Chương 217: Chapter 216 - An Enclosed Head

Lucid spoke with a calm Arthur did not trust, his voice measured now, almost too level for the storm pressing around them.

"Listen. I am not with that sick bitch, Elara." Arthur gave him an uncomfortable glance. It was not the wisest way to begin a negotiation with a terrified hostage, especially when said hostage had already mistaken him for something sent to ruin her, but the girl eased by the smallest degree. Her shoulders did not relax, and her fingers still trembled around the torn edge of her shirt, yet the hatred in her eyes shifted, losing a sliver of certainty. Lucid noticed. Arthur noticed that Lucid noticed.

"Tell me the exact situation," Lucid continued, lowering his voice as rain dripped from his chin and vanished into the mist covering his face. For a moment, it looked as if the girl might answer. She drew a breath, swallowed, and lifted her chin with the fragile dignity of someone who had very little left except the choice of how she would be seen while afraid. Then she spat at him. The glob struck Lucid near the collar. Silence fell across the deck.

Even the tied crew seemed to forget their fear long enough to stare. Lucid wiped it away with two fingers. Arthur felt the change before he saw it, that slight hardening in Lucid's posture. He was mad. Arthur's hand moved a fraction closer to his sword. Lucid inhaled. He was forcing himself through some method learned under pressure, perhaps from pain, perhaps from humiliation, perhaps from the kind of place where anger had once cost him too much.

Arthur had seen that expression in soldiers returning from academies that believed cruelty made efficient blades. He had worn parts of it himself when younger men tested him in public, eager to see whether the knight would break decorum before they broke law. Lucid smiled beneath the mist. The smile was patient. That made it worse. The girl recoiled as though he had drawn a weapon. Arthur placed a hand on Lucid's shoulder, firm enough to interrupt without making it a challenge.

"Hey. We should ask the others instead. She is clearly not cooperative." Lucid did not move. For some reason, he remained fixed on her, as if the rest of the ship, the bound crew, the storm, and the blood on the deck had faded into background noise. Arthur did not understand what made her so important. Lucid had said she could not die, and Arthur accepted that as a rule of the rift, but this felt different. It was not only strategy. His attention had narrowed too sharply, too personally.

'What is it about her?' When Lucid spoke again, his voice had shifted into something oddly unlike him, softer and far more careful than Arthur expected.

"Hey. I saw the damage on the ship." The girl's gaze flicked despite herself. Lucid pointed toward the torn rail, the scorched planks near the starboard side, and the splintered boards that had been repaired in haste before the storm had worsened them.

"That could not have been that sea creature." The girl's mouth tightened. Lucid lowered his hand.

"Tell me the truth. I am not fond of them either." That, at least, sounded sincere. The girl studied him through the rain. Her fear remained, but something in his tone seemed to draw a line she could understand. Enemies of enemies were never friends by default, but the desperate often had to measure risk faster than pride allowed. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. She gathered herself, wiping her cheek with the back of one wrist.

"I am from Port Vexis," she said.

"We were a fleet of twenty vessels. We lost five before the storm came and... and..." She couldn't finish, maybe it was due to trauma. Arthur frowned. Port Vexis. The name belonged to Vexian waters, or close enough to Vexian authority that it should have been under their tax routes, patrol records, and noble disputes. A ship from there should not have been drifting beneath this impossible sky unless the rift had dragged it here, or unless the history being re-enacted inside a rift.

Lucid nodded once, accepting the information without interrupting. The girl continued, voice roughening.

"We are fleeing the fleet of The Dao Dynasty, Shenzhou." Arthur's attention sharpened again. Shenzhou. That made even less sense. Why would a pirate girl from Port Vexis be fleeing a fleet of that caliber? Shenzhou did not waste full pursuit formations on petty thieves unless tribute, sacred cargo, dynastic insult, or maritime contracts had been violated. If she had stolen from them, then her survival was not courage. It was a temporary mistake in the universe. Lucid tilted his head.

Arthur could not see his expression, but he sensed the question forming in him as clearly as his own.

"What did you take?" Arthur asked before Lucid could. The girl did not answer. Lucid straightened. Without warning, a chain shot from his hand toward the crow's nest. It caught around a high beam with a sharp metallic snap, and Lucid launched himself upward with unsettling efficiency, rising through the rain as if the storm were nothing more than inconvenience. He swung past the torn sail, caught the outer rail of the crow's nest, and pulled himself onto it in one clean motion.

