Mal wakes after only a few hours’ rest. It’s reflexive, at this point; he’s so used to his watch schedule with Gunny that even if it had massively changed for some reason, he has a feeling he’d still be unable to get more than a few hours’ rest at a time. And then, of course, there are the days when he never gets any sleep, so at least this hasn’t been one of those. In fact, it’s been a better rest than any he’s had in a while — he slept deeper, for all he’s awake now.
The real problem is that awake now means preparing to go on watch or just wasting time, and if he’s slept like he normally does, there isn’t much time to procrastinate. Only just enough that he’ll be ready before he heads up into the bracing night air, and no more.
With a sigh, he wrenches his eyes open — and immediately reaches for his gun. But as he blinks the image becomes clearer — it’s just Alice, asleep in his chair.
The very same chair that he’d given up because she’d insisted she wasn’t tired and she had lots of things to think about. He smiles to himself a little, wondering how long she lasted before falling asleep.
Then he hauls himself out of bed, pulls on his boots and very quietly makes his way over to the desk. In a smooth, swift motion, he gets his arms up under her and picks her up bridal style. He carefully settles her down on the bunk, and then, quietly as he can, opens one of the under-bunk storage drawers. From the drawer he pulls a blanket — not terribly heavy, but good enough she’ll stay warm even though the pleasant heat from his little stove is dissipating.
He carefully spreads the blanket over her, and he’d’ve thought he’d totally succeeded at his sneaky bait-and-switch maneuver if she didn’t curl into the blanket the moment it’s been spread over her.
The fact that she speaks doesn’t help with his feeling of accomplishment much either.
“Goodnight, Mal,” she says. “Have a good watch.”
Then she rolls into a tighter ball and pulls the covers up almost over her nose. Mal grins. “Goodnight, Alice,” he says. “Sleep well.”
----------------------------------------
He trades off with Gunny for what turns out to be an incredibly boring watch. Not that he expected much better, when he was going into it — honestly, he expected to be tired enough that he fell asleep on the wheel, but he’s actually surprisingly energized for once.
He’s just terribly bored. They’re too far from Tuanaki to see land, even if you could see anything but stars at night. At least they’re high enough up that the sea distantly beneath them isn’t easily visible — there’s just the ever-present whoosh of wind, and the stars, and the cooling night, and eventually the slowly-lightening sky. But oh, how the hours crawl after sending Gunny down to get some sleep.
Finally, he heads back inside to get some feeling back into his hands — maybe he’ll ask Den to make a soup, he’s always good at those. Mal gets tired of mushrooms — who wouldn’t? — but anything warm and liquid that he could pour inside himself right now would be lovely, something to warm him from the inside out and not just the outside in.
However, he’s barely landed in the upper hold when he hears Gunny’s distant shout. He freezes, both trying to listen better and hoping that if he waits long enough she won’t actually really seriously need him.
Gunny shouts again, and with a heavy sigh, he briskly rubs his hands together in a feeble attempt to get some warmth into them. After fitting his goggles back into place, he heads back up the ladder.
He finds her with a spyglass trained on a spot to their distant aft. As he approaches her she shouts again, without turning. Even if the shout weren’t loud enough to rattle his boots, it would still startle him. Three times calling for him, and not even looking around to see if he’s shown up since then? Clearly it’s something important.
Rather than trying to shout over the sound of omnipresent wind, Mal simply reaches out and puts a hand on Gunny’s shoulder. Similarly, she doesn’t bother with words — just hands him the spyglass and points to the distant horizon.
Where there’s a smudge that looks just a little bit too well-defined to be a mirage. If it’s not land, which would be unlikely because of the route they took, then there’s pretty much only one thing it could be.
He still puts the spyglass to his eye before cursing. But the cursing still comes, because of what he sees distantly.
Blacksails.
----------------------------------------
Alice wakes up in the morning slowly. She’s warm and cozy, which isn’t the worst thing in the world. And, no, the bed she’s sleeping in isn’t hers and nor is the ship beneath her. She can be honest and admit that to herself. But that doesn’t stop her from imagining what it would be like if they were.
