CHAPTER 3
The heavy, suffocating silence that settled over the lower cargo hold of The Leviathan was sharper than any iron blade. Sixty hardened maritime mercenaries, men who had chopped off limbs without blinking and laughed as coastal villages burned to ash, stood frozen like blocks of northern ice. The rhythmic, heavy groaning of the wooden ship’s timbers against the rolling Atlantic swells was the only sound left in the world.
First Mate Vance stayed rooted to the spot, his fingers still wrapped tightly around the hilt of his cutlass. But his knuckles had turned entirely white. His chest heaved beneath his grease-stained leather vest as he stared down at the Grand Admiral, who was still kneeling in the dirt, the animal feces, and the dried blood of the beast cage.
“The… the Imperial Seal?” Vance stammered, his gravelly voice cracking as he tried to maintain his footing on the swaying deck. He looked around frantically at the crew, searching for a single nodding head, a single drunken smile to validate his authority, but he found nothing but pale faces and wide, terrified eyes. “Lord Admiral, with all due respect, that is impossible. The House of the Sea Throne was wiped out. We all saw the reports from the Eastern Vanguard. The palace was turned to charcoal. The High King’s flagship was dragged down into the black trenches by the weight of its own burning cannons. No one survived. Not the queen, not the guards, and certainly not a fragile three-year-old toddler.”
The Admiral did not rise immediately. Instead, his massive, scarred hands remained hovering gently over my bare, trembling shoulder. For three years, those same hands had signed execution orders, map coordinates for coastal raids, and logs that recorded the deaths of dozens of expendable deckhands just like me. But right now, his fingers were as light as feathers, terrified that if he pressed too hard, I would break into pieces.
“Reports can be bought with silver, Vance,” the Admiral murmured. His voice was no longer a roar, but a low, vibrating hum that made the iron bars of the cage seem to hum in response. “But the sacred iron of the Sea Capital cannot be forged by common blacksmiths. The seal of the three tridents is laced with star-fall ore. It does not fade. It does not stretch as the flesh grows. Look at the symmetry of the brand. Look at the silver hue beneath the scar tissue.”
He slowly stood up, turning his towering frame toward Vance. The vulnerability that had caused him to weep just moments ago was entirely gone. His posture was rigid, his shoulders thrown back with the ancient discipline of the high imperial navy.
“I spent twenty years serving the High King,” the Admiral said, his gaze cutting through Vance like an executioner’s axe. “I stood by his side when we broke the back of the southern pirate armada. I watched him place the royal crest onto the flesh of his newborn son to seal his destiny before the ancient gods of the deep. I know the mark of my master’s bloodline, Vance. And I know the penalty for keeping an imperial heir in chains.”
A collective murmur of terror rippled through the upper deck railings. Men who had spent the last hour throwing rotten fish and stale biscuits at my head began to back away into the shadows, trying to make themselves invisible. The senior gunners, who had been laughing the loudest, quietly lowered their wooden tankards to the deck, their eyes glued to my small, broken figure.
“I didn’t know!” Vance suddenly shouted, his voice rising in panic as he took another step backward, his boots splashing into a puddle of stagnant sea water. “If he is who you say he is, how was he surviving as a mute beggar in the gutters of Oakhaven? Why didn’t he speak? Why didn’t he tell us his name?”
The Admiral stepped out of the cage, his heavy black fur cloak brushing against the iron door. He stopped just inches from Vance, his physical presence completely overwhelming the shorter, stouter First Mate.
“Because you broke him, you miserable dog,” the Admiral whispered, his eyes narrowing into cold slits of flint. “For three years, you and this miserable crew have treated the last living king of the northern reaches like a rabid hound. You starved him. You whipped him. You made him sleep in the bilge water with the rats until he forgot he even had a tongue to speak with.”
The Admiral turned his head slowly, looking up at the high balcony where the ship’s Quartermaster and the sailing masters were standing.
“Bring the iron ledger,” the Admiral commanded, his voice echoing off the oak ribs of the ship. “Now!”
Nobody moved for a three-second heartbeat, stunned by the sudden directive.
“Are you deaf?!” the Admiral bellowed, his voice exploding through the hold like a cannon blast. “Bring the ship’s registry and the plunder records from the raid of Oakhaven! If I find a single lie in our logs, I will hang every officer on this deck from the highest yardarm before the sun breaks the horizon!”
