[He looks over at her, uncertain. Most of his stories are macabre. None of them are appropriate for a good-hearted princess. There is one, though, that he has told no one as of yet. And he's not sure he wants to tell her, either. It's too close to the bone in some ways, yet it has been nagging at him for weeks, now---ever since he went back to read the Codex and the horrors on page 112. He begins in a halting voice:]

Not certain now's the time for me to tell of my adventures. But there was once a pirate named Kairavi. She was one of the most beautiful pirate ladies to sail the Indian Ocean. Possibly the world. Even the fabled Pirate Esmerelda could not match her in beauty. She hadn't always been a pirate, though, you see. She was once a young lady in a fine home in Bangalore. She had everything she wanted---was doted on, really. Praised for her beauty and cleverness.

[He clears his throat. Some parts of her story he had made up himself. There was so little he knew of her in the years before---and Teague had not been too forthcoming.]

But it was never enough, none of it. Had a wild streak about her---some called it madness, which made her parents worry, of course, and deny it straight up and down. But she was. She was mad. She had...a boldness about her, an appetite that bordered on sickness. And then she got into some trouble...with an English soldier.