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The Birdsnest gunsmithy had been closed for counting on nine days. It was another week away from having its windows boarded shut and its property sold off on the open market. Only Fishbones’ reputation and known status as the Syren’s gunbunny had kept it from being picked clean.
Sarah Fortune frowns as she stares up at the hanging sign, the swinging shark’s head with one eye blotted out. It squealed on its hinges with every sweep of wind, the salt air beginning to eat into the metal chains. Without Fishbones to oil it, it was sure to rust off completely.
There was not one sign of the blue headed woman— no more bombastic weaponry making its way into market rotation, no gossip wheel of an eccentric braided genius.
Her gunbunny, her odd friend Fishbones, had vanished. Utterly. Not a trace. It was almost impressive.
It had been a useless venture, trekking all the way up to her shop. She’d done it twice in the past week and twice she had been disappointed. And slightly winded.
Empty of powder-blue, just like every other place was. Wherever she had ended up, Sarah just hoped she wasn’t dead. What a waste that would be of such a brilliant friend.
It had only been four months of even having blue-braids sailing with her crew. A rather profitable four months, certainly, and rarely a dull moment besides. Docking into Bilgewater for a much needed landsrest had been standard procedure. The moment they’d landed Sarah had caught Fishbones’ head bob through the dockyard in that frenetic, too-smooth way of hers, back up to her shop.
Not a goodbye said to anyone but Peyru— which was less of a goodbye and more a don’t die. The woman had gloated terribly once she realised.
It had certainly felt as if she meant to return. Yet the empty shop, her regular haunts deserted, and not a hide or hair of the girl.
Sarah Fortune sighs, palming her face as she turns away. How irritating. She had put far too much work into getting the girl, only to lose her the moment they touched landside.
She needed a drink.
In the early hours of the day, the Tipsy Tapir lost much of its dangerous edges. In truth, it was one of the safer, if impossibly rowdy, open-houses in Bilgewater. A frequent for Captains, while their men crawled along the waterholes further below. A smart place for important people to be seen, unspoken but known to her city of misfits.
Sarah Fortune found she liked the place for personal reasons. A pleasantry in the necessity — in the dawn hours, the lilting murmurs of a dozen different accents, dialects, and tongues all melded into a pleasant song. With the stench of sweat and rum, gunpowder and oil, Sarah Fortune could almost call it a safe haven of sorts.
Her gunbunny had never stepped one foot over the threshold. Not that Sarah was expecting to find her at the bottom of a cup.
Or cups.
“Y’heard anythin’ yet?” Rafen hums. They’d been matching drink for drink the whole night – he certainly was her first mate for a reason.
“We’d be at out on the waves by now if I had.” Sarah peers up from her drink, vision a slight blur. “Shop was the same as last week— rats and nothing. Bonny told me not even old Tarn can sniff her out.”
Rafen whistles. “You think she’s in trouble?”
“If she were, half of my city would be blown to little pieces by now.” She fists her cheek, leaning heavily enough her face was already beginning to ache with pressure. Murmurs into the meat of her hand, “I just can’t figure it. Four months and she’s merry down a different way.”
The barmaid, a slight girl with long-braided hair, doe-eyes and a far too sweet smile for the Tapir, slinks by. Tired from her shift with the way her eyes spoke. She waves coyly at Sarah before gathering a table of cups into one hand. Sarah eyes her arse, humming a short note before draining her cup.
Pretty little thing. Didn’t deserve to be in a pirate’s alehouse earning pittance from Gloomy Gettie.
“Always had her pegged as her as a creed-hugger.” She says absently. “Not a basher.”
“Jealous?” Rafen pipes up, far too amused.
The idea Fishbones had shacked up with a different captain was laughable. The idea she would be jealous over such an impossibility even more so.
“Annoyed,” Sarah bites, cutting her gaze back. Rolls her eyes when her first mate clearly fights a grin. “I spent months trying to get her onto my Syren and this is how she repays me? I hope blue-braids really is in trouble, otherwise I ought to spank her for this mess.”
Rafen tilts his cup, grinning fully. “You and yer favourites.”
“Quiet, you.”
A laugh peels out of him, “Can’t a man speak his mind? ‘Sides, crew’s been itchin’ to leave.” He drops his voice a little, “Coin purses are runnin’ low— Slipster got into a brawl just yesterday.”
