Tailwind
by Hannah Sloan
The hot sun glared down on dusty stalls as shouts rang throughout the square. Vendors peddled their wares with false gusto, clamoring like seagulls for the attention of the patrons passing through. The nobles heading for the docks held their noses high, women lifting the hems of their skirts from the dirt under their feet with curls of disgust teasing their lips.
Bram slipped through the crowd like a mouse among mooring ropes, easing between gaps and edging past turned backs. With a smooth hand, he nicked a man’s exposed coin purse, smiling at the simplicity. The nobles here should have been more wary of thieves, but this was Narook, the capital city of Amaron. It was a city of finery, of honor.
Disregarding the tent city of homeless merchants, of course.
Normally, the crowds were comforting to Bram. No better place to fade into the background than surrounded by other people. Even the constables, who were sometimes more adept than Bram liked to admit, had trouble sorting out riff raff from a large crowd of nobles. In some cases, one bad apple could hide among the bunch rather than spoil it.
Today, however, the crowds made him nervous. Rather than providing him cover, it felt like an easy way for others to hide from him. And on a day when he needed to be at the top of his game, that was less than ideal.
Just ahead, Bram spotted the stall he was looking for. There, a greasy looking man, with a dusty mustache and missing teeth, was holding up cloudy jars of unknown substances, shouting amounts while the patrons tried to avoid his eyes. Bram wormed his way through the crowd and leaned inconspicuously against the side of the stall, pulling out a cigar and lighting it so he would look occupied.
“Odd to see you out, my friend,” The man hissed out of the corner of his mouth, still focused on the passing crowd. “I thought the plan was to stay in the shadows.”
“Plans have changed, Seedy,” Bram said simply, lifting the cigar to his mouth and taking a delicate drag in. He stifled his initial reaction of coughing in disgust. Cigars were awful, but it was necessary to look the part. Also, he’d nearly lost a hand stealing it a few weeks back, and didn’t want to admit it had been a risky endeavor with little reward.
In order to blend in with the hoity toity crowd of the early afternoons, Bram had shed his usual worn leather jacket and dirt ridden pants. He’d stolen a jacket from the seat of an unattended carriage and a smart looking low brimmed hat from a drunkard passed out in the bar. With a waist high stick whittled and carved to look like a gentleman’s cane, he figured he fit the persona of an aristocrat. His seaman’s boots were a little out of character, but there hadn’t been any easy to nick, and Bram wasn’t about to spend the month’s earnings on a pair of flimsy shoes he was likely to ruin after a single use.
“I spotted your man,” Seedy whispered.
Bram’s muscles tensed in anticipation. “Where?”
“He was hangin’ aroun’ the- C’mon down, sir, you look like yer in some need of healin’ tonic!” Seedy interrupted himself to shout at a large-gutted man lumbering after his slender wife, who was doggedly hurrying ahead of him and flirtatiously smiling at every man she could make eye contact with along the street.
“Seedy, focus,” Bram ordered with gritted teeth.
“Alright, alright. Last I saw, he was headed toward Raven’s Point.”
“Last you saw? When was this?”
Seedy shrugged. “Coupl’a hours ago, I guess?”
Bram shoved away from the stall in irritation, ignoring Seedy’s cry of “Yer welcome!” as he left. His target could be anywhere at this point. A few people muttered angrily as he shoved past them, not trying to slip through the crowd like before. Stealth took time, and those precious seconds weren’t ones he could afford to lose any more.
Beneath his urgency, Bram was ignoring the tiny voice that was warning caution. His target was supposed to be meeting with the dockmaster this morning in the square. It was supposed to be public, it was supposed to be timely. It was definitely not supposed to go down in the Point.
Either his target had improvised at the last second, or he’d gotten spooked for some reason and had needed a new place to lay low. No matter what, it was a switch, a deviation from the plan, and Bram hated it.
Raven’s Point came up ahead, the one dark building in a line of faded cherry oak storefronts, already looking like it was set for the night crowd, despite it being only hours past sunup. The Point was the kind of place that never truly saw the daylight. Like it sucked the sunbeams out of the very air around it.
Bram walked past the murky windows into the dimly lit interior, and saw that, as per usual, it was sparsely attended. Never completely empty, not in this part of town, but about as low in attendance as the Point would ever get. It was difficult to distinguish faces or anything, really, other than vague human forms, but nothing stood out to Bram as his guy.
He entered the Point, and immediately all eyes swiveled his way. Bram ignored the attention, meandering over the bar like he had no place else to be. Taking a seat at the counter, he lifted a finger to signal the barkeep. While he waited for the drink, he cast a careless glance around the bar. Still, no one stood out.
Bram knew it was probably pointless. Seedy had seen his guy heading here hours ago. Even if the target had chosen to come here, which, truth be told, there was no guarantee, there was no way to know how long he stayed or where he left to.
Bram’s hand curled around his newly arrived drink at the thought of going home with his tail tucked between his legs, no new leads, and having lost the one he’d just gotten. He couldn’t do it. He had to make this work.
