Sea of Thieves

by Chris Allcock

  Larinna lowered the spyglass, momentarily dazzling herself as the hot sun caught the lens. As she blinked furiously in an effort to clear the purple spots out of her vision, the first vestiges of a plan began to form in her head. She stood for a few moments, pondering. There was a good chance something could go wrong, she knew. But was there also a chance everything could go right?

  “Faizel!” she called across. “What do you know about the captain of that ship?”

  “If you are thinking that you can appeal to his better nature, I am not certain that he remembers where he buried it!” Faizel shouted back over the roar of the waves. “All I know is that his name is Quince, and that he is a military man. Strong as an ox, they say!”

  So he’s a soldier but not a tactician, Larinna thought to herself. Out loud, she asked, “If he was a soldier, would he know about flags and signals, things like that?”

  “I would suppose?” Faizel looked at her, curiously. “Do you have a plan?”

  “If it works, I’ll let you know!” she called, already halfway up to the ship’s wheel. “Adelheid, I think I’ve got us a way out of this, but you’re not going to like it.”

  “I’m glad you’re a pirate and not a politician, because that was a terrible speech.” Adelheid grumbled. “What won’t I like about it?”

  “Well,” Larinna hesitated, but she’d come this far. “All of it, honestly. Oh, and I’m going to have to borrow Ned.”

  “Captain Quince, sir!” Quince, who had been inspecting the newly installed cannons that ran along the deck of the Black Gauntlet, harrumphed at the sound of his name and glanced upward. To his surprise, he saw that the scruffy little ship they were pursuing was beginning to turn so that its own relatively meager arsenal was aiming directly at their prow.

  “So, they’ve decided to make a fight of it, have they?” he barked. “Lucky us, eh? I was starting to get bored of the whole bloody cat and mouse game, after all. Prepare to fire!”

  “Er,” said a nearby deckhand, meekly. “I believe the plan was to bring them in alive, sir.” He flinched as Quince rounded on him, for the captain was a great bull of a man—not tall, but as solid as a slab of beef with a great whiskery moustache that bristled when he was angry, which was often. Two piercing blue eyes bored into the deckhand, who was already regretting ever having spoken.

  “Don’t be a bloody idiot, boy!” the captain snapped. “Bringing prisoners aboard is a fool’s game. No, they deserve to be scuppered and scuppered they shall be! Can’t have the Companies thinking pirates can’t get the job done or that’ll be the end of the contracts. D’you want to spend the rest of your life digging up crusty old boxes on a godforsaken beach, lad?”

  “Well, no, sir, but—”

  “Precisely!” Quince patted the hull of the Black Gauntlet, his pride and joy. Back home, he’d diligently saved up all his wages from over twenty years of naval service and never managed to afford himself more than a creaky little sloop. Out here on the Sea of Thieves, free from the grasping fingers of the taxman and his cronies, he’d managed to afford himself a fine and distinguished vessel by handing in bounty after bounty. He was not, he vowed, about to let anyone take that away from him.

  As he glared at the rapidly approaching vessel, Quince noticed something strange—a flashing burst of bright light, visible even in the daylight, winking at them with a regular pattern. Feeling for the ornate spyglass at his belt and peering down its length, he could see a hulking man with a great mirror clutched in his outspread arms, tilting it up and down to the instruction of a dark-haired woman at his side.

  “It’s a signal!” he declared out loud, after a moment. “They’re trying to get our attention, I’d wager.”

  “Does that mean they want to talk to us, sir?” the deckhand inquired, cautiously. This was his first voyage, and he’d been hoping for nothing more exciting than a few skeletal bounties that might bring him to the Order’s attention. Sparring with a crew of living, breathing pirates was another matter entirely, especially given the chaos their targets had already caused.

  “Course it does, laddie! They probably want to surrender like the lily-livered filchers they are.” Quince harrumphed. “Let’s give these cowards our answer, eh? Fire the cannons!” He watched in satisfaction as his own ship began to turn, cutting across the Unforgiven’s path and striking her twice on her port side.

  The instant the first blows hit home, the woman sprinted down the steps to the cannons on her own vessel, and Quince barked with laughter at the sight of the large man still dumbly holding the glittering mirror. “Oaf!” he barked, before ordering his crew to brace for impact. A single cannonball arced through the air from the Unforgiven, striking the hull of the Black Gauntlet and causing a small shudder.

  “Only minor damage, sir!” someone shouted. “We’ll have it repaired in a moment.”

  Quince sneered. “One cannon? Pathetic!” he called, hoping that his voice might carry across the waves somehow. “Is that the best you can do?” He coughed, wheezily, and then ordered a second volley. This time, three of the Black Gauntlet’s shots hit their mark, her crew shouting and jeering as the Unforgiven came close to rolling just from the impact. “It’s almost too easy,” Quince laughed, though this again gave way to a second coughing fit that nearly doubled him over.

