“They owe us money.” Ransom finished for him.
“Yes,” he nodded in agreement, “that.”
“Well, the boy is upstairs. The ogre and the girl are elsewhere.” The woman’s vapid smile never wavered. “But they’ll all be dead in the morning.” She informed them calmly.
“Ah.” He nodded. “You know, I never liked them anyway.”
“We know all about them and why they’re here.” The strange woman made her way into their cell, looking completely at ease. This fact also made Uriah tense. Generally, bureaucrats did not feel comfortable in prisons among killers, even if they were an Adithian and had an armed guard watching their back. “But I’m afraid despite their best efforts, my employers have been unable to find out much about you, Captain.”
“Great men always have the shortest biographies.” He told her simply.
“No,” she shook her head, “you miss my point. In a field where dozens of prominent personalities are household names, no one knows you. You are a minor figure, responsible for things more accurately classified as annoyances than anything else. No one has any idea who you are and you’re liable for an almost meaningless fraction of incidents when compared to other pirates roaming the seas. To be frank, you seem to have had a rather unsuccessful career.”
He took on a wise tone. “Ah, but think how silent the woods would be if no birds sang but those that sang best.”
Ransom snickered.
Their guest ignored that, continuing the thought where she left off. “Except that’s not the impression one gets after speaking to those same leading figures in your industry.” She pointed at him. “I have spoken with a number of them after their capture and your name comes up with surprising frequency before they die. They all seem to know you. And they don’t like you. At all.” She smiled again. “Which makes your complete unfamiliarity to authorities all the more difficult for my employers to understand. You are despised, but never really seem to do anything especially noteworthy in your field.”
He held up a finger to make another important point. “As my departed sainted mother used to say: ‘If people know that you’re a killer and a thief, then you didn’t do it right.’”
Ransom snickered again.
“I see.” The woman casually put her arms behind her back. “Captain, I represent a coalition of various kingdoms and key city states, Baseland included, who are getting rather tired of your chosen lifestyle. They’re bringing order to this world. The War of Gold and Silver is only the beginning of their plans. And as you know, trade is the lifeblood of a society, and your fellow pirates, well, they are interfering with that.”
Ah.
He sat down on the cell’s single stool on the opposite side of the room, and glanced at Ransom. “Dove, it seems that this young woman is here representing the rancorous throng which seeks to keep us from achieving our highest aspirations in the piratical arts, and instead return us to the dreary fold of the virtuous and law-abiding.”
“Go legit?” Ransom sounded repulsed by the idea.
“Afraid so.” He nodded sadly. “The occupation of the dreamless.”
“Bitch.” His partner bit out.
“Now, now,” he waved her off, “let’s not rush to judgment. Perhaps she’s just an idiot.”
“Probably both.”
He pointed at her. “You are an excellent judge of character, Dove.” He praised. “Have I ever told you that before?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “But you’re a liar.”
“See?” He spread his arms wide in appreciation of her gift. “You just did it again! Bravo!”
Their guest cleared her throat.
He frowned at their visitor. “Oh, I apologize. I had forgotten you were still here.”
“Uriah?” His partner asked softly. “Can you please…?” She trailed off.
He knew the unspoken words: “…be my eyes.”
And they never failed to break his heart.
He turned to her, pointing at the other woman as if drawing attention to their guest. “Certainly Dove, allow me to set the scene for you so that you can fully appreciate it, given your infelicitous disability.” He looked the woman up and down. “We are being visited today by a rather generic looking soldier,” he looked at the lad, “dreadfully sorry, young man, but you know it’s true,” he turned to the woman, “and our primary guest, who is an Adithian and… difficult to describe. Short in stature, pinched face, round features, dresses in provocative attire.”
“Pixy meets slut.” Ransom summarized.
