King of the Sea (4)
The ransom negotiated with the pirate captain came to 3.2 million bhat in total — the sum of every hostage's price, doubled.
"Pocket change. I'll have it sent within the month."
"...Something smells off, though."
The pirate captain tilted his head.
"Count or no count, isn't 3.2 million bhat a bit steep for you?"
The hulk picked up where he had left off.
"He's right. What's a snot-nosed brat who's never seen the world doing, running his mouth like that?"
"Now you're insulting House Naiden. 3.2 million wouldn't cover the cost of my horses."
I flashed the arrogant smile of a high noble.
"If your money's rotting that badly, why are you sailing on someone else's ship?"
"I come from Sandor. Sandor has no sea."
The Kingdom of Sandor was a nation rooted in the southern desert. With the crown perpetually unstable and civil war a recurring affair, its nobility turned over practically by the day.
"...Well, you are draped head to toe in expensive things, so I can't call it a lie. Our intelligence had you down as a young upstart noble from the south, too."
The captain scratched his jaw.
"Eh, no matter. If the money doesn't arrive on time, you're the one who's fucked."
He turned to Lucian.
"You have one month. Bring your master's ransom to the port of Garidos. What happens if it's late — I don't suppose I need to spell that out."
"I will raise the funds as quickly as I can and return."
Lucian answered with perfect courtesy. Having delivered his demands, the captain crossed back over to his own ship.
"Out to open sea! Full sail!"
"Full speed ahead!"
The moment the pirate ship spread its sails, the calm sea began to churn again as though it had never been still.
The pirates hauled Uld and me below deck. Beside the hold waited a small cell built for keeping hostages.
"Stay put."
The boatswain shoved us into the room and clamped shackles around our wrists and ankles.
"Sirmite. Play the noble and try throwing your Awoken Ability around in those, and you'll be the only ones who suffer for it."
Sirmite — a special metal that suppressed mana. We had used plenty of it ourselves when building the facility to hold Chris.
Though I doubted it came cheap enough for common pirates to handle so freely.
Of course, no amount of sirmite plating could stop me or Uld. The most this stuff could contain was an upper-tier Awakened, at best.
The hulk checked carefully that the shackles had locked fast, then laid down the law to his men.
"Just so we're clear. Lay so much as a finger on the hostages, and you'll be dealt with by the code. No exceptions."
"Yes, Boatswain!"
"I can't hear you!"
"YES, BOATSWAIN!"
The men answered in crisp unison. It was the bearing of soldiers.
"What do we do now?"
Uld asked once the pirates had filed out. I pressed my ear to the wall.
Shaaaaaaa—!
The sound of the hull cleaving through the water was ferocious. Whether by virtue of an Awoken Ability, the ship was moving at a monstrous clip — one the vessel we had under construction could never hope to match.
No wonder the Sirakos navy, reputed the strongest in the world, could never catch these bastards.
"First, let's see where they're taking us."
Groll had once told me something: pirates had a code all their own.
The so-called unwritten laws of pirates.
The first of them was that traitors were never forgiven. The man who blabbed where the treasure lay buried. The one who gave up the location of the home port.
These two breeds of traitor, it was said, would be hunted to the far ends of the ocean and made to answer for it.
Which was supposedly why prying information out of a pirate was next to impossible — and here these idiots were, escorting me straight to their stronghold of their own free will. It could hardly get better than this.
A ransom of 3.2 million bhat?
I would stake my life that the wealth piled up in their base was worth not 3.2 million but well over 32 million. Treasure plundered from every corner of the world, heaped like mountains.
That much would more than plug the hole the port and shipyard construction had torn in our tax revenue.
I closed my eyes and sank into meditation. Not to train — to smother my metabolism.
Uld was simply too close. Close enough to count her eyelashes. Cramming a young man and woman into a box this cramped — honestly, where was their common decency?
Worse, the cell's entire furnishings amounted to a single wooden chamber pot. I could hardly be seen committing an indignity into it, so I was regulating my body through qi circulation.
Uld seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion. She had folded herself into a corner, cross-legged, steadying her breath.
A long while passed like this. Deep in the night, when the pirates had dropped off into sodden sleep, the barred door ground open with a slow scrape of iron.
"I told you to keep it down, you dumb bastard."
"...Sorry."
Two pirates picked the lock and slipped inside — the pair the boatswain had assigned to watch us.
"Don't scream. Not unless you want a scar across that pretty face."
One of them pressed a knife against me in threat.
"Touch us, and you'll be punished under the code."
"Shut your mouth, you little shit!"
He glared at me with vicious eyes.
"I couldn't give a damn about the code. It's her fault for being so damn pretty."
Their lecherous eyes crawled over Uld where she huddled in the corner.
"You expect me to sit on my hands with a woman like this around? Fuck that. I'm a pirate, not a priest."
One of them seized Uld's wrist roughly. The other, in too much of a hurry, was already fumbling with his belt.
"Just enjoy yourself with us a little. It's not like a bit of fun wears you out. Oh — what's this, does the noble lord care whether she's been used?"