  “Right,” he thundered, staring down at the crew with red-rimmed eyes. “Which one of you idiots is smoking while we’ve got powder on the deck?” All he got in return was a sea of blank expressions, however, and he turned slowly in place, trying to find the source of the acrid smell that was washing over him. Finally, Quince’s eyes settled on the piled-up powder kegs stacked next to the bow of the ship, close to where he was standing.

  The powder kegs were smoking and smoldering, becoming extremely hot—thanks to the focused sunlight directed by a large, curved mirror. One or two of them had begun to pop and sputter dangerously.

  Captain Quince was not a young man, but he impressed his crew that day by executing an acrobatic dive over the railings, a few short seconds before the powder kegs exploded in a chain reaction that sent fire across the deck of the Black Gauntlet. Smaller fires erupted in the sails, but no one was left to extinguish them, for many of the crew had followed their captain into the sea—either hurled overboard by the blast or attempting to escape the roaring flames.

  Larinna, watching the chaos from afar, was tempted to reload the cannons and exact some very satisfying revenge against the crippled ship. A lurch from below reminded her that the Unforgiven was in no shape to pick a fight, however, even if her opponent couldn’t retaliate.

  Instead, she called to Little Ned, who insisted on returning the mirror to the captain’s cabin before returning to the sails, and Larinna swiftly set a course that would carry them out of sight. She didn’t know whether or not they’d been able to inflict a fatal blow to the Black Gauntlet or not, but she was convinced that she’d bought them enough time to reach Tribute Peak unchallenged.

  Sure enough, they soon left the other ship far behind, though Larinna still felt unsettled about fleeing from a half-finished fight. The Unforgiven felt sluggish and slow in the water, and although Adelheid and Faizel had been below to repair the damage, Larinna was starting to get concerned about how badly they’d been hit.

  “Ned!” she called, unable to completely mask the unease in her voice. “I think we’re safe for now. Why don’t you head below decks and see if you can help the others finish making . . .”

  She trailed off as Adelheid staggered up the stairs, grunting with exertion, for she was struggling under the weight of Faizel’s motionless form. Ned moaned softly and was at her side in an instant, lifting the smaller man effortlessly and laying him out across the deck on a tarpaulin. Larinna could see a nasty purple bruise across Faizel’s head where something had struck him, and his breathing was shallow and rapid.

  “I’ve used up every last scrap of wood and cloth we have left to patch the leaks,” Adelheid panted, looking pale and
exhausted herself. “They hit us too hard, and we’re still taking on water from half a dozen places. The ship is sinking, and there’s not a damn thing we can do to stop it.”

  RAMSEY

  The sky was the deep blue of a sapphire as the Magpie’s Wing sluiced across the waves, surrounded by a veritable armada of merfolk who darted and danced around and under her hull. The lower decks were filled with their strange, keening wail that Mercia assured the others was harmless. She imagined it must have made the ship look like a mother whale surrounded by its young, although the mood aboard was rather tenser than the playful scene might have suggested.

  Rathbone, naturally, demanded that she and Ramsey finally sit down and supply them with some explanation of everything to which he and Shan had been unwitting accomplices in the last few days. Ramsey refused to linger on details and insisted that they get under way at once.

  Rathbone also wanted to raid the remains of Douglas’s hideout for anything that might have survived the cave-in and could fetch a pretty penny. Any gang of pirates that size surely hoarded some valuable treasures, he insisted, until Mercia reminded him that at least two of the objects had been cursed in some way. The prospect of winding up with a petrified arm of his own seemed to have quieted him, at least for now.

  Their destination was distant, and Ramsey wasn’t sure how slowly they would have to travel, lest they risk leaving the merfolk behind.

  As it turned out, they needn’t have worried—they left the island at a crawl, with but a single sail unfurled, and their new companions surged ahead of them almost immediately, flipping and waving. Is that the best you can do, they seemed to say, and they increased their speed until the Magpie’s Wing was sailing along at a tidy clip. Only when the horizon was free of both land and ship alike did Ramsey allow the others to go below as he kept watch at the helm, giving Mercia a chance to explain the truth behind their journey.

  No sooner had the three sat themselves around the map table than Rathbone demanded to know all about their destination and what their reward might be, given that they’d risked life and limb to free the prisoners. Shan, by contrast, was rather more interested in the merfolk themselves and how it was that they’d come to ally themselves with the crew of the Magpie’s Wing.

  Mercia decided to start at the beginning—the very beginning, in fact, explaining how Ramsey had become taken with the idea of somehow possessing, or at least controlling, the magic that seemed to permeate the Sea of Thieves. How the ransacking of their hideout had made him eager to find any kind of trick, some advantage over anyone else who might seek to steal from him or challenge his authority.

  She told them of the many fruitless hours she’d spent in taverns listening to prattle and nonsense before finally stumbling upon the old woman, and of the real reason for her trip down into the shipwreck. Finally, savoring the thrill of a good story, she explained in great detail their descent into the network of underwater passages. She was gratified to see their eyes widen as she described the grand hall that lay forgotten under the waves. “It was when I put the earrings on that everything suddenly became so . . . clear,” she finished. “Like when you remember a dream.”