“Yes!” Uriah burst out in laughter. “Yes, that is the picture precisely, Dove. Thank you. Once again your brevity and sense of people succeeds where my own inarticulate palaver fails. She is a Pixie dressing up like a whorish Adithian warrior.” He snapped his fingers. “That’s how I’d describe her.” He casually put his arms behind his head, a feat not easily accomplished since he was in chains. “Anyway, at the moment, she is not looking all too happy with us.” He held a hand up to his temple. “And she has got this little vein next to her eye which is beginning to twitch in the most grotesque but captivating way. I simply cannot look away from it.”
The woman began to pace back and forth in the cell, obviously trying her best to control her irritation. “My employers,” she snapped in barely restrained hate, “have authorized me to offer to you a one-time only job offer. We will negotiate your release with the Baseland authorities here and take you to the Southern Isles, where you will join our joint naval forces and begin to push back against the pirates which prey upon innocent merchants.”
“I’m not really interested in joining the navy, miss.” He told her flatly. “There are simply an obscene number of rules. Piracy is much more fun.”
“And he gets seasick.” Ransom added.
“I do.” He admitted reluctantly. “It’s a…”
The woman cut him off mid-sentence, focusing on Ransom. “Are you Adithian?” Her brow furrowed in confusion, obviously recognizing someone from her land now that she got a better look at her. “What are you doing here?” There was something in her voice that Uriah couldn’t place, but didn’t like. At all. “Who are you? What’s your name?”
Uriah and Ransom were both silent for a moment.
Ransom casually rattled her chain several times in a recognized pattern of silent communication they’d developed over the course of their association. It helped to remain on the same page, since she was unable to see visual cues in a situation, but was far better at big-picture thinking than he was. It let them remain in contact and keep track of each other. Plus, it was just amusing to mock people in front of them.
These particular noises indicated something like surprise or curiosity, the non-verbal equivalent of “What the hell is that about?”
He moved on the wooden stool, quickly jingling the chains back a simple code advising caution and warning of danger. Something was going on and he didn’t know what it was. But he didn’t like it.
He made an effort to ensure his face remained impassive and bored however. “Let’s say I was interested in your offer.” He leaned forward, hoping his utterly fake curiosity about the job would distract her from whatever she hoped to discover about Ransom. “I’m listening.”
The woman started to pace again. “The Southern Isles and their trading partners are tired of being stolen from.” She explained.
He pursed his lips in thought. So, now it was the Southern Isles alone which were behind this offer and not the “multinational coalition” as she’d originally claimed.
How interesting.
“To be fair, is anyone ever not tired of being stolen from?” He asked rhetorically.
“Those are precisely the kinds of people we need to befriend though.” Ransom declared, as if thinking out loud. “Write that down, ‘Rai.”
“Indeed.” He casually stretched his legs, jingling the spur in a more complicated way, communicating to his partner something like, “Who did we piss off in the Southern Isles
?”
Ransom gave a series of dry hacking coughs in a pattern which basically said, “You’re an easy man to dislike. I’m your best friend and I can’t stand you.”
There was something else going on here. He could feel it. True, his partner was correct in that his associates— and occasionally, random passersby— did have a strange penchant for launching vendettas against him over the most preposterous of things, but this was something else.
This odd woman had come a long way to see him and he wasn’t sure why. And he really wasn’t sure what she could possibly want with Ransom.
There was an ogre somewhere in this city, for god’s sake. Compared to that kind of power, a couple of pirates couldn’t possibly matter much to someone with world-conquest on their mind.
Their guest finally finished her rundown of recent pirate travesties and looked ready to make her final pitch. “So, you have two choices, you can help them in their efforts to free the seas of piracy or you can hang with your friends here.”
“And the way I see it, you have two choices of your own.” He began ticking them off on his fingers. “One…”
“Fuck you, he’s a pirate.” Ransom interrupted.
He shrugged, but then nodded in agreement. “Not the exact phraseology I would have chosen, perhaps, but it satisfactorily imparts the crux of my point all the same.” He smiled pleasantly. “Questions?”
