Sea of Thieves

by Chris Allcock

  Having said his piece, Ramsey straightened. He took one last look around the chamber, drinking in the piles of treasure and wondering how much of eternity the cursed figure before him would spend trying, in vain, to lay claim to every last piece of gold. His eyes alighted on the black diamond ring that the Gold Hoarder still wore upon his curse-stiffened finger, and for a moment it seemed as though a great sadness overtook Ramsey—as though he had yet more to say. Then the moment passed, and he lumbered toward the exit without another word, ready to set sail for the last time. Gradually, the light of his lantern faded and his echoing footsteps fell silent.

  Hunched upon his usurped throne, lingering among his stolen treasures deep within the ruins of a forgotten sanctuary, lost far beyond the edge of civilization . . . the Gold Hoarder began to scream.

  LARINNA

  Under Larinna’s steady hand, the Unforgiven made its way carefully out of the Wilds and back toward the familiar sights and smells of Sanctuary Outpost. Faizel had suggested that they sail to a more distant destination, one where they were less likely to be recognized by members of the Order of Souls, but Larinna stood firm. “Adelheid will be expecting us back there,” she insisted. “Besides, I should think our little run-in with Captain Quince will make any other pirates think twice before accepting bounties on the likes of us.”

  Grinning, Faizel conceded the point, and they made landfall just as the sun was bidding the day its last goodbye. The lights of the now-familiar tavern were calling to them like a beacon, but there were arrangements to make before they could really relax.

  They called first at the shipwright, who scratched her long locks in bemusement at the impoverished condition of the captain’s cabin but gamely began taking measurements to replace all of the furnishings that had been thrown overboard. Most of what they’d been able to loot from the Gold Hoarder’s lair vanished into the folds of her apron, but she assured them that she’d have the Unforgiven repaired and restocked by morning.

  Faizel clutched their last few coins tightly in his hand as they made their way up to the tavern, where some smooth talking and the promise of a good story transformed his gold into several large tankards of frothing grog. Faizel did the lion’s share of the telling, as ever, but Larinna was surprised to find herself rather more talkative than usual and frequently cut in with corrections, contradictions, and when the time came, her own part of the anecdote. As they talked, they noticed more and more listening figures emerging from the shadows to hear their tale.

  There was a quiet cheer as they talked about their escape from the Order of Souls, and a rather louder one when Larinna gleefully described how they’d finally scuppered the Black Gauntlet using a Chest of Sorrow. She suspected a few ships with unpopular captains might find themselves unexpectedly soggy in the days to come. By the time Faizel reached the part of the story where they arrived at Tribute Peak, the tavern was overflowing with an attentive audience, and the tankards before them seemed, mysteriously, to have been refilled.

  Just as she’d expected, the story of their descent into the ruins and the eventual discovery of the Gold Hoarder drew the most interest from the crowd, although many scoffed at the very notion of Skeleton Lords, let alone an immense underground treasure pile.

  Larinna coyly invited the naysayers to head out to Tribute Peak to see the ruins with their own eyes. “Although,” she informed them, “you’ll need a sharp sword, a lamp to see by, and an eighty-foot rope bridge. I’m sure Salty the Shopkeeper has one lying around somewhere!”

  This got the biggest laugh so far, but also seemed to signal the end of the evening’s entertainment. The assembled pirates began to disperse, making their way back to their bunks for the night.

  Larinna had expected to be toppling over of sheer exhaustion by now, but the thrill of recounting her first voyage across the Sea of Thieves had made all of the excitement and terror feel new again. She felt sure that more grog would cure her wakefulness in time and poured another glass for Ned, Faizel, and herself.

  Together, they toasted both Adelheid and the Unforgiven, as well as the original inhabitants of Thieves’ Haven, whoever they may have been. It was at this point that Ned fell over backward, toppling off his stool with his eyes closed, smiling happily and dreaming of whatever it was Ned dreamed about.

