A Bright and Shiny Life

Sarah knocks loudly on the door.

“Are you illiterate!?” A voice shouts from within.

“Oh, come on!” I shout back. “If you had combat spells you would have used them in the fighting. Besides, I already divined you’re pure utility.”

“You did?... I mean, that’s just what I tricked your divination to say… Ha. Ha. Ha.” He doesn’t laugh, he just says the word ha with a delay between them.

“Listen, I have a personal shield up and am standing out of the way. Our squire is going to kick this door in. If she gets blown up by a trap, I am just going to burn everything in there. If she doesn’t, then she is just going to kill you if you don’t open up. Okay?”

No answer.

“Three… two…”

The door opens.

“All right, no need to be mean about it.” A slightly chubby boy says, coming out of the room.

I shove him back into the room with my dagger to his throat. Sarah follows with her sword likewise pointed over my shoulder.

“What spells do you know?” I ask.

“J-just some weather stuff. Wind change, cloud shape, and some divinations. My grimoire is over there. It doesn’t have anything dangerous.”

“Huh huh.” I say, flipping through the book. It’s mostly as he says. Just utility spells that focus on sailing: water purification, cloud shape, wind stream, fire extinguisher, fish beacon, water breathing, buoyancy. There is an advanced spell that conjures a lightning storm and then directs the bolts, but I doubt someone his age has learned it, and it wouldn’t help him here.

“How do you communicate with your other boats over the horizon?” I ask.

“The cloud shaping. I alter a cloud in the distance into one of several shapes. It doesn’t look like anything suspicious, but we know what it means.”

“All right Sarah, give him the speech.”

She smirks as she sheaths her sword. “Good day sir or madam, you are guilty of piracy. You have the opportunity to not die. By working to aid the crew you victimized you may earn a commuting of your sentence. The normal sentence for piracy is death of personality.”

The boy blanches so I chime in. “And by working with us we mean signalling your other ship to move away from our route.”

“What other ship? You lured our other ship into a bunch of rocks.”

“Your other other ship. The one you have cutting us off…” I shove him towards the map he has laying on a table and point at their last location, “here.”

He blanches again, obviously having hoped we hadn’t divined it.

“In fact,” I continue, “don’t call it off. Tell it to go there.” I point to another spot.

“That’s where the storm’s going!” He says.

“Yes.” I say.

“…Fine. It’ll take a couple of hours to send the message though. It takes longer since they’re farther away.”

“By the way, how did you know to track us?” Sarah asks.

“Spies! What did you think?” He says condescendingly.

Sarah and I look at each other and smile, then hand him a sheet of paper with a pen.

“…Fine. I don’t know all their names though.”

“I’m sure your memory will improve shortly.” I say and he winces. “You must have quite the network to find out about this.”

“Yeah, all for nothing. (sigh) To think I was so close to finally learning combat spells.”

My blood goes cold. “You know what the orb is?”

He looks between us then smirks. “What? You don’t? Oh, that’s hysterical.”

“Cut the crap. Tell us.” I say, pressing the dagger to his throat again.

“H­­-hey easy. I’ll tell you. No reason not to. It’s a library. Thousands of spells, lots of really powerful ones too.”

“I don’t get it.” Sarah says. “That’s nice, but the empire has tons of Grimoires. It doesn’t seem like something that big would even be saving space.”

But my blood remains cold. “It’s a bargaining chip.” I half whisper.

“You get it.” The boy says with a smirk.

Sarah looks to me, and instinctively places a hand on her sword. “What do you mean?” She gulps.

The boy explains. “The world is more willing to allow the wielder to learn the spells in it. Meaning they learn them faster. Which in term acts as a bargaining chip to learn more spells, which can also be boosted by the orb. It’ll turn a mediocre mage like me into an elite in a few years. I’ve only heard of a few like it.”

“The empire has about a dozen ‘chips’ publicly known,” I add, “all of them owned by either the imperial family or major houses. A few minor houses ascended to great houses after acquiring one… why the fuck didn’t the mage who owns it travel with it?”

“They received an urgent imperial summons that required them and their retinue to travel ahead. We suspect the empress, or one of the potential heirs, didn’t want them to ascend, and so created a situation where it might be vulnerable to acquisition. I figured I’d learn a few things from it, then go and sell it for a pardon and court position.”

