Into the mansion.

As you enter the mansions main foyer, you see the shadow of a lavish past. A large open hall with a vast staircase spilling down into its centre, carpeted in fraying, faded red material. Fine curtains line the sides of the windows, bleached white with sunlight and often more hole than whole. The walls and ceiling are dotted with intricately carved reliefs, shedding their cracked paint with the aid of decades of neglect. Fine, thick, floors are littered with dry footprints of mud or even blood and other stains of unguessable origin. Large squares of unfaded paint tell of pictures long since lost and tarnished brass hooks hold simple iron lanterns.

Several more recent signs of use highlight that this house is no longer a home. Crates both big and small stand in the middle of the room, and more line its side either stacked or alone. They all silently speak of plundered valuables, the grief of the wealthy and the reach of the greedy. The middle of the room also plays host to a small group of five men talking quietly to each other. They immediately strike you as the opposite of the mansion; while the building is grandeur rotting with time, they are rot reaching for grandeur. Bright silks cover blemished tattooed skin while gold chains and amulets drape around fat and unshaven necks. They talk with a quiet, business like demeanour, yet the few words you overhear are often coarse and don’t bear repeating. Merchants, you would guess; the kind that deal with pirate scum in stolen cargo or unwilling flesh. Such positions are the destination of the rare pirate who gets enough sense beaten into them to leave the life yet not so much that they die, or those few merchants that can’t compete in honest trade and seek higher profit margins among those as dishonest as they are. Their occasional, dismissive glances at you practically scream that you have no place in the conversation they’re having.

Rooms split off on each side of the foyer -grand arched entrances to grander rooms- while other, smaller doors are on either side of the base of the stairs, leading deeper into the building and fit only for servants. Judging from the design and the layout, you would guess that there are two wings to the mansions first floor. From the outside it was clear that this was a long and mostly rectangular building; there must be far more rooms beyond the two side arches, and a fair few at the back of the building as well. It should be fairly easy to go through one of the big side arches and travel in a circle; walking as far as possible in that direction, loop around through the back of the building and return to the foyer through the opposite side. Being in the belly of the beast, it only makes sense to get a quick lay of the land and come up with a plan.

Hearing faint voices from the dark room to the right of the buildings front entrance, you leave through the big door to its left. It leads to a fine sitting room, with several simple wooden chairs and one large fine one. A low table sits in the room and while its wood is in **** need of fresh varnish, you cannot see any dust or dirt on it. Even the floor in this room looks somewhat acceptable. Shelves line the room but hold nothing of interest, save a heavy looking metal bar likely used to open the crates in the main hall and far too heavy for you to use for any practical purpose. A small door is on the right wall, and following it leads to a dimly lit corridor that again splits left and right, with the right path taking a sharp turn towards the back of the house. With no windows here, navigating could get confusing. You continue down the long left corridor, lined with many doors on each side. No sound escapes the rooms they hide, nor does any other sign of light or life, and you walk past them all, turning right at the end of the corridor and continuing until you arrive in the room at the end. From the windows, you would guess is the corner at the rear left of the house. The room is otherwise empty, save for a single man looking out of one of the windows. He stands in a mixture of moon light and lantern light and has the countenance of someone too busy thinking to really see anything. Unlike the men in the foyer, he wears plain, clean clothes, drab in colour and bares no jewellery of any kind, but his clothes are well cared for and finely tailored. From the way he stands, with his back naturally straight and his head held precisely so, you get the feeling that this man is a servant bound to someone of real wealth and power. From the perpetual sneer reflected in the window, he also clearly doesn’t want to be here.

Sensing a possible source of information, you walk towards him, careful to make your footsteps loud so he can hear you coming. He turns to face you and starts to talk with the educated drawl of the central nobility.

“Is your captain ready to negotiate?”

Seeing him full on, his station is clearly that of a professional servant. His accent and mannerisms coupled with the fact that he is here at all would suggest he is very well paid and, rarer still, probably even trusted. His face is both old and young, his deep creases looking more like joints in armour than wrinkles, and his hair is short cut and grey, looking more as though it wants to be that colour than made that way over time. All told, getting gossip out of him will be beyond tricky; professional servants like him, the kind that serve the nobility and the wealthy merchant families are, above all, paid to keep secrets.

You walk into his lantern light,

“No, but I’d like to talk if you don’t mind.”

Tall as he is, either naturally or through a posture that makes you self-conscious of your own, he looks down his broad nose at your loose jacket, you hole ridden ankle baring trousers, and your dirty shoes.

