Two days came to a close rapidly. The Mercy of Dradinoor sailed toward the centralmost port of Irminthin. Alinyaln had been here once before in his days as a cabinboy serving under the great Captain Yamadeon. He took in a deep breath of the hot air, desiccated despite the humidity of the sea, lending the air an even saltier quality.

  The beachscape before him was an arid environment, trees in separate groups but thick and hearty from adapting to the lack of rainfall. Grass was sporadic, the image in the distance more brown and yellow than green and vibrant. But the unique part of the view was the abundance of sugarcane plantations. Irminthin was not only the largest port for the selling and buying of forced slaves, but also of sugarcane, the tall sprout-like plant capable of being Shifted into moscin, one of the most valuable resources in the world.

  Drags blew a spout of fire, the signal to raise the sail. Ninia, who was diligently at her post, quickly pulled on the rope to bring the fabric up to where it would no longer catch the wind, lowered once they burned up the last of the moscin they had available. She hadn’t spoken to him much the last two days, not after their interaction in the crew’s quarters. He still didn’t know how he felt about what she had done. But had he himself overreacted to what had happened? Part of him wondered this as he watched her. There was likely a better way he could have handled the situation, at any rate. Syrin would have known what to say.

  He found his thoughts drifting to Syrin more and more as the weeks wore on. He pulled a pocketwatch from his jacket and popped it open. The various gears set behind glass ticked and whirred displaying the general position of the moons. The top of the watch displayed the sun, a large metal circle. The hands had two smaller circles, one slightly larger than the other and silver, which rotated opposite each other. The smaller moon, Syphys, was getting close to lapping over the sun icon, which was true to reality as Alinyaln could see the normally bright moon in the sky turn dark as it neared the sun.

  Set into the lid of the watch was a black and white photograph of himself—before he had been scarred by Tyrnarm—and a gorgeous woman with curly black hair and a smile close to divine. This had been taken on the last visit Alinyaln had made to Syrin, who had insisted they try out photography, which had been little more than standing in place for hours as the image developed. This was six years ago. Time really doesn’t like to stay still. He thought to himself.

  Taking a deep breath, Alinyaln closed the watch and dropped it back into his pocket, the chain connecting it securely so that it couldn’t be easily lost. This watch was one of the only pieces of his previous life that he had left. That, his maroon--not blood-red--jacket, and the second pistol he carried with him.

  “Lass!” Alinyaln called to Ninia, drawing her attention.

  “Captain?” She asked, saluting him crisply.

  Alinyaln pulled a small spyglass from his inner coat pocket and investigated the shoreline in more detail. They were sailing in far slower now, the sail only partially exposed in order to catch a small amount of the wind, plenty of time for the deckmasters to see their approaching vessel. Another ship was sailing out of their port, closer in size to the Mercy of Dradinoor, flying the colors of a navy vessel.

  “What do you see, lass?” Alinyaln asked her, then handed her the spyglass.

  She hesitated a moment before responding. “Plantations?”

  “Is there anything remarkable about those plantations?”

  She shook her head, lowering the spyglass. “I don’t know, Captain.”

  Alinyaln accepted the spyglass back from Ninia and held it up to his own eye again. The many fields full of sugarcane roasted in the hot sunlight. And in the thick of them, Alinyaln couldn’t see anyone actually tending to the fields, one of the island’s most important resources, being neglected. “There’s no slaves.”

  Ninia raised an eyebrow. “Is that important?” She asked the Captain.

  “Irminthin has something of a cannibalistic economy,” Alinyaln said with a nod. “They buy and sell slaves, yes, but they mostly sell them. And they also require those slaves to work in the sugarcane plantations and sell the plants to processing centers, which then are sent to distilleries to make rum.” He pointed out with his right hand. “With no slaves tending to the fields, the entire economy of the island has been stopped for the time being. There must be something going on.”

  “You can figure out all of that just from a spyglass, Captain?” Ninia asked, grabbing the spyglass from him even though he hadn’t offered. Alinyaln let his annoyance at this pass.

  “It’s just a matter of looking, lass. Get ready for landfall.” Alinyaln ordered her. He turned and saw Kiara emerge from belowdecks. “First Mate Kiara.” He waved to the woman.

  “Yes, Captain?” Kiara said briskly.

