Lost at Sea Bk. 02 Ch. 23

"Sure seems tragic so far," Jack said bitterly.

Quinn shook his head. "That is not what I see."

Jack looked up at him. "Tell me what you see that I don't."

"In your whole life, you haven't the time," Quinn half-smiled.

"About this. Us," Jack clarified, gesturing between herself and Will, sounding a bit exasperated.

Quinn crossed his legs and sunk down to the sparse grass to sit beside Jack. "I see the world creating this moment for you both. It has arranged itself to accommodate the desires of two people who desperately seek what they already have. They are so caught in their past that they cannot see their present. Together they sit on a beautiful day, at a cliffside overlooking the sea, holding each other's hands in a scene fit for song, yet somehow still unable to enjoy the short time they've been gifted."

Will looked at Quinn like he'd grown a second head. He shook his head, bemused. "I see what you mean about him being the philosopher."

Jack's heartache cracked enough to smile for a moment. "I told you."

"He does that a lot?" Will asked, masking his wonder with mocking sympathy.

Jack smiled at Quinn. "No. He only does it when I'm being particularly thick."

"So a lot," Will teased.

Jack rolled her eyes.

Are we just... being stupid?" Will asked.

"Yes," Quinn answered.

Jack and Will looked at him with the same expression of affronted surprise and impressed amusement.

"You are human," Quinn said with a hint of mockery in his eyes. "It is your nature."

Jack gave him a small glare. "Alright, smartass. What would you do?"

Quinn gestured to the small bustling port below. "Focus on the task at hand. Let go of as much pain as possible. Appreciate joyful moments when they present themselves."

"A bit vague," Jack retorted.

"It's a point on the horizon," Will said, considering thoughtfully. "Sometimes that's all we have to work with."

Quinn nodded.

"So we need to focus on getting the ship fixed," Jack said, forcing her mind to focus in a different direction.

Will nodded. "And we can't do it if we keep dragging each other into this swamp of old problems."

"The situation isn't your fault," Jack said.

"Sounds like it isn't really yours either," Will said with a long exhale. He'd been blaming Jack for so long that the words sounded alien to him. The deep pit of anger he had devoted so much energy to keeping a lid on felt like it had drained in a moment. He felt hollow.

Jack swallowed, struggling a moment to hold her composure. "That... is nice to hear."

Will's accusatory glance swept between the other two. "I have a book's worth of questions, by the way."

"I hope someday I can answer them," Jack said with a glance to Quinn.

"Is she right that explaining things puts you at risk?" Will asked Quinn.

"Yes," Quinn answered. "And herself. And you."

"What the hell is so bad that just knowing about it is risky?" Will asked. Jack started to speak, but Will raised his hand. "That was rhetorical. I believe you, and I guess that's good enough."

"So where does that leave us?" Jack asked.

"I don't know," Will shrugged. "Somewhere new."

"Finally," Quinn said with an exasperated roll of his eyes.

The both looked at him, shocked. Then Will started laughing. "I like you."

Jack looked between the two men flanking her with a pained expression, then turned apologetically to Quinn. "This must have been insufferable to watch."

Quinn's lips tightened a bit in consideration. "Quite."

Jack let out a tired laugh. "I'll try not to subject you to it anymore."

Quinn looked doubtful.

Will snorted, then looked away when Jack turned a glare towards him.

"Will that be all, mistress?" Quinn asked.

She turned again and leaned in to kiss him. "Yes. Thank you."

Quinn gave her a small, secret smile and stood without a word.

"Just going to disappear like you came?" Will asked.

Quinn gave him half a smirk. "Differently."

With two steps he jumped powerfully off the cliff. Will began to surge to his feet, but Jack's hand against his chest held him back. Will looked at her in confusion, his heart suddenly pumping in his ears. Quinn's heels arced out of sight as he flattened himself, then dove.

"He's fine," Jack said.

Will sat up straight and craned his neck just in time to see the green warrior hit the waves and vanish.

"We're two hundred feet up," Will blurted.

"A hundred and fifty. Perhaps a bit over," Jack corrected, settling back against the tree.

"What about rocks below the surface? Or getting dashed on the walls?" Will demanded.

"He's fine," Jack repeated firmly.