The Quartermaster, a thin, gaunt man with ink-stained fingers, practically fell over his own feet as he turned and scrambled down the companionway stairs toward the captain’s quarters. The sound of his frantic footsteps hurried away into the depths of the ship, leaving the cargo hold in a tense, breathless suspension.
I sat there in the corner of the cage, my legs pulled tight against my chest, my tattered shirt hanging off my left shoulder. My mind couldn’t process what was happening. The word king felt heavy, foreign, and terrifying. To me, the world was only made of three things: the cold biting wind, the sting of the leather lash, and the constant, gnawing hunger in my belly. I looked at the massive hunting hound across the cage. The beast was still cowering in the shadows, its ears flattened against its skull, staring at the Admiral with the same absolute terror that I felt.
“Boy,” a soft, deep voice called out.
I flinched, pulling myself closer to the wooden wall. The Admiral had turned back to me. He slowly reached down, unclasping the heavy silver chain of his own fur cloak. With a grace I had never seen from any man on this ship, he laid the thick, warm garment over my small, shivering shoulders. The scent of pine woodsmoke, fine tobacco, and expensive oils instantly enveloped me, replacing the foul stench of the cargo hold. It was the first time in three years that something warm had touched my skin.
“Do you remember the night the sky turned red?” the Admiral asked, his eyes searching my face with an intensity that made my heart race. “Do you remember the city of gold and white stone, before the black ships arrived?”
I stared at him, my lips trembling. I tried to find words, but my throat felt like it was filled with dry sand. For three years, I had kept my mouth shut because every time I made a sound, a pirate would strike me across the mouth to keep me quiet. But in the deep, forgotten corners of my mind, a memory suddenly flickered—a memory of high white walls, the sound of women singing a beautiful, haunting melody about the northern stars, and a massive man with a golden beard who used to lift me onto his shoulders to watch the waves roar against the harbor cliffs.
“He doesn’t remember anything,” Vance sneered, trying to regain his composure, though his hand was shaking so violently he had to rest it on the wooden frame of a nearby cannon. “He’s a half-wit, Admiral. A broken tool. Even if he carries some old royal blood, the dynasty is dead. There is no throne left to claim. The Sea Capital is a graveyard of melted stone. We are a pirate fleet now. We answer to the warlords of the Iron Coast, not to a ghost in a cage.”
The Admiral slowly turned his body around, his face settling into a mask of pure, unadulterated ruthlessness. He reached down to the scabbard at his hip, his fingers wrapping around the grip of his heavy, gold-hilted broadsword.
“The dynasty is not dead as long as I draw breath, Vance,” the Admiral said, the sound of his sword sliding out of its leather sheath making a sharp, singing sound that caused every man to catch their breath. “And the Western Fleet does not answer to the cowards of the Iron Coast. We swore an oath to the Sea Throne. An oath written in our own blood.”
Just then, the Quartermaster returned, panting heavily, a massive, leather-bound ledger clutched tightly in his trembling arms. He stepped into the circle of torchlight, his eyes darting between the drawn sword of the Admiral and the pale face of the First Mate.
“I… I have the registry, Lord Admiral,” the Quartermaster stammered, holding the book open with ink-stained thumbs. “Three years ago, during the raid on the outer ports of Oakhaven… the log states we cleared the lower docks of all vagrants and beggars to serve as expendable labor for the oars and decks. The entry was written by First Mate Vance himself.”
“Read the secondary log,” the Admiral ordered, his eyes never leaving Vance’s face. “The section regarding the private plunder that was not registered with the fleet treasury.”
The Quartermaster swallowed hard, his eyes scanning down the yellowed parchment page. His face suddenly went completely white. “There… there is a note here, my Lord. A private transaction. Vance recorded the acquisition of a unique silver chest found hidden beneath the floorboards of an abandoned fisherman’s hut. The chest bore a shattered lock… and the insignia of the Royal Guard.”
The hold erupted into a sudden, chaotic roar of voices. The crew looked at Vance with a mixture of shock and fury. In the pirate code, hiding royal plunder from the crew’s treasury was a crime punishable by being marooned on a barren rock without water or food.
“You knew,” the Admiral whispered, his voice dropping to a level that was more terrifying than any shout. “You knew exactly who he was when you found him in that hut. You stole his family’s remaining relics, you took his birthright, and then you threw him into the bilge to ensure he would die a slow, anonymous death so that nobody would ever question your theft.”
“It’s a lie!” Vance screamed, his face twisting with desperation as he drew his cutlass from his belt. “The book is wrong! The Quartermaster is trying to ruin me! I am the First Mate of this ship! I have led you into a dozen victories! Are you going to throw away everything we’ve built for a mute, starving brat who can’t even hold a knife?!”