  “See to it that the crew remains on the ship.” Alinyaln said to her. “Especially the Yishks. I believe there is something happening on Irminthin, and they would be the first targets if there were an attempt to seize one of the crew.”

  “Very well, Captain.” Kiara said, nodding her head. “Sir, I actually wanted to talk to you about something.”

  Alinyaln raised his eyebrows at her. That tone… “Is something bothering you, Kiara?” He asked her.

  “I—No, sir, nothing like that.” She said quickly. “It’s about Timphinny.”

  “What about him?” Alinyaln asked her.

  Kiara took a deep breath. “I recognize your fondness for the oaf, but I suggest that we part ways with him in Irminthin.”

  Alinyaln’s jaw dropped. “Why would you suggest such a thing?”

  “The man is lazy.” Kiara said quickly. “He does nothing but loafs around getting drunk. The only reason he sometimes listens to you is because you give him the rum.” She threw her hands up in the air. “I can’t have someone like that aboard this ship.”

  “Am I not Captain, Kiara?” Alinyaln said.

  “You are the Captain.” Kiara agreed.

  “Then it is my responsibility to decide who does and does not belong aboard this ship. Not yours.” Alinyaln said. “If you want to restrict his alcohol intake, that’s fine. It might kill him one of these days if you don’t. But there will be no more talk of removing him from my crew, understood?” Alinyaln was surprised at the harshness in his words and the fact that he had stepped progressively closer to Kiara. He didn’t like using intimidation aboard his ship, but his mood in the last few days wasn’t very accommodating.

  Kiara stepped back, her face uneasy. “Very well, Captain.” She repeated. “I’ll restrict his intake to three bottles of rum a week. That’s half of what he normally has.”

  Alinyaln sighed. “You are dismissed, First Mate Kiara.” He waved her off, and the First Mate strode away. He couldn’t help but notice that Ninia in her “preparations” for landfall, decided to stay close at hand inspecting a bundle of rope used in replacing the lines.

  *

  The plank was dropped on the port side of the ship creating a ramp of sorts. Alinyaln hailed the deckmaster, then whistled with his fingers between his lips. His placement on the deck was perfect for what happened next. The rustling of ropes and the whistling of air as a dark figure swung into view and landed beside him.

  Jendul, a girl in her early twenties Alinyaln figured, had pitch black hair cut short with a knife along with a jacket that matched, ragged in some ways and dark as pitch. “Captain!” She saluted, more of a slap against her chest.

  “You heard my orders that no one was allowed off of the ship?” Alinyaln asked her. Somehow, despite her not leaving the Gull’s nest very often, the girl was always able to hear important information.

  “Yes, sir.” She said with a nod. “And I agree with it.”

  “Good. I want you,” He pointed at her, “To search around, see if you can find anything of note. We’re going to stay around port, so perhaps go check further along.”

  “That’s well, Captain.” Jendul said with a smile. “Good chance for me to stretch my legs.” She held out her hand. “In case I need to pay someone off, of course.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  An exasperated sigh came from Alinyaln, but there was no animosity behind it. He smiled at her and handed her a few Golgins, the larger denomination of currency. “Keep any extra you might have, lass.”

  “Sir, yes sir!” Jendul said, then stepped off of the deck walking toward the port town.

  “Captain?” Ninia asked, stepping up to Alinyaln.

  “Ah, yes, I want you to come with me, lass.” Alinyaln said. “We have work to do. But first, go tell Letno to keep an eye out, then meet me on the docks.”

  “Aye, Captain!” The girl smiled wide, scrambling away from Alinyaln and running down into the hull of the ship.

  The deckmaster boarded the Mercy of Dradinoor on the plank. “Ho, there!” He practically yelled at Alinyaln. The man was old, thin as a whistle and as old as the Continents. “Any goods to sell?”

  “No, no selling on this visit but perhaps you could see that some supplies are delivered to us?”

  “What kinda supplies do you be needing?” The deckmaster asked, pad and paper appearing in his hands.

  Alinyaln recited from memory; “Six barrels of drinking water, ten bags of flour, a bag of salt, and some of those limes you folk have here.”

  “Lime’s no good no more.” The deckhand said with a shake of the head. “Sold the last bundle just yesterday in fact. Not enough workers in the fields.”