I nod. Yeah, it’d be worth at least that much. If I had it, I could easily get into the academy. If I could just study with it until we got to port. Maybe keeping it would be an even better teacher than what I could find at the academy.

“We’re not doing it Malz.” Sarah says, apparently telepathic.

I glance at her, and then back to the boy without moving my head. “Does it work on knights?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

The boy openly looks at me, then to Sarah, and back at me then smiles. “Yeah.”

“The answer is no. It would be stupid.”

“I’m not saying we try to keep it. Just maybe create a situation where we can study it a little before reaching port.”

“What? Lure the captain down here, kill him and say a pirate did it?” She scoffs.

“… I didn’t say it.” I say.

“Good. Because if the captain dies there’ll be an inquiry. The lowest status person will have their mind raked for information, and since we’d be the only witnesses after we killed this guy, that would mean us. Specifically you, since I’m noble related.”

So, we’ll have to make it look like an accident. Maybe trick the captured crew to revolt and do the job for us.

“I said no.” Sarah says, making me suspect her being a disguised mind mage… or that I’m worse at bluffing than I think. Equally likely. “Have you considered that any mage that could hold on to this thing probably trapped the shit out of the crate it’s in? That and if it’s as important as you say it is, then if we just ‘happened to take over the ship’ and went off course, then they’d know and send an entire team of elite mages after us?”

I grimace, having been spoken reason to. I smile, causing her to relax. “Hey, don’t be so tense. I didn’t say we do anything. You’re just thinking for me it seems.”

She looks at me sceptically. “You won’t try to steal the orb?’

“Not if you don’t.” I shrug.

She nods, then focuses on the boy who has been inching away while we were distracted.

He squeaks having been caught. “Oh, come on, it wouldn’t have killed you to kill each other, would it?”

We both stare at him witheringly.

I speak, gesturing with my dagger. “All right. Where’s the good stuff?” He looks at me innocently. “Treasure, magic items, valuables.”

“… We have a vault… I have a key.” He rummages through some paper, causing us both to renew our weapons’ place by his throat until he produces a rusty key.

“What was your role on the ship that you had a key?” Sarah asks.

“Oh me? Just one of the crew.”

“Right.”

“No, it’s true. I had a key because I had to take stuff out a lot to study the magic items.” He says as he leads the way. “I’m Remey, by the way. Nice to meet you.”

We get to the vault without being attacked, though ‘vault’ is a glorious word for a door with an iron grate in front.

“All right. I’ll open it, and you stay back with him. I have my shield so I should be fine. But if there are any traps, kill him.” I say.

“You’re so suspicious.” Remey says. “They’re no traps. We’re an honest ship. No thieves.”

I roll my eyes and open the door and am assaulted by the shine. Mostly silver with a good amount of copper. Some gold. There’s a shelf with magic items, jewellery and a few expensive looking books.

“Nice.” I say looking over a magic bracelet.

“I should inform you that taking anything before it can be tallied up would invalidate our verbal agreement to receive extra.” Sarah says, coming in behind me.

I roll my eyes. “You’re such a solicitor.”

“What, you think they won’t interrogate the crew for what items are supposed to be in here?” She says.

I squirm a little, fighting the sound reasoning before putting it back.

“You’re a solicitor?” Remey half laughs.

“In training, formerly.” Sarah says tersely.

“Hey, that's great!” Remey says. “Did I mention how pretty you are? Maybe we should get together in private and umm… go over my defence?”

She sighs. “The offer to work to commute your sentence in exchange for work is binding under imperial naval law. It’s a standard deal put in place to aid commerce in these situations. There isn’t a case for you to defend. By agreeing to work for us in exchange for the commuting you have already pleaded guilty.”

“Yeah, but hey, you didn’t spell it out for me beforehand. I mean, it’s not like you’ve actually seen me do anything illegal have you? I didn’t do any fighting. You didn’t see me cast any spells to capture your vessel. I’m just a kid caught up in a bad situation. I didn’t even know this was a pirate ship when I signed up. Why would I become a pirate when I don’t even know any combat spells?!”

“You tracked our ship.” I say.

“Hey, it’s not illegal to divine ship positions.”

I look to Sarah who shakes her head no. “Yeah, but you told pirates about the results of your divination.” I say.

“I’m free to tell anyone I like about my divinations, aren’t I?”

“Not if it’s with the intent to rob, right? Isn’t that conspiracy or something?”