Vance looked up at the upper decks, appealing to the crew. “Men! Who feeds you? Who leads the boarding parties while the Admiral sits in his cabin with his maps? I am the one who brings you gold! Don’t let him kill me over a ghost!”
A few of Vance’s personal loyalists—heavy-set mercenaries and boarding axes specialists—stepped forward from the dark corners of the deck, their hands moving toward their weapons. The tension in the room stretched until it was ready to snap like a frayed hawser line in a gale storm. The ship rolled heavily to the port side, the swinging lanterns casting long, chaotic shadows across the walls of the cargo hold.
The Admiral didn’t call for his personal guards. He didn’t look at the men who had stepped forward to support the First Mate. He simply took a deep, steady breath, raised his heavy broadsword, and pointed it directly at Vance’s throat.
“Any man who steps between me and this traitor will be hung by their own entrails before the watch changes,” the Admiral declared quietly.
He then turned his gaze slightly to the side, looking at the two burly pirates who had originally dragged me across the deck and thrown me into the cage.
“You two,” the Admiral commanded. “Step inside that cage. Drag the beast out, and chain it to the mainmast upstairs.”
The two pirates hesitated for a split second, but under the terrifying glare of the commander, they scrambled forward into the cage, dragging the cowering hound out by its heavy iron collar. The animal didn’t even snap at them; it was eager to escape the suffocating aura of violence that had filled the enclosure.
The Admiral then looked back at Vance, his lips curling into a cold, merciless smile.
“Vance,” the Admiral said, his voice ringing with a terrible, poetic justice. “You said you wanted to see if the little rat could run as fast as he scrubs. Let’s see how fast a First Mate can run when he’s stripped of his rank, his sword, and his lies.”
Before Vance could even process the words, the Admiral lunged forward, his heavy leather boot striking the First Mate squarely in the chest. The force of the blow sent Vance crashing backward into the open iron door of the cage, his cutlass clattering across the oak floorboards.
Vance scrambled to his feet, trying to dive back out through the opening, but the Admiral was faster. With a deafening clang, the Admiral slammed the heavy iron door shut right in the First Mate’s face, turning the massive brass key in the lock with a definitive, bone-chilling click.
“Admiral!” Vance screamed, his fingers clawing desperately at the rusted iron bars, his face pressed against the cold metal. “You can’t do this! I am the First Mate of The Leviathan! You can’t lock me in here like an animal!”
“You are no longer the First Mate, Vance,” the Admiral said, his voice dropping into a flat, icy calm as he slid his broadsword back into its scabbard. “You are an unrated prisoner of the Sea Throne, awaiting the judgment of your rightful king.”
The Admiral turned away from the howling, screaming man in the cage, ignoring his pleas completely. He stepped back toward me, dropping to one knee once again. The entire crew above stood in absolute, paralyzed silence, watching the legendary warlord look down at a ten-year-old boy covered in dirt and scars.
“My Lord,” the Admiral said, his voice carrying clearly to every corner of the silent ship. “The crew is yours. The cannons are yours. The fleet is yours. Tell me what you wish for me to do with these men who have wronged you.”
I sat beneath the massive, warm fur cloak, staring at the old warrior. My lips parted, the cold air rushing into my lungs. For the first time in three long, brutal years, the entire ship was waiting for me to speak.
CHAPTER 4
The silence that followed the Admiral’s question was heavier than the deepest ocean trench. Every eye on The Leviathan—from the youngest powder monkey hanging from the rigging to the oldest, battle-scarred gunner on the deck—was fixed entirely on my mouth. They were waiting for a sound, a word, a sign from the boy they had spent years treating like dirt.
Inside the iron cage, Vance was still screaming, his heavy boots kicking against the rusted bars, creating a frantic, metallic clattering that sounded like a dying animal. “He won’t speak! He’s a mute idiot, I tell you! Look at him! He doesn’t even know what day it is! You’re throwing away the ship for a broken child!”
The Admiral ignored the shouting entirely. He remained kneeling before me, his head slightly bowed, his massive hands resting on his knees in a posture of complete, undeniable submission. He wasn’t just acting; he was waiting for his true master to give an order.
I looked down at the heavy silver chain of the fur cloak draped over my shoulders. The metal was cool against my skin, but the thick black fur was already chasing away the deep, bone-chilling cold that had lived inside my bones for three years. I looked at my hands—small, covered in calluses, black with the grease of cannon grease and bilge tar. Then, I looked up at the faces of the men standing on the upper decks.
