Salveran Tides Ch. 04

Chapter Four: Port Corrin

The stewards of Port Corrin are an anomaly in the larger scope of the Salveran Main. A matriarchal household as opposed to the norm, the Corrins are a dynasty shrouded in much rumor and hearsay, though much of it is no doubt seeded by dissenters who seek to undermine their authority. Liblac Corrin, current matriarch of the house, has spread their influence far and wide, though it had not been without consequence. Her valiant son Denwin was cut down by savages far to the north, a tragic loss far from home. - (Excerpt from the most recent edition of The Guidebook to the Main, penned by famed explorer Tidus Delphine.)

After the storm, night fell, and it was only when the stars were out and the moonlight danced across the eddies that Yesseil felt a semblance of being dry. She'd wrung all the water possible out of her shirt, though she could still feel the film of brine across her skin. It would take a thorough soak in fresh water for the feeling to go away.

A loud splash made her ears prick up. Leona clambered back onto the deck of the cutter, shaking water from her lithe body. She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling the biggest drops out with smooth motions. Unsure as she was about the Altaean, Yesseil had to admit that the royal cut quite the stunning figure. She was lithe and strong, her skin a shimmering coat of aquamarine scales, her hair dark like the deepest trenches below. With the powerful Tidecaller lance in her hand, she looked every bit a warrior queen.

At least until she moved. There was a hesitancy to the way she walked, as if she wasn't entirely sure of what she should be doing. It wasn't that she was tripping over herself or stumbling. There was just an innate timidness to her gait. Which was surprising, considering that the mermaid had butted heads with Scarlet and still had hers attached to her shoulders.

"There's nothing else down there, far as I can tell," she said to Scarlet, who was leaning against the tiller. "At least not in the area around us."

"Bugger." Scarlet tapped her fingers on the wooden spar. "Well, not much else for it. Looks like we're doing this old-fashioned way."

"By which you mean?"

"By the seat of our pants, making it up as we go along." Scarlet beamed.

Leona sighed, her shoulders slumping. "All the swimming has left me exhausted. I need to rest."

"Take belowdecks, neither of us will bother you there." Scarlet snickered. "And we'll keep the noise to a minimum tonight, promise. Voracious as my appetite is, even I'm knackered from steering through that storm."

Leona nodded, then walked across the deck and slipped below through the open deck hatch. Yesseil straightened up and moved her way towards Scarlet, her fingers sliding along the smooth deck railing. It was different than the ship she'd grown used to, more rough and grainy. Scarlet kept the Lady Sanguine in pristine condition, even after the ship had been damaged heavily during battles. She never spared any expense for her beloved. The ship, after all, was part of a love triangle that also included the ocean.

Scarlet rolled her head as the elf drew close. Yesseil heard several audible clicks from the vertebrae in her upper back. "You look awful," she said.

Scarlet smirked. "Oy, easy, just a little tired is all."

Yesseil inclined her head up the length of the ship. "What are you playing at with her?"

"Hm?"

Yesseil leaned against the stern railing next to Scarlet, close enough that their thighs touched. "You're always plotting something. She may not know it yet, but I do."

Scarlet chuckled. "You have the benefit of experience."

"Aye. For better and for worse. So tell me."

Scarlet looked up at the stars, and made a slight alteration to their course with a nudge of the tiller. "To be quite honest, I really am kind of winging this one. I still don't know much about Leona, beyond her apparent royalty and the fact that with that lance in her hands she could be a real terror. But strangely, she's my secondary concern. My main priority is rescuing Lexaeus, and then getting the Lady back. So long as she keeps that tide stick pointed at anyone but us, I'm not going to worry about her too much."

Yesseil blinked. "That seems a little too open, even for you."

"Does it? Perhaps." Scarlet's mouth was a flat line. "I'm not one who really believes in things like fate, Yesseil. I don't think it's happenstance that the two of us wound up on the same island at the same time."

"Who could have arranged such a thing?"

"Search me. I don't see much point in aimless guessing when we know next to nothing. The answer will likely slap us in the face at some point. Knowing the life I've lived, probably literally."

The elf giggled. "Good to see you haven't changed."

"I am like the mountain," Scarlet said with a dramatic lilt to her voice. "Unchanging and unbending."

"So what kind of trouble did you get into while I was away?"

