"Yer not so bad, are ya, Miller?" asked Lovely Mari, burying the drunken man's face in her cleavage. His arms draped around her waist as she stroked his hair and cooed into his ear. "You jus' needed a lil' calmin' down, didncha? Atta boy, jus' relax." His whiskers tickled her breasts, and it amused her to see a grown man melt in her embrace like this. Beyond them, the Englishmen were teaching the powder-monkey a dirty song about elephants. Rackham, Phillpotts, and Nicholass debated the merits of breaking into one of the rolls of tobacco—"There's so bleedin' much of it, ain't there?"—as an incentive to the crew.

"Naw, naw," slurred Rackham. "They're good men 'n' all, but… I think this rum-party's enough for 'em. Don' want 'em gettin' all spoilt." His perch upon a barrel looked none too steady. "You spoil yer crew, an' they're no good fer nothin'. Turn on ya like a cur, and I should know."

"But perhaps just to shave a little off," urged the quartermaster. "Unroll it, trim some out of the core. Not too much, not to get greedy, but how could that harm anything?"

Anne Bonny regarded Rackham from the poop deck, getting slurrier and droopier with every inch of the candle. "Maybe I should lead him back to his cabin," she said. "Keep him out of trouble before a fight starts. The way they're drinking…"

Mary Read snorted. "Yes, a fight. I'm sure that's your foremost concern regarding John and his drunken state. You ever heard of whiskey-dick?"

Bonny was about to ask about this when she stiffened. "Ship ahoy, Mary. An armed sloop. I can't see the flag."

Read spun about and spotted the long, dark shape emerging from the mists. It wasn't overtly threatening, positioning itself to fire, but it was a highly unpleasant surprise nonetheless. "Go fetch Rackham. I'll hold them off if needs be." The young woman's coppery hair flowed beneath her kerchief as she plunged into the pogied sailors and hauled her prey out. Read extended a glass and tried to make out the crew of the new vessel. Only six or seven were visible on the sloop, with who knew how many below decks, and one man grinning and waving a lantern at them.

"Bonsoir, mes amis!" he cried. "Hail! What goes zees evening?"

Read hailed him back. "Who'm I talking to? Am I wrong in thinking that's Captain Napin's ship?"

The man laughed brightly, ringing falsely through the gloomy night. "You recognize ze Bennet! Très bien, c'est très net! As it 'appens, I in'erited zees lovely ship from my old friend, Captain 'Ornigold. She now thrives under my keep, je crois."

The skin began to crawl up Read's spine. She had been in Nassau three years ago and remembered when Hornigold's Bennet pulled in to dock. Their surgeon, John Howell, had been relieved of duty and was attempting to relax in a tavern where Read had been recruiting: she'd recently accepted the King's pardon and was gearing up to hunt pirates on behalf of New Providence, distasteful as this was. She remembered exchanging wry glances with a Captain Barnet as he reluctantly renounced his pirating days as well, not long before raiding Spanish wrecks in violation of the pardon.

With less drama than the overtly buxom Mari's entrance, a certain Frenchman burst into the bar with his men, searching for his own surgeon and uninterested in waiting for volunteers. Howell narrowly escaped and took shelter with a merchant in Nassau, William Pindar, who hid him away until pressure from the Frenchman led him to seek out a pirate recruiter by the name of Richard Noland, formerly of Hornigold's crew. After a long and heated discussion with Noland and Hornigold himself, Howell admitted—with the profoundest reluctance—he'd rather serve the English than side with the French, if he had any choice at all. The Frenchman still attempted to steal Howell away, but Hornigold kept him on the Bennet.

A sick feeling rose in Read's stomach: how was it that the Frenchman was now in possession of Hornigold's ship?

Clopping and shuffling on her left gave her a start: it was only Bonny struggling to haul a badly cup-shot Rackham up the stairs to the poop. "Who's this asshole?" chirped a voice on her right. She flinched and found herself face-to-décolletage with Lovely Mari, her golden hair and slender arms glowing in the night, her boobs as inflated as ever.

"He's, uh," started Read, struggling. "What was his name?"

"Belle dame, que Dieu vous bénisse!" he called out across the water, bowing. "Are you 'aving a leetle party over there? 'Ave you room for a few more!" He laughed, and not at all in a cheery way.

Lovely Mari's beautiful countenance darkened. "Somethin' 'bout him rubs me the wrong way," she growled, looking around for something to throw. Mounted on the rail directly behind the ship's wheel was a light cannon. Squealing delightedly, she pounced upon it and turned it around, looking for the trigger.

"Help me with him!" Bonny yelled at Read, who snapped out of her reverie and grabbed Rackham by the underarms, dragging him upon the deck. The younger woman followed, panting and swearing. "So what'd you find out?"

"I know him from Nassau, but I can't quite place him." Read glanced nervously at the Bennet. "Do you remember Hornigold pulling in and that trouble with the surgeon?"

"You told me about that. That was a year before James and I arrived. Is that Hornigold?" If it were possible in the dim light, the already-fair Bonny paled slightly.

