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The hag had given him a name, Omorose, and not much else. This was usually how it went. She’d have one of her goddamned whims, and he’d get marching orders with none of the useful details like who and where. Lars supposed these worldly things became unimportant after so many years spent at the bottom of the sea. At any rate, he’d stopped bothering to ask for elaboration, and instead did his best with his own devices.
It was his own devices that tonight landed him at a table at The Sword-Fish Inn, a neglected little place in a neglected little corner of a neglected little port town. He’d been to this village twice previously. The first was three months ago, when he’d finally tracked down the so-called leader of the band the girl was running with. Strongly preferring an easy job, Lars had met with the man and offered him what he thought was a good sum for her. This had gone over poorly.
His second visit was some weeks ago, when he and his crew rooted out one of the band’s hideaways and stole a half-dozen of them from their beds. Lars lost two of his own men that night, which prompted a week-long period of drinking punctuated by a suicide attempt. Not that he was especially attached to the crewmen—he had a sort of widow’s loyalty to the twelve mates that had gone down with the Judith—it was just that the loss served to remind him of his senseless predicament at the hands of that waterlogged bitch.
At any rate, he’d sobered up and sent word for the troupe’s leadership to meet him at The Sword-Fish to negotiate the return of the captured men. And so he sat his table, now, a bloody steak in front of him and the leader in the chair opposite. Deliberately, he forked a too-big bite into his mouth before answering the accusation just thrown at him. He chewed for a time, apparently serene.
“I won’t kill your men,” he started, his voice thick with the food and his accent. “I’m going to bring them to the Governor and let him kill your men. He’ll flay them alive and put them all in little cages over a big fire.” Using his fork, he drew the invisible scene in the space in front of him. “And they’ll scream and scream and tell the Governor’s men all about you; where you stay, where your caches are, and so on.”
His friend went quiet at that. He didn’t seem to be expecting this kind of dramatic attempt at leverage. This was, of course, because Subira’s crushing will that this be done was a significant factor that the rebel was entirely unaware of. Lars swallowed, finally, continuing. “In that scenario, I think you’d have very few options, and none of them very good. You’d run, maybe? Or all of you could die too, as martyrs? But where would that leave your friends on the plantations?”
After giving his company some time to consider that last remark, he shook his head and went back to eating. “I hate to think about it. Of course, the other scenario has me giving you your men, you giving me the girl, and the Governor getting nothing from either of us.” Quiet, still, except for the scraping of knife against plate. “Did you tell her I came to you to buy her?” He thought not. “What do you say we give her the price and let her decide, hm? Did you bring her along? Have her come down and we’ll talk.”
At first, Omorose and her ilk were lead to believe that the men abducting their brothers were irate slavers that were wise to their schemes, but holistically, they were the opposite. “Pirates,” one of her brothers hissed, “Filthy fucking pirates. Historically, the company had no qualms with pirates. In fact, the two often bartered among each other, but there was never a disturbance this immense.
Abasi, a monstrous Nubian man, was elected as emissary to meet with the abductors. He rode in on a skiff with his younger brother Papasi and a woman whose expression was reminscent of stone. Her skin wasn't nearly as black as that of Abasi and Papasi - it was several shades lighter, dusted in bronze flecks and sun-kissed freckles.
The brothers often frequented the cape town for supplies; the local inn was a place they knew well, along with its whores and ales.
As they commiserated among themselves in their native tongue, Ohm leaned over the lip of the ship, taking with her a make-shift anchor. They steadily approached the strand where they were to mire, well off from the village, but their trek wasn't at all long.
While entreating their "guest", Abasi ordered a flagon of ale to himself; Papasi flanked the door, his glassy black eyes transfixed upon their tormentor. "A threat we've heard many times before," Abasi put in. His voice was thick with the accents of Kush, thicker yet with discontentment. "They will scream, yes. But they do not know your way of speaking. The means in which you wag your tongue is foreign to them. Men from Kush, from Numidia, the flats and the dunes and the white city, they speak the language of God; of Allah. Not of your filth."
Papasi occasionally peered through the doorway, observing patrons as they ambled in and out. There were drunk sailors, half-dressed harlots, nothing that was of note. Not yet, at least.
"You mean the woman."
Abasi grimaced for a moment. He pressed his lips in a hard line, momentarily pensive. "I did just that - I told her. Nothing else. I do not know how you came to know of her and I deign not care." He knew Omorose to be about, likely within an earshot. She'd hang the man if he could for even learning her name, but such audacity would have both of them shipped to the Governor.
"I don't think you know what you're getting yourself into, friend."
Sucking the flavour off his lips, Lars gave his company a brief and lifeless smile. He certainly didn’t know what he was getting himself into. He rarely did, these days, and it wore him down to his nerves. He was a creature of educated guesses, of sure fire, of knowing something about the cards across the table and the man who held them. Anything less felt like throwing shit up a cliff.
