The map on his hands

The bargain

At sixteen he crewed the Thresher when a storm took it apart and drowned most of the men on board. What he did next is the reason there is a Pirate Lord at all: he bargained with the Sea God, and came out of the water with a living map of every coastline in the world moving across his hands. He learned the price when he got back to Skull's Bay. His mother and his sister were already dead. That is the whole man — the power is genuinely enormous, and it was paid for in advance by people who did not agree to it.

Two assassins and a chain

Arobynn sends Celaena Sardothien and Sam Cortland to collect on him for three dead assassins, and Rolfe uses the meeting to reveal what Arobynn is actually doing: entering the slave trade, with the pair of them sent to secure it. He needles Celaena about the disguise he has already seen through, and warns her about Sam, which is the closest he comes to kindness in that book. Then the two of them free every captive in the bay, start a brawl that swallows the city, and go for the Ship-Breaker — the great chain sealing the harbour.

Signed at knifepoint

They duel him at the chain and win. Overpowered, he signs two documents Celaena has brought with her: one ending the slave-trade arrangement with Arobynn, and one binding Skull's Bay against it. It is worth noticing what he does with that afterwards, which is: keep it. Nothing forces him to honour a contract signed at knifepoint by two teenagers. He honours it anyway.

The alliance

Books later, Rowan and Dorian arrive ahead of Aelin to court him against Erawan and get nowhere. Then Aelin turns up posing as Celaena, with Lysandra wearing the queen's face, and they spar their way through a negotiation while his hand-map quietly shows Morath's fleet already in the water. When Erawan's sea-wyverns hit the bay and Lysandra goes into the harbour as a Mycenian sea dragon out of his own people's legends, the argument ends. His fleet leaves Skull's Bay with Aelin's armada.