  Nodding, Alinyaln looked toward the port town. Not much more than a dozen or so wooden hovels with thatch roofs, surrounded on all sides by sugarcane plantations. “I noticed the lack of help.” He said. “What happened? Did a plague take out all of the workers?”

  “No plague, not in my lifetime.” The old man said with a chuckle. “Some toshes bought up all of them there slaves! A deal too good to be true, the masters said, so they sold them all. Somma the slave owners hired workers for the fields, but ye can’t replace ten thousand slaves with a few hundred workers.”

  Ten thousand slaves? “How many buyers were there?” Alinyaln inquired.

  The deckmaster shrugged. “Hard to say.” He replied. “At least twenty, coulda been more.”

  “And what are the odds of them all being connected?”

  The deckmaster gave Alinyaln a strange expression. “You sure do seem interested in this.”

  “Consider it a professional curiosity.” Alinyaln said smoothly. “Not that I deal much in slaves myself, but a massive purchase like this might increase the need for tools for their newly acquired assets.” The words felt disgusting coming out of his mouth, but he tried to hide the revulsion.

  “Coulda been.” The deckmaster said. “But the ships came from differen’ places, according to our ledgers.”

  Alinyaln nodded. “Might be a coincidence, then. I thank you for your help. Do you have any other fruit we might purchase?”

  “Mangoes.” The man said with a nod. “Don’t sell a lotta those, don’t dry as well to keep, you know?”

  “I know.” Alinyaln grimaced. He really hated mangoes, but fruit aboard a vessel was almost as important as fresh water. “Very well, but I won’t pay as much for them as I would have for the limes.”

  *

  After signing the ship in to make their visit in Irminthin official, Alinyaln, followed by Ninia, stepped into the port town of Hrinili. The stable ground beneath Ninia’s feet felt wrong, her whole body trying to move and sway as though she were still compensating for the movement on the sea. She stumbled slightly when a pebble got underfoot but she caught herself, blood cold as she almost fell.

  “You’ll get used to it.” Captain Alinyaln said with a chuckle. “You haven’t been back to land since leaving home, have you, lass?”

  Ninia shook her head. “I haven’t, not more than a few minutes anyways.” She answered. “That’s a couple of years on one ship or another.” The true answer was more than five years, having left her home when she was eight, stowing away on a merchant vessel heading for what she thought was the mythical island of Kolish, fabled home of the Three Gods of Wrinthim. She’d had a fight with her father, the last fight she would ever have with the man as she looked toward more magical prospects. As Ninia had been heartbroken to discover, Kolish doesn’t exist, and at that point she was already hundreds of miles away from home. She had been on different ships the entire time, though she was predominantly treated as more of a Yishk, not entrusted to do anything important.

  Then, she met Captain Alinyaln.

  Could I even find my way back there? She thought to herself. She had never been back to the shores of Rythmar, and at that she had no way of knowing which port she had left from in the first place.

  Hrinili was a smaller town, a central throughfare running up into the hills, each side surrounded by the same mud and thatch buildings that she had been able to see in the spyglass. Some were small, likely huts belonging to poorer civilians, and larger buildings which she assumed were shops and taverns. The road, if it could even be called a road, was yellowed dirt from one direction to the other, with some cobbled stones in place in front of the more wealthy looking buildings.

  “Where is everyone?” Ninia asked, looking around. This was more than there being no more slaves available, this was far more eerie.

  “Let’s find out.” Alinyaln said, walking up to a random door and opening it, the hinge creaking as he did so. Inside was a hot barroom with a dozen tables, each of them with heavily intoxicated men and women. Some were lying facedown on the tables, others leaning back with bottles of dark liquor in their hands. There weren’t even any whores trying to drum up some business, Higlim had always told Ninia that they were vital to any taproom.

  Along the bar rested a barkeep, wiping down a small clear glass absentmindedly. Alinyaln approached and cleared his throat, gaining the barkeeps disapproval. “Whachu want?” The woman asked, her wrinkled face far too unpleasant to look at, coupled with her ratty hair this was not an attractive woman.

  But Alinyaln could charm just about anyone, Ninia assumed. He was attractive enough—for a man. He leaned forward against the bar top, shifting his body to where his coat formed more fully against his strong profile. He gave the woman a grin that could have seduced the moons out of the sky, full of clean teeth and bravado, the effect only ruined by the horrible scar on his face that stretched to his ear. “I’d like a drink, if you’d be so kind.” Alinyaln placed a half Golgin coin on the bar top, the four connected segments of golden metal shining in the flickering candlelight of the tavern.

