The Maestro can’t help chuckling as he tosses Mal and Alice into the same windowless cell. “Now, I hope you two appreciate that I’ve managed to find you a nice, quiet, secluded corner of the Institute,” he says, as Rebecca and a young man they haven’t been introduced to lead the captives inside. “You know, it seems like just the place to have an important conversation.”
He chuckles again, and even if Alice’s mind weren’t reeling and her fist weren’t throbbing, she’d find the sound grating. Right now, only the ferocity with which she’s glaring daggers at Mal keeps her biting her tongue. Fortunately for her, it means their captor loses interest rather quickly, shepherding his people from the room almost as soon as they’ve deposited their charges.
“Go on, sit down, make yourself comfortable,” the Maestro says, even as Mal and Alice stoically do the opposite. It’s not like it would be easy to follow the man’s instructions; the only furniture in the room is a single metal framed bed, with a mattress but no sheets. “You’re going to be in here for quite a while, so may I suggest a conversation to — clear the air, as it were?”
With a final chuckle, the Maestro finally leaves the room, closing the heavy cell door behind him. It plunges the room into almost complete darkness, except for a small, round disk of amber light cast through the reinforced window. The darkness hardly phases Alice, though, who immediately sticks her tied-together hands out in search of something. She hits Mal’s thigh before she finds it, giving him a brusque “Sorry” before moving on.
“What are you looking for?” he asks. The only answer he gets for a long moment is the sound of roughly sawing at rope with a tool too blunt to do the job well.
“This is a shitty metal bedframe,” she explains. “Shared one just like it with my mama growing up. We always had to be careful walking past the end, cause the bits would stick out and tear at your skirts. So I thought…”
She trails into silence for a moment, nothing but the sound of sawing rope and the distant pop of steamworks before she makes an inarticulate sound of success. “Got it! Here, give me your hands.”
Alice reaches back towards where Mal had been standing a moment ago, and sure enough it’s just one hand that makes contact with his bound ones. She guides them over to the edge of the bed, where sure enough there’s a loose screw that provides a decent, if not exactly perfect, edge. “There, now be careful and try not to scrape your hand up. And don’t squint in this darkness, you’ll just give yourself a headache.”
“That’s alright, elves can see in the dark,” Mal says, even as he sets about taking care of his own bindings.
“Really?”
He laughs, and even though he’s not exactly high on her list of people at the moment, it’s a much nicer sound than the Maestro’s laughter. Despite herself, Alice feels her face twist into an invisible smile. “No. That’d be convenient, though.” With one final cut, he tears his bonds free, or at least his hands separate. “Wonderful plan. And what was the next step?”
“I’m looking for a way out,” Alice says from a different part of the room than he expects. He can’t see it, but she’s carefully tracing her way along the wall, feeling for some kind of seam that will hopefully lead to unexpected salvation. Being honest with herself, she can’t say that’s happened many times before, but it would be more disappointing to know she had overlooked such an escape than to find none.
“And you think you can find one? In the dark?”
“I happen to be perfectly good at my job, I’ll have you know.”
“Which job is that again? Stealing things or talking your way out of trouble?”
“That’s none of your business,” Alice snaps, and Mal sighs.
“Listen, Alice, about the whole informant business,” he begins, but she cuts him off before he can get any further.
“I don’t want to talk about it. And that’s not secret code for keep pestering me about it, either. Right now, I’d really like to get out of here, and you’re probably the only one who can help me with that. So just let me do my part.”
After that, Mal stays quiet, even as Alice keeps looking — or rather, feeling — around the room for anything that could help them. It isn’t as fruitful an exercise as she would like, and just as she’s starting to lose hope, there’s a quiet rustling on the other side of the door.
Suddenly, there’s the sound of a metal door opening, and the faint amber light in the middle of the room becomes both brighter and clearer. “Mal!” hisses a voice that it takes Alice a second to recognize. “Are you okay?”
While Alice is working out the voice’s owner, Mal glances over towards her. She doesn’t quite know what to make of the look on his face, but he holds her gaze as he calls back, “We’re alright, Rebecca. Can you get us out of here?”
“I can certainly try,” comes the answer. Alice doesn’t know if she’s ready to trust this woman yet, but it’s hard to ignore the determination in her tone. “Listen, it’s going to take a little convincing to get the Maestro to give me the keys, but I think I can do it. I can show you the way out, but you’ll have to go on your own.”
“What about our gear?” Alice asks. They’d had most of it confiscated after their rather disastrous conversation with the Maestro, and she doesn’t want to leave without it.
“I think most of it’s here,” Rebecca answers. “If it’s not, I’m afraid I won’t be much help in finding it. If I were to ask for the key and your belongings, I worry he’d figure out my intent.”
