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Portsmouth, England, 1694
“That one. That one there, Loki.”
From their position on the hill, Sif points down to the shipyard with the spyglass nicked from the third drawer on the right of Odin’s massive desk, the drawer that sticks a little and almost requires more finesse than their ten-year-old fingers are capable of to open it without unleashing a hail of squeaks and alerting the entire household to their clandestine activities.
“They say she’ll have seventy guns,” she breathes with reverence.
Loki swipes the glass and looks for himself, his shoulder pressing companionably against Sif’s as they lie on their stomachs where the sand starts to shade into grass. “That one? No, I heard ninety guns. Maybe even a hundred. Best ship in the royal fleet, she’ll be.”
“Seventy, ninety, one hundred, two hundred, it matters not,” Sif says. Her fingers itch to take back the glass, to stare once more at the ship oh-so-slowly taking shape before them, plank by precious plank. “All that matters is that she’ll be beautiful and I’ll be the one to captain her. Sailing ‘round the world, visiting faraway lands, endless adventure!”
“Captain Sif. Has quite a ring to it, I think.”
Sif hears the smile in Loki’s voice, the delight at the prospect of his friend commanding a great crew to heights of heroics heretofore unknown, and it sends a thrill down her spine. It always does. It always makes her feel warm down to the very tips of her toes every time either Loki or Thor agree that, one day, she’ll be the finest commander the Royal Navy has ever known, never once dismissing her dream as a mere flight of fancy.
Sif flops over onto her back and brushes sand off her linen shirt and the breeches that her mother still sighs over every time she dons them outside their house. She stares out at where the sky meets the ocean at the horizon, a wide expanse of what seems like a thousand different shades of blue, and she feels limitless, infinite. “Why stop at Captain Sif when I can be Admiral Sif? Leader of an entire fleet!”
She feels, rather than sees, Loki roll onto his back as well, rather more gracefully than she herself had.
“And what,” he says, mischief dancing around the edges of his words, “will happen if the uppity lords in charge decide that you shall be an admiral maneuvering the halls of Parliament, the battlefield of politics, instead of--”
“No, won’t happen,” Sif cuts him off, refusing to allow that hateful thought to take hold. “They’ll never take me from my ship, not ever.”
She turns her head, catches a slow grin curling at the corner of Loki’s lips. “Never ever?”
“Never ever.”
“Hmmm. Will you, with your ship they can’t take away, let me sail in your fleet?”
What a ridiculous question to ask, Sif thinks, and she starts to say as much, but the repetitive clink-clink-clink of Loki sliding the glass shut-open-shut stills her tongue.
She takes a breath, thinks for a moment. Sometimes Loki needs reassurance but is loath to say that he so needs it.
“You’ll be at my right hand, of course. Captain Loki, my most trusted commander, in charge of the second-most-fearsome ship in the fleet.”
Loki snorts, and the clinking of the glass ceases, his restless movements on pause. “Second most fearsome to yours, of course?”
“Naturally.”
Loki hums, and the need to speak fades, drifts away along the sea-salt air moving inland from the water. It’s a comfortable silence, a familiar one. Sif traces a finger through the sand, indulging the notion of her mother actually allowing her a permanent reprieve from the duties of the household and establishing one of her own, of the Navy admitting her into the ranks of the officers, of sailing around the world with her closest friends at her side, finding glory, finding meaning.
“What if we took a different path?” Loki asks. He strives to keep his tone casual, but he misses the mark, not quite able to mask the barest hint of uncertainty.
Sif’s brow furrows and she turns to stare at the side of Loki’s head with a slight frown. Loki himself stares with great determination at the glass lying on his stomach.
“What kind of different path?”
“The kind that allows us a certain, ah, freedom that the Royal Navy typically does not provide to its officers or its enlisted men.”
There it is, that spark of mischief returning as he says freedom, and Sif, she knows him well and knows exactly what he means.
“Piracy,” Sif says, her voice flatter than the sand as it packs tightly together and disappears under the rolling tides. “You’re talking about being pirate captains. The scourge of the seas, or so your father always says.”
“Scourge of the seas, hmmph,” Loki sniffs. “If you’re a pirate captain,” he continues, needling, clearly warming to the topic now that Sif has not immediately shown herself likely to run him through with one of their practice swords, lying discarded a few feet away but still close at hand, “there are no pesky superiors above you who could send you to beg funds from and make nice with dreadfully dull lords in Parliament.”
Sif rolls her eyes and shoves his shoulder. “I don’t want to avoid Parliament that badly.”
Loki shrugs, carefree in a way that he rarely allows himself to be, even around her. “It’s an option, though. When you get tired of the lords and admirals and captains, you say the word, and we’ll abandon our posts and commandeer a ship and sail off into the unknown, capturing prizes and making Sif and Loki the most feared names of all the seas.”
The idea of embarking upon a reign of terror and fear on the high seas doesn’t particularly call out to her, but bowing to no one, taking no orders, controlling her own destiny? There are worse things in the world, Sif can admit in the privacy of her mind. She certainly sees how the thought would appeal to Loki, who always has--and likely always will--chafe under rules and restrictions and unnecessary traditions.
“I’ll keep it in the back of my mind,” she allows, and when a genuine smile spreads across Loki’s face, she can’t resist permitting an answering one to settle on her own.
“That’s all I ask. That you keep an open mind. Captain Sif.” He rolls towards her, quick as a flash, and dumps a handful of sand in her hair before scooping up the purloined spyglass and taking off towards the shoreline.
With an indignant yell, Sif hauls herself up and shakes the sand out of her hair before giving chase. “Damn it, Loki! A captain no longer! You’re demoted to Lieutenant Loki!”
When she catches up to him, tackling him into the surf, their shouts and laughs mingle with the waning waves and disappear, washed out to the sea.
*
Tortola, January 1714
More than an hour after disembarking at the pier, Sif finally manages to slip away, past the prying eyes of her fellow officers and shipmates, free at last.
She takes a roundabout path around the town, ducking down narrow side streets and occasionally doubling back, hoping to lose anyone who may have taken an untoward interest in her whereabouts. Her sharp and crisp blue officer’s coat and the sheathed sword hanging from her hip dissuade any townspeople from attempting to waylay her, and somehow, blessedly, no one takes any notice when, instead of continuing on an established path, she walks straight into the grove of trees at the edge of the settlement.
She walks for another fifteen minutes, dodging downed trees and wild undergrowth and streams barely worthy of being called such, before stopping in a small clearing. She turns slowly in a circle and looks around. No one there, not a soul save for the birds circling overhead, not keen to investigate one lone person among the trees. She takes a breath--too much caution is simply not something that exists, not here, not in these circumstances--and walks forward.
