by Kell Inkston
Colette exhales a puff of steam. “Last time?”
“Our heirloom, the Gauntlet of Mist, was stolen from us two weeks ago.”
Colette listens to the wind a minute. “And just how did the person get in?”
The man pauses, shakes his head. “Spose it doesn’t matter now. Everyone’s out of the manor, so I guess I might as well tell you. We weren’t expecting so much force at once…. Someone got in during the changing of the guard. It had to be an inside job.”
Colette nods her head a bit to the side. “…So this happened two weeks ago. When the kidnappings started?”
“Yeah.”
Her features sharpen. “And no one believes you, I guess.”
“Of course not. No one could steal something so well guarded… unless they also had a gauntlet for themselves.”
She lowers her gun.
“What… do you mean?”
“I suppose you’ve heard about the kidnappings, how the person did them?”
“…Yeah?”
The figure shakes his head. “There’s two gauntlets.” Colette’s quiet, and the man sighs. “I’m guessing you haven’t heard the whole story… I suppose I might as well. Come on, I’ll let you into the manor and I’ll fill you in. I can’t very well take you to the family hideout,” he says as he turns to a stride.
Colette holsters her gun and paces back to the manor. She’s let in by the man, and she’s met with the deep warmth of the estate, its boiler running by the constant upkeep of the very same man that allowed her entry. He offers to take her coat, she denies. She then takes a seat in the sitting room before he offered to do so, and once he offered to give her some tea, she denied again.
He’s a cool guy, don’t get her wrong, he’s just not her kind of cool guy.
For the sake of not keeping her waiting, then, he takes to the opposite chair and sits politely, quite unlike his sulky demeanor in the forest. “Yes, well. You see, for generations the Gauntlets of Mist have been safely in the hands of the Kalamests and the Ganasteres. The man who wielded both was none other the intrepid captain Skellson of legendary repute. He forged these gauntlets from the soul of a warlock who terrorized the island. The warlock, you see, had powers over the mist; so much so that he could create, manipulate, and transform into mist at any time.”
“Huh,” a relaxing Colette mutters, cozening up to the corner of her chair.
“The gauntlets, when separated, display only a fraction of the warlock’s power, capable of being used during a single hour, The Witching Hour.”
“Midnight.”
“Precisely. But together, they achieve the full extent of their power: a perfect mimicry of the warlock’s magic. Skellson, not needing the power and being a good captain, decided to split the gauntlets between the warlock’s two sons, Ganas and Kalam, one for each. From those boys we get the Ganastere and Kalamest families, but it seems like the balance of power is all going to end soon.”
Colette squints an eye as she relaxes herself entirely. “You think the Ganasteres stole the other gauntlet?”
“No one else but them could have done it. Really, I’m impressed more than anything. The moment they got the other gauntlet they ‘kidnapped’ one of their own, and another each night. By keeping to midnight only, not only could they stay out of the suspicion of it being them, they’ve also turned public opinion against us; not that it was ever good.”
Colette leans in. “Yeah? Why not?”
“They run the mailing service. A small operation but they have the printing press. The WhiteWave Includer’s been including some very skeptical opinions about us, presumably written by anonymous sources.”
“Wow, that’s…” her initial skepticism, melted into confusion, cools into a weary compassion. His deep brown eyes carry his case quite well, she feels. “That’s real shitty of them. But that does make sense… I guess. I guess I should apologize,” she says, averting her gaze in some sort of embarrassment. “Name’s Colette. I’ll do what I can to help.”
The man, looking equally abashed, brushes his forearm with a hint of pain on his features and nods. “Itrim Kalamest. I’m sorry, but I don’t think there’s much we can do at this point,” he says, looking through the halls and rooms to the front window— lights and chatter are approaching. “Oh, great,” he adds with a defeatist grunt. “Here they come.”
“So you think the kidnapped people are with the Ganasteres, held up somewhere?”
Itrim nods. “Probably. Either that or one of their farms.”
Colette strokes her chin in a very Captain-like way. “You know, we can’t win this with so many on their side. My commander is joining in with the Ganasteres, but once he hears of this, he’ll see things our way.” She leads him to the back door. “Look, Itrim, you need to get back to your friends and tell them to get to the Ganastere estate at… at noon tomorrow, I’ll have The Captain turned around and we’ll blow this whole thing wide open. Fighting the Ganasteres will be hard, especially when they have both the gauntlets, but if we show them to be the kidnappers the people will turn on our side.”
