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The pirates gathered in a huddled group, exclaiming about the mission, while he stood, alone, behind them. The captain walked around all of them, talking to each one with the energy and animatedness he had for everything he did; no doubt the same that inspired the rest of the crew to follow him so unquestioningly.
Viraneas’ nose twitched with the effort to stamp down a sneer. Fools.
He shifted on his feet, resting most of his weight on his right leg, accommodating for the fact his left carried the weight of a loaded pistol in its holster.
Salynir had given it to him himself, without a word. A shiver snaked down Viraneas’ spine at the memory. Salynir had a way with words, and the spaces between them. Silence spoke louder volumes, from him, than any order ever could. “Follow them. Give me the information I need,” he had essentially said, “And I will replace my current second with you.” What would happen, should Viraneas fail, had been known since the day he first joined them… the ‘terrorists,’ as the captain here called them.
If you find yourself at risk of such a position, Salynir had then seemed to say, when he had handed Viraneas this pistol, You have one more chance to redeem yourself.
Wind howled around them; the Nightingale’s sails snapped taught with crisp noises of whipping canvas, rippling in the centers. The medic girl scurried between those injured, but for the most part, only few had been, and not seriously. The ship escaped unharmed, heavier for the loot now stowed in her cargo hold, lighter for the weight gone from the hearts of her crew of the dangers they would imminently face. The mission had been a success.
Darkness clouded his vision; Viraneas grit his teeth. No, he admonished himself. A failure. Their success is my failure.
I am not one of them.
Between the crook of his forefinger and thumb and his elbow, he turned his attention to winding a coil of rope, coarse against his skin.
He had done all that he could in this corner, searching for tasks, anything to have a legitimate excuse to stay away from the thicker group of people, when the signal finally came. In his left ear, hidden by his hair hanging over it, a small piece of metal crackled with static, then focused into a sickly, rasping voice. “...Ort side. We are nearing the ship. …Viraneas, are you there?”
His stomach flipped. He glanced at the group to ensure no one was watching him, and pressed the button set into the device. “Understood,” he murmured. “Tell me when you get closer.”
Silence.
The air around him, in that moment, turned frosty; he shivered again. He could almost picture Salynir in front of him now. He would be half turned away, hands folded behind his back, face turned to give Viraneas only a side-profile with his attention boring into the floor, but that was all he needed to get his point across. He would be thinking now, if Viraneas really thought it appropriate to be making any demands at all, when he has been more than generous to him. So generous, enough to give him this last chance, and to go out of his way to provide him with an escape after the deed was done, as opposed to leaving him to fend for himself—to prove himself—and make it back, alone.
From the group gathered around Draziel, the medic girl, Bella, made accidental eye contact with him. She seemed to pause in order to make a decision, and then began walking closer.
It would be a lie to say Viraneas never wondered why Salynir gave him this chance at all. If it was because Salynir believed in him, or because his current second had grown too cocksure, and needed to be replaced with someone more desperate, to his eyes. Someone controllable.
She had almost reached him now.
I am not desperate, he swore.
“Are you hurt at all?” Bella asked.
Viraneas forced himself to smile, as kindly as he could manage. “A few flesh wounds, they’ll heal. You’d better still help some of the others.”
“I have,” she answered. “But I had better look at those scrapes, then, so even if they are fine now, they don’t get worse and fester.”
“No, I’m serious. Do not worry about me, go back to the others,” Viraneas replied, with more insistence this time. Before he could hide it, a hint of malice slipped past his guard, staining his words a toxic black.
She straightened, jarred by his tone. “Viraneas, what is wrong with you?”
Hah! He snorted, before he could stop himself. What was wrong with him? Oh, what a question. That depended on who was asking, he supposed. A visiting member of the ring in which he used to fight told him once, as he stood bent over, blood gushing from his nose, that he was too soft, too fair. He needed to be more opportunistic. The next fight, he’d hit his opponent in an old injury on his back when the man was already going down, all but taking him out of the rest of the competition that way, and the ringleader had shouted at him only cowards hit that way. He did not listen, and continued to. It was the best way to win, he learned. All but the only way, for him, when given opponents too large for him to take on face-to-face. But that only made the ones he sparred grow to hate him for his underhanded ways, and he took more hits than he gave, outside the ring more often than in. Snake, they hissed, Coward.
It did not matter, in the end. He had weaseled his way out, and found kinship in the company of a fringe group of the terrorists. Terrorists being what terrorists were, however, with him less than eager to perform the demeaning tasks expected of the newest member, he did everything in his power to make himself useful to their leader and find her favor, forked tongue slipping past his teeth. It was almost too easy. He had succeeded, and of course, they, too, grew to hate him.
