Not the fainting kind, p.1
Not the Fainting Kind, page 1
Will Soulsby-McCreath
Not The Fainting Kind
Not That Kind Of Dandy 2
First published by nopoodles everything books 2024
Copyright © 2024 by Will Soulsby-McCreath
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
First edition
ISBN: 978-1-917179-01-0
This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
Find out more at reedsy.com
For those of us who never seem to be enough.
Contents
Content Warning & Edition Notes
Also By Will Soulsby-McCreath
Not The Ignorant Kind - A Short Story
1. Prologue: I Won’t Even Need A Sword
2. 1: I Will Bring You To Your Knees
3. 2: Quite The Unorthodox Tribute
4. 3: The Voice Of Davy Jones Himself
5. 4: A Cross Between A Quaint Detective And A Poorly Dressed Valet
6. 5: Not To Make It Sound Too Much Like A Date
7. 6: At Risk Of Drowning
8. 7: Not Enough Of A Pirate
9. 8: Do You Have An Invitation?
10. 9: How Did Our Hummingbird Find Exeunt From A Pirate Ship?
11. 10: Simply Collateral Damage
12. 11: Seems To Be A Lot Of That Going Around
13. 12: Ruining, Ruinous, Ruiner, Ruined
14. 13: It Is My Decision
15. 14: Oh. Oh No.
16. 15: Lost At Sea
17. 16: Do I Look Any Straighter To You?
18. 17: You Seem Besieged By Those
19. 18: What Are You Doing Here?
20. 19: Can’t Risk Getting Caught
21. 20: Lie
22. 21: I Don’t Know If I Can Go Back
23. 22: He Thought I Was Dead… He Should Have Known Better
24. 23: Take Your Hands Off My Sister
25. 24: Damaged Merchandise
26. 25: Mercy Is You All Over
27. 26: Now
28. 27: Admiral Adelhard
29. 28: Unransomable, Unwanted
30. 29: Fool On Me
31. Epilogue: To Claim A Pirate Lord
Can’t Wait For More?
Not The Wanting Kind - A Short Story
Acknowledgements
Preview From Upcoming Fantasy Series
About the Author
Content Warning & Edition Notes
Content Warning:
Moderate depictions of violence and injury, scenes of consensual intimacy.
For more detailed content warnings please visit
WillSoulsbyMcCreath.com
I have shared two bonus short stories in this edition:
Not The Ignorant Kind at the beginning of this book is Tao’s perspective about the mystery Nat presents to him and is a great recap of the previous novel for those who may want or need it.
Not The Wanting Kind at the end of this book is Tao’s perspective of some of the chapters.
A quick note about pronouns:
If you are unfamiliar with neo-pronouns, they do appear in this novel.In particular you’ll come across the singular they, as well as others like ey, eir, em and xe, xyr, xem.
Also By Will Soulsby-McCreath
The Guardian Cadet Series
Merry Arlan: Breaking The Curse
Merry Arlan: Finding The Heir
Kitty Hughes: An Unexpected Meeting (short story)
Welcome To Humanity
Inter-Planetary Alliance Novels
Unlicensed Delivery
Not That Kind Of Dandy
Not The Fighting Kind
Not The Fainting Kind
Not That Kind Of Dandy Omnibus
Not The Ignorant Kind - A Short Story
Tao’s perspective of his first meeting with Nat and the puzzle they present him with.
Tao didn’t like to not know things. Mysteries could be fun to unravel, but only because Tao was already so skilled at discovering things people wanted to keep hidden. Training as a physician had only increased Tao’s desire to know all, see all, understand all. And it had given him tools by which to gather extra information. Knowledge about bodies that told all kinds of stories. A flush here, a stance there. Between that extra knowledge and Tao’s way with words, most people decided to give in and tell him their secrets. He would find out one way or another anyway, why not mitigate the potential damage and scrutiny by telling on themselves? Which was probably why this particular puzzle has so thoroughly claimed his attention.
In one of the many offices he had in a building too big for one simple man to live, but that was of an appropriate size and stature for someone in his position, Tao had laid all his clues across a low table. He scoured the notes, the pieces of a life he had managed to gather, what little of it there was to find. Part of the problem was that he had so little to base his search on in the first place. It didn’t matter the tools or the people at his disposal if the only certainties he had were low enough to count on one hand.
Worse still, almost all of it had come in one fell swoop. Further interactions with the source of the puzzle had yielded so little information that Tao almost felt he was swimming against a riptide. It would be easier to let it go. But Tao wasn’t that kind of person.
His first puzzle piece had been an accent. But not just the accent, the choice of words too. It had been clear from the first sentence, “I’m a tad low on funds.”
