Coronation of the Queens

Jimmy looked at her up there on the stage, his Captain, his Queen, and felt his heart swell. They’d had a rough start, but in a very real way she had become his greatest mentor. Though Edward had set him on his path, Vinesse had shaped it. She had carved a bloody canyon through his life and aspirations, but she had walked that trail beside him.

She was exquisite, standing beside her wife and before her people, positively dripping in gold, wrapped in all her strength. Her hair had been combed with gold-flaked oil, twisted into intricate, gleaming coils and the delicate coronet that rested upon them shone with polished gold and sapphires. She had traded her worn leather eyepatch for a new one, dark brown with filigree inlays. Her good eye, fever bright with barely-restrained excitement, burned over the crowd like a flame. Golden and blue paints traced dizzying designs of knotwork and swirls over her chocolate skin anywhere that it could be seen. Her gown was layered golden silk, each slashed to reveal the ones below and flow around her body until finally revealing the single layer of cerulean beneath it all and with open sleeves that draped loosely down before coming to tight cuffs at her wrists. Feet bare but for the thin gold chains that decorated them, she stood as tall and regal as any born Queen. Everything in her carriage declared her royalty.

When her eye met his, she favored him with a small smile. It was only the barest curve at the corner of her painted mouth, but it was a high honor that warmed his very soul. He pressed his fist to his heart and bowed to her as he would have to Gideon himself.

With her hand down by her side, she quickly crossed and uncrossed her fingers, signaling that she wanted to speak to him after all the pageantry was finished.

He inclined his chin in acknowledgement of their sign and she returned to surveying the crowd at large. His eyes shifted to Tsuria and he saw her smiling.

Tsuria Fer-Geuse, *Queen* Tsuria Fer-Geuse, though she was still adjusting to the title, smiled down on Captain Jimmy Holy. Of all her lovely wife’s wealth, that man was their greatest prize. The trio had walked a long and arduous road, but now they were at the summit.

Rebecca and Holy had stacked the bodies of their enemies into a stairway to reach new heights while Tsuria laid a solid foundation for their efforts to rise from. She knew that she and her wife could never have a natural child, but in him they had found a son and partner.

They knew who he was, who he really was, but the pair had agreed to continue pretending. With his secret exposed, he would have no more reason to stay, and while Bec liked to lie to herself that she only wanted him around for his usefulness and loyalty, Tsuria knew better. They would miss the boy, though he was a mere boy no more.

Bec shifted beside her and she smelled the lilac perfume floating from her skin. She smiled, feeling a blush creep across her cheeks. It had been nearly twenty years and she still couldn’t believe that the other woman hadn’t had a favorite color or scent until she mentioned her love of lilacs. Then the flood began. The Captain’s wardrobe slowly gained lilac items, beginning with scarves and spreading as far as full gowns. Every letter Tsuria received from her beloved was either scented with lilac perfume, accented with floral drawings, or contained pressed flowers. Her love was a soft, sentimental sort once you got under all the blood.

Only she could see the sweat on her Rebecca’s temple. Only she could feel the nervous trembling of her hand. For all her strength, she was nothing more than a woman suddenly granted unaccustomed power and thrust in front of a burgeoning nation of thieves, cutthroats, and, perhaps wort of all, merchants. For all her weakness, she had faced odds and foes that could have crushed even the strongest of men beneath their heels... and survived. Flourished. She and she alone was the architect of her fate.

Giving her hand a quick squeeze, Rebecca stepped forward to address her new people, their new people, and Tsuria was somehow reminded of when they met.

She’d been cowering, naked and chained, in her master’s quarters. The fighting above had grown unbearable with all the screams of the dying and she’d wondered how many of her fellow slaves had been fed to the relentless machine of the pirates. She’d wondered if she would be next. If her master would return. If she would have a new master. If he would be as cruel. If maybe it wouldn’t be better to die...

Then the looting began. The cracks of splintering doors, the cheers of the attackers.

The door to her prison had given way and in its frame stood a man who could have easily broken her master. Fear had flooded her heart as she curled in on herself beneath his gaze. Then he’d looked over his shoulder and called for his captain.

If this was the dog, what kind of creature was monster enough to hold his leash?

She’d let out a thin, reedy wail of terror as the giant stepped back to allow his leader passage... and there she stood. A slip of a girl who couldn’t have been out of her teenage years, with piercing golden eyes and covered head to toe in blood like some savage thing. That hard gaze had softened when it fell on the nude girl in chains.

“Out, Gunnar.” Two words. Two words said so very softly, but with such conviction. Those two words had changed her entire world. The bear of a man had nodded and left, pulling the remnants of the door closed behind him. The girl had approached slowly and knelt before her. “I mean you no harm. Your suffering ends today.”

Hope. Dangerous, glorious, painful hope had burst in her chest like an entire Spring condensed into mere seconds. She had screamed with the euphoria of it all, a raw sound of agony and wonder, and the dark girl had smiled.

“My name is Rebecca Vinesse, Captain of the *Valeria.* Come with me and claim your freedom. You are a slave no more.”

She’d broken the chains with her sword and offered Tsuria her own tattered, bloodstained coat. She’d offered Tsuria the world.

And they’d taken it.

Inch by inch. Day by day. Coin by coin. Body by body. They had cut and climbed their way to the top and now stood on equal ground with the kings and queens who had abandoned them as their lessers.

The crowd roared in thunderous applause and she snapped to the present to see her wife, her love, standing statuesque in the sunlight and shining with the favor of the gods. If every step of her life had been what led Tsuria to this exact moment, it had all been worth it. And when Rebecca turned to her with an outreached hand, she did not hesitate to take it and step into her spotlight. For whatever road this woman walked, she would gladly walk as well.