It’s a sad excuse for a palm tree, really, but it has its virtues. Namely, a split in the far side of the trunk where it bends almost enough to touch the ground. She reaches inside and is rewarded by a slip of parchment.
12 Nov. 1713
S -
The usual place. 6 mo.
L
Sif closes her eyes. Still alive as of November. Although she already knew that, really. If the fearsome Captain Loki had been captured, every sailor in the fleet would know it. Her own captain would certainly celebrate for days, even if not personally responsible, depleting the rum supply and allowing the men to set off some of the ship’s precious shot as makeshift fireworks.
Beyond that, she’s convinced that she would know, intrinsically, if Loki met his end. We are linked, you and I, he had murmured into the thin skin beneath her ear when they were holed up in a room in Grenada, the rains pouring down outside and granting them precious hours of extra time together. She repeats it to herself often, when missing him turns into an ache that threatens to overtake her: we are linked, you and I.
She traces her finger over their initials, over the crossed lines inked below what passes for Loki’s signature, and memories wash over her.
(Our swords, he had whispered to her once, when she asked if the lines held some meaning. Few things make me feel more alive than crossing blades with you, my captain.
Not a captain yet, Sif had murmured back, trying not to let the bitterness become too obvious. Her gaze had traveled to the coat carefully folded over the back of the room’s only chair. She could see her hard-earned lieutenant’s stripes stitched around the wrist, obscured as they were by a sleeve of Loki’s leather coat, thrown carelessly over her own. Sometimes it seemed as though that adornment was all that she would ever know.
Would they ever trust her to captain, to command?
Would they ever allow her to be more?
Loki ceased his charting of the line of her collarbone with his lips. You’ll be a captain one way or another, he vowed. He dropped a kiss to the top of her shoulder, and then another, this one with a hint of a bite.
If you wish it, I will make it so.)
So. Two months have passed since Loki was here, here at this very tree, thinking of her and of them. Four left to go until he’ll be in St. Kitts. It’s always a dicey proposition for her, making any kind of long-term plans. She’s only a lieutenant, and a junior one at that, still. Her time is not her own.
She pushes down the growing resentment at being forever subject to the whims of those who do not seem to recognize her value, and she files Loki’s message away in her mind. If he plans to be in St. Kitts in mid-May, she’ll see what she can do. She’s long overdue for a leave, at least.
She drags her fingers over the tree bark once more--does his presence still linger here, a hint? She likes to imagine that it does, that it does so everywhere they’ve been, leaving invisible traces of them behind, forever--and heads back the way she came. The parchment slips from her hand into a burbling stream along the way. She waits until the letters run together and become unrecognizable, and then she takes a breath and draws her responsibilities around her shoulders and becomes Lieutenant Sif once more.
*
HMS Resolution, somewhere off the coast of France, 1699
Three bells into middle watch, and all decent and upstanding midshipmen should be in their hammocks, trying to catch whatever slumber they can before the toils of the next day begin.
Sif fancies herself a decent and upstanding midshipman, but there’s just something about the sparkle in Loki’s eyes when he passes her in the tight quarters of the galley and whispers sparring tonight? that always makes her reckless.
So here she is, on the gun deck with Loki, the weak light from a single lantern and the slivers of starlight working their way inside the cracks around the gunports the only illumination as they practice their footwork and try to keep the clanging of their swords to a minimum while their fellows sleep on. They had been surreptitious as they snuck away from the crew, removing their boots to slip past on stockinged feet and leaving at different times, but Sif is under no illusions that this session has gone unnoticed. Captain Heimdall sees all.
She cares not.
She enjoys sparring with Loki. She always has, ever since Odin handed Thor and Loki their first practice swords and then doled one out to her too, much to her mother’s everlasting consternation. He’s prone to dramatics and tends to overcomplicate nearly everything, but she can’t ever predict him. It keeps her on her toes. It’s invigorating, and dreaming about these moments of excitement makes the long hours studying headings and trade winds and the finer points of tacking bearable.
“That makes you slow, you know,” she says, taking care to keep her breath even, lest the thrill that this gives her becomes too obvious, and she slashes her sword in a wide arc, almost, but not quite, catching Loki’s ribs with the flat of her blade.
“Not too slow, apparently,” Loki teases, and he dances out of the way of her sword with another flourish and a swirl, dodging the end of a cannon. “Besides, it does look spectacular.”
“I’m sure that’s something that will be considered when we’re up for lieutenant’s commissions in a few years. The spectacular nature of our swordsmanship.”
He snorts and gives a little shrug, a you never know. They circle back into the center of the deck, away from the heavy cannons, and when the space opens up, Loki’s the one to strike--a rarity--and it almost catches her off guard. She blocks just in time, and Loki’s close enough now that she can see the wildness in his eyes, wildness that she feels mirrored somewhere deep within her, rising to the surface. It’s intoxicating, like the sweet burn of the rum they had all been allowed to share after Captain Heimdall led them in subduing a rogue French sloop. She thinks about leaning in, their lips meeting next to the crossed swords between them, and the thought is so surprising she feels a jolt in her stomach.
Oh. You want this.
She stills to keep from stumbling over her own feet, and she tightens her grip on the handle of her sword, grounding herself.
She licks her lips. Loki’s eyes follow the movement.
Oh. Well then. At least I’m not the only one.
“Sif,” he whispers, and there’s a question there, his ever-present curiosity burning brightly. As always, it ignites her own.
She hasn’t thought about this before, not really, not seriously. She wants to be a great captain someday; she has no wish to be anyone’s wife, trapped in a fine house with no adventure of any kind, trapped like the grains of sand in the ship master’s hourglass. The idea of some kind of a romance, even an innocent one, seems antithetical to everything she has ever wanted.
But this is Loki. Loki, who trains with her. Loki, who patiently listens when she corrects his fighting stance. Loki, who lies next to her atop the forecastle as the stars come out and tells her increasingly outlandish tales about their origins. Loki, who has never once tried to tell her that her hopes are mere fantasies never to be realized. Loki, who would never try to cage her.
If she’s going to throw caution to the wind, the late hours are the proper time to do it, she supposes. It can be a secret, one shared among her and Loki and the night, with no one else the wiser.
It’s decided, then.
“Yes,” she whispers back, and she’s treated to the sight of Loki’s eyes widening slightly in stunned surprise as she leans forward, their swords still held up between them.
It’s hardly more than a brush of lips, the tiniest hint of the taste of him, a barely-there caress before they separate to consider the turn of events, the unexpected road they have traveled down together this night.
Oh, now this won’t do. This won’t do at all.
Loki looks thunderstruck, and it’s the desire to surprise him once more and keep surprising him, forever surprising him, that draws her forward again, this time with deliberate intent. If she’s going to kiss him, she should kiss him.