Sarah makes a wishy-washy motion. “Not without establishing quid pro quo. It’s highly likely that it happened, but it’s possible that all the witnesses are dead.”

“Yeah! All the witnesses are dead!” He says with an excited smile.

I stare at him drolly. “Innocent people don’t get excited about dead witnesses. Besides, you facilitated communication for a criminal enterprise.”

“That was just me talking about stuff. You know, shooting the shit. Sure, you guys might of come up, but that falls under no ‘quiz per troll’ right? You’d have to establish that the cloud talk was solely for criminal stuff, right? Which you can’t because you have to prove that I never used the system for non-criminal outcomes which would be a negative. And every mage knows you can’t prove a negative. You’d have to observe all communications made with it, but then you’d have to observe one more thing, being that no more communications were made. But you can’t do that, now can ya?”

My exasperation follows his increasing excitement. “How can you mess up ‘quid pro quo’ so badly while tying in that reference in the same thought?” I say rubbing my eyes, then freezing with the thought that this entire thing might be a con to invoke that exact gesture so he can attack as my eyes are closed. It would make about as much sense as him seriously trying to argue this.

Sarah smiles at my frustration and shrugs. “I mean, it probably won’t work, but he might have enough arguments to warrant a separate trial. Though I should warn you that a separate trial means separate sentencing. Especially if you are claiming that our offer to commute your sentence is void due to not understanding that it necessitates pleading guilty. If you go through with this, you might be the only one who receives the maximum penalty of death of personality.”

“Yeah, but you’ll help smooth out all the issues, right? Since I’m being so helpful.”

“You should do it.” I say before she has a chance to reject. “Have a chance to get back to law a little. Besides, didn’t you say you preferred mages?” I add to get back at her not answering about telling Kalen.

She glares at me while Remey smiles hopefully.

“Fine. I should be the one guarding you anyways. But you’ll need to be extra helpful. Any other stashes we should know about? On board or otherwise?”

“Oh yeah, sure. I’ll show you where the cove is. It’s on an island with a couple hundred pirates planting food to maintain the fleet. But we only have one more boat and I’d say it’s fifty-fifty them surviving the storm. You could probably hire a bunch more thugs and raid it easy. Very few real fighters, lots of gold.”

“Deal.” She sighs, and we go back to his room with the maps.

“Hey, I was wondering what exactly did our agreement with the captain entail?” I say as we go.

“… Well, it was to a certain split of the treasure.” She says after thinking.

“And what is treasure exactly? Legally?”

“… A definition that is occasionally used is a collection of objects whose value is primarily derived from tradability rather than immediate utility.”

“So, any of the weapons laying on deck wouldn’t count as treasure due to having greater utility value than trade value?” I ask.

“…Yeah.”

“Meaning I could take some without invalidating the agreement to treasure?”

“To a limit. Highly ornate or magic weapons would be ambiguous, and you can only take what you can immediately use.”

“What about his grimoire? The value is clearly in the immediate utility of learning magic.”

“Hey! I need that!” Remey shouts.

“I’ll let you make a copy.” I say.

“Why don't I keep it, and you make a copy?”

“Because… I’m not a prisoner?”

He grumbles.

Sarah speaks. “Well, I suppose it’s not as absurd of an argument as some we heard today.” She looks to Remey who feigns offence. “At worst they would just make you pay the value of the book if it’s contended, rather than just invalidating the whole agreement as taking stuff from the vault would. However, even if you’re correct that it’s not treasure, then it would just fall under normal distribution rules.

“Normally weapons and mundane items of base materials aren’t counted just because the accounting is a pain, but strictly speaking the value of the weapons are estimated and placed in the distribution. But the crew might take weapons and tools for their personal use while working for the ship and then keep them without it coming from their share due to their labour imparting a greater claim of ownership. Maybe the Grimoire might fall under that, maybe not. Might as well try it since the fines for it not working aren’t excessive.”

“What about the other books he has in there, and the maps?” I ask.

“Okay, now you’re just pushing your luck.”

“But surely I’ll be using the maps in my labour for the ship, no?”

She sighs. “Alright. How about this? I’ll cover you if you take them, but you’ll only keep the grimoire and like one other book. The rest you hand over to the ship once you leave. It’s a good plan. You’ll say you’re just using them, and then forget to hand a few things over. Good?”

