The Seaport
Sixteen years later.
The seaport town of Whitehaven sprawled along the western coast like a drunkard leaning on a fence. It smelled of salt, fish, tar, and trouble. Sailors shouted in three languages. Merchants argued over barrels of wine. Women with painted faces leaned from windows and called down to men with empty pockets.
It was the perfect place for a thief to raise a child.
Robin — the original Robin, now gray-haired and slower than he used to be — had built a small life here. A crooked house near the docks. A reputation for knowing things. A daughter who was nothing like him.
Not in blood. But in everything that mattered.
---
She was called Robin too.
He had given her his name because he didn't know hers. The baby had no mark on her clothes, no note pinned to her blanket. Just a yellow cloth and a small silver locket that snapped shut and never opened. Robin had tried to open it a hundred times. The locket never gave up its secret.
So he called her Robin. And she became one.
---
By the time she was sixteen, the girl had grown into something the old thief had not expected.
She was beautiful. That was the problem.
Not soft-beautiful, not the kind that made men write poems. She was sharp-beautiful — cheekbones like blades, eyes the color of storm clouds, hair that fell dark and wild to her shoulders. When she walked into a room, men stopped talking. Not because they were enchanted. Because they were wary.
She had killed her first man at fourteen.
A drunk who had followed her into an alley. She had told him to leave. He hadn't listened. She had a small knife and a steady hand and no hesitation at all.
Old Robin had been proud and terrified in equal measure.
"You're better at this than me," he had said that night.
She had shrugged. "You taught me well."
"I taught you to steal cabbages."
"You taught me not to be afraid."
He had no answer for that.
---
Now, at sixteen — no, seventeen; she had stopped counting exactly — young Robin had a ship.
The Laali had not been given to her. It had been taken.
The original owners, a wealthy merchant family named Hartwell, had refused to sell. The daughter, Meredith Hartwell, had laughed when Robin came to negotiate.
"You? A girl? With a ship?"
Robin had smiled. It was not a nice smile.
"Your daughter has beautiful hair," she had said to Meredith's father. "It would be a shame if anything happened to it."
The Hartwells signed the papers within the hour.
Old Robin had watched from the corner of the room, saying nothing. Later, on the docks, he had pulled his daughter aside.
"Threats are a weapon," he said quietly. "But they make enemies."
"Enemies are just people who haven't lost yet," she replied.
She walked up the gangplank without looking back.
---
The crew of the Laali was a strange collection of misfits, runaways, and broken men.
There was Rosa — a dark-eyed girl with a scar on her chin and a fierce loyalty that Robin had not expected and did not fully deserve. Rosa had been found in a back alley in Portugal, half-dead and fully alone. Robin had scared off the men who were hurting her. Rosa had followed her home like a stray cat. She had never left.
There was Amanda — cheerful, yellow-eyed, good with a needle and better with a broom. She kept the captain's cabin clean and did not ask questions.
There was Cripso — broad-shouldered, slow-talking, with hands the size of dinner plates. He was Amanda's man, though nobody knew if that meant love or convenience.
There was Evan — quick with a joke, quicker with a knife, and too handsome for his own good. He smiled when he should have been serious and fought when he should have run.
And there was Scotch — a soft-spoken man from the highlands who had not smiled in seven years. He kept a small leather journal in his coat pocket and wrote in it every night. Nobody knew what it said.
These five were the heart of the crew. The others — the deckhands, the riggers, the cook's boy — came and went with the tides.
---
One evening, late autumn, the Laali sat anchored off the coast of a small English town called Grimsby-by-the-Water.
Not a real town, not really. Just a cluster of stone houses, a railway station, and a church with a leaning steeple. The kind of place where nothing ever happened.
Robin stood at the bow of the ship, watching the sun set over the hills. The wind was cold. She pulled her coat tighter and tried not to cough.
Behind her, Rosa appeared with a cup of tea.
"You should be inside," Rosa said. "It's cold."
"It's always cold."
"You've been coughing all week."
"I've been fine all week."
Rosa gave her a look. The look said: I know about the blood on your handkerchief. I know about the pneumonia. I know you're not fine.
But Rosa said nothing. She just handed over the tea.
Robin took it. She did not say thank you. She never said thank you. But she held the cup with both hands and let the warmth seep into her fingers.
"Tomorrow," Robin said quietly, "we unload the kegs. Then we rest for a few days."
"The crew will like that."
"The crew can like it or not. I don't care."
Rosa smiled. "You care a little."
Robin did not answer.
---
In the town below, in a small stone cottage with a smoking chimney, a young man sat at a wooden table and stared at a cold bowl of soup.
His name was Luke. Luke McAlphin.
People called him Lucky Luke, though he had never been lucky. The nickname was a joke that had stopped being funny years ago.
He was twenty-two years old, with sandy hair and blue eyes and the kind of face that made old women say what a nice young man. He worked at the railway station, loading cargo and selling tickets and watching trains disappear toward London.
He had lived in Grimsby-by-the-Water his whole life. He had never been anywhere else.
Tonight, he was not eating his soup because his grandmother was dying.
Catherine McAlphin was eighty-three years old. She had raised Luke since he was six, after his parents had gone to sea and never come back. She had taught him to read by candlelight, to mend his own shirts, to be kind even when kindness was not returned.
Now she lay in the back bedroom, breathing in shallow gasps, her hand cold and papery in Luke's own.
"Don't sit there staring," she had whispered earlier. "Go eat something."
"I'm not hungry."
"Liar."
He had smiled at that. She had always seen through him.
"Grandma," he said. "I don't know what to do without you."
"You'll figure it out," she said. "You're a McAlphin. We're stubborn."
She had closed her eyes then. She was still breathing. But barely.
Luke had come to the kitchen because he couldn't stand the quiet of the bedroom. But the kitchen was quiet too. The whole house was quiet. The whole world, it seemed, was holding its breath.
He looked at the soup. He looked at the window. Outside, the sky was dark and the stars were coming out.
And somewhere on the water, a ship called the Laali rocked gently at anchor, and a young woman with storm-cloud eyes stood at the bow and coughed into her sleeve and thought about nothing at all.
---
Author's Note:
These two are like two worlds, not yet touching.
But soon...
xxx