Itrim smirks and nods while he locks the door behind them. “You got it. I… I don’t know what to say.”
She smiles. “It’s an upstanding captain’s duty to be a ready and willing help.”
Itrim’s smirk grows into a grin, and he nods again. “Thanks, captain Colette.”
She’s quiet as Itrim rushes off to his hiding place. It’s very cold, but there’s enough in her for her cheeks to redden, if only a slight increment. He’s not her kind of guy, still, but for a slight second she felt like he could be.
“Captain Colette,” she says to herself in awe. Colette turns about to the main street, moving around through the woods to avoid the Kalamest estate’s assault party. She then approaches from the back of the group and finds The Captain and Boris at the front of the crowd.
the captain, The Captain, and their Disagreeable Disagreement
“Captain!” She shouts, practically into his ear.
The bandaged man in officer attire turns to Colette while he presses his glasses to his face. “Ahh, my dear Miss Ketiere, what news of your watch?”
“It’s…” she looks about the crowd, noticing a few pointed gazes aimed at her “Can we talk somewhere privately?”
“Now is an inopportune time for privacy, my dear doughnut. I’ve agreed to spearhead the assault into the keep. Now what have you learned?” He says, stepping up to the front doors with Boris. “Dear Boris, if you please.”
“PLEASE OF WHAT?” the hulking lobster asks, his long, lance-like whiskers twitching in confusion.
“That door called your mother a bottom feeder, I believe,” The Captain says, nodding his head over to the front doors.
A splurge of saltwater and sausage spit out from Boris’ crustacean jaws. “IS DOOR HAVING OF THE DEATH WISH?”
“And he also said your shell’s the color ‘coral’ rather than ‘red’,” The Captain adds.
“BORIS IS HUMBLE MAKING OF YOU!” the seasort expels, flying at the doors with galloping speed. Cheering erupts from the crowd and Colette’s jaw drops at the sight of Boris dividing the iron-reinforced doors into a trashed heap of splinters and scrap-metal in a matter of seconds. “YOU ARE NOW OF THE HUMBLE!” Boris shouts, pounding his huge claws into the heap. For a few seconds until he turns around. “CAPTAIN! I AM OF THE RED, AM I OF THE NOT?”
The Captain nods. “You certainly are, Boris. You are the reddest lobster I’ve ever seen.”
“THIS IS OF THE PLEASING!” Boris shouts, ranking back next to The Captain.
There is a massive, anticipating silence among the crowd when they see that, not only is the door no longer blocking them, there is no force field made by Kalamest magic that would block their entry. For the first time, they can step inside the manor. The Captain turns to the group, and calmly gestures into the house, as if to suggest entry.
“I know what you all are really here for. Go right on and get your reven
ge,” he says with a disgusted, if good-humored inflection.
Suddenly a wave of frantic enthusiasm overturns the armed crowd and they rush into the estate, searching for their loved ones, but also to loot everything in sight; because the inhabitants of this island are humans, and they love to get things for free under the guise of justice.
Colette escorts The Captain and Boris into the manor when she speaks again. “Captain, there’s something incredibly important I have to tell you. Like, something that’ll make you rethink all of this!” She says, her hands waving in wild, obvious enunciation.
The Captain stops in the crowd of Pro-Ganastere rioters, and shrugs. “So be it. Off to the restroom!”
The three make themselves comfortable in the fourth-floor restroom, two floors ahead of the raiding/rescue party.
“Alright, Captain. Gran isn’t here, and neither are any of the others!”
The Captain raises his head back with a knowing pretention. “Oh? Is this what you’ve found?”
“Yeah, I met one of the Kalamests, Itrim. He told me that their gauntlet was stolen.”
Boris gasps in shock, sounding more like a wheezing, drowning pig than anything else. “CAPTAIN! THIS IS OF THE MEANING THAT THE FOOD I WAS OF SMELLING-”
“I am not asking for your input at this time, Boris,” The Captain, adjusting his tattered coat of the Lascardian Navy, says.
“BUT CAPTAIN! I WAS OF THE SMELLING OF OTHER FOOD!”
