Kennedy has it as well. Jack sees it shine bright and bold as Kennedy's hair, blond as dried bones in the sunlight. Worse though is that the boy has what Jack lacks, has ability, talent, and it's like a flame of defiance to Jack, a blazing conflagration that ignites Jack's anger, bitterness like bile in his throat.

The others know better. They're silent and supplicant and nothing to cause Jack to worry. They've learned. But Kennedy is a fresh faced boy who knows too much and nothing, and soon will know only what Jack Simpson teaches him.

The rest of the men look elsewhere when Jack comes into the room. They know to turn their gazes away as Jack looks the new boy over, sizing him up. Kennedy's nearly a man - fifteen at best guess - and Jack knows he's the crucial age. Clayton is the only one that meets Jack's eyes, but even he looks away when Jack sneers. Clayton's less than a man, he's a weak one, a coward, and Jack has no time for him. Not now when there's a boy about that needs to know the way of the world.

And Justinian may be Keene's ship, but it's Jack's world. The ports change, but nothing else does. The rest of them turn away, but Kennedy stares at him with defiant blue and Jack smiles back, the curl of his lip like the sharp edge of an unfurling sail.

There are tried and true tactics that Jack knows in ways he'll never know spherical geometry, but that serve him better than navigation ever will. They're the ways to break and bend spirit and will, to mold men. He's mastered the techniques and owns them all.

Except he can't break the boy down. Strop and knife and rope and fists haven't done it and Jack senses a change on the wind, a sense of challenge in the air, a hint of mutiny in the men that look to him as the law of Justinian.

There's laughter in the air at Jack's expense, and short of his hands at Kennedy's throat, Jack knows no way to stop it until he hears the men going on about shore leave, about coin and whores and Kennedy's real chance to become a man.

And then Jack knows. And wonders why he didn't think of it before.

The time comes in the dawning, the night fading to day through the filter of the gray smoke of fog coming off the sea. You can't see Spithead or the other side of the ship in the thickness, but Jack knows the boy's there. He can sense him, feel him like a blade to his back, a thorn in his side.

Clayton says something to Kennedy and he laughs, the sound like a shot in the quiet. Jack walks over to them, the ship moving beneath his feet like a partner, dancing on the waves as his hand closes around the nape of Kennedy's neck. "Did I hear you laughing, boy?"

Clayton freezes, folding in on himself like a sail devoid of wind, and Kennedy straightens, standing up to Jack and turning those vivid blue eyes on him, the corners tight with something that tells Jack the boy knows, knows that whatever it is that's come before is behind him now, as distant as the unseen shore.

"I certainly wouldn't presume to tell you what you heard, Jack." There's mockery in the boy's tone, damned defiance that burns like rope on flesh.

Jack's hand clenches around Kennedy's queue, his fist tight as he jerks the boy's head back. "Seems to me, Kennedy, that you need a lesson in respect."

"Seems to me, Jack," he's bold, this one and Jack wants to break him into little pieces and pick his teeth with them, "that you're the wrong man to teach it to me."

"I think you'll find, boy, that you're very, very wrong."

There's no such thing as silence, not even in the ghost of a fog. The ship makes noises of its own, and men move and breath and live and die in every second. No one is completely still.

But here, there's quiet. The rats and the waves are relentless and invisible in the dark and Jack matches their rhythm, as dark as the sea, as vicious as the vermin. He spreads and spears the boy beneath him, bruising death-white flesh in blues and blacks, purples, greens and ochers.

He pushes harder, thrusts deeper, striving past ambition and knowledge to fear, to need. Kenned embraces the table like a lover, Jack's sacrifice to aborted ability and Jack searches for words, for deeds that will crack the veneer, shatter the becalmed surface of Kennedy's expression.

He finds them in Kennedy's distant gaze, in the shimmering anger that floods over, wetness dampening the surface, spiking Kennedy's lashes into dark clumps in the lantern light.

Jack moves his hands deliberately, slowly. Kennedy will not break, he knows that now from the silence that's met every thrust and jibe, every beating and threat. He will not break with the snap of bone, but with the soft, gentle stroke of a lover. He runs his thumbs up Kennedy's spine, feeling the ladder of bone, feeling the shudder of something that brings the boy back to the present, back where he belongs.

"Knew you'd be agreeable, boy," Jack purrs under his breath, the faint pressure of his thumbs splintering the man Kennedy wants to be into pieces at the feet of the boy he is. "And now you'll never forget, will you? You'll know your place." His breath ghosts over the crisp white of Kennedy's shirt, the dark ribbon of his queue. "Beneath Jack Simpson, with your legs spread."

Jack leaves him there and knows no one will disturb him. Leaves Kennedy with whatever ambition and desire he had crumpled at his feet like his breeches. Jack moves into the sunlight and inhales the sharp scent of the sea, salt and wet and decay that stings his nostrils and clears his head, but doesn't quite wash everything away.