Chapter 2 #2
Bruno wiped the sweat from his brow and nodded.
Monsieur Durand, fatherly as he was, often asked Bruno to walk the other tavern maids home at night for safety.
Going down to the docks with Nia would be no different.
They said nothing as they hurried down the street, the night air almost as stifling as the busy tavern had been.
There were many things she hated in this life, but she hated sweating most of all.
It was her eternal struggle that both her job and her favorite pastime involved a lot of it.
She couldn’t imagine how it must have felt for Bruno to stand by the roaring bread ovens all day.
Bruno’s large hand touched her waist to keep her from stepping in the path of a wagon as they came within sight of the harbor.
His fingertips pressed to the links of the silver waist chain through her bodice only briefly.
When his hand retreated, Nia touched the same spot.
It was a habit now, double-checking the waist chain was still there even though it had no reason not to be.
She never went anywhere without it and its tiny silver key, her most prized possession.
Salty wind off the harbor lifted her spirits as they approached berth forty-four.
Visiting the docks usually made her melancholy.
She wished she could throw herself into the surf and swim away back to her old life.
Merely touching the water would have dire consequences now.
So she avoided going near it if she could.
It was too tempting. Even the sea breeze wafting up to the inn made the longing so unbearable some days that she considered just walking inland until the sea was nothing but a distant memory of the one thing she could no longer have.
But today, the promise of a reward kept those feelings at bay. She stepped confidently onto the wooden dock over the lapping waves, with the hulking and silent form of Bruno trailing behind. This would take but a moment. She would be back on solid ground again before anything could happen.
The docks were busy with the first arrivals of spring after a long and arduous winter.
Out at anchor, several ships sat with their decks shrouded beneath white canvas tents, no doubt repairing damage from the last dregs of winter storms that had rolled through only a week before.
There was no sign of those now; the fickle weather had decided to skip its usual gentle spring blush in favor of full summer heat.
A small, Yarenen style ship sat at anchor in berth forty-four. Its fanlike sails unfurled, and the crew bustled over the deck, preparing for departure.
Bruno hung back, looking uncharacteristically nervous as Nia hailed one of the sailors.
“I’m here to see Sarah. I was told she has a delivery for me.”
The man told her to wait, then disappeared belowdecks. Presently, he returned with a tall, dark-skinned Yarenen woman carrying a wooden box. She strode down the gangway and stopped before Nia.
“You’re Nia?” The woman’s brown eyes swept her from head to toe.
“I am.” Nia did the same, letting her eyes wander over this stranger.
The woman stood on the end of the gangplank, furthering the gap between their heights.
She was generously proportioned—not as curvy as Nia herself, but more muscled from her life at sea.
Loose red trousers were tucked into knee-high black boots, and a sleeveless white top showed off both her generous cleavage and muscle-corded arms. A small gold ring studded one nostril, matching the ones in her ears.
She held herself with a self-assurance that spoke to both power and confidence.
This was not a simple Yarenen merchant as she seemed. This was a pirate.
Nia smiled up at her. No wonder the Durands had both thought this woman was another of Nia’s paramours. She was gorgeous, and Nia had a penchant for rogues.
“I hear you have a package for me.”
The woman handed over the light colored wooden box with peach blossoms carved into the lid. A piece of parchment tied to the latch with a pink ribbon fluttered in the warm breeze. Nia tucked the box under her arm and flipped the card over.
Open alone
-JL
JL? Nia bit her lip, riffling through her memory for a fling with those initials, but came up empty.
“Who’s JL?” she asked the pirate, who watched her closely.
The pirate’s lips parted to answer, but a shout interrupted. A unit of Talvan navy soldiers sprinted down the docks.
“Shit,” the pirate said under her breath. “You better go before—”
BOOM!
Every ship in the harbor shivered with the force of the explosion.
Nia ducked instinctively, bringing the beautiful box over her head as a shield.
An old, familiar panic spiked through her gut, but she forced herself to look out to the harbor, trying to parse the source of the threat.