"Honestly, things got real boring for a while." Scarlet's eyes grew distant. "Raids, robbery, the usual. Nobody could touch the Sanguine. Nobody could touch us. I guess in a way, it's what led to this whole mess. I'm self-aware enough to admit that."

Yesseil put her hand on Scarlet's shoulder. "What do you mean?"

"I got bored, and because I got bored, I got lax and didn't see Nashor's trap. And now a whole bunch of good men and women are dead because of it." Yesseil felt Scarlet's muscles tense under her fingers as she fought to control her rage. "I'll honor their memory by hanging Nashor's head off the bowsprit, and never getting cocky like that again. It's the least I can do."

Yesseil squeezed her captain's arm. "It won't happen if you slip up again because you're tired. Go sleep, I'll mind the tiller for a few hours."

Scarlet nodded. She took hold of the length of the rope tied to the railing and lashed the tiller in place. "We should be near Port Corrin by midday tomorrow," she said, running her fingers along Yesseil's arm. "Wake me at dawn."

"Aye aye."

As Scarlet walked away, she seemed to grow more human with each step as her exhaustion became more apparent. Her shoulders slumped, her steps became heavier, and her head hung lower. It was as if she was willingly casting away the visage of The Dread Pirate Rydell and just becoming Scarlet again.

It didn't happen often. As much as she had the pirate's trust, Yesseil still only caught a glimpse of the real Scarlet every once in a long time. Even when they were in bed together Scarlet had the persona. The Dread Pirate was immortal, a pirate queen who struck fear wherever she went, could outthink anyone she couldn't outfight and outfight anyone she couldn't outthink. The seas were hers, and may whatever entity you prayed to help you if you earned her wrath.

Meanwhile, Scarlet Rydell was just a woman in her early thirties, as mortal as anyone else sailing the Main. A disgraced Templar, who likely would never be able to put down roots. Her life would be lived on the run, with danger around every corner, the hangman's noose or a Navy bullet always a hair's breadth away. Before she'd left the crew, Yesseil often wondered if Scarlet thought it was always worth it. Now that she was back, it seemed the pirate still hadn't found the answer.

Yesseil sat down with her back against the railing. She reached into the pocket of her tunic and pulled out the elven geometer that she'd carried with her ever since leaving her homeland. It had been the first thing to go in her pocket as her shop burned. The small device of disks and gears had been the first thing she'd made in her father's workshop, a simple tool to tell time and orient yourself towards home. The little bubble of fluid suspended in crystal hadn't moved away from the edge of its confines in several decades. In all likelihood, it never would. Weapons were her passion, and the elves had little need of such things these days. She knew her designs would change the world.

And they would do it, as they always had, in Scarlet's hands.

Scarlet slept like a log until Yesseil woke her up at dawn. The elf took her place in the bunk, rolling herself in the slightly stinky blankets and falling asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Scarlet patted Yesseil's shoulder, then went out onto the deck and knelt down by the hatch to below. In the dim light, she made out Leona sleeping with her back against the mast, her body curled protectively around the Tidecaller. "Like I could use the bloody thing," Scarlet muttered, straightening up. She went to post up by the tiller and blink the sleep from her eyes.

She hadn't been lying to Yesseil the night before. Pirates often dealt in half-truths and outright falsehoods, but Scarlet had spent enough time around the elf that lying to her would've been pointless. Under normal circumstances her mind would already be buzzing like a hornet's nest, plans to exploit their newest acquisition formulating and coalescing into a long-term strategy. Scarlet's reputation as a wild, reckless tempest of a woman was a carefully curated persona. While she wasn't the type to plan every detail of every day, she always had a long-term goal in mind that she worked towards. Making herself out to be someone who just did things had led many an enemy to underestimate her, often fatally so.

But Leona's presence was a true wild card, enough so that even Scarlet was filled with trepidation as to how it would play out on the table. She had no idea how best to employ the mermaid. What was more, she was damn near certain Leona didn't know herself all that well. While she didn't carry herself with the highborn arrogance human nobles did, it was apparent as a rash that she'd led a cloistered life and didn't know the full extent of who she was. There was nobility there obviously, a foolish amount. If their roles had been reversed, Scarlet would have let the cutter be sunk in the storm without a second thought.