He reviewed the facts quietly, eyes still scanning the room for anything out of place. He’d heard from a sailor just under a fortnight ago about how his ship’d been overtaken by a motley crew of pirates, alerting Bram to the fact that he was in the area. Hanging around that bar and a few others for the next few nights earned him the knowledge that the pirate captain was supposed to be meeting the dockmaster for a sordid deal about ransacking a few of the wealthier ships at the dock. It sounded straight, exactly how Huppert would have done it.
But now…
The meeting place had been moved. Now the captain was nowhere to be seen. What was missing?
It was all too possible that he hadn’t been stealthy enough. That Josiah Holt had gotten wind of his presence and taken off. Maybe gone back for reinforcements. After their disastrous first encounter, Bram had a hard time thinking that Holt would come at him one on one. Although, maybe that’s exactly how he would do it, so spare himself the embarrassment in front of his crewmates if he lost.
Bram’s fingers curled tightly around the mug in his hands, imagining them wrapped instead around the traitorous pirate’s thick neck. If Holt lost, he would have much more than humiliation to worry about.
It had been nearly seven years since Bram had set eyes on the gargantuan man, and it felt like seven years too long. For seven years, those last few moments, the rain whipping across the deck, the way the blood ran over the sanded boards, thrown into a frothy pink by the crashing waves, the image of glassy eyes staring up at him. It was still as fresh as the night it had happened.
Now, Holt was out there, somewhere, on the Myriad, hand on her stern like she was his. It made Bram sick to think about. Holt would never be as good a captain as Huppert. He would never deserve the title of captain, no matter what he liked to think.
Huppert had been a good man for a pirate. No, he had just been a good man. He’d lead his crew with honor. Yes, they’d stolen and pillaged and raided, but there had been a code. A sense of order. There had been lines they were not allowed to cross. But now… With Holt at the helm, the legend of the Myriad had turned from one whispered with a sense of reverence and awe into a story spun on dark nights under the glare of the dusty moon. It was a fear-mongering tale, a nightmare warning used to scare children into returning home before the sun set.
It was nothing that it used to be, because Holt was half the man that Huppert ever was.
Bram’s head jerked up, eyes wide. Holt was not the man that Huppert was. He wasn’t going to make the same decisions. While Huppert would have ironed out a deal with the dockmaster to look the other way while they picked their way through the moored ships, Holt would not see the need for such caution. The only use he would see for a meeting would be to distract the dockmaster, to get him out of the way, clearing the dock for a real raid.
Bram shoved away from the bar, tossing a few coins behind him to make up for the difference. He ignored the eyes watching him as he tore down the street, running quickly for the docks. Who knew how much time he’d wasted here, mulling everything over, while Holt and the rest of them…
The dock came into sight at the end of the street, the wide sea yawning out behind it. As he ran forward, the streets became more congested with people moving quickly or running down the street. He noticed that there was nobody manning the counter of the small shack sitting in front of the docks. A moment later, a loud shot of cannon fire and raucous yelling gave him the answer of why.
As he was running toward the docks, he heard a shrill screeching. He glanced to his right and saw a small brown blur whipping through the crowds. The small brown creature darted underneath a woman’s large skirt, and she squeaked in alarm. Bram merely held out his hand as he ran and smiled when he felt sharp nails digging into his forearm.
The little monkey, small even for its age of fourteen, crawled up onto Bram’s shoulder with a pearl necklace clenched between its teeth as he ran for the docks.
Bram’s boots clomped hard onto the wooden boards of the dock, and his hand reached for his cutlass. The air was slightly hazy with cannon fire, but he could see shapes crawling all over the expensive ships, tossing sacks and valuables overboard to their waiting crewmates.
Bram’s lip curled in disgust watching them. It was so disorganized, so obvious. They would all be lucky if the constables weren’t here in the next thirty seconds to send them all to the gallows. It was so obvious, raiding in broad daylight. It spoke to an arrogance and stupidity that Bram knew Huppert never would have allowed.
He heard a snarl of disgust from his left, and looked down to see a small man, stocky with a thick red beard nearly tangling in his belt buckle, whip his sword from its sheath and run at him with a vicious twist in his eye.
Bram drew his cutlass and threw a direct swing from higher up, forcing the dwarf to raise his blade to block. When his midsection was exposed, Bram drew back his boot and kicked the man directly in the sternum. He watched as the breath whooshed from his lungs and he stumbled backwards, winded. Without waiting for a second opening, Bram lunged forward, swiping the hilt of his cutlass across the dwarf’s jaw. The dwarf’s head snapped to the side and his body fell hard over the side of the dock.
Bram only took half a moment to wonder if he’d fallen into the shallow waters or the hard sand below. The dwarf’s cries had alerted others to his presence, who hopped down and started to encircle him. The monkey on his shoulder screeched angrily and bared its teeth at the pirates.
