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That was twelve years ago, and the boy had been six years old, sitting on a barrel in a tavern on an island so small it didn't appear on any chart, eating rice and listening. He had a scar under his left eye and a wide-brimmed hat that had belonged to someone braver than him, and he understood almost none of what was being said, and he believed every word of it. That was the thing about the Pirate King's final speech — it was not meant for admirals or scholars or kings; it was meant precisely for boys like him, in taverns like this, with nothing to their names and everything to dream.

Now he was eighteen, his boat was four planks and a sail, and the Grand Meridian lay somewhere beyond the horizon, patient and enormous and waiting. The chicken had died.