“Please send my thanks to your captain for the wine-“, amazing how he can say wine yet clearly mean some kind of urine, “-and rooms. Please also remind her that I am in need of none of the islands other services-“, he briefly looks over your body with ill hidden disgust,”-, save for the negotiation I’m here for.” He pulls out a white, scented handkerchief and holds it over his nose and mouth, turning back to the window.

Conversation ended and with nothing else of interest in the room, you shrug and head through the door to your left, down another door ridden corridor, smelling your underarms as you go. It’s a hot night, and you are met with more odour than a decent woman should accommodate. Still, he was just being rude.

The corridor narrows and ends in a simple wooden door with no handle. Hinges that swing both ways mark the door as the entrance to the kitchen and sure enough, when you walk through you see a grand one. Several lanterns light up the room, ready for the dozen or so servants it could accommodate but who would likely never again grace its hearths. You see no people, no half prepared meals, but your eyes are drawn to a hand cranked water pump in the corner and, on inspection, a bucket of water still lies at its base. Travelling the island has been hard work and has had its fair share of tense moments; you hadn’t had a chance to truly get clean since the swim here. Looking down yourself you see the ‘grime’ that you have picked up in your travels.

While every speck of dirt you have accumulated adds to your pirate persona, you’re unable to help yourself; a wash with cool water is just what you need right now. You were brought up knowing that if you are dirty, you should get clean, and you had maintained that habit with pride, even after giving up the public baths you’d enjoyed immensely as a girl. Your ears strain for the sound of movement, of feet on floorboards, of any other presence but your own. The kitchen has a backdoor, which you watch wearily, but you hear nothing and see nothing. You’ll make it quick regardless.

Taking a handful of the water into your mouth, you swish it around before swallowing. It’s cool and refreshing, much needed after your journey here. You pick up a nearby cloth and soak it in the bucket before pressing it against your face. It’s wonderfully cool against your skin and for a brief moment you even manage to push the precarious nature of your situation out of your mind. The moment doesn’t last and so you wipe your face of any sweat and filth that may have made its way onto it before soaking the cloth again. After wringing it out, you move the cloth under your loose jacket, over your chest, around your breasts, neck, and under your arms. After another soak and wring, you move it over your stomach and lower back before sliding down the front of your trousers, over your crotch and thighs and around the back over your cheeks as well, wiping away any sweat or dirt on your skin. Popping off your shoes and giving the rag another dunk, you rub down your legs and over your feet, getting between your toes and giving your soles a quick rub.

You’ve already seen and done thing on this island that will never truly wash off, but it feels good to take a few minutes to cleanse yourself of what you can. You take the wet rag and have a brief go at washing the disguise you’re wearing before deciding that it’s a lost cause; only fire could cleanse it of its years of grime, let alone any of the more recent stains it’s gained. Quickly dried in the warm night, you slip your shoes back on and take a final moment to look around the room. During your wash, you’d kept a constant vigil, and one of the things you saw was interesting enough to warrant further inspection. You neatly fold the cloth and return it to where you found it before walking over to a square hole set into the wall. It leads into a vertical shaft.

Floating in its centre is a wooden tray, held aloft by a length of rope connected to its four corners, with another two ropes dangling down in front of it. It’s a dumbwaiter; a mechanical means of transferring food from the kitchen directly upstairs. You look up the shaft and see nothing but flickering candle light coming out of another hole above. No way of knowing who or what is up there. The centre rope looks sound and you should be able to work it using the other two ropes from inside the shaft, hauling you up with a little effort. You doubt the mechanism is a quiet one, however, and it would almost certainly alert anyone in the adjoining room upstairs, if there is anyone to alert. You add it to your mind, more bricks of knowledge with which you can build your success you suppose.

Seeing nothing else of consequence, you continue your reconnaissance around the building by walking out the nearby door opposite the one you entered by. You walk down another hallway of doors in what should be the other half of the building when one of them catches your eye. Light and sound **** its way out from under the bottom crack, a rare enough occurrence so far, but the light is angled oddly, leaving a thin line of yellow light half way up the opposite wall as though its source was much lower than the floor. A cellar perhaps?

Footsteps and talking come from further down the hallway and you duck into a nearby room, checking to make sure it is one of the dark and lifeless ones first. The room feels empty, even unseen, and from the crack of the slightly open door you see three people round the far corner of the corridor; two men and a woman. The woman has long wild brown hair and is built tall and full of muscle. One of the men has equally unkempt hair while the other is bald and seems to be mid joke.

“-an so he says, ‘I don’t know what you done ear but I ain’t eatin it!’”

The group guffaw with laughter at the no doubt poor anecdote before opening the door that stopped you, walking through and down as they confirm that it is indeed a cellar. You hear the sound of feet on stone stairs fade as the door swings shut behind them.

