After a couple days in the air comes one of Mal's familiar sleepless nights. Gunny only lets him take one of her watches, so he gets a break around dawn. In that quiet moment, he decides to take the time to tend to his leg. It's not the only thing that deserves his attention, but it's always at the top of his list. He'll feel it first if he lets it get neglected. After some rummaging in his chest, he pulls out a keyring with a few very small keys on it and flips through them for the one he's actually looking for. He props his foot up on the chest so that it's close enough for him to find the miniature keyhole. He's just about to unlock it when he hears Gunny's shout from the deck above him.
"Mal! Blacksails!"
What is with all these extra blacksails about? Mal wonders, hurriedly putting away the keys. Then he scoops up his second set of pistols. When dealing with people, looking the least intimidating an elf can look is a decent strategy, but when dealing with blacksails, all he's worried about is not dying. And potentially getting away with his ship intact.
There's a knock on his door and someone timidly calls his name through it. "Mal? What's going on?"
Mal sighs as he crosses the room, offering a brief but faithless prayer to save their sorry skins. He vaguely regrets letting Alice back on board — or perhaps just leaving after nightfall, despite it being common for them. And he can't help laying some of the blame for it on Alice, since the blacksails haven't troubled them any in months. Then again, he hasn't been out this way in a while. Regardless, worrying about why the blacksails are here won't stop them from being here.
Mal opens the door a bit roughly and Alice is actually a bit startled to see him standing there with two pistols strapped across his chest for easy access. She's sure that hasn't changed the fact that he's also wearing one on his hip, as per usual. But somehow he looks quite a bit more intimidating like this — coat flapping and metal glinting and—
"Do you know what blacksails are?" he asks.
"Everyone knows what blacksails are," Alice says indignantly. "I mean, who hasn't heard the ghost stories about the mutant creatures who never sleep and who will hunt you down and never rest until they've killed you if you take anything that's theirs? They're just stories, but—"
"They aren't stories," Mal says, a bit too darkly, perhaps. But the words are already out and he can't take them back. "They're quite real. And Gunny's spotted some one the horizon.'
"They're not real," Alice says. "They're just pirates, or—"
Mal shrug. "Come up and see for yourself. But don't come up unarmed."
Alice isn't, anyway. But somehow, given the amount of weaponry now attached to Mal's person, she feels under-armed, which is a different matter entirely. "What do you want me to do?" she asks.
"Just stay out of the way. And, if I say duck, for gods' sake, duck."
Alice isn't entirely sure why she'd have to agree to that, but she nods. Then she lets Mal lead the way up to the deck.
"Gunny?"
"Blacksails two points to starboard," Gunny says. "They're a bit of a ways off — only saw their dark sails against the horizon. But — I think they're coming this way."
"You haven't taken anything of theirs, have you?" Alice asks.
"You're the thief," Gunny says.
"Hey! I'm not a thief! I just... use other people's money to finance my hobbies."
"And that's not stealing?"
YOU ARE READING
A Trip To Tuanaki
Adventure(Adult Language) Alice has been looking for her father for four long years. She's running out of leads, but she has good authority that this last one is the real thing, and it has her bound for Tuanaki. When she charters the Nameless, all she's look...
