Tyrone was starting to feel sick. Like the rest of his crew, he’d had nothing to eat but fish, grilled breadfruit, and breadfruit beer for days now. He knew Prangians tended to run late; it was part of their collective persona. Sometimes it was just a day or two, but this time it had been almost a week. On his own, he wouldn't have minded - Aja frequently sent him off to stake out one or another of the islands for days or even weeks at a time. But this time he’d had to bring the whole crew; this was a big private transaction, so bringing anything less than a full crew was just begging to be robbed. That meant every day was costing just over 150 stacks in wages, plus provisions that were rapidly running out. If the deal went through as expected, Tyrone knew he could count on getting paid back for both wages and provisions, but that was always a big “if.” If for any reason they came back empty-handed, Aja wouldn’t be in a hurry to reimburse for anything. Aja didn’t like taking responsibility for any kind of negative outcome.
And anyway, he knew he had Tyrone over a barrel, just like all the other captains. Skoi was the only city where any captain who wasn’t local could count on getting paid properly, in decent money, when they came back from a successful mission. So people from villages, like Tyrone, didn’t have many options. If Aja kept offering them work, they’d keep coming back, even if they sometimes came away at a loss.
“Anything?” Tyrone shouted up to Grant, who was currently lookout.
“Nope,” Grant replied languidly.
The ship was at anchor in a wide, shallow bay, just far enough from shore to see and be seen from a wide inlet off to the east. Light blue-green water shimmered all around them; the beach on which most of the crew had camped lay about a hundred yards off the port side of the ship. The campfires of those who’d been able to go to shore to sleep the night before were barely visible, just shimmering black blips in the roasting sub-tropical air. Occasionally, a light breeze would carry a whiff of campfire ash over to the ship, although for the most part there was no wind at all. It was midday, and the heat was oppressive. The beach stretched off almost as far as the eye could see, lined with palms the entire way. When they’d arrived it had felt welcoming, a nice, big, safe pocket for their ship to shelter in. Now the two capes at either end of the bay felt increasingly like a monstrous pair of jaws, opening wide as they prepared to swallow the ship and trap the crew inside the bay forever. Every member of the crew was caked with salt, grease, ash, and the crusty resin that cutting up breadfruit left on your hands. It was hot, humid, stinky, and miserable. Tyrone felt like his brain was simmering in its own juices. At times it felt like they were going to be here forever, slow-roasting in the sun.
“I told you before, Grant: lookouts stay standing, no exceptions. We both know you can’t see past those palms, sitting there growing out your big fat ass.”
“Can’t we just watch from the shore? Why do we have to be out on this stinky piece-of-shit ship round the clock?”
“Because those are my orders.”
“OK, OK, I get it, no problem. Don’t piss your pants, captain. I’m happy to keep pissing my life away, drinking your beer, even if I have to do it standing up.”
Lazy bastard, thought Tyrone. Maybe it’d be a good thing if there were a little bit of trouble, actually. This wasn’t the first time Tyrone had found himself hoping for a battle just to get rid of some of the low-lifes he’d been lumbered with. However, he’d realized some time ago that these thoughts normally occurred when he was otherwise feeling confident about his chances. Aja’s reputation was such that the deal would most likely go through just fine. If there were some kind of trouble… well, they’d brought the Zephyr, so they could get away at any time. And if they could manage to get the engine on board before they did, then they’d come out of this with a tidy profit. Tyrone knew the odds of failure were slim here, and that made him happy - he didn’t like killing, and (again, despite the occasional fantasy) he didn’t like losing people.
Despite the stories - mostly total bullshit - that people like Grant were prone to telling anyone who would listen, violence was at an all-time low around the Lagoon. The Union was still in control, despite occasional disputes throughout its power structure, and there hadn’t been any attempts at secession since the Gvarentine rebellion twenty years before. Sure, there was some bad blood lingering from that. But that had been one city. Even within Gvaranga province, the majority of the towns had ignored Gvarance’s call to rebellion. Joe had opted not to conquer the Lagoon cities by force; he’d just established the Union, given them all an ultimatum to join, and then expected the Union to keep the peace for him. Two centuries later, it was still doing that pretty well.
Grant whistled (his infuriating, high-pitched whistle - the one thing he seemed to know how to do well).
“Black lateen, one o’clock. Twenty minutes,” he called down.
“Got it - give it ten and come down. And leave the choker up there.”
“Whaat?” Grant said, feigning disappointment. “The choker’s part of my whole look. These Prangian girls think it’s badass, and you know how hot they are.”
“OK, well maybe bring it and start waving it around, and some sexy Prangian captain will give you a whole new look. Some much-needed plastic surgery, or a lobotomy, free of charge.”