Colette squints at Boris. “Boris, I’m not talking about food here. I’m talki-… Wait, food? Don’t you use that word for people too?”
Boris nods. “YES! LITTLE FOOD. FOOD THAT IS OF THE TALKING. YOU ARE OF THE RIGHT!”
Colette grins and turns to The Captain. “See! He’s obviously smelli-.”
The Captain cracks his knuckles, and Colette’s Pavlovian terror kicks in. “Miss Ketiere, I do not desire input on this matter either. I simply wish to know what you have found out, not what you advise.”
She presses her hand into her face as she grinds her teeth. “But if you’d just listen, Captain, I-”
“Miss Ketiere, am I going to have to take away your sailor card and put you back through basi-”
Colette cringes. “Oh, gods! No! Sorry! Damn! Okay! Itrim told me that it was the Ganasteres that had done the kidnappings!”
The Captain nods. “Thank you, anything else?”
“Yeah, he thought the Ganasteres has both the gauntlets, there’s two by the way, and they’re holding back with the gauntlet’s power to make it seem like the Kalamests are misusing theirs. It’s such an obvious trick, Captain! Of course a Ganastere would be the first one kidnapped! Who would be so dumb to believe that the Kalamests would go straight for their enemy! It’s so, so obvious!”
The Captain taps his boot against the bathtub. “Is that all, Miss Ketiere?”
“Well, I told him and his group that I’d make you see things their way. They’ll be going to the Ganastere Estate tomorrow at noon to blow it all open.”
The Captain sharpens his posture diligently. “Excellent. Good thinking. So we will lie in wait for them and ambush at the opportune time.”
Colette’s blank for a moment as a raider busts into the restroom and asks for Boris’ help moving a gold-plated shower curtain rail. “Wh-what? What do you mean?” Colette asks.
“As I said, my dear muffin: we will wait for the Kalamests and administer justice to them.”
“No, I think you’re missing that it was the Ganasteres that did it!” Her tone by this point is incredulous. She knows better than most of the sailors that The Captain is a force to be reckoned with, but he’s not always “all there”.
“Oh my,” The Captain leans in, his shining glasses glinting an aura of authority. “Could it be you intend on disobeying my orders?”
“Uh.” She inhales sharply. “Hell yes I do! You’re helping criminals, even when you know it’s the truth!”
“We’ve helped criminals before so long as they pay us.”
She draws back in confusion. “C-Captain, are the Ganasteres paying us?”
The Captain shakes his head. “No.”
“Then why don’t we help the good guys!”
“Because the Kalamests are not the good guys.”
“Wh-What?!” Colette shakes her head about dumbfoundedly.
“My plan is the most efficient solution to this island’s problem, and you must follow along, or I’ll revoke your sailor’s card.”
“Captain! You’re going to hurt innocent people! You know the truth!”
The Captain’s silent a moment. “You want the truth, Miss Ketiere?”
“Of course!”
“Would you believe me if I told you?”
She scoffs. “Duh!”
“I already know Miss Vereyrty is inside the Ganastere estate. She’s safe and sound in the kitchen basement.”
“Then why don’t we do something?!”
The Captain smiles. “We will, but I suppose your mind is made up?”
She searches his face for some answer to his impenetrable idiocy. “Yeah. Tomorrow I’m going to do what’s right, and if you’re on the other side of my sights, I sure as hell hope I’m not you.” Colette turns around and starts for the steps leading out of the manor.
He taps his boot, and it causes her to look back once more. He smiles through his bandages and says: “I won’t stop you, little croissant. Go on and show me just how far you’re willing to go out on a limb for someone else’s wild fantasies. But before you go, I have a question for when we meet tomorrow: Should I fight you like one captain to another, or just an impudent sailor?”
She stops at the steps and looks back at him with a smile that’s on the verge of igniting into flame with its ambition. “Croissant? It’s captain croissant to you.” Colette then storms off into the dark of the night.
The Captain watches her disappear as a chandelier-toting Boris comes across him. “IS THE COLETTE FOOD OF THE UNHAPPY?”
“She certainly is, Boris. The indignancy of her youth is too strong to do her any good. I’ll have to stamp this one out personally… Boris.”
“AYE?”
