On the fortified island of Copperhaven, in a private solar built from the wreck of a mighty Gardate galleon, Admiral Molly Arvah, Scarlet Moll, robber-queen of the Alloyed Isles, sprawled and ached. The windows overhead cut the midday sunlight into long, narrow slices, casting thin stripes of brightness across the great dark curve of her belly. They warmed her bare skin - she had long since given up on trying to find clothes that covered her comfortably. Besides, what was the point? There wasn't a soul on Copperhaven who didn't know by now that Scarlet Moll was heavy with child.
A throwaway night of passion, they whispered. A wayward seed that caught inside her. Rumour had it that even Molly, unmarried and somewhat infamous for her carnal appetites, didn't know who the father was. This was all true, and just as she had planned it. If nobody could be sure of the child's paternity, then it would be Molly's heir and Molly's alone, and she could establish a line of succession and strengthen her tenuous hold on the Isles.
She had tried her hardest not to let her impending motherhood slow her down. No voyages, of course - pregnant women were bad luck aboard a pirate ship - but she had a tight inner circle of captains at her command, and she met with them whenever she could, planning sorties and plotting out patrol routes. She still addressed the ragtag committee that passed for Copperhaven's ruling council, keeping the island at some approximation of peace, and presided over trials when the court of blade and flintlock wouldn't suffice.
But, as the months wore on, her body set her agenda with greater and greater insistency. For one, it weighed her down. Molly had never been a small woman - she ate well as a warrior queen, further filling out the ample curves her Vayyan blood had given her. But now her once-soft belly was round and tight as a drum, making her back ache whenever she was upright and keeping her thighs almost permanently apart. Her breasts, too, had grown from abundant to immense, threatening to break whatever hastily converted bodice she tried to keep them in; at rest, as she was now, she untied then and let them hang, thick dark nipples pointing slightly outward to the sides as her immense stomach nudged them apart. A thin, dark trail led from her inverted belly button down to the thick undergrowth of near-black hair between her thighs, which she'd given up on trimming. She could scarcely even reach her crotch, let alone see it well enough to be comfortable taking a blade to it.
And that lack of reach was causing her no end of other troubles. Pregnancy had stoked Molly's naturally prodigious libido into a raging wildfire deep in her core, one she could scarcely keep up with some days. Early on, she'd caught herself idly rubbing her clit through her breeches under the council table more than once, and soon had to switch to skirts exclusively to lessen the tantalising friction. When her belly had outgrown her arms, Ohra, her high priestess and closest confidante, had given her a rod of smooth stone, what sages would blushingly call a "fertility idol". She'd lost whole afternoons kneeling over it and fucking herself to exhaustion.
But even that wasn't always enough. Her cunt craved warmth and motion and life. It demanded a companion.
She had to be wary, of course. Though she'd tried to keep living her life and wielding her authority as she always had, she knew as well as anyone that her state made her vulnerable, and she'd tightened her selection of consorts to reflect that. Only her most trusted captains and officers were invited up to her solar now, and they all too often had duties of their own to attend to, elsewhere on Copperhaven or out at sea. She'd put out a summons for one of them an hour ago, but he was presumably occupied elsewhere; in the meantime, all Molly could do was stew in her lust.
Her clit throbbed beneath her long, loose skirt. Nothing made her more acutely aware of it than having it neglected. It forced itself to the front of her mind and refused to shift. Play with me, it murmured. Rub me and lick me and make me cum. Now.
And so there she lay, sweating and writhing and cursing under her breath, as her desperation mounted and she considered reaching for that little stone idol again, just to tide herself over, even if it was no substitute for the real thing. In fact, she was already hauling her swollen body towards the edge of the bed, clawing at the air just short of the rod, when the door swung open with a creak.
"Ma'am," the voice behind it bellowed. Petyr was the sergeant-at-arms of Molly's honour guard, but even he wouldn't dare actually enter her chambers uninvited. From the acoustics, she could tell he wasn't even looking at her.
Molly hauled herself half-upright in bed, bracing her shoulders against the headboard. "Aye," she called back.
"Captain Valdi has arrived," announced Petyr.
"Send him in."
"Ma'am, yes, ma'am."
A few heavy footfalls later, Captain Valdi stepped through the door into the solar, nudging the door closed behind him. Even the sight of him made Molly sigh with relief. Her salvation had arrived.
Everything about Captain Thomas Valdi seemed just a little unfinished, from the rough outline of his jaw to the too-neat square silhouettes of his fists. He wasn't much taller than Molly, and his frame was lean and wiry, far from a great physical specimen. But he carried himself with a clear, hard certainty that made him impossible to ignore, as though his mere presence cut a hole in the world. Eccentric, yes; a little unsettling, absolutely; but there was nobody Molly trusted more than Tom Valdi when the stakes were high, and nobody she would turn to sooner in her hour of need.
He began to salute, bringing his right fist to his left shoulder, but Molly waved a hand and he reversed the motion neatly.
"Tom," she said.