Grant snickered, and turned back to watch the sails approaching. He picked up his choker - a clunky, ugly black piece of metal with a well-worn black wooden handle - and laid it down on the floorboards at his feet. Tyrone would never have said it out loud, but he’d always been envious of this weapon. It was another one of the many weapons the Black Army had left behind after it had disbanded almost two centuries earlier. There hadn’t been a lot of house-to-house fighting during Joe’s wars of unification, but Joe had always equipped his men perfectly for whatever task he assigned them, no matter how rarely the need might arise. Hence the choker: basically an ugly combination of revolver and grapeshot cannon, it couldn’t even kill you if you were more than fifty feet away (he had alchemical weapons for that). But if you happened to be nearby, in a hallway or street? It would shred not only you, but anything else in its path. The ten-shot drum meant that one guy could “choke” just about any thoroughfare he might come across, hence the name. It was also pretty good at clearing a ship’s deck of business associates who’d suddenly turned into enemies. Grant may have been a buffoon, but Tyrone had seen more than one opponent seemingly split violently in half right in front of him, soaking Grant with their blood and guts. One time, that had even been enough to scare the others into surrendering immediately and abandon their attempt to rob Tyrone and his crew.
“Look alive! Prangians’ll be here in fifteen minutes. Tim - get the Zephyr primed and ready to go. Just keep the steam down until they’re on board. If you hear two double knocks, gun it.”
Tim nodded and went down into the bowels of the ship.
“How many are there, Captain?” A young guy from Yassey piped up. Yassey was Tyrone’s home village, and he was a bit of a minor celebrity there, so this guy was excited to be serving with him and seemed a little on-edge now that zero hour was approaching.
“Just one, thank the Gods. Plus it’s just a lateen - they might be some greasy bastards but they’re not coming in force. Not expecting trouble today.”
Tyrone glanced at the men for a second once they’d assembled on the deck. Most of them were old hands by now and knew that you don’t come fully strapped unless you need to. They all had swords and daggers on their belts, but that was it, and it was no more than you’d expect of a crew of sailors. The young guy from Yassey, though, had a Maura stuffed conspicuously into his belt. Tyrone smiled. Had this been one of his veteran crew he’d have been furious, but you had to let people learn their lessons the hard way sometimes. Tyrone was glad, because this wasn’t going to be one of those times. The young guy was about to learn the easy way.
Tyrone gestured at the Maura with a nod:
“What’s that?”
“What do you mean?”
“In your belt?”
“...it’s a Maura…”
“I know what it is - what the hell is it doing in your belt right now?”
“Well, you never know. Got to be ready for anything.”
“Well, actually, you do know. You do know that those things scare the shit out of people, which is the last thing we want right now.”
“Ok, but - “
“Not ‘but.’ ‘Understood, Captain.’ That’s what you meant, right?”
“Yes, Captain… uh, my apologies, Captain…uh…” the young guy stammered, fumbling with his Maura, face flushed a deep red.
Tyrone gestured melodramatically toward the door leading into the crew’s quarters; the guy hurried off to put his Maura away. He might be embarrassed now, but within a few years he’d come to know that he’d learned the easy way here. Half the fights Tyrone had been in (in the Lagoon, at least) had started because someone had brought some Black Army weapon to what was supposed to be a negotiation. Mauras, Neras, Shavis, Beltzas - any of these would burn a big, greasy hole right through whatever part of your body they happened to hit. Compared to anything else people were likely to bring to the table, they were like magic. Horrifying, flesh-searing, damn-near-indestructible magic. The presence of any of them during this negotiation would ratchet up the tension about a thousand percent.
When the young guy got back, Tyrone continued:
“We’ve been through this before so I’ll keep this quick: no talking, just let me make the trade, no weapons on deck except tools, and our “plan b” is the Zephyr, not a fight. Clear?”
“Clear, captain,” the crew answered, almost in unison. Discipline wasn’t what it used to be, but this crew could be trusted.
“Captain.” Tyrone stopped and turned around as the crew dispersed to clear the deck of their chairs, rugs, game boards and beer bottles. A middle-aged woman with a crossbow resting on her shoulder was strolling over toward him.
“Hey, Theresa.”
“Ready whenever. What’s the tripword?”
“Tripword is…“Let’s be reasonable here.””
Theresa nodded; a faint smile flitted across her face. Tyrone smiled too. What were things coming to when the phrase “let’s be reasonable here” could be used as a code, a signal for Theresa and her team to perforate these Prangians with spikes, arrows, and bullets? Well, whatever - it had worked before. Hopefully they wouldn’t need it this time.
The Prangian ship glided toward Tyrone’s ship. Its black lateen sail bore the blue man-o-war sigil of Prangia, and its crew stood or sat at their posts, totally silent. It sliced gracefully through the warm water of the bay, throwing up only a little ripple that glinted blindingly in the sun as it spread out from the ship’s stone-gray prow. Given the total silence, the speed with which it moved was almost unsettling. None of this unnerved Tyrone’s crew, of course. Prangia was only about a days’ journey by ship from the island of Yassey, and most of the people on board had been there many times. A few of the older women on board had even served with the Prangians on the Union expedition to Ausron. So the coarse black sails, the man-o-war sigil, the very-much-affected habit of sailing up silently? None of it was having the desired effect.
Still, though, it was always best to be careful. No two captains were alike, and some of the Prangian captains actually were real hotheads. Tyrone chalked this up to their little adventure in Ausron. About thirty years ago, a consortium of the biggest guilds in Prangia had sent an expedition to Ausron to found a colony. The plan was the Maral peninsula. And who could blame them? White sand beaches, tropical fruit everywhere, warm sun and a few warm, brief rainstorms almost every day? The best coffee the world could produce, right in your backyard? It was paradise.
