The Mad Voyage of Prince Malock (15 page)

But in reality, a thick atmosphere of fear and
tension filled every nook of the ship. The Gray Pirates monitored
every activity, which might not have been so bad if they were not
drunk and violent all the time. The Pirates seemed to have
discovered Malock's secret store of wine because they were
constantly seen with the drink, gulping it down, carousing loudly,
and partying well into the night.

This might not have seemed so bad, but the drink
made the Pirates even more violent and volatile than usual. Often
they beat sailors for no reason at all, except perhaps because they
could. Kinker had so far avoided a beating, but poor Gino got beat
upside the head by a lug of a pirate who got angry when Gino
accidentally dropped a fish instead of giving it to him.

In addition, the Pirates often ate more than their
fair share. At mealtimes, they'd gobble down the fish that Arisha
prepared, leaving only bones and scraps for the rest of the crew.
As a result, hunger, which was always a problem on the ship, became
even worse than before. It was quite common for Kinker to have only
a few pieces of fish a day, if even that, because the scraps they
did get were not distributed evenly among the crew, turning every
mealtime into an every-man-for-himself brawl, which Kinker refused
to participate in, knowing that he could not beat the younger
sailors even if he wanted to.

As for Malock, he was kept locked up in his
stateroom. Banika, Vashnas, and Bifor had been taken to the hold,
where they were kept under lock and key all day every day. As far
as Kinker knew, none of them got even scraps, causing him to
realize that the Pirates were slowly starving those three. He
didn't know why the Pirates didn't kill those three right away, but
as he never understood pirates in the first place, it perhaps
wasn't as shocking as it could have been.

In particular, Daryh, Garnal's first mate, was bad.
He was a botamancer, the one behind the moss from earlier, and had
apparently at one point been a accomplished academic before being
fired for reasons Kinker didn't know. The only reason Kinker knew
any of that was because Daryh usually monitored the fishing crew
and spent long periods of time ranting about the idiocy of the
Academy and how he would love to slit the throat of every one of
his former colleagues if given the chance.

Not only that, but Daryh showed a creepy interest in
Jenur, despite he being aquarian and her being human. More than
once he would try to run his slimy hands up her behind or grab her
breasts, but to Kinker's relief Jenur would always glare at him and
make him back down. Well, it didn't
always
work. The first
time she slapped his hands away, he hit her and threatened to rape
her right there before being summoned by Garnal to discuss
something. He never followed up with that threat, but it did make
Kinker worry for Jenur more than he already did.

The uncertainty of it all was the worst for Kinker.
It was almost impossible to tell what pleased the Gray Pirates and
what didn't. Kinker suspected, too, that once they returned north,
the Gray Pirates would simply slaughter them all, as the crew of
the
Iron Wind
would no doubt be more of a liability than
help then. Perhaps they would keep Malock to use as a bargaining
chip, but the rest of the crew had no worth in their eyes, which
was why Kinker knew they had to overthrow the Pirates somehow.

Kinker was no hero, which was why he kept his head
down. He doubted there was anything he could do to defeat these
Pirates. He thought it best to let them have their way, at least
for now. Without Bifor or Malock, Kinker didn't see how they could
possibly beat the Pirates. Not to mention he could not plan a
mutiny with the fishing crew while Daryh constantly watched them.
He heard every conversation because once, when Deddio whispered to
Kinker about doing something to defeat the Pirates, Daryh jumped to
his feet and kicked Deddio in the crotch.

So the entire situation seemed unlikely to change,
unless a miracle happened. Kinker went to bed every night praying
fervently more than ever for Kano to intercede, to provide them
with a miracle, but so far the goddess had yet to answer his
prayers. At this point, he doubted she would.

On the third day, not long after lunch, Daryh was
summoned by Garnal to the stateroom. At first Kinker thought this
meant they would be free to plan in secret, but then Daryh called
one of the other pirates to take his place, an octopus-like
aquarian named Hino. Unlike Daryh, Hino seemed more attached to his
drink because all he did was sit back against the mizzenmast,
downing a bottle of wine while occasionally hurling drunken insults
at the fishing crew, though because he spoke in the aquarian
tongue, Kinker never understood them.

