We stopped only to clean the bullet wound on my arm with sea water before I took off my shirt and wrapped it around it to stop the bleeding. Shirtless was the style here, fortunately, so I didn’t look out of place.

Elma led me away from Column H, towards one of the outer pillars. When we got closer, I realized that at the end of one of the piers on Column J was a wide opening in the concrete. A few men in bright green, yellow and red uniforms, looking like some sort of reggae police force, stood inattentively near the entrance. They didn’t stop us as we went by, though one of them noticed how I tensed as we walked by. But he was too busy playing with some sort of handheld game system to investigate further.

A large, bare room had been built into the pillar. Along the walls there were at least twenty elevators, a few of them small, or at least normal elevator sized, while most were large, industrial sized things. I saw two Patchwork, identical except one looked like it was made entirely of bronze and the other completely out of silver, and a thing that looked vaguely like a bipedal shark pushing several trollies of what looked like frozen, packaged peas, carrots and other assorted vegetables.

“I suppose getting vegetables must be hard out here,” I said, “But that’s not the sort of people I imagined delivering vegetables.”

“Yea? And what sort of people deliver vegetables, Sam?”

“Maybe someone who might actually eat vegetables.”

“Why would that be? The vegetables are safer with them.” Elma said, her lips curling into the smallest of smiles.

We were stopped at one of the elevators by a woman in one of the Green Yellow and Red uniforms.

“State your business, please?” She said in a small, polite voice that belied her six foot something height and broad shoulders. “Do you have any identification?”

“What the heck? Stopping people at elevators? Have the Guardia turned into fucking facists? I don’t have any identification! Does anyone around here have identification?”

“Look, we’ve just been told to ask, alright?” The woman said, brow furrowing, her voice suddenly getting louder and deeper. “I don’t like it anymore than you do but somebody has been setting shit on fire, so why don’t you quit complaining before I arrest you for being a dick?”

“Well I don’t have any identification. Neither does he.”

I did, actually, but I thought it might not have been the best idea to flash that around if there was a bounty on my head.

“Then state your business.”

“Our business is getting trashed. We just got into port and I want a Moscow Mule or five. I like to steal the tin cups they serve them in.”

The guard snorted and waved us through.

“I’ll tell the others to look out for a loud mouthed Water Cannibal, have them check her bag for stolen cups if she comes this way again.”

Elma’s back straightened at the word ‘Cannibal’, but she just walked on through.

“That was terribly unprofessional.” I said as the elevator doors closed. “I don’t think I’ve ever run into a more relaxed police force in my life.”

“Hey, are you complaining?”

“No. But I just feel like… I don’t know. If I was a citizen here I would probably complain to their commanding officer.”

“I like ‘em. They don’t interfere with people's business.”

“Not even when someone is being shot, apparently.”

“They would have, but Pillar H is Bellyacher territory. Those guys in bandannas. The Guardia don’t go there much, on account of liking to be alive. They get paid more depending on which tier they work. Higher tier means more money. More money means they give more of a damn.

The doors opened and we stepped out of the elevator. I had to blink several times, to be sure I was seeing things right.

It was like a completely different place.

The pillars still rose up around us, but instead of being bare concrete they were painted with pleasing murals. A still life of a coral reef wrapped around Pillar J, and off in the distance, swimming across pillar K, I thought I could see a swarm of fish being chased by a dolphin, frozen in motion. Sunlight trickled down, stronger than down below, from in between the platforms. From the ceilings chandeliers hung, unlit in the day, and urns filled with plants whose vines were creeping slowly downwards, several of them looking like streamers of bright flowers moving faintly in the ocean breeze. .

No piers and rickety floating platforms here. The ground beneath my feet was solid, and you could almost believe that this was some sort of ground floor, at least until you walked up to one of the bridges and looked down to see the slums below. Up here it felt like some sort of beach resort. Even the buildings were made of wood, painted in different too bright tropical colors, and the ground was cobblestone paths and faux grass. I don’t know that I liked it anymore than the district below. It seemed a little too direct. You’re a city in the ocean. Understood. No need to beat me over the head with it. Alder’s Grave was certainly not Honolulu.