As they press closer together, Sif feels the shape of his smile, feels it with her own lips, a discovery she hadn’t known that she wanted to make.
He always does keep her on her toes.
*
Kingston, 1708
“You weren’t followed, were you?” Loki asks. Sif hardly has a chance to shut the door to the room he had charmed out of the tavern-keeper before he throws the question at her.
Sif arches an eyebrow and reaches to unbuckle her sword belt. “I know how to be careful, Loki.”
“Yes, I know.” He pushes himself off the narrow bed and begins to pace, although there’s no room for it. He only manages four steps in any given direction before he has to turn around. “But your superior officers want to see me swinging at the end of a rope, so perhaps a little caution is not unreasonable.”
Feeling a snarl of irritation starting to untangle in her stomach, an unpleasant substitute for the anticipation that had been building there ever since she finally discovered a coded message from Loki in a tavern storage room on Barbados eight months prior, Sif takes a deep breath and tries to remember one of the long-forgotten etiquette lessons her mother had attempted to instill in her ages ago. Something about proper ladies never showing their anger. Sif has never given a damn about behaving as a proper lady would, but she and Loki have so little time together as it is, and that time is so very fraught with danger, she doesn’t want it to start off with wrath and harsh words.
Still, she can’t let this slide entirely.
“I’d like to remind you,” she drawls, but there’s a bite to it, a bite that Loki detects, if his slight wince is any indication, “that you’re not the only one taking a risk by being here. If you swing, I’ll swing right alongside you for consorting with a known pirate. So perhaps what’s unreasonable here is lecturing me about the need for a little caution, hmmm?”
Loki stops his pacing close enough to her that she can see a tiny bit of the tension visibly leave the line of his shoulders. “You’re right,” he murmurs, and Sif relaxes a fraction at the acknowledgment.
He raises his eyes and meets her gaze, and there, there’s that familiar wildness. There it is, along with desperate desire, smoldering, ready for the flames to be fanned, and it’s real and it’s genuine, but it’s trying to cover something else, something Sif can’t quite place. “I’ve missed you, Sif. Let’s not go six years in between seeing each other ever again.”
He mostly succeeds in keeping his tone light, mostly, but his voice wavers on missed you, and Sif, now she can place that mystery emotion because she has felt it too, and felt it often these past years: loneliness. Absolute, crushing loneliness.
She reaches out, brushes a finger over the sharp curve of his cheek. They’ve already gotten off to a shaky start, and she doesn’t want to continue in this vein, but she must. Best to meet this head on, get it out of the way.
“I’ve heard the rumors,” she says, and when his open and vulnerable gaze starts to shutter shut, she reaches out with her other hand, grasping his own, her nails digging in. “I don’t care if they’re true. I know who you are.”
Loki snorts, but there’s no humor to it, none at all, only despair. “Son of a traitor to the crown? Now a traitor himself?”
“My best and closest friend. My confidant.” She turns so they’re face to face, a hair’s breadth between them. “My strongest advocate.” She leans in, somehow even closer. “My partner.” Her lips brush his, a hint of what’s to come. “Mine.”
They’re so close she swears she can feel the rumble in his chest at that, and she laughs, bright and delighted, when he pushes her back two steps against the door and looms over her. “Yes,” he says, and the desperate earnestness in his voice nearly brings her to her knees. “Yes, yours.”
*
The White Hart, Southwark, London, January 1702
“Here.” Loki shoves a book at her, yet another heavy tome about tactics and maneuvers, and idly kicks at her knee with his bare foot. “Quiz me again.”
Sif, utterly frazzled from all of the information she’s tried to cram into her head, looks up from her own ponderous book of star charts and navigational practices. A stray strand of hair hangs in front of her face and she huffs a breath at it, trying to blow it from her field of vision. It doesn’t work. Loki smiles, a small, sweet twitch of his lips, and reaches out to tuck it behind her ear.
“You don’t need to be quizzed,” she says. “You know everything already. You’re going to get the highest score ever on the lieutenant’s exam. It will be so impressive King William himself will make a big to-do about it, we all know this. So, no, I will not quiz you.” She lifts the book in her lap. “You should quiz me, though. I’m still fuzzy on the southern ones. We haven’t traveled there very often; I only know them mostly from books.”
Loki leans towards her, his fingers inching their way up her thigh to play at the hem of his linen shirt which she had carelessly thrown on after waking. “Just think of our stargazing lessons on the Resolution.”
The stargazing lessons that had started off as actual lessons with Loki taking her hand in his, pointing to the constellations, and weaving wondrous tales with a whisper in her ear and had ended with exploratory touches and fevered kisses as they laid next to each other, bathed in moonlight and starlight, her head blessedly free of all thoughts but how good Loki felt next to her? That will decidedly not help her recall.
“I do not believe that is going to help me,” she admits, and oh, Loki’s answering grin is wickedness itself.
He’s beautiful like this, soft and rumpled, the mid-morning light shining through the curtains of their room at the boarding house, leaving highlights in his dark hair, bathing the sharp lines of his face in their warm glow. Once, she hadn’t thought to want this, to desire it, to need it. Foolish of her, really.
“Alright. I’ll quiz you, then,” Loki relents, his voice turning molasses-slow and sweet. He leans back against the pillows, drawing Sif on top of him. “You just need the proper incentive.”
“This is serious, Loki!” Sif protests, but she does not care to stop her fingers from trailing along the smooth skin of his bare stomach, she does not care one bit. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t make lieutenant. It will be all of my mother’s worst proclamations made true.”
Loki frames her face with his hands, his touch as gentle as any she’s ever known. “I am serious. I would never do anything to jeopardize your career. You know this.”
Sif does know this. She knows it as if it’s a fundamental part of herself. She looks out for him and he looks out for her. It just is.
“I do know this,” she whispers.
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just holds her, the tip of one of his fingers stroking her temple, the gesture calming, reassuring.
“One kiss for each one you get right, how about that?”
His gaze is steady, certain, and she could use some of that certainty right now, she really could, so she draws from it, gathers her usual brashness around her and sits up in his lap, lifting her chin in a challenge. He grins to see it.
“And when I get all of them right?”
His hands settle on her hips, a comforting weight. “You’ll be ready to become Lieutenant Sif, that’s for sure. I’m sure we can work out an appropriate celebration for your triumph.”
Yes, yes, she’s quite sure they can.
*
HMS Elizabeth, fifty nautical miles northwest of Antigua, 1711
The smoke clears from their broadside, and Sif can’t help but chuckle to herself when she sees the Trickster’s Revenge sailing away from the hobbled merchant vessel, entirely unscathed by their cannon fire. Loki's banner, with its green snake twining around crossed daggers, whips in the wind, as if taunting them.
