…forgo your guide. The risk is too great for hasty action.

Thinking about it, chancing the main path to this place, then making a swim all the way around the island and further, to another distant island, all before the rise of the early summer sun, is an improbable and dangerous thought. There’s been chaos enough for tonight, and it’s lost you the prize of the necklace and the bounty through it. The morning should provide better results, so long as you have a plan to handle it.

You look out towards the inferno and beyond, in the vague direction your guide should be. There’s some silvers wasted. You are the cause of course, and the solution clinks at your back. You lift it off your shoulder, careful not to unbalance and fall, and you carefully lower it down until you lie on the shallow roof and your arm drapes to the lawn below, dropping it with as little distance and noise as possible. You’re not waiting inside unless you absolutely have to, and if someone tries to enter the room while you still search for your disguise, you’d rather not have to deal with it in your escape. The mansion had some bushes close too, just below some of the rear windows, and waiting inside them seems like a good bet for not being found.

With that in mind, you return to the room and begin to search for clothes that would aid an escape. Who would be leaving by ship in the morning? Who could you blend in with? Roland will be making a quick getaway, you’d wager, and if Captain Washkins crew does not give chase then they will be the main people you will need to fool. Dressing in their red and white colours may raise questions, both regarding who you are and why you’re not leaving with the rest, if they have not left already. You don’t want to be aboard their ship, no matter what. There will be others on the island looking to leave, and there were more than just two ships docked that you saw. A merchant perhaps? You could say you were a merchant or fence visiting Captain Washkin, either yourself or on behalf of a patron: a fellow criminal representing some powerful someone should help in terms of excuse and safety. Now all you need to do is dress the part.

You keep a keen ear, listening for any disturbance, and feeling like a coiled spring or a hunted doe for the strain of your attention. The sound of shouting, the sound of running boots, or any attempt to approach would have you diving for the window, and even a raised voice or creaking floorboard would have you skittering back from the piles of loose clothes, warded as though burned. None come, and you search through them, each small dump placed strategically. As you pick them apart you learn why.

The first few contains things of a scandalous nature, whose functions you can only guess at by holding them against yourself and trying to work out where your arms and legs would even go. Silks and lace, wired corsets and webs of material, each designed to highlight all things woman, and each beyond your figure and purpose. It proves almost educational, your inexperienced senses broadened by the impracticalities of allure, but it’s mostly frustrating as you sort through a top layer laid out to distract the minds of guests like Roland. It only gets more so when you realise how successfully it’s distracted yours.

Eventually, you return to the wardrobe that you previously hid in, careful of the nearby bodies. Perhaps it’s the silence, but it feels even more alone to be with a corpse than without, and while you in no way want guests, having them both there is…eerie, as if they are both watching you as you rummage through the draws. Having become familiar with the wardrobes alcove and its contents, the draws are where you go first and what they hold is both neatly folded and more practical. You take out a blue top that catches your eye, neither yellow, nor red, nor white, and therefor of suitable neutrality. Holding it against you shows it to be a little loose in the chest and more flowing than needed, but a set of drawstrings promise an adjustable quality. A blue skirt also catches your eye, but unless you wish to chance the ex-whores nickers or find some bloomers, you don’t fancy going ‘no'neath’ with so many disreputable men about. Eventually, a pair of cream coloured trousers come to hand, a little fancy and made to be snug against someone with more to hold, but they’ll do. There is no way she has shoes in your size.

You leave the room as you found it and climb out the window, clambering down to the lawn and your loot. The fires are nearer, the smoke thicker, but the lawn is still mostly untouched, even near where the fire has reached the treeline.

You walk about the building, finding the bushes you saw just under some large partially obscured windows, and you crawl into them, the dry dirt and dead leaves providing a little respite from the smoke and heat elsewhere. If some drifting embers land and get through the thick green wall then it shouldn’t be too hard to jump out.

You sit with your back against the building, resting your head against it and closing your eyes. Sleep seems unlikely, despite working all night. The fire roars like a storm, the trees cracking and popping with heat. Dawn shouldn’t be but a few hours away, and the flames are already less where they broke through before, their easy fuel consumed. Charred branches smoulder, still licked with flames, but the smoke billows up more lazily instead of the quick pushing plumes elsewhere. Even if this was a still night, you’d still have recently watched two people die, one the most notorious pirate in the whole archipelago, the other in a most violent manor. You were nearly caught and then walked back into the lion’s den. You feel almost buzzed with it, resting as you are, as though your body forgot to be scared.

