Violet walked – no – she sashayed into the kitchen. Her dress, a simple white tunic cinched at the waist by her gun-belt, fluttered with the movement, revealing slender, well-turned ankles. All I could do was gape, standing exactly where she’d left me.

“Well?” She gazed at me curiously as she held the door open, the corner of her lips turning up in a half-smile. “Aren’t you hungry? Ma says you’ve been marooned for days.”

That was enough to jolt me out of my trance. But just barely. I followed her into the kitchen. Over supper, I filled her in on the past few years and all of my recent adventures. How I’d come close to losing my life but wound up losing two good friends instead.

“I’m awful sorry about Ben. Who was Henry, though?”

I drank deeply from a tanker of ale before answering her. “He was somebody Ben and I met in the Nav-”

Before I could finish my sentence, there was a loud crash from outside, and I distinctly heard my father’s voice shouting: “All men to starboard! We’ve been hit! Pirates!”