“The Adithian Navy will put a stop to your little operation, Captain.” The woman threatened. “There’s no changing that fact. They have the largest fleet in the world and they rule the waves. Make no mistake: our side has won the War of Gold and Silver. Our allies, the Baselanders, have taken over this kingdom and we’re joining them in taking over all the others. We have your friends and their giant in custody right now. So the only question is if you want to be on the winning side or executed with the traitors.” She met his eyes. “Just to make myself clear, Captain. You will be executed tomorrow if you don’t agree to this.”
He continued smiling at her pleasantly. “Oh, I understand you quite well, miss. And, as I said, you have two options,” he held up his fingers to count them off, “One: fuck you, we’re pirates. Two…”
“…see Option One.” Ransom finished for him.
“If I walk out of here, there’s no escape for you.” The woman warned.
“There’s the door.” Ransom pointed towards the exit.
“In the end, is there really an escape for any of us?” He asked, taking on a profound tone. “Mankind is but embers; ignited and then extinguished.”
“Still don’t want candles in here, Uriah.” His partner told him flatly. “Let it go.”
“But they’d be so atmospheric!” He protested playfully. “Yes, you wouldn’t be able to see them, but you’d know they were there.”
“Only when I burned myself with them and then started a fire.” She held up her hands and shook them in mock indignation. “Don’t I already have enough problems?”
He started to laugh. His partner’s charming little accent made for the most excellent comedic delivery and timing. Honestly, he found being around the woman absolutely hysterical. She was a constant delight.
The bureaucrat watched them for a moment in irritated silence, looking less charmed by Ransom than he was. “Now I know why no one knows anything about you, Captain.” She informed him, making her way towards the door. “You’re a fool. A useless Grizzle fool,” she spat out the slur for people from his homeland like she was used to saying it and he wasn’t used to hearing it, “who would rather sit in the dark afraid than go out and be a real pirate or a real man.”
“Let’s get one thing straight, lady.” He held up a hand, cutting her off. “I do not want to sit in the dark.” He shook his head emphatically. “I wanted candles!” He pointed at Ransom. “She wants to sit in the dark!”
“I’m blind!” Ransom cried with mock indignation again.
“Oh, that’s your excuse for everything!” He pointed at their guest. “And now you’ve gone and given this delightfully racist woman the wrong idea about us. I was hoping that she’d stay and join us for our last meal. You know how much I love entertaining guests during my last meals.”
“No, I think I have the right idea about you, Captain.” The bureaucrat pointed at him. “No one knows about anything you’ve done, because you’re too afraid and too stupid to do anything!” She took a step towards him. “Your whole fucking homeland is like that! You’re all alike! You’re stupid fucking animals.”
“See, now I kind of want the candles for our room, just so I could set this bitch on fire with them.” Ransom decided.
To Uriah’s surprise, his partner’s taunts actually caused their guest to stop in her tracks and whirl around. At first, he assumed that the woman intended to attack Ransom, but instead, she just stood there squinting at her for a long moment.
His uneasy feeling grew more intense.
Something was deeply wrong here and there were pieces to this puzzle he was missing.
A new fear occurred to him suddenly… One which he hadn’t thought about in a long time, and didn’t want to ever think about again.
“What’s your name?” Their guest demanded, a tone of excitement in her voice. “How old are you?”
Ransom continued her silence, which didn’t appear to make the woman happy.
“Guard?” Their guest called to the soldier in the hall, then pointed at Ransom. “This one is coming with me.”
That got Uriah’s complete attention.
He came from a region where the only law was The Right of the Meanest, and if something was yours, you needed to be ready to defend it every second of every day, because there were thousands of very dangerous men out there in the murky woods all just itching to steal something precious the second your back was turned. You grew up early and you learned how to fight to the death for what was yours or it wouldn’t be yours for long. The barbarians which survived in the Grizzwood were nothing if not jealous and possessive.
