had been enough to fully cement Logan's suspicions, both regarding the identity of his abductors and that of the ship itself. He had noted the resemblance the two bore to one another at the start of the ambush, but with that last piece of evidence he was certain...
(For Logan had, in secret, commissioned a small handful of his kingdom's spies to bring him any information they could gather about the Deception—either the ship's whereabouts, or its crew. His first duties would always be to his people, of course, and to his family, and the crown. But if the opportunity ever arose to see justice delivered at last against the Deception and its blackguard captain, then he could hardly allow it to pass him by...
Unfortunately, it seemed as though the crew of the Deception had come to find him first.)
Now, Logan rowed. He rowed for an unfamiliar shoreline he dare not look behind him to see, because in front of him the other boat was gaining. On that boat were Roman and Remus—twin sons of the notorious pirate king Romulus—and, in the seat of the boat nearest him, manning his own set of oars, was the captain of the Deception...the masked terror of the seas known to many only as Deceit.
(A man whose crimes had won him a lasting residency as a specter in the darkest of Logan's dreams...)
A man who was currently rowing at the back of the boat ahead of him, slowly gaining.
A man, it seemed, who thought that Logan was in any sort of position where he would want to chat.
"You know, Your Highness," Deceit shouted over his shoulder as he rowed. "I'm not sure you've quite thought this escape of yours out as thoroughly as you ought to."
And Logan was determined, at first, to ignore him. With so far to row, it only made sense—he was keeping his pace easily enough now, but if he stooped to engaging in conversation with his abductors, he would wind up using breath he couldn't allow himself to spare. Unfortunately, Deceit seemed not to care one way or the other whether he replied, for he instead kept right on talking.
"Are you even familiar with the waters we've sailed into?" Deceit asked him. "Do you know what awaits you should you reach the shore?"
Logan did not, though he had, in making his plans, naturally considered several possibilities. Ideally, there was hope they might not have managed to carry him very far past the shores of Teruma, in which case making landfall would return him to his own kingdom. Less ideally, they may have delivered him to waters under Dolumet's control. There were a handful of principalities in between—smaller kingdoms along the coast, island nations, some of which were his kingdom's allies...
And then there was the Outlaw's Coast—a stretch of great cliffs, creased with sheltered bays and twisting fjords, in which the Lords of the Sea had built petty kingdoms and fiefs of their own.
Sparing a glance at the shore looming behind him at last it was difficult to even begin to guess. Was that the small range of mountains along the coast of Dolumet that he was seeing? Or were those cliffs, towering to cast their shadow over the hollows where vermin of his abductors' ilk liked to hide?
"Regardless of where I land," Logan returned, maintaining his pace, "my chances of finding freedom there will still be better than they were aboard your vessel."
"Perhaps," Deceit allowed. "Though if the freedom you're after is the choice of who you'd prefer to slit your throat, perhaps the twins should have simply left you where they found you..."
Logan may have imagined it, but the twin on the oars seemed to falter briefly in the pace of his rowing. The one bailing with the bucket quite visibly made as if to cast its contents onto the captain, though sharp words that didn't quite span the distance between their boats discouraged him from carrying through.
"With my entourage of bodyguards, on my way headed home?" Logan asked, confused by the pirate's logic, there.
"In the hands of men who had been bribed and ordered to ensure you never made it home," Deceit said. "It wasn't for the pleasure of your company, after all, that my associates brought you to me."
Logan had to respect the man's audacity in opening with such a bold claim—indeed, it seemed unlikely that even Deceit himself could possibly believe that it was a credible one.
"You're simply after a ransom," Logan argued, hoping this was the case. "And I am of no use to you dead."
"You're of no use to anyone dead save your enemies," Deceit said. "Some of whom, conveniently, are also my enemies, and I wouldn't particularly enjoy seeing any of them get their way. But perhaps we can better talk about this back on my ship? It's windy, and it could easily snatch important words away."
And that...was perhaps a bit more believable.
Logan couldn't say that the offer wasn't tempting—the wind was beginning to grow rather strong, the chill cutting sharply through the threadbare coat he had stolen, and it's resistance wasn't helping to ease his passage to shore. Then again, once he was back onboard the Deception, he would truly be at Deceit's mercy...