Will stared at her. "Why the hell did he do that?"

"He likes diving," Jack said simply. "And I think he was telling me that he trusts you."

"What?" Will shook his head, confused. "How?"

"Now you know more about him than you did," Jack explained. "He showed you something he usually keeps hidden."

"That he's a mad cliff diver?" Will's voice was thick with incredulity. Something dawned on him and he looked back over the cliffs to the water below. "He... didn't make a splash."

"He never does," Jack shrugged.

"Is this another one of those things you're just not going to explain?" Will asked.

"Yes," Jack said, not quite able to hold back a teasing smile.

At a loss, Will relaxed back against the tree, shaking his head to clear it. "I think we should find a different way down the cliff."

Jack leaned her head on his shoulder. "In a bit."

Will stared at her a moment longer, then shook his head in bemusement and let himself relax against the tree again.

Comfortable together for the first time in half a decade, they sat and watched the rolling sea glitter under a clear blue sky.

_________________________

The hike around the cliff took a couple hours, but was pleasant. Jack and Will came out of the treeline to the surprise of twenty or so loggers who were busy carving back the jungle. They were nice enough, and pointed across the curve of the cove to two places where cargo lifts had been built to ferry goods and people up and down the sides. Or they could walk all the way around the curve to the slope where the houses were, and find lodging at the top or bottom of the steps.

They stood at the edge of the first lift, waiting for it to reach the top. The old codger running the apparatus barely moved when they'd approached and only responded in grunts when they'd asked to head down. In lieu of conversation, he'd raised a red flag and waved it. A few moments later they saw the big pulleys start to move.

The whole thing was an oversized block and tackle, operated by someone they couldn't see. It took about ten minutes, but eventually a flat, raft-like platform reached the top. It hung by a single thick rope that split into four lines that were attached to the corners of the platform. It had nothing in the way of railings. The only thought to safety seemed to be the smaller ropes suspended across the corner lines about seven feet above the raft. Without getting up, the old man reached out with a shepherd's crook and hauled the platform towards him. It pivoted on a rickety looking crane arm until it was above solid ground, and then he waved a yellow flag. The platform lowered a foot and came to rest in front of them.

Jack and Will exchanged a worried look, deciding if they wanted to get on the contraption.

"You first," Jack said.

Will shrugged. "Apparently my magic luck will save me, so why not." He stepped onto the platform and reached up to grab the rope.

"Yes, well it might not save me," Jack said dubiously. After a moment's hesitation, she followed.

The old man grunted, and gestured back and forth between them with his flag. Will and Jack exchanged another confused look.

"I'm sorry, what?" Will asked.

The old man rolled his eyes and lifted the red flag. The platform started to rise, tilting dangerously as Jack and Will's weight caused it to begin swinging. He lifted the yellow flag. The lift stopped rising, The platform was barely a foot off the ground and already tilting wildly. The corner Jack and Will stood on caught the ground and started pivoting.

Jack and Will held tight, looking like they were about to jump free when the pivot slowed and then rocked back the other direction.

"Oh," Will muttered as a realization dawned on him. "Right. That's what he was saying."

"You're going to have to translate grunts and flag waving," Jack said, annoyed.

"The load has to be balanced," Will explained.

The old man grunted an affirmation and waved the yellow flag again. The lift lowered back down to the ground again.

Will walked to the center of the platform. "Over here. We need to keep to the center and balance our weight. I'm heavier so you'll need to adjust out a bit once it's up." Jack looked like she'd rather walk around to the other side of the ridge line, but followed him to the middle of the lift. The old man gave them a nod and waved his flag again.

The lift started up again, this time not tilting. Jack and Will adjusted their footing a bit and held onto the ropes above. The old man waited until they were settled and stable, then used his hook to push the crane arm back out over the edge.

The platform swung gently over the long drop and Will's stomach felt like it was trying to crawl into his throat.

Jack started to instinctively step closer to him, but he held his arm out to stop her. She stopped and thought for a moment, then nodded. "Right. Don't want to do that."

After a few moments the swaying mostly stopped. The old man waved the yellow flag again and they started to descend.