  “I don’t dream,” Rathbone said, curtly. “So you can understand that racket they’re making out there, then? What are they saying? Nothing about what we might taste like, I hope.”

  “Their song is about, well, anything. And everything,” Mercia shrugged. “I know that doesn’t make sense, but it’s their identity, it’s their art, it’s what they did a thousand years ago and will do tomorrow, all carried on the music. It’s not like they can write anything down, after all.”

  “Interesting,” Shan mused. “If it’s anything as powerful as whale song, they must be able to talk to each other across huge distances. Could be a useful way of sending messages.”

  Rathbone rolled his eyes. “You two make quite the team, one of you pulling the world apart so the other can patch it back together again. So you put the earrings in. What happened next?”

  Mercia took a deep draft of water as she considered how to arrange the story in her mind. Only when the last of the drops had passed her lips did she rest her chin thoughtfully on her fist and begin to speak.

  Ramsey’s hand, Mercia told them, went to the hilt of his sword when the water in the chamber’s central pool began to churn, though she herself was far too enraptured to pay much attention to his actions. Her mind was filled with a sudden understanding that threatened to overwhelm her, and it was all she could do to stay on her feet.

  That changed when the first of the figures erupted from the water with a great splash that soaked the floor in every direction, for the song had reduced to a muted, wordless hum. It was as if the singers themselves were waiting to see what would happen next.

  The two pirates had found themselves staring at what they both knew had to be a mermaid. A living, breathing mermaid of the kind that Mercia had read about in storybooks when she was a child, now floating serenely before them and studying them much as they were studying her.

  Her large eyes, sparkling with both interest and intellect, were the color of fossilized amber. Her skin wasn’t blue, lavender, or silver—rather, it was some shimmering combination that seemed to shift and swirl from moment to moment, like oil on water. Her slender face with its strong jaw was framed by a mass of pale green hair, tied sensibly back into a delicate ponytail that seemed braided to intertwine with the flowing fabric that wreathed much of her body.

  After a moment, two more mer broke the surface of the water to float slightly behind her, though they performed nothing as ostentatious as a backflip. Mercia guessed, correctly, that the two pirates were looking at some kind of leader or nobility. A mermaid queen, perhaps? Ramsey had evidently been thinking the same thing, for much to Mercia’s surprise, he took a step forward, removed his hat with a great sweeping gesture, and bowed as low as his great frame would allow.

  It was a gesture that seemed to please the merfolk, for their song started up again—not a chorus, this time, but a single voice calling out from the darkness. Mercia had no way of knowing if the words she was hearing belonged somehow to the mermaid in front of them, but a lone singer was far easier to understand, and after a few seconds her face split into a broad smile. “Yes! Yes, I can!”

  Ramsey looked at her in confusion then, and she attempted rather clumsily to explain that the merfolk were trying to communicate with them. With her. Not through speech as humans understood it, but by changing the meaning and tone of the song—one that they seemed to sing at all times and that seemed to unite them, no matter how far apart they were.

  To begin with, the song had been filled with a mixture of curiosity and uncertainty. The merfolk were, unsurprisingly, aware of the many humans who had recently come to the Sea of Thieves. (They used a strange and complicated word to refer to anyone who dwelled on land—a word that Mercia first tried to translate to “sand-swimmer,” then “two-tail,” before she finally gave up.)

  What Ramsey and the others saw as discovery, however, the merfolk viewed as a homecoming. They expected to be met in the old ways of their people and were surprised and a little alarmed when the humans not only seemed unfamiliar with the merfolk, but also had begun warring with one another. “They think we’re the same as the people who built this place,” Mercia explained to Ramsey, finally. “Or at least, that we’re somehow their descendants. They expected us to remember them! No wonder they’ve been so wary of us until now.”

  It took some time, but Mercia managed to explain to the merfolk that she and everyone else who sailed above had come from far away, where the idea of a sea-dwelling people was considered nothing more than a myth. Their song took on a mournful tone at this point, though when she expressed a desire to learn all about the mer and the ancient inhabitants of the Sea of Thieves, the sadness was replaced by a wistful refrain. She sat cross-legged on the floor and listened, Ramsey standing patiently behind her.

  Long ago, she learned, what hu
mans now thought of as the Sea of Thieves had been home to a nameless people whose civilization flourished and thrived. There were ships back then, too, and even a few pirates. There were also artisans and sculptors, philosophers and painters—men and women who the mer had no name for but whose understanding of the world around them had led them to harness great power.

  It was while describing this power that Mercia had first, reluctantly, use the term magic for herself. There were special places in the world, it seemed, certain spots where magic would manifest itself in a variety of ways. The ancient humans marked these special locations not with words, which could be forgotten, but with paintings on the rocks and stones whose meaning would endure beyond any written language.

  Across the centuries, temples and altars were created at these special locations to harness the power and gain some understanding of its potential. Eventually that understanding grew into reverence, and reverence led to ritual. The temples became sacred ground.

  Over time, this ancient people was able to channel this magical power well enough to imbue the objects and belongings they had created with special properties. Through their knowledge and efforts, all kinds of strange and magnificent artifacts were brought into being.