The Storyteller: The Pirate Lord

[annarti.livejournal.com]

Fourteenth Birthday

Kaiji was the only person Sen told she was running away.

‘Come back,’ she made Sen promise, words barely heard through her tears. ‘Because I still want to marry you.’ She left Sen with a kiss on the cheek. Sen returned it with a peck on the lips, then she boarded the Golden Fleece and left Jita behind.

That had been two months ago. She found herself back in Ryas, looking for a crew to join. Despite what Tu and Sula and everyone in Jita had told her all her life, she couldn’t just walk onto any ship she chose. Just because her parents had been sailors, that didn’t make her one. She had only the experience she had sailed in with, what little the crew of the Golden Fleece and the Exeter two years earlier had been able to show her.

Every day she walked the docks of Ryas, asking every new captain who docked if they were looking for new crew members, but every time she was turned away. She was close to giving up, close to running out of the money she had brought. She needed to at least keep enough to book passage back to Jita. There was only enough left for maybe another week in Ryas before she would be unable to get home.

‘It’s not you,’ one captain told her, resting a heavy hand on her shoulder. She had kind eyes even though she seemed very old for a sea captain. ‘The new king and queen will be ascending the throne in two weeks. Nobody knows what’s going to happen.’

‘I heard,’ Sen replied with an uncomfortable shrug. It was all Ryas seemed to be talking about.

‘We don’t know if we should be preparing for trade or war,’ Captain Tila went on, ‘though most of us are expecting war.’

‘With the pirates?’ Sen asked.

‘Exactly right. There’s a new leader of the Pirate Isles, one who’s said to be extremely vicious. Last year, the current king and queen sent an envoy ship to try and treat with him, to find out just what sort of a man he was.’

Sen frowned. ‘But how?’ she interrupted. ‘I didn’t think anyone knew where the Pirate Isles were except for pirates.’

Captain Tila folded her arms and looked up in thought. ‘You might be a bit young to remember it. It was about seven years ago, now. A famous bounty hunter ship disappeared without a trace—’

‘The Horizons?’

Tila raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘You’ve heard of it?’

‘Captain Tu was my friend,’ Sen answered with a nod.

‘Well, doesn’t you just go up in my estimations?’ the captain said with a laugh, and Sen grinned. ‘You know about the shipwreck, then?’

‘Probably even more than you,’ Sen answered with a cheeky grin.

Captain Tila gave a full belly-laugh. ‘That you may! Well, one of the crew managed to survive the shipwreck, and he came back to Ryas last year with the news that they had wrecked on the Pirate Isles, and he knew how to get back there. Rather than raise a fleet, though, which everyone wanted to do, the king and queen decided to send an envoy ship instead.’

More than one crewmate had survived the wreck, but Sen didn’t need to tell the captain that. Let her keep some stories for herself. ‘Why didn’t the captains just make their own fleet?’ she asked instead.

Tila shook her head with a heavy sigh. ‘Not that easy, kiddo.’ Tu had called Sen that. ‘As soon as the pirates heard that their location had been leaked, they started spreading rumours of their own, each pretending to be that sole survivor of the Horizons shipwreck and knowing the location of the Pirate Isles. But of course, they all gave different locations. We were back where we’d started, not knowing where they really were. That, and the king and queen threatened anyone caught trying to raise such a fleet with being declared a black spot themselves.’

Sen snorted. ‘Declared a pirate for killing pirates?’

‘I know!’ Captain Tila said, spreading her hands in an expansive shrug. ‘So instead they sent off their envoy ship with two of who they said were the best negotiators in Tsayth. Big surprise, the new pirate lord didn’t take kindly to the outside world suddenly knowing his location. He seized the ship, slaughtered the whole crew and one of the envoys, then took the other hostage. One of the pirate ships then came back to Ryas to tell the king and queen what their pirate lord had done, and that if any ship was seen any closer to their islands than the horizon, they’d sink the ship and kill the lasts envoy.’

Sen gasped and covered her mouth. Tu had somehow managed to escape this man?

‘Not a pleasant person, by all reports,’ Captain Tila said with a shake of her head. ‘That was when the king-and-queen-in-waiting made their voices heard. They promised when they took the throne that they’d do what the people wanted and they’d raise a fleet to attack the Pirate Isles.’

‘And they take the throne in two weeks?’ She couldn’t wait that long. She would run out of money to get home, and if she didn’t manage to find a crew in that time… she didn’t want to think about that possibility, of being homeless and penniless in a city the size of Ryas.