(As well as the dubious mercy of a pirate crew no doubt still trying to sort out the issue with their rudder, which Logan had sabotaged just before stealing the row boat for his escape.)
"Or perhaps we could save that conversation for when we both reach the shore instead," Logan offered in return.
Though of course, given the hole that was slowly pouring the sea into the bottom of their boat, and given the tremendous effort the three pirates were forced to commit toward keeping it afloat, there was every chance they wouldn't make it to shore along with him.
"We could, though there's a rather strong chance that neither of us will reach the shore," Deceit suggested. "There are sea snakes in these waters, after all, particularly once you reach the shallows. Venomous ones. Sometimes they will even come up into a smaller boat seeking after warmth... All it takes is a single bite and the remaining span of your life will be counted in the few breaths left to be taken."
Logan couldn't help but laugh.
"Am I supposed to believe such an outlandish claim," he asked, "from a man who calls himself Deceit?"
"I think it's rather unfair to judge someone based solely on their name, don't you?" Deceit said, almost petulantly—Logan couldn't see his face, of course, as the pirate's back was turned to him while he rowed, but he could almost imagine a pout. "Even if some small part of my reputation proceeds me, you can't claim to think you know anything about me."
"I know far more than you'd think," Logan said, "about your crew and your ship, and about you."
"Oh, do enlighten me, please," Deceit said. "I'm sure it will help relieve the tedium of rowing."
"Your ship is the Deception," Logan said, "with a long and storied history of conquests stretching back almost fifteen years, all along the coast. Your crew is filled with outlaws, each with their own colorful and shaded pasts. Your companions there, for example, are the sons of Romulus, self-crowned King of the Outlaw Coast. They were banished quite recently from his kingdom for offenses unknown, and sought you out—his most notable rival—in a bid for protection."
Both of the twins were visibly taken aback by this, each stopping to stare for a moment and forgetting their duties...though another harshly delivered order quickly snapped them out of their shock and got them right back to it.
"Impressive," Deceit said. "Go on..."
"Your boatswain's name is Rembrandt Sove," Logan said, "a disgraced royal guard from Dolumet who fled execution for charges of treason after allowing the assassins responsible for the murder of the previous king to escape through the palace gate—though most reliable accounts suggest that he was drugged. Your ship's apothecary, Virgil Greven, is the son of a well known professor of the Royal University of Teruma, both of whom were exiled, if I'm not mistaken, for alleged involvement in illegal practices of black magic. And one member of your crew, though I think it prudent to leave them unnamed, is a refugee from a religious order that would seek to sacrifice them to bring about the rebirth of their fractured god..."
And Logan also knew that the quartermaster on board the Deception was a man called Patton Morse who, under a much different name than the one he used now, had once worked in the castle kitchens of the royal palace of Teruma. But that wasn't information he was going to share either, given that same quartermaster sent in letters to his "niece" in the capital of Teruma once a month that were actually coded messages that then found their way delivered into Logan's hands directly.
(Those communications, and the knowledge they had given him of the ship's layout, had been invaluable in proceeding with his escape.)
For several moments there was silence, save for the sound of the waves and the wind and the oars' disturbance of the water—and the occasional sound of a bitten-off swear, which it pleased him to think was inspired by Logan's deep knowledge of Deceit's operations, though there was plenty else in the situation that Logan could excuse the pirate for swearing about.
"Very impressive," Deceit managed eventually. "And what, then of myself? I have to confess, you have me absolutely enraptured with curiosity."
"Prior to being commandeered as a pirate vessel, the Deception was a Terumese naval frigate called the RS Domination," Logan said. "During the last conflict with Dolumet fifteen years ago, her previous captain was rumored for having both a tight hand with wages and on the handle of a whip. He was betrayed by his first mate, Ethan Lysander, who staged a mutiny, putting the ill fated captain and any resisters to the sword before turning privateer under contract to the crown of Dolumet...which he then broke just before the end of the war. After sacking a naval fort and seizing the war reparations being gathered for delivery to Teruma the name of the ship came to be changed, and his history of betrayals earned Captain Lysander the moniker of Deceit. The deed and several that followed went on to earn him a title among the notables of the Outlaw Coast as the Pirate Prince of Lies."
