“Excuse me.” 

He frowns. The snapping still rings loud in his ears.

“I don’t know where you got your information from, but they must have been mistaken. Our last Captain stepped down in the midst of the Alcedi contest of ritual combat for the Captain’s chair. I entered as one of the competitors, and…”

Come to think of it, he didn’t actually fight any ritual combat. Of course he didn’t. That would’ve meant disaster for sure. How could he possibly fight entire warbands? How could he [i]win?[/i] What had he done instead?

“...and I asserted that they had no legal right to fight me, as I was the duly appointed Captain, and they hadn’t made the proper offerings to clarify their intent to Artemis. Then, yes, that bought me enough time until the incident on the bridge, where I…saved the ship by asserting that right again. Hrm.”

He quietly removes the ornate Captain’s hat. Runs a shaking finger on the edge of the intricate badge of office.

“My apologies. I, everything happened so quickly, I’d forgotten [i]how[/i] exactly it happened. I thought saving the ship was what convinced the crew I was suitable for the job, but you’re absolutely right. I just took the job as it’d been offered, and held on long enough for everyone to accept it. I didn’t think…” Not quite true. He was thinking. He’d done an awful lot of thinking. Just never quite in this direction. 

“It was by a vote, at the start, since there were only the four of us. I didn’t want it. Alexa didn’t want it. The Princess wanted to be Champion. Vasilia offered, and we agreed. But how was anybody else to know that? Galnius and their defectors, the Secretary from the Eater of Worlds, the Hermetics, the Coherent, the Alcedi, they all came on later. All they’d know is that I’d claimed authority from the previous Captain. Then we were straight to Endless Azure Skies, and - well, you were there for the rest of it.”

The rest of it. A desperate flight. A hard decision. The horrors of war. There is quiet enough for both of them to remember, before he speaks again.

“But you are wrong about the Princess. She’s on this journey because she [i]doesn’t[/i] want to kill her mother. I don’t think she’d say it as such, but it’s the entire reason she’s chosen this journey. She wants a free world. A world where the stars are open to all, however they want to see them. She won’t get that, so long as Nero holds the throne. Nor will she get it if she wins that throne in a bloody revolution.” No one would forget that her reign was bought by blood. No one would forget the lesson, that Empresses weren’t as immortal as they seemed. Besides, the princess who could drive a spear through her mother’s chest couldn’t also cling to her beautiful dreams. 

“So here we are, on a journey to Gaia, on a gamble from Hades, with a wish as the prize if we should succeed where a few hundred crews before us have failed. The one way to get what she wants, without driving a spear through Nero’s heart.”

He gives a little huff. “Can you imagine, picking [i]this[/i], just to get rich?”