“Yooowchh!”

I really didn’t want to shriek like a fair maiden when the cleaning ointment made contact with my wound, but I’ve never had to endure that much of it at once. Even without my wail, my body flinching wildly like a caught fish’s last flop was a dead giveaway to my threshold for medical pain.

“Quit your bellyaching sailor, it’s just a regular ship tonic. Keeps the wounds clean,” Ruby said as she handed me some dry rags from a broken barrel near where I found my shield. She had wrapped her own arm quickly without making a sound beyond a sharp inhale. Her cuts were over a smaller surface, but much deeper than my own. The idea of the fiery liquid making contact with an open gashes like that made me almost forget my own pain.

Almost.

“I told you I’m not a god damn sail-ach!!” I cut off my own sentence as I attempted to wrap the ointment damp rag around myself, barely finding the nerve to cover the wounds I was wearing it for.

Ruby, fully wrapped, folded her arms as she leaned against the ladder that led out of the lower deck. The only source of light was the sky from the morning hatch, which gave the murderous pirate a sort of angelic image as the natural shine fell around the spot she stood in. With her jacket removed, I now had full view of her torso that was now only covered with a fairly damp white undershirt.

Her breasts were slightly smaller than average but they had a nice shape which was more apparent compared to her toned torso around them. My male urges made me feel kind of stupid. This woman was a murdering thieving criminal who tried to kill me and almost certainly still wanted me dead, but I couldn’t show enough restraint to not look at her tits. As she looked around the space , my gaze fixated on her perked nipples which were mostly visible due to the wet fabric. Holy shit. Her icy blue eyes locked on to mine and I had no idea if she caught me looking, but she didn’t give me any reaction beside a sneer.

“How long are you going to take? Unless you want to die at sea you might want to think about setting a course.”

For some strange reason, the responsibility of directing the ship lit a fire of excitement in my belly.

“We’ll head to the Alvion mainland, we can’t be that far from the coast. I just gotta figure out the direction.”

She folded her arms and tilted her head before making a “hmph” sound.

“Your solution is in front of you, sea-dog. Use your turkey.”

“What?!” I glanced at Knives before squinting at Ruby.

“Shit, you really aren’t a sailor. Even the most moss-green deck-swabber knows that birds can be used to identify land. Send him to grab a branch from the nearest shore and turn the ship in that direction.”

I wanted to respond to the insults but it was a damn good idea. Gritting my teeth I wrapped the last bandage around my torso and threw on the captains jacket. It may have belonged to a dead man but anything was better than that gaudy sailor’s shirt. We climbed to the main deck and I gave Knives his instructions right after seeing to his wounds, which were thankfully quite superficial.

“Alright, mate. If you see any Harpies, Griffons or even a cute looking DireHawk, just come straight back here, got it?” I said while stroking his wing.

Knives gave me an enthusiastic cry before beating his large wings into elevation and circling the ships. Right before he departed he glanced at Ruby before glancing at me and then shot off into the sky, leaving me to wonder what his observation was. Without my winged partner, I did have to watch her even closer. I may have the shield and the flintlock but she was surely still a threat unarmed. I couldn’t bear large gaps of silence so I attempted to converse.

“What’s going to be your plan after this? You gonna return to the Bishop Isles?” I asked casually.

“Probably, but it’s not something I’m looking forward to…” she said as she found a seat on an empty barrel and wrung out a large amount of water from her crimson hair. “Forsythe has considerable influence on those isles, even if I could somehow pay him for all these damages, my safety would not be guaranteed.”

“You never actually told me why you work for him. The few stories I heard about you always had you described as an independent pirate.”

“I don’t work for him, it’s just Tax. He owns most of the docks and he gets a piece of everything smuggled, traded and sold overseas. Which obviously includes most of us pirates. Problem is, I owe him a little bit more…”

I scratched my chin curiously as she went quiet.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“You racked up some extra debt somehow? You piss in his ale?”

“I killed his ex-wife,” she said with a mix of dread and dark pride. “I didn’t know who she was when her ship came into view but the Red Menace takes on all challengers, she didn’t stand a fucking chance.”

I squinted my eyes with curiosity.

“Considering you’re still alive, I’m assuming it wasn’t the most amicable divorce.”

She snorted before offering me a smirk.

“They got on just fine, pretty sure they’d fuck now and again. But for him it was a business thing. He loaned her the ship and I sunk it. He took my Hell Manta as collateral, spent a fortune fixing her up and set my new Tax.”

“I could take a wild guess as to how much you owe, but I’d probably still be under,” I said as I set the shield against the steering wheel after gauging the distance between us.

“Damn right, but that cargo you are so stubbornly stuck to would’ve made a real dent in the debt.” she hissed resentfully.

“Well it’s mine now, so get comfortable with that reality,” I stated abruptly.

“With the value of that cargo, I’m the least of your worries, hang on to it tight, Pleb.”

I quickly learned her pride was huge and fragile, like an overstretched air balloon. It was like she didn’t even care about the cargo itself, but only that she failed in taking it from me. I’m a fairly competitive lad myself, but the high stakes of reputation that a pirate like her knew was out of my realm. I wanted to speculate further but my stomach made itself known in noisy fashion.