Now you sit on the edge of a fire that’s consuming the whole island, which is no doubt in a panic, its people running to and fro.

Sleep is the last thing on your mind.

---

You wake up in the same position you drifted off in, surprised by the risen sun outside your bush. The sky is still orange with the last of dawn, and the trees of the woods still smoulders, though without a flame in sight. The nearest trees hiss a constant smoke out from each branch, and the air is hotter than the summer morning should allow, but it seems the worst is done and quicker here than you expected.

Stretching, you also note with satisfaction the lack of blades in your face and the lack of hands pulling you from the bush, your safe haven having been unfound and undisturbed. You listen for the sound of whatever woke you, but hear nothing. Perhaps it was just your bodies’ time to wake? Convenient if so as the hour looks perfect to make your move.

Before you do, though, you grab the bag and do what time and light forbade the night before, opening it and taking inventory of what you have.

What you have takes your breath away.

The Captains bounty was 50,000 gold pieces and an island; an unprecedented amount throughout the history of the principalities. What you have is not 50,000 gold, or even close, but for a single bag it’s as much as it could be. Gemstones, jewels, jewellery, gold and silver pieces of ornate craft, a silk scarf with hundreds of pearls sown into its trim, an ornate dagger -southern steeled and ivory handled, hilted in an artwork sheath- figurines of jade and fine amber, and gold, both in measured bars and coins of all kinds. You feel dizzy just holding the bag! How many bags did they take!? Surely this was the richest, but even the notion of more… If Captain Wendy ‘Go’ Washkin had been reeling in this kind of wealth, 50,000 gold must be a small price to pay to make her stop!

An odd paranoia creeps in, as though someone was looking over your shoulder. You’ve never held this much money before in your life. If anyone within a hundred leagues saw even a tenth of this, they would kill you for it, you have no doubt. This changes things. You don’t know how, but they’re changed. You consider what to do with it. Hefting the bag, even plane as it is, past pirates and other such scum, feels like the stupidest risk you could take. Better would be to hide some of it, or most of it, returning once the burned island is cleared out.

You take a moment to plan a little further ahead than just beyond the island. You had always planned to return with the navy once the captain was dead. Going to them ahead of time would have only tipped off the agents she had buried within, and a single pidgin would have her and her forces cleared out well before the first naval ship set sail. There was a reason she had been considered unbeatable for so long. Now, though, that wasn’t a problem anymore; returning with them, the island could be cleared of any remaining riffraff not scoured clear by the fire. The navy would be keen for a much needed victory, no matter how much of a pretence it would be, so getting them here shouldn’t be a problem and tagging along by acting as a guide is not an impossibility, should you need to. Unfortunately, the Navy is little better than the pirates themselves, being a branch of the Standing Army of the Principalities, but once they are gone and the island safe, you could return again, as long as what you hide is not found.

That seems like a good plan, and a flat pressed bar of gold gives you an idea, its edge tapered like a chisel, or a thick shovel. You take it an attack the ground, crumbling the dry dirt and letting the sun rise a little more as you dig a nice hole. Throughout, you think of the other thing you will have to do on escaping; you will need to go to the Guard and the Bounty judges office and have the necklaces worth nullified by oath. Leveraging your position and your recorded service to the gods, you can cast doubt with your testimony on whoever turns in the necklace, which should help prevent Roland or his ilk for turning it in unchallenged.

Hole dug, you consider it for a moment, and eventually you look about (though you don’t know why) and take off your top, baring your chest to the privacy of the inner bush. You line the hole with the material and empty the sack slowly and quietly onto it, taking back a handful of coins and trinkets before wrapping it in your dark top and pushing the earth back over it. The stolen blue top replaces it on your torso, your trousers similarly swapped with some difficulty, and you stuff the trinkets in the bag, mere payment for your journey and a little more, with your old dark trousers as padding to stop the clinking rattle. A few stamps on the turned dirt and you’re all good to go.