Arthur watched with a grim sort of admiration. Lucid was always quick to act. Too quick, perhaps. He moved from thought to motion with almost no visible distance between the two, as though hesitation had been cut out of him and replaced with instinctive violence. Arthur did not know whether to envy that or pity it. Above them, Lucid took a watch scope from one of the bound crewmen he had dragged up earlier, or perhaps from the lookout's belt, then turned toward the horizon. Arthur remained below with the girl.

She trembled quietly now. He wanted to ask many things. Port Vexis, the tax routes, the Shenzhou pursuit, why her crew looked less like raiders and more like starving townsfolk wearing stolen courage, why the rift had placed Lucid and Arthur on this ship instead of any other. Yet asking everything at once would only drive her back into defiance. So he chose the simplest question.

"Why are you here?" She lifted her face. Her eyes traveled to his armor, then to the crest that marked him unmistakably as Vexian. Recognition hardened her expression. The fear remained, but contempt rose to stand beside it.

"Tch. You would know."

"I do not," Arthur replied. She stared as if deciding whether ignorance from a knight was more insulting than cruelty. Arthur held her gaze.

"I would not ask if I knew." The girl looked past him toward her bound crew, toward the men and women tied around the mast, toward the soaked faces that had grown still at the mention of Port Vexis. Something in her seemed to cave inward.

"The kingdom raised the taxes again." Her voice shook. Arthur said nothing.

"Our people are starving." The words cracked through the rain with more force than shouting. Then she did shout, anger spilling into the wound fear had opened.

"And now you are willing to help? Here, in the middle of Shenzhou waters, when it is convenient for you to play the honorable knight? Tell me, what branch sent you? The First Tier Arsenal? The Shield Branch?" Arthur's jaw tightened. She leaned forward on her knees, rain shining along her cheeks.

"Is King Henry truly that incompetent?" Arthur blinked. The name sounded familiar but also wrong, like it was a false memory. King Henry. Queen Elara had announced his death around the time of her coronation. Arthur remembered the hall, the banners, the controlled grief, the political convenience wrapped in mourning silk. Yet this was a rift. It did not need to follow the present. It could preserve old sins, old decisions, old suffering dressed in the shape of now.

"So you stole from one of the greatest fleet nations in the Scattered Realms," Arthur said slowly. The girl's eyes flashed.

"That would solve a lot," he added, not cruelly, but with the bluntness of a man trying to understand the size of the disaster.

"What do you know, Vexian trash?" The insult struck him with less force than she probably wished.

"You are from Vex as well." Her teeth clenched. The crew began shouting then, not all at once, but in waves. One called him tax hound. Another cursed the crest on his armor. Their anger rose, broke, and became something uglier, then weaker. It did not faze Arthur as much as it might have years ago. Public service had taught him that frightened citizens often aimed pain at the nearest uniform.

Serving near Elara when she had still been a princess had taught him that people bowed in court, then cursed in alleys, and both reactions could be true. The shouting became weeping. The girl finally, collapsed forward on the deck, both hands pressed against the wet planks, her shoulders shaking beneath her torn coat.

"All I want," she whispered, and her voice had lost every sharp edge it carried before, "all I want is for my town to be safe." Arthur's expression softened before he could stop it. She lifted her head only slightly.

"I want a future where everyone can pay their tribute without selling their children to the docks, without resorting to illegal activates, without praying that the next collector dies before reaching our street." Arthur looked away for a breath. Pity was dangerous inside a rift. It could distort judgment. It could make illusions feel like citizens and citizens feel like ghosts.

Yet he could not deny the way her words struck something old in him, some memory of petitions left unanswered, of regional officers filing reports no noble would read, of towns that looked grateful only because rebellion required energy hunger had already stolen. Something dropped onto the deck behind him. Arthur turned. Lucid landed from above, boots cracking against the soaked planks, watch scope still in one hand. He stood very still afterward.

Arthur could not see his face through the mist, but the shape of his body told enough. Nothing good waited beyond the horizon.

"How is it?" Arthur asked. Lucid's voice came flat.

"Bad." The girl swallowed. Rain ran down Lucid's shoulders as he lowered the scope.

"There are about fifty ships closing around us."