"I have no mother" she retorted icily, detaching her arm from his. "I am a daughter of the bloody handed gods and carries out their will.

Her lips had pulled back, baring kitten-sharp filed teeth, her nostrils flaring.

The man didn't seem at all unnerved. "Your mother would be disappointed to hear it," he said. "I have a message from her."

"A message?" She snorted and crossed her arms over her chest.
She almost spat out the question, asking whether it was from beyond the grave then, but her mother was still useful.

As alive she was a force of nature. As dead, just another dead pirate.

Death was for enemies.

"She found a way back," the Admiral explained. "She wants to speak to you. I think-- and I'm not completely certain-- but I think it has to do with your inheritance."

She narrowed her eyes, stepping close to the old man. Close enough to sniff as if she had been an animal, or capable of sniffing out whether he told the truth or not.

Unfortunately, what he had said could not be dismissed out of hand.

"Why wouldn't she contact me directly then?" She stepped back, tilting her head to the side like a cat surveying dinner.

"Because she is a dead woman, inhabiting the only suitable body she could find, and that body is not at her disposal to move as she would wish," the Admiral replied. He looked to her, matching the motions of her head, like a snake surveying a hungry cat.

She pursed her lips, frowning deeply. "Then I demand that you take me to her. If she truly has clawed her way back from the beyond she should not be at the mercy of unbelievers. But be warned, old man, if you are playing games with me your demise will be spoken of in hushed whispers for generations."

She was making an effort to seem as intimidating as her mother, but to tell the truth, she was not insane enough for that.

"I somehow doubt anyone would remember my demise as being particularly singular," the older man quipped to himself. "Your mother is in Mercer," he explained. "It's a ways off. You'll come with me?"

She mulled that over for a few moments, then nodded. "It would be unsuitable to bring my ship that close to Aquitanian waters. Yours will have to do." Perhaps she was sounding dismissive, but she was a captain in her own right after all.

"You will be rewarded for your troubles." She did not know what the old man wanted yet, he walked like navy but smelled of snakes and plots.

He smiled at her, cool and slow, and his blue eyes glinted. "That's not necessary," he assured her. "Meet me at the docks tomorrow, dawn. We'll be on our way."