“Hardly my fault what that loose cannon gets up to shoreside.” Sarah grumbles.
“It is when his Captain refuses to way anchor.” A look. One of his disapproving ones, rarely used and vastly effective. “How long you are’ya gonna mope?”
“Captain Fortune does not mope.”
“Fine.” He chuckles, “Pine? Yearn? Languish?”
Yet another laughable idea. It was true enough she was playing favourites, but it rather seemed like no one cared. A little special treatment was nothing in comparison to having a crack-shot genius making them anything from pistols to bloody limbs.
Sarah would hedge to bet half her crew was concerned over her disappearance. Fishbones was irreplaceable like that.
“Oh, please.” She drawls, “When have you ever know me to pine, dear Rafen?”
“Entire months chasin’ after some blue-headed madwoman that blew up yer canals?” The unfortunate wording has her snorting into her drink. She should remember that one for next time. “Dunno what else to call it, lass.”
“As if I haven’t done the same for your rum-ridden arse,” Sarah huffs. “Now quiet, scallywag. Drink your ale—” Sarah raises a brow, affecting whatever authority she had left, “Which I bought you, mind.” She jabs a finger in his direction. “Go on.”
He raises two hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. Droppin’ it. Let’s just hope blue-braids turns up before a mutiny, eh?”
The city-state of Bilgewater never slept— which meant Sarah Fortune wasn’t allowed to either.
Docking up the Syren meant that the title of Pirate-Queen was more than simply words thrown in the face of scivvies and officers. Owning a city was a buggery of boring work— which no one deemed inform her before she hunted down Gangplank and his reavers. Really, she ought to find a live-in desk-jockey to deal with it all. Her hand was cramping. The things she suffered for her ragged crew.
Fishbones ought to be behind the desk doing this for her, for all Sarah was putting up with it for the girl.
A knock sounds at her door. It shakes her out of her reverie— imagining the impossible vision of Fishbones behind a desk, writing letters.
Her feather-pen had bled ink all over her letter.
“Shit.” Sarah mutters, crumpling the paper in a fist.
“’Ey boss?” Comes Bonny’s voice through the door. Sarah sets aside her feather-pen and shunts herself back into her chair.
If it wasn’t news on her gunbunny or a fight she could go ruin, she may well dip her red-head in oil and strike a match. Bloody idiots.
“Come in, doll.”
Bonny slips through the door, all elbows and spindle limbs. They were her spy-monkey in the Syren’s birdsnest, keen eyes and a muddled tongue. Sarah had picked them up from run-down port in Targon, a quick little thief with a sweeter heart. The red strike of their bandana made their curious-coloured hair gleam.
“Word for ya.” They say, valiantly fighting their stutter, “It’s— uh, ol’ Fishbones. She— finally popped up again.”
Finally. Sarah releases a breath.
“And what’s that naughty girl been up to?”
Bonny scratches the side of their head. It’s awkward and lasts a little too long, before they clear their throat and say, “She killed Cap’n Gallo’s first mate. Crabbers down the way told— me.”
“Oh.” Sarah Fortune pauses. That was entirely unexpected. “Well then. Naughty indeed.”
The Birdsnest was still silent and abandoned, but considering recent events Sarah Fortune thinks it’s rather appropriate to kick open Fishbones’ door. It was the least she could do, truly. Fishbones should count herself lucky she didn’t simply shoot it to little tiny bits with her pistols.
Sarah waves in Rafen, Jorey and Bonny to follow as the door cracks against its frame unhappily. The shop is as it was before— darkened and a little must-smelling but otherwise utterly untouched.
“Fishbones!” Sarah calls to the ceiling. “Don’t make me call you like a puppy, dollface. I am not in the mood.”
Nothing responds but the creak of the building.
Sarah sighs. She wasn’t here. It was a reach to think she could’ve been. That woman was never where you wanted to find her.
And Fishbones was loud at the best of times— it was hard to think she could go ghost like this. But it remained that Fishbones had sown the seeds of an inter-Captain catfight and buggered off to buggery after the fact.
“Come, let’s poke around.” Sarah dusts off her trousers, readjusts her pistol strap, “Maybe she’s left something for us to follow.”