And maybe if they were Mal’s, too, even at the same time. She’d be alright with that. She’s certainly enjoying the fact that she and Mal are sharing a bed — even as indirectly as it is. It’s not the worst thing in the world, perhaps, but she can certainly imagine a better arrangement of things. One in which there are no turns with the bed, only her and Mal all curled up in one another, sleeping the deep sleep that you can only get when you’re around someone who you can trust to watch your back.
With a sudden shock, Alice realizes that’s how she has been sleeping. That all this time she’s bed sleeping in Mal’s bed as comfortable as if it’s her own, and it isn’t. It’s a startling thought — and one she’s not really sure how to address. Suffice to say, lying around in bed all day will only serve to drive her thoughts down a path she’s not sure she’s ready for.
Not that she there would be anything wrong with going down that path. Just that they haven’t, yet, and so it’s too strange to address it, when she’s not even sure how she feels.
You know what, maybe I’ll just say something, she tells herself. Surely that can’t hurt anything now. And if I’m being honest with myself—
If you’re being honest with yourself, Alice, she thinks angrily, berating herself for her stupidity. You’d realize you’re already head over heels and may as well do something about it, god dammit.
So Alice is in the middle of thinking when Mal angrily bursts through the door of the cabin. She looks up, for a moment still wrapped up the oh-god-I’ve-been-sleeping-in-his-bed part of the moment that she misses his expression.
But then the murderous rage burning behind his eyes becomes more apparent, and she almost cringes. She doesn’t know what to say, or even do.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Mal barely notices her, anyway. He heads straight for his chest and then goes digging around in it, angrily tossing things aside that aren’t whatever it is that he’s looking for. Alice carefully gets out of bed and goes over to him.
“What are you looking for?” she asks. “Maybe I can help.”
“No, I know exactly where they are,” Mal says. “They’re just — under—”
With that, he pulls out two swords wrapped in sheathes whose belts are tied around them.
“Swords? Really?” Alice asks incredulously. “I mean, sure, you can be all stereotypical airship pirate and everything, but swords? What good are swords against anyone reasonable? And how’s anyone close enough to be a problem?”
Mal sighs. “Yes, swords,” he says. “You should put your boots back on and grab your pistol and come up to the deck.”
“Um…”
“Or you can wait until the blacksails’ve boarded us to decide to start fighting.”
This certainly has the intended effect of getting Alice’s butt in gear. However, she can’t quite move fast enough to get herself out the door before Mal does — so she doesn’t have a chance to ask him any more questions. Instead, all she can do is scramble into appropriate gear for the weather and then clamber up the ladder onto the deck.
Mal and Gunny are standing at the back of the deck, trading the spyglass between them and looking at a point out in the distance. It’s still pretty windy up here and Alice has a feeling that the reason Mal and Gunny appear to have a whole silent language of communication between them is because they actually do have such a language — they need to, in order to navigate situations like these on a daily basis. Something about that realization makes Alice feel a little less — what, she’s not sure, exactly, because she’d never want to admit that she was jealous of Gunny. Of all the stupid things…
Mal looks over his shoulder and notices Alice standing there at the top of the ladder looking a bit lost and so he waves her over using gestures as exaggerated as he can manage. The good news is this means that Alice spots him quickly, and before you know it he’s handing the spyglass over to her so she can see what they’re all hung up on.
Alice takes the spyglass and holds it up to her eye, doing her best to follow the line of Mal’s finger off into the distance. It takes her a second to know what she’s looking for but when she sees it, she instantly recognizes it. They’ve very far away — too far for her to see anything more than the distinctive black sails that make the distant ship easy to name, even for her.
She turns to Mal, cups a hand around her mouth, and then says, only a bit loudly, “What are they doing out here?”
“Patrols, maybe. Hopefully they haven’t seen us and we can sneak away.”
“How?”
Mal glances to Gunny, and Alice follows his look. She already has one of the two swords strapped to her hip. Something about its presence makes Alice feel this is far more ominous than she is really able to understand.
“Shout if you need us,” Mal says, or something like that; Alice isn’t entirely sure. Either way, he heads for the access hatch that leads them back below deck and Alice is only a step behind him. When they get onto the deck of the upper hold, Mal heads straight for the boiler room.