The men who had kicked my ribs when I didn’t scrub fast enough. The men who had stolen my moldy bread crusts just to watch me cry. The men who had cheered and placed silver bets on how quickly the starving hound would tear my throat to pieces.
Right now, those men were trembling. Some of them were gripping their lucky charms, others were quietly crossing their arms, their eyes darting toward the sea as if praying for a storm to come and save them from the judgment of an old warlord and a broken boy.
I opened my mouth. My throat felt tight, like a rusty hinge that hadn’t been turned in a lifetime. I swallowed hard, trying to force the air past my cracked lips.
“Al… Alastair,” I whispered.
The word was so small, so faint, that it was barely audible over the creaking of the ship’s timbers. But to the Grand Admiral, it was a thunderclap.
The old warrior’s head snapped up, his eyes widening as a fresh wave of emotion washed over his scarred face. Alastair was not a name anyone on this ship knew. It was the Admiral’s private, first name—a name that had only ever been spoken by the High King himself and the royal family in the privacy of the sea palace. To the rest of the world, he was simply the Grand Admiral or Lord Warlord.
“Yes, my Lord,” the Admiral whispered, his voice trembling as he leaned closer to the cage door. “It is me. It is Alastair. I am here. Your father’s shield is still unbroken.”
A strange, sudden warmth filled my chest, breaking through the thick wall of fear that had kept me silent for so long. The memories didn’t come back all at once like a flood; they came like small, brilliant sparks in a dark cavern. I remembered this man. I remembered him sitting at a great oak table in a hall filled with white banners, holding a small wooden ship model and showing me how the sails caught the northern wind. I remembered him laughing, his deep voice filling the room with a safety that I hadn’t felt since the night the sky turned to fire.
I looked past the Admiral’s shoulder, my eyes landing directly on Vance, who was still clawing at the bars of the cage, his face red and sweating with desperation.
“He… he took the box,” I said, my voice growing stronger, clearer, the natural language of my childhood returning to my tongue like water returning to a dry riverbed. “The silver box… under the floor. He told me if I ever spoke a word… he would cut out my tongue and throw me to the sharks.”
The Admiral slowly rose to his full height, his face turning into stone as he looked back at the crew. The warmth he had shown me vanished instantly, replaced by the terrifying efficiency of a high commander who was about to purge his ranks.
“Quartermaster!” the Admiral barked, the authority in his voice striking the deck like a physical blow.
“Yes, Lord Admiral!” the man shouted, nearly dropping his ledger again as he straightened his spine.
“Assemble the entire crew on the main upper deck. Every single man who is not holding an oar or steering the rudder. Bring Vance’s personal loyalists forward and disarm them. If any man resists, chain them to the anchor and drop it.”
“At once, my Lord!”
Within minutes, the lower cargo hold was cleared. The two burly pirates who had thrown me into the cage were ordered to carry me up to the main deck, but the Admiral pushed them aside with a snarl, reaching down to lift me into his own massive arms. He carried me up the narrow wooden steps, my small body wrapped completely in his heavy fur cloak, shielding me from the biting salt spray of the open sea.
When we stepped out onto the main deck of The Leviathan, the cold northern wind slammed into us, bringing the scent of an approaching storm. The sky above was a deep, charcoal grey, the heavy waves crashing violently against the black hull of the warship, sending plumes of white foam high into the air.
All seventy men of the crew were lined up along the port and starboard railings, their heads uncovered despite the freezing rain that had begun to fall. In the center of the deck, Vance’s five personal enforcers were already on their knees, their boarding axes and daggers piled in a heap at the base of the mainmast. They were being guarded by twelve of the Admiral’s personal elite guards, men who wore the dark iron armor of the old imperial vanguard.
Vance was dragged up the stairs moments later, his hands bound tightly behind his back with thick hemp rope. He was shoved onto the wet planks, landing hard on his knees right in front of the mainmast, his face covered in mud, sweat, and the dark grease of the beast cage.
The Admiral walked slowly across the deck, carrying me toward the high quarterdeck balcony—the place where the captain usually stood to command the ship during a battle. He set me down gently onto a carved wooden chair, placing his own heavy broadsword across my lap. The weight of the iron blade was immense, pressing down against my thighs, its gold hilt catching the dim, gray light of the storm sky.
The Admiral then turned to face the assembled crew, his voice rising above the roar of the wind and the crashing waves.