“Ain’t there gonna be— like— booby traps?” Bonny murmurs. The poor kid had their hand twisted around their pistol like a lifeline.
Fishbones enjoyed their nest-monkey, startlingly obvious from their first meeting. She had been all smiles and elbowing, like a dock-yard bully with their crush. Bonny held between absolute fear and a giddy sort of reciprocity.
It was oddly adorable. They were around the same age, Bonny a touch younger perhaps, with the same finger-quick background as thieves. A bunny and a monkey, both with a birdsnest to settle into. It almost sounded like a shanty song.
As they tread through Fishbones’ shop, Bonny careens, quite visibly, back into fear. Blue-braids had certainly built an odd reputation.
“Don’t worry your handsome head, sweetheart.” Sarah smiles. “But maybe stick to the ground floor, hm?”
Bonny nods rapidly. Jorey snorts and claps the kid on the shoulder.
Poking about revealed a second floor and an attic. The gunsmithy’s backroom was the same as ever, jukebox dead in the corner and half-built hunks strewn about. A ladder led up to the next floor, rickety and creaking with every step.
The second floor was like the first, only joined with a kitchen and bathroom. Odd knick-knacks stuffed into every corner; a bemusingly large stuffed toy, an even larger ship-model of what suspiciously looked like the Syren, a canon with the head of a dragon, four exquisite-looking swords and several other strange pieces Sarah can’t even begin to place. Demacian, Noxian, some Shuriman, some bizarrely Ionian and a carved blow-horn of the Winter’s Claw tribe. Everything was slashed with neon paint.
It was all very Fishbones.
“Poke about in here, would you? I’ll go about the attic.” Sarah sticks a finger upwards, hip cocked at an angle. “See if I can’t find a clue.”
“Ain’t this a bit intruding?” Jorey mutters.
“Fishbones has been gone for weeks, doll. This is completely appropriate.” Why, exactly, blue-braids had decided to go this alone, without telling anyone, was boggling. Naturally a secondary thought to the very real dilemma before them, but one that was irritating Sarah. Coming to her Captain should have been the very first port of call. “Try not to set anything off. Or pull any pins.”
Bonny squeaks.
A rope-ladder swings down from the ceiling, the attic aglow with chem-lights. Sarah takes it one rung at a time, careful where her boots were landing. Shuffling up through the trap-door is just slightly humiliating.
When she rises from the floor, a definitive den greets her.
A pile of blankets and various clothes is stuffed into one corner, the floor littered with scrap in boxes, odd trinkets and bits covering the rest. What could be a low table was slung near a criminally comfortable-looking settee, piled high with underwear and clothing.
Sarah knuckles her hips and squints.
What seemed to be baby’s cradle-toy turned dream-catcher was set by a small, inlaid window to one side of the attic. Set up beside was a shrine Sarah couldn’t name, both animal and human faces carved into little metal toys and arrayed across it. Incense sticks, completely burned, were stuck haphazardly out of a bowl of sand on the floor. It was surprisingly intimate to see Fishbones’ bed, a blanket-ladened hammock hanging high to the ceiling— so overstuffed it was a wonder it could take any more weight at all.
Sarah casts her gaze around to the scribbles across the walls— the central drawing a woman with pink hair and a tattoo under her eye. Another smaller blue-head beside her, and more faces blended into the eclectic artwork. Chemlights and tubes covered the rest.
Very Fishbones indeed.
“’Suppose it’s too much to hope blue-braids keeps a journal.” Rafen calls up from below.
“The wall is ‘er journal, lad,” Jorey responds in a mutter.
“And it’s all in— what do Zaunites even speak?”
“The gutter,” Comes Bonny. “Or somethin’.”
Sarah hums thoughtfully. Glances a finger over one of the paintings before moving on.
A thorough look around reveals nothing of interest: an alarmingly good replica of Shock and Awe sat on the low table, the ridiculous, enormously feathered hat Fishbones had bought once on a whim, a prosthetic arm with sharks teeth, personal belongings Sarah doesn’t linger on.
But not the woman herself.
Tilting her head up, she eyes the attic ceiling. Spies a stuffed bunny sat up in the ragged beams and something else hidden in the shadows. And—
Sarah squints. There was a note.
