Twenty-Four Years Ago...
----------------------------------------
Skipper Kerr had saved his life in the skies over Drelven and again near an island south of Smallfield. And now, Kale Anton thought, he’d have to repay his debt with betrayal.
The stench of acrid myst mixed with spilled blood and rum in the Silent Skipper’s hold. Dead and dying ship rats and crew, some only a bare year older than Kale, lay strewn across crates and tangled in their hammocks. A few had been thrown off the airship’s side to crash into the waves below.
How many men were mutineers, the young ship rat wondered. Six men, or maybe seven? Anton couldn’t tell in the mystsmoke-filled hold. Enough that he couldn’t have fought them even if he’d been armed.
Which he wasn’t.
One of the men pointed with his pistol. “Get him out of there, now,” he whispered. Joseph Icklen, Kale thought. He was not a man to cross, especially with blood already on his hands.
He knocked on the door.
“Anton, that you?” The skipper’s voice was, as always, barely audible.
Kale hesitated. The man inside had saved his life - more, he’d taught him how to sail the skies over the Sunset Sea and granted him freedom and liberty instead of life trapped on the cliffs. Could he really betray his skipper?
“Speak,” Joseph said, leveling the pistol at Kale’s head.
“Aye, skipper. There was a mutiny.” The mutinous pirates tensed and readied their weapons. “We won. They’re all dead.”
“Very well. Have Icklen set a heading for Seapike. I have one more bit of nasty business there, then it’ll be over,” the skipper said.
“We’ve lost a lot of men, sir. We’ll need you at the helm.”
The skipper’s sigh carried further than his voice. “I’m so close, Anton. So close to being done with my masterpiece. Then our treasure–and our legacies--will finally be safe.”
For a minute, no one spoke. A few mutineers pointed guns at the door - muskets or pistols - and one grabbed a device from a sling on his back. A [Bolt Launcher], Kale saw through his lens. A few shots with it would tear the door apart.
“Skipper, the men need you out here. There aren’t enough hands to bring us to port and get more. A lot of the ship rats died in their berths.” That, thought Anton, was not a lie. The Silent Skipper was huge for a pirate airship, and the seven or eight men left alive wouldn’t be enough to crew the double-masted monster.
Another pause. The pirates tensed, and Joseph opened his mouth to give an order.
“Very well, Anton. I’ll take the helm.” The skipper thumped around in his cabin, obviously securing something.
The door creaked open, and Joseph grabbed the [Pirate King] before he could draw his [Heavy Mystshot Pistols]. The big man heaved, grunting, and threw the skipper toward the other mutineers. Kerr collapsed, tangled in his greatcoat and sword.
The other pirates clubbed him with their pistols and sword hilts. Kale ran at them. “Stop! If you kill him, you’ll never read his map!”
The men laughed and only beat the skipper harder.
“Stop! Now!” Joseph shouted. They stopped. “Kale’s right. We need to know how the map works, or we’ve gone this far for nothing!”
He picked up the [Heavy Mystshot Pistols] and turned to Kale. “That’s your job now. Get that map explained, or there’ll be hell to pay. Welcome to my ship, rat.”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
----------------------------------------
“Please, Kale,” The skipper wheezed through cracked ribs. “I know this wasn’t your doing. Kill me, and bring the Silent Skipper down. Let our treasure and our story fade into legend!”
He would want that, Kale thought. The man was nothing if not concerned with his reputation, even with two broken legs and a ribcage that made every breath agony.
But Kale couldn’t kill him. Joseph and the other mutineers would have his head if the skipper died.
“No, skipper. Tell me how to find your treasure. Tell me where you hid it and what traps you placed on its hiding places. If you give the lads what they need, they’ll set you free. Or let you die if that’s what you wish.”
The old man gritted his teeth and winced as a cough wracked his body. “Kale, kale, my boy…I’ll be dead soon enough either way, and my secrets dead with me. Help me with this last safeguard and let my part in this tale end.”
“No. Skipper Icklen won’t let me live if you die before giving up the treasure - or at least a way to find it, and I don’t wish to die today.”
The skipper fell silent. What was the old man thinking? The paranoid old bastard had to have had a plan for this. A way to scuttle the airship, or regain control of it, even if he couldn’t pilot it alone. But the skipper just sat there. Silent and thinking.
It drove Kale mad when Kerr got this way.
Finally, he spoke. “Kale, I’ll bargain with you. If you come back here with a pistol, my pocket watch, and the map, I’ll tell you the secret you need and give you the tool to solve it. You’ll let me end this torture. Not Icklen. Just you. You’re the only one I can trust.”
“Aye, Kerr, I can do that. I’ll give you the pistol when you tell me how to use the map.” Kale stood and opened the door to the hold. “A pistol, the pocketwatch, and the map. He’ll talk to me and me alone.”
When the new skipper had given him the three items, Kale returned to the old skipper’s side.
“The pocket watch?” Kerr wheezed. Anton tossed the black-painted, intricate timepiece to him. “Thank you. This is the key. The key to the map. Give it to me next.”
Once the map was in his hands, Kerr shut his eyes. “I’ll not betray my legacy, Kale. A pen! A pen, but no answers. Only clues.” He wrote on the edges of the map - random numbers and letters.
“And now, the pistol?” With the gun in one hand and the pocket watch in the other, Kerr nodded at Kale. “Thank you, lad. And now, to preserve my legend and the legend of the Silent Skipper, we must all die!”
Before Kale could stop him, the old man fired the pistol. The air sizzled as myst punched through the ship’s deck and into the boiler! Myst, purple and boiling, filled the room!
Kale ran through the steaming-hot myst as the ship’s engines died. It scalded his skin, but he had to get the map and hourglass! Another pistol shot split the sharp, stinking smoke, and then he was on top of his old skipper. He grabbed at the map, and it tore as the skipper yanked back. A third shot and the skipper lay dead.
As the mutineers and their traitorous new skipper struggled to get the Silent Skipper under control, the waves grew closer. Kale sprinted onto the main deck. He knew there weren’t enough men aboard to save the enormous airship, and there was only one way off of it before it sank.
He ran forward to the forecastle and crawled out to its end. The map was secure in his coat pocket, and the pocket watch was -
Where was the pocket watch? He’d had it, he was sure!
The Silent Skipper crashed into the Sunset Sea below. Anton Kale threw himself free from the wreckage. He swam, as best he could, toward a bit of decking and dragged himself onto it. He looked desperately for the pocket watch in the light of the burning ship.
It was already gone.
----------------------------------------
High in the tower above Seapike, Kale sat manacled. His earthly possessions lay sprawled on the table before him, marking him irrefutably as a pirate, if a young one. A dozen guards filled the room, and a jury of sailors and townsfolk glared at him and shouted insults. But most damningly of all, the Prince of Seapike presided over his trial.
He could see only one way out besides the noose.
“Sirs and misses of the court, I confess to the crimes of piracy, murder, extortion, kidnapping, disrupting commerce, and sailing with [Pirate King] Kerr on the Silent Skipper. I regret none of my choices. Save one. That I didn’t sink that cursed airship sooner, with its monstrous crew and hell-bound skipper sooner.
“Aye, though I confess to the sin of piracy, I also rid the Ludya Principalities of its most terrible pirate. Does that not grant me some clemency? Am I not repentant? I beg you, Prince, for a pardon or reprieve!”
As he was led, hooded and manacled, back to his cell, Kale Anton smiled to himself. The map was hidden on the shore far below, where he’d washed up. He’d live, he was sure. And if he could but live, he’d find Kerr’s hidden treasure, even if it took him every last second of his time on earth to do it!