The smouldering grounds are empty, the charcoal pillars of the treeline your only company. As you creep around the house, even the door guards are absent and the air of neglect already heavy on the building gets another final nail. Once the navy comes and searches it, perhaps someone else will live there. More likely it will simply fall into ruins.

You trot down the path, bag over your shoulder and facemask still on. With the smoke and your more casual clothing, it looks far less suspicious to cover your mouth in black cloth. Sensible, even. The air is thick, the path cutting a wide and walled way through the trees, close enough that your eyes sting and your brow begins to bead with droplets of sweat, but it soon ends in two stone gatepost pillars, looking sinister and blackened in the swirling grey smog. Beyond them is the islands village, as was; black beams of wood stand haphazardly in places, and spaces of little more than ash tell tales of houses and businesses gone for good. Much of it still smoulders, the beams glowing with inner fire and stacked like a grand hearth. The road is smothered with ash, like fallen snow, and as you walk through it you leave a trail of lonely footprints: the only set to come from the mansion path for some time.

You soon come to the first people you have seen since the night before. They work in a group, about half a dozen, picking through the rubble with metal poles, like fire pokers, looking for valuables. They all wear masks like yours, sooted and stained, and you’re surprised to see several women among them. Everyone looks tired, and they pay you little mind as you pass.

Reaching the village end, you look down a long path downhill, to the docks and sea, and your breath catches slightly in your throat.

They really didn’t hang around.

The docks you saw the night before are near empty, with only a couple of midsized ships remaining moored. It makes sense you suppose: Roland’s galleon would have surely left, and it seems the head cracking bat man of the night before had convinced his fellow crew to follow. That meant none of Captain Watkin’s crew was present either, and with a dearth of anything but ashes -or at the time, fire- on the island, the other ships had all left as well.

Your hopes of escape now rests on two ships.

You walk down the long path, similarly lined with trees and a short wall, and similarly hot and smoky for it. Here though, the downward path gets steadily easier as the rising smoke and heat thins, with normality returning as you reach the untouched sands and only slightly scorched wooden docs. Several burly men sleep on the planks, exhaustion evident and empty buckets nearby; dockworkers who had kept the lifeblood of the island alive, unknowing of its owners fate. There are some wearing pirate colours, but a second glance shows their sleep to be of the eternal kind, and their blooded wounds suggest the fire was not the cause. Good thing you weren’t here when the chaos hit.

Several women sit nearby on upturned barrels, watching the lethargic to and fro of sailors and dockworkers still on their feet. Ratty short skirts and loose low hanging blouses tell of their profession, though the disinterest shown by the world around them would suggest business isn’t booming. You catch the eyes of one of them.

“Er, excuse me,” you ask, turning the heads of others, “any idea which ship is the best to leave on?”

It seems only sensible to ask someone who had spent the morning here. Of the two ships, one is bigger than the other, and more practical, the smaller ship being more decorative. Both have guards stationed at their gangplanks.

“Who’s askin?” The darker skinned woman squints as she asks, not hostile, thankfully, but curious. You pull off your mask, finding it less useful in the smoke free lowland.

“I’m a merchant…’ss assistant,” which seems more logical, and less rich pickings for anyone thinking it, “and my master left me behind. Looking for a way to New Lilia.”

The whores face turns to an expression of unconcerned acceptance, her mouth pulled down at the odd taste of your lie, but otherwise satisfied.

“Bad luck luv, but better than some.” She points to the little ship. “Don’t bother. Bastards ain’t even listenin till their boss gets back.” She points at the bigger ship. “Cost an arm an a leg, an is full to boot.”

Another whore chips in, “Better off waiting my girl. Filis got a cousin what took one of the last rowboats. Gonna bring his boys back wi more in a day or two.”

You pretend to mull it over. Waiting a few days on this cutthroat island is not what you had in mind, but you guess it’s not impossible. It’s not your first choice though.

“Thanks. Think I’ll talk to that ship captain first though.” You gesture to the big ship and smile at them, heading off with only their words chasing you.

“Good luck! Better hurry!

“You’ll need coin though!”

“Yeah! Muckfucker ain’t acceptin a woman’s charms, that’s for sure!”

