Interlude: How to Evade the Hound's Pursuit
Interlude: How to Evade the Hound's Pursuit
The Emerald Silk steamed up the Dragonyu River.
Fitted with a state-of-the-art compound steam engine, the vessel was one of the flagships of the Bergson Trading Company.
Rumor had it that, at the ship's launching ceremony, the company's founder—thoroughly drunk—had christened her in praise of his daughter's hair, its color and softness.
The current chairwoman, of course, vehemently denied the story.
The sailors of the Emerald Silk, however, had never hesitated to call her "Anais's Hair," and they never would.
Seafarers liked to give their ships women's names, names of authority, gentle names. They believed such names could placate the savage god of the sea.
And "Anais's Hair" satisfied all three.
At that moment, the owner of that name—and the owner of the ship—was holed up in her office one deck below the bridge, her own hair a disheveled, unwashed mess as she raked her fingers through it.
"Haah."
Two full nights without sleep.
Dark shadows had pooled beneath her eyes, and the whites were shot through with ruptured capillaries, turning them a raw, inflamed red.
The mountain of backlogged work had left her no time to wash or rest.
Exhaustion had seeped into every limb until she could barely move. Now, even lifting a pen was a struggle.
She tossed the document she'd been reading onto the desk and slumped back in her chair.
The work kept piling up faster than she could clear it.
She was now shouldering the former vice-chairman's duties on top of her own.
His workload was more than double hers.
Had he really managed all of this?
Anais squeezed her eyes shut.
She didn't want to think about him. Yet someone kept drifting back to mind.
"Uncle..."
Pierre Maupassant.
The man who had been like family.
The same man who had tried to kill her.
His presence still loomed large over the company. She realized it now as she struggled to fill his role.
Why had he betrayed them?
It couldn't have been the overwork.
A wry murmur escaped her—the leading theory her exhausted mind had been circling for days.
Which was, of course, absurd.
This wasn't a conviction born of personal trust.
It was about tangible gain.
What could he have wanted so badly that he was willing to throw away his position as vice-chairman of a major trading company?
—I received an offer I couldn't refuse.
What kind of offer...?
And who had made it...?
Anais let out a deep sigh.
There were too many problems to solve.
Pierre had been the de facto leader of the company's operations. Without him, the internal order was falling apart.
If he had simply stepped down through the proper channels, that would be one thing.
But he was now a wanted man on charges of attempting to assassinate the chairwoman.
Naturally, those who had been considered his faction poured out denials and excuses, while the factions that had always resented them seized the chance to dredge up every minor infraction and launch an all-out assault.
The eldest council elder had stepped in to contain the chaos, but it was an uphill battle.
Had this trip really been the right decision, with everything falling apart back home?
Shouldn't she have taken an airship straight back to Vegas and focused entirely on work?
Then his voice flickered through her mind, unbidden.
—I hope we can continue to be together.
That face. That smile. The way his eyes had looked at her when he'd said it.
"Hehe... yeah..."
A laugh she couldn't suppress. He definitely wanted her. He definitely had feelings for her too.
Yes. He must have been just as flustered back at the manor.
Given what he'd done to treat her, he couldn't exactly admit his feelings outright. Not after she'd already branded him a pervert.
A surge of energy.
Right. This trip was worth it.
***
Lamancha. A port city in eastern Castille.
A man walked briskly along the quay, his hat pulled low. Though it was only April, Lamancha's near-equatorial climate was warm year-round. Yet the man had not only the hat but a heavy coat, his figure entirely hidden.
None of the merchants loitering along the docks—nor even the soldiers—paid much attention to the suspicious figure.
At most, a few remarks passed among them.
—Looks like another customer headed for Pirate Island.
—He didn't have to go to all that trouble. Nobody cares anyway.
—More and more outsiders visiting the island these days.
The locals and soldiers alike spoke of Pirate Island as casually as they might a friendly neighbor.
Freeport. A pirate-ruled island, as its name suggested, lying in the waters not far from Lamancha.
To the people of Lamancha, however, those pirates were not infamous outlaws.
They were swashbuckling rogues who plundered the merchant ships of the detested Republic, and excellent trading partners who sold quality goods at bargain prices.
The pirates needed somewhere to sell their loot, so they never harmed Lamancha. On the contrary, they paid taxes to the local duke. Officially, this was dressed up as His Grace's glorious navy seizing the goods—for the sake of outside appearances, of course...
The disguised visitor knew the local situation in Lamancha well.
He still didn't remove his disguise. He wasn't just another visitor here for some shady deal.
He was a wanted man in Charlotia, an attempted assassin who had tried to kill a noble. Even if this was a foreign land, he had to be cautious.
In particular, he had to watch out for merchants—more than the laid-back local troops.
Not just anyone bearing the Bergson crest, but all of them.
He had once been the vice-chairman of a major trading company.
There were plenty of people who could recognize his face.
'Maybe I should have just gone to Florand.'
His movements there had been completely exposed to Anais, but at least he had loyal subordinates and an established base of operations. If he'd gone straight there, he could have secured a ship immediately, without all this trouble.
Moreover, the Delos Republic, to which the province of Florand belonged, took a notoriously lenient stance on crimes against the aristocracy—a matter of republican pride. In class-conscious Charlotia, a grim joke made the rounds:
'If you commit a crime, just punch a passing noble and run. Delos will welcome you as a freedom fighter.'
Pierre shook his head.
Delos was also lenient about private retribution. If Bergson's gunmen or the mercenaries Anais had hired came to drag him away, the Republic would likely wash its hands of the affair with a shrug. This was the better option.
"Mr. Luazel?"
The appointed meeting place.
A man in merchant's attire called out to him.