A little scuffling and she’s dropping back down from the high beams. It’s clear Fishbones was keen on high places— the note had been stuck on a perch beside the stuffed bunny. Sarah Fortune glances over it with a furrowed brow.
Out for furry-thing hunt, some snipe fat cat wants my coin
Back in three colours on the clock. Don’t die while I’m gone Red.
Beside the writing was a crude doodle of an overweight cat with a pistol in his mouth.
Sarah pinches the bridge of her nose. Captain Gallo could well die at any moment by the bite of Fishbones bullet— and that would be the least of her headache.
Really, who put a note in the ceiling?
Captain Gallo, the fat cat of the eastern sea, was a particularly hard to pin down sort of man. A pirate from the time between Gangplank and herself, he was traditional, greedy, and an utter coward. It was a particular trait that earned him many enemies and many more years of life than most of the Serpent Isles.
Sarah Fortune did not quite like him, as much as she tolerated the fat cat with nine lives and a ring on every finger for each of them. Calling a meeting with him had been swift enough to indicate his anger at her gunbunny.
It wouldn’t do, really. Sarah hated bold threats on the best of days. Threats on her crew, however bull-headed they were being, would hardly do at all. Fire and brimstone roil in the pool of her throat.
“I understand you’re not happy with me.” She drawls from across the way.
They’d settled in the bloodworks, Jackie lending his butchery out for this particular meeting. It had the scent and scene of gruesome proportions. An adequate display, Sarah wagers. Enough to convey her own meaning in kind.
With her men behind her to match Gallo’s own, it was almost a stand-off. Sarah’s hand itches for her pistols.
“With that fuckin’ madbox of yers—” Gallo sighs, palms his face with heavy-landed fingers, “Look, ain’t out for bad blood, Fortune. But ya’ crunch on my gold, it becomes my business. And then that crazy bunny killed my man. Can’t let that slide, big boss or no.”
Sarah cocks an eyebrow. “Well, I certainly didn’t order her to do it. Bad blood’s bad business, and I like gold as much as you.”
“So, we’re in agreement, then.”
Sarah Fortune just about stops an eyeroll.
“Fishbones isn’t a crack-jack.” She hums. A finger tapping on the hilt of Awe. “There’s always a reason in the madness, doll.”
He pauses for a long moment. A thick thumb reaching out to spin his index-finger rings around and around. The gold and jewels glint in the low light.
Sarah Fortune cocks her hip and waits out her bluff. It was true she knew less than a fig as to why Fishbones was getting into indiscriminate murder, but her gut told her some reason was to play. A real reason. One that would send Fishbones scurrying into shadows for two buggering weeks.
She really was a gambling woman at heart.
Captain Gallo has the decency to seem embarrassed. “Look— I’ll level. That whole mess with the shop was in poor form, but that girl ought to have been paying from the start. My man got overzealous, sure— but it’s a lotta money, and that madbox is making a fuckin’ fortune up there. Been turning heads, but didn’t mean we had to start firin’ off shots, yeah?”
Taxes.
This idiotic mess was about taxes.
Sarah Fortune stills her gunhand from its tap-tap against the hilt of Awe and sighs.
“Gotta respect the code. You bring‘er to heel and pay us back twice over that’s owed and I’ll call it settled.” The fat cat of the eastern sea tilts his head. Money-hungry and eyes gleaming with it. “Wouldn’t mind a sweetener too, to forget any bad blood.”
“I’ll consider it.” She would not. “For now, I can count on you not to turn my city into a warzone?”
“Aye, Captain Fortune. I’ll give ya some days. Hard to keep a mad dog in line, eh?”
Great. She ought to be cutting out his tongue with the gall, but her hands were tied. And now indebted. It was an awkward position to be in, certainly not her favourite way to be tied up.
Maybe she really would spank Fishbones when she got her hands on the girl.
“Word for ya, boss.”
“It better be good.” Sarah Fortune huffs, “Have we discovered that gold grows on trees? Or the location of a mysterious cove that produces beautiful virgins?” Sarah cocks a wry brow, “Perhaps a genie that will grant me three wishes.”
Rafen, ever her friend, snorts and crosses the room. Their messenger crow was perched on one of his broad shoulders. “Nothin’ yer gonna like.”
