Chapter Text
Jungwon downed the liquor in front of him in one gulp, grimacing: he would never get used to the feeling of it pouring down his throat like hell fire, but he asked the innkeeper for another glass anyway while looking around in the most discreet way possible.
There wasn’t much else to do, at the Black Pearl. At night, all the sailors who were out of work, or the ones whose ships were anchored to the port, or those who were desperate for a job, gathered there. When these kinds of men gathered, beer flowed quick and gossip even quicker: luckily, that was exactly what Jungwon needed.
A few weeks earlier, while he was coming back with his ship and his men from his last raid, he had started hearing strange voices in every port he stopped by. Whispers, murmurs, nothing more than that, but it was enough to arouse his curiosity, because the half-formed phrases he was hearing all regarded the same subject: the Spring of Eternal Youth.
Jungwon wasn’t that convinced of the existence of some magical place that could guarantee the lucky pirate that found it an eternal and youthful physical splendor, the gift of never growing old: he knew sailors needed to believe in something, and he wasn’t particularly interested in smashing their dreams. And, in any case, the details to the ritual the Spring required were so complicated, so confused, the knowledge so thoroughly lost, that he knew no one could take that story for more than the legend it was.
Strangely enough, a lot of sailors had started to go around saying that someone had started to ask around for information on that precise matter, and that someone was handsomely rewarding any kind of direction. Jungwon had wrinkled his nose at the news: when he had learned that the man poking his nose around was Sunghoon Park, the infamous admiral he himself had had the displeasure to meet more than once, head to the Baroness, from the Royal Navy of His Royal Majesty, he had started to smell blood in the water. To him, Sunghoon was little more than a nosy bastard, always ready to meddle in someone else’s business, with a knife in one hand and a royal decree in the other. He described himself as a loyal sailor, ready to carry out His Majesty’s orders, but he never hesitated to use all the tricks of a common pirate to get what he wanted, and for that reason Jungwon despised him. But if he had to give something to him, it was that he never did something just to do it. If the voices told the truth, and he had started searching for the Spring, then it meant His Majesty himself was interested in it. So, there had to be at least a little truth in all those stories.
That was the reason why he was there: in that same moment, his second and third in command were in different inns around the city, to do what he himself was doing, which was mingling with the patrons, meeting them at the places where they were always eager to talk, to understand if all those words had even a bit of truth to them. After all, they were pirates, always hungry for their next adventure: it wouldn’t take much more than that to sail again, even though Jungwon wanted to be sure that he would be following an actual lead, and not a mirage.
A voice, a couple tables away from him, obtained his attention. ‘Did you all hear?’ shouted a sailor too old to go back to the sea, hitting his mate with his elbow and almost making him spill his beer. ‘The Centuria is about to set sail again. Jay Park is looking for the Spring of Eternal Youth, or so they say’.
From behind his glass, Jungwon arched an eyebrow. If he was searching for proof, he wouldn’t find anything better than this: captain Jay Park was known as a shark, out at sea. He looked for his prey, assaulted it, and conquered it, and he never made prisoners. He would have never thrown himself in anything he wasn’t sure would have made profit for him. Jungwon drank what was left on the bottom of the glass, paid and left.
His feet led him to the port: there, anchored, was his ship, the one he had inherited with its crew less than three years earlier, the one he tried to defend and guide between the waves to the best of his capabilities every single day.
Jungwon didn’t have any strings attaching him to nowhere, not anymore, but he would have drowned with the Carraich and for her, if it came to it. He was proud of his ship like he would of a daughter. She was a sturdy vessel, made of oak wood and she and her sixty cannons had never betrayed him, nor would they ever. She was anchored at the port for the night, but the gangway had been nailed to the ground, because the sailors knew their commanders were going to come back before sunrise. And, as it was predictable, when Jungwon came back, someone was waiting for him, their arms crossed, in front of the gangway, nervously hitting the ground with their right foot in an irregular pattern.
