Chương 176: 19. All Aboard 1

After the body was dealt with, the smell in the storage room—rust, poison residue, and damp timber all compressed together—somehow became even worse. Though perhaps it wasn't the smell at all. Perhaps it was simply that I now understood, with crystalline clarity, that we had passed the point of no return. If the Yanxia Empire's Ravens could track us all the way into Blackbeard Bay and casually place bids at an auction house in broad daylight, then this port had long since stopped being merely a filthy harbor.

It was a rotting ship that had been hollowed out from below, still performing normalcy on the surface. The fact that it hadn't sunk yet didn't mean it wouldn't—it just meant the people standing on deck hadn't heard the timber cracking yet. Marro clearly understood this. He stood by the half-open door, his single eye fixed on the narrow alley outside, where afternoon light had sliced the space into unequal portions of brightness and shadow. He was quiet for a long time. Not vacant. Calculating.

Calculating how many informants Blackbeard Bay still contained. Which docks had been compromised. Which long-standing arrangements had already rotted through. How many invisible nails he would need to step over if he wanted to sail his ship out of this harbor with his skin intact. Finally, he exhaled slowly and turned back to us.

"You two have two options." I folded my arms and looked at him.

"Let's hear them."

"First option." He raised one finger.

"You get out of Blackbeard Bay right now. Rely on your own legs, your own luck, and that face of yours that looks particularly designed to invite knives—and see how far you make it."

"That sounds less like an option and more like a suicide note."

"Exactly." He nodded.

"Which is why I don't recommend it."

"And the second?"

"I take you out." He said it completely flat. Which was precisely why the word take carried so much weight. Not guide. Not help. Take. Take us to the Dragon Kingdom, or take us to the bottom of the sea—depending entirely on whether we proved worth the risk he'd be absorbing. I watched him without answering immediately. Because I knew the genuinely complicated part was only just beginning. Naturally, Marro's next sentence didn't disappoint.

"But given how the situation has evolved, the price needs to be recalculated." My eyelid twitched. There it was. Like knowing a storm would eventually blow through your windows, and still feeling your stomach drop when the first raindrop finally hit the glass.

"Name it," I said. Marro didn't waste time with preamble.

"Eight gold coins base. Plus supplemental costs for hull repairs, route changes, hush money, and clearing favors owed. Twelve total." I went quiet. Honestly, the price wasn't outrageous. Under the circumstances, it was almost generous. The Ravens had infiltrated Blackbeard Bay. Routes needed changing. Eyes needed avoiding. Crew members needed silencing. All while risking being spotted by Summer Flame's black birds as he smuggled us out.

This wasn't standard smuggling—it was carrying a powder keg through enemy lines while pretending to be a merchant. Twelve gold coins, by any rational standard, made complete sense. The problem was— Rational was only ever comforting to people who actually had the money. My hand went to the coin pouch at my waist—the one that had traveled faithfully with me from the Kingdom to this rotten harbor, deteriorating in quality alongside everything else. It was very light. No—light was generous.

It was currently achieving a level of honesty about its condition that I found genuinely confronting. I untied the drawstring and poured the contents into my palm. A few silver coins. A few copper. Some fragments so pitiful they wouldn't even provide satisfying weight as projectiles. Forget twelve gold—this collection couldn't fund two proper hot meals without the innkeeper throwing in a complimentary "stop being picky, pauper" under his breath.

I stared at the sad, educational display in my hand for a full three seconds. Then I was forced to acknowledge something deeply practical and profoundly humiliating.

"... Most of my money isn't on me." Marro's eyebrow went up.

"Oh?"

"It's with Olivia, and with the diplomatic convoy at Black Dragon Pass." I ground the words out, each syllable making me feel increasingly like an idiot who had left home with half a flatbread and was now attempting to charter an entire merchant fleet.

"On-hand funds are... inadequate." Marro was silent for two beats. Then he reached out and patted my shoulder. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. It wasn't comfort. It was the kind of contact that contained one part sympathy, three parts mockery, and six parts kid, you've finally achieved the particular flavor of misfortune I recognize.

"Don't worry," he said, with a sincerity so profound it made my fist consider its options.

"Everyone has a first time they can't afford their passage at the worst possible moment." My temple pulsed.

"That doesn't sound like comfort."

"It wasn't meant to be," he replied with complete moral confidence.

"I just wanted you to know your current expression has real instructional value." Then, with exquisite cruelty, he actually stepped aside toward the door, politely clearing a path for my come back with money if you want to live exit.

"In that case," he lifted his chin, "better luck next time." This absolute bastard. My fist was approximately two seconds from making a career-limiting decision. At the exact moment Marro began to turn away, a figure stepped forward from my side—half a pace, precisely enough to block the dismissal route he had been preparing to use. Ignicia. The movement was small. Almost quiet. But the moment she stepped into that space, the room's center of gravity shifted to follow her.

Even here—in this narrow, suffocating storage room that had recently hosted a corpse—presence followed her like a natural law.

"Move," she said. Marro looked down at her, something surfacing in his single eye that wasn't quite surprise, but was definitely interested.

"Oh?" he said.

"Is Her Highness planning to incinerate me on the spot as a discount arrangement?"

"If you were only worth twelve gold coins, that would be insultingly cheap," Ignicia replied, without inflection. Wonderful. She was already adopting his insufferable conversational style. I had a very bad feeling about this development. The next moment, she reached into the inner lining of her cloak and withdrew two objects from a concealed pocket I had genuinely never noticed existed. When they hit the wooden table, even the dim afternoon light seemed to bend around them. Two golden scales.