“Den,” he calls as they enter. “Den, I need your help!”
A few moments later Den appears from somewhere. All Alice can say is one moment he’s nowhere to be seen, and the next he’s standing right in front of them. She’d suspect some kind of witchcraft, except that she has a good feeling that that wouldn’t be the strangest thing to happen on this trip.
“What is it?” Den asks stiffly.
“Can you do quarter speed on the propellers?”
Den frowns. “That is — half of half, yes?”
“Yes, that’s what a quarter is,” Mal says. He sounds far less exasperated with the question than Alice would be. “Can you do it?”
Den frowns. “Why?” he asks.
So Mal explains — the distant blacksail is probably just a patrol. They need to slip out of sight, but not at such a clip that the patrol will instantly lock in on them as an interesting target. After all, up till now, there’s no guarantee that they have even spotted them.
“So, if we can get out of range without them noticing us…”
“I will try,” Den says. “Half of half is — not easy. But I will try.”
“Thank you, Den,” Mal says. Then he and Alice exit the boiler room. But before Mal can cross back across Alice’s path, she stops him.
“Mal, wait,” she says. He turns to look down at her — she’s got a hold of his arm, perhaps a little tighter than she really needs to. Especially when both of them know that even with her strongest grip, he could still rip his arm out of her hands with ease.
“What is it?” he asks. “Let’s be quick, I want to know if anything’s changed up there.”
“I just have one question.”
“And it is?”
If you’re so anxious to be back up, then why did you lead us both back down here? “Why the swords?”
Mal grins. “Alright, that does deserve some explanation. So, the blacksails. You’ve heard they have automata.”
“In the stories,” Alice says. Mal just rolls his eyes.
“One of these days you’re going to have to give up the ghost and admit the fact that you’re not just walking around in the world that you always knew, with the nice easy boundaries of real and fake. The real world is a fair bit stranger than that, my dear.”
“Believe me, I’m starting to figure that out,” she says. “But — the automata. Go on.”
“Right. Blacksail ships, crewed by clockwork automata.”
“They’re clockwork?” Alice asks, impressed. “I didn’t realize they could — well, that they were made of clockwork. I mean, obviously they had to be made of something, but—”
“Yes, clockwork. And well-armored clockwork. Designed to withstand gunfire, even though by all rights that should be the easiest way to put those buggers to rest. Just blow ‘em full of holes and the gears will never turn and they won’t get anywhere.”
Alice nods. It certainly sounds reasonable enough. Well, if she gets over the bit where there are clockwork men sailing a blacksail ship towards them.
“Unfortunately, whatever savage mind it was that originally came up with these things was also aware of that flaw in the design of building clockwork creatures. So he protected them very well against that — so well that guns may as well be useless against them.”
Alice gulps. “So, what can we do? Is there anything that—”
Mal grins. “And that is where the swords come in,” he says.
Alice raises her eyebrows incredulously. “Swords. Swords are more effective than guns at taking care of these — blacksail automata.”
“More or less, yea,” Mal says. “I mean, if you were a good enough shot…” He shrugs. “The only place the automata are really not armored is around their necks. They’re a bit too narrow, and a bit too many important pieces needed to get shoved in the space that connects the head and the chest. So they’re not quite as well armored there. And, if you can manage to behead them, it’s one of the few body parts they have that can’t just be swapped with a new one.”
While the thought of swapping out broken body parts is a little disturbing to Alice, she can’t deny how that would have a certain advantage. Especially in an armory made of up of people who don’t care at all about what they look like and whether they can keep going for ever and ever is a more important thing anyway.
“If the blacksails board us, how screwed are we?” Alice asks.
“Well,” Mal begins. “Have you ever held a sword?”
“No,” she admits.
“And how good of a shot with that pistol are you?”
She shrugs. “Fair,” she says.
“Yep, we’re screwed. We’re outnumbered ten to one.”
Alice’s stomach does a funny little flip but she doesn’t have long to think about it before Mal heads back up to the main deck. With a sigh, she follows him, knowing that sitting around here will only make her more anxious.