“Thank you, Rebecca,” Mal says, even as Alice lets out a weary sigh. She doesn’t like having to rely on someone she’s only just met for something like this, but it doesn’t seem like her path to escape is going to lead them anywhere.
“Right,” Rebecca says. “Stay put.” Then, their cell is plunged into thorough gloom once more as the cover closes over the little window she had been speaking through. Part of Alice wants to point out that there isn’t anything for them to do but stay put, but her heart isn’t in it.
“I don’t suppose you want to talk about it now,” Mal says, his tone far too mild in Alice’s opinion.
“No,” she snaps, promptly turning back to the fruitless task of hunting down an escape route they no longer need. Mal, for his part, stays well out of her way as she idles away the time until Rebecca returns.
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Their rescuer reappears a good twenty minutes later with a jangling set of keys. The ruckus they make rattling against each other is what Alice hears first, and she quickly stops what she’s doing when she hears it. For all she knows, it’s their jailer returned to deal with them in some kind of unpleasant manner.
Fortunately, it turns out to be Rebecca, who hurries the two out of the cell after she unlocks it. The former prisoners emerge into a small anteroom with three other cell doors leading out, and a solid door standing open. Alice is quick to collect up her pistol and check the pockets of her father’s leather jacket for all of the goodies she’s stashed in the various pockets. Mal follows suit as Rebecca gives them the sparsest of directions on how to get out.
“There’s an old escape tunnel if you go out and turn right,” Rebecca explains. “It’ll be the long way around, but you ought to make it out without being noticed.”
“Thank you,” Mal says. “What about you? Will you be alright?”
Right, ’cause she’s the one you should really be worried about right now, Alice thinks angrily. It doesn’t help her mood any that Rebecca blushes at Mal’s obvious concern.
“I’ll be fine,” Rebecca insists. “Really.”
“Why are you helping us, anyway?” Alice asks, a little more blunt than she really needs to be. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the help. But why should I trust you conveniently telling me how to find a way out?”
Alice doesn’t miss the way Mal flinches at the question. Only an hour ago she would have hated herself for causing that reaction, but right now she finds herself taking a savage bit of joy in it, if only for a fleeting instinct. Rebecca immediately quails under the harsh tone, and blurts out a mess of words. “I’m sorry! I never thought — I mean, I never thought Mal could be an informant,” she says, glancing at him briefly before continuing. “But even if he is, he doesn’t deserve to be locked up over nothing but refusing to join the rebellion. Neither do you. It sounds like something the Company would do — and we’re supposed to be better than that.”
Despite herself, Alice finds herself relaxing. It’s like Rebecca has said the magic words — and in a way, she has. Alice herself wouldn’t let this kind of thing pass her by if she had any say in the matter, either.
“He’ll figure out you helped us,” Mal warns Rebecca.
“So? He’s confiscated your cargo — he’s got what he wanted. He’ll be just as happy to be rid of you without the hassle of doing it himself.”
Mal frowns. “I don’t suppose you have payment for hauling that cargo, to go along with the escape?”
Rebecca grimaces. “No. I have about twenty gold to my name, but…”
“Keep it,” Mal says. “But if you could point us to any treasure on the way out…”
He’s grinning as he says this, and Rebecca’s grimace becomes a grin of her own. “Sorry, I’m afraid we’re fresh out,” she says, causing Alice to roll her eyes.
“Right. Well, I’m getting out of here,” she says, without waiting for the others to be finished their conversation. She heads off in the direction Rebecca had indicated, and quickly enough Mal hurries up behind her. Once he’s caught up, he silently keeps pace as they work their way through the long-abandoned sections of a fairly extensive network of underground structures. Finally, they come to the very end, where a long-disused door creaks open on rusty hinges, revealing a small natural passageway through the stone.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“After you,” Mal says, so Alice walks through. After a few tight squeezes, they find their way out to a gravel beach on a side of the island they haven’t yet seen. They take a few moments to get their bearing, and Alice spots a manicured path weaving alongside the gravel beach.
“Let’s hope that leads somewhere we actually want to be,” she says. Fortunately, it takes them to a quiet part of town only a bit circuitously, getting their bearings again on a quiet back alley. As soon as they can, they break away to weave through city streets until they reach the Nameless.
The dock is fairly deserted as they approach. Remembering that Mortimer had been able to name his ship, Mal waits until he’s nearly on board to call out. “Gunny,” he hisses loudly, but there’s no response. “Gunny!”
After a moment of silence, he glances at Alice, and then pointedly at the pistol strapped to her thigh.
“Can I trust you not to shoot me with that?” he asks.
“So long as we have mutual enemies,” she mutters. He rolls his eyes but heads towards the edge of the ship, easily pulling himself over the railing. He lands on the deck with soft feet, Alice a few steps behind him.
There’s no one about, not even on the decks of nearby ships. It sets Alice on edge, and makes Mal outright concerned. So the first thing he does is carefully approach the edge of the hatch and hiss for Gunny. Again, he gets no response.
“If you hear shooting, wait til it’s over,” he tells Alice, drawing his own pistols.
“And if it’s quiet?”
He gives her a look she finds unreadable. “Follow as you’d like,” he grunts, and then jumps through the hole in the deck. Alice listens for gunshots, but before she’s made up her mind about whether it’s safe to climb down, Mal shouts out. “Alice!”
She jumps down. Mal has already approached the cabin door, but it’s not hard to see why. There’s a trail of dripping blood that leads towards it.
Mal hammers on the door. “Gunny? Gunny, it’s Mal. Let me in.”
“I come,” says a familiar, gruff voice. A moment later, the cabin door opens to reveal a shaken Den. He looks incredibly relieved to see Mal. “Mal! Good. Gunny needs help.”
He pulls the door open all the way so Mal and Alice can step through. When they do, they see Gunny with her arm hastily bandaged, sleeping in Mal’s bunk. Mal curses angrily.
Then, abruptly, he becomes all business. “Alice, in my chest there’s some bandages,” he says, already crossing the small room to Gunny’s side. “Den, could you boil me some water?”
“Mal,” Alice says quietly, “we need to get out of here. Fast.”
“And I suppose you know how to wrap a proper bandage?”
“Better than I know how to sail us out of here.”
Mal sighs deeply. He knows she’s got a point — it’s far easier to wrap a bandage than to sail, and it looks like Gunny’s already done a halfway decent job of it herself. “Fine. I’ll need your help to get off the docks, though. Then I want you to go with Den and get some fresh bandages boiled. And if she wakes up, come let me know.”
With that, Mal snaps his goggles into place and heads for the deck. Alice follows suit and, together, they release the Nameless from the Lonely Palms docks.
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When Gunny comes to take the watch from Mal, she’s alone. At least her bandage is in better condition. Mal pointedly raises his eyebrows at her, nodding at her arm, but they’re going too fast to bother with a conversation. She shakes her head, giving him a little smile. She’s fine; they’ll talk about it later.
Then, she nods towards the wheel. With the usual amount of fanfare they trade the watch. Only once Gunny has both hands on the wheel does she actually speak to Mal. “Go talk to her,” she says.
Mal gives her a quizzical look, but she’s wearing a carefully neutral expression. With a sigh, he heads below. First, he checks the cabin, but he’s not surprised when Alice isn’t there. Nor is she in the boiler room, though he does find Den stirring vegetables into a large pot of water. He errantly wonders if the stew will taste like the bandages that the pot first boiled.
“She was here,” Den says, straightforward as ever in response to Mal’s question. “She went below.”
Into the hold? Mal wonders, but he thanks Den for his help. He grabs a lantern before heading off to find her.
Even though the hold is empty, it’s a good thing he brings the light. Alice is standing in a corner of the hold, nearly out of the ring of illumination his lantern offers. Without it, he never would have noticed her.
“Alice?” he asks hesitantly.
“Fuck off, Mal,” she snaps.
He’s surprisingly taken aback. “What’d I do now?” he asks.
“You’re still a fucking informant,” Alice grumbles.
“Oh, you’re still hung up on that?”
“Of course I’m still hung up on it!” she exclaims. “What did you think was going to happen, I was just going to stop worrying about the fact that you’re an informant?”
“What’s there even to worry about?”
Alice finally turns fully towards him, just so he can receive the full force of her glare. “You’re worse than Piers,” she spits.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. You’re worse than Piers. At least he was open with his loyalties.”
“Oh, really, was he now?”
“More so than you! He never acted like something he wasn’t. Sure, he bought people’s loyalty, but at least he was open about it.”
“And you don’t think, perhaps, that a reaction like this is exactly why I didn’t tell you about it before now?”
“You really thought you could get away with not telling me something so important?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, yes, I did, because — if you recall, when we met, you had hired me for one job. To take your cargo — or should I say, you — to Tuanaki. And I certainly did that. Did far more than that, even. So, now, tell me. When exactly should I have told you? Before or after I’d tried so hard to keep you out of the Company’s sight?”
“Oh, right, because you’ve done so much to avoid the Company. Except — well, doesn’t it seem like a bit of an oxymoron, trying to avoid the Company when you also work for them?”
“Please,” Mal says dismissively. “They’d never hire an elf.”
Alice gives him a pointed look. “Except maybe to do something like inform for them,” she says, as if he’s too stupid to realize it on his own.
“Those are two rather separate things.”
“No, they aren’t! They both help Piers!”
Mal sighs deeply. “Alice, I know you’re only a child, but—”
“I’m not a child!” she exclaims angrily, stamping her foot in anger. “I’m twenty years old! I’m a perfectly responsible adult!”
“One who apparently doesn’t understand the difference between making ends meet and betraying your morals.”
“They’re the same thing if they take you to Piers!”
“No, they aren’t!” Mal exclaims, frustrated. “Being an informant isn’t the same as sharing everything you know.”
Alice gives him a look of clear disbelief. “Right. Because you just get to choose what you tell Piers.”
“As a matter of fact, I do. And not that you’d care, but I haven’t gone anywhere near my contact since I picked you up.”
“I should fucking hope not! Otherwise why the hell did I pay you to keep me away from them?”
“Who better to keep you away from the Company than the one who knows them best?”
“Right, because that’s exactly how you want to convince me that you’re not working for them.”
Mal shakes his head. “This is pointless,” he mutters.
“You’re telling me! I was perfectly content to while away the hours all by myself, but no, you just had to show up and demand that I forgive you for being an informant!”
“I don’t want your forgiveness,” he snaps, as though the mere idea is beneath him.
“Then what do you want?”
Mal gives her a hard stare. She returns it with a glare of her own, firm and unyielding. Finally, he says, “You’re my crew. Forgive me for caring.”
With that, he turns on his heel and walks back to the ladder. He hasn’t noticed himself approaching Alice, but it sure feels like his way out has retreated to the far side of the hold. Still, he’s got his feet on the second rung by the time Alice calls out his name. It hardly stops him.
Her question does the trick. “Does Benny know?”
He has no words for her. Instead, he spares her only a look. A pointed one, sure, and rife with implied meaning, but a look nonetheless.
What do you think I do for him?
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A few hours later, there’s a timid knock on the door to the cabin. “Mal?” calls an uncertain voice.
“Enter,” he says brusquely, and the door opens slowly. Alice steps through and takes her time closing the door. “What is it? We don’t have long before the watches change.”
“Then I’ll make it quick. As soon as we’re back on a belt island, I quit.”
Mal frowns at her. “Well, that didn’t take long. I thought it’d take longer for you to go from ‘please please give me a job’ to ‘never mind, this is too hard’.”
“It’s not too hard,” she says quickly.
“What is it, then?”
A million thoughts run through her head: I can’t bear to work for someone who’s worked for the Company. I can’t trust anyone who sells information to Piers. I’ve already escaped his control once; I don’t want to have to do it again. None of them are good enough, not with Mal looking at her like she’s deathly wounded him. I don’t want to walk away, she thinks, and that hurts as much as anything he’s done.
“I just can’t,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’ll pull my weight until we get back to somewhere civilized, but then we go our separate ways.”
Mal sticks out a hand. “It’s been a pleasure working with you,” he says. “You keep your watches, and I’ll get you back to Huana.”
Alice shakes his hand. “Deal,” she says.
“Now, speaking of watches,” Mal says, getting to his feet. “I’ve got somewhere to be.” After putting on his goggles, he strides past her. Alice watches him go, a little forlorn. She’s sure of her decision, but that doesn’t make it any easier to leave Mal or the Nameless behind. Still, she’s got a few last days to enjoy herself, and she wouldn’t miss that for the world.
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Alice stands on the deck of the Nameless watching the familiar port of Huana come into view as a knot forms in the pit of her stomach. She could put a dozen names to the feeling without any of them being wrong: fear and shame and regret, all mixed up with hope and a strange kind of accomplishment, just to name a few. Trying to name them all just seems kind of pointless, when she’s already made up her mind about what she’s going to do. It’s not the perfect answer she always dreamed of, but when is anything?
Certainly, finding her father wasn’t anything like she’d dreamed. But she did it, saw those four years of her life through and did what she’d set out to do. It gives her confidence that she’ll see the next step through on her own merit, on the strength of her own two hands and the new callouses she can feel emerging.
She grips the railing one last time as the Mal glides the ship into her assigned berth. The Nameless, at least, has been unequivocally good to her, and she’ll miss the cozy quarters. But she’s got people to see and places to be, and there’s no time to dawdle. Alice throws Gunny the rope after she’s leapt to the pier, before picking up the rest of her belongings and slinging the pack over her shoulder. Then, she throws herself over the railing like a proper sailor and clambers down to the deck.
Alice lands on the pier and looks back up at the ship to wave one final goodbye. Mal’s departing smile is small, but she recognizes it. There’s something in the look that tells her she won’t be forgetting this elven captain any time soon. “Bye, Mal!”
He waves back. “See you!” he calls, and she smiles. Yes, some day she’d like to. But right now, she has other things to do, and so with a final wave she turns and heads off into the busy Huana docks.