He straightens his glasses. “That thing we talked about on the way here…”
“OH, YES, CAPTAIN! IT IS OF MUCH GOODNESS!”
The Captain looks out to the dark and enters a more casual composure as some of the raiders exchange ideas as to where the kidnappees could be hidden. “Excellent.”
The Dirty, Nasty Scheme
Time passes slowly for Colette. She returns to the bar and slumps over in a corner table, is asked to leave thirty minutes later by the barkeep, and then she tells him that she’ll leave if he can finish a glass of vinegar. He says she’s an idiot, and then she pulls out her gun. This makes him leave her alone and she wiles away the hours in that sort of half-sleep that most find quite uncomfortable. He has to wait around because he doesn’t want her lifting any of his booze.
Her Hours pass with strange, shifting dreams of friends, family, and that damnable overlord that tormented her for so long; took everything she loved from her. Just when she gets to the part of the dream where she has the means to fight back, does a hulking cloaked figure bust into the bar.
The figure scans the bar with two vertical, crustacean eyes, poking out of two holes cut into the hood. Its gaze lands at Colette’s table. The sleeping bartender awakens, and is just about to tell the figure to leave as well when the cloaked one steps over to Colette’s table and slams down into a seat.
The tender groans back to his slumped position at the bar; they must know each other.
Colette wearily opens her eyes and frowns snidely. “You know, Boris, you’re not the sort that gets much use from a disguise... Old Salt sent ya’ here to spy on me?”
The figure raises a massive claw to pull up the hood. “THIS IS NECESSARY DISGUISE. CAPTAIN’S EYE IS OF THE SHARP ONES, YES?”
She leans back and crosses her arms. “I guess. So why’re you here then, Bor
is?”
Boris leans forward, his large lobster whiskers pointing out from his cloak. “I AM OF THE AGREEING WITH YOU. THE CAPTAIN IS OF THE CRAZY SINCE THE DAY I KNOW HIM FIRST, AND WHILE CAPTAIN IS OF THE GOOD AS CAPTAIN, HE IS OF THE BAD IN THE HEAD.”
She smirks. “Wow, I had no idea,” she says with no sarcasm at all.
“YOU WERE NOT OF THE NOTICING? I WAS OF THE THINKING IT QUITE OBVIO-”
“No, Boris. Of course I know he’s nuts.”
“BUT YOU WERE OF THE SAYING TH-”
“It’s called sarcasm, Boris, shit.”
“OH, I AM NOT ALWAYS GETTING OF THE FUNNY WORDS.”
She looks aside crassly. “It’s cool.”
“I AM GLAD THIS IS OF THE COOL, BECAUSE I WOULD BE OF THE WORRYING IT BEING TOO MUCH OF THE COLD. BUT I AM OF THE DIGRESSING. I AM OF THE HERE TO BE OF THE JOINING WITH YOU AGAINST THE CAPTAIN. IF THE GANASTERES ARE NOT OF THE REVEALING, THE KALAMESTS WILL BE OF THE DOOMING, AND THE JUSTICE WILL NOT BE OF THE SERVING!”
Colette raises a brow. “Well… well yeah, you’re right there, and if we do nothing they’ll have no chance. The Captain’s gonna be sorry he messed with me. He trained a true killer.”
Boris is quiet a moment. “ARE YOU OF THE MEANING THAT YOU’D BE HURTING OF THE CAPTAIN?”
Colette’s quiet too. “I certainly am. I’m going to shut down his little parade. I’ve grown a lot since I’ve been on this ship, and I’ve watched him a good deal. I know how to take Old Salt alright. He’s a better shot, and a better fighter, but I have my head, and that’s the most important asset one can have; he taught me that much.”
Boris shakes his entirety. “I AM OF THE DOUBTING, THE CAPTAIN IS OF THE UNMATCHED IN THE FIGHTING. YOU MUST HAVE A PLAN OF MUCH GOODNESS TO BE OF THE STOPPING OF HIM.”
She glances to the windows, half expecting a looming Captain to be staring back at them. “I do, now that you’re here… What’s his weakness, Boris?”
“I… I AM NOT OF THE SURE I SHOULD BE OF THE TELLING.”
“Come on, Boris. Lives are on the line. The Kalamests’ll probably get killed for crimes they didn’t commit if you don’t.”