“As-bloody-always.” She leans back. Fiddles with a piece of fire-red hair and reminisces about the old days— stuck in caves, stuck in bars, and never, not once, stuck behind a desk with her pretty hands tied. Well, maybe once, but in fun sort of way. “I’m starting to think twice about this run-around shit.”
An explosion rocks the warehouse district. A flurry of fireworks screams out of the crater left behind, shrieking into the sky and illuminating the night with a dizzy of lights. It paints a litany of colours across Rafen’s face as they both turn to peer at the source.
“Well.” He snorts. “Mystery solved. She ain’t ever been subtle, huh?”
Sarah Fortune cuts off an inappropriate bite, for once. “Cover for me.”
It’s a hop and a skip to the warehouse. The distinctive sound of Fishbones’ brand of destruction echoes up from the canal-side building the entire way.
Sarah climbs her up onto the upper floor of the warehouse, slipping between an open entry-way with Shock and Awe firmly in hand. Peering down onto the ground floor reveals the warehouse to be half converted into a gamble-den. And in between the tables and chips, a certain blue-headed girl.
“There you are,” Sarah mutters to herself and takes cover behind the wooden rail.
Fishbones vaults over a table, slamming her foot into it’s back to launch it onto its side with a crack. A makeshift cover, which she immediately hunkers down under.
“Oi, cardsfreak,” She crows, hands busy stuffing a line of bullets into her gun, “What’s ya’ deal? Like chasing down girls and paper-cutting them?”
“Girls ain’t my particular forte.” Comes a familiar voice.
Sarah sighs heavily at the wall. Really, this was just getting out of proportion. A captain, now bounty-hunters? What was next, another crazed Demacian?
“So get off my ass—” A giggle. “And I won’t fill ya with holes. Mostly.”
“There’s a bounty on your head, sweet thing.” Twisted Fate drawls, “A pretty big one, too. Ain’t personal.”
Well then. Rafen’s word had been solid. Fat cat Gallo really had gone behind her back. A stupid decision, considering her own career. Sarah tongues the inside of her teeth. Valiantly fights her temper. Respect the creed her fantastic arse.
He’d have to die for this. How convenient, since she’d already been planning his death.
“Ugh. Bounty-shmounty— fuckin’—” The distinctive whir of Fishbones’ mini-gun starts, “What’s with the cards, anyway? You a fancy clowner?”
“Naw, just a bounty-hunter,” He chuckles to himself, “Like your Red, but a tad more handsome.”
“Ugh. No tits, no red— no fun at all—” A grenade is lobbed over Fishbones’ head, landing with a quick tick-tick-tick and exploding into—
Pink dust.
She leaps up and fires off a spray of bullets, cutting through the pink smokescreen, before hunkering back down. Muttering the whole time, hands frustrated on her monstrous weapon.
“That fat fuckin’ cat got his knickers in a twist for a fuckin’ guttersnipe—”
“Dollface,” Sarah calls out, watching Twisted Fate duck and slink behind a different pillar at the echo of her voice, “that fat cat is a Captain on the collective.”
“Eh? Red?” Fishbones pops her head up. A card goes sailing by, flaming magic trailing past her eyes. The girl doesn’t blink, zeroing in on Sarah like a shark, even as she points her monstrous gun and sprays another sleet of lead at the other man. “Red! Long time no see boss!”
“Hello dollface. I should spank you for all the trouble you’ve put me through recently. Not even a kiss goodbye?”
“Wha— spank?” Another card goes sailing by, glittering with arcane, and Fishbones ducks under just before it embeds between her eyes. Her face that lovely blushing red, “Trouble? How’s— Not my fault some greasebeard started shakin’ me down.”
“Unfortunately, doll, it very much is. You haven’t been paying your fees for trade.”
Twisted Fate ducks his head out, three cards laced between his fingers.
“This is about taxes?” He snorts.
“What the fuck is a tax?” Fishbones whines.
Three cards are flung into the overturned table. A rune glows betwixt them and begins eating away at the wood like acid, just as Twisted Fate— amused and smirking —replies, “You ain’t never heard of taxes? What a world to live in.”
“Can someone explain—” Fishbones darts across the room, a pink-jittering blur, ending up behind an opposite pillar in only a blink, “—stupid made-up bunk. Ain’t this a free city?”