Their last words all seem to be insults directed at the captain that rejected them and you leave them to it.

The big ship is only such by comparison. It looks to have perhaps a single lower deck, with a house like cabin at the rear. It also gives an impression of thinness, despite you looking at it side on. The guard raises a hand, but it’s the man on the deck that raises his voice.

“No whores! No anyone! We’re full!”

“I can pay in coin! I just need passage!” and while less important, you add, “And I’m not a whore!”

He looks at you sceptically, taking in your attire and bag.

“Two gold.”

Your eyes bulge. That’s more than it would cost to sail across the whole ocean!

“To where!? Losh and back!?” You had passengered aboard a ship from the principality city to Coronac’s capital several years ago. It had taken weeks, and while the waters had been safer then, it still only cost you three silvers.

“Dearinda. Take it or leave it!”

Dearinda was a coastal town, if you remember correctly, situated some distance south of New Lilia. Barely three days away.

“Two gold is all I’ve got left!” It’s not, by a comfortable margin, but you know accepting straight away would have him asking for more. “How about one and six silvers?”

The back and forth goes on for several minutes, mostly consisting of him restating the two gold cost and you gradually giving ground until you accept. At least food and water is included. You hand him the coins and his crew, who had finished their work several minutes into your argument, all finish and cast off. For all the exorbitant cost, the captain hardly treats you like a five star guest.

“Fuck off below girl! I don’t want my men trippin over you!”

The ship is quite narrow, but it’s not like you’re in the way of anyone. You raise an incredulous look that lands impassively on the back of his head before giving up and walking to the stairs. The little cabin is locked, and through its little porthole windows you see boxes stacked to capacity, valuable supplies moved from below to make room for sticky fingered guests. That captain must have made a fortune in this.

You walk down the slanted stairs into the ships underbelly, the bright light of morning blinding you to the sweaty gloom and casting off you in a glow as you stand in its reaching shaft. The nearby wood catches pale light from your skin, and blue light from your top, highlighting a few singed faces as your eyes adjust, dressed in black, looking at you with a sudden sullen stillness, and an uneasy feeling rises in your chest. Perhaps you’ll sit on the bottom step, in the light.

The door above, a wooden grate of thick crossed bars, falls to a close, the last passenger securely below, and your eyes adjust further to the dark kept at bay by the pool of checkered sunlight.

There are more faces than you thought, many smoked and stained with ashes and other grime. It’s hot down here, from bodies more than the fresh sun, and many hug close to the hull where the rushing water outside cools the planks. The few that sit in the centre have no such luxury. They are the ones in dark clothes, growing lighter in patches as your eyes adjust, looking almost like winter woollens.

It’s a paler skinned man, with less hair on his chest, which shows you the truth of their nakedness.

You gulp and look up. Perhaps the deck would be better, even if you were in the way.

---

Gregor took inventory, rummaging through the cloth bag for valuables. Sometimes, it paid to be gay. Not in the eyes of the law or society, obviously, but here on the periphery of such things he could live as he chose.

And today, it paid to be gay.

He couldn’t upturn the bag, for obvious reason, but moving the pair of dark black trousers about, he turned out another gold coin. But where to put it? He was running out of spaces.

For now, her tucked the coin into the palm of his hand; surely there would be no more in the sack. It weighed no more than the trousers left inside, and there was still the question of leaving here safely with such wealth. He tossed the bag away, glad of it landing with no more than the ruffle of cloth, and sat back in a lounge. Perhaps he’d retire after this. Better yet, he could win twice as much at the right gambling tables.

He looked over to the poor dear, admiring the behind of the man between her legs. It was like a backside parade just for him, each man baring all one after the other to spend several minutes under his judgment. Unfortunately, the current man had an ugly boil or growth of some kind, giving him the lowest score yet. Three out of ten: would not bugger. Fortunately, his ugly matched his stamina and he crawled away after a few piggish grunts.

And so, Gregor briefly saw the girl again. He did feel sorry for her. She was laid out in the dark end and pinned by several men, that disgusting furred slit that women have, red raw and bleeding a familiar white liquid. He couldn’t help but look, as though she a dog or cat walking past with tale up and puckered rear bared; disgusting and unwanted, yet inviting the eyes to wonder horribly. It was what nature had been merciful enough not to give him.