You can’t tell what’s going on down there, or what could be drawing these people in. Perhaps it’s worth coming back to after your downstairs investigation is done? Whatever is happening down there is not happening near the door from the sound of it.

With the hallway now clear, you continue down it and turn right, following the corridor the three pirates came from. By your estimation, this corridor should be going straight to the front of the building again, but there should still be much more of this wing to explore. As if to answer you, a corridor splits off to your left, leading to a place that looks fairly lifeless and uninviting, lacking any of the lantern light that’s been guiding you so far. Its exploration would take more effort and likely yield less results so you continue on for now.

After a while, you come into a slightly familiar room; a grand ball room, currently dark and filled with crates, with a large arch on one side leading into the foyer you saw before. In the dark looking out, the shape of the crates makes more sense to you, clearly filling the long space with stacks and stacks of boxes. Evidently, the voices you heard previously are the ones now down in the cellar as unlike before, the room sits quiet and empty.

You walk over and sit on a crate in the dark to collect your thoughts and plan for the task ahead. You can see the foyer from where you’re sitting and see that nothing has changed since you left, however, past the foyer and through the opposite arch, you see a girl that was not there before, moving around the room and dusting its shelves half-heartedly. She looks young and blond, wearing a neat (if a little short) brown dress, but she’s far enough away that you can tell nothing more from your rough wooden seat.

If you were Captain Washkin, where would you be? Upstairs would be the obvious choice. If she’s...‘negotiating’ then the master bedroom would be a safe bet. The people at the bottom of the stairs didn’t choose the spot randomly for their hushed discussion either. Then again, the other man here to meet the good captain isn’t waiting with the rest and the buildings cellar seems to be the liveliest part of the house. Perhaps the merchants are simply waiting with their cargo. Captain Washkin gained her infamy doing what other people did not expect. If you think she’s upstairs then she probably isn’t. The fact that she isn’t expecting you is irrelevant; a woman of her position no doubt faces as many threats from within as without and would pick a safe spot to do business.

You have to admit, you cannot be sure where in the manor she will be. While she is here to meet with the other ship captain, you cannot be sure if that meeting is in session now or if it’s already over or hasn’t even started. Granted it is likely the former; the other men here would surely be talking to her right now if that wasn’t the case.

So, what to do? The ground level is open to you; you could look in many of the rooms that you walked by, even the section you skipped. It didn’t seem to contain much life, but it could provide some opportunity or information. The only thing you would lose by checking them would be time, but it wouldn’t take that long and you have at least until morning to get this done, a good four or five hours at least. Slow and steady wins the race after all.

The cellar is also a possibility, far more likely to have people throwing information about or even have captains cutting clandestine deals. Going down to talk to groups of pirates may not be safe; you don’t know what kind of gathering they are having and it could be invitation only. The way the light shone up the stairs, the bottom is likely well lit, so you don’t think you could take a peek and walk away unseen. It’s a bit too much of a high risk, high reward option and you’ve never really approved of gambling. Still, you may have to go down there eventually anyway.

More than likely, she’s upstairs. You could explore it like the floor you’re on; you’d either find her or you wouldn’t and either would be illuminating. The slight problem you have is how to get up there.

The main set of stairs sit in the side of your vision, but you haven’t actually seen anyone go up or come down them, and from the way the group is hovering at their base, such unauthorised use is probably taboo, or would at least raise questions. Then again, if your ‘captain’ is talking with Washkin right now then you may be able to flout such a restriction in order to deliver a message. It’s frustrating. Going up them could be perfectly natural or it could bring the wrath of the merchants and then the whole manor down on you. There is also the dumbwaiter in the kitchen. Going up it would be stealthier but also more incriminating if there’s someone at the top. Choices, choices. Perhaps exploring downstairs first would give you time to consider them or even find some unlikely alternate way up.

The movement from the girl in the sitting room catches your eye again. Another source of information. Such sources have to be considered very carefully; a stranger asking strange questions can trigger alarms far faster than stealth when it comes to loyal servants. If she has been hired by Captain Washkin to clean the house and have unrestricted access to it, then she also has some degree of trust. Do you risk trying to exploit that trust? You can’t just walk away if you fail, unless you’re willing to stop her from walking away. Pirates are one thing, but she looks a little too innocent to simply silence if things go wrong.

Then again, she is certain to know where her master is. Not to mention that these large houses often have hidden passages for servants so they can do their job without being seen. The house isn’t big enough for anything extensive, but there could easily be a hidden way upstairs.

Risk, risk, and more risk. You remind yourself that this whole operation was a risk, yet you have made it this far. No use just sitting here; time to make a choice. After drumming your fingers on your thigh,