#nero as a pirate slash mercenary instead? why not

[aglaecan]

@imbricare​​ said: “It’s always easiest to let yourself be governed.” / eleanor @ the bastard  ||  ursula k le guin starters

Nassau was a port like many other ports the man had visited. It was loud, loud with a riot of voices speaking a riot of tongues – English, Spanish, Italian, French, Arabic, Portuguese, and others, less readily identified, in the mouths of the Africans laboring among its dust-packed streets. Several of the European tongues he spoke fluently; the others, only well enough to know that much of what was being shouted or laughed crudely was, by and large, profanity. Sailors were alike the world over.

Sailors, and pirates.

The man, whose name was not actually Nero, had docked his ship in many ports like this one, indeed. St. Mary’s Island, Porto Farina, Annaba… others, smaller, some with no name at all, some whose very existence was a secret known only to those who already knew of it. Nero was a man who knew many secrets.

His own crew were out there, adding their various dialects of Italian to the Babel of tongues riot in the streets; his own was Florentine Italian, Dante’s Italian, and even speaking in English, as he did now, his accents were refined, befitting a man whose ancestors had rubbed elbows with the Medici, with Boccaccio, with Da Vinci. His crew were at their leisure, as they always were when their ship docked, spending their wages on gambling and rum and whores; but Nero, as usual, had set his sights a little higher. He was their captain; and he was the source and wellspring of all that coin they were pissing into what passed for gutters in Nassau-town now.

So he’d come to the woman known to be the woman to come to, a circular piece of logic but one which followed well enough. There were people like her in every pirate port, those with their fingers stuck deep into every pie, with their eyes on every piece of business done both above and below board. But Eleanor was different. Eleanor had ambitions. And so to this woman, he had made an offer. Her little empire here was unstable, reliant on too many things which could change like sand sucked away by the tide, altering everything. He had explained to her the history of Italian condottieri, and offered… to serve as such, protecting her borders. For pay, of course. (And also for the fun of it, and because he himself might find advantage here….)

“Says the woman,” he replied, laughing quietly, “who lives in a pirate port, who has made her coin and her name by smuggling and fencing, who deals daily with pirates, those who live outside the law and are governed by none by themselves.” And their captains, of course. His head tilted, and he smiled at her; she was quite pretty, really. “You would not be my governor, signorina, but my employer… at least so long as it is convenient for us both.” Nero was not a man to be leashed; but for coin, he’d fight, yes.