ponders nirvana.
Chapter 1: The Gentleman from the Gallows
The year was 1715, and the Caribbean sun beat down on the island of Tortuga like the wrath of God Himself.
Lucien Vale stood on the rotting dock, salt wind whipping his once-fine crimson coat, now stained with seawater and the blood of lesser men. The Viscount of Blackmere was dead. In his place stood something leaner, meaner, and far more dangerous.
He had arrived on a leaking merchant brig three days earlier with nothing but his rapier, two pistols, a ruined reputation, and a burning hatred for everything England had taken from him. A duel over another man’s wife had cost him his title, his fortune, and very nearly his neck.
Now he needed a new kingdom.
“Oi!” a gruff voice barked behind him. “You there, fancy boy. You lost?”
Lucien turned slowly. Three men approached – the kind of scum that made the gutters of London seem refined. The leader was a hairy brute with a belly like a rum barrel and a cutlass that had seen too many skulls.
Lucien smiled. It was not a pleasant smile.
“Lost?” he said, his aristocratic accent still sharp as a blade. “On the contrary, my good fellow. I believe I’ve finally come home.”
The brute laughed. His two companions joined in, circling Lucien like jackals.
“That coat looks expensive,” the leader growled. “And those pistols… French, ain’t they? Hand ‘em over, milord, and maybe we let you keep your pretty face.”
Lucien’s grey eyes glittered with dark amusement.
“These pistols,” he said softly, “were a gift from a very dear friend. I’d hate to part with them.”
The brute lunged.
He was fast for such a big man – but Lucien Vale had been trained by the best fencing masters in Europe. The rapier Widowmaker hissed from its scabbard in a blur of silver. Steel met flesh with a wet sound. The brute screamed as the blade pierced his shoulder.
The second man charged with a boarding axe. Lucien spun, drew one pistol in the same motion, and fired. The man’s head snapped back in a spray of red.
The third hesitated — just long enough.
Lucien stepped in close, elegant as a dancer, and drove the pommel of his rapier into the man’s jaw with a sickening crack. The pirate dropped like a sack of grain.
Breathing hard but composed, Lucien reloaded his pistol with practiced ease, then looked down at the groaning leader.
“You made a mistake,” he said conversationally. “You assumed that because I sound like a gentleman, I fight like one.” He pressed the muzzle of his pistol against the man’s forehead. “I don’t.”
A slow clap echoed from the shadows of a nearby tavern.
Out stepped a one-eyed, sun-baked man with a braided beard and a grin full of gold teeth.
“Well, well,” the stranger drawled. “A proper blue-blood butcher. Haven’t seen swordwork like that since the old wars.” He tilted his head. “Name’s Black-Eyed Jack. I captain the Wicked Grace.”
Lucien kept the pistol steady. “And?”
Jack chuckled. “And I’m in need of a rogue who can kill without hesitation… and speak like a lord when it suits him. We’re sailing for a fat Spanish coaster in three days. Rich pickings. You in?”
Lucien looked out across the turquoise harbor at the forest of masts and black flags. For the first time since fleeing England, something like a smile touched his lips – cold and hungry.
He lowered the pistol.
“Captain Jack,” he said, “you’ve just hired yourself a rogue.”