Chapter 56: Those who Remain

“Until my last breath, for the world of man.”

-Inscription on Cursebreaker, ancestral blade of the Callans.

Kazzul jogged slow circles around the silvery ship, eyes wide in wonderment.

“Woah,” he said. “This is…”

“An Ancestor ship,” Stephan breathed. “If that’s not a treasure, I don’t know what is.”

“This thing’ll be old,” Kazzul said. “Who knows if it even works?”

A ramp split from invisible seams on the bow of the ship and lowered itself to the ground with a barely audible hiss. Kazzul stepped inside, letting his loot clatter to the floor of the ship.

“Wow. I mean… Wow. This thing is gorgeous. Wait.” He stuck his head out, frowning, then ran back inside. “It almost seems like it’s bigger on the inside than the outside. Way bigger.”

Yin jumped the control panel and jogged up to the ship, following Kazzul inside. She whistled. “Yeah, you weren’t kidding, huh?”

“Company,” Kurko grunted, readying his shotgun at the other end of the hall. “They’ll be here soon.”

“I’m going to see if I can get the ship working!” Kazzul called from inside the ship.

“I’ll help,” Yin said.

Kurko fire up into the staircase, the Knocker producing an echoing boom. Stephan jogged over to help Taira, collecting what few trinkets he found along the way. One, what looked like some kind of bladed weapon, still had a few brittle finger bones attached to it, which he shook off.

Taira refused to leave, curled up against the wall. The kithraxi purred at her feet, hissing when Stephan got close.

“I’ve lost them both,” Taira sobbed. “I don’t even know why she left. It must be my fault. I made this happen.”

Stephan sank to one knee, ignoring the insectoids as they squared up towards him. “Okay, listen,” he said in a soft voice. “You’ve been through a lot, and you have every right to mourn, but we have to go now.” He tried to catch her gaze, but she looked away. “If we don’t leave, we might lose more. Maybe none of us would make it out.”

Taira gave a last sniffle, wiped her eyes, and stood. She marched past Stephan, kithraxi in tow, and walked aboard the ship.

Kurko fired once, twice, and ducked behind the wall to reload. Yin came out of the ship at a sprint and rushed back to the control panel.

“What’s wrong?” Stephan asked, going over.

The silvery vessel hummed to life, its engines producing a smooth purr.

“Well, we’ve got the ship working, sort of,” Yin said, “but we need the roof open. That mystical space connection I got is kind of slipping, so it’s hard to know what to press…” She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. Reaching out blind, she pressed a rune. “Maybe… this one.”

Screams echoed from the stairs above.

Yin’s eyes opened. Her and Stephan looked at each other.

“Dunno what that did, but I think it was good for us. Maybe this one.” She ran her finger along a groove, and the panel began beeping insistently at her. “Uh, alright. Maybe not.”

Stephan pointed to a random rune. “What about this one?”

Yin shrugged. “Can’t hurt to try.” She slammed her fist down on it.

The ceiling above them rumbled. It began to shift and separate, first the smooth stone, then layers of dirt and rock that somehow shuffled politely aside of its own accord. Trees fell away, and then only clear skies met them up above.

Stephan whistled, craning his neck. “I love this place.”

Yin nodded. “Yeah, met too. But we’ve gotta go.” She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him along.

Kurko retreated from his spot by the stairs and followed them up the ramp into the ship. A room with a vaulted ceiling met them, perhaps twice the size of the Tits Up’s cargo hold, with doors leading to other areas and a staircase going up. Bigger than the entire ship had looked from the outside.

Maybe Kazzul was onto something.

Hollow thuds echoed through the hull as the landing ramp slowly retracted. They were taking fire.

“Um, I don’t know how to activate the wards on this thing,” Kazzul said, his magnified voice booming throughout the room over some kind of farshout. “Now that I mention it, I’m not sure how to do anything. Doesn’t seem to come with a manual. Sorry in advance.”

The ship lurched, knocking Stephan to the floor. Sudden acceleration—first vertical, then horizontal—caused his stomach to drop.

“Woo!” Kazzul called. “Goodbye, assholes!”

*****

Ario followed his soldiers into the chamber, arms folded behind his back, just in time to watch a silvery wisp of a ship take off through the open ceiling. It was gone in seconds.

Nothing was left behind. An empty hall filled with the scant ashes of a dead civilization.

Ario contained his rage behind a passionless mask. He stared at the spot where the ship had been, a jewel that could have, should have been his. Those pirates would pay for this embarrassment. Wenezian and her people. He didn’t even want to think what the politicians and high society back in the Concord—the very people he had hoped to impress—would say about his failure.

He ground his teeth.

His clothes were dirty and ripped from the scramble to get to the treasure

This pit of beggars and garbage will burn. I will burn every home, every hovel, every brothel in Tumba to the ground and pave it over with steel.