Deceit seemed not to have any response to this, nor any great outward reaction, frustratingly silent as he continued rowing with an unflagging, steady rhythm, even as Logan's arms were beginning to burn with their own continued efforts...
"Since then, the Deception has become one of the more prominent terrors of the sea," Logan continued. "You've maintained one of the highest bounties in either kingdom for at least the past ten years..."
"They do seem to enjoy trying to outdo one another don't they," Deceit said conversationally. "I believe the bounty in Dolumet now includes a landed title, doesn't it? And in Teruma I think it's a knighthood?"
Logan grit his teeth so that he wouldn't waste his breath in a scream.
"I can imagine both nations would enjoy seeing you finally brought to justice," Logan said. "Particularly after your kidnapping and attempted ransom led to the untimely and tragic death of the Princess Jane."
Jane Mendaci, second born child of the previous king of Dolumet, sister to its current ruler...and the betrothed of Teruma's youngest prince. Though her father and later her brother had kept her sheltered from the public most of her life, her loss had been mourned by the people of both nations equally.
When the pirate threw his head back with an amused chuckle Logan found himself wishing, rather fiercely, that he hadn't wasted his only pistol shot on the hull of the other boat.
"Falsehood," the pirate declared silkily.
Logan's arms faltered briefly in their rhythm, and the unevenness of his movements had both of them twinging sharply.
"I beg your pardon?"
"The depth of knowledge you possess about my crew is, as I've said, quite impressive," Deceit praised, "however, while you are clearly quite the devoted student of history, Your Highness, there are a few crucial points on which your information happens to be...rather significantly out of date."
"How so?"
"The Deception is, as you've said, a ship with a storied past," Deceit said. "One that has changed hands several times over the years...and the name and titles of her captain with it. I am not the first of her captains to take the name of Deceit, nor, if the sea's fortune continues to show her favor, will I likely be the last. The captain responsible for the sacking of Princess Jane's ship was not Ethan Lysander but a man named Damien Black...my predecessor."
"You're lying."
"Am I?" Deceit asked.
"You're trying to entice me back onboard by hinting at gaps in my knowledge," Logan accused. "It won't work."
"Won't it, though?" Deceit said smugly. "Because if you did return to my ship I would be more than happy to tell you the tale of her past captains and their fates. As well as that of Princess Jane."
It was a cruel tease—and Logan had little illusion that Deceit was unaware of just how cruel it was.
"No," Logan decided firmly. "While I applaud your efforts, it doesn't matter whether you're telling the truth or not. There is nothing you possess that could make me sacrifice my only chance at freedom."
"Not even this?"
And Deceit paused rowing long enough to bring out a gold watch from the pocket of his vest—Logan's watch, he could tell, from the sight of the locket dangling from the end of its chain. Logan stopped rowing too as he stared. Which was perhaps foolish—after all, it wasn't as if he wasn't aware that it had been taken, along with the rest of his valuables after his capture. But with the topic dredged up from the waters of memory its loss felt far greater than it should. Few even knew he still possessed the portrait in that locket...and seeing it in the hands of Deceit was an insult, a violation, a wound.
Because that portrait was one of the last things he had—and the only glimpse he would ever have—of his lost Jane.
Logan and Jane had been promised to each other when they were practically children, and though they had never been given the chance to meet face to face Logan had always thought they had been paired well. They had, after all, exchanged volumes of correspondence over the years, and though Logan had eventually come to the conclusion that he would never love a woman as a wife deserved he had been looking forward to their eventual marriage nonetheless. Through their letters, Logan had come to see Jane as the closest he was likely to find to his intellectual match—and she had always maintained that what she lacked in raw intellectual power to match him she made up for in the clear common sense that he lacked. As a member of the royal family, Logan had few peers and even fewer friends among them, but though he doubted the sort of wedded bliss most imagined was to be found in his future, he had nonetheless seen in Jane someone he might one day grow to cherish, if not romantically, then as a companion.
(Indeed, though he would never confess to any such sentiment, were she only a man, Logan might very well have come to believe, that he had found his soulmate...)
But alas—for himself, for Jane, for their families and their kingdoms—the ship that should have brought her for their marriage had delivered her instead into danger and then into an untimely grave. And the treaty that their marriage was meant to have sealed—settling accounts between their two nations at long last—had followed her with its own untimely demise.