"No, Hornigold died last year, but his ship belongs to… what the hell are you doing?" Read barked at Mari, who had dismantled the light cannon and, amazingly, was cradling the heavy little beast in both arms. It peeked pertly from beneath one mammoth breast.

"I'm doin' pirate shit, since you're all fuckin' around with drunk guys!" Frustrated with the impenetrable mysteries of the gun's operation, the alluring witchy quietly muttered an incantation, her milky back turned to the other women. A radiant spark formed upon her fingertip, illuminating the miniature vent and breach around the rear of it, and then she spotted the little portal known as the pan. "This's gotta be where the action happens," she murmured, shrugging, and as best as she could estimate she leveled the cannon at the bowsprit of the Bennet.

"Attends une minute, s'il vous plait," started the Frenchman, signaling furtively to his crew.

Read snapped her fingers and gaped at Bonny. "Bonadvis! That's Captain Jean Bonadvis, he's one of Barnet's privateers!" Before Bonny could even swear in response, Mari touched the spark to the pan, setting off a deafening roar of noise, like three competing choruses bellowing at each other. A brilliant bolt of multihued light blasted from the little cannon, slicing the bowsprit clean off the Bennet and knocking Bonadvis on his ass. The beam shot into the fog, illuminating great clouds of red and yellow and green as it raced to the horizon.

"Yo ho ho, ass-munch!" screamed Mari. "Come over here so I can kick your tummies!" Read and Bonny gaped at her, then at each other.

"What the feck was that," gasped "Calico Jack" Rackham, sitting bolt upright and instantly sober.

*   *   *

He's not wrong, thought Drummond. He's annoying, he's filthy, he has no discipline, but you've got to be honest with yourself. The key slid with a metallic rasp from the door jamb, and he let himself into the administrative office of the library, wheeling the large suitcases behind him one at a time.

Why is she sexy? She's not sexy, she's grotesque. This whole thing is unreasonable. He laid a suitcase upon a desk, then opened the desk drawers, exposing hundreds of thousands of dollars in tidy stacks. If she were your size, she'd look like a fuck-doll, that's it. You couldn't take her seriously, you wouldn't even look twice at her. Except maybe in morbid curiosity, like, how could someone do that to herself.

He pulled out the top layer of bills and quickly transferred them from the drawer to the first suitcase. And she's crazy. She's fucking nuts, don't forget that. At any moment, she could reach down and pinch my head like popping a zit. I don't know why she doesn't, honestly. She gets mad, she has a temper, and she's totally unhinged. I really don't know why I'm still alive.

When the first suitcase was full, he zipped it up, hauled it off the desk with a grunt, and moved to another desk to repeat the same routine. But there's something about her, still. I don't know what. Maybe it's the effect of being stuck in this lunatic world, where nothing makes sense. Feral bands of tiny people? What the fuck was that about? He shuddered, reliving (yet again) the executions of Andon, Mecho, and Pavla. Hideous deaths worse than nearly anything he'd ever seen. And she enjoyed it. She laughed… no, she didn't even laugh. It was a mild amusement to her. The way she crushed those guys under her tit…

What irritated him the most about that was how badly it had turned him on. Staring,  watching from her bare shoulder as she arrayed the two helpless men before her, picked up one immense breast with both hands—and it was too much for both hands!—and just let it drop. Bam. Up, then down, without a shudder of resistance. Drummond couldn't even imagine what those little guys had experienced, though he tried. He envisioned the scene from their perspective, watching the enormous planet of woman-flesh rising above them, that tense second as she struggled to hold it, right before release… I'm sick. I'm fucked in the head, that's all there is to it, I'm broken. What 17 years in SWAT couldn't do to me, a month in this nut-house has finally achieved. Has it even been a month?

The former officer paused and looked up. There was a clock, but it had been broken in the relocation. The desks had desk calendars, but no one had kept them up and he had no idea what the date should even be. Days? Weeks? Months? He really should have been marking these down somewhere. The sloppiness shouldn't have surprised him, he reasoned, if he was truly broken by this insane goddess.

And still I want her. He looked at his hands: they were strong and steady. I can't help it. When I climb her chest, like a huge, soft hillside, and when I lie down… and, better, when she just picks me up with those young fingers of hers, and she places me where she wants me… He closed his eyes and moaned quietly, aroused and ashamed. Goddamn me to hell. What am I doing?

Drummond punched the desk. It boomed in the dead-silent library office, the drawers rattled hollowly for a moment. He looked around, reflexively, but there was absolutely no one around at all. And there we are. I didn't communicate with my wife, and she left. Now that I need to talk shit out with someone, there's no one here. The Teen was inappropriate to discuss matters with, and upon penalty of death he didn't dare confess his inner workings to the giantess. Isn't this what I wanted, keeping everyone away? Aren't I finally comfortable?

He finished loading the second suitcase and wheeled them out of the library, beginning the long slog across the sexy witchy's bedroom.