But (as happened with so many plans involving Ausron) they failed to factor in the natives. And (as happened with so many plans involving Ausron) that oversight turned out to be fatal. Scores of Prangia’s experienced captains, together with their ships and crews, were blown to pieces by the natives’ primitive-but-effective alchemical artillery, arrows, and bombs. Foraging parties usually came back a few people short, if they came back at all. After three months, most of the hundred or so remaining captains sailed every available cubic foot of shipping back to Prangia to bring reinforcements. They ran straight into the autumnal winds that blew in off the Eastern Sea. Some turned back, some pressed on. When the corpses of the latter began to wash up onto the shores near the Maral colony, it was enough for the others to abandon the place. The few who remained sailed back along the coast to Prangia. But it was the Ausronian coast, of course, so only about half of those captains survived with their crews. It had been a very sad day indeed in Prangia when those eleven ships limped back into port.
As it turned out, this was just enough to pass on the requisite technical knowledge to a new generation of captains and restore Prangia’s merchant fleet. It was nowhere near enough, however, to exert enough peer pressure to maintain the culture and etiquette that had once been more or less required for a captaincy in Prangia. Hence the lack of decorum, the inability to forgive an insult, the general rudeness, etc., that one could almost always expect from a Prangian captain. But Tyrone wasn’t worried - no captain lasted more than one or two voyages without some degree of business sense, and this deal was one that would be well worth conducting by the book. Tyrone had the money, and then some. The Prangian captain would have to be an idiot to risk the engine and this much money instead of just closing the deal, making a few grand, and going home.
One of the Prangian crew threw a line over to Tyrone’s ship, and within a minute their captain hopped up lightly onto the deck of Tyrone’s ship.
She took his breath away. She was young, maybe thirty at most, and absolutely stunning. Her eyes were a piercing, deep green, and her waist-length, wavy black hair was pulled back behind her head. She was wearing a deep-blue, short-sleeved robe (somehow form-fitting enough to accentuate her curves) that extended down to her knees, with a thin, short knife strapped to her right hip. She had a thin orichalcum wire wrapped around her left arm; its deep orange, metallic glow contrasted elegantly with her beautiful, dark brown skin. She had a tattoo of the Prangian man-o-war wrapped around her right wrist. Just for the brief interval between when she hopped up onto the deck and when the typical Prangian rudeness would inevitably start, Tyrone allowed himself to be smitten. Grant may be an idiot, but he was right - Prangian women could be almost insanely beautiful.
Mind you, Tyrone had been expecting something like this. This kind of physical beauty was also part of Prangia’s strategy: most of the captains in their merchant fleet tended to be good-looking, if not downright stunning. You could never tell what someone’s weakness might be, and sex was a pretty common one. These captains didn’t sell themselves for the greater good of Prangia or anything, and first and foremost they’d have to be dangerous and cunning, but being a knockout did help their chances when it came to awarding captaincies. So far, this captain fit the pattern perfectly, and Tyrone noted to his chagrin that his whole crew was gawking at her. With an expression of mild disgust on her face, she took a quick look around Tyrone’s ship, spotted Tyrone (standing in front of the rest of his crew and obviously their captain), then turned to address his crew, her long, beautiful black hair following the quick movement of her head in the stifling air:
“Who am I talking to here?”
“Me. Tyrone - nice to meet you,” Tyrone said, holding out his hand.
She looked down squeamishly, then squeezed Tyrone’s hand limply.
“Ariel. Pleasure. We’ve got to get back by evening, so this is what we’ll do: money first, then engine. 34,000 as agreed, and we can both go our separate ways.”
“So… couple things. First, we’ve been waiting for you for a week. Which means that I’ll be deducting half the cost of provisions and wages for those days from the final price. This is how things are done. Second, I’ve got half the money here. You haul the engine across, turn it on, and let me run my inspection, then we’ll bring up the other half. Again - this is how things are done. Soon enough you’ll have your 33,500 and you’ll be home by evening. It goes without saying that none of this is negotiable. I’ll say it one more time, since you seem to be new: this is how things are done, everywhere in the lagoon, even Prangia.”
Ariel scoffed, shaking her head; mentally, she felt a pang of disappointment. The knockout thing hadn’t worked. On the one hand, he’d obviously been checking her out for the first few seconds after she’d come into his field of vision, she hadn’t missed that. But he hadn’t really missed a beat after that (even if some of his sweaty, filthy crew’s eyes were still riveted on her chest). Ariel made a quick mental note of this as she watched Tyrone wave to two of his crew, who dragged over two huge, heavy burlap sacks. They dropped them at Tyrone’s feet; they thudded down onto the deck so hard that one of Ariel’s crew almost lost his footing.
“17,000, ready to go.”
“What the hell is this?” Ariel snapped.
“Silver, 17,000 stacks’ worth. Technically it should be 16,750, since again, we burned through a thousand stacks’ worth of provisions waiting for you assholes, but I guess I’m just feeling generous today. The other 16,500 is below deck. It’ll all be yours, right after your crew manages to get that goddamned engine onto my deck and I’m 100% sure it runs like a goddamned dream.”