“Lieutenant Sif!” her captain demands, his fury rising with the pitch of his voice.
“Out of range, sir!” she calls back from her position at the starboard bow. “And they’ve got the wind!”
“Goddamn it!” he screams, and Sif is sure that if he could get away with tossing his tricorn hat to the ground and stomping on it without looking like a petulant child, he would. There are certain captains who take the loss of potential pirate prisoners as a personal affront, and this captain is definitely one of them. She’s only been serving on this ship for five weeks, and she already knows exactly what kind of man this captain is.
“Alright,” he finally says, when he can speak without grinding his teeth loud enough for Sif to hear it from thirty feet away. “Let’s go rescue the survivors. See what damage those monsters have wrought over there.”
Sif bristles at the term, monsters, so very reluctant to apply it to the one she loves. Is he a monster? Am I, but just in different clothes?
Before descending to the lower deck, she looks through her glass one more time. Sure enough, there’s Loki standing atop the forecastle of his ship, as bold as brass. As if he senses her regard, he sweeps his hat off his head with a grand gesture and bows deeply, the tails of his coat fluttering behind him.
She snorts, but there’s a thread of anxiety in it, as there always is when they have these near scrapes and she never knows if these glimpses with the ocean between them are the last ones she’ll ever get.
“Stay safe, Loki,” she whispers as she savors the sight of him. She slides her glass shut with a snap. “Don’t let this be the end of our story.”
*
The Admiralty, London, June 1702
Sif has never been in an earthquake, but she has read accounts of them, and they've left her shaking and uneasy. The way they happen out of nowhere, the terror as the ground starts moving beneath your feet, the feeling that the very earth itself will swallow you whole, the devastation left behind. They sound horrifying.
If she were ever in an earthquake, she thinks she would probably feel something like the way she feels now: bereft, torn loose of her moorings, adrift with nothing to guide her way.
How quickly things can change. How quickly fortunes can turn.
“Why do you think we’ve been summoned to the Admiralty?” she had asked Loki in the carriage from their boarding house that morning, an unusually clear day in London with not a single cloud anywhere in sight. “We’ve only been lieutenants for six weeks, that’s not enough time to mess anything up!”
Loki had smirked at that, but now that she thinks about it, it had been a shadow of its usual self, as if he was somehow able to anticipate what was to come.
Sif doesn’t know how he could have. She certainly never could have anticipated the bits and pieces of what she’s now hearing through the door to Admiral Hoenir’s office while she loiters outside in the hallway, trying to appear as though she belongs there and not as though she’s eavesdropping.
Her vexation rises as she hears only snatches of the conversation, not enough to paint a coherent picture of why they’ve been called to account.
Something about Laufey? There’s only one Laufey she’s ever heard of, a former naval captain, and he’s been in France, supposedly, for more than a decade now. So while he might, theoretically, be of some relevance to the business of the Royal Navy, she doesn’t quite understand why he might be pertinent to Loki. Loki is only a newly-minted lieutenant scheduled to start serving on a third class ship of the line come July. Of course, he's also the second son of Admiral Odin. Perhaps this Laufey once served with Odin, but they somehow became bitter enemies, and now Loki's life is in danger?
That notion sends her mind careening in alarming directions, dreaming up all kinds of wild scenarios while she waits.
Sif simply does not understand what is going on, although she takes some solace in the fact that Loki is probably safe from imminent doom at the hands of Laufey or his nefarious agents while here in the halls of the Admiralty.
She shifts with impatience as Odin raises his voice, and, at last, finally, she abandons any pretense of not trying to listen in. Now, she all but presses her ear to the door, so desperate is her need to know what is being said barely ten feet from her.
She hears nothing from Loki, nothing at all.
And then:
Discharged from service.
That’s Hoenir’s voice, and Sif feels the urge to kick down the office door, his admiral status be damned, and demand to know what in the hell is happening, when Loki’s voice, broken in a way she’s never heard it before, cuts her to the quick.
Father, please, father don’t let him do this--
It must be a mistake. Whatever is happening inside, it must be a mistake. There’s absolutely no reason why Loki, already the shining star of their generation of officers, with a quick wit and a keen tactical mind, would need to be discharged from the service. It’s definitely a mistake and Odin will ensure that Hoenir sees that, that he stops playing this bizarre game, that he--
I’m sorry, Loki. I’m so sorry.
Sif, reeling and dumbfounded at Odin’s refusal to stop this, this, madness, barely registers the sounds of shuffling feet and rustling clothes moving closer towards her. It’s not until the doorknob turns that she has the presence of mind to jump back and plaster herself against the wall, pretending that she’s been standing there dutifully the entire time.
She’s quite certain she doesn’t fool Admiral Hoenir in the slightest. He gives her a sour look as he motions for Loki to join them in the hallway. Hoenir glances quickly back inside his office, and whatever he must see on Odin’s face makes him relent, ever so slightly. “You have two minutes,” he says, the gruffness in his voice overwhelming as he turns his back on them.
Loki looks, oh god, he looks distraught, as though his entire world has come falling around him and the waves are now crashing around his ears, pulling him down, pulling him under.
With a trembling hand, Sif reaches up, trailing a finger down a track of tears. “Loki, what--”
“Shhhhh, it’s okay, Sif. It’s okay.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “You’re comforting me? What happen--”
“I can’t, Sif, I simply cannot talk about it. I’ll tell you later, I promise, I don’t know when, but later. You can’t come looking for me, you have to become a captain, my Captain Sif, you must, I’ll find you someday, I promise.”
“Loki--”
He presses a kiss to her forehead, then rests his own forehead against the very same spot. “I love you, Sif. I could love you so well.” From behind him, Hoenir pointedly clears his throat, and Sif could scream and do great violence, she really could. “I’ll find a way to see it someday. Captain Sif, in all her glory. I promise.”
He grasps her hand, squeezes tight, tighter than he’s ever held her before. He takes a step back, then another, and then Hoenir’s hand lands on his shoulder and they’re off, down the hallway, to whereabouts unknown.
She takes a step to follow, but she doesn’t even make it past the door before she’s stopped in her tracks by Odin, older and wearier than she’s ever known him to be. “In here, Sif.”
She whirls toward the open door, the tails of her coat whipping around her legs. Odin, an Admiral for longer than she’s been alive, towers over her, but she cares not as she strides right up to him, utterly unafraid. “How could you!”
“Sif--”
“You let him be discharged, when it’s been his dream to captain a vessel, it's been the dream of all of us, and you’re letting Hoenir take him away to god knows where!” Sorrow wars with confusion in her mind, and in the disarray that her thoughts have become, incandescent rage takes over, fierce and destructive. “How can you be so cruel? How can you--”
“Lieutenant!” Odin snaps, losing his patience with her impertinence. “Watch yourself!”