We wound our way through the gaudily painted houses, more like districts in a normal city up here, as opposed to the strange pier neighborhoods of down below. Eventually we came to an open area, almost like a park, only there were no trees or bushes or grass of any kind. In their place were strange statues, all of them looking like they belonged in a modern art exhibit, which is to say, I had no idea what they were. There were people here and there, but they seemed more interested in the buildings around the art. Bakeries and candy shops and little holes in the wall that sold souvenirs. Elma led me towards the largest building, on the far side of the fake grassy field of the modern art installations. It was tall and squat, with red walls and a yellow ceiling. It had three stories, each of them with large, wide, clear windows. Behind some of them people sat at tables and chatted or ate. The rest held tables too, only these were empty, though chairs were pushed out and tables still sat on their surface as if they’d been used but recently.

Elma took me around the side of the building, to an ugly iron door at odds with the colorful front. She pushed it open and we entered into a kitchen full to the brim with cooks. Most of them human, the rest Water Folk. I think if I had to eat here I would order something without meat.

“Elma.” One of the Water Folk said, a thin, long faced man in a white chefs uniform and a bandanna tied around the top of his head, thankfully not the same color as the ones I’d seen adorning the faces of the Bellyachers.

“Not now. Is a booth free?” She said,

“I don’t know. Probably. I’m not wait staff.” He said,

“Tell Marnie that I’m taking a booth and I don’t want anyone bothering me.”

Elma grabbed my arm and yanked me out of the kitchen and into the main room. I clenched my teeth. I didn’t want to stumble into the main room of some sort of restaurant without a shirt on. It was embarrassing.

But I needn’t have worried. The next room was indeed a restaurant, as I’d suspected, but only in part. It was some strange mix of a bar, a restaurant and a grocery store. There was a section of people, near the front, dining but none of them seem to have dressed up much. On the left side of the room was a bar, a large wooden counter top behind which a few dozen different beers seemed to be on draft. On the walls were beers and cups and bottles of wine all on sale, I assumed.

The rest of the place was dominated by some sort of grocery store. Foods, mostly, lots of junk food like chips and candy, but also things like toys or souvenirs.

On one of the walls near the bar, however, was a pair of double doors, behind which was a hall filled with entrances to more private booths.

Inside one of the booths was a Japanese style table with no seats, just a polished, clean floor with cushions to sit on. I took off my shoes before stepping inside. Elma, I realized, didn’t have any shoes to begin with, she’d been walking barefoot this whole time.

“Stepping onto one of these without shoes is just as bad as stepping onto them with shoes if you’ve been barefoot all day.” I pointed out. “It’s quite rude, if the owner has any appreciation at all for asian culture.”

“Sam. How much blood have you lost?” She said, cocking an eyebrow. “Lie down.”

She grabbed a few of the cushions and motioned for me to put my head down on them. I was feeling a bit light headed.

When I was lying down and comfortable, Elma took a moment to check my makeshift ‘bandage’.

“Yea. We’re going to need something better than your shirt. You’re still bleeding.”

“Well that’s a shirt ruined.” I said, and laughed which was a mistake. My world spun for a half second. I was feeling giddy. That probably wasn’t a good sign.

Somebody knocked on the door and Elma went to get it. I heard hear her talking to someone, but I didn’t really care. I’d been shot. I’d never been shot before. Shot at, sure, but not shot. It hurt. Why the hell had I been shot at all? I was out. Done. I wasn’t even even all that important. Certainly not important enough to be chased out here. If they’d caught wind of me the logical thing to do would just be to put out a warrant, circulate my pictures so the cops would know who to look for. At the most maybe send some lawmen to the ports when I came back.

“We’ve got some real bandages coming, and my friend Maddy is going to call Melody so she can come and stitch you up. Now spill. That wasn’t a Bellyacher after you. That was someone else, someone who knew how to fight, and he was looking for you in particular.”

“Special Forces Agent from Caligon.” I said. Maybe it was the blood loss, but I had promised to explain. “There’s a bounty on my head, apparently.”

“Why?” Elma said, her eyes growing wider.

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Sam. You didn’t tell First Mate about this!”