“Men of the Western Fleet!” the Admiral shouted, his hand resting on the wooden railing. “For three years, we have sailed these seas under the lie that our nation was entirely destroyed, that the bloodline of our kings had been erased from the earth. We took up the black sails. We took up the lives of mercenaries and raiders because we believed we had nothing left to fight for but silver and survival.”
He pointed down at Vance, who was trembling on the deck below.
“But the true betrayal did not come from the enemy’s fire,” the Admiral roared, his voice carrying across the water like a horn blast. “The betrayal was right here, on our own decks. First Mate Vance found the true heir of the Sea Throne hiding in the ruins of Oakhaven. Instead of bringing him to me, instead of raising the royal banner and rallying the remaining provinces, he stole the royal relics, hid the truth, and turned our king into a slave to satisfy his own petty greed and fear!”
A loud, angry roar went up from the older sailors in the back of the crowd. These were men who had served in the imperial navy before the war, men who still remembered the pride of wearing the king’s colors. They looked down at Vance with eyes filled with absolute disgust.
“He hid the silver!” an old gunner shouted, stepping forward, his fist raised in the air. “He’s been keeping the royal hoard for himself while we bleed for copper pennies!”
“Maroon him!” another sailor screamed. “Throw him to the hounds!”
“Silence!” the Admiral commanded, and the deck instantly went quiet once again.
The Admiral turned to me, stepping back a pace and bowing his head. “My Lord, the law of the sea state is ancient and absolute. A traitor who hides the royal bloodline and steals from the crown must face the judgment of the throne. The sword is in your hands. What is your sentence?”
I looked down at the massive sword resting across my knees. I looked at Vance, the man who had spent three years making my life a living hell, the man who had kicked me into the dirt just an hour ago for his own amusement. He was looking up at me now, his eyes wide with a pathetic, sniveling terror. His mouth was open, his lips moving as he tried to find a way to beg for his life, but no words came out.
I didn’t feel a sudden rush of anger. I didn’t feel the desire to see him torn to pieces by the beast or chopped into bait. What I felt was something much deeper, something that had been buried beneath the fear for three years: dignity.
I reached down, my small fingers wrapping around the gold hilt of the broadsword. With all the strength in my small body, I pushed the heavy weapon off my lap, letting the tip of the iron blade drop onto the wooden deck with a loud, ringing thud.
“Take his rank,” I said, my voice echoing clearly across the quiet deck, steady and calm despite the wind. “Take his gold. Put him in the chains that I wore… and let him scrub the deck until the blood is gone.”
The crew stared at me in absolute, stunned silence for a long heartbeat. They had expected an execution. They had expected a brutal, bloody spectacle. But the sheer, cold authority of the sentence—forcing the proud, arrogant First Mate to live the exact same life of torment he had inflicted on a child—was far more terrifying than any blade.
The Admiral’s face broke into a grim, proud smile. He turned toward his elite guards.
“You heard the King,” the Admiral ordered, his voice ringing with a fierce satisfaction. “Strip him of his boots. Strip him of his armor. Chain his ankles to the lower deck deck-cleats, and hand him the scrubbing brush. If he misses a single spot of grease, treat him with the same mercy he showed to our master.”
“No! Please! Admiral! Mercy!” Vance screamed as the heavy guards seized him by his shoulders, lifting him off his knees. They dragged him backward across the wet deck, his bare feet sliding through the cold sea water, his cries echoing down into the lower hatches until the wooden doors were slammed shut over his head.
The five enforcers who had supported Vance fell flat onto their faces, pressing their foreheads against the wet, cold planks of the deck, begging for forgiveness. The rest of the crew slowly, one by one, dropped to their knees, their hats pulled off their heads as the freezing rain washed over them.
The old Admiral turned back to me, dropping to his knee once again, his hand moving to rest on the gold hilt of the sword that stood between us.
“The wind is turning to the north, my Lord,” the Admiral said softly, his eyes reflecting the deep grey of the open sea. “The remaining ships of the fleet are waiting at the hidden fortresses of the western fjords. They have been waiting for ten years. Shall we raise the royal banner and tell them the king has returned?”
I looked out over the bow of The Leviathan, watching the massive black waves break against the horizon. The storm was coming, but for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid of the cold. I pulled the heavy fur cloak tighter around my shoulders, feeling the strength of my ancestors flowing through my veins.
“Raise the banner, Alastair,” I said, my voice steady as the ocean itself. “Let’s go home.”
And for the first time in many years, nobody knelt on my back again.