She snaps her mouth shut, fuming. Finally, she mutters, “Yes sir.” Insincerity oozes out of her voice, and for once she does not care how obvious she is being about it. “What happened?”
“I can’t tell you any details about it.” When Sif scoffs, Odin shoots her another warning glare, but he does elaborate. Marginally. “There are . . . political motivations here.”
“Politics?” She can’t believe what she’s hearing. “You’re telling me that politics, fucking politics, are responsible for all of Loki’s dreams crumbling away?”
“There are forces here at work that you do not understand, that you don’t--”
“You’re not even trying to help me understand them! You’re being cryptic, and Loki’s being taken somewhere, and I can’t go find him, and we were supposed to sail together, for the rest of our days, each other’s right hands.”
She will not cry in front of Odin, she will not, except she apparently is, and this is absolutely the worst day of her entire life, with the possible exception of when she was five and Odin brought the news to her and her mother that her father had perished in battle.
“Sif, child.” Odin’s hand rests heavy on her shoulder, a weight she wishes she could throw off, but he makes an effort to gentle his tone, and she hears it there, grief, as clear as day. She tries to cling to her fury, but she feels it washing away, as if cleansed by the rolling tides, leaving resigned devastation in its place. “Regardless of what has happened this day, I do not believe this is the last you will see of each other. What is it that Frigga has told you all so very many times over the years?”
Sif shuts her eyes tight and gives in to the urge to wipe the tears from her face with the sleeve of her coat. It’s a childish gesture, but she allows herself this, she needs the comfort it brings her. “Fate works in mysterious ways,” she sniffs.
“Indeed,” Odin agrees. “If you believe you and Loki are meant to sail together, perhaps you will.”
“How?” The word leaves her lips in a plaintive wail, and she spares a quick hope that no one from her chain of command is outside, hearing her miserable outburst from the hallway.
“Ah, that, I do not know. Perhaps that’s why it is a mystery.”
“Sometimes I really hate mysteries.”
Odin manages a chuckle. “Yes, I know. But Loki loves them. I have a feeling he might relish solving the mystery of how to make his way back to you.”
Sif hopes, wildly, desperately, that he is right.
*
Nassau, New Providence Island, 1705
“Lieutenant.”
Captain Heimdall intercepts her before she can step foot in the tavern, and she stops short, her desire for a tankard of ale evaporating in an instant.
“Sir?”
“Walk with me. Towards the interior, not the beach.”
She falls into step beside him. Being reunited with Captain Heimdall had been a blessing after serving on a series of ships with captains who viewed her with barely concealed disdain, her lieutenant status notwithstanding. She has no illusions that she’ll be allowed to remain under his command for long--the Royal Navy does not seem to regard her in the same manner in which she regards it, after all--but she’ll soak up his gentle direction and quiet respect for as long as she can.
When five minutes pass after their last encounter with a townsperson or fellow sailor on the road out of town, Heimdall finally speaks.
“I’ve received intelligence of a new pirate operating in the area. Young. Not yet a captain, but a quartermaster to a respected captain. He’ll likely be voted in as captain within a year or two.”
“Sir.” Sif doesn’t know what else to say. She has nothing to offer on the question of piracy, no unique insight that Heimdall couldn’t receive from others with decades more experience. She’s never once been included in intelligence briefings before, and she doesn’t know why she’s a party to this one now.
He stops and turns to face her. His face is always serious, but now it’s positively grave.
“It’s Loki, Sif.”
Her eyes widen, her breath catches. If she had been moving, she would have stumbled. As it is, she suddenly feels a bit faint, as if her heart has left its customary position in her chest and is now beating in her throat, up in her ears.
“Breathe, Sif.”
Captain Heimdall. Fuck! Captain Heimdall is watching her and is seeing everything, every tiny reaction. He has probably even noticed the way her pulse has kicked up a notch at the barest mention of Loki--Loki, a fucking pirate!--she wouldn’t put it past him.
“Are you--” She stops, clears her throat, starts again. “Are you sure, sir?”
“I am. There is not a doubt. He has not assumed a new identity.”
A laugh escapes her. It sounds wild, it sounds deranged, like she has lost all leave of her senses. Perhaps she has. She now lives in a world where Loki is an actual pirate. She’s probably lived in this world for years and she hadn’t even known it. He had vanished, as if he had never existed, and she hadn’t looked, she hadn’t even looked, but here he is, somewhere in these waters, engaging in piracy.
Now that she’s had a minute or two to allow the thought to settle over her, albeit like an ill-fitting coat, she supposes she really shouldn't be surprised. He had brought up the idea himself, after all, years ago, long before he had everything taken away from him, back when his dreams, his possibilities, were as expansive as the horizon.
“A pirate.” She murmurs the word, but so low she doesn’t think she actually makes any sound, just her lips barely moving.
“Indeed,” Heimdall says, and her unfocused gaze flies up to meet his eyes.
She swallows, heavily, all her swirling thoughts and emotions caught in her throat. “Why are you telling me this, sir?”
“You know you will come into contact with him. Sooner rather than later, I would wager. He will not want to put you in danger, but he will be unable to resist the urge to see you again after so long.”
Sif doesn’t disagree, but Heimdall just stating it like that, as matter-of-fact as you please, knocks her even further off balance. “Sir?”
Now he does roll his eyes, a gesture so familiar from when she first served under him that it almost makes her laugh.
“The two of you were midshipmen together on my ship for four years, Lieutenant. I know that you know that I know exactly what the two of you got up to when you thought you had the cover of darkness to shield you.”
“I hope you don’t know exactly, sir,” she can’t resist saying.
She cannot classify the noise that Heimdall makes in response. Something vaguely resembling a snort crossed with a laugh with a bit of a sigh thrown in the mix. This conversation is surreal, and Sif really needs that ale at the tavern.
“Quite,” he says, recovering. ”I’m telling you this because he will contact you, at some point, somehow. And I want you to be prepared, for you to think this over and come to terms with the fact that your love”--he says this with a completely serious face, and Sif wants to lie on the ground and let the wild grasses of New Providence Island take her over--“is a pirate, and I want you to do this before you see him. Think it through, develop a plan for how to deal with this once you have mastered your emotions, and stick to that plan.”
“You say this--develop a plan--like there’s some option other than turn him into my superior officers for engaging in high seas piracy.”
Heimdall sighs. “I think we both know this situation is a bit more complicated than that.”
“Sir.” Not a soul is anywhere nearby, but Sif drops her voice anyway. “This sounds an awful lot like treason to me.”
Heimdall lowers his voice as well. “I don’t think we need to throw that word around, do you?”
“Sir!”