And lo, outside of her name and the hopeless kind of men she was in with, Lars knew nothing about the girl. Woman. He had nil on which to base a guess at what to leverage against her. Hence all the madness leading up to and including the present conversation; the schizophrenic oscillation between bribes and threats, and so on. He’d plunged his open fist into the dung heap and heaved-ho.
Finished his meal, he leaned far back in his seat. It did come as a surprise that the beast across him seemed to hold her in such high esteem. “You’ll do me the kindness of delivering another message. Tell her it’s up to her whether the rebels on my boat spend the next nights in cells or back in the home we took them from.” Truthfully, he’d tip them all into the sea rather than risk his own criminal neck delivering them to the Governor.
“And if she doesn’t go for that, tell her she’ll get what I offered you, plus whatever I can get for your friends on the market. And...” He paused a moment, unsure if the name would mean anything. Or if it would make her run. Or, if so, in which direction. “Tell her it’s about Subira.”
Abasi had stout distaste for pirates. Though his brother often dabbled, he steered away from it and devoted his day to praying and thanking Allah for his savior, Omorose.
Much to his chagrin, Papasi was making gestures to him, ones he knew that translated to “Kill him”. He subtly shook his head and steadily nursed his flagon, occasionally drinking in the sight of mezzanine in addition to his ale. A woman was flitting about, changing vantage points as often as patrons came and left.
Before Abasi could continue, he felt a palm rest upon his shoulder. It was her.
Her presence was cognizable, always. There was something warm and matronly about it, but, in the same sense, frightening. He rose in the most obsequious of manners and retreated to a half-rotten wooden column where he could spectate in the darkness. Omorose sat in his stead, crossing her spindly fingers with a look of pure discontentment splashed across her face.
The first thing she said to him was in the most guttural of Arabic dialects, understood only by Abasi and Papasi. They both knew it to be an insult of the crudest nature, though it was not unlike Omorose to be profane. “Tell me what you want,” she said curtly. Her accent rode the breadth of her words from beginning to end, wavering like the sweetest of melodies, “And why you dare throw around Subira’s … as if it were playing dice.”
When the woman made herself known, Lars fell into a rare somber silence. She was more than just beautiful; she was such a perfect construction that all the thoughts in his head were eliminated, replaced with only the strange compulsion to tell her that she was singularly the most bewitching woman he'd ever seen. As if it was some injustice, some mortal sin, that she might go through life not knowing it. He managed to keep himself quiet, but hardly composed. Realizing she'd demanded information from him, he shifted uncomfortably, trying to regain some of the footing he'd lost so easily.
"I don't want anything," he began, voice still smallish. He cleared his throat. Hell, he didn't have much to tell her. He didn't know who she was to the sea witch, or who the sea witch was to her. He hadn't been given a reason; just 'go.' Just 'fetch.' Visibly, something dawned on him, and he smiled to himself. Maybe this was the cunt's idea of a taunt, throwing such a pretty thing in front of his impotence. Ha-fucking-ha. He'd been cursed so long that even his cock was jaded; he was done embarrassing himself in attempts to see if the hex had just 'worn off' by now.
"She asked me to track you down and deliver you to her. You'd know why better than I do." He was starting to realize that there was the trip ahead of them, the three or four weeks between here and the inlet where he was to drop her off. Weeks trapped on a ship with that ... thing of divine beauty. It put wrinkles around his eyes, just imagining the endless frustration. Of course, he had to woo her to come along first. "So. Which will it be? Your men? Or the money?"
Omorose was a woman of occasional words and ever-present austerity. Her stringency made her ideal for the position of a leader, but her tyrannical nature made her equally as impotent as the captain that sat before her. Her face and eyes were reminiscent of stone, still, unwavering and stern.
To avoid suspicion, she flagged down one of the bar maids and ordered her own decanter of whiskey. As she waited, she pulled a burlap satchel from the recesses of her rucksack and gently drew the string, having revealed a healthy heap of the blackest and ripest currants. She speared the plump berries with her fingers first, bleeding them dry of their juices with a lap of her tongue and gnash of her teeth.
When her whiskey came she took a long, exaggerated drawl from the decanter and reveled in its oaky aroma before swallowing yet another handful of currants, seeds and all.
Omorose held her men in high regard. She knew each of their names, which plantations they were borne of and even the name of their late masters (which she slew).
“I’ll leave with you.” Abasi, within an earshot, was shocked to hear how willing she was. Her nefarious nonchalance was something to note, but often represented miscommunication. “You will meet me at the grotto south east of the bay come dusk with one barrel of black currants, a satchel of pomegranates and a cask or whiskey or bourbon. I’ve no preference between them and don’t quite care how you get them.”
She stabbed at the last of her berries and swallowed hard, swirling her drink in its cup as she gazed into it. “I’m going to half to be drunk half this trip to even fathom being anywhere near fucking … pirates. White pirates, no less.”