Now, seeing the villain responsible for her death—whatever his claim—holding her portrait, Logan found himself shaken-
Enough so, unfortunately, that his grip slipped on one of the oars in his hand.
With the constant exertion, he hadn't noticed how numb his fingers had grown with the cold, and so he hadn't expected the difficulty in trying to fumble for the oar as it fell away. It fell loose from the crutch and slid into the water. Logan pulled the other up into the boat quickly—he wasn't going to be able to outpace them with a single oar, let alone make it to shore, and he needed to act quickly—leaning over the gunwale in the desperate hope of retrieving the wayward thing before it drifted too far to reach...
"No, wait, Logan, don't-"
And Logan had barely had the chance to register the words—to register the alarm carried in the sound of his name—before the boat tilted and his world with it and he was dumped—not without warning, but with far less than he might have liked—into the cold, icy waves. Which would have been a distressing and dangerous event regardless, but doubly so given that, for all his various areas of study, there was one area of knowledge that he had, as recently as his unpleasant awakening onboard the Deception, come to regret his negligence of...
Because, unfortunately, Logan did not—at least, not properly—know how to swim.
To say that the experience was disorienting would have been an understatement, as he quickly lost track of time, place and direction as he struggled to hold his breath and try to get his head above water. What he did finally register, as the chill seeped into him and his fight started to leave him, was the feeling of a tug on his coat, hauling him in a direction that blessedly turned out to be upward. Soon he was drawing in lungfuls of air and clinging onto the side of the boat with the very last dregs of his strength, his arms long leeched of it first from rowing and then from his fight to find the surface.
"You have one job," a voice said by his ear, "and it's to hold on.
Deceit, he registered distantly—though far too distantly to care. He held on. He held on as the boat started to rock once more, and he held on even as he was hauled upwards back into the boat—in fact, at that point it was almost difficult for him to stop. At last, the two of them were left lying in the inch or so of water at the bottom of the boat, both breathing hard, though calling what Logan was doing breathing was charitable. Fortunately he hadn't inhaled too much sea water, but enough of it had invaded his sinuses to make drawing air in a miserable experience.
It took several moments for the both of them to recover themselves following the ordeal, but soon Logan found himself staring up into the dark leather mask with its tooled pattern of scales that the pirate always wore.
(And because he had regained most of his wits but little of his sense, he couldn't help but comment on the sight.)
"Seems you weren't lying," Logan said, breathlessly, "about the threat of venomous serpents invading the boat."
The noise Deceit made in response sounded almost as disgusted as it did amused.
"How are you still the stupidest smart person alive?"
The words, exasperated, shouldn't have alarmed him the way they did, but there was something in the inflection—something in Deceit's eyes—that drew him suddenly to look closer than he had yet managed. To try and see beyond the mask on his face and the reputation that had apparently come with it, and...
He had expected the hand coming up to meet his as he reached for the mask, but he had expected the touch to push him away rather than guide him. And as the mask slid upward, Logan found himself staring up into features that were both new and at the same time very familiar. It wasn't an exact match, of course—the artist, or whoever had commissioned them, had clearly possessed their own vision of what the portrait had been meant to show. But while the lines of the face were neither as delicate nor the eyes as soft as the portrait portrayed, though the cheeks were both ruddy from exertion and pale from the cold, and marred by a scar that stood out boldly across the expanse of one cheek, they were clearly the same features he had spent so long looking at, with curiosity, with longing, and in grief.
"Ja-"
"Janus."
"Janus," Logan managed, testing the name on his tongue. "You'd better have a damned good explanation for this."
And Patton was going to need a damned good explanation as well, depending on whether he had—somehow—simply failed to learn the truth, or had chosen to keep it from him.
Janus let out a snort.
"I do, but perhaps we could return to my ship before I share it?" Janus invited once more. "Preferably before those two manage to upstage us and actually drown..."
Logan cast a look toward the other boat, which with only a single rower and a single bucket was now practically at a stand still and slowly but steadily sinking.
He gave the pirate—Deceit, Janus, his beloved, he thought, if the other would still have him—a tired smile.
"As you wish."