“Sif.” He sighs again, and she sees his fingers twitch, as though they’re aching with the effort of avoiding rubbing his forehead. “I know you’ve heard the rumors about Loki and why he was discharged.”
She has, indeed, heard the rumors. Laufey’s son, not Odin’s. It had almost been too much to believe.
But she had seen the look on Loki’s face, on Odin’s. Father, please, father--
I’m sorry, Loki.
Her heart hurts anew at the remembrance of the pain in Loki’s voice, his red-rimmed eyes, his shaking hand grasping hers.
“I have, sir.”
“Political bullshit is what it was,” Heimdall says, disgust coloring his voice, and Sif has to laugh, startled at his vulgar frankness. “He tried my patience like none other, with his endless questions and flagrant disregard for policies and regulations, but he already had the makings of one of the best officers and tacticians the Royal Navy has ever known. And he gets tossed out, not because of anything he’s done, but because of who his birth father is?” Heimdall shakes his head. “It’s no wonder he turned to piracy.”
Sif’s thoughts have already begun creeping in that direction. She can’t say she accepts it, not yet, maybe not ever, but she thinks she might be able to understand it. Heimdall apparently feeling the same is a surprise, though.
“You’re still young, Sif. But you’ll find that the heart wants what the heart wants.” Heimdall looks away, stares off in the distance, but Sif catches the pain there, and if Heimdall wasn’t her superior officer, she would reach out, place a comforting hand on his arm. “You will think this over, and you will make your choice, and whatever choice that is, I, at least, will not interfere.”
She doesn’t know what her choice will be, but she recognizes the unexpected and extraordinary gift she has been given. “Thank you, sir,” she whispers.
“Whatever you do, be careful. You will undoubtedly be transferred to another ship at some point, and unless you someday serve under Thor, you will not find a captain as understanding. If you are discovered, your fate will not be a kind one.”
She swallows again, hard, a vision of the gallows swimming in her mind. “No sir.”
Turning back towards her, Heimdall peers closely at her, as if gauging her sincerity and resolve. Finally he nods, sharply, decisively, apparently satisfied with what he has read in her soul. “Alright. Back to the tavern we go. I’ve kept you from proper shore leave long enough.”
Sif is not sure she can properly enjoy her shore leave, knowing what she knows now, but she also knows the importance of keeping up appearances. And in any event, she could use that ale now more than ever.
She takes a deep breath and follows her captain back to town.
*
Devil’s Tavern, London, 1713
“I’m almost afraid to ask why you chose this particular tavern,” Sif comments as she slides into the booth across from Thor. “Hello, old friend.”
Thor smiles as she sits and he pushes a tankard across the table at her, but his smile contains none of its usual boisterousness. “Hello, dear Sif.”
Sif takes a sip and glances through the window at the crowd starting to gather along the banks of the Thames before the afternoon’s excitement. She’s always happy to see Thor, always, but this time, he’s only said three words and she’s already beyond weary.
“I assume this is to be a warning of some kind?”
Thor sighs, but he doesn’t deflect. That’s something she has always appreciated about Thor, how straightforward he is, how forthright, and for a moment she grieves the fact that their careers--while ostensibly the same--have taken them in such different directions. It’s difficult, seeing each other once every four years or so, never knowing for sure whether a given high-risk engagement will be the other’s last.
“I know that you’ve seen Loki.”
Sif wills herself not to react. “You know this.” She’s proud of herself; she doesn’t give anything away.
“I know this because I’ve also seen him. In Bermuda, of all places. He mentioned he had seen you.”
“What were you even doing in Bermuda? I thought you’ve been kept close to the continent for most of the last decade.”
Thor waves a hand in the vague direction of the Admiralty. “I go where they send me, and late last year they sent me to Bermuda, and Loki happened to be there at the same time.”
Sif has not had any messages from Loki in months. Surely Thor didn’t . . . ? “I assume he’s still sailing?” she ventures, cautious, ever so cautious.
A momentary flash of real offense crosses Thor’s face. “You really think I could turn him in? My own brother?”
“Thor, I’m sorry, that was thoughtless of--”
“Every instinct I have as a naval captain told me to do it, to take him back to my ship, to throw him in the brig, to bring him back here. Think of all that he’s taken! Lives, goods, treasures, gold! Justice demands it! And every instinct I have as an older brother opposed those instincts, told me to hug him in case it’s the last time, told me to pass on what I know of movements in the region, told me to cover his tracks. I’m sure you can guess which instincts won; you’ve been fighting a very similar battle, after all.”
She has indeed. She knows this battle well.
“So if we’re both fighting this battle, delaying so-called-justice indefinitely in favor of ensuring the continued existence of one whom we both love, what’s the point of this meeting, Thor? Here, where half past the next hour, some unfortunate soul will meet his end on the gallows out there for doing the very thing Loki has been doing? What’s to be done?”
Thor looks away, off outside. The crowd has already grown larger, tossing jeers and insults around, becoming restless.
“I think I just wanted you to know. That I understand why you haven’t turned him in. And I do have a warning. I’m privy to intelligence that you’re not because for some reason those fuckers at the Admiralty refuse to promote you.”
Sif grimaces at this. Her career stagnation has rankled for so long it has become a dull, throbbing ache that occasionally threatens to overtake her. It’s some measure of comfort that at least Thor recognizes her worth, although he is not yet in a position to do anything constructive about it.
”Their desire to capture Loki has not abated. Hoenir was willing to let him disappear quietly all those years ago, but his very existence these days is an affront to them. He’s as notorious as any other pirate out there. If they catch him, there will not be mercy. And if you are caught with him, or suspected to be in any way involved with him, there will be none for you, either.”
Sif traces a finger around the rim of her tankard, around and around and around, as if she could somehow conjure up an answer to this dilemma that has nothing but bad options and worse ones.
“Are you telling me to abandon him?”
Thor pushes his tankard across the table to knock into her own. Ale sloshes out of both, splashing her fingers. He kicks her under the table for good measure. “No. I’m telling you to be smart. Do not become complacent. Do not believe for one second that they’ve forgotten him. Do not let yourselves become their trophies.”
She looks him straight in the eyes; he does not let her look away.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I love you, sister. He is my brother. You are each other’s. You are my family.”
Tears spring to Sif’s eyes, and she takes a deep breath to prevent them from falling, here in this place that will soon be witness to death. “It’s that simple, huh?”
“For me? Yes.”
She takes another deep breath and the tears, they do not fall. “The Royal Navy doesn’t deserve you, Thor.” She clears her throat. She can do better than that. “Brother.”
Oh, there it is, there’s Thor’s usual sunshine smile.
“Nor you, Sif.”
*
Tortuga, 1712
Sif rests her head against Loki’s chest and tries to catch her breath. It takes her a minute, two. At least Loki’s heart is beating just as wildly under her ear, beating to the rhythm of their shared dance.