Uriah was no exception.
His voice was low and level. “Don’t touch my partner.” He cautioned, trying to keep his temper in check so that he didn’t do anything too brutal in front of Ransom.
“Captain, I am the duly authorized representative of the Southern Isles and this woman is coming back with me. I could have you hanged right now for interfering with me if I so chose. You do not want to test the limits of my power in this country now that my allies control it.”
“Lady, take a good look at me.” He met her gaze. “I killed my first man when I was seven years old. Strangled him. Over a basket of fruit he tried to take without permission. Fruit. And I’ve never looked back. So I don’t care if you can shit gold and piss rainbows, you go near her one more time and I will fucking kill you.”
It was a promise; a solemn vow, made by the darkest parts of his soul and one which he fully intended to carry out, chains or no chains.
And their guest obviously took it as such, stopping what she was doing and taking an automatic step away from him in sudden apprehension, as if just recognizing what kind of man she was now locked in with.
Ransom slowly straightened as well, also recognizing the tone and realizing that this situation was about to spin out of control. “Uriah?” She asked uncertainly, worry in her voice, as if making sure he was okay and hadn’t somehow been replaced by someone else.
Their guest was silent for a moment longer, obviously trying to determine her best course of action and regain her confidence. “I really don’t see why you’d put up a fuss about this, Captain. I am offering this girl a reprieve from the sad fate which awaits you on the gallows tomorrow, along with your Cormoranian friends. The giant is being marched to his death. The rebel general girl and her brother will be tortured and hanged as an example to the others who oppose the rulers of this land. But I am rescuing this one from that execution. Why would you threaten someone who is trying to help your friend?”
“Well, I was bullied as a ch
ild.” He kept his voice completely level. “Perhaps I’m overcompensating.” He shook his head again. “But she’s still not going anywhere with you.”
The woman’s hand fell to her sword and the guard by her side did the same. “I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree, Captain.”
“Many people have found that I’m a dangerous man to disagree with.” He warned coldly.
She pointed at Ransom. “All the same, she is coming with me.”
“Doubtful.” He eyed the woman again, his rage building. “I don’t think you and I are going to live to see my execution, lady. We’re both gonna die right here if you touch her.”
“No.” Ransom announced, rising to her feet. “I’ll go. I’ll… I’ll go.” She pointed at Uriah. “If you set him free, I’ll go with you.”
“Done.” Their guest seemed unusually excited about all of this for some reason. In Uriah’s experience, that wasn’t good. Things which made his enemies happy were sure to be bad.
Ransom casually leaned against the bars and tapped her shackle against it.
One tap.
Two taps.
On the third tap, Uriah sprang to his feet.
The guard pulled his sword and moved to stop him. Ransom used the distraction to wrap the chain on her hands around the guard’s neck and pull as hard as she could.
Their guest looked back at the struggling guard and grabbed for her weapon to aid him, but she never got the chance to pull her sword free. Uriah was still moving forward and decked the woman while her head was turned. Hard. She fell to the floor.
The guard Ransom was strangling made one last desperate attempt to loosen the chain wrapped around his neck, then went limp. Ransom let him drop to the floor as well.
Uriah frowned slightly at the sight of the large fist-shaped bruise already marking their guest’s face. “Not my finest moment, Dove.” He confided to his partner shamefully.
“Whatever works.”
“Indeed.” He nodded. “Very wise. Pragmatic sagacity, thy name is Ransom.” He leaned up against the wall as he watched her. “I admire your ability to uncomplicate things and cut to the very heart of a matter, particularly when it’s as unpleasant as this one.” He paused. “Still, allow me to issue your entire sex my sincerest regrets over this dreadful— though tragically necessary— affair, and a prayer that none of your exquisite kind surmises that I make such ungentlemanly action a habitual activity, because nothing could be further from the truth.”
Travels With a Fairytale Monster Page 29