However, Leona had been willing to compromise and help them, even though she didn't trust Scarlet and Yesseil. Whether that would lead to betrayal was anyone's guess at this point. Scarlet grinned. Though she didn't know it yet, the mermaid princess had the eddies of a pirate's soul in her. Maybe Scarlet could drop a few rocks in and turn them into ripples, for from ripples came waves.

Port Corrin appeared in the distance a little while later, first as a hazy shape on the horizon that gradually resolved into a large island, many times the size of the tiny spit of land that Scarlet had retrieved Yesseil from. With their destination in sight, Scarlet went and roused the elf, then tromped loudly down the steps to belowdecks.

Her loud footsteps on the wooden planks jolted Leona awake. The mermaid's crystal blue eyes darted around the space, as if she was trying to remember where she was. "How long did I sleep?" she asked, her voice scratchy.

"Most of the night," Scarlet said. "Rouse thyself, Princess, our mission awaits."

Leona picked herself up off the floor. She tapped the butt end of the Tidecaller against the floor below, and the weapon shrank down to a fraction of its normal size with a quiet snik sound. "I'll need something to hold this in," she said. "Is there a harness or something on board I can borrow?"

"We can probably make something happen with some rope," Scarlet said. "Plus we'll need to find you a cloak."

"What for?"

Scarlet pointed in the direction of Port Corrin. "We're going ashore, Princess. Can't have you wandering with your face out. You'll wind up on a street cook's grill faster than you can blink."

Leona's face turned a noticeable lighter shade of blue. "Yes, well, we should prevent that."

Scarlet sliced off a length of rigging rope with her knife and gave it to Leona to make a sling for her lance, while she set about rummaging through the drawers to find something for the mermaid to wear. While there was no cloaks to be had, she did find a shirt and pants several sizes too big, so the trailing ends of the fabric would cover Leona's webbed fingers and toes. Another shirt could be balled up around her head. It would look conspicuous as all hell, but in a crowded port city conspicuous things were on every street corner.

"I look ridiculous," Leona said, her voice muffled by the shirt fabric. Her eyes stared out through the one gap in the fabric, two pinpricks of aquamarine that simmered with irritation.

"Better than having your blue bits hanging out," Scarlet said. Her fingers were slick with black, tarry lantern grease as she ran them through her long, firey hair. It would be a dead giveaway as to who she was, and they'd be mobbed by town guards in seconds if she was recognized. She pulled her slimy hair back, then jammed it up under a wide-brimmed hat she'd found in the back of a drawer. For the finishing touch, she daubed the grease around her eyes, giving them a sunken, hollow look. "This is how we play the game, Princess."

Leona's shirt-swaddled head inclined towards Yesseil. "May I ask why she's not putting on a disguise?"

"Because this is my disguise," Yesseil said. "I'm just the weaponsmith, my face isn't plastered on every Wanted board on the Main like Scarlet's is. We're going to pretend I'm coming to the port on business and you're my assistants."

"We've used this one before on a different island, worked like a charm," Scarlet said, finishing up in the mirror. "It's not for very long though, just to get into port and through the town. Once we find out where Lexaeus is going to be executed we'll go from there."

"And once we save him, we just run back to the ship?" Leona asked. "Won't they know it's ours, though?"

"Not if we're in disguise, Princess, keep up," Scarlet said. "When we disembark we'll be an elven merchant and her assistants. When we come back with the law nipping at our heels we'll be our old selves again."

Leona heaved an irritated sigh, but said nothing more as Scarlet steered them towards the island's inlet that was the proper port part of Port Corrin. A dozen long jetties protruded from the shoreline, with the two in the middle being the longest and each pair growing shorter as they went in either direction. The long middle jetties were reserved for Royal Navy and Flame Church ships, as well as any merchant vessels or privateers that answered directly to the Corrin family. Behind the docks, the bustling port town was alive in the morning sunlight, people moving back and forth along the waterline carrying cargo to be loaded onto the docked vessels or unloaded onto carts to go to the market square in the center of town.

Scarlet's eye, however, was drawn further back, towards the bluffs that overlooked the town where the fort was. It was an easily defensible position, especially with the wide-bore longiron guns that could send a shell from the fort's walls to the edge of the harbor with ease. There was a chance Lexaeaus was to be executed there, which would prove to be a challenge to their rescue efforts.

"Right, ladies, here we go," Scarlet said, steering them towards one of the short jetties. "Leona, keep quiet and let us do the talking."