“I...think it’s time for breakfast, there should be some vegetables in those barrels you’re sitting near.” I mentioned as my stomach snarled curiously. “I can probably whip up some stew.”

“Fill your face, peasant. Just tell me where the rum is!” Ruby’s voice became brighter suddenly as if the very concept of booze was the answer to everything.

“You can drink if and when we get to shore. Look at what those harpies did to you sober, we need to be on alert.”

“You got a very well developed sense of humor if you think I’m gonna not-drink at sea because you tell me to.” Her eyes became narrow and her voice was full of threat, which made me quickly grab my shield in response.

“Sailors can’t drink on the job under New Alvion regulations. So if there is rum on this ship, it’ll be in the Captain’s Cabin, they wouldn’t leave it around where the crew could snatch it,” I explained firmly. “Now I have the Captain’s Key from his coat, and your chances of getting it are as likely as this shield.”

Ruby held her threatening pose with simmering rage before kicking a crate behind her hard enough to split the wood, causing a handful of damp potatoes to roll across the deck. I’d never say it out loud, but her outbursts were starting to grow on me, it was cute.

“You think you can just appoint yourself the Captain cause you’re wearing that dead man’s coat?” she barked, stomping up and down the deck.

“Actually as the last surviving crew member, I inherit full command of the ship by common Alvion law, so that Cabin is my room now.” My voice was full of smugness, and I was relishing every moment of her reaction.

“Your pleb rules don’t apply to my ship! The Hell Manta isn’t yours. I’m the Captain and I’m still breathing!” Ruby yelled as she jabbed a pointed finger at the busted airship fastened to the Bronze Bastion.

“Then your criminal claim to that property means even less, now that you hold no leverage. Only way you’re taking either of these ships is if you kill me, and you don’t hold the tools to make that happen,” I snarled threateningly.

“I don’t need a weapon to kill,” Ruby retorted coldy.

“Well goodluck winning a fisfight against this,” I scoffed as I patted my shield lovingly. “Now stop whining, I need to eat and so do you. Whatever the next scourge of the sea we encounter next, I’m not fighting it on an empty stomach.”

I always prided myself on my cooking. My city was home to some cracking restaurants but they had access to the finest ingredients. My unique skill was that I could make almost anything taste good. So when I watched the grumpy Ruby-Jack wolf down my improvised vegetable and harpie stew, I felt my cooking confidence swell pleasantly.

“Careful, Ruby. If you eat too slow you might get a chance to taste it,” I said as I consumed a spoonful.

“Mmmph, fuck off...mph...Pleb.” Was all I was able to understand between her binging scoffs. “Needs rum….mmpph.”

“Like I said, not until we get to sh-”

My authoritative voice was interrupted by Knives’ cry as he returned to the area above the ship, circling excitedly. I placed my tepid bowl of stew on a wooden crate before running to the center of the deck. Knives then gracefully swooped down to perch on my shield revealing a dark brown smoking pipe held firmly in his beak.

“Interesting looking ‘branch’ you found, mate. Were there no trees in that direction?”

Knives responded to my quip by dropping the pipe in my free hand before flying over to my unattended stew and pecking away at the contents. Cheeky bastard.

“Hey I was still eating that!” I protested before Ruby came up behind me, surprising me with her speed and relative stealth.

“Let me see that thing,” she asked, motioning to the pipe.

“You’re not getting the tobacco in the captain’s quarters either,” I said, pulling away from her.

“No idiot, look at the design. It’s Dwarven. Your dumber than your turkey who’s trying to tell you something about where we are going.”

“That there may be people on the land who smoke? Truly an astounding revelation,” I said as I threw my arms into a shrug.

“You really are an uncultured pleb, aren't you?” Ruby sassed as she waved the pipe at me like an angry teacher. “Only dwarven lungs can draw air from these pipes, it’s the way they are sculpted. A human or elf could suck on this like a flaccid prick for hours and get nothing from it.”

“Thanks for the imagery.” I rubbed my forehead before glancing in the direction that Knives flew in from. “So it definitely belonged to a dwarf, what’s your point? There aren’t as many dwarves as there used to be, but they are still around.”

“The ports, pleb. Dwarves either work in the mines, the blacksmiths or the independent ports. Your turkey wouldn’t have been able to get into the first two, so guess where we are headed?”

It made so much sense I felt a bit silly not putting it together myself. We had been turned back around to Alvion, but far away from where I sailed from. Independent docks means no Skylander oversight, so I wouldn’t be recalled to duty by some snotty official. But I still have the tiny detail of the pair of bound ships I was sailing on and the wanted criminal with me.

“So? What exactly do you plan to do?” Ruby asked with folded arms and narrowed eyes.

“We are going straight to that port,” I said as I ran to the helm, unable to hide the bounce in my step.

“You got some sort of idea, pleb?” Ruby asked, her tone dripping with skepticism.

Knives abandoned the bowl to land on my shoulder and cried out in the direction he arrived from. I began to steer the wheel heartily, guided by his sounds. I turned to Ruby and flashed her a smile.

“Actually, I do!”