“No way - you know how it works. Ever heard of Tsennie? Platinum, gold, orichalcum, hyperium? I don’t even have a test kit on board, this silver could be shit quality. I’m not going to bring back a whole goddamn cartload of silver.”
“And I’m not going to carry around 34,000 in a little leather pouch around my neck. No captain does when they’re doing shipboard deals. This is basic stuff, Ariel. I don’t know who you usually do business with but if it’s anyone in the Lagoon, they don’t conduct shipboard transactions in tsennie.”
He paused.
“Are you really telling me that you trade with someone who pays in hyperium?”
Tyrone’s crew roared with laughter (as did some of Ariel’s crew, actually). Of course, hyperium was just as valuable as gold, orichalcum, or platinum. Unlike those metals, though, hyperium was liquid - an opaque, yellow, liquid metal. It was beautiful, but it was also highly unstable: once set flowing, it kept flowing, keeping its momentum up indefinitely even if the slope of the surface changed and it was moving uphill. In short, it broke a lot of the laws of physics, and this made it unpredictable. The Kargian Empire and Qurz both used to mine it, and the low hills of Ausron were supposed to be full of hyperium ore, but the technology to refine it had disappeared after the Battle of Alamandu (as had so much else). It was now found mainly inside the Kargian engines that were occasionally unearthed in shipwrecks, mines, and the occasional airship’s engine that had miraculously gone unnoticed for over 500 years. Its potential was obvious to anyone, but the metals needed to harness that potential required technology and infrastructure that nobody had possessed since Classical times. So as valuable as it was, it was no good as a currency. Who wanted a currency that came in little glass vials, which could blow your legs off if you accidentally dropped them?
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Anyway, Tyrone had won the battle of wits here, so now it was time to get down to business:
“Well, anyway - it’s all there, and it’s 95% pure, at least. See the eel up there on my sails? Aja’s not some small-time thief, he’s got a reputation to maintain. Go ahead, weigh it, then bring a few random silver coins from your safe over and Jenna will show you how to test it. I’m not here to screw you guys over. We want the engine and this is more than a fair price. Do we have a deal, or what?”
Ariel scoffed again, putting her hands on her hips. The awkward silence was overpowering as everyone waited for her response. She’d overdone it and made a fool of herself (“Why the hell did I have to say ‘hyperium?’” she kept thinking), but Tyrone was giving her a way to save face here - she could lay the condescension on thick as she accepted, and she’d look tough again in front of her crew. She was obviously a noob; all Tyrone had to do now was hope that she wasn’t such a noob that her pride would get in the way of the deal. That would be pretty stupid, of course, but it had happened before. Nothing worse than wasting so much time only for the deal to collapse. Although no, actually, there was something worse, and that was having to sweep a bunch of sailors’ congealed blood and guts off the deck into the sea because of their captain’s ego. Not to mention it made the deck stink for weeks.
Ariel was incensed, and as she stood there silently, fuming, the tension mounted. Both crews were standing there in full sun, sweating and waiting. Any trade could turn into a robbery, and it seemed like this one might be about to. The smell of the sweat mixed with the smell of the sea, cured leather baking in the heat, and the candlenut oil with which Tyrone’s ship had been painstakingly varnished, year after year. The tension grew. Some of Ariel’s crew let their hands drift slowly down to the hilts of their swords. Tyrone threw a quick glance around Ariel’s crew. One of the guys at the back had a few throwing knives, but they were still strapped to his belt. Otherwise, there were no range weapons in sight. They could wait.
Ariel kept quiet; she was red in the face, sweating under the murderous sun like the rest of them, but also burning with embarrassment. She felt like drawing her sword and pushing it slowly through Tyrone’s exposed neck. Right through his shitty little throat; let’s see him laugh with his vocal chords dripping into his lungs. She knew what her dad would have said here. She could hear him say it: “He’s your countryman. We don’t shed our own blood unless we have no other choice. We’ll never bring Kargia back by acting like a bunch of pirates.” She also knew what he would have done here; and he’d not only been her mentor and her best friend, but also the best captain of his generation, single-handedly responsible for saving everybody who’d made it back from the Maral colony.
Tyrone started to worry. The silence was getting really weird, and under the circumstances that made it scary. Maybe this Ariel was indeed stupider than your average Prangian captain. It didn’t seem likely, but still - the diplomatic rules that applied to state commerce lost their force during private transactions. If a fight were to break out now, it would be treated like a duel. Survivors would be interviewed, the case would go to a local magistrate, and whoever was found guilty (if they were still alive) would be fined. That’s it. People could die during trades like this - it happened all the time. Tyrone was feeling really nervous now as he stared into Ariel’s beautiful green eyes, afire with hatred and rage. Noob or not, he now regretted humiliating her in front of her crew. She was longing to kill him, that much was sure, and maybe she could; all it would take was a brief loss of self-control.
Ariel could hear her dad’s voice in her head; annoying as it was, she knew he’d be right to say what he was saying. Bringing back Kargia might be dreaming too big, but there were a lot of other, more practical reasons he’d be right here. So she gulped, swallowing her pride and her fury, and said:
“If - if - your silver turns out to be pure. I don’t trust anyone from Skoi.”