The thick rope creaked and rotated as they dropped, slowly spinning them in a circle giving them a panoramic view of the cove from the inside. As they descended, they began to pass the layers of ropes, walkways and suspended platforms they'd seen from above. A few people waved. Most ignored them. It looked like they were in the process of hoisting a salvaged mast from one of the ships below.

"Getting off here?" a voice called from below.

It took a moment for them to realize the voice was talking to them. Will answered. "We're looking for whoever runs the ship repairs."

A waving flag came into view, and a one-armed Nivalese man peered at them as they came to a stop in front of him. He sat in a deck chair next to a small table, complete with a shade umbrella. His whole set up was nailed down to the slightly tilted hanging platform he worked from. "New fish, eh?" he asked.

Will nodded. "First time here."

"How'dja get up top?" the dark skinned man asked, seeming more curious than inquisitorial.

"Our ship is beached around the curve of the island. We came in through the jungle," Will explained.

The man looked impressed. "No easy trek, that," he grinned. "Be wanting to talk to Shady, you."

Will suddenly felt like the blood was being drained from his body. "Right. That's who we're looking for. Point the way?"

The man pointed down and across the cove. "One stop down, across the bridge to the craneworks, then take the big bridge to the red house. Ask there."

"Thanks," Will said.

"Good luck, new fish," the dark man grinned. He waved his flag and they started descending again.

"The last time I saw that look, you'd seen an actual ghost," Jack said once their guide was out of sight. "What's going on?"

Will was concerned, and made no effort to hide it. "We're in Shady's Cove."

"I take it, that's bad?" Jack asked.

"Well, it's a place I've always managed to avoid before now, and I live in Bastard's Bay," Will said pointedly.

Jack checked her weapons, making sure none of them were hanging wrong or too tight in their sheaths and holsters. "Right. Bad."

Will looked down at the ships in the cove with new understanding. "This place has been something of an open secret for at least twenty years. It's supposedly an independent drydock and shipyard, that specializes in salvage, but the reputation is, they'll take any coin, don't ask questions, and don't keep records. So a lot of their business is from pirates looking to flip stolen ships, or dodge a bounty."

"Why does the empire tolerate that?" Jack asked.

Will shrugged. "We aren't in imperial waters. They've tried to deal with this place, but decided it wasn't worth the trouble."

"That doesn't sound like the Imperial Navy I know," Jack said. "This place doesn't look terribly well defended. Two or three patrol ships could seize the place in a day."

"Sure, but they won't," Will said. "The story is that a small fleet of patrol ships decided to cast a net for pirates. They set up a loose blockade and started inspecting every ship that came to or from this place. That lasted about a month before the Malaharan navy showed up. Things got very tense, and the Empire decided it wasn't worth war with Malahara to catch occasional pirates. I never heard why the Malaharans got involved, but it's clear that they like this place working how it is."

"Alright. That's a bit concerning, but not nearly enough to worry you," Jack said. "What's the rest?"

"Captain Banton died here," Will said.

Jack shook her head. "Sounds familiar, but I can't place the name."

"How have you spent half your life sailing about and still don't know any sea stories?" Will asked wryly.

"I prefer history to gossip," Jack countered. They drifted idly downward, gently spinning through the net of ropes and walkways. "Tell your story."

"Captain Banton was an Imperial hero. He won the Cannonade Regatta twice, and earned the Warden's Star defending Corsa."

"Oh, of course! I remember him. I think I met him once as a child," Jack said with a small laugh. "Didn't he end up being court martialed?"

"Yes. It was political bullshit. He pissed off someone he shouldn't have and ended up on trial. His name was eventually cleared but by then he was fed up, so he resigned his commission and went into business for himself. He took most of the men under his command with him. I'm pretty sure they were deserters, but no one was going to cross Banton to bring them in. He had at three ships crewed with former Dragoons, and was fast to earn himself a reputation as a privateer. When he was around, pirates made themselves scarce. The Freebooters decided he was bad for business and formed a small armada to take him down. He sank eight of them before the rest ran off. One of Banton's ships went back to the mainland to collect the bounty on the Freebooters they'd sunk, and the other two went here for repairs. No one knows what happened after that. Banton, two whole crews of soldiers, and both ships, just vanished without a trace."

"Alright, that sounds like it's at least partially history," Jack admitted.

