The place slowly filled up to capacity and just when Amanda didn’t think anymore sailors could fit in the door opened and more filtered though. She chatted with Sirius about all sorts of random things, animals they’d each seen, things she knew about the desert. Sirius was just telling her about the different ways you could tell the quality of a sword when someone dropped a stack of shot glasses along with a bottle of something caramel coloured on the table and invited them to a round. Sirius politely declined while Amanda grabbed the bottle to see what it was. It didn’t really matter to her, she just wanted to see if it was one she recognised. It was whiskey but not one she knew. A few more bottles showed up, a rum, a gin, and some type of green tinted spirit Amanda didn’t recognise. She skipped the green one, made a face at the taste of the gin, downed a full shot of whiskey to wash away the taste of the gin then poured another deciding to stick to that.
Thankfully someone brought out some more snacks, hot fries, and cheese coated potato balls. Cheers were had, more shots were squirreled away, and Amanda and Sirius got distracted listening to wild stories from the crew. Amanda even joined in with a few of her own, tales from musters in the desert, or late night games of cards that had gone wrong.
Crawly was the first to get up from the table. “Well I’m off off find me a nice woman, gotta get the good ones before they’re all gone.” No one laughed as he slipped from the table, into the crowd, and out the tavern door.
“Did his parents really name him Crawly?” Amanda asked.
Her question was met with friendly laughter and many quips in reply. Even Sirius chuckled a bit and joined in with a tale of his own. Just like many of their other tales she wasn’t sure which one was the truth.
Slowly the crowd in the bar thinned and their own table shrunk. Instead of dying out the mood in the room took a different, more familiar turn, as someone took to a stage at the end and struck a few chords on a guitar. The volume of conversation dropped enough that the music could be heard and appreciated, but it didn’t disappear completely.
The mood change seemed to please Sirius who appeared more relaxed and watched the stage with rapt attention as different people got up and took a turn at entertaining the crowd.
“Is there an order to these performances?” Amanda asked after one particularly drunken performance where the singer fell off the stage.
Shiv leaned in. “It’s open mic. They always do this when the crowd thins a little. Anyone can get up and play. The guitar belongs to the bar. There’s a piano in the corner too. Play too many bad songs and they might start throwing things at you though.” Shiv chuckled followed by a hiccup which prompted more laughter.
Amanda watched as Neko got up on stage and played a song or two on his lyre. The whole bar room hushed in response.
Shiv leaned in again as Neko returned amidst cheers and whoops. “You know, the captain’s not that bad of a singer himself.”
“You sing?” Amanda asked Sirius, intrigued.
Sirius shot Shiv a look before turning back ready to watch the next performer. “Sometimes,” he answered.
“Oh go on, sing for us.” Neko encouraged from further down the table, having caught the end of the conversation. No one new had gotten up on stage yet.
Sirius shook his head. “Not tonight.” He glanced towards the door and started to stand, “I actually need to go and have a chat to…”
He was interrupted by Neko who said, “What about you Amanda? You’re pretty good.”
“Yeeeah,” encouraged one of the crew and next thing she knew they were chanting her name. “Amanda! Amanda! Amanda!” Who could say no to that?
“Oh alright then,” she conceded and got up from her seat.
Whatever it was that Sirius had been meaning to do could evidently wait, for as he saw her stand he sat himself back down ready to watch with undivided attention.
Amanda had always enjoyed performing. She’d never been an amazing singer but she could hold a tune and she knew how to keep a beat going better than anyone. The right beat could capture a crowd, get them swaying to music and almost hypnotized.
She played them something soft and sweet at first, plucking strings rather than strumming. She sung an older song she didn’t know the origin of. Something about a lost bird, it was sort of a sea shanty, and she would be lying if she had said her current predicament hadn’t inspired it.
As the last note played itself she started up a beat with her palm slapping the body of the guitar. Slow at first, layering vocals on top. The traditional tune had a piano come in third then fade out as the base and lead guitar came in, but it could be played with just the one guitar too. It was supposed to have a sort of empty echo to it. Getting the beat right was the key in this song. Pretty soon she had folks bobbing their feet and heads in time to the music. She returned to her seat amidst a sea of cheers and whistles.