Tyrone grinned, shaking Ariel’s outstretched hand tightly. The silver was pure, so he didn’t have anything to worry about. This time, at least - Aja really wanted this engine, so he hadn’t tried to pawn off his usual shitty silver on them. None of his crew were actually from Skoi - nobody who had to sail for a living was. A few of them let out another laugh.
“Bring it over!” Tyrone shouted, trying to mask the scattered sound of laughing. Ariel seemed not to notice.
Grant and one of the other crewmen picked up the bags of silver and hauled them across the gangplank to Ariel’s ship. The deep, well-oiled oak of Tyrone’s ship contrasted markedly with Ariel’s deep-gray ironwood. Noob she may be, but that was one beautiful ship. Small, but fast, and the deep-gray color had obviously come from an alchemical varnish. Not a cheap one, either - some varnishes could turn wood to various metals, while others (much more expensive) could impart the properties of metals to the wood. This was obviously one of the latter; looked like high-quality steel, in this case. Nothing to fear from any normal cannon or incendiary arrow. And it was most definitely not Prangian.
The gangplank was sloped, since Ariel’s ship sat lower in the water than Tyrone’s. The ships weren’t bobbing (it was nearly windless, hence the murderous, stifling heat), but the weight of the bags of silver was too much for Tyrone’s men, and their pace picked up as they approached the end of the gangplank. Grant slipped, dropping the handle he’d been holding and falling on his side; the other guy slammed to a halt as the heavy bag thudded down onto his feet. A torrent of cursing erupted, and the guy gave Grant a few well-deserved kicks as he lay there on the ground. All this was accompanied by peals of laughter from both crews. Even Grant has his uses, thought Tyrone. Comic relief, if nothing else. The tension thus broken, the crews started to mingle and chat while Jenna showed Ariel’s treasurer how to test the quality of the silver. Ariel walked down the gangplank and stood over her woman’s shoulder as Jenna demonstrated the sound made by jingling coins of varying quality together. Pure silver rang out nice and loud. The lower the quality, the duller the ring. Jenna demonstrated this using coins from Ariel’s own treasury (whose silver content she therefore trusted). Finally, satisfied after a few minutes that the silver was indeed as pure as Tyrone had claimed, she told her crew to bring it below deck and get the engine ready for transfer. She sat down on her ship’s deep-gray gunwale (now cooled off in the shadow cast by Tyrone’s ship), took a little bag out of the pocket of her elegant blue robe, and started rolling a cigarette.
“You buy that ship?” Tyrone called down to her; he was curious, and since none of the other crew were within easy earshot, maybe she’d dish a little bit and explain how a noob had gotten her hands on such a badass ship.
“Yeah. Paid in platinum, too, not silver like an asshole.”
“Nice,” said Tyrone, ignoring the insult. “Where’d you get it varnished?”
“Came that way,” Ariel said, pulling the edges of the rolling leaf up to create a little pocket for the tobacco.
“Damn,” said Tyrone after a pause. Now that she wasn’t looking at him he just spent a few seconds just staring at her. Gods, she was gorgeous, even compared to the other Prangian captains he’d seen. Focus, he thought. This is part of their game. Snap out of it. “I’ve never met a runner who had that kind of money before. Pirates from down south sell it to you?”
Ariel rolled her eyes, exasperated:
“No.”
“Well, anyway - she’s a beauty. I’ve only ever seen one other ship with anything like that. Guy from Gvarance.”
Ariel sat there, only barely covered by the shadow of the ship, pretending not to have heard him. She pulled out a little alchemical lighter and lit her cigarette. Bluish smoke started to curl up from its tip, and she blew a little cloud out into the salty, humid, sub-tropical air. Looking out to sea, everything shimmered in the stifling heat; looking back to the beach a few hundred yards away she could just barely make out the camp Tyrone’s crew had set up. Gods, it was hot. Prangia was nicer than this. Located way out at the end of Cape Zaprang, you could more or less count on a breeze of some sort at all times. Deeper in the lagoon - among these dirty dry-forest islands and stinking mangrove swamps - it was hot, sticky, and malarial. This was the weather that had stopped the Zurian armies all those centuries ago. As a little girl, Ariel had seen their huge burial mounds still lining the north bank of the river for hundreds of miles inland. That, and her dad had never gotten tired of telling her all the old legends about the Zurian wars, with their titanium armor, weird colorful writing system, and policy of killing or enslaving everyone they encountered. In a way, Ariel thought, this weather’s the only reason we’re all here in the first place. But she hated it all the same.