“I needed that, I think,” Loki murmurs, his voice a low rumble in his chest. Sif hums her agreement and cuddles closer, impossibly closer, soaking up his presence so she can savor the remembrance of it in his absence.
There are times, times like now, when Loki is next to her and beneath her and surrounding her, so gloriously real and alive and here, that she thinks about it. Leaving the Navy behind, turning pirate, sailing the seas together, as they had always intended.
Those times have come more frequently in recent years, as they spend far, far more time apart than together, always wondering if the last time was the last time.
The thought of leaving the Navy still causes a pang though, deep in her chest. It had been her dream, the only dream she had ever had, and it does still gives her purpose. Most of the time. Some of the time. Sometimes, she can still feel like she’s doing some good in the world, like she’s helping some people, at least, even though it has become more difficult by the day to see that, buried as she is in bureaucracy and tyrannical captains more interested in their own aggrandizement than in bettering the world and useless rules and superiors who willfully refuse to see her value.
So she thinks about it.
Disembarking at a port just this side of reputable, disguising her sea chest as just another trunk to be offloaded and taken to supply the town, shedding her uniform to melt away into being just another townsperson, keeping an ear open for movements of the Trickster’s Revenge.
She can’t do it, not yet, but maybe someday. She shivers under the tips of Loki’s fingers dragging up her bare back. Maybe someday soon.
Loki brushes a kiss to the crown of her head and rests his lips there, breathing her in. “I won’t ask you, because I don’t wish to force you to choose,” he whispers, and Sif tenses, wondering if she had somehow spoken her thoughts out loud. “But you know you’re welcome on my ship. Any time. For all time. You don’t have to ask. They’re not worthy of you, Sif.”
She takes a deep breath. “You already have a quartermaster.”
“I do.”
“And an armorer.”
“That too.”
“I’m a fine sailor, but surely I couldn’t displace your ship’s master.”
Loki chuckles, and god above, Sif loves when she’s close enough to feel him laugh. “Volstagg would probably take exception to that, it’s true. But I don’t think he’d mind it if you came aboard as co-captain.”
It’s not the first time Loki has broached the idea, but it still gives Sif pause. Co-captains can work very well together, but it can also go very, very wrong. Loki knows that, though, and he would not suggest the idea to her if he were not as close to certain as he could be that it’s a viable one with his crew.
“Is it wise to split a captaincy like that?”
He shrugs as best as he’s able with Sif’s head lying partly on his shoulder. “I don’t much care, to tell you the truth. If the crew doesn’t like it, they’re free to go elsewhere, but I don’t anticipate that happening.”
Sif hates to ask the next question, but she must. If there’s one thing her time in the Navy has taught her, it’s that the vast majority of men who work on ships are threatened by the presence of a woman, especially one in a position of authority. “And would it cause resentment in your crew, answering to a woman?”
Loki, to his credit, does not answer immediately. He takes his time, giving the question--and his answer--the weight it is due.
“I genuinely don’t think it would, no.” He rests his palm on Sif’s back, in between her shoulder blades, and she relaxes into him, just a little further. “That’s not the case for every crew, of course. But these men . . . well, they’re not all men, for one. Sylvie was just chosen as boatswain, and the men adore her, even though she’s the one responsible for enforcing discipline, when needed.”
This is the first Sif has heard of there being a woman on Loki’s crew, and the idea intrigues her. “What is she like? Do the men listen to her?”
“She's a fierce fighter, sharp as a tack, and one of the more devious pirates I've known, which is saying something. She doesn’t put up with any shit, let’s say, and the crew loves that. They do listen. And these men, most of them are, well, outcasts, I guess you’d say. Men who were forgotten, ignored, thrown away. By their families, by society. They have a purpose on the crew, and they’ll respect anyone who acknowledges that.”
“That very noble purpose being high seas piracy, of course.”
Loki doesn’t answer right away, and when Sif cranes her neck to look up at him, she catches the tail end of a contemplative frown before he schools his features back into neutrality. “I think it’s more . . . taking power back when they’ve never had it before, not once in their entire lives. Reveling in creating their own code and not having one imposed upon them. And, also, enjoying the sheer fucking joy of causing a little bit of mischief and mayhem, of course.”
“Of course,” Sif murmurs, hiding her reluctant smile in the skin above Loki’s heart. Loki doesn’t comment on how she might relate, just a little bit, to the men on his crew, and she doesn’t either.
He slides his hand upward, ever so slightly, and plays with the ends of her hair, curling around her shoulders. “Is that something you might be interested in? Co-captaining a crew of unruly pirates with me?”
“I think,” Sif begins, and she has to start over, banish the shakiness from her voice. “I think I need to think it over. I’m not saying no. But I’m also not saying yes, not yet.”
Loki tugs on her hair, gently, just enough to encourage her to move up, up over him so that their eyes meet and they nearly share breath. “I won’t ever force you, Sif. If you join, it has to be your choice. I just want you to know there is a choice. That said, I won’t lie and say that I don’t want you with me. I do. I will continue with our current arrangement as long as you want to and as long as we’re both as safe as we can be. But Sif . . . .”
His finger moves, featherlight over her cheekbone, a caress so sweet she nearly abandons her resolve and agrees right then and there to stay with him. He breathes deep, takes a moment to gather himself, and the hesitation is so unlike him she almost can’t take it.
“Sif, I want to love you in the daylight. You deserve more than one or two nights at a time, ten months apart, in dingy rooms above decrepit taverns after we’ve left coded messages for each other on three different islands to ensure that we arrive at the same place without detection. I want to fight side-by-side with you again. I want to walk arm-in-arm with you when we arrive in a port, you my pirate queen there beside me, with me every step of the way. I want the world to know that when they make the foolish choice to take on Loki, that means taking on Sif as well. I want, I want . . . I want everything with you, Sif.”
Sif doesn’t have Loki’s words, she never has. But she has her actions, her actions speak louder than any of her words ever could, and so when she leans down and kisses him, desperate and demanding, she pours all of her passion, all of her adoration, all of her devotion into the kiss. She shouts her love, and when his breath hitches just before he rolls them over and presses her into the mussed sheets, when he gasps god, I love you before lavishing kisses down down down, she knows he has heard her.
*
HMS Royal Sovereign, the Caribbean Sea, March 1714
Endless blue, a thousand shades of blue, nothing but possibilities.
She used to think the Navy would provide her with those possibilities. A thousand different ways to make herself matter.
Over a decade as a commissioned officer, and she has finally made it onto a ship with a hundred guns, at least. Not as a Captain; no, of course not. A Lieutenant, still. Always.