The intricate monkey-play that kept Bilgewater bay a free-trading city in the eyes of the west was hardly appropriate talk for a gunfight. It being a half-nonsense, obvious cover to keep any officiators knocking— that had slowly turned into a racket in itself —was an entire evening’s worth of talk. Of course Fishbones wouldn’t have a clue.
Sarah repositions herself from the upper-level of the warehouse as more bullets fly across the open space below.
“Your shop, it’s on his quarter. You pay protection racket—” Sarah fires off a barrage at Twisted Fate’s pillar. Bullets eating holes into his cover, he dives away as she skids to the ground to reload. “And he doesn’t send his firstmate to shake you down.”
“Oh—” Fishbones drawls, “Taxes! Right, right. Bok-grift, that’s the proper word. Why d’ya bother with made-up junnie?”
Sarah snorts. “We pretend we’re civilised, sweet thing, keeps everyone across the ocean happy. Most comes back into my pot—”
Twisted Fate whistles, “—Perks of bein’ the big boss lady—”
“—Which I use to pay off nosy kingdom-folk poking into free-merchant business. Fat cat takes a cut-a-piece. All part of the system, and you’ve not been playing along. It’s made him rather upset.”
Not that he should have ever sent his men round to shake down one of her crew. A double-cross if she ever saw one. If he weren’t marked for death before, he certainly was now.
Respect the creed. How asinine.
“Sensitive.” Fishbones crows. “Can’t he just get a new matey? Pop like shakers ‘round here.”
“He liked that one,” Twisted Fate fills in. “A lot.”
Sarah eyes the hanging anchor above the floor. The chain and pulley weren’t loose, but a decent shot would send the thing careening into the floor. A good cover to leave— if Fishbones could bear to run from the fight.
“Ah, like you and Graves, hm?” She calls, still eyeing where the pulley laced across the ceiling, “Where is that big dolt?”
“Other business, sweetheart.”
Sarah Fortune laughs. “You’re earnin’ for bail again? No other reason you’d toe-to-toe with my crew.”
“Especially not your gunbunny,” Fate sighs. Audibly wraps his knuckles onto the wooden pillar. “Yeah, the big idiot got caught again. Told him not to buy that damn thing, but did he listen?”
“Does he ever?”
Sarah evens her breathing and aims handily at the chain and pulley above. Twisted Fate would know the play and respect it. They’d known each other far too long not acquiesce to these little games between them.
Fishbones harrumphs. “Can’t I just pay ya off and call it even?”
“Sorry, love. Professional curtesy.”
“Janna’s wispy tits,” Fishbones swears. “Kinda thought that one would work.”
Twisted Fate laughs.
Sarah slinks along the rail above, enough to get Fishbones in eyesight again. The gunbunny was entirely unharmed, wrapping her metal-finger against her gun and face scrunched up something fierce. Odd clothes, but otherwise fine.
Say what you will, Twisted Fate was a consummate professional. Sarah dips her eyes over to wherever the man still hid.
“Say, a deal with her Captain might be worth it.” Even Fate had to know this business was big now that Sarah herself was hauling ass. Gallo going behind his Queen’s back to place a bounty on her crewmate was an entire bloody tango away from greedy— it was idiotic. An emotional decision, unusual for Gallo. Maybe he really had liked his first mate. “Don’t wanna make an enemy of me, do you, Fate?”
“Can’t say it’s big on the cards for me, no.”
“So,” Sarah purrs, “One for old time’s sake?”
A moment sweeps by in silence.
Then in a remarkable display of sheer audacity, Fishbones hops from around the pillar and skips over to a table. Drags up a seat, sits down, and throws her booted feet on top. Her gatling gun is dropped dead beneath her with a clang.
“A deal! Ken!” She claps her hands together. “M’sore from all this gutterbrains shit anyway.”
Twisted Fate pops his head out. Blinks, bemused, at Fishbones. Then up at Sarah, who grins back unrepentantly.
“…A’right then. Sure. Deal it is.”
“So,” Sarah Fortune begins, eyeing Fishbones beside her as they walk, one-hundred and six gold, a favour, and one grenade lighter, from the warehouse. “Where, exactly, have you been?”
Closer up, the girl looked a little ragged. Fingers scabbed over, cuts over her knees. It looked as if she’d been crawling around pipe-works.
