Free Blow Me Down by Katie MacAlister

world.
    “Oh, no, you don’t,” I told myself, glancing out the opened door to where Bart stood in the hall giving orders to his men. “You are not getting used to this place! It’s not real. You have a daughter and a home and a real life. Think, Amy, think—there’s got to be a way out of here other than killing someone.”
    I was still desperately trying to come up with another solution when Bart entered the room, followed by one of his men. He thrust a foil and scabbard at me.
    “Oh, thank you. I like foils.” I strapped the leather belt around my waist, adjusting the scabbard until I could withdraw the foil easily.
    “Wear this. It’ll mark ye as one of me crew,” he said, shoving a green and white striped bandana in my hands. “As I’ve told ye, to be a full member of me crew, blood must be spilled. Yers in addition to Corbin’s.”
    “What?” I shrieked, jumping back when his cohort moved toward me, a wicked-looking curved-blade knife glinting in his hand. I pulled my foil and took a self-defensive stance.
    Bart cocked an eyebrow at me, but his eyes laughed at my outraged indignation. “ ’Tis just a little nick Maggot is wantin’ to make. Just a little bloodlettin’ to act as yer bond.”
    “Well, my word is going to have to suffice as a bond, because there’s no way I’m letting him stab me with that thing. It looks positively riddled with tetanus.”
    “Aye, well . . . I suppose we can hold off with this part of the crew initiation until ye’ve completed yer appointed task,” Bart said graciously, waving his crewmate out.
    I waited until the door closed behind him before turning to Bart and saying, “There’s not going to be any completion of my appointed task, Bart. As I’ve said at least a half dozen times before, I’m not going to kill Corbin.”
    “He’s a murderin’ thief,” Bart answered, leaning his hip against the desk, his arms crossed over his chest. Bart was clad in a dark blue captain’s jacket, thigh-high boots, black pants, and a shiny gold earring. He looked like a pirate off the top of a Disney float, perfect in every way. I had the worst urge to muss him up a bit. I wasn’t a big history expert, but I knew enough about the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to know this sanitized version of pirateness wasn’t strictly kosher. To be honest, I much preferred Corbin’s scruffiness to this dandified version.
    “Look, I’m not going to do it, okay? So let’s talk compromise. I want to be an officer in your crew. Aside from killing a man who may or may not be innocent, what else can I do to achieve that?”
    “Nothin’. Ye kill him, or ye don’t join the crew.”
    “What is it about ‘I’m not killing anyone’ that you don’t understand?” I asked, annoyed with the shrill tone my voice had taken, but losing my patience. Honestly, were death and mayhem all these people thought about?
    “What is it about ‘ye must’ that ye don’t ken?” Bart countered.
    “I’m not doing it,” I said abruptly, crossing my own arms over my chest.
    “Ye won’t be joinin’ me crew, then.”
    “I’m crying in my beer over that,” I said, admittedly flip, but I wasn’t in the mood to censor myself.
    “Ye won’t be makin’ officer, either,” Bart said, picking up a dagger and fingering the tip of it.
    “Big deal. I’m not one hundred percent sure that will help me, anyway.”
    “And ye won’t be goin’ home,” he said, completely ignoring my comments.
    That stopped me just as I was about to tell him where he could stick the dagger. “Er . . . just how dead do you need Corbin?”
    He tossed the dagger up and snatched it out of the air while it was still a spinning blur. “I want him removed from the Seventh Sea. Does that answer your question?”
    “Yes, it does,” I answered, my mind chewing over the loophole I’d been hoping to find. Maybe there was a way I could contact the game’s creator and ask to have the character of Corbin deleted from the