In the bright, relentless sunlight they had narrowed their eyes, eyebrows drawn low in an attempt to see past it. If they stayed out for much longer with that peach toned skin, they would burn in those squint lines. They looked different out here compared to when he had seen them in the tavern a few days earlier. Not just for the sheepish smile, but so many other things too. Their stance, their attitude. None of that happy confidence showed here and now in the marketplace. And wasn’t that interesting.
The way they said those words, though. Tad. Low on funds. It all added up to a person of high society. This was a person not used to asking for favours. A person used to having enough money for the things they desired.
The way their mouth formed the words told Tao all too easily that Endrish was their first language. Which could have been more useful, had Enderand not conquered half the known world at this point. They could be from anywhere with an accent like that.
The name had been easy to find too. At least a first name. He’d admitted to not having seen them before. Met with the easy agreement of a simple, “No.”
“I’m Tao,” he had offered.
“Nat.” Could be short for something. But the way they said it, the way they later responded to it didn’t match that. Usually people with nicknames carried an air of apprehension. Constantly on edge, waiting for someone to expand said nickname into its fuller version. Nat didn’t do that. They introduced their first name casually, more casually than they probably should have considering the situation they were in at the time. Still, Nat as a name wasn’t particularly popular so it should have helped.
It hadn’t.
Tao also had a ship name. Not just the one they had, as it turned out, been captured to. That one had been easily found, though reluctantly given as part of their introductions.
“What ship are you with?” he had asked after hearing their name, filing it away. It was the kind of question he would ask any newcomer to his port. Made all the more relevant and important by Nat’s obviously ill-fitting clothes and interrupted stance. They held themself awkwardly, but Tao couldn’t tell if they were hurt or simply on the run.
They hadn’t responded. Worse still, they had frozen. A wide-eyed little fawn in the middle of wolf territory. All pirates could sense a weakness like that. And something about Nat, even then, said they should have known better than to do something so foolish as display their fear.
Tao had reassured, placated. After all, he always found these things out. He didn’t need Nat to tell him. And the guard they had run from interrupting their conversation, face chilli red with rage only confirmed Tao’s thoughts. He didn’t need them to tell. He found out.
Not only was Nat with Poseidon’s but they were a prisoner.
Poseidon’s was a particular kind of ship. They liked to skirt the edge of the Pirate Code like it was a blade to walk upon.
Playing with boundaries was one thing. Poseidon’s took it to an all new level. Which explained why Tao had involved himself quite so intricately. He’d snapped at the crewman about letting prisoners wander free about his port.
Nat had slumped at his side. Defeated. Depressed. And how interesting it had been, to watch the wind fall from their sails as if they hadn’t been obviously blowing them with a straw. To see all the thousand possibilities flittering around them crumple to the ground like mosquitos in a sudden rain.
So Tao had involved himself further. He stole them. Temporarily. Wanting to see how much he could find out. What a fool he had been. He should have let them go then and there. Not started himself down this path.
&n bsp; But he had been sunk on this –on them– since that day Aleksei had brought them into the tavern. Seeing the way the red-haired stranger had transformed from shy, nervous even, into a part of the action of the tavern. The way they had lit up at being invited to dance, to share in the shanty with the other pirates. To believe Tao had felt any other way would be a lie.
For that temporary rescue he had been rewarded with yet more tidbits of information. Confirmation that Nat was a member of high society. Implication that their family was in some kind of trouble. The knowledge that they were unwanted. That they had been hurt. And not just by pirates. He still couldn’t escape the image of that moment of weakness where every piece of carefully curated persona had faded away to reveal a young person convinced the world was made entirely of pain.
“Ultimately, if you want to hurt me you will. That’s just how it works. People justify it but there are lines they will cross and lines they won’t. I have almost no control over it. If you want to hurt me, you will, my scrabbling to stay safe doesn’t really change anything except where the lines lie.”
The problem with Nat, and the puzzle they presented, was it, and they, were too confusing. And too intriguing for it. One moment they were the blushing liege, turning away to provide privacy to a mere caress of the face. The next, they asked frank questions like, “Did you love him?” as if it weren’t a monumental sort of ask. As if to answer wouldn’t be world shattering. Power imbalancing. As if such questions were easy.
After that, after reluctantly returning them to the person who wished to hold them for ransom, he had found the ship Nat had been on before their capture by pirates. Poseidon’s quartermaster had been exceedingly forthcoming. He always was. Aleksei…
Nat had been captured from The Valiant. Naval ship for sure, even if he hadn’t figured that out for himself already.
They couldn’t have been aboard ships at all for more than a year. Their hair too soft, their enjoyment of food too fresh. They weren’t resigned to a life at sea. So he’d used his contacts and influence to fish out the last few years of The Valliant’s records.
Now, knelt on the mat at his squat dark wood table, he checked over them again, knowing there was nobody who could possibly have been Nat on the lists he had managed to find. Barely any N’s at all. Nobody with a Nat in their name. Let alone record of someone whose official, legal name was Nat. But the last set of records were long gone, lost to that boarding that had brought Nat into his life.