The tent-shrouded ships, which she had assumed were undergoing repair, had abandoned their coverings to reveal wooden catapults, their flaming payloads lighting the night like a meteor shower.
Was Roseforte under attack? It was Talva’s best stronghold in the south, one of the main ports the Talvan Empire used to deploy ships to Souna and the Sunrise Sea.
Who would dare attack them? The soldiers from earlier hadn’t been coming for the pirates; they’d seen something wrong before the first projectiles flew.
Now the docks swarmed with soldiers and sailors deploying navy ships from their resting places around the sides of the harbor.
The attacking ships weren’t large enough to be warships, and if they flew any colors, Nia couldn’t see them in the dark.
Marra wouldn’t have sent ships to attack Talva directly, would they?
Nia didn’t know much about politics, but even she knew a direct attack between the two empires would ignite the cold war they’d been locked in for decades.
They preferred to play out their wars with the game pieces of their colonies.
They didn’t put their own mainland citizens in danger, only those they had subjugated.
Maybe the Nanadie rebels had finally gathered enough resources to launch a proper rebellion?
“We’re under attack!” a soldier yelled, dislodging Nia from her reverie. They’d made it to berth forty-four, half of them splitting off toward the next ship along the dock. Another flaming projectile arched through the night, trailing embers and crashing into a ship anchored not far away.
The docks sprang into action like a kicked anthill, soldiers and civilians alike either arming themselves, or running for safety in the direction of the fort that crowned the hill.
Nia scrambled a few feet toward solid ground, Bruno already turning to flee, intending to run like the rest of them.
She had to make it back to the inn and warn the Durands to get to the fort where they could hunker down and wait it out.
Distantly, she heard shouts of “Get down!” along the pier, but the meaning didn’t register until the world exploded around her.
Breath punched out of her as she hit the dock hard.
The force of the explosion quaked the pier as rock and fire crashed down at the entrance to berth forty-four, obliterating the soldiers and the dock beneath them.
Despite the damp, the wood caught immediately, blazing between her and safety.
Nia sat up, still clutching the box to her chest. Where was Bruno?
She couldn’t see him past the columns of thick black smoke already engulfing the docks.
A hand closed around her upper arm, and she looked up in a daze to see the pirate woman. The pirate said something, but Nia couldn’t make it out over the ringing in her ears. The pirate shouted louder, then hooked her arms beneath Nia’s armpits and hauled her toward the ship.
“Wait,” Nia gasped, struggling out of the pirate’s grip and nearly falling as her own full weight threatened the integrity of her shaking legs.
“We gotta go!” the pirate shouted over the roar of fire and the ringing in Nia’s ears. Tongues of flame crept along the wooden planks between them and solid ground.
“But…” She had to get to the Durands; she had to find Bruno and make sure he was alright. She could not set foot on a ship. Even now, she already felt the creep of imminent death along her skin from where seawater had splattered her.
“Don’t be stupid,” the pirate growled. Behind her, the crew cast away the lines securing their ship to the docks. One of the crew shouted something at them. “What are you gonna do? Swim for it?” The pirate grabbed Nia’s arm again. “We’ll drop you off at the next port, I promise.”
That wasn’t really the problem. She could hold her own with sailors, even pirates. The problem was the sea. She couldn’t leave the mainland.
When Nia just stared at her dumbly, the pirate let out an exasperated growl and began pulling her up the gangplank.
“Wait,” Nia gasped. “I can’t, I…” The pirate ignored her, hauled Nia onto the ship with little ceremony, and began issuing orders as pirates pulled up the gangplank behind them.
Nia’s eyes filled with tears. So this was it. This was how she was going to die, killed by the thing she loved the most, the sea she couldn’t even touch.
The pirate shoved her into a corner by the rail where she would be out of the way. Her peach-colored skirts puffed up around her, and Nia curled into a ball around the mysterious box.
It would start with heart palpitations, and she would get dizzy, then…She hoped she would pass out before the pain started. Before the prickle of a thousand needles made her feel like she was being flayed alive. Maybe it would be like dying in her sleep.