"Lord," Lars breathed, contemplating the woman across the table. It wasn't much to ask, but it was ... particular. He was unaccustomed to particular. "I'll arrange all of it myself, mijn koningin." Her distaste for present company made him chuckle. It was a common aversion, understandably. "We've got a Negro with us," he offered in a compromising tone. "And a couple of Turks. So you'll have friends." If, finally, that was all, he was happy to push himself out of his seat and nod good-bye. "At dusk." On his way out, he shot a friendly smile to the silent one at the door.
By the time he made it back to his ship, his men were close to mutiny. Tensions had been running high for some time now, as they typically did whenever Subira sent him off on a distant objective, with little opportunity for piracy in-between. Her adventures were universally unprofitable, which was an obvious problem for a crew of treasure-seekers. Pair that with the whimsical nature of these assignments, and you had most people who knew him (or knew of him) now figuring him for a goddamn lunatic. They called him Captain 'Mad' Bullens. Very clever.
At any rate, when he was first drumming up a meager crew to start fresh after the Judith, he'd made the good choice of hiring people who were more inclined to hear a man out than throw him over the side with a rope around his neck. After some hours, he'd managed to placate his men, entirely through the use of outright lies concerning the plan ahead of them. And after all that, he had to skip into market to find some goddamn currants and pomegranate.
Miraculously, they'd made it to the arranged grotto as the sun was setting. True to her word, thank God, the little ship carrying Omorose and her friends was waiting for them. Lars himself lowered the gangplank.
That evening, Omorose rode in on a skiff into the grotto, having been escorted by the Numidian brothers until they approached their meeting place. Abasi handed Omorose a lantern so she could chase the shadows in the cavern away to their respective corners. Each niche appeared to cast mishappen masses of black every which way she glanced, but the dark was not what she feared.
Further within the maw of the grotto she could hear thunderous crashing of the waves as they licked the precipices; barnacles dotted the ledges eked out in the sides of the cavern, given breadth by the high tide that frequently filtered in.
The bay was once an old smuggling hideout for thieves and their ilk but was since abandoned when English officials raided it. Half-cracked and rotten crates were strewn about in addition to moss-eaten hemp ropes and mired rowboats that were cracked up the keel.
As a result of the humid weather, the grotto was thick with fog. Omorose’s brow was dappled with a light film of sweat, but the rest of her skin was entirely cool. It may have been that the overcoat she wore was two sizes too big, or that her trousers—a supple doeskinned material—were of a mitigated make.
“They’re here,” Abasi announced in his native tongue. When the cog teetered in towards the lip of the edge they stood on, Papasi began to voice his concerns.
“Are you certain of this? They are like to just turn you in to the Governor.” His brow was knotted with concern.
“I’m never sure,” Omorose admitted, “But if Subira has requested that I meet with her …” She swallowed. “It’s for the best.”
The brother’s nodded in followed her to the gangplank, both weary with each step they took. Omorose simply leered at Lars long and hard, as if she were seeing through him, then boarded his vessel with a look of unadulterated disdain plastered across her lightly freckled face.
Having been twice married – once, literally, to a mortal woman; and then, figuratively, to Subira's impulses – Lars was almost boredly familiar with uniquely female looks of disdain shot his way across any given room. Accordingly, he very easily tolerated Omorose's abundant and obvious contempt throughout the evening. He kept on her like a fly on shit, entirely unwilling to leave a rebel alone with his ship, and similarly reluctant to leave any his crew alone with her. These men were young and unfamiliar to him; he couldn't be sure they wouldn't try to fuck her.
The tension eased off a little with dinner, or rather with the drink that came along with the meal. The mess was louder than it had been in some time, as one shipmate after the other made himself look like a goddamned adolescent vying for Omorose's attention, mainly distinguishing himself as merely noisier than the last man. Lars was happy to chew at his whisky-soaked bread and take in the spectacle of it.
Once again, the hard part was over. As he watched the girl grow tipsy, the exasperation of months of dogged searching began to unravel in him. Rather than relieved, it made him bitter and frantic: What was next for him? How many more errands were between him and freedom from his obligation? Or was that the witch's trick – would she never release him? He took another drink to crush his panic, and another, soon drifting into a thick fog of sombre intoxication.
An hour after all plates were empty, he broke up the lingering conversation and dismissed his crew with low orders, an obvious and selfish move to get him alone with his guest. Captive. Charge? "The men sleep here," he waved at the space around them, indicating hammocks and stowed bedrolls under the benches. "If you would feel unsafe with them, though, you can put up in the kitchen."
He put his cup to his lips, only to find it empty. Purposefully, he set it down and levelled his hazy eyes on the rebel. "You don't seem to think she'll kill you," he started, matter-of-fact. "I'm curious. What do you expect she wants with you?"