Having just tossed the trawl back into the water,
the fishing crew were hard at work cleaning the fish. It was not
difficult work, but due to Kinker's deep hunger he had a hard time
concentrating. That was why it took him a moment to notice Jenur
subtly tugging at his shirt sleeve in a way that Hino wouldn't
notice (although considering how drunk the pirate seemed to be,
Kinker doubted he would have noticed even if she'd been
blatant).

“What?” said Kinker in a low voice. “What do you
want?”

“Your permission for what I am about to do to you,”
Jenur replied in an even lower voice. “It's going to be painful,
but I think it will be just what we need to kick these pirates off
our ship and save Malock and the others.”

Kinker looked over his shoulder at Hino. The pirate
was still sitting against the stateroom's back wall, swinging his
now-empty bottle of wine through the air like a bird.

“What do you mean, it's going to be painful?” Kinker
said, looking back at Jenur. “How painful, exactly?”

“Not very painful,” said Jenur. “But painful enough
that you might feel it for a few days.”

“A few days? Jenur, whatever you're planning to
do—”

Kinker had always known Jenur was stronger than she
looked, but until her fist smashed into the side of his face, he
hadn't really understood it. The blow knocked him flat off his
feet, causing him to crash to the deck and let out a sharp intake
of breath. This was then followed by a kick to the gut from Jenur's
booted foot, the blow hitting him so hard that he thought he saw
stars in his eyes.

The rest of the crew gasped in response and Deddio
even said, “Jenur, what the hell are you doing?” but no one tried
to stop her, perhaps because they were afraid of her.

At the same time, Hino was perhaps not as drunk as
he looked because he was there almost instantly, his tentacles
flailing as he shouted, in a heavily accented voice, “Break it up,
you two, break it up. What's the deal here? Daryh said no
fighting!”

Through watering eyes, Kinker saw Jenur take on a
completely innocent expression as she turned to Hino. “Oh, this old
perv just tried to touch me in a way I didn't like. I was just
defending myself, you see.”

Hino glanced at Kinker and said, “Doesn't change a
thing. Daryh told me to keep the peace until we get to—”

Kinker wasn't sure what happened next. All he saw
was a knife slip out of Jenur's sleeve into her hand, her arm jerk
upward, and Hino fall to the deck silently. The pirate lay in a
pool of ever-expanding blood, which Kinker moved away from to avoid
getting stained with it.

Jenur held out a hand to Kinker, which Kinker
reluctantly accepted. He glanced over his shoulder at Hino and
noticed a cut in the pirate's throat from which blood was leaking.
The rest of the fishing crew just stood there, looking on in
disbelief and confusion, which was exactly how Kinker felt right
now.

“Sorry about hitting you so hard,” said Jenur. “I
needed to make it look real enough so the big lug would decide he
needed to do something about it.”

“You killed him,” said Deddio, his eyes on the
pirate's corpse. “And expertly so, too. How did you know that
slitting his throat right there would kill him instantly?”

Jenur wiped the blood off her knife on Hino's
jacket, not looking at any of them as she said, “Doesn't matter.
What does matter is rallying the rest of the crew to get Hino's
friends.”

“But how do we do that?” said Kinker, rubbing his
face, which still hurt from Jenur's fist. “There's still a dozen or
so murderous pirates who have Malock in their custody. Not to
mention Bifor, Vashnas, and Banika are also in the hold, which is
guarded.”

“I know,” said Jenur. “I already figured out how
we're gonna save everyone. Kinker, you and I will make our way down
to the hold, where we'll kill the guard and free the
prisoners.”

“But they took Bifor's wand,” said Deddio. “Even if
we freed him, I doubt he would be able to do much against them.
Mages need wands to use their magic, don't they?”

Jenur shook her head. “Wands are helpful, but they
only channel magic. A mage's real power lies in their devotion to
their gods. But we probably do need to get Bifor's wand. He
obviously needs it; otherwise, he would have escaped by now.”

“How do you know that?” said Kinker. “You're not a
mage.”