  Larinna and Faizel shared another laugh and clinked their glasses, and Faizel pulled a battered deck of cards from his pocket. He taught Larinna how to play Karnath, a game she had never heard of but which was apparently a popular way of passing time across the Sea of Thieves. In return, she taught him a few sleight of hand tricks that she’d picked up from a deckhand in her younger days. “She had very nimble fingers,” she said with a slight smile, and produced the ace of hearts from behind Ned’s pink-tinged ear with a flourish. She expected Faizel to ask her how it was done, but by the time she turned back to the table she found that he too was asleep, snoring contentedly with his head on his arms.

  Chuckling to herself, Larinna gave a long, luxurious stretch and slipped the cards into her pocket for safekeeping. It was then that her fingers brushed against the ring she’d found during her battle with the Gold Hoarder. She’d completely forgotten she’d taken it, but now she pulled it free and turned it over and over in her fingers, hoping to find some clue as to whom it might belong. The black diamond shone oddly in the firelight, reflecting the flames in a way that seemed to draw her gaze deeper and deeper.

  It was as she contemplated the heart of the dark stone that she heard the scraping sound. If the tavern hadn’t been deserted, save for those few pirates now dotted around in a drunken stupor, the noise might have gone completely unnoticed. It sounded for all the world like stone sliding against stone, like when she’d uncovered the secret passage that led from the Gold Hoarder’s lair.

  Larinna stood up, a little unsteadily, and began a slow examination of the room, for the noise had filled her with a strange curiosity. There was a mystery, and she simply had to have the answer. She checked behind the bar and beneath the tables, poked at the dying hearth with a poker, and examined the brickwork of the fireplace closely, in case there was some sort of mechanism or entrance being disguised by the flickering flames.

  Finally she spotted what was different. The far corner of the room, dingy and unoccupied as it was farthest from the fire, seemed to have shifted. Four of the flagstones that made up the tavern’s floor were recessed, forming a series of steps that led down and out of sight. Larinna couldn’t remember ever seeing them before, but surely they’d been there all along, hadn’t they?

  The drink’s made you daft, she told herself, standing again. It’s just a stock room, or something. As she turned to leave, a light breeze raised the hairs on her arm, though the tavern’s door remained tightly closed, and a burst of distant music tickled the edges of her senses.

  Side by side, we sons and daughters . . .

  She was convinced it had come from the stairway. Scowling at her own irrationality, Larinna found herself moving down the steps. She was extremely glad that Faizel and Ned were sleeping soundly, for she knew the Voyage of the Wine Cellar would be a joke she’d never live down if the steps turned out to lead nowhere more exciting than a musty old basement.

  The stairs didn’t seem to be guiding her anywhere so mundane, however, and the floor was already getting more uneven beneath her feet. The stone slabs of the tavern floor gradually gave way to a fine white sand, and the walls had the rough coolness of natural rock to them. She could smell salt, and suspected that the passageway in which she’d found herself eventually led out to the ocean. An old smuggler’s passage? That didn’t seem to fit either, for this was the Sea of Thieves. Smugglers didn’t need to sneak into the building, not when they owned the place.

  She soon realized that whoever had built this passageway was no mere bandit, for the corridor came to its end and Larinna was presented with an imposing threshold: an open doorway through which a blinding light was shining. The searing brightness made her head
ache even worse, but the distant music seemed even louder than before. It seemed that all she had to do to solve the mystery was keep walking, and so Larinna stepped tentatively through the portal, shielding her eyes with her hand.

  The salty aroma was stronger here, and as Larinna’s eyes adjusted to the light, she finally understood why. The cavern she’d stumbled into was monstrous, larger by far even than the treasure chamber of the Gold Hoarder, though much of it was filled with seawater. Huge stalagmites rose up around her, many taller than the mast of most ships—including the vessel that dominated the scene ahead of her.

  Long ago, though how long was impossible to say, she had clearly been a fearsome galleon, perhaps the most impressive on the Sea of Thieves. And yet, at some point in her past, someone had sailed her into this cavern, likely right through the roaring waterfall that cascaded endlessly in the far distance. They’d threaded her between vast pillars of stone and brought her to rest atop the rocks, beaching her once and for all. Then, they’d cracked apart her hull, exposing the inner decks.

  There had been a toymaker on the island where Larinna grew up, and she remembered passing by his shop one day while he was displaying his latest creation—a dollhouse whose entire front could be peeled away to reveal all the little rooms and tiny people within. This unusual ship felt the same to her, as if some great giant had seized the vessel and opened her up to stare at all the little pirates inside.

  The pathway Larinna was following led her to a maze of boardwalks and planks that snaked out across the water. She was much closer to the music now, the distant trill of a violin and the wheeze of a concertina in something approaching harmony.

  She wove her way across the walkways, noting as she did that there was another ship shored up nearby. It was an impressive galleon in its own right, a ship fit for a pirate of renown, but it seemed to be unoccupied. Who else knows all of this is down here?

  Following the sound of singing, Larinna made her way to the ship itself, taking the time to examine the various details and seeking out some clue to its history or purpose. Finally, she found what she was looking for—a large, wrought iron metal sheet, held in place with massive bolts that had long rusted into position. The ship’s nameplate.

  A layer of deep green moss had built up across the engraving, and she impatiently pulled at it until the whole fuzzy mass came away and she could make out what was written underneath.

  It said: Athena’s Fortune.

  Larinna stared at it for a long while, thinking back to the note that had greeted her when she’d first woken up in the tavern. She suspected she was being toyed with, and that alone was enough to make her want to turn on her heel and storm away—but her curiosity, as ever, proved more influential than her anger. She climbed the final few stairs, reaching the level of what she supposed would once have been the ship’s lower deck.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find at the heart of the huge vessel, but she certainly hadn’t expected a tavern. That was where she found herself, however; the spacious interior of the ship had been converted into a pub far more luxurious than the one where she’d left Faizel and Ned asleep. There were plush hangings adorning the walls, paintings and portraits here and there, and fine crystal goblets to drink from.

  There were also ghosts, and Larinna was surprised to find that detail didn’t bother her in the slightest. They sat around the tables, talking and joking in groups of three or four, apparently unwilling to let a mere trifle like their own mortality get in the way of a good time. They seemed solid enough, other than the eerie green glow that surrounded them, and as she watched, one of them picked up a tankard of grog and downed its contents seemingly without difficulty. Upon spotting Larinna, they raised their glasses in a toast and gave her a raucous cheer, as if she were a welcome regular. Despite the unusual circumstances, it felt very much like stepping into any other drinking den.

  An otherworldly pirate band was playing in the corner, the source of the tunes she’d been hearing, and one of them nodded cheerfully as she moved through the tavern to its far end. There was another ghostly figure here, larger than the others, seated at a table by himself—no, not a table, she realized, a captain’s desk. He glanced up as she approached, and his eyes crinkled with the lightest trace of a smile.

  “Nice to see you at last, Larinna,” he said. “Welcome to the Tavern of Legends.” He remained seated, gesturing toward a stool on the opposite side of the desk to his own high-backed chair. Although Larinna usually preferred to remain standing in situations like this, she sat herself down and leaned forward with her elbows upon the wooden surface, so that they were face to ghostly face.

  “You,” she said, “must be the Pirate Lord.”

  “I must,” Ramsey replied agreeably, “although people in here usually just call me Ramsey.”

  “You’re a lot more—” Larinna hesitated. “—dead than I imagined.”

  Ramsey laughed at this, a big belly laugh that shook his spectral fame. “Noticed that, did you? Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. We didn’t have a Ferry of the Damned in my day, after all. But when you live as long as I did, you tend to pick up a few little tricks and trinkets for sticking around even after your body’s worn out its welcome.” He fingered the Reaper’s Mark that hung around his neck absentmindedly as he said this. “Although I suppose you could also say that a pirate never really dies out here on the Sea of Thieves, not as long as their legend lives on.”