Luazel was the alias he used in his dealings with the pirates.
The man was neatly dressed, but his swaggering gait and predatory eyes betrayed his true profession. Unless the harbor master was a complete fool, there was no chance he'd stamped an entry permit believing this man was a genuine merchant. The rumors of a secret arrangement between Lamancha and Pirate Island were clearly true.
"I've heard about you. Let's go."
Pierre followed the man aboard the ship.
The crew all looked like they had "I'm a pirate" tattooed on their foreheads.
"It'll take about a day."
As the man had said, they didn't reach Pirate Island until the following afternoon.
Most of the island's coastline was ringed by sheer cliffs, with only one entrance to the interior: the mouth of a bay bristling with reefs. The passage was so narrow that even a single ship had trouble navigating it, but the vessel Pierre had boarded rode the waves through with practiced ease.
The inner bay was surprisingly spacious.
A crescent-shaped harbor enveloped them, dozens of pirate ships—at least—moored along its docks.
Contrary to its notorious name, Freeport was remarkably tidy. It wasn't, strictly speaking, where the pirates lived. Every notable pirate had a private hideout somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. This place was a sort of pleasure district—somewhere to trade goods and carouse.
Pierre was escorted to a resort on the island, a place he'd visited once or twice before for business.
It was a favorite haunt of the crew belonging to one of the pirate lords who managed the island: Claw Hand.
—Wahaha! Hey, that's hilarious! Do it again!
—Another crate of booze over here!
—Kyahaha! You should've seen 'em! Those navy bastards!
A party was in full swing inside the resort.
Parasols ringed the pool. Beneath them, pirates reeking of alcohol shouted and brawled. Prostitutes weaved through the chaos, refilling their drinks. Younger crewmen held some kind of heated betting competition in the pool. An old man with white hair floated by on an inner tube, snoring, his rear wedged into the ring. A younger pirate, who had been making the prostitutes shriek with laughter with a string of cheerful jokes, spotted Pierre and waved.
"Long time no see, Mr. Luazel."
"Keeping well, Octopus Leg?"
"Hah! You remembered me."
"I remember your right leg, not you."
True to his nickname, the pirate called Octopus Leg had an octopus's tentacle where his right leg should have been.
He wasn't the only one.
Every pirate there had body parts that were not human.
One had a serpent's eye socketed into his skull.
Another's mouth was filled with shark teeth.
Yet another had a furred beast's paw in place of an arm.
Under the largest parasol sat a massive man with a protruding gut, a pincer claw attached to one hand.
The leader of this pirate crew.
"Welcome, Mr. Pierre."
"...It's Luazel."
What's wrong with this idiot's memory?
Every damned time...
Pierre grumbled inwardly.
"Ah, right, right. Come, sit down here. Hey! Bring our guest a drink! Uh... what was it again?"
"Coffee."
"Right! Coffee!"
A girl in a maid's outfit soon appeared with a cup. Her ears were not human—they belonged to a rabbit.
Is she a pirate too?
Pierre took a sip of the coffee and nodded, satisfied with the rich aroma.
"Good coffee."
"Oh, uh, what was it? We hit a Republic merchant ship a while back. Picked it up there."
Pierre nodded at Claw Hand's words. Whatever the man's memory problems, his skill at running a ship and leading a pirate crew was undeniable. A bungler could never have become one of the managers of Pirate Island.
Claw Hand studied Pierre's hand intently for a moment, then murmured,
"You've lost a finger."
"A rat bit it off."
"Yikes! Rats are terrifying! I once nearly got my balls chomped by one... Anyway, don't you worry. Ask the Priest, and he'll fix you up with a new one. Heh heh. What'll it be? A tiger's?"
"I might take you up on that. But I have something more important to discuss."
"More important than a finger...? What's the matter?"
Pierre recounted the events at the manor in detail.
Claw Hand's expression remained leisurely as he listened. He even burst out laughing at strange moments.
Dammit, this man is impossible to read.
Fine.
"This is no laughing matter. I don't know the full picture, but I'm well aware that exposure would be disastrous for your operation. I'm in too deep to back out now myself. So, let me meet this Priest of yours."
Despite Pierre's earnest plea, Claw Hand simply kept laughing.
He took a swig of strong rum and shrugged.
"Doesn't sound like much of a problem to me."
"Are you even listening to me?"
"Of course! That... kkhh... the man you shot..."
"Wait."
A voice cut in, interrupting him.
A young girl's voice.
It was the rabbit-eared maid, still holding her tray. She raised a hand, halting Claw Hand.
"What did you just say?"
She looked directly at Pierre.
Her tone carried an unmistakable weight of authority.
Pierre's instincts, honed over decades, spoke.
That was not the voice of a mere servant girl.
The sudden shift in the situation made Pierre's mind race even faster.
Someone who could freely eavesdrop on Claw Hand's conversation. Someone he deferred to.
There was only one person that could be.
"You're the Priest...?"
"Yeah. Got it in one. Sharp."
She addressed him with unabashed informality, as if speaking to a subordinate.
Pierre was taken aback.
This girl was the mastermind behind the Voodoo Cult, the one spreading so insidiously through the Caribbean?
The rabbit girl didn't give him a moment to process his surprise.
"We'll get to the details in a bit. But first—say that again. You shot that man?"
"Ah... yes, I did."
"No, say it right. You said you shot that woman, Anais, and he jumped in and took the bullet for her. Is that the truth?"
"It is."
A smile spread across the rabbit girl's face.
It wasn't a smile of pleasure. It was something far more ominous.
Beside her, Claw Hand stiffened, his eyes darting nervously.
"Now that's interesting."
_____
End of Volume 1