Chapter Text
“I’m going to miss this place,” Zale sighed, trailing his hand along the doorframe of the Humble Boast as he and his friends left the inn for the loud, humid embrace of the wharf.
“I’m sure you are,” Valere grumbled, strapping shut a compartment left open on Garl’s backpack.
Zale frowned, picking up his pace to be certain she could see him analyzing her scowl. “We got swindled a few times, so what? Nothing unexpected from a port town this size.”
Garl cleared his throat, looking over his shoulder. “I think Valere is referring to the nonstop seaside sun.” He smiled apologetically, rubbing the red rash spreading over his nose. Zale felt his own face warm. “Ah. Right. If you’ll let me, I can—”
“No! Thank you,” Garl sputtered, gently batting the bladedancer’s hand away.
“Something tells me healing magic from the sun isn’t going to do much of anything for a sunburn, Zale,” Valere huffed.
“You’re just mad because we’ve been sleeping through each night. You know, like normal human people.”
“We aren’t normal human people.”
“Maybe you aren’t.”
Valere mocked reaching for her spear. Zale cracked up at last, grinning and stumbling over his boots as they left the staircase of the repurposed ship behind, making for their new vessel.
He could see it from here; an elegant, square-rigged merchant ship, swaying gently beside its docking. The sun’s rays spilled through its three towering masts, pooling on the polished main deck. Zale had never sailed before, and as far as he knew, neither had Valere or Garl, but he was sure they would all fare well in the hands of the self-proclaimed pirates they’d met yesterday.
As shifty as they were, Zale could tell they were as nervous around him and his friends as he was around them. The captain especially. But he and Valere had been putting on their best mature and effervescent Solstice Warrior personas ever since they’d arrived in Stonemason’s Outpost. He was certain the pirates trusted them, and he was certain he could trust the pirates.
“Good luck!” called one of the vendors as they passed. Zale beamed back at them. The praise they’d been getting since soothing the Sleeper was going to give him a big head if he didn’t keep a close eye on himself. Then again, he wouldn’t mind if the people in Lucent gave them the same sunny reception. It was certainly helping them in the realm of local discounts here in Brisk.
Lucent. It sounded pleasant enough despite the so-called curse it harbored. A curse no one wanted to tell him about. Valere and Garl were pretending not to know the problem on Wraith Island, but Zale had heard Captain Klee’shaë discussing it with them near the bandstand in the Humble Boast. When Zale had approached, they’d all taken a sudden interest in making small talk with the walls.
“Ahoy, ye mateys!” called a familiar voice from the end of the wharf. Valere groaned. Zale smirked, jogging to meet the pirates where they stood in the shadow of their ship.
“Morning, Yolande. Is everything ready?”
“Not much to prepare,” the First Mate assured him. Zale furrowed his brow. While it was true he’d never traveled by sea, Valere had read him enough nautical stories back at Zenith for him to understand that ships like the one in front of him needed plenty of work both before and during their travels. He’d been looking forward to helping with the complicated rigging if he could, maybe climbing it and letting the wind comb through his hair as he stared up into the blue—
“Nonsense, Yolande!” Keenathan, the pirate with the nonsensical eye patches, remarked. “What our vessel may lack in structure, it makes up for with a complicated and powerful crew, or my name is not Keenathan!”
Valere took a deep, calming breath.
Keenathan continued, “I’m sure Zil—”
“Zale.”
—“Zole is simply referring to our mental readiness.”
“Ay, good catch,” Valtraid nodded, approaching from a food stand on the ground side of the wharf with the captain by his side. “I know I’m ready,” he claimed, locking eyes with Valere and Garl and offering them reassuring smiles. He glanced toward Zale for a near undetectable fraction of a second before his gaze bounced toward the docks. Zale narrowed his eyes, looking down at himself to check he wasn’t unwittingly glowing or, the more likely option, sporting pieces of breakfast on his vest. What was it they weren’t telling him?
“Then let’s be on our way,” Captain Klee’shaë declared from behind her kerchief. Spinning between the fidgeting fingers of her right hand was the dull Coin of Undeath Accord. A payment that, in Zale’s eyes, made this more a crew of privateers than pirates, but he wasn’t one to ruin anyone’s fun.
Slipping the otherworldly payment into her coat, she took a carefully balanced step onto a small raft made of logs floating just off the dock. Zale and the others followed quickly in her stead, Garl grabbing the raft’s tiny makeshift mast to steady himself as it rocked under their combined weights.
Zale wondered with what oars the motley crew planned to move the raft over to the ship with until Keenathan cleared his throat and flicked up his eye patches.
“Ready, Captain?” he asked Kleeshae with a wink. The captain rolled her eyes, though Zale noticed the amused creases at their corners.
“If you are.”
“Then may this wind carry us to Wraith Island!” He flipped his eye patches down once again, brandishing his mildly unnerving octopus-laden staff toward the horizon. Zale jolted as a gust of Brisk-scented wind filled the raft’s tiny sail, rocking the vessel back as they left the port behind.
“Um.” Valere was the first to voice any concern. “We’re . . . not going to stop at the ship?”
“What ship?” Captain Klee’shaë asked.
“That ship,” Zale clarified, pointing towards the shrinking outline of the magnificent wooden vessel tied to the docks.
“That isn’t ours,” the captain muttered.
“We’re sailing to Wraith Island on . . . this ?” Valere exclaimed, eyes widening as she tugged and twirled the ends of her hair, an idiosyncrasy Zale had come to recognize as a sign she needed some space to meditate.
Captain Klee’shaë adjusted her hat. “Yeah.”
“But with that very coin ye Solstice Warriors have brought us, we’ll soon have control of the fabled Vespertine!” Yolande boasted. “Just wait ‘till you see her.”
“It appears we don’t have anything better to do,” Garl declared, sliding down to sit against the mast. He leaned his backpack against his thigh, sifting through its contents. “Apple, anyone?”
Zale accepted the small treat, settling himself beside the warrior cook. “Well.”
Valere sat down in front of them, eyeing her own apple before looking out into the seemingly infinite blue expanse surrounding the raft. “Let’s hope we won’t need to eat each other soon.”
The warrior trio laughed at that.
The pirates, however, did not.