  The woman glanced at the money, then raised an eyebrow. “And a good way to pass my time, of course.” Alinyaln said with a dignified air. “It’s been an awful long month since I’ve been back to shore, bein’ a Captain and all that.”

  With a snorting sound, a greenish glob of phlegm was spat out of the woman’s mouth onto the dirt floor behind her. She then proceeded to glare at the mucus and shake her head, as if it disappointed her. “Wassat you’ll be drinkin’ then?” The woman said, taking the half Golgin off of the bar and slid it into her apron.

  “Rum,” Alinyaln said. “Mishk if you have it.”

  Rum from different regions, Ninia knew, had different tastes to them. Mishk rum, from Mikklid, was said to have a chilling sensation to it like sucking on a chunk of ice. Ninia had never been allowed to try any rum before, and it was always kept locked up on any ship she had been on. So maybe...

  “I’ll have a Mishk too.” Ninia said before the Captain could order something for her.

  The Captain closed his eyes and rocked his head back and forth, deliberating. “Water for the lass.” He decided. “No rum yet.” Alinyaln added, pointing his finger at Ninia.

  “Phinny would give me some.”

  “You know he wouldn’t, he’d be more likely to drink it before offering you any.” Alinyaln said barely louder than a whisper as he accepted the small glass of amber liquor. With a swig he downed the drink and blew out with a “hoo” the glass clinking against the counter. “Good Mishk.” He complimented.

  The woman, without asking, poured more of the rum into his glass. “Thank you very much." He said with the same smile. “May I ask, where did all of the slaves go? I came into town hoping to add some more labor to my ship, yet I can’t help but notice that all of the labor has up and left.” He said this with some extra pomp in his tone.

  Pouring herself a cup of the Mishk, the woman drank it and slammed the glass down as well. “Yer lookin’ at it.” She pointed around the tavern. “These here are the nearby plantation owners, fat on their newly acquired Gins.” Her second glass followed a moment later, then she poured a third for both herself and Alinyaln.

  “So, it’s true then, there’s no more slaves left within Irminthin?” Alinyaln asked, surprised.

  “A couplea house slaves were kept.” The woman said with a shrug. “They even took tha whores, the whole lotta ‘em.”

  “The prostitutes were slaves?” Ninia asked. She had always assumed that they had been more of the “self-employed” sort.

  “Yessay were.” The woman’s words were beginning to slur more than before, the alcohol affecting her.

  Alinyaln took another drink. “You wouldn’t have met any of the folks that were buying the slaves here, would you?”

  “Sure ‘nuff.” She rocked her head back and forth. “One fella, small, chubby. Terrible tipper, rish tosh.” Then the woman hesitated. “And a tall man, short hair, handsome.”

  “Did he have a name? Anything special about him?” Alinyaln pressed. Ninia noted that his voice had yet to begin slurring. He was either an expert at holding his drink, or he had some trick at staving off the inebriation.

  “Whachu so interessed in this man for, Captain?” The bar woman asked, leaning forward to expose her cleavage to him.

  “I’m just wondering if he was a colleague of mine.” Alinyaln lied quickly, Ninia surprised at the speed of the deception. Was this the type of behavior the Captain was familiar with?

  The woman knocked back a fourth cup of rum. “Oof, room’s spinnin’” She said, grabbing a stool and sitting on it. Ninia cocked her head at the woman. Her reaction to the alcohol was too sudden, too dramatized. Either it was a ploy for Alinyaln, or she had been drinking prior to his arrival and was feeling those effects more strongly now.

  Alinyaln poured the woman another glass and slid it over to her. “The man?”

  Noticing the glass of rum, the bar keep drank it down and belched. “Name wassa… somethin’… Yarmido or sommat.”

  “Yamadeon?”

  “Yeah, thassa one!” She said and hiccuped.

  Alinyaln’s face turned stony at the revelation. He dug in his pocket and pulled out another half Golgin, slamming it on the table top harder than he needed to. Turning away, the woman called, “Wait!”

  “Maybe next time, darling.” Alinyaln said with a wink and a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I must be going, however.” And he strode out of the door, Ninia following close behind.