“Here and there— around.” Fishbones chirps. “Chasing down a cat’s tail. Sniffin’ others. Ya’know,” She spins her hand in a vague circle, “Big-shark things.”
“And why was I not informed of your big-shark business?”
“Hm?” Pink eyes snap to hers. An entreating sort of gleam to them, like Fishbones couldn’t quite figure something out. “Too big of a thing— business doesn’t like messes, fucks up all the cogs, right? All black smoke chugging and no coin. So I was cleanin’ this one myself.” Something twists her mouth. “M’good at cleaning messes. Was a fixer once. Or— tried to be?”
“And here I thought you were a thief.”
“Both. Called me— wass’it? His enforcer.” Her hand comes up to blot out her eye, wiggling the fingers up at Sarah, “Like I said— his stupid fixer.”
Sarah sighs. “Look, doll—”
Fishbones’ face is a whirlwind, sweeping from cheeky to distressed in less than a second. She shakes her head twice, eyes un-focussing for a fraction before locking back onto Sarah’s with an unsettling intensity.
“Am I in trouble? Did I— don’t tell me—” Fishbones slaps her palms to her face grinds the meat of her hands into her eyes. “Fuck, stupid, stupid— not—”
“Fishbones.” She takes her by the shoulders, spinning the girl around until they’re face-to-face. “You should know this by now, when you’re in trouble, we are.”
“What?” Her eyes peek through her splayed fingers. “What’s that mean?”
Sarah sighs. Gentles her grip on Fishbones’ shoulder, pattering bare fingers against her bare skin. Then rearranges them entirely, an arm hooked into Fishbones’ own as if they were promenading. They walk like that for a long moment, dipping in and out of the shadows along the canal. Waiting until the girl’s breathing evened out.
Rafen had already gone ahead to prep the Syren. Drinks were certainly on Fishbones’ tab tonight.
“…So I’m not in trouble?” The girl manages as they begin to climb the steps back into the market district.
“Oh no, you certainly are. I’ve been busting my ass all over my own damn city trying to find you.” A glance down reveals Fishbones’ twisted up face, fingers attaching and detaching her metal finger. “Really, doll, a note on the ceiling?”
“What?” She whines, “Thought it— I always messenger from up top. Only the smart ones look up.”
“Two weeks, my dear, and not a word. Really,” Sarah tosses her head, “What am I going to do with you?”
“Y’said— Spanking?”
“Thought about it. A few times.” She taps her chin, grinning, “Might be too skinny for a good hit, though.”
Fishbones snickers around a hiccup, face a little flushed. “And— uh, the dead matey?”
“Fat cat will come later. This whole business has made him more rat than cat.” Sarah casts her gaze up. The dizzying heights of Bilgewater loomed over them both, a jungle of wood-step walk-ways and repurposed ships clinging to the cliff walls like molluscs. It was ever changing, and yet somehow, always the same. “I’m almost glad you offed his first mate— but I do hope it was accidental.”
“You’re— Eh?” Fishbones chokes. Her arm pulls a little in Sarah’s own, her surprise a physical thing. She jogs them along, into the forest of hanging signs and stalls that made up the market district.
“Well, certainly don’t make a habit of it. This mess has aged me a year,” Sarah shakes her head. “But that bounty on your head was bad business. Gallo knows it, I know— everyone knows it, even Fate. And— well, I’m a woman with a particular taste for loyalty.”
“So…?”
“So,” Sarah Fortune grins, waving her hand in a grandiose arc, “You’re going to buy me a drink, and then we’ll go and kill a fat little cat.”
“So I’m really not in trouble?”
Sarah Fortune, dressed down for bed and just about to slip into it, jumps a foot in the air.
“Tidemother’s tits—” But the blasted woman was quiet.
Spinning around revealed the leering-pink gaze of Fishbones, sat up atop her wardrobe. Bare footed and swinging one to and fro. If she didn’t know her well enough, Sarah would believe this was an assassination.
Hells did she hate assassins.
“Fishbones.” She hisses. “Really?”
“Really what? Really yes? No?” She whines, reedy and childish, “C’mon, ya killin’ me here Red.”
“I meant, could you not have asked this question this morning? Two days ago? A week ago?”
A shrug.