No—that description was inadequate. If they were merely scales, they wouldn't carry that quality of having been pressed, edged, and finished with such precision. Each was roughly half the size of a palm, edges curving slightly inward, the centers engraved with patterns that were faint but extraordinarily intricate—something between flames and ancient dragon script burned deep into the metal. The surface wasn't gaudy brightness; it was a settled, weighted gold that carried authority in its color alone.

As though these had never been minted as currency, but had always been part of something that existed at a higher register—simply cut away and granted the function of exchange. My first reaction wasn't how much are these worth. It was: when exactly did you start carrying these on your person. Ignicia set them down with the same energy one might use to place two entirely ordinary copper coins on a counter.

"Terminus Dragon Scale coins," she said.

"Each trades for over ten standard gold. Your passage is covered." The storage room went very quiet. Whatever trace of sardonic amusement Marro had been maintaining vanished completely. He didn't reach for them immediately. That earned him a small increment of my respect. Because anyone with functional eyes could see these weren't normal currency. Most people would have gone wide-eyed with greed. Marro didn't.

He simply watched the coins for two heartbeats, recalculating exactly how far beyond normal parameters this transaction had drifted. Then he picked one up. First he examined it. Then he felt it. Running his thumb slowly along the edge of the scale markings, testing whether the fine texture was artifice or something inherent in the material. Then he brought it to his mouth and bit it lightly. My eye twitched.

"... That technique makes you look like you're inspecting potatoes."

"Silence," Marro said without looking up. He flipped the coin and held it to the light one more time. The dragon scale caught a thin, cold glint between his fingers, the pattern in its depths refusing to behave like anything that had ever been struck in a human mint. After a long moment, he let out a slow breath. Not in wonder. More like an old fox who had finally confirmed that the two problems standing in front of him were no longer quantifiable by any price he'd previously encountered.

"Genuine," he said.

"I don't have time for counterfeits," Ignicia replied, her tone carrying the warmth of winter stone. Marro looked up at her. The practiced worldliness that usually occupied his single eye had been replaced, fully and completely, by something else. Not deference. Reassessment. As though only in this moment had he understood that what he had taken on as two desperate travelers was, in fact, two people capable of dragging the entire harbor district into the eye of a storm. He glanced at me once more.

The look said, with reasonable clarity: you cause considerably more trouble than your appearance suggests. I wanted to explain that this particular situation wasn't entirely my fault. Though judging by the outcomes, the distinction seemed largely academic. Marro closed both Terminus Dragon Scale coins into his palm, gave them a single toss, listened to the sound, and appeared to settle whatever final reservation he'd been holding. Then he nodded.

"Deal." The breath I had been holding in my chest since this conversation began finally dropped by one increment. Only one increment. Because I understood perfectly—this wasn't simply purchasing passage. This was using two pieces of Dragon Kingdom high-denomination currency to formally drag a dangerous Blackbeard Bay ship captain into our specific category of catastrophe. From this moment, Marro no longer had the option of calling himself a bystander.

He tucked the Dragon Scale coins into his inner pocket—unhurried, but noticeably more deliberate than before.

"Tomorrow morning," he said.

"Clean yourselves up." I blinked.

"... Clean up?"

"You planning to board my ship dressed like something that crawled out of a fish-gut barrel?" Marro's expression shifted into genuine aesthetic offense.

"I can transport trouble. I didn't agree to transport trouble that compromises the air quality of my vessel."

"The fact that I look like this is at least half your fault."

"Only half? You're generous with yourself." I was about to respond when Marro raised one hand and cut me off.

"Tomorrow, after sunrise. West side of Salt Dog Wharf, Pier Three. Don't arrive too early, don't be late. Early looks suspicious. Late means I've already left."

"What if we're being followed?" I asked.

"That's your problem, not mine," he said with complete serenity.

"If you bring a tail to my dock, I'll put you both back on shore first, then have a conversation with whoever's behind you about what they're willing to pay." Every sentence from this man served as an excellent reminder never to expect his conscience to develop accidentally. Ignicia simply nodded.

"Understood." Marro turned toward the door. At the threshold, he stopped as though something had just occurred to him, and half-turned back.

"One more thing, boy."

"What now."

"Make sure you sleep properly tonight."

"What kind of advice is that?" The corner of his mouth moved.

"Because starting tomorrow, you're going to look back very fondly on this period when your biggest problem was being upset about your wallet." Then he left. His footsteps faded and dissolved into the harbor wind and crowd noise outside—like a stone dropped into black water, the surface closing over it without a trace. After the storage room fell quiet, I finally turned to Ignicia. She was adjusting the edge of one glove, her expression as undisturbed as someone who had just covered a friend's dinner tab.

"... Terminus Dragon Scale coins?" I said.

"Mm."

"Exactly how many of those things are you carrying on you?" She looked up at me, and something passed through those golden eyes—a faint, entirely unreasonable flicker of superiority.

"Enough to buy your current outfit ten times over."

"That's not what I was asking."

"I know," she said calmly.

"Which is why I have no intention of answering." I was quiet for two seconds, then pressed my hand over my forehead with genuine resignation.

"I'm experiencing a very complicated set of feelings right now."

"Such as?"

"Such as—I had been operating under the impression that I was desperately protecting a princess in distress." I looked at her, my voice carrying a particular dryness.

"And it turns out the princess paid for the boat." Ignicia paused for half a beat. Then she actually laughed—softly, briefly.

"If it bothers you that much," she said, "you can pay me back slowly once we're back in the Dragon Kingdom."

"That sounds like a loan with interest."

"Don't worry." She looked at me, the outer corner of her eye lifting just slightly—an expression that was simultaneously too beautiful and too dangerous to be fair.

"My method of collecting interest is simply a little more complicated than gold coins."... Wonderful. I had apparently sold myself somewhere along the line without noticing. And this time, Marro hadn't even taken a commission.