The Long Road Back: A Jarthen-centric Interquel (pt. 5)

After awhile, things got awful tense on the Sinn. The tension was a quiet, slippery thing, one that crept in and settled over everything and left me with the distinct notion that something was off. Not anything I could put my finger on, nothing I could really name, but it was unmistakable. It was like the charge in the air right before a thunderstorm. I tried to ask Tawiri about it, but he just ignored me. He did a lot of that. So I was left on my own again and I did what I always did: I watched the rest of them.

Whatever it was had the wild pirates on edge and the fresher ones looking a might bit pleased with themselves. Sort of relieved. But not comfortable, that was fer damn sure. The captain started posting one of his on deck at all times – looked like he was doing work but really he spent the time watching the rest of them. And they were always pulling Muladah off to do this or that. Nothing big, just little jobs here and there, but little jobs that kept him out of earshot of Nossi and Salir and the rest. By then, I was pretty sure I knew what it was Muladah was heading up and the way things were shaking out it was looking like the captain had a suspicion himself. You don’t need to be a pirate to know how bad that was fer Muladah.

I started listening, too. By then I’d been on the ship for a solid four months and I’d started picking up the odd phrase in Felin now and again. The pirates, especially the wild ones, spoke Common a good deal of the time, but when they were dealing with the captain’s men they tended to speak Felin and the captain’s men really only spoke Felin to each other. Again, I’m no great shakes with languages, but I was stuck there on that hunk of wood hearing it day in and day out and slowly bits and pieces started making sense. And one day, when I was minding my own business by minding all of theirs, I caught a snippet of a conversation ‘tween the captain and his first mate. I couldn’t make it all out, but from what I could glean they were discussing who to unload when we hit port in the pirate isles in a fortnight.

From where I was sitting it was plain as day that a storm was brewing. And while I had no loyalty to any of them, it did seem like I’d fare better if Muladah and his fellas were still standing when the dust settled. At the very least they spoke Common. But it was nigh impossible to get Muladah alone during the day and anyone within three feet of him got watched like a hawk by the mates, so I waited until they herded me into the hold and locked me in the closet with Rofi and Tawiri like they did every night and did what I could to get Muladah sent to me. “Hey, Tawiri.”

“Yes?”

I rolled up my sleeves and cracked my knuckles. “This is nothing personal, a’right?”

He ignored me, like he always did, and I told him I was real sorry about it and punched him as hard as I could in the chest. Tawiri just sat there blinking at me for a minute, clutching at his chest and shocked, but when I reared back to punch him again, Rofi came flying out of nowhere and jumped me. He leapt on my back and did his damnedest to strangle me, and all the while he and Tawiri went back in forth, yelling bloody murder in some language I don’t speak. Think it might’ve been Semadran. Anyway, it didn’t take much to pull the tinker off – he was small and scrawny and not really all that strong – and I tried to explain to him that I didn’t mean no harm, but you know, we don’t speak the same language and all he knew was that I was attacking his friend. So I can’t really blame him fer attacking me. Then I landed a good solid hit to the side of his head and he went down and stayed down. I felt right awful about it, but like I said, he sort of forced my hand.

Tawiri snapped out of it and lunged at me. I tried to apologize fer it and explain again that it weren’t nothing to do with either of them (since, you know, he seemed to know a bit of Common), but he was bellowing summat at me in the strangest-sounding tongue at the top of his lungs. Which was really what I wanted him to do from the get-go. I figured all I had to do was keep my distance from him ‘til Muladah came bursting in and it would all blow over. Problem was that Muladah took his sweet time about it and before I knew what was happening, Tawiri slammed into me, knocked me down, and just started wailing on me. And I got to give the little bugger credit, because fer being as small as he is he’s got a helluva right hook. I mean, I had a foot on him easy and god knows how many pounds, but Tawiri was a class A brawler – every time I tried to throw him off me he’d hit me hard enough that I got all disoriented and fell back down again. And all the while he just kept screaming at me.

By the time Muladah finally did get in there and managed to pull him off me, I was a mess. But still, mess or not, my plan worked. “What the hell’s going on in here?”

Tawiri let out a stream of summat or other, pointing at me and Rofi, and Muladah asked him summat back. Tawiri shrugged, shot me a mean look, and babbled summat else.

“Hey, Muladah, I got to talk to you,” I said.

He frowned and held out a hand. “No, you got to stay right where you are.” He said summat else to Tawiri and Tawiri nodded and went about trying to wake Rofi back up.

“Look, I’m not a troublemaker, I swear. I just had to get you in here somehow. ‘Cause whatever it is you got up your sleeve, you should probably do it sooner rather than later.”