“I think they love you more than they love me,” Neko observed.
“No way.” Amanda shook her head as someone on the other side of the room yelled out “Encore!”
“It probably helps that she’s a girl,” Dickie slurred.
“Well you should have no trouble then,” Amanda fired back without missing a beat. It drew a round of hoots from the rest of the table. She sat back down with a grin and poured herself another shot of whiskey. She had barely put the bottle back down before it was picked up again and passed around the table. Someone set a second bottle down at their end and Shiv promptly grabbed it and refilled his own glass with a couple of shots. The rum had long since been nabbed by the far end of the table. She wasn’t sure where the gin had gone and she didn’t really care.
“I do hope you’re gonna be able to find your way back to the ship later,” Sirius remarked with a glance Shiv’s way.
“Aye,” Shiv replied with a slow nod.
“Surely it would be hard to get lost with the port that close?,” Amanda observed.
Sirius gave a nod and then replied “And yet every time we’re here some poor sod ends up taking a dip in the sea.”
Shiv waved a hand dismissively. “Half of them get thrown in cause they pissed someone off.”
It was then that Amanda realised Sirius hadn’t taken his eyes off her. She glanced at him and he didn’t look away.
“That was really good, the performance.” He nodded his head slightly at the stage.
She smiled. “Thanks”. She glanced at the empty table in front of him. “You worried about getting thrown in the sea?” she asked after a pause.
He sighed but smiled. “You ever hear the story of Anne Bonny and Captain Jack Rackam and what happened when one night they stole a Man o’ War?”
She frowned. “Man o’ War? Like the jellyfish or the horse?”
“Like the ship. It’s a warship. Human ship.” He paused then frowned. “The horse?”
“Racehorse. Very fast. Also apparently from the old world, sort of. An unknown worldjumper secretly borrowed the original back in 1920, then cloned him or bred him I don’t know but we ended up with our own one.” She paused double checking her memory of the year. “He won everything, course we don’t handicap them like the humans do so they raced our version a lot longer here. He didn’t live quite as long though, disappeared, no one’s sure to where. There isn’t much human history I know, horse racing tends to be about it. There was a bit of crossover back in the day.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Huh.” Sirius mused thoughtfully. “I didn’t know that.” They were silent for a moment and then Sirius spoke again. “It’s not a jellyfish by the way.”
“Huh?”
“The man o’ war. It’s a Siphonophorae. A colony of tiny organisms called zooids.”
“What?” Amanda laughed, thinking he was messing with her. But the expression on his face was one of earnest. She frowned. “Really?”
He nodded and gave her a breath-stealing smile. “Really, it’s in a book I’ve got on the ship. I’ll show you later.”
“It’s not one organism?”
“Nope.”
“Weird.” She gave a soft laugh at the incredulity of it all before she remembered what had started the conversation. “You were telling me about the ship?”
“Oh yeah. It’s not much of a story. So these pirates, back in the old world, not long after the great Splice, but legendary all over, especially among sailors, they stole a ship. A very large, very important ship, and to celebrate a lot of them got to drinking. All except for the two woman. There was another, Mary Read. The three of them were rumored to be lovers, Anne, Mary, and Jack. Anne was a redhead like you.”
“But not a witch?”
“Not a witch, at least she wasn’t rumored to be one. Anyway, all crew, including the captain got boat-tipping drunk, except for Anne and Mary. Wait, I think I got this backwards. They stole a sloop. The man o’ war was what chased after them.”
“A sloop?”
“Another ship, much smaller, single mast.”
“You ain’t even got the pirates right,” Shiv interrupted. “That weren’t them. Rackham did steal a sloop and they did get chased by a man o’ war but none of that crew were drunk. That story belongs to Nicholas and Isi of the Treble, a pair of witches. They were delivering bananas...”
“Nooo.” Interrupted Benny “They stole an aristocrats daughter, way up north, by the Boodacks”
“Nah,” said another. “It was in the south, and they weren’t pirates. They were reputable merchants pursued by pirates.”
As the crew fell into debate Amanda turned to Sirius. “So what happened?”
“Well the short of it is the crew got shitfaced and when their pursuers caught up with them not a single one was capable of putting up a fight. Well in the case of Anne Bonny and Rackham, only Anne and Mary put up a fight. Point being, if you don’t want your ship stolen someone needs to be awake for the night watch and ready to wield a sword. Ideally several someones. But I’ve found it’s better to let them cut loose at some point, as long as we don’t all do it together.”
“It spoils the brotherly love though,” Shiv slurred. “When half the crew gotta stay back while the rest of us party. It’s not a united front.”
“It ain’t half the crew,” Sirius replied. “It’s a handful. And they’ll get their chance later.”
“Well what about you?” Shiv remarked as he waved his glass about. “You’re not guarding the ship, you’re here and could be drinking with us.”
“One of us needs to stay sober so one of us can be in charge. Either I drink or you do and since you’re always drinking I don’t. Would you prefer to swap?”
Shiv glanced at Amanda. “He’s a got a point.”
Amanda smiled back. “I think we should leave the captain to his choices.” Then she turned to Sirius and feeling a fair bit of the effects of the alcohol told him, “My mother would probably like you.”
“She not much of a drinker either?” Sirius asked.
“More like my father is too much of one,” Amanda replied casually before taking another sip of her own whiskey.
Shiv stifled a yawn. “How about some five finger fillet?”
Amanda slid her gaze toward him slowly and gave him an assessment. He did seem drunk enough, perhaps she had a chance this time.
“Alright.”
"No more five finger fillet," Sirius objected. “Or four finger either,” Sirius added before Shiv could counter offer.
"Aw come on, we're all adults here. We're all perfectly capable of assigning our own risks," Shiv replied sitting up straighter and stabbing the end of his knife into the table in front of him so it stood straight up on its own.
Sirius didn't answer. Amanda felt a small thrill at being called am adult so offhandedly. There had been no undertone to Shiv's mention. She felt like she'd spent the last five or six years fighting to be seen that way. Fighting the world. Fighting her mother. Now here was someone she'd hardly known long, someone twice her age just casually including her as one of them. Some part of her did register that maybe her response to that statement suggested she might not be there quite yet but she ignored that thought. Instead she glanced at Sirius.
She noted out of the corner of her eye that Sirius had acquired a thoughtful sort of look in response to Shiv's statement and she wondered if he felt the same as she did. It wasn’t worry she was seeing, although that had been there before. A moment passed and he glanced her way. Amanda met his eyes and he quickly turned away. The expression on his face had been a curious one. Amanda watched him a little longer until he risked a glance again. Briefly. Now he was pointedly not looking at her and his cheeks had developed a light blush. Interesting. Amanda smiled and turned back to Shiv. “Go on then.”
Before Shiv could pull the knife out of the table Amanda glanced back at Sirius once more. The blush was gone but he was watching her carefully. This time when he saw her look his way he replied “I’m not patching you up again if you stab yourself.”
“Oh ye of little faith,” Amanda replied and turned back to Shiv. He handed her a knife from his belt and took his own one back out of the table.
Benny counted down and the crew watched in a hush. Shiv started on two with the obvious intent to give Amanda an advanced view of what she was up against.
Immediately she could sense she was in trouble. What had been a drunken posture before was now a solid spine and a focused face. Shiv splayed his fingers out and fast as he had last time, maybe even faster he stabbed the knife accurately between each one.
She started a second later but she didn’t dare go as fast as Shiv was, not after last time. She had gambled at being able to beat a drunk and lost. Shiv was obviously less intoxicated than he had first appeared. If they had actually bet anything she might have felt a little cheated.
She knew she would only look foolish if she kept on too long so she stopped and stabbed the knife he’d given her into the table just as he had done earlier. “Fine you win.”