One of the men mauling at her flat teats moves to take his turn, hiding her tear stricken face still gagged by a man’s strong hand. It was pathetic and brought him no joy, like watching an animal being tortured. He watched idly for…

There it was; the best yet; ten out of ten.

The man’s cheeks were tan and transformed from a shapely hard to just the right amount of jiggle with each of his movements. There were no deficiencies either, as though the gods had cast his buttocks from perfections mould. Seeing it between the twitching legs of a woman was almost tragic; if only the man knew how Gregor would gladly suck the soul out of him for a change to grab that behind.

He sighed, feeling himself stiffen but remaining unmoved. Wild thoughts of just ravishing that behind came unbidden, and even shameful disgusting thoughts of relieving his urges in the woman’s behind (a feat no one had yet thought of) needed to be quashed. Besides, he was so loaded with coin, he planned to wait until the docks before standing at all, lest anyone here hear the clink of his burden.

Yet he couldn’t look away, and so he watched, like a beautiful sunset, as the man’s delicious stamina took him to the same end as everyone else.

Being gay may pay sometimes, but most times it was a burden. Still…

There were thirty-nine men below deck, and several days left. The parade continued, and Gregor judged until he’d judged them all.

---

---

Jainer didn’t like the place before, and she liked it even less now. The lush woods and green grass left it feeling confined, as though crawling into a deep trench, and the windless day added to the haunted feeling. This was an eerie deserted place, with a peace that she could tell wished to remain undisturbed. That was before she saw the houses.

Flotain, meanwhile, loved it. He was in his element and had been the full journey out here, even rowing the boat much of the way, in defiance of his usual lazy attitude. Her younger brother was typically quite cautious, reserved even, yet now the sight of blackened rotted stumps poking up through the grass put a near spring in his step.

“See, I told you! This is it!” He hopped from foot to foot, as though five instead of nearly twenty.

The old path, barely visible, was choked with grass and a few trees that had steadily closed in over the years. Between their branches, old stones could be seen; a few walls, an overgrown path; each of them headstones adding to this places graveyard feel. This was no place for giddy excitement.

“Let’s just push on.”

She pointed up the vague trail they had both been told about, and unlike her brother, she tried not to disturb anything as she walked.

They had both been raised on tales of adventure, as most children are. Heroes and villains, strange sights to see and places to explore, cautions and pitfalls and lurking monsters eager to pounce unless they ate their vegetables. This was the first time either of them had actually been on an adventure though. Mostly, it had had just been the archipelago before. Tree’s now. No monsters yet. Jainer was less than impressed, and eager to return home. There was a boy there who she refused to let anyone else try to bat their eyelashes to; her future husband, whether he liked it or not.

Flotain may as well be off to swashbuckle with some legend of the past. He’d picked up a stick, ostensibly to use as a walking stick, yet she had caught it holding the thing like a sword more than once on the steep climb up here. Still, she said nothing; they had both been quite down recently and perhaps all this foolery was what they both needed. She just wished it was in a place a little more welcoming.

“Wait.”

Jainer was so on edge, she actually did wait at her brother’s word, continuing only when he rushed ahead.

“Wait. Wait. Wait. By. The. Gods!”

She finally caught up, where the trees strangling the path finally thinned, and looked at the sight that had him so excited.

It was a dump.

“This is it! This is the place! Just where she said it would be!”

He pointed at the ramshackle old building, as though she couldn’t see it. It was pretty hard to miss. The place stood two floors tall; the ground floor windows showing stacks of sagging broken beams, the upper floors windows showing impassive blue sky. The roof had come down inside and left it a truly run down wreck, like some decayed corpse, all bones and collapsed innards. The path was as overgrown as before, and a shaggy lawn was dotted with the encroaching march of trees.

It looked like no-one had set foot here in decades.

“Come on!”

Flotain ran forward with a boyish energy she had not seen from him in a long while, and yelling insults, she followed while demanding he slow down. They had both studied the maps drawn from them and knew the place to go, but images of this crumbling ruin falling down atop both of them left her hesitant to approach. Only her stupid brother drove her forward.

“Here!” he said, rustling through a bush at the back end of the building.