I nod in agreement. I end up taking the grimoire and a dedicated divination book to my room hidden in a bunch of maps and the cloud codebook. The captain doesn’t say anything.

We spend the next hour clearing the deck of bodies and sorting the wounded. The captain orders that the pirate crew members who can move be watched under crossbow on our boat while we check for survivors on the pirate ship. Those who are wounded lightly enough to walk to our boat we offer the deal. Anyone who can’t get up, or is still blinded by the mirror, we kill and toss overboard.

The captain justifies this by saying that if they’re wounded enough to be unconscious then they will likely need my berries to be saved, and I should only use those on our crew. Moreover, keeping wounded prisoners would require more guards, and we don’t have enough food to feed pirates who can’t work. Besides, if they don’t work then they’ll just be executed when we reach port anyways.

Of course, the execution would be a death of personality, turning them into near mindless workers for a while before having a non-violent personality constructed in the ruins of the self, which some say is preferable. We would be paid an added bounty for bringing them in alive to this fate, but I agree that we simply don’t have enough food to keep them all. I do manage to convince the captain to keep a couple of the blind out of curiosity if the berries can heal seared retinas. I take the most damaged ones just to make sure they wouldn’t recover on their own.

There is a wounded archer on the poop deck that I come across away from anyone else. Everyone on our boat is watching the prisoners, and everyone on this one is on the main deck. I could offer them to Anar and dump them over with no one noticing.

My skin itches. It’s been four days since my last sacrifice. This would likely last me until I reach port. I don’t even need to cut myself, just use the magic dagger and apply the runes, cut the throat and push them over.

My breathing intensifies. The boat rocks as I stare at them…

I slit their throat without offering them and dump them over. I don’t even know why. It’s not because I don’t want to, but almost out of a perverse desire to prove that I don’t have to. That when I scratch my skin off in my sleep, I’ll have the pleasure of knowing I could have stopped it.

I sigh. Well, at least maybe I’ll figure it out.

There are seventeen unwounded pirates, and twenty-nine ambulatory wounded. We split them onto the two boats and have them do all the work while our crew, armed at all times, overlook them from the aftcastles. We board up the deck entrances to the castles and lift up the ladders so none of the captive crew can climb up. The only entrance to the inside of the castle is a hatch on the roof with a ladder.

My room, the guards’ and the captain’s are all in the aft castle. However, the galley and the food supply are below decks and only accessible from the prisoner area. We have no other area to safely cook food, so the cook has to stay there armed and with two guards.

Splitting our crew among the boats we have seven crew each, four with bows overlooking from the aft castle and three guarding the kitchens. In addition, on our boat we have myself, Sarah, and the captain. On the other we have Martin and Kalen.

We object about the captain putting such a greater force on our boat, especially since Kalen is severely injured and won’t fully regenerate for several days. But the captain is more worried about his own safety than losing the crew on the bounty ship. He does agree to send three more crew over to the other ship, while keeping all of our severely wounded besides Kalen on our ship for me to treat and hopefully recover to the point that they can help guard.

Remey is also on our boat, and helps greatly, first by sending the false cloud to send the last ship to the storm, and then by using his wind magic to boost the speed of both ships.

At night we tally everything we took from the pirate vessel. They had very little food, their massive crew having eaten nearly everything during the chase. We have extra, and the berries will stretch it, but things will still be tight. Our crew goes to three quarters rations while the captives go to half. At the very least this will make them less capable in any uprising.

The loot will be distributed when we reach port after we sell the jewellery and pay a small tax, but from the look of it my share will be in the thousands.

Sarah laughs at the riches soon to be bestowed on us. “It’s enough to make you want to tackle the last one, isn’t it?”

I smile at getting to be the voice of reason for once today. “With us being out of ammo and most of our crew being pirates? Are you insane?”

“Yeah, but they’ll be damaged from the storm you sent them into, and maybe we can pretend we were captured and trick them into docking.”

“The captives would mutiny and warn them.”

“We could lock them up.”

“We’d still need to post guards, and we don’t have enough crew left to both guard them and operate the ships to get close.”

“Some of our wounded might be better from your berries by the time we reach them.”

“Not likely.”

Ultimately the captain vetoes going after them, so we settle down to rest after a hard day fighting and treating wounded.

I start itching as I go to sleep, but I balance it with another hunger. I swear by Anar’s orchards I will get the orb.