The Challenge
The smell of the sea salt and rum wafted down the lane from the Hung Jack Inn. Emily could see the faded paint on the sign depicting a man hanging from the gallows. This was the most lively inn on the island and was of course a place she had always been forbidden to visit. Her father was a major importer who lived in a big house not too far from the Royal Governor's manor on the pretty beach side of the island to the south. Here on the north side it was all the labor that made a thriving port. Barrels and livestock were loaded off ships, fishermen mended their nets, and the hammer strokes of carpenters tending to the vessels beat out a steady rhythm that combined with the calls of the sailors and the cawing of the gulls to form a sort of music.
Emily felt a nervousness slip into her belly as she approached the door. She had slipped her fathers agents and walked the breadth of the island to come here but now on the threshold she looked herself over and was scared. She had borrowed clothes from one of her servants and though it was a rather plane bodice and skirt, the girl did not share Emily's curves and thus it was a bit more revealing around her chest. What's more her father had kept her from this place because her own mother had been an island native and her mixed blood showed in her dark hair, light brown skin, and her eyes. A lecherous uncle at a holiday feast had said she had the most exotic eyes he had ever seen; of course he had later called her 'a filthy mongrel bastard that didn't know her place' when she had kicked him squarely in his manhood for trying to ravage her in the upstairs hall. Emily Perrington though raised as her father's child was indeed not of legitimate birth. Arnold Perrington, her father, was a widower who had left the majority of his shipping company in the hands of his sons and son-in-laws and retired here to the Caribbean to over see this one minor port and storehouse and enjoy a few late life comforts one of which had been her mother.
As a proper man of station he could not remarry to some 'savage' lest his own children disown him for disrespecting their late mother and leave him penniless. He had never afforded his island children less then his white ones and damned the chains of propriety that kept him from making them a proper family. Doting but strict, her father had warned Emily that the north side of the island was not kind to native girls especially mixed blooded ones (as he explained it the whites would not see as more then a savage they could make sport of and the native sailors would see her lineage as part of the ongoing insult to their culture and do nothing to aid her) and her beauty would be her undoing. His words crept into her mind as she faced the large wooden door but the music on the other side pushed them aside. Her father had refused to let her court outside those of proper station and her mixed blood meant that she was then only courted by twice widowed lechers looking for a tame savage to make into a pet. It was his damnable customs that had made her mother a consort and her a bastard unfit for marriage to the sons of his partners but fit for those same partners to leer at and grope in passing at balls. She had prisoner to this sort of tyranny for 19 years and no more.
She pushed the door open and walked brazenly to the bar. A few heads turned as she walked towards the long scrubbed wood counter. Her swaying body moved in step to the lively tune sung by the musicians as smoothly as the flicker of the candle flames and the shadows they cast. From the back she heard a smoke rasped voice call out "Now that's a fine island bird there mates," and a chorus of harsh laughter from a table in a dark corner. She looked into that darkness and saw a half dozen forms seated around a central figure but could make out no faces. She turned away and continued to the bar. After several 'pardon me's the barman finally stopped and she slapped two shillings on the bar and said loudly "I would like a drink if you please." The corpulent and sweaty innkeeper looked her over then down at her coins then back to her (though not quite meeting her eyes) before grunting "What'll it be then?"
"Rum" His hand which had been reaching for the coins slid back and he grimaced.
"Sorry but me last three bottles was bought up by them lot over there." He nodded to the table of laughing shadows in the back. Emily was not to be discouraged; she had come here to drink rum, dance without propriety, and maybe even share a kiss with a lucky young deck hand if the mood struck her. She marched purposely back towards the table but stopped almost within ten feet as the dim candle light afforded her a clear view of the occupants. Sitting around that central figure were four of the most tattooed, pierced, branded, scarred, scabrous and armed sailors she had ever seen. Their belts and sashes literally bristled with pistols, daggers, and swords. On either side of the man in the center were two women not much older then Emily herself. One was a red haired girl with a tattoo of knot work covering her left forearm. The other was an Oriental puffing gently on a long thin pipe which she held to the flame of a candle stub. The Asian beauty's top had been so loosened that one her breasts was exposed. Emily stared in fascination at the small silver ring hanging from her light brown nipple.
"I am sure Rei will run yours through for ya if ya ask nicely." Emily's attention snapped to the smoke rasped voice she heard before and looked directly at the large man in the middle of this surly pack of what were clearly pirates. He was wearing a short sleeved open tunic and had long reddish black hair and dark green narrow eyes. His skin was slightly tanned and he had the faded freckles of someone whose pale skin long ago acclimated to the sun. In the split of his shirt she could clearly the brand upon the broad muscled chest; two P's facing each other. The brand the agents of the Perrington Shipping and Holdings placed upon any pirate they captured. Not only had this man stolen from her father and been caught but he had escaped as was clear by the fact that he sat here talking as opposed to rotting on the sea floor.