Jainer, who, despite all the expectations of the fairer gender, had been stuck carrying the bag, did not move, forcing him to come out to her and away from the building. Hands on hips, she glowered until he calmed down.

“What?”

“Don’t you ‘What?’ me sunshine.” She didn’t have much else to say after that; she mainly just wanted him to calm down a little. Instead, she looked at the crumbling building as though appraising it, and then realised that appraising it would probably be a good idea anyway. The bush in question was overgrown, like all things here save civilisation, and the wall behind it, while holding nothing but hollow space beyond, was as straight and sound as any other. She ‘humphed’ to herself; not even the final stop of their adventure looked dangerous, not that she was complaining.

Dropping the pack, she passed the small gardeners trowel to her brother and followed slowly behind him. The odds of the ‘treasure’ still being there after years was slim, if it was ever buried here at all. She loved her grandmother dearly, but she had to wonder if the old woman had simply gone a little soft in the head near the end.

As she closed the distance, her brother rustling in the bushes, she wondered aloud, perhaps spurred by thoughts of her grandmas old tales.

“Who do you think lived here?”

“Don’t know.” Flotain panted, turning the dirt noisily in the stillness. “But they were rich!”

Jainer couldn’t deny that; the building was big, and the island isolated. How did they get all this stone here? She passed into the bush and the far less interesting sight of branches and her younger brother scraping at the dirt.

“Do you think…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t really need to. Flotain looked back with a strange expression, sombre and curious, with a splash of greedy hope.

“Who knows? I mean, maybe…”

He shrugged and returned to the hole, moving further up when nothing was revealed. That was probably the best way; if they found something, then they could speculate.

The shovel rang as it struck stone, and Flotain grunted as he moved on. The bush had grown aggressively and there was a wide patch to cover. Even after her own resolution, Jainer continued to speculate, looking at the old stones, wondering what secrets they held.

There was a thud, hard and soft at the same time, and different from stone or soil. Jainer looked on curious, then excited as a dark ball of very old cloth was pulled from the ground like some desiccated ancient vegetable. When Flotain set it down and it made the clink of metal, neither of them could breathe, and when they opened the cloth, the world stood still.

She gripped her brother’s shoulder, and he gripped her hand, both frozen at the sight.

“We’re nobles.”

Her brothers words caused her throat to clench a little tighter, and her voice squeaked out with faux calm.

“Not…necessarily…”

Their childhood musings were at the forefront of both their minds. Their mother, a seamstress, came from a long line of seamstresses, with some fishermen mixed in, and their father was absent and long since written off as useless. Only their grandma had remained of that side of the family, and while she had been many things to them; a guide, a trickster, a rock to run to, be it for advice or a scraped knee; she had also been frustratingly mysterious, and, to Jainer’s mind, quite quietly sad when she thought no one looking. Their grandfather (one of them anyway) was also absent, and so they had wondered who he had been and what life they had led together. Of course, such stories often lent themselves into the fantastical, with them inheritors to some noble title, or even the untouched crown itself. Now they stood by the ruins of a nobleman’s mansion that only their grandma knew about, looking at a noble woman’s jewels and jewellery that had been buried by her hand.

“…They…They could have been powerful merchants, or…”

Jainer herself didn’t even believe that. It was far too much money. Adding to that, the image of her grandmother in her younger day, flittering through a place like this, dressed in some ball gown and arm in arm with her grandfather, was an image that had been nurtured by her fantasy for all the years of her childhood. She wanted to be a princess damn it! Now, even that reality seems terrifyingly possible.

“They must have lived here.” Flotain looked at the building as though for the first time. “I wonder what made them leave?”

Probably the Civil War, or the darkening, though that was less likely. Jainer silently put the pack down next to him, inviting him to load up, but also reminding him of the urn still present within. This seemed like a fitting place to leave her.

Before they both left, Jainer did what the windless day seemed almost made for, scattering their beloved grandmother across the old stones of the mansions front step. Flotain wanted to do it further inside, but it was too unsafe.

Their grandmother had played many tricks on them, ‘to keep you sharp’ she had said. They would never know who their grandfather was or the grandeur of their heritage. Such records, living and otherwise, were long gone.

To think she could still trick them both, even now.