Sarah Fortune groans and makes her way over to her desk. Pulls out her pipe and tobacco, packing it with a practiced ease. Fishbones is under her nose in a whisper, flicking out her lighter.
“Thank you doll.” Smoke curls lazily into the air. She eyes the girl. “…Have you slept recently?”
A rapid shake of her head. It sent the adornments in her hair clinking. “Brain was tick-tick-ticking. Need to know— can’t you just tell me?”
“I really haven’t a clue what you mean.”
“I jinxed it.” She says, as if that explained anything.
“O-kay?”
The mess with fat cat Gallo and his unfortunate decisions had been dealt with near four days past. He lay dead in the sunken wreckage of his own ship, Fishbones’ own rockets his death-knell. A clean affair, if bloodthirsty. His crew had dispersed, a few loyalists among the many. Lo-Mao had taken in the rest, and Gallo’s position on the collective along with it.
And another notch on Captain Fortune’s belt. No-one felt up for questioning her or the feud— at least for another few months.
“I mean— bad business, pissed off Captain…? I jinxed it.” A motion to continue, to which Fishbones’ face twists painfully. “Fat cat’s man— didn’t fuckin’ know it was him. Just barged in shooting my ceiling and askin’ for coin, guns, the works, so— y’know, pow-pow.” Fishbones flops her body onto her chaise. Looks remarkably uncomfortable for someone nestled in cushions and plush leather. “Sorta— didn’t think about it. Had snipes before tryin’ta steal from me, giving the whole shake-down deal like him. Seemed the same, right? Then it all spiralled and— felt like before with Shark-eye. M’sorry.”
“Tell me one thing— why’d you go ghost?”
“I don’t— What?”
Sarah pads over to lean her hip against the window-set nook. The night’s breeze was warm, brushing across her bared skin through the crack in the glass.
“I’m your Captain, sweets. That means you come to me with trouble like this. Fat cat was a Captain himself, I would have sorted this in a jiffy.”
“But—” Pink flashes, Fishbones blinking rapidly up at the darkened ceiling. “I’m supposed to— fix it, that’s what I’m supposed to do. Right?”
Whatever she was supposed to do, Sarah Fortune had not a clue. Perhaps the Zaunite way was different. Perhaps whoever she was before had particular rules. But a crewmate of the Syren followed the creed, and that was that.
The rest was salt-water bunk for the dead to figure out.
“Fix it yourself?”
“Well, duh?”
“Remember when I said we were friends? Well, friends help each other out. That’s how this—" Sarah gestures between them, “Works. Besides, this is hardly the first or last time one of my crew fucked up. Detai ever tell you when the time he was almost sacrificed by a cultist?”
A laugh barks from Fishbones’ skinny chest. Face lit up with glee, she rocks upwards to beam at Sarah, “No— ha!”
“Took me’n the boys three sleepless days to track him down. He double-crossed— no, tripled-crossed some old crone of the depths. Had to barter for him like a fish.” And spin Fate and Graves out of yet another bind. Those two were hopeless, truly. “We all fuck up, doll. And we all gotta have people when we do.”
The times when Miss Fortune had no one, backed into a corner and desperate, were times she swore to never revisit. Quiet rooms while wrapping injuries, limping alone through shit-strewn streets, the mistrusting eye of keeps and bookers alike— it was a self-imposed misery. One her early, bloody twenties had been full of. One her crew shouldn’t have to suffer the same.
“Mmp.” Fishbones turns, plants her face into a pillow. “M’used to being a solo act, y’know.”
“I got that.” Sarah hums, eyeing her splayed out form. All lean muscle and slight curves. Spankable, certainly. “But you aren’t anymore.”
“Feel’s too easy.” Voice completely muffled by the pillow.
“Well, if it makes you feel worse, poor Peyru was heartbroken when she heard you’d been raising hell without her.”
“Mmmp.” Comes her eloquent response.
“Was close to mutiny, from what I heard.”
“Mhm.”
She really was about to fall asleep on her couch. Sarah chuckles.
“And I will be deducting your pay for a bit, dollface.”
“Ummf.”
“And taking a cut from the Birdsnest.”
“Mmhm.”
A smirk. “—and taking away all your toys.”
“Mm.”
Sarah Fortune snorts. Fishbones was dead asleep.