That was fine, they could hate him. He had power over them. They could not touch him, not while he stood above them. They could not hit him outside of the ring, not when the world was the ring in which they played, and power, he learned, was the best—the only —way to keep hands off his back. But even then, they still, sometimes, found ways to hit. The answer why was simple, and it took only a little while for him to figure it out: he did not yet have enough.
And so, he climbed.
Faces spun before his eyes, rungs of his ladder one after the other, until, finally, Salynir’s hung before his vision as the last. The most powerful of them all. Vertigo seized him, and for the first time, he dared to allow himself to ask the question: Have I climbed too high?
Bella was still waiting for an answer. He cleared his throat, and lied—lying came so easily— “Sorry. Nothing.”
She leaned back and surveyed him, with a hint of newfound suspicion and not a shred of belief in his answer. “Are you alright?”
“Yes, I told you, I am fine—”
“No, I meant,” she replied with greater insistence, “Are you alright? I am sorry, I didn’t mean what was wrong with you like that. You just seem… stressed. Your face is pale, but you look almost nauseous at the same time.”
Viraneas paused, looking anywhere but her. The ship dipped beneath his feet, but no one else seemed affected by it. “...It was a close call,” he finished, choosing his words carefully, sidestepping the direct question.
Bella’s face fell into sympathy. “It was. I’ve been here a while, and even then, I still get nervous on missions like these. But you did well. We all did.”
No, I did not. It would not do to tell her of the explosives he’d rigged, that had misfired—only the latest in a long, long line of such misfirings. A line, not one mistake, as Salynir never failed to remind him with the sternness of his face. Salynir’s expressions never changed from stony and impassive, but in the lack of change, every doubt, every insecurity of his reflected back at him to glare in his face when he spoke to him. “This is uncharacteristic of you,” Salynir had once commented, “You are usually so meticulous, and careful in your work.”
He no longer reported his failures. It did not matter; he was certain Salynir knew of them, anyway.
Bella drew a deep breath, then reached out, and rested her hand on his shoulder. “I’ll leave you to your space, then.” She opened her mouth as if to say something further, then evidently decided against it, and left to rejoin the others.
When no one was looking anymore, he clenched his teeth, closed his eyes, and sighed with a shaking breath. “Viraneas, we are here,” the device in his ear rasped, with great timing. “You will see us soon, we are below the cloudline. Time your jump well.”
“Understood,” he said. When the moment immediately following felt empty of action—instinctively, he felt he should have been moving his arm—he realized he had forgotten to press the button that carried his voice across at all. A great tiredness seeped into his bones, and he knew he would not need to repeat the word. They’d have his answer soon enough. He looked to his right, over the portside barrier of the hull. In the cloud cover below, approaching quickly, a needle pierced the soft, white ocean. Mist swirled around it, breaking in its wake and leaving the turbulent pattern of a sharp arrowhead behind, the emerging mast at its point. Soon, sails would follow. Now is the time, he resolved, Or I never will.
Draziel was not facing him. He had paused his walking in circles and flitting around from person to person to talk to the group at large, laughing with them.
A hit on the back is the coward’s way out.
Why, then, every time he turned his back, someone saw fit to hit it?
The world was full of back-stabbers and manipulators, without suffering the repercussions for their dishonorable actions. There are no rules in the real world. Fighting fair was a disadvantage; a true fighter would take advantage of any opportunity. A coward’s way out, the voice echoed, A coward’s way out.
I am not a coward!
He clenched his jaw. His eyes fixed on the deep blue-green of Draziel’s coat, just left to the center, while his hand reached to his left hip for the gun.
Blood rushed in his ears; his heart thundered in his chest.
“Are you ready, Viraneas?”
Icy wind stung his knuckles as he drew out the gun, straining his wrist to hold it level. The metal felt colder and harder than it had ever seemed before.
He lined up the sights.
Deep breath. …In… out…
“Viraneas?”
He still did not answer. Here’s to the end of an era.
Images, feelings, and futures whipped around him, joining his hair in his face and clothes in frantic streamers, some stinging just as badly: the pirate captain falling; the horrified looks of the crew; the way Viraneas’ stomach would lurch as he lept, then ankles and knees and back would ache as he landed on Salynir’s ship; Salynir’s satisfaction; Salynir’s following death, when he would aim this very pistol to his back in turn and take full control over his forces, and oh, how poetic it would be…
No one would dare threaten him. No one would attempt it, not when the news spread far and wide it was he who finally ended the reign of so terrible a figure, larger than life, proven flesh and blood like the rest of them in his final moments, ended by his hand.
No one would cross him ever again.
The pirate captain turned the slightest bit to smile at the person next to him. His eyes crinkled from it, warm with relief, shining in the sun.
Goodnight, Draziel.
His thumb pulled the flintlock back into place with a whirr and a click.
Sweet dreams.