No one will remember their names.

No one will remember Quintilla Wenezian.

Only me.

Something at the other end of the chamber, a monolithic rock of darker stone, caught his eye. Considering the seamless, clean architecture—a trait of the Ancestors he ever so admired—the rock had to hold some kind of significance. Once the island was secured, he would bring in a few taskmages to study it along with the rest of this chamber.

A chorus of hisses trickled down from ground level. Ario looked up and countless pairs of glittering eyes looking back down. The reptilian creatures banged improvised weapons on their chests. A taller, snake-like creature with a face like a human pushed to the front, and it grinned as it peered down at him.

Ario steeled himself, inwardly cursing Quintilla Wenezian once more. He barked orders to what remained of his soldiers, got them to take defensive positions around him in preparation for another long and bloody fight.

They will all pay.

*****

“Quincy was a simple woman,” Taira said, black dress flowing in the wind. “But more complicated than she seemed. Confident, angry, violent. But also vulnerable, sometimes.”

They all stood on the lowered landing ramp of the new ship, which Kazzul had named the Quickdraw, as it hovered over the Shipbreaker Sea. A heavy coffin lay on the edge. There was no body inside, but everyone had put in something that made them think of the captain.

Yin clutched Torch’s flower pot to her chest, badly holding back tears. Stephan held her by the shoulders. Dryden was there, too, in a tattered suit that looked like it had been rolled down a mountain. The mad bastard had come to their aid. For Torch’s sake, he said, and nothing else. Still, he’d cared enough to stick around for the funeral.

“Quincy was a lot of things,” Taira continued, voice shaky. “Some good. Some bad. But most of all, she was my big sister. She wanted to take care of me, and she did.”

The Ancestor trinkets they had found in that vault—weapons, bangles, brooches, all perfectly preserved—had fetched outrageous prices on the Tumbani collector’s market. More than enough to cover the Wenezian sisters’ debt to the governor. More than enough to see the rest of the crew well off, too. Stephan hadn’t even been able to count all his earnings yet.

“Despite her flaws, Quincy was…” Taira’s voice broke. “She was the heart of this crew. It won’t be the same. Never again. But I’ll always remember what we had.”

She nodded, and Kurko stepped forward. Even in his specially tailored suit, the seams looked like they were fit to burst. He pushed the coffin forward. It fell into the sea, making a big splash before the weighted lining caused it to sink, a dark spot sinking beneath the waves until it couldn’t be seen anymore.

“That was beautiful,” Stephan said. He offered his arms out to Taira, but she waved him aside and strode past, hurrying into the bowels of the ship.

None of them had fully mapped out its maze-like corridors and rooms. It seemed to subtly shift every time they explored it, and every floor plan Stephan had tried to make became increasingly inaccurate.

“So,” Dryden said, rubbing at his sniffly lack of a nose, “what’s next for you flush ol’ bastards? Going to rob the God Rulers, perhaps?”

“Retiring, actually,” Stephan said. “I had a short but productive pirating career.”

Dryden’s eyebrows shot up. “Retire? Boy, you’ve hardly been at this long enough to wet your beak.”

“I know. But I’ve always wanted to try my hand at being a bar owner, and this little rat…” He shook Yin by her shoulders. “...Deserves a break from this business.”

“Same for me,” Kazzul said. “Not the bartending, o’course. That sounds like a chore, no offense. I’m going back to lubbard waters. Gotta see about a woman.”

Dryden shrugged. “Supposed the best time to quit is while you’re ahead. What about you, then, big man?”

Kurko hesitated. He loomed large over the rest of them, shoulders hunched up to his ears, face twitching with poorly hidden anguish.

“I will stay,” he said. “Quintilla is… not here. But I can still serve her sister until she returns.”

Kurko still hadn’t accepted that the captain was dead. They had swept the area off Dead Echo with the Quickdraw multiple times, finding nothing. To Kurko, that meant she was alive somewhere.

Stephan didn’t have it in him to rob the man of that hope.

They turned back to go inside. Dryden had brought his finest casks of beer for the wake, and Stephan had cooked up a feast from that jabbermaw he’d acquired. Filling their bellies would likely do them all some good. Kurko remained on the landing ramp, sitting down on the edge.

Stephan sighed at the thought of the crew splitting up, but there was no going back to how things were.

That didn’t stop the legend, though. It was already spreading through Tumba and all the Free Cities like wildfire. The story of the crew who had defied an empire, deposed a traitor captain, and stolen an ancient treasure. Quintilla Wenezian was the name on everyone’s lips, spoken with almost equal reverence as the Golden Son and the Prince of Rogues.

The age of piracy was only beginning.

END OF BOOK ONE