“What?”

I took a step closer, afraid that there might be some of those fresh ones lingering on the other side of the door and listening in, but Tawiri screamed at me until I stepped back again. “We’re putting into port -- ”

He cocked an eyebrow. “I know that. You probably don’t even know which one. Shakhar, you do this again and you’ll end up -- ”

“It don’t matter which one! Muladah, they’re getting rid of you somehow. They’re planning to, anyway.”

“Shit! I knew it! That bastard. Alright. Alright. You come with me,” he said, grabbing my arm and dragging me towards the door.

“Wait, I don’t – I mean, shouldn’t Rofi look me over or summat?” Tawiri shot me a mean look I did my best to ignore.

“No. Look, Shakhar, you want to make it out of this alive?”

What I wanted right about then was something to take the swelling down. Maybe some pipeherb. To be honest, I didn’t feel like I was in all that much danger. I mean, killing me would really raise more questions about him than it would answer. Still, though, he was on edge and it seemed best just to say that I would, in fact, like to go on living.

Muladah nodded and thought fer a second. He nodded again and looked over at me. “I appreciate you telling me this. If you do exactly what I tell you and we’re both still around when the dust clears I’ll take you as crew.” Tawiri glared at him and asked summat I couldn’t quite catch in Felin and Muladah waved at him until he shut up again. “Deal?”

“Deal. What do you want me to do?”

What Muladah wanted me to do, it turned out, was stick close to Nossi and pass along a message in Felin that he had me memorize but didn’t actually translate fer me. Looking back, I really should’ve asked him to. He got the captain to agree to let Nossi watch me, since (as Muladah explained it) I was hell-bent on tearing the rest of the cargo to pieces. And they did let Nossi watch me, but only after they made me run the gauntlet. To show me where I stood, since as far as cargo went I was so much less valuable than those scrawny elves. Even though I was the worst off of the three of them. Long story short, a couple hours later I got stuck in a different closet with Nossi cleaning my wounds and did my best to pass along the message. Course, given the events of the day it should come as no surprise that I mangled it and it took him awhile to catch the meaning. At which point, his eyes got all big and he told me to stick real close to him and to follow his lead when the time came.

“Follow how? When?” I asked.

“You’ll know when the time comes,” said he, explaining nothing and making me feel that much more uneasy.

The time came three days later when the crew was changing shifts. The first mate walked up onto the deck, passed by Muladah, and as soon as he did, Muladah nodded at Nossi and disappeared below deck. And then all hell broke loose – Nossi shoved a knife in my hand and hauled me upright, and then he leapt at the first mate like cat catching a bird in midair. He yelled fer me to follow suit, which I sort of did. Mostly I just pinned the bugger’s arms behind his back and a second or so after I had him held there Nossi slashed his throat wide open. I confess I screamed like a little girl. I’d not been expecting that. Maybe I should’ve been, but I wasn’t. Anyway, a good number of Muladah’s fellas had taken down about half of the rest of the captain’s men the same way at the same time Nossi took out Hayim. The rest of them were starting to rush us when Muladah showed back up on deck dragging the captain along with him with a knife to his throat. “Tell them to stand down!”

The captain spit on him, called him every vicious name in the book, and railed at him until Muladah smacked him in the back of the head with the hilt of his knife.

“Last warning. Tell them to stand down and load up in the dinghy or swear allegiance to me,” Muladah said again.

“They can hear you. Tell them yourself,” the captain hissed back. One of the captain’s men lunged at Muladah and got taken down in the space of a second by three of the wild ones. The rest stared at his body and went quiet and still. None of them swore allegiance to Muladah. Can’t say I blame them, though, as I doubt Muladah would’ve thought twice about cutting them down in the blink of an eye and I doubt he would’ve trusted any of them as far as he could throw them. The wild ones herded the handful of them who were still alive and kicking onto a lifeboat – no provisions, no compass, nothing – and set it adrift.

Muladah slit the captain’s throat and tossed his still bleeding body overboard and turned back to the rest of us. He grinned, the moonlight bouncing off his fangs and reflecting the still-damp blood splattered over his chest and arms. “The Sinn is ours!”

The pirates erupted into cheers all around me. I just stood there, frozen in place by some awful combination of horror and sea-sickness and fear that I was about to be the next one to get the life drained out of me and find myself tossed into the sea. Muladah shouted orders to clean the deck, sent Salir to rifle through the captain’s quarters, and beckoned towards me. Nossi shoved me over and Muladah smiled and patted me on the shoulder. I flinched and yelped a bit. “Well done, Shakhar. Let’s get you some new marks.”