Tyrone continued:
“Good guy. Kind of a dick, but never killed anyone he didn’t have to. Fought with the Union fleet up north, won some battles, got enough money for a nice ship. Absolutely gorgeous, and perfectly designed: balsa wood, steel varnish on the hull and osmium just at the end of the keel. Must have had some connections with someone in Ausron. Thing was stable as a battleship, fast as your cutter. Right before he had it varnished he installed cork planks on the deck. Had to make them himself, but within a few days they were varnished too. You could sleep right on the deck, it was so comfortable…”
Tyrone trailed off; Ariel took another drag on her cigarette, tapping the ash off into the sea as it lapped against the hull of her ship. She kept staring over at the beach and the row of palms behind it. This heat was draining her, as was having to put up with this idiot. Either he was just bored after having no one but this crew of dipshits to talk to for a week, or this was the worst attempt at hitting on her she’d ever been subjected to…
“Anyway, it was something to see. Guy got put on trial with the ringleaders in Gvarance, though, since he was the senior naval commander during the rebellion. Bullshit, if you ask me…”
Tyrone trailed off again. Ariel was sitting there, facing away from Tyrone, a little ribbon of smoke drifting up from her left thigh above which she was holding her cigarette. He was a little smarter than she’d originally thought. At very least, she was now sure he was trying to pry into Prangian affairs, rather than making some pitiful attempt to strike up a friendly conversation.
“No one did ask you though, did they?” Ariel said after a pause. “They didn’t need to ask anyone, did they? Everybody knew the rules - the Union was the best thing that ever happened to the Lagoon. They were lucky Joe didn’t wipe them out right away when he came over the mountains. He even let the cities and islands keep their independence once they joined the Union and put a stop to the mayhem, and still, Gvarance almost pissed it away for everybody. Especially their navy. Killed twelve thousand Union men just for some bullshit “principles” that only the richest people in Gvarence ever cared about anyway? Union sailors were pulling their friends’ bodies out of Gvarenga Bay for days after the city fell. By the time the trial came they were howling for blood, and the Union only executed forty Gvarentines? They’re lucky they even still have a city. I’d have killed them all.”
Tyrone chuckled. “Sounds like you guys are still on side in Prangia. I bet you also know the guy I’m talking about, huh?”
“I’m alive, on this planet, so yeah, obviously I know about Ansel. My dad served with him when he went north with the Union. The guy was a good commander, fine, but he knew what he was getting into with the Gvarentines. Nobody to blame but himself. Doesn’t matter what he did before the rebellion, that doesn’t mean he gets to piss away all our futures for some bullshit principle of his.”
“Yeah… although, what’s most interesting to me is what happened to his ships.”
“Meaning…?” Ariel turned to face Tyrone, a look of angry exasperation on her face. She was still throwing up her veneer of sarcasm, but her voice was getting a little louder and faster as she talked. The cigarette had burned down to a little roach in her hand and gone out.
“Well, they didn’t get put up for public auction like impounded ships usually do. They got sold at a closed auction. Knockdown prices. They all went to the families of that bullshit Gvarentine Council, the one that executed Ansel and the rebel commanders.”
“You think this is one of Ansel’s ships?” Ariel scoffed.
“Don’t know whose else it could be. Lots of people get alchemical varnishes, but nobody else had eight ironwood ships varnished with steel metasubstantiate, including two cutters just like this one.”
“Well, this wasn’t one of his. I don’t have that kind of money or connections. You think I’d be dicking around this Lagoon like this if I did?”
“Oh, I know it’s not yours, could be you’re working for someone and using one of their ships. I wouldn’t expect you to tell me who it is. Let me guess, though, just tell me if I’m wrong: is it the kind of person who begs and pleads with a guy to lead a defense, executes him for doing a good job, then sells his ships to their friends for next to nothing? Basically a real piece of shit, is my guess. Again, I'm not talking about you - I'm talking about whoever owns this thing… which obviously is not you.”
“Remind me of something here - did I say at some point that I was interested in your thoughts on all this shit? Because I’m not. Nobody is.”
“Okay, okay. Touched a nerve, huh? It’s nothing personal. Well, against you, at least. It’s just that I can’t stand the human garbage that runs Gvarence and somehow wormed its way into Prangia - ”
“Screw you, you shithead. You’ve never robbed anybody, right? And you bought that piece-of-shit deathtrap of a ship with some cash you earned selling breadfruit fritters or some bullshit like that? And this crew - all these dirty imbeciles and idiots - they’re all clean, upstanding citizens, I bet. Staring at my tits like a bunch of freaks. I know people like that, I have the hand of someone like that nailed to my mast right now. You think you’re better than me because of how I got my ship? I’ve killed better people than you over card games. Take all your Ansel-fan-club bullshit and shove it up your ass.”
Tyrone just stood there, taking it all in. He tried to hide his smile. He didn’t care about Ansel, really. Sure, the guy had taken the fall for some real scumbags, but overall Ariel was right - he’d known the risks when he accepted the command from the Gvarentines. It was always a good topic to bring up with Prangians and Gvarentines, though, because it was virtually guaranteed to piss them off one way or the other and get them to spill more info than they might have otherwise. And in this case, it had allowed Tyrone to come to a conclusion about Ariel. Golden girl - he’d guessed it the second she’d stepped off the ship. Far too nice a ship for someone this inexperienced. Far too rude to be an experienced trader who was actually dependent on trade for a living. Far too hostile an attitude to someone most common people in the Lagoon Cities still considered a hero. And - most obviously - definitely working for someone much, much bigger than her. Probably daddy, or uncle, or some patron who’d taken a shine to her pretty face (and pretty everything else). Or maybe the power dynamic worked the other way - maybe it was some patron she’d beguiled with her beauty and wrapped around her little finger. That seemed most likely, given her obvious lack of experience and talent as a captain - plus, when you looked like that you could beguile just about anybody you wanted without even trying. At any rate, it was someone who could get their hands on a Black Army engine. They weren’t rarities, unlike Kargian engines, but they weren’t cheap. They were one of the more expensive items that regularly made the rounds in trading among magnates like Aja.
