Riven Isles

22 | Loyalty

Once upon a time, in the cottage I called home for all my life, I'd read a book about a war. Not our war, with the men and the wolves and the anarchic Gifted. A fabricated, fantastical war, where the navy stood on one side, written as the heroes, and the pirates stood on the other, as the villains. It was propaganda, disguised in a children's book, but the moral was fair and unbiased. The pirates had been disloyal to their captains, and one by one had pleaded mercy from the navy and joined their ranks until the count of navy men far outnumbered the pirates. As a result, the navy won with barely a finger lifted, solely because of their superior numbers.

They would not have won had the pirates been loyal. Strength comes in numbers and in loyalty, and with this principle, Captain Avery had built a fortress, and I had been dropped in the middle of it. The pirates celebrated me, and played with me, and involved me more than I felt comfortable with. These men would trust Avery with their lives, and believed he would trust them with his, and I've started to get the same feeling. Even if I'd heard straight from his mouth that we are 'baggage', I've started to feel that we are anything but.

And with the captain's name out, the morale is higher than ever, and the attention around me reached a peak so fast that I haven't been given the time to breathe since. I have been lifted onto shoulders, taught to gamble and play dice, sparred with, given alcohol that I had to discretely pour overboard to avoid drinking... So far, each time I have been able to escape the men, I have found my companions already asleep in our shared chambers. They always rise earlier than I and are gone, and the cycle repeats.

Professor Woods has been apparently so repulsed that he has skipped mealtimes to avoid me and the crowd that follows. He ignores me and my existence entirely.

I asked Lydia to talk to him, to help me to stop this nonsense business of having two sides, when we all could be on one. She kindly spoke to the both of them, the professor and the doctor, on my behalf, but not to ask them to reconsider their distaste in the captain; only to reconsider their unwillingness to accept my choices. So, four days into being exhausted witless, Dr. Oswald waits for me to awake to play a game of cards with me. He hears me out at last.

"I don't want you to be pressganged into drinking, or galivanting with harlots or breaking hearts or thieving. It isn't respectable, Walt," the doctor frets, "That is what these men do. It's their lives; in fact, I'd wager many of them even have the audacity to call it a career."

"Doctor, my mother raised me to be respectable. It would be an insult to her memory if I went following in my pa's footsteps, don't you think?" I argue. "I wouldn't do that. If I ever found a girl, I'd be honest, I would. One girl, and I'd not pick up and leave her. No, never. And I wouldn't drink, because I know that drunks get violent, and I don't want to hurt anyone. I wouldn't thieve because I was raised to earn and not steal. But not one of these men have stolen from, violated, or hurt any one of us; not the captain's men. It's not fair to judge them for doing things that we haven't witnessed them doing."

Dr. Oswald chews his lip and hesitantly lays down a queen. He almost takes it back, but after consideration, leaves it on the stool that we use as our playing table. "You are quite right, my boy. But, I have observed their interest in you."

"How could you not, sir? I've been suffocated by them for days!"

He chuckles. "Yes, yes. What I am worried about is their constant offers of alcohol. Have you taken any?"

"Taken any? I've been alienated enough by the three of you, sir," I scoff, and despite how I try to keep my tone light, I hear my bitterness slip through just in the slightest of breath. "I'd rather not give any more reason for you to doubt where my loyalties lie."