“Because I didn’t know!” I said. I tried to raise the heat in my voice, but I was feeling a bit too out of it to summon more than a few degrees. “I really didn’t know.”

“And you expect me to believe that a Government is sending special forces soldiers after you for no reason at all.”

“Yes!” I said, “I mean, they’ve no cause to love me, but I haven’t done anything bad enough to merit this level of response.”

“But you’ve done something to merit some sort of response?”

I sighed through my nose.

“The Sacred Trust is a philosophy.” I said, “A good one. But not one that the Caligonian Government embraces. Some of us believe… well, some of them, now, believe that they can do it better.”

“Run the government?”

“Yes. I used to work with the Sacred Trust. I found the things that the Government wanted to keep hidden, and unhid them. But I don’t have anything that they want. I was just a glorified errand boy. I got what was asked of me and then brought it back.

“Maybe they think you kept something for yourself.”

“I don’t know why they would think that. I didn’t.” I ground my teeth together. These questions were making me angry, but she was right to ask. Why were they doing this? There had to be a reason.

“They could just be tying up loose ends?”

“I’d be one of the last to get tracked down. No point if they can’t figure out who's behind all of this, get them and wipe their databases.”

“I don’t know, Sam. What was the last important thing you took?”

“You really want me to tell you Caligonian State Secrets?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Honestly? Hell yea.” She said,

“It’s not as fun as you think.” I told her, shaking my head slowly.

“We’re just brain storming here.” She said,

“The last two pieces of information I could get, was the fact that the Vice President of Caligon frequented a brothel in Portland that was caught with a basement full of minors sleeping on bedbug ridden cots. That one is out in the open air, but you know how politics are. Even with evidence people are going to believe it when their guy says it isn’t true, because they want to. The other thing was just some security codes for doors on one of the military complexes back in Caligon. They shouldn’t know I had those. I got away clean.”

“Maybe you have a security code you aren’t supposed to have.” She said, and she almost sounded excited. This was exactly the kind of reaction I didn’t like. Freaking movies made anyone that knew about this think I was some sort of super spy. But that’s not how this worked. It wasn’t anywhere near as glamorous. Mostly just waiting and watching for an opportunity to sneak in somewhere, grab what random bits of info you could, mostly useless stuff, and then get the hell out. “Some sort of code to the door they’re keeping a secret project behind.”

“I don’t know about that…” I said dubiously. “It was pretty surface level stuff. Access to the mess hall after dark, the offices. Useful, maybe, but not that useful. And it was on a flash drive that I gave over to my boss. It’s not like I keep that sort of info in my head. I only remember the code to the mess hall because some idiot made the pin 12345.”

“They’re after you for a reason, Sam. Either your lying to me or you did something that made them want to hunt you without you knowing.”

“Yes. I am well aware.”

“It’s got nothing to do with why you’re with us on the Befuddled? Going to the Necropolis Isles?”

“That is an entirely personal matter. It has absolutely nothing to do with my work with the Sacred Trust.”

“Pretty strange. Espionage from the Sacred Trust.” Elma said,

“A promise made is a promise kept. That doesn’t mean we can’t be… circumspect when it comes to our political endeavors.”

“Circumspect?” Elma snorted, “And when someone asks you what you’re up to?”

“I refuse to tell them.”

“Alright. Fine. So you promise you’re telling me the truth, right now?” Elma asked.

“That’s a big ask, Elma. I don’t make promises lightly.”

“You’re asking the crew to take someone whose being literally head hunted on board. You want to talk about big asks? That’s a big ask.”

I stopped. She was right. It was a natural reaction, to bite back when asked to make a promise. My word was my bond. I didn’t like to shackle myself if I didn’t have to. But I was telling the truth. Everything I had said was true.

“Yes.” I said, nodding, conceding her point. “I promise you that I have no idea why the Caligonian Government is chasing me. I don’t believe I have anything that they would want. I don’t believe I have done anything that would make me such a target. I was working with the Sacred Trust to undermine the Caligonian Government, but I was the man on the ground, not important enough to hunt like this.”

She grinned. This seemed like enough for her, and I felt relieved. This was why the Sacred Trust was so important. Even now, people knew they could trust me when I made a promise. Wouldn’t the whole world be better if everyone was like this?