“Clear!” came a shout from up above, on Tyrone’s deck. Tyrone looked up to see a big boom crane, suspended from Ariel’s mast and counterweighted with a huge slab of rock. It groaned, rose, then swung its arm out slowly toward Tyrone’s ship. A shadow passed over Tyrone and Ariel. The sheets of burlap covering the engine flapped silently as the massive bulk of the engine swung over onto Tyrone’s ship. With a little more creaking and groaning, the crane set the engine down. Tyrone could feel his ship list gently toward him as the engine came to rest on the deck; it rocked, ever so lightly, for about twenty seconds as Tyrone and Ariel made their way back up onto the salty, sticky, ashy deck, back into the scorching midday sun, back into the company of both their crews. Ten more minutes to test this thing, Tyrone thought, and then back to Skoi. No more goddamned breadfruit.
“As promised,” Ariel snapped as they walked past their mingled crews, over to where the engine sat under its burlap covering. It was big, even bigger than most Black engines Tyrone had seen, a flawless, graceful black cylinder with rounded edges, with one flat side on which it would be installed. Several shaft ports lined the left, right, and top sides of the housing, and a short, hollow, cylindrical drive shaft about a foot in diameter barely protruded from the front of the housing, opposite the end where the control panel was. Counting the extra eight inches the main drive shaft added, the engine was fifteen feet long, about five feet high and five feet wide. Ariel’s crew untied the ropes and pulled the burlap covering off. The engine was encased in semi-gloss, black metal, totally free of rust, lime, or anything like that. He walked slowly around it, admiring the craftsmanship. It struck him every time. Just like everything Joe had invented or redesigned. Nothing excessive; the sleekness of the housing was not only elegant and space-efficient, it also meant that bullets, bombs, grenades, and shells would normally ricochet off into the distance without a trace. Lots of the Northern warlords and their soldiers had found that out the hard way during the Conquest.
Tyrone walked over to the control panel, situated on a flat surface at the center of the end of the cylinder opposite the drive shaft. It looked brand-new, as expected. The dials were a little bit different on this one than the thirty or so others that Aja had collected so far, but that wasn’t anything too unusual, since Black engines could be modified using modern technology (though such modification did tend to be minimal, in order to keep the resale value high). He turned the heavy, circular switch, and heard a satisfying click. The engine hummed to life. Joe had thought of everything; it was an artificial noise, loud enough to let you know it was on, but wouldn’t otherwise so much as scare off a school of fish. Once the engine was on, Tyrone flipped another switch and turned the faint noise off; the essential functions of these engines happened totally silently. Tyrone flipped a switch to engage the gears, and heard them start to whir. He flicked ‘clockwise’ and saw the short black stub of a drive shaft at the front of the engine immediately begin its lightning-fast, silent rotation. All good so far - next thing was to pop open the port, check it out, then finally tap the priming blast switch and make sure a big orange flash of priming energy shot out the hollow drive shaft, out across the open sea to incinerate a palm tree somewhere. Most people didn’t even know there was a port behind the dials. If it ran, and especially if the big impressive priming blast boomed out as expected, they figured it must be fine. But all sorts of shit could get in there during two centuries underwater, buried in snow, or lodged in compacted gravel high up on some mountainside where an airship had crashed. Let a bunch of barnacles die in there, and it’d still work just fine, but you’d never, ever get rid of the stench. Tyrone slid the port cover off from behind the ‘engage’ dial, and saw a few bands of deep green light glowing inside.
“Holy…shit,” Tyrone said, swatting suddenly at his neck. He’d had to think fast; nothing had bitten him or anything, but his exclamation had almost given away his astonishment. Ariel and her crew had obviously not looked into the port or fired a priming blast. How had nobody noticed this?! Black engines weren’t supposed to glow at all. Sure, the perisubstantiate conductors in a Kargian engine glowed - although they glowed orange, not green - when the hyperium was flowing. A Kargian engine, like a Black engine, would shoot a brief burst when you hit the blast switch. This engine looked a lot like a Black engine, and its housing was identical, but Tyrone had never heard of any engine that glowed green before. Kargian engines also emitted a small but palpable amount of heat; this one, by contrast, seemed to be emanating cool air when Tyrone opened the port.
“Well?” Ariel snapped. “Are we done here?”