The mermaid nodded, the oversized garments draped over her body rippling with the motion. Her gaze was transfixed on the town, at the bustle of the port. Had she never seen anything like it before? Then again, Scarlet knew that in all likelihood if she saw what Leona's normal was, she'd be speechless too.

Scarlet steered the cutter alongside the jetty, and Yesseil hopped over the side to tie the small boat off. Scarlet left the tiller and moved to join her on the deck, side eyeing the dockmaster who had started walking towards them. If they could fool him, they were in business.

"State ya business, knife-ear," he rumbled.

Scarlet saw Yesseil bristle at the slur, one hand making a ghost of a motion towards one of the guns hidden on her person. But she caught herself, and turned it into a small half-bow. "Just a merchant," she said, though her tone was forcefully polite. "A representative from a larger conglomerate, on a scouting trip down south."

"Don't see many o' your kind around these parts." The dockmaster scrutinized Scarlet and the heavily-robed Leona. "Funny lookin' assistants you got there."

"Oy, it's honest work," Scarlet said, intentionally masking her high-born lilt with a phlegmy fake accent. "I'll not hear a bad word be spoken about Mistress Altiabaraicaelansvi."

The dockmaster grunted, too simple and backwater to realize that Scarlet had called him a 'fucking dumbass with a whore for a mother.' It was the only phrase she knew in elvish, and she got a lot of mileage out of it. "What's that one's deal?" he asked, gesturing to Leona with his ledger.

"Got a terrible affliction she does," Yesseil said. "Makes her skin burn like paper, took her speech with it too. She likes to work though, so I keep her around."

The dockmaster produced a pen from his pocket and scrawled something on his ledger. "Ten silvers for the day for you, elf."

Scarlet pressed the coins into Yesseil's palm via sleight of hand. The elf then set them on the flat ledger. "We'll not be trouble, sir," she said.

The dockmaster grunted, suitably paid, and wandered back up the jetty. As he did, Yesseil glared daggers at his back. "I may just shoot him on the way back," she muttered.

"I'll help steady your rifle," Scarlet said, patting the small of her back. "Let's go. Leona, stay close, and for fuck's sake don't wander off."

The three women worked their way up the jetty to the shore, dodging dockhands and sailors as they went about their business. When they reached the packed road that ran parallel to the waterline, they turned, walking towards the main avenue that cut through the center of the town. Scarlet's practiced eye flicked around their surroundings, always looking for anything that might be a threat.

As they grew close to the main avenue, she spotted a small wooden platform where men and women wearing white and red robes stood talking to a small crowd. She sneered. What need did the Flame Church have to prosthelytize here? The Corrin family was entwined with the Church like ivy growing over a gazebo.

"...And thus, the Flame saideth, 'warm thine body by me, that you be restored and given the temperance to live a life free of the cold, empty darkness,'" a female Cantor recited, her hands clasped in front of her in a sort of reverant at-ease. "Friends, there is not much time left before we light a sacred fire and cleanse a profound sinner from this earth."

Scarlet pulled on Yesseil's wrist, making the elf stop as the Cantor continued. "For in just a short while, the heretic Anthra Lexaeus will be purged of his sins in fire inside the square just outside the cathedral. Bear witness to it! So that your own transgressions may be scorched clean so that only purity remains."

"Not the fort?" Yesseil muttered.

"This is Lexaeus," Scarlet said. "He killed her son. She'll want to make it a public spectacle, and you can't exactly cram a crowd of onlookers into that fort to watch him burn. We don't have much time."

"Ideas?"

"Let's get there first," Scarlet said. She turned and inclined her head to Leona. "This way, Princess, step lively."

Scarlet and Yesseil took off at a fast walk up the main avenue of Port Corrin. Scarlet kept her head on a swivel as they weaved their way through the people around them. With enough people, a crowd became as tricky to navigate as a wild tide, and Scarlet kept glancing behind her to make sure Leona was still there.

"Scarlet, eyes up," Yesseil said.

Ahead of them, the crowd grew too packed for them to move through. Scarlet stood up on tip-toe, trying to see over the sea of heads in front of her. Far in the distance, she saw the steeple of Port Corrin's cathedral poking up over other buildings, along with a wooden platform out front. "Shit, seems like everyone on the Main turned out for this one," she muttered.