Six commendations for acts of valor to her name, at least. Heimdall was the only captain who hadn’t grimaced when he recounted her acts of bravery in his captain’s log, the only captain who had said well done, Sif and truly, genuinely meant it.
Her situation is not unique, she knows this from her infrequent correspondence with certain friends, always careful to obscure the details and the depths of their dissatisfaction with their careers lest their letters fall into the hands of the wrong superior officer. Val toils away in the Mediterranean, serving under cowards and layabouts and disgraces to the service when she could do better still half-drunk on rum from the night before.
(Sif, I don't know how much more I can take, Val had written in her last letter.
Sif knows the feeling. She knows it well.)
A waste is what it is. A waste of their talents. A waste of their lives.
When she dies in the service of queen and country, will anyone but Thor mourn her after they’ve promoted her replacement?
Sif hates the dark turn her thoughts have taken, and she lets her head thunk back against the foremast, her watch not even half over. This ship is weathered from years at sea, but she's still magnificent, likely as beautiful as she was the day she first set sail. Beautiful in a different way, perhaps. Beautiful not because she is pristine but because she has survived. Sif wishes she could fully appreciate it.
She doesn’t know, she truly doesn’t know, if co-captaining a crew of pirates with Loki can help her find her purpose again, but god, it can’t possibly be worse than this.
There, at least her opinions will be given value. Loki won’t talk over her. He might disagree with her, but he’ll carefully consider all of her suggestions, and they’ll work towards a compromise. He will hear her. She can’t remember the last time she felt heard on this ship.
She fiddles with the cuff of her coat. The stitching of one of her lieutenant’s stripes is starting to unravel.
Too much stagnation, she mutters to herself, so quietly not even the wind can pick it up. Wasn’t meant to wear them this long.
Can she change the world as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy?
No, no she cannot. That is abundantly clear.
Can she change the world as a pirate?
That is unknown. But if anyone can make it happen, Loki can. There is much to be said for them trying together.
Eight weeks. She closes her eyes, breathes deep. Eight weeks for her to decide the course of her life.
*
St. Kitts, May 1714
When Loki walks in the room, Sif sits on her sea chest at the foot of the bed, her naval-issue sword properly stowed, her coat already folded up and placed carefully inside.
He pauses just inside the door, his eyes wide, barely breathing. “Sif . . . .” he whispers.
“I want to love you in the daylight too,” she says, her voice steady from weeks of saying it over and over and over to herself when she takes on an extra watch in the crow’s nest, nothing up there with her but her thoughts and dreams.
“I can live with the theft and the destruction and the violence and even, God help me, the murder. I’ve taken lives too, and I have been rewarded for it because I was doing it in the name of God and Queen Anne. A higher purpose, they said.” She shakes her head. “I haven’t had any purpose in so long. Can we find that together, Loki? Can we find a way to do something that fucking matters, for once?”
He takes two steps and is there before her. He lifts her chin, bends to kiss her forehead, then her lips, so very lightly. He sits on the chest next to her, takes her hand, looks her face-to-face, on equal footing.
“I cannot promise you that everything we do as pirates will be in service of some greater purpose. Sometimes the only purpose behind taking a prize is to make the men happy, to settle rising tensions. Sometimes the only purpose behind attacking a warship is just to make England angry, remind them of who they wronged. But I think that providing a place for people to create their own destiny is a higher purpose. And being allowed to love you, freely, openly, constantly? I don’t know if anything fucking matters more than that.”
He tucks a rogue strand of hair behind her ear and leans in to rest his forehead against hers.
“Can that be enough, Captain Sif?”
She leans in the rest of the way, lets her kiss be her answer.
*
Trickster’s Revenge, twenty-six nautical miles north of Saint Martin, December 1715
“What do you think, Hogun?” Fandral calls from where he’s laid out on the quarterdeck, Sif’s dagger at his throat. “Do you think she fights more like a pirate now or a naval officer still?”
“Hogun thinks you need to up your game, quartermaster,” Sylvie answers, admiring the three pieces of eight Hogun flips her as a result of Sif’s victory. “That’s four times this week you’ve lost a match to our co-captain.”
“Quit losing me money.” Hogun levels Fandral with a baleful glare, and Sif laughs, bold and bright, as she offers Fandral a hand up and hauls him to his feet. He brushes off his trousers and elbows her gently in the ribs, a companionable acknowledgement of her superior swordsmanship.
“Quit betting against the co-captain!” Volstagg yells from his place by the helm. “Haven’t you lot learned anything yet?”
“They’re pirates, Volstagg,” Loki drawls, leaning over the railing of the forecastle. “Not scholars.”
“Personally, that’s a boon to me.” Sylvie claps Sif on the back. “This is the most prolonged source of entertainment and the steadiest source of income I’ve ever had.”
“Happy to accommodate you,” Sif says, still grinning as she climbs the stairs up to where Loki stands. “Well?” she asks when she reaches Loki’s side. “Do I fight like a pirate or an officer?”
“An odd mix of both, actually.” Loki’s fingers brush over the back of her hand, and Sif turns her palm up, allows their fingers to entwine. “You’re still not as dramatic or wild as pirates typically are, but you definitely fight dirtier than you used to. It’s very alluring, actually.”
“When are we going to spar again, Loki? I’ll show you alluring.”
“Name the time and place, my lady captain. Preferably not when that rabble is anywhere nearby. Lest they get an eyeful of something you don’t want them to see.”
Sif hums, more content than she ever imagined she could be. “What are you doing tonight, on the gun deck, three bells past middle watch?”
“I have a feeling I’ll be getting my ass handed to me by my co-captain, a better fighter than me, just like always.”
She winks, letting him know that’s a safe bet.
“I had a question for you,” she says before he can wander off back to their cabin to check charts or document Fandral’s continued string of defeats in his log. “Where were you thinking about going next?”
“Hadn’t given it too much thought, actually,” Loki replies, which Sif knows is a lie. As if he doesn’t, at any given time, have their next five destinations planned out in advance. “But it sounds like you might have an idea.”
“I’ve been hearing rumors for awhile,” Sif says. “Rumors of a war, a different kind of war. A war with unusual allies against civilization itself. A war designed to bring down empires.”
Loki turns so his back is against the railing. He crosses his arms over his chest and does not hide the smile that settles on his face. “Sounds like your spies and my spies have heard the same rumors.”
“And what do you think about these rumors?”
Loki takes a deep breath and blows it back out, sending a stray strand of hair in front of his face dancing about. “I think these rumors might present an interesting opportunity to find some purpose. Something that fucking matters.”
Sif grins. “I was hoping you might say that.”
“Why don’t you give the order, Captain?”
“Volstagg!” Sif calls. “We head northwest! We have a rendez-vous we need to make.”
“Aye, Captain!”