Tila nodded. ‘But lately the king and queen, and a number of their advisors, have been in their ears and nearly convincing them not to. This new pirate lord is truly vicious. If their campaign against the pirates fails, the new pirate lord could well raise a fleet of his own, send it against Ryas and raze it to the ground.’ She slapped a hand on Sen’s shoulder. ‘And that’s why nobody’s taking you on board just yet,’ she finished. ‘It could be war, it could be a whole new world of trade, or the world could just sail on as ever it has. We just don’t know.’

‘Oh.’ Sen’s shoulders slumped when she remembered the reason for their conversation. ‘What if I can tell you about the Horizons wreck?’ she tried. Captain Tila said Sen had gone up in her estimations just for saying she knew Tu. Maybe she could work that here. ‘That’s why I’m trying to find a crew to join, so I can look for Captain Tu and join her crew again.’

Tila’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Again?’ she repeated. ‘You were on Horizons?’

Sen shrugged. ‘Sort of. My parents were, but they died in a pirate attack just after I was born. Tu brought me ashore to grow up. She said I could join her crew when I was old enough, but then Horizons disappeared.’

Tila’s frown was deep, both desperate to know and somewhat troubled by the new knowledge, too. ‘So what brings you to Ryas now?’

‘Last year, one of her crew found me and said Captain Tu was bringing her crew back together on her new ship.’ She held back the name of it, though. She would disclose that only if Captain Tila agreed to take her onboard. She couldn’t gamble the last of her money on the slight chance that Tsayth would return to normal after the new king and queen took the throne.

The captain folded her arms again, her brow now completely troubled. ‘I think, maybe, it might be safest for you to stop looking,’ she said carefully. She gave a heavy sigh and scratched the back of her head. ‘I’ve been calling the new pirate lord a man, but only because nobody really knows, and how could a woman be so vicious as that? But now what you’ve said about the Horizons…’

Sen swallowed, though her mouth had gone suddenly dry. She didn’t like where Captain Tila was going, but she had to know. ‘What is it?’

Tila sighed again, a noise that was half a groan. ‘The new pirate lord’s name is Tu,’ she answered. ‘He—or she, I’m thinking now—took the title early last year. The pirates who came back to tell the king and queen about what the pirate lord had done to their envoys also told how their new lord had come to be their leader. After wrecking and being imprisoned on the islands for years, Tu challenged the former leader to a duel at dawn the following morning. Instead of fronting up to the duel, though, Tu slit the former pirate lord’s throat while he slept. When everyone turned out to watch the duel the next morning, Tu presented them with their lord’s head and proclaimed herself their new lord. She wouldn’t play by anyone’s rules, the pirates said, not the pirates’ and certainly not by Ryas’. Even the pirates seemed scared of their new lord.’

Sen slumped down against the pylon. Her legs were shaking. She sank down until she sat down right there on the jetty. ‘It was definitely Tu?’ Her voice sounded like someone else’s.

Tila crouched down in front of her, reaching out her comforting hand to rest on Sen’s shoulder. ‘They made sure we wouldn’t forget it,’ she answered, her voice soft. ‘It could be another Tu?’

Sen shook her head, suddenly tired of trying to make excuses for Tu, tired of trying to explain away her indiscretions, tired of trying to fill the holes in Tu’s story with stories of her own. Tu was a pirate. It was time for her to just accept that. She was the vicious, merciless new lord of the Pirate Isles.

‘Can you take me home?’ she asked, her voice small. She was tired of being big and strong.

‘Of course, kiddo,’ Captain Tila agreed. ‘Of course.’

STUFF

o I'm in McLaren Vale! At a café called Terre, which is a dumb name for a ship, but there's another café up the road where I've also been a few times called the Golden Fleece so there's that.

o Oh shit pirate. Bet nobody saw that coming. Probably the pirate lord thing is a surprise, though. OH SHIT PIRATE LORD TU.

Comments

[drazzi.livejournal.com]

Come back because I still want to marry you jdfgbdfgbdfgfhg MY FUCKING HEART MAN. Those kids.

I love that like nothing's fucking easy in your worlds. She can't just get on, because she has no experience. It makes SENSE. Shit be real in this fantasy world.

God new Pirate Lord, why you gotta be such a dick?

NO I refuse to believe it is Tu! Someone is using Tu's name! I'm as naive as Sen sometimes.

Sen baby, you have the worst birthdays D: