If you were in the mood for a good yarn, you couldn't go far wrong asking Joshamee Gibbs. He had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of stories about almost anything and, as so often happens in life, the things that seemed the simplest rarely were. That battered old flask was just a case in point. Stand him a drink and he'd be only too happy to tell you its story, and no matter how unlikely it may seem you could be sure every word was nothing less than the gospel truth.

In The King's Head it had been a token of appreciation from a promising, if impecunious, young lieutenant back when he sailed under the King's flag. The gentleman in question had a particular weakness for cards, and the flask was a thank you for Gibbs' role in warning him off a crooked game set up in a particularly unfriendly port.

In The Crested Serpent it had been a gift from a fine woman, payment for turning a blind eye to her visits with a captain too complacent and indiscreet to worry about the disgruntled murmurings of his crew. The captain may have been beyond caring; but the fact she'd smuggled the flask, filled with brandy as rich and smooth as she was, under her petticoats meant that each golden mouthful, still warm from her skin, was more than enough incentive for the bosun to mollify the men.

In The Black Boar she hadn't been so highly born, but still had the same gleam in her eye. Spirited onto the ship when the captain was ashore on Admiralty business, she'd supplied good company and cheap gin to any man with coin enough to impress her. A woman on board may be bad luck (and this one certainly had been more than once), but never had her company or the gin failed to warm his heart.

In The Cat and Fiddle he'd found a younger audience. The newest crew members may have been barely more than children, but they'd grown up wild. Pickpockets and petty thieves since they could walk, it was little wonder they'd fallen into piracy. Despite this they still hung on the quartermaster's every word as he told them how it had been the only thing, apart from his life, he'd managed to escape the fearsome witch-queen of the Black Islands with. The boys' affected worldliness had only been belied by their wide-eyed silence when he explained just what part of her last suitor she'd had it made from.

It was only when he was in his cups he'd confess he didn't actually know its origins, but he'd heard tell it came from a triple-cursed ship. A ship whose very name brought nothing but bad luck to anyone who spoke it. It was said that her captain, a cruel and terrible abomination in God's eyes, had been killed when she'd floundered on a reef during a particularly vicious storm. This hadn't apparently stopped either him or his ship sailing that selfsame stretch of water these last one hundred years. The pirates had found her deserted and even though she'd been laden with goods they'd been too fearful to sack her. However one man, either too young or foolish to know better, pocketed the flask and he'd only lived long enough to regret it. Of course any talk of a curse was nonsense, but it was always best not to tempt fate.

Only Jack knew the truth of it. It had been a gift from a proud sister on the occasion of her younger brother's first trip to sea. An apple-cheeked girl, with a ready smile and a kind nature, who'd not survived to see him return. It wasn't a curse, or the stolen warmth of a noble woman's thigh, or even the spirit inside that made Gibbs keep it close; it was something much more important.