Will shrugged with one shoulder. "That's usually how sea stories go."

"Stopping?" Came a voice from below them.

"Yes," Will called back.

A gaff hook reached up over the edge of the platform and hooked one of the support ropes. The whole platform swayed as the person below them tugged them onto a slightly different trajectory. As their descent slowed, a large woman in a floppy hat came into view. She put away her hook and waved her yellow flag. As the lift came to a stop on the platform the woman stood on, she said "Mind the gap," and took a drink off a large jar.

Will took a careful step forward, checking for stability, and saw that there was a sizable hole in the platform they'd come to rest on where the boards had rotted away. A single fresh plank had been nailed across it. He gave Jack a concerned look and stepped off the lift, going wide around the broken patch.

"Thank you," Jack said to the woman as she followed Will carefully.

"Happy to help, dearie," the woman said with a happy smile full of pitted teeth.

The platform they found themselves on had three rope bridges that left it, but only one went to the large platform hanging in the center of the tangle. The bridge planks were sturdy, but had sizable gaps between them, and it was long enough that there was an uncomfortable amount of sway. They held the rope rails and stepped from board to board warily. The whole thing bounced and rocked as they crossed. Twice they had to pass people coming from the other direction, requiring an awkward balancing act to rotate around and past each other. The workers looked at them a little oddly, noting their nerves, but said nothing but grunted greetings.

Once they'd traversed the dangerously swaying bridge, they found themselves at the edge of the large central platform they'd seen from above. It was round, and suspended by massive chains All around the perimeter were more swinging crane arms like the one that held the lift. Will felt like he was stepping onto the back of a giant spider at the center of its web. All around them, people were working, yelling, hauling lines, pointing. Of the edge nearest to them, men in lowered baskets were wrapping ropes around the hoisted mast they'd seen earlier.

"What are they doing?" Jack asked.

"No idea," Will answered. "I don't feel like drawing attention to ourselves, so let's not ask."

"That looks like the red building we're supposed to head to," Jack said, nodding to the sloped side of the cove.

It stuck out against the makeshift structures just by virtue of being painted all one color. Getting there seemed easy enough. Another large rope bridge went straight to it. Will started walking, trying to avoid as many people as possible. Jack got a few lascivious leers as they passed, but for the most part the work crews ignored them. The platform was surprisingly stable. At the center of it they passed a large dusky skinned man with a ruddy face and a beard like a bristle brush who stood at a table covered in weighted down papers screaming at the group in front of him.

One of his underlings replied in a way the angry man clearly didn't like, and his meaty hand snapped out, hooked the smaller man behind the head and slammed his face into the table. Then the bearded man wrenched the dazed man back up by the hair and roughly dragged him towards the edge. The smaller man tried to protest and even started fighting back, but only got a fist in the ear for his troubles. At the edge of the platform, the big man stood the smaller one up straight, planted his foot on the other man's ass, and kicked him screaming into empty sky.

All over the cove, work crews stopped and watched as the man plummeted. His fall carried him into a rope that turned his scream into a strangled gasp and sent him cartwheeling the rest of the way down like a ragdoll. The onlookers only winced or laughed. After they heard the splash they all went back to what they'd been doing like it had never happened.

"How high up are we?" Will asked Jack as they continued walking.

"Seventy feet?" Jack guessed. "Survivable, I think."

"Depends on how he hit the water," Will said with a sympathetic wince. "After catching that line..." Will shook his head and didn't bother finishing his thought. "What was all that about anyway?"

"I didn't catch it all," Jack said. "The big one was yelling about how the ropes had gotten crossed. He did not seem to like the explanation."

Will scanned the intricate rigging all around them. "I can see how that would be a problem here."

"And I can see why this place has you worried," Jack admitted. "Let's try to be quick."

The next bridge was built right off the side of one of the large chains holding up the crane platform, so it wasn't nearly as unstable as the last, and it was wide enough that passing people wasn't an issue. The far side connected to a wide switchback carved into the slope where the chain was anchored by a succession of massive lag bolts that had been driven right into the stone. A quaint and very out of place wooden footbridge arched over the giant chain to let people on the ledge avoid having to climb over it as they passed. It was coated with faded whitewash and decorated with small painted flowers.