Sabaody Archipelago.
Sunlight filtered through the gigantic boughs of the Yarukiman Mangrove, laying dappled coins of gold across the grass.
Soap-bubble orbs drifted through the air, prismatic and weightless. They rose, shimmered, then burst without a sound.
On a quiet islet far from the bustle, two men lounged with their backs against a tree's vast roots, drinking like it was any other afternoon.
Empty bottles sprawled in the grass. Roger tipped one back and gulped so hard his throat rolled, liquor streaking from the corner of his mouth to soak the front of his pink shirt.
Beside him, Silvers Rayleigh was the picture of manners by comparison. He held a cup, watching Roger swig with a helpless smile tugging at his lips.
"Hic." Roger let out a satisfied burp and tossed the bottle. It rang bright against the others.
He wiped his mouth, glanced around as if searching for something.
"Hey, Rayleigh." Roger elbowed his first mate. "Where's Shakky? Haven't seen her around."
Rayleigh went taut for a heartbeat. Without seeming to move, he shifted just enough to block Roger's line of sight toward the little bar in the distance, expression politely guarded.
"She is busy."
Roger blinked, then snorted, then doubled over laughing.
"Tch. I asked how an old friend is doing, and you act like I am here to rob the till." He ribbed, grin wicked. "Rouge is the best wife in the world. No one compares."
He said it like a man showing off his most precious treasure.
Rayleigh's wariness softened into a fond smile. He knew Roger meant every word.
Their smiles faded at the same instant. Both men lifted their heads, eyes narrowing toward the blue.
A white speck had appeared on the horizon.
It was ripping the sky open as it came, arrowing straight for their island at a speed that mocked reason.
"Kuhahahaha." Roger's mouth split in a grin bright with expectation. "Looks like he made it."
Rayleigh set his cup down and rose. The lenses of his glasses caught the gleam of that onrushing streak.
It was not a speck.
It was a long white wake that looked like it would split the heavens, and at the tip of that wake rode a pitifully small fishing boat.
Its hull groaned at the brutal speed, yet some unseen wave held it in a sheath and kept it steady as bedrock.
"That guy." Rayleigh's mouth twitched despite himself, watching a fishing skiff get bullied into flight by pure shockwave. "Old as he is, he still has to make an entrance."
Roger threw his head back and laughed. It was the laughter of a man thrilled by reunion.
"That is him. Kuhahahaha."
By then the flying skiff had reached the islet. The ringed shockwaves driving it blew apart, their job done.
Momentum carried the boat in a clean arc toward the grass.
Roger and Rayleigh did not so much as shift their feet.
Just before impact, Kael's foot tapped the deck.
Hum.
A soft pulse spread from the keel like an invisible air cushion.
The rickety skiff settled as lightly as thistledown.
A figure stood at the bow, coat falling back into place as the wind died.
Black hair. Golden eyes. A face all cocksure lines in the sun.
Kael Grylls.
He glanced at the bow and wrinkled his brows, faintly dissatisfied.
"Tch. Still too slow."
The lazy mutter drifted shoreward on the breeze and made Rayleigh's eye twitch again.
Roger only laughed louder. He sprang to his feet and waved hard.
"Oi, Kael. Any slower and I would have finished the barrel."
"You bastards." Kael bared a neat line of teeth. "You did not leave me a drop, did you."
"Why not bring a Sea King along and we can throw a feast."
Roger slapped Kael's back with force enough to crack rock.
Kael swayed, the turf sinking under his boots. He grinned through his teeth and rolled his shoulder, answering in kind.
"Then leave some rum next time. What else am I supposed to serve our guest."
He dropped between them, grabbed an unopened bottle at Roger's feet, bit out the cork, and took a long pull. It was as crude and cheerful as anything Roger would do.
"Kuhahahaha." Roger's laughter boomed. "That is more like it. The three of us should always be like this."
Rayleigh could only shake his head, smiling despite himself.
He nudged his glasses and asked, "Any word from Jabba? Could you reach him, Roger?"
Roger's laughter hitched. He scrubbed a hand through his hopeless hair and pulled a face of theatrical trouble.
"Tried. The line will not connect. He is probably down in some trench arm wrestling a Sea King, or shut in on a mountain no bird bothers to foul."
Kael, inwardly: caves have terrible signal. Checks out.
The ease between the three of them made the air feel young again.
It was like a thousand nights before, on deck and by campfire and in enemy waters, drinking without restraint and talking without shame.
Sunlight fell through the mangrove leaves in coins of gold. Time itself seemed to hold still.
After a final bit of ribbing, Roger quieted.
He folded his legs under him and sat straight. The grin ebbed from his face, replaced by a calm neither of the others had ever seen.
He took a fresh bottle, yet instead of guzzling poured with care. One cup for himself, refills for Rayleigh and Kael.
That mood, the one that meant a decision no force on earth could move, wiped the lingering smiles from the other two.
Whether in tavern roar, cannon thunder, or ocean gale, whenever Roger wore that look, it meant he had chosen.
"I have decided."
Roger's voice was not loud, yet it cut clean through breeze and birdsong.
"I am going to turn myself in to the Navy."
The air froze.
The bottle in Kael's hand halted at his lips, amber liquor trembling at the throat. Rayleigh's fingers tightened on his cup until the veins stood in his hand.
"What did you say."
Rayleigh's voice was low, like something he was holding back was trying to break out.
He did not look at Roger. He stared down at the liquor in his cup, his always-composed face scrubbed blank.
"Roger."
Rayleigh's head snapped up. The seal on his restraint split.
"Do you know what you are saying. We are pirates. If we die, we die at sea. What is surrender supposed to be."
"This is not surrender, Rayleigh." Roger shook his head. He looked from one to the other, and his eyes went gentle. "It is the best curtain call I can find."
He let out a breath. There was weariness in it, the kind that finds men at the end, but there was also a defiance that refused to dim.
"We saw Laugh Tale's answer. It does not belong to this era."
There was wistfulness in his tone, and more than that a kind of peace.
"My time is short. You both know it. I will not rot in some nameless bed, carved to pieces by pain, and slip away without a sound. I will not take that coward's ending."
He straightened. The force that crowned a Pirate King rose off him again, as if it might poke a hole in the sky.
"I will not fade out."
His mouth pulled wide in that fearless, mad grin.
"I will make the whole world hear me. I will use my death to open a brand-new age."
Kael kept silent. He watched the face of a man burning with the last light of life and let the hurt in his chest settle into a bitter understanding.
Roger had never been a man fate could place. He would live like summer lightning. He would die like thunder.
"I want those adrift on the endless sea, the lost and the afraid, to know that the ocean's end is not emptiness."
Roger raised his cup. Light flashed in his eyes as if he already saw the waves to come.
"I will tell them that I left everything this world holds there."
"My curtain fall will be the overture to a new era."
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