Jungwon had known Taehyun since he was seventeen years old: they had both been cabin boys on the Carraich when that wasn’t even her name, and then, when Jungwon had become first mate first and captain soon after, he had wanted to reward that bright, calculating mind. Taehyun’s skills were wasted away if they were only used to determine how to best brush the command bridge, and such nights only confirmed it.
‘Captain’ Taehyun started, respectfully taking his right hand to his forehead. Jungwon nodded in his direction. ‘I spent the night at the Old Sailor, that pub at the outskirts of the town center. The only thing the men were talking about was how Park is looking for the Spring of Eternal Youth’.
Jungwon already knew it, but having it confirmed couldn’t hurt. ‘Which one of them, Taehyun?’.
‘Both of them, captain’ his first mate answered. ‘Only, it looks like Sunghoon has already set sail’.
Jungwon couldn’t help the noise of distaste that came out of his closed lips. Now, if he wanted even just to compete in that run, he would have to trail after that idiot like a dog. ‘What about Jay?’.
Taehyun shrugged, as if to say he didn’t know. ‘Jay is in town, they say he’s trying to employ more men. He suffered some losses coming back from his last raid, and he needs to fill the empty posts’. Taehyun and Jungwon both turned around, following the voice that had just spoken: from the port’s shadow, like a devil, a blonde boy had emerged, dressed in nothing more than a pair of trousers and a white shirt, with its sleeves rolled up to reveal his pale forearms and thin wrists, adorned in similarly delicate bracelets. With a face like that, all pink cheeks and pouty lips, no one would have thought him to be able to throttle a mutinied with those same dainty hands, leave him to wheeze his last breaths in a pool of his own blood, and throw the body out at sea, making his fellow mutineers clean the blood stains left on the Carraich’s main deck. ‘He plans to leave in two days’ time. Tomorrow evening, he’s going to be at the Corsair, employing sailors’.
Taehyun arched an eyebrow. ‘Shouldn’t his Royal Majesty be responsible for replacing the men he lost?’.
‘Jay Park is a corsair like no other, Taehyun, you know that. He has the money to buy out a crew loyal to him, and only him, not to the King, if he so pleases. Very well done, Sunoo, as always’.
The boy, Sunoo, winked in Jungwon’s direction, and with a graceful little jump he was on the gangway and back on board.
‘Which do you think is the better course of action to take?’ he asked Taehyun as they followed Sunoo back on their ship.
Taehyun reasoned with himself for a few seconds, in silence. ‘The sailors’ gossip is often more reliable than the newspaper, and Jay Park leaves nothing to destiny or fate’ he reasoned out loud, in the end. ‘If he started to pay an ear to all these voices regarding the Spring, it means they are no voices at all. And considering that Sunghoon is involved in this search as well, we would be fools to miss the opportunity’.
Jungwon nodded, considering his words. ‘The fact that the Spring requires a precise ritual and we have no idea what it requires stays, though’. ‘
We have two days to find out. And, if push comes to shove, we could always go to the Corsair, tomorrow night. You know Jay will listen to you’. ‘I want nothing to do with him, even less ask him for something. Who knows how much it would cost me’.
‘You’re too proud to admit he may have information you need, and you don’t want to humiliate yourself by admitting you’re not in complete control of everything, you mean’. Jungwon didn’t answer him, he didn’t need to; Taehyun seldom relented if he hadn’t succeeded in his lifelong mission to always, always be the voice of reason he loathed to listen to. ‘Nevertheless, I think you should consider it as a last option, if nothing else. Don’t you think?'.
Jungwon didn’t want to keep it even as the most remote of options, but he had to acquiesce: if they didn’t manage to discover anything regarding the ritual to the Spring of Eternal Youth before the following night, the would go to the Corsair, to listen to what Jay or his men, Jungwon wasn’t picky and he was really hoping not to meet him, had to say.