He recognized a few of the pirates standing before him. The man with stringy black hair, one cloudy eye, and two golden teeth. Another dwarf with a handkerchief tied around his head and only three fingers curled around the hilt of his weapon. He knew their names, but it was easier not to think of them, to frame them as strangers, not people he’d used to fight alongside. People for whom, at one point, he would have laid down his own life.
“The prodigal son returns,” The man with stringy hair growled, twisting his sword in Bram’s direction. “Have ya’ come for penance, boy?”
“The day I ask for penance from the likes of you is the day the planes of hell are slick with ice,” Bram fired back.
“Fighting words,” The dwarf commented. “Where’s the skill to back it up?”
“Why don’t you come find out?” Bram taunted through gritted teeth, and lunged forward. The pirates’ chuckles were cut off with the clang of blades and the clatter as Bram twisted his blade and sent the dwarf’s weapon clattering to the deck. He smashed the hilt of his weapon into the dwarf’s nose before he could react, and his body crumpled to the deck.
Without missing a beat, Bram spun and met the second blade whistling toward his spine. The man with stringy white hair sneered at him as their blades clashed.
“Resorting to stabbing me in the back, are you, Nix?” Bram challenged, and Nix’s eyes narrowed. He shoved away from the pirate and swung toward his gut. He was too far away and he knew it, but he wanted a reaction as Nix arched his back and his weight went to his heels.
Bram could feel someone approaching fast from the side, and the weight left his shoulder as Indigo launched at his attacker. He heard a high-pitched primal scream and then turned his attention back to Nix, who had recovered in the half second that he’d been distracted.
Nix drew a dagger from his belt and lunged at Bram, who seized the pirate’s arm with his free hand and drew back his own sword for the fatal blow to the pirate’s exposed torso. Nix snarled and lashed out with his boot. Bram’s leg buckled for a moment and Nix tore away, dancing to the side.
Bram blinked the sweat out of his eyes, circling to keep Nix in his line of sight. This was foolish. These pirates were not the man he was after, and every second, his window of opportunity tightened a little further. Despite the danger right in front of him, he felt his eyes scanning the ships around him, assessing the outlines of those that he could see, looking for the hulking form of one man in particular.
Motion to his side alerted him to attack, and he spun away, but not quickly enough. A sharp pain lanced down his side, and he shouted, his free arm automatically reaching for the afflicted area. It came away stained with blood. He looked angrily at Nix, grinning with his blade edged with red, and launched into a fresh attack, the pain narrowing his focus.
He slashed wildly with his blade, fighting for control. He knew that if he lost focus, for even a moment, Nix would find a way through his defenses. As it was, though, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should have been taken down by now. Nix was a skilled fighter, but he was merely dancing around Bram with that insufferable smile on his face. Not to mention the countless other pirates watching and jeering that should have joined in by now.
“Pulling your punches now, are you?” Bram grunted, and Nix smirked at him.
“Ay, and here I thought you was a dull lad.” He flashed Bram a grin, glinting with the shine of false teeth. “Turns out you’ve got some brains after all.”
Bram felt familiar claws dig into the back of his coat, and then felt panting against his neck. He would have raised his hand to calm the agitated creature if he hadn’t been preoccupied with the fierce ache in his side and the buccaneer before him.
“As much as I’d like to take yer life myself, lad,” Nix explained. “You been claimed by another. Yer life is only forfeit to him.”
Just over his shoulder, a figure took shape in the fog. His shoulders spanned the width of two men, his arms the size of the average sailor’s leg. His features were indistinguishable in the haze of cannon smoke, but Bram knew that if he were to come closer, the blackness of his eyes would stand out among his dark midnight blue skin.
“Holt,” Bram breathed like an oath and fought the cement that weighed his feet to the dock.
His shoulders tensed, his every muscle bunching up, readying for the attack. This was the moment he’d been waiting for, the reason he’d stayed here for six years, hunting for any sign of them again.
“Lower the gangplank!” Came a harsh cry from behind Bram. “The guards are on their way!”
In an instant, the pirates leapt down from their ships and sprinted headlong for the biggest ship, moored at the end of the dock. Bram caught glimpses of her through the smoke, and she was by far the most beautiful ship in the water, with long curving sides, a sharp nose, and a tall proud mast raising high into the air. It took his breath away every time he saw her, with the Jolly Roger snapping in the wind.
He turned his attention back to the crowd, moving with them as he fought for a glimpse of Holt in the crowd. But the massive man, as easy as he should have been to spot, was nowhere to be seen. Bram pressed on, fighting past the ripping pain in his side, until someone crashed into him, upsetting his sense of balance and sending him careening towards the side of the dock. He had a moment to look over and see Nix, a cruel smile twisting his features.
“This is for your own good, laddie,” He snarled, before raising a boot and kicking Bram in the knee.
His leg twisted to the side and he slipped toward the ground, stomach twisting when his hand found nothing to brace upon. For one long second, the wind whistled in his ears and he watched Nix’s face grow smaller above him.
And then the icy water washed away every other thought.