When he wanted a positive spin, he considered it useful to back up his hypothesis that Nat hadn’t been at sea long when they first met. When he felt defeated, it was more useless. It told him nothing about Nat at all.
Tao hated nothing so much as useless and unrelated pieces of information. Hated that it had to be him that was the problem. Not quick enough to put it together. A patient presenting with symptoms that didn’t make sense and he not able to fix it. Attempts to find a root cause that resulted in more theorising and less discovery and the entire time the patient was worsening.
His intent focus on the puzzle of Nat was taking time away from his duties. He wasn’t playing the game half as well as he had used to, but that first time Nat had turned up in his receiving room after being voted in as captain of what was now named Mercy’s Myth. That first time he had seen them after their fight…
They had strode in with Aleksei at their side. A Deity and their worshipper all decked out in matching attire. Bronze thread glittered, complimenting their bright red hair, even if it clashed just a little with their pale, peachy skin.
Tao had found himself out of his chair without even realising he’d stood. He walked around them, taking in everything about the way they had chosen to present themself. The version of themself they wanted to show the world. It matched so neatly with what Tao had expected, so neatly with what Tao had offered them when he had made clothes to replace the aged and ill-fitting atrocities he’d first seen them in.
He’d almost been proud.
And then they’d snapped at him, “I am not a carousel to be circled over and over.”
He’d fired back, “Then why are you dressed like one?”
He’d expected laughter. It hadn’t come. Still too wrapped up in the self-deprecation and fear. Sourness fizzled in the air, lemon juice blasting out of the squeezed fruit.
While Nat had become more confident, more taunting, more… piratical than Tao could ever have imagined them to be, he didn’t trust it.
That soft, weak, lonely dandy couldn’t fool him with shiny clothes and sharp words. Tao was the Pirate Lord of Shenai. He had been voted in by his people to protect them. To hold the visitors at their port to the Pirate Code. He couldn’t risk betraying that trust and, if Nat would not tell him their loyalties, their allegiance, their origins, then he would find out for himself.
But not today apparently. The papers strewn across his desk showed no new insight. No sudden inspiration struck him as he, once again, traced an approximation of that mysterious tattoo on their forearm.
The paper felt nothing like Nat’s smooth, soft skin under his fingers. Nothing like the warmth of their body pressed close to his. Nothing like the trust they had shown him in such a brief instance. He had broken their trust back then. Too nosy. Too insistent.
Tao had never been one for simple pleasure to turn into something more serious. He was the Pirate Lord; he couldn’t afford to split his loyalties like that. The closest he had ever come to serious had proven that to him more clearly than anything else could have. Aleksei had been torn between his loyalty to his captain and his affection for Tao. It had been easier for all involved for Tao to cut him loose. After all, better to have the hurt under his control, better to make the hurt happen when he was prepared to deal with it, rather than the hurt of a betrayal. Rather than finding out whose side Aleksei would ultimately fall on. Better to choose to let go of that care and affection than to find out you were the one who cared more.
But somehow Tao had fallen prey to that same problem in Nat. A new variant for sure, but the same basic problem. He seemed to care. More than he should. And he needed to know who they had been before he met them before that care could turn to anything else. He needed that barrier. He needed to keep himself and his people safe.
A knock called his attention to the door. “Enter,” he commanded.
Xiran slipped through the door with smooth and graceful movement. In her hands she held a folded piece of paper. She spoke in Shenai. “I think I have something for you.”
“You think?”
She nodded.
“Is it not addressed to me?”
“It is not.”
“But you think it is for me anyway?”
She held out the paper, hovering by the door as if afraid of what Tao’s reaction might be. As if reluctant to hand over the very thing she had entered the room to bring him.
Tao stood, hand outstretched. The paper was soft, clearly of high quality. Heavy in an awkward way, weighted unevenly. Tao’s fingers brushed a wax seal, a family crest embellished upon the ruby deposit. The same colour as Nat’s hair.
He flipped the paper over. The handwriting was flourishing. A dip pen in pure black ink with enough practise to leave no sign of smudging, even on the widest and most decorative loops. His stomach went cold at the words themselves, fingers clamping tight to the paper.
Xiran was right to have been afraid to bring this to him. Just as she had been right that he needed to see it. This was the key that unlocked the puzzle of Nat.
Their family wasn’t in dire straits. The reason Nat couldn’t have been ransomed back was this.
“Thank you, Xiran. That will be all for now.”
She slipped from the room as smooth and quietly as she had entered, leaving him alone with the letter addressed oh so carefully.
Tao touched fingers to his collarbone, to the scar that the Admiral had branded him with when he was a youngster on his first ship. The thing that had pushed him into medicine in the first place. A scar that had never healed right. Never would. The piece of himself that would always carry that horrible run in with that Admiral with the voice of Davy Jones himself.