The two of them snickered. Uld's face was set in disgust. However far beyond humanity her strength might reach, visceral revulsion was another matter entirely.
"There's a passage in the Taiping Guangji that goes something like this."
I spoke softly, eyes still closed.
"A man who cannot master his greed — how is he any different from a pig?"
"What the hell did you just say?"
"Return. To your true forms."
Chanting the mantra, I pointed a finger at them.
"Hold up — is that little shit using his Awoken Ability?"
"Don't talk nonsense. He's wearing sirmite shackles."
"Hey, shut up and block it! Block it!"
Too late. This was not a spell that could be blocked.
Transformation arts cost me more when I transformed another than when I transformed myself.
This technique went a step further still. It did not merely alter a surface for a little while — it transmuted the very substance of a being, as though it had never been human at all.
I would name this technique the Art of Chaotic Transmutation.
Fwaah—!
Light burst from the pirates' bodies. When it faded, all that remained where they had stood were two plump, well-fed ragworms.
"Did they turn into bugs?"
Uld asked, startled.
"No."
I shook my head.
"They were worms all along. They merely spent some time playing at being human."
I crushed the ragworms under my heel.
Come morning, a stir ran through the pirate ship. The two guards assigned to watch the prisoners had vanished without a trace.
The spare boat sat untouched and their belongings lay where they had left them, so the hunt for a culprit threw the ship into an uproar for a while.
"Did you two have something to do with this?"
The captain demanded, glaring at us.
"Like this, you mean?"
I raised the sirmite shackles for his inspection. Uld went one better: she sat there meekly and asked with the guileless innocence of a child.
"Has something happened?"
I hereby declare that line of Uld's to be her first diplomatic act as my consort. I am not joking. The moment we are home, I am ordering it recorded in the annals, black on white.
"...I'm going mad."
The captain pressed a hand to his forehead and scowled in exasperation.
"Searched high and low, and not a hair of 'em. Gone clean."
The boatswain came over and reported.
"Where in the hell is there to disappear to on a ship?"
"How should I know? Maybe life got dull and they threw themselves to the sharks. Or maybe these little brats worked some trick — you know how it is, every imperial noble's got one strange power or another."
"No, that can't be it. They're too young. Neutralizing sirmite shackles at that age — you'd have to be one of the Imperial Seven Pillars to manage that."
Well informed, Captain.
"Then let's call it a swim. They were useless anyway."
With no clue to be found, the disappearance of the two pirates was papered over. If anything, some of the crew welcomed their absence.
Judging by how readily they had been willing to break the code and lay hands on Uld, the pair had never been exactly beloved among their fellows.
The fifth day of captivity.
The pirate ship slipped into an archipelago where small islands crowded shoulder to shoulder. I could not see outside, but I could feel the vessel picking its way with care along a winding coast.
It had to be the Palemara Archipelago, southeast of the Kingdom of Sirakos.
I had expected as much on the way here — Groll had told me this stretch of sea was home to countless pirates.
But with thousands of islands and every gift of nature's geography on lavish display, rooting them out without knowing their exact position was impossible.
"The ship... it's stopped."
Noise broke out above. I could hear the anchor splashing into the sea. Someone came thundering down the stairs, and a broad, flat face wedged itself between the bars.
The boatswain.
"Walking out on your own two feet, or do I drag you?"
"On my own two feet."
He entered the cell and unlocked our shackles.
"Follow me. No funny business."
We climbed up behind him onto the deck.
The pirates' stronghold lay deep inside a bay hidden behind cliffs. At its heart sat a large pier and a settlement of respectable size.
A ship that looked freshly arrived was moored at the pier, and its pirates too were just then carrying their spoils ashore.
"Move it! Walk!"
Over there, the air was of a different world entirely from ours. People in neck shackles staggered across the planks. They were naked, their bodies covered head to toe in whip scars.
Neither more nor less than exactly the sight I had expected.
"What are you doing? Keep up."
The boatswain urged Uld and me along.
Now came the moment of choice. Squeeze out a little more information, or drop the disguise and blast this island to rubble.
Going by what lay before my eyes, the latter was the answer. What delayed my decision was a single remark from the captain. Watching the hostages being dragged off the neighboring ship, he snarled:
"What the hell is wrong with those pirate bastards?"
"Captain, we're pirates too."
The boatswain chided him.
"No, what I mean is... that's a violation of the code, is what I'm saying."
"I say that all the damn time myself, and not a soul listens."
The code...
Was that what made outlaws of the sea drill like soldiers?
It felt different from the unwritten laws of pirates Groll had described. The way the captain used the word, the code was the line that separated a "pirate" from a "pirate bastard."
"If nobody listens, then you make them listen."
The captain started toward the other ship with a dangerous look on his face. I dragged over an oak barrel that was mid-unloading and dusted it off.
"Sit, Uld."
They say nothing in this world beats watching a fight or a fire. And the finest show of all was a scrap between two fools of exactly the same caliber.