Jenur, once again, ignored the question. “Last I
saw, Garnal had taken it. She probably has it on her person, so if
we want to get it back we'll need to steal it from her.”

“Steal it from her?” said Gino with a gulp. “Isn't
that like trying to steal from an oversized crab that knows how to
chop you into a million pieces?”

“That's why I've decided upon a change of plans,”
said Jenur. “We don't have much time until Daryh returns, so we
need to act as natural as possible. Attacking now would only give
the pirates time to kill Malock or sink the ship. We need our
attack to be so sudden that they don't have time to do either.”

“Then what's the plan?” said Gino. “I'm all
ears.”

“Firstly, only one of us will be going below deck to
free the prisoners,” said Jenur. “And that will be Kinker.”

“Hold on,” said Kinker, holding up a hand. “I'm not
a fighter. What if the guard tries to attack me? I'd be toast.”

Jenur immediately held out another knife, similar to
her own, and said, “Act as natural as possible. When he raises his
neck, stab him directly in the throat. Do it right and he'll die
without making a sound.”

Kinker took the knife uncertainly and turned it in
his hands. “I'm not very fast.”

“You just need to be fast enough,” said Jenur.
“Anyway, I'm going to sneak around and find Garnal. I'll try to
snatch the wand from her; if I can't, I'll slit her throat and then
take it from her. The rest of you should stay here and act like
nothing is out of the ordinary until I or Kinker return.”

“What about the corpse?” said Gino, gesturing at
Hino's body. “Do we—”

“Toss it overside,” said Jenur. “No one will notice
and by the time any of the pirates do, they'll all be dead. Let's
go.”

-

Malock wasn't used to feeling hungry. Back on
Carnag, he had always had three meals a day, and they were big
meals, too; roasted black fish, fried calamari, strawberry pudding,
Friana chocolate cookies, the freshest of Carnagian bread, and so
much more.

Even after running out of their food stores, Malock
had remained well-fed, in contrast to the rest of the crew. True,
he didn't have the same variety and richness of meals that he had
had back in the Hall of Carnag, but he did have three meals a day;
this he accomplished by hoarding what little food that hadn't gone
bad and making sure he got more food than the rest of the crew at
mealtimes. As Captain of the ship, he felt that he needed to remain
well-fed more than the rest of the crew did, so he often ate as
much as he pleased.

Now, however, Malock's stomach grumbled with hunger.
In the three days since the Gray Pirates had somehow managed to
take over his ship (he was still wondering how that happened, to be
honest), his meals had dropped from three to one a day, sometimes
even less than that. Whenever he was fed, he was spoon-fed by
Garnal, which was always an awkward experience in part because her
claws made it almost impossible to grip the spoon correctly, and
even when she succeeded in gripping it, she always spilled more
food on his shirt and lap than in his mouth.

There was a reason he couldn't feed himself. When
the Gray Pirates took over the ship, Garnal had taken Malock to his
stateroom and tied him up to his chair behind his desk. Despite her
clawed hands, Garnal was extremely good at tying knots, so good
that Malock could barely even feel his arms and legs anymore. The
chair itself was not nailed down or anything; however, that was a
useless fact because every time he tried to move, his chair would
tip over and he would remain that way for hours until Garnal
decided to check up on him.

Malock had not yet eaten today because Garnal had
gone to discuss something with her first mate, Daryh. They were
standing just outside the stateroom, but all he could hear were
their muffled voices. He had no idea what they were talking about.
All he knew was that it probably wasn't ways in which they could
improve their treatment of the crew of the
Iron Wind
.

A few minutes later, Garnal returned. She walked up
to Malock's desk and took a seat opposite him, on the chair that
Vashnas usually sat on. It reminded Malock that Vashnas was in even
worse conditions than him, being locked up in the hold with no food
or water at all. It made him angry, so angry he wanted to spit on
Garnal (although he didn't, knowing from experience how she would
react to that).

On the table between them was a bowl of cold lime
fish soup. It was the only thing Malock had been allowed to eat day
in and day out and he was getting sick of the taste. He now
understood why the rest of his crew despised the dish so much.