Chương 181: 21. Flames of Wrath 1

When the second day properly began, I realized that last night's soul-shaking hammock ordeal had merely been Tidesever's introductory greeting for newcomers. The real torture was daytime. Because during the day, you couldn't lie down. Couldn't play dead. Couldn't explain that you were from the Kingdom, or that you had just crawled out of a consecutive disaster involving a port auction, Raven operatives, and an ancient submarine base. On a ship, there were exactly two categories of people. Those who could work.

And those who got in the way. Unfortunately, on the morning of day two, I belonged firmly to the latter.

"Not like that!" Blake snatched the line from my hands and dismantled the knot I had spent considerable effort producing—a knot that had genuinely achieved the aesthetic of a gallows rope—and retied it in three movements with the efficient contempt of someone teaching a newly upright dog to fetch.

"You couldn't trust that knot on a woman's dress sash, let alone rigging!"

"Do you people actually use women's dress sashes as a unit of measurement?" I pulled the rope end tight through gritted teeth.

"What else?" Nico crouched on the gunwale collecting hook-lines, a piece of dried apple clamped between his teeth, grinning with the specific energy of someone who deserved to be kicked overboard.

"Does the Eckhaus Kingdom measure things in noble belt lengths?"

"At least we don't use monkeys to calibrate intelligence."

"Hey, I understood that one," Nico pointed at me with genuine offense. Lov walked past carrying a powder case, not looking up.

"The fact that you understood it means he was being considerate." I drew a slow breath and reminded myself not to argue with anyone on this ship. Because on Tidesever, starting an argument with any crew member would almost certainly end with me losing to all of them simultaneously. Blake looked at my finally acceptable knot and gave a reluctant nod.

"Fine. At least this one doesn't look like you're rigging yourself for execution."

"Thank you for the encouragement."

"That wasn't encouragement." He grinned.

"That was me confirming you won't be directly responsible for drowning us." I had developed a genuine appreciation for the fact that this crew had survived to the present day through a combination of technical skill and one very specific talent— The ability to take any sentence that could have been said normally and deliver it in the most infuriating manner possible. By contrast, Ignicia's adaptation speed was genuinely maddening. This wasn't to say she instantly became a perfect sailor.

Her Highness the Dragon Princess clearly hadn't spent the night mastering wave-reading, rigging assessment, sail management, or wind interpretation. But she possessed a completely unreasonable ability—anything involving strength, balance, reaction time, or not falling over like an idiot she learned with alarming speed. Before the morning was half over, she was standing perfectly steady on the wave-washed deck, one arm carrying two people's worth of spare canvas, without so much as adjusting her stance.

Nico's eyes nearly departed his skull.

"... Is she actually human?" I gave him a flat look.

"That's an excellent question. I suggest you ask her directly next time." This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"I like being alive," Nico said, immediately retracting his head like a turtle. Blake laughed until he needed the rigging for structural support. Lov simply swept Ignicia with a single measured look—recalibrating her assessment of this far-too-beautiful passenger who had no business being on a smuggling vessel, and exactly how much trouble she represented. As for Marro—he said nothing.

Just looked over from the stern where he was managing the helm, took one glance at our side of the deck, and returned to his heading. But I could read that glance clearly enough. The trouble you dragged aboard, boy, is genuinely non-standard specification.... As if I had actively gone shopping for catastrophe. By midday, the sea had decided to temporarily spare my stomach. Or perhaps it simply chose to keep me functional—one fewer deck-scrubber would be inconvenient.

We ate lunch at the stern: fish soup thick enough to use as mortar, bread hard enough to serve as projectile weaponry, and smoked meat so salty it could theoretically preserve a corpse. I was working through the bread and trying not to think about the Raven operative who had died in a storage room yesterday, when Lov's eyes settled on the oil-cloth wrapped bundle at my hip. The ancient pistol I had carried out of the underground base. The best-preserved one of the lot. She studied it for two seconds, then spoke.

"Let me see that." I looked up.

"Is that a question or an order?"

"If you want the polite version," she said, extending her hand with approximately zero warmth, "it's a request." Two seconds of silence. I unwrapped the cloth. The metal surface had long since lost its original finish, but I had cleaned it as thoroughly as circumstances allowed. Its shape bore no resemblance to Lov's flintlock—no exaggerated barrel length, none of the elaborate front-loading mechanism. Short, dense, compact. Lines as clean as something designed with no purpose other than killing.

Lov's brow drew together the moment she took its weight.

"This is heavy."

"It's ancient," I said. She turned it over, examined the side profile, then the trigger and slide mechanism. For the first time, her expression shifted into something genuinely serious.

"This isn't a matchlock. Isn't a flintlock. Doesn't look like a wheellock either." Her voice dropped.

"What does it use for ignition?"

"... I only have a general understanding," I admitted.

"You've been carrying it around without knowing how it works?"

"I've been carrying it because the people who had them before me were dead, and they all had small holes in their heads." Nico made an appreciative sound. Blake moved his chair forward, clearly interested. Ignicia set down her soup bowl and said, with complete calm: "Ancient military-issue sidearm. It carries Old Civilization military markings. For practical purposes—think of it as a killing tool the ancients wore at their hip." Nico blinked.

"... Sidearm is the name?"

"A general category term," she said.

"The ancients had terrible naming conventions."

"Better than Nico," I said.

"Hey!" Lov ignored our exchange. She pressed the slide lightly with one finger, touched the magazine catch, and her eyes went steadily darker.

"If this thing actually works, it's going to be a massive problem."

"For who?" Blake asked. Lov looked up, voice flat.

"For whoever it's pointed at." She handed it back, then stood abruptly, picked up her own flintlock, and walked to an open section of deck.

"Get up." I blinked.

"Why?"

"You said you only have a general understanding." Her voice was ice.

"So I'm going to teach you how to use a gun first."

"You're going to teach me?" She looked at me the way people look at things that have disappointed them on a fundamental level.

"What's your alternative? Wait until it actually matters and try to use that ancient pistol as a club?"... Fair. Painfully, undeniably fair. So for the next half hour, on Tidesever's rolling deck, I received a foundational firearms education from Lov. Unfortunately, her teaching method was entirely consistent with her conversational style.

"Don't plant your feet like that. You're not posing on a Kingdom training ground."

"Shoulders loose—loose, not collapsed."

"Don't muscle the trigger. Unless you want to send the shot to the sea god as an offering."

"And stop flinching. If you're afraid of the noise, put the gun down." Every criticism landed precisely where it hurt most. Every criticism was also entirely correct. Because whether it was her flintlock or the ancient pistol from the ruins, both were ultimately the same thing—making the metal in your hand travel as fast as possible to decide someone else's fate. The difference was that the ancients had apparently been considerably more committed to that outcome.

Ignicia watched from nearby for a while, then observed: "You don't grip your sword like that."

"My sword doesn't explode next to my ear."

"Then you'd better get used to it fast," Lov said.

"When it actually matters, no one waits for you to find your form." Nico sat on a rope coil eating his apple, providing commentary of negative instructional value: "I think if he actually fires the first shot, the person most startled will be him."

"One more word," I said, not looking at him, "and you're my next target."

"See, the temper came in ahead of the technique," Blake said, laughing hard enough that his shoulders shook.