Tyrone pretended to be ignoring her, still inspecting the engine, but internally he was panicking. What the hell was this thing? 34,000 would be a lot for a Kargian engine, even if it still functioned; nobody could modify it, and it was too powerful to be compatible with most modern machinery. It was more than a fair price even for a mint-condition Black engine, but that was obviously not what they had here. 34,000 would make or break Tyrone for years to come - if he bought this thing and it turned out to be a dud, Aja wouldn’t reimburse him. If he let it slip that this was something else, Ariel would turn around and take it back to wherever she’d come from, and then Prangia would find out what it was. This also meant he couldn’t hit the blast switch; if the priming burst that came out turned out to be green, too, there were enough people between the two crews to guarantee that someone would catch on to the fact that something was different here, and the deal would definitely fall apart there and then. Unbelievably, whoever had procured this engine for the Prangians had missed this, as had Ariel and her crew, but in any case, Tyrone had a choice here: either buy the engine, right here, right now, and hope for the best, or spill the beans, go home, and eat the cost of this expedition, which he couldn’t afford to do.
No time: the thing seemed to work, and it definitely wasn’t a Kargian engine, so Aja might well reimburse him for the whole thing for 34,000 stacks, or close to it. Plus, if he failed on this expedition, he knew the next big trade would probably go to someone else. Either way, he was risking financial ruin; at least if he bought the engine, he had a chance of coming out ahead. It was time to act.
“Looks good. Grant, Severa, Molly, go get the rest of the cash. And Grant - left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot this time, yeah?”
The quiet chuckling that broke out here diverted everyone’s attention. Tyrone’s heart was hammering in his chest. He didn’t scare easily, but right now he felt a little nauseous. He walked over to Ariel and shook her hand.
She pressed his hand firmly, then flicked her wrist as if disgusted by the handshake. Her beauty had stunned him at first, but between the initial negotiation and the conversation they’d just had, a palpable aura of hatred and rage had been imparted to her dark, beautiful face. It was really intense, and something about it disturbed Tyrone. He could tell, though, that he’d just been the spark for a lot of this anger; he must’ve touched a nerve, but there was something else that was pissing her off.
“See? You do what you have to do to get by, just like I do. Here you are, shaking hands with a piece of shit like me,” she snarled, wrinkling her perfect nose with a visceral snort and then spitting hatefully onto the deck of Tyrone’s ship. She brought her bright-green glare back to meet his eyes again; one last time, and for just an instant, her beautiful, dark face with its sharp features stunned him. He noticed that she had an orichalcum stud in her left nostril, as well. Its deep orange sheen made her face look like it was literally smoldering with fury. Nevertheless, he thought… Gods, she was pretty. But the weight of his brand-new acquisition overwhelmed his brain again almost immediately.
“No hard feelings, yeah?” Tyrone said distractedly, looking pale and squeezing her hand once more before turning around and walking back toward his cabin. Ariel looked at him quizzically. No shitty little comeback? Nothing? Weirdo. Well, whatever - he could go on about his principles all day for all she cared. They had the money, or soon would, so now it was back to Prangia, back to Terry to give him his 30,000. Thank the Gods that had worked out. Hopefully her crew had enough sense to keep their mouths shut and just enjoy their extra 100 each. That creep Terry wouldn’t be likely to look into things too deep; he’d be too busy staring at her ass. She hopped back down onto her own ship’s deck, the alchemically-treated wood emitting a dull clunk as the nails in her boots slammed down onto it. Every time she heard it, it made her feel all warm inside, just knowing how strong this ship was.
“Move it! I don’t want to spend even one more minute in this shithole of a bay!” Ariel’s crew scrambled, clearing the decks, letting out the sails, and packing up the crossbows and other projectile weapons they’d had stashed below the gunwales in case of a fight. Ariel had just shown her inexperience, to be sure, but still, there wasn’t one of her crew who was prepared to disobey her orders. Seeing them scrambling, she finally felt her anger subside a bit. Maybe Tyrone knew more about business than she did - there was no way in the world he’d have avoided being gutted if she’d decided to gut him, and every member of her crew knew it. That’s why they were so loyal to her: they knew it was safe to serve with her. Nobody got away with any kind of violence against Ariel or her crew. The smoked, severed hand that was nailed to her mast was proof of that, just in case you hadn’t seen her fight yet. Calmer now, she turned to watch Tyrone’s crew scamper back up the gangplank. Screw Ansel, screw Terry, and screw this asshole Tyrone. Sooner or later, she’d be leaving all this bullshit behind anyway.
Tyrone walked past his crew as they were securing the engine with big, heavy ropes, as Grant, Severa and Molly walked back over the gangplank from Ariel’s cutter, as Theresa and her team came strolling nonchalantly out of the hold of the ship. Tyrone tapped the scabbard of his sword against the ground three times to let Tim know to weigh anchor (not using the Zephyr; just sails, this time). A flurry of hissing bubbles rose from under the starboard side of his ship as Tim opened the Zephyr’s underwater exhaust valve. The ship’s two big sails snapped into life, catching the wind and pulling the ship slowly to the west. Looking to starboard, he could still see Ariel’s strikingly beautiful figure standing at the prow of her ship, and her crew scurrying in all directions as their ship slid quietly off to Prangia.
Right up until he’d looked into the engine’s port, he’d been eagerly anticipating saying goodbye to this malarial, stinky bay, its stifling air, and the goddamn ashy breadfruit grime that was encrusted onto every surface on this ship. Instead, a wave of nausea swept over him once again as he thought about what he’d just done. He’d had to choose between two pretty unappealing options, but…ugh, shit, shit, SHIT.