Crimson.

The name was spoken in English, German, Italian, Spanish and the mixed musical tongues of the slaves brought from Africa. The French, as was their way, added a touch of romantic milieu to the killer and called her La Belle Dame a Sanglant Cheveaux-the beautiful woman of bloody hair. It made for some middling poetry and the occasional three-verse song.

She inspired a variety of feelings in rogues of all sorts-at least during the course of the tales told on a heavy night of drinking, or while crouched beside a dying campfire… fascination, respect, fear, skepticism, and an angry, bitter lust.

A tiny creature she was, from what they said, but one with a strange hold on most men of the Caribbean Basin, both white and black alike. There was even some talk of a deposed marquis who dueled for her honor although he'd never so much as laid eyes on the lady of sanguine hair. As he thrashed in agony for over an hour, dying from a sword thrust through both lungs, he whispered her name with a beatific smile.

Perhaps it was true.

But one had to be wily-as crafty as she was-for she could be enlisted by anybody who matched her price, and you could never be certain whose employ she was in at any given time. In London, Barcelona, Berlin, and Paris there were such hirelings as this, and they were called confidential agents. Mercenary investigators who would, if paid well enough, help take care of obstacles and quandaries. Perhaps retrieving a jewel stolen from your mistress…or finding useful secrets about your enemies…or tracking down a lost son or corrupt business partner…or carrying cargo past the navies of foreign governments.

Rumor, gossip, fact and exaggeration all lent to a slowly-evolving myth.

This was Crimson, a dark-eyed corsair. La Belle Dame a Sanglant Cheveaux grinning across a floor of broken men, with the molten sun draping over her shoulders…and there were always writhing shadows in the depths of the dark waters she sailed.