Shiv grinned and put his knives back on his belt.
“Aww,” The rest of the crew returned to their previous conversations in a sulk.
She glanced at Sirius and could tell he was trying not to look to happy at this result. It shone through anyway.
There was more drinking and more talking. Eventually Sirius got up from the table and in a lowish voice intended mainly for Shiv he said “I’m gonna go look for Polly.”
Shiv gave a knowing nod between mouthfuls of spiced popcorn, a snack which seemed to be a favorite here.
When Sirius was gone Amanda asked in a quiet voice “Who’s Polly? A prostitute?”
Shiv laughed so loud a few heads turned. But then he dropped his voice. “Polly’s a guy, not that they don’t have those for sale here too, but no, Polly’s a captain.”
“A pirate?”
Shiv laughed again but quieter this time. Another shake of the head but he hesitated before speaking and more thoughtfully replied. “It’s complicated.”
Before Amanda could ask anymore a tall brunette haired woman with curls in her hair sat down next to Shiv. “Shiv,” she purred. She wore a loose white skirt cut clean up the front and tied with a ripped leather sash at her hips. Her bosom overflowed her blood red corset and from the moment she sat down she had Shiv’s attention.
“Hey Darling.”
“Who’s bed are you sleeping in tonight?” she asked him as she placed one hand on his thigh.
“Yours I hope,” was his reply which brought a smile to her face and a twinkle to her eye. With that the pair of them disappeared into the night.
“Was she a prostitute?” Amanda asked the crew at the table. She half expected one of them to reply ‘well duh’ but no one did.
“Fuck knows,” Dickie replied looking bored and a little jealous. “She always comes looking for Shiv when he’s here. She was probably just waiting for the captain to leave. You know I bloody hope he’s paying for a woman that fine. Uh, no offense or anything. You pretty fine yourself.”
Before he could dig himself into a hole Benny whacked Dickie on the head. When Dickie turned to see who had done it Benny was already looking the other way. He waited just long enough then turned around and gave Dickie a ‘why are you looking at me like that?’ expression. Poor Dickie was obviously too drunk to put two and two together.
“Didn’t you have a woman you were seeing here?” Neko asked Dickie from further down the table.
Dickie’s face took on an even darker scowl. “Yeah, she told me I wasn’t to come by no more.”
That prompted murmurs and a bit of laughter from the rest of the crew. “Gee I wonder why,” exclaimed one in a bout of schadenfreude.
Then someone suggested a drinking game. The kind that everyone lost when it was this far into the evening. At one point Amanda knocked over the bottle of rum and was told to drink a shot in penalty. There was arm wrestling and even some more five finger fillet which Amanda wisely stayed out of. She left the table to find the bathroom and when she got back the table had shrunk and one crew member was passed out under it. Two telekinetics were having a magic wrestle over a shot glass placed between the two of them, both staring intently as the shot glass quivered, threatening to fly off in one direction or the other.
“Is he okay?” Amanda asked of the man under the table. In response another man gave him a gentle kick. The sleeping bloke groaned and rolled over. Amanda shrugged and returned to her seat just as the levitating shot glass went flying into the wall. She laughed along with the rest of the crew and nearly fell off her seat as she sat. Then she reached for a peanut from the bowl in the middle of the table.
“I bet ya can’t do this,” she challenged, and flipped the peanut high in the air. She leaned forward to try and catch in it her mouth only to have it hit her in the face instead.
“Do what?” Benny asked. “Hit myself in the face with a peanut.” But he couldn’t resist trying it himself and soon several of them were. One guy turned out to be particularly good and then everyone was throwing peanuts at him.
They drank some more, laughed at every little thing. Eventually the guy under the table started snoring and they laughed at him as well. A couple of hours passed and Amanda had no idea what time it was or how many drinks she’d had. Truthfully the world wasn’t entirely in focus anymore.
She might have kept going if their celebrations hadn’t been interrupted by an earth-shattering crash from outside.