  Larinna nodded. “I’m starting to believe that. I mean, I came to the Sea of Thieves because I wanted to see things that no one else had seen. Leave my footprints on the sand of uncharted beaches. To see what lies in the creases of the map. I still do, but I’m starting to realize that that’s only part of it. When you’re with your crew sharing a grog and your stories, that’s when it becomes real. Not just living it, but reveling in it.”

  Ramsey made a sweeping gesture that took in the entire tavern, nearly spilling his drink in the process. “That’s what this place is all about. A pirate needs a fine ship under their feet while they’re out on their adventures, and they need a good tavern in which to tell their tales afterward. Well, I thought, why not combine the two? I sailed mine into this cave, laid her onto the rocks, and built a tavern where real pirate legends could live on. What do you think?”

  Larinna considered the question, looking around slowly. “All I see are ghosts,” she said finally, glancing over her shoulder at the distant pirate band. “If you have to die to become a regular customer, I don’t think you’re going to do a lot of business down here.”

  Ramsey snorted. “Well, anyone who’s still living, breathing, and fit to sail a ship is out doing so, or so I should hope. I spent a good many years out on the open sea, and I’ve still got a good head on my shoulders, green though it may be. I know about all sorts of dangerous creatures, hidden treasures, ancient curses, and I offer them up as voyages to my guests here. They’re better than anything those damnable Trading Companies have to offer, believe me.”

  He leaned backward, gesturing toward the curios and items that littered his desks. “Weapons, provisions, and all of the spoils I gathered over the years, too. I have everything a crew needs to sail out together and do what pirates do best. Then they can head back here together and tell everyone all about it.”

  “So it was you,” Larinna said softly. “You were the one who put the map in the bottle. And back at the beach, too—”

  “I arranged for that to happen, yes.”

  She shot him a look. “Why me?”

  “Why not you? Why not anyone?” Ramsey took a deep draft of his grog. “I like to keep myself informed as to who follows my maps, even now. Sometimes a new arrival will catch my interest and I’ll help point them in the right direction. Not everyone heeds the note, of course, and some people are more stubborn than others. There will always be pirates for whom fighting and feuding is enough. But if I think they’ve got potential, I do my best to steer them here.”

&nbs
p; “My potential?” Larinna blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  “You plucked a ring from the hands of the Gold Hoarder and lived to tell about it,” said Ramsey, mildly. “Not bad for your first voyage.”

  Larinna realized she was still clutching the ring in her hand, and slowly uncurled her fingers. “This? I suppose I did.” She placed it on the table between them. “What’s so special about it?”

  “Everything you see here is special,” Ramsey reminded her. “That ring in particular once belonged to a young man who made a very foolish mistake, as young men often do. He fell in love. If you’d like to buy a drink, you could sit and hear the whole story.”

  Larinna hesitated. There was no denying that the warmth of the room, the cheerful music, and the smell of good drink were all extremely comforting. More than that, she thought, this is the Pirate Lord! Possibly the greatest captain who ever lived, and he wants to have a drink with you! Imagine everything he could tell you. The voyages he could send you on. The voyages he will send you on . . . one day.

  As much to her own surprise as to Ramsey’s, Larinna got back to her feet. “You said it yourself: This is a tavern of legends,” she said firmly. “And I’m not a legend. Not yet. I don’t even know what my legend will be, but I think I’m going to have a lot of fun finding out.

  “I know that the Sea of Thieves was very different in your day. No Gold Hoarders to trade with. No Ferryman to help you back to the land of the living. No maps and charts for sale to guide your way. But everything out there, right now, that’s where my stories will come from, and I need to go and find out what they are.” She paused. “They say you sailed in a Golden Age of Piracy. Well, I say that a new Golden Age is just beginning out there, and this one’s for us to enjoy.”