Approximately a week before the events of last chapter, the fleet admiral Roserie found herself sailing, just hours from pulling into port at Arbabane, the country on the other side of the same ring as Scaular. Due to a combination of her lackadaisical attitude, and the cunning of the pirate she was chasing, she was far behind in her duty to arrest him.

  “Alright, lads!” Admiral Roserie shouted, foot on the gunwale of the quarterdeck, fist over her head, “Free hands, gather round - gather round!” Eventually, over the course of a few minutes, all the sailors who weren’t currently engaged in an uninterruptible task had gathered round indeed, “Alright, mates, listen up. I know I’ve been somewhat secretive with the nature of our mission, but I can’t anymore.”

  “Ma’am, are you sure this is a good idea?” Her first mate, a man they called Racquet (for he was quite the killer at tennis) asked. He was a catfish hybrid, and looked quite professorial with his small circular glasses and whiskers, “You’d be disobeying a direct order.”

  “Your concern is noted, Jones, and thusly disregarded.” The admiral replied, “Alright then, as I was saying: The man we’re chasing has some rather delicate cargo on board, and that’s why I haven’t brought down our full guns against him. Specifically, he’s currently holding a dignitary, whose specific identity I’m not at liberty to say.”

  A few of the men began to murmur amongst themselves, and as anyone who has ever sailed aboard a warship will tell you, the disruption in protocol proved contagious, and soon their collective whispers almost deafened the sea itself.

  “Enough!” Roserie shouted at the top of her lungs, which quieted them quicker than any pistol shot could, “Now, as I was saying. You all know we don’t have clearance to land in Machiave for another month. So, being that this mission is of utmost importance, I need five volunteers to join Admiral Jones and I on land. We’re going after him directly, and he is to be approached only with extreme caution. Do I make myself understood?”

  “Yes, Admiral!” They all shouted. Immediately, quite a few more than five hands shot up, stiff as a board.

  “Shit, I didn’t think we’d even get five.” Roserie said, leaning over to her executive officer, “I trust you to pick the five most qualified. I’ll be performing a good-luck ritual in my quarters.”

  —

  “Still a shame we left Robert behind.” Jeyro said, taking his drink and raising it to his lips, “I know it had to be done, but I was rather fond of him.”

  “These kinds of things are unavoidable, son.” Hearnah, who astute readers will remember as the captain of his ship, replied, “When you live a life of crime - you give a few things up.” Then he raised his own tankard, a large stein he kept as a souvenir from his homeland, and toasted “To Robert.”

  “So, who exactly are we waiting to meet here?” His crewmate, with whom he had a complicated familial relationship, asked before he downed the rest of his drink in one go.

  “There’s a painter here,” The captain explained dutifully, his lips concealed behind the black-and-white ceramic of his drinkware, “Supposedly the pigment he uses is somewhat preternatural. He gets it from those large bees he has, and - ah, what am I rambling about. The important part is that they should rid us of our tail, so to speak.”

  “Couldn’t we just leave?” His ward asked. His tone wasn’t rude, exactly, but was quite direct and to the point, “This is the last Union country on our way, right?”

  “Correct.” Hearnah conceded, “But I doubt that our destination will remain neutral for long. These supplies should allow us to safely offload that ‘cargo’ I was talking about earlier, and get that damned marine off our asses.”

  Almost as if on cue, the door of the seedy bar they drank in swung open, the wood making a loud cracking noise against the wood of the wall. In strode a rather depressed (if the hunched shoulders and downcast face were any indication) man. He was, as evidenced by physical features soon to be documented, half angel-half human. Like most of his breed, his wings were somewhat stunted in development, but unlike most of his breed, he was inflicted with a congenital condition and his wings had migrated to just where his nape met his skull, and were in the present business of covering his face.

  Eventually, after a few seconds of scanning the crowded room, he found the two engaged in a more rousing discussion at the bar, and walked over. He cleared his throat when he arrived, his other hand holding a leather bag. “You - you must be… be Hearnah.” He said, with great difficulty, “I’m Louren?o.”

  “Ah, my good man,” He peered at the case the half-angel was holding, “That must be your famous paint.”

  “I - I don’t know if I’d -” Louren?o cut himself off abruptly, as his wings parted slightly from his eyes, and he got a better look at the pirate, he made a sudden realization, digging into his case and producing, not pigments like expected, but rather a portrait. “It’s - it’s you! Or… do you know the man I’ve painted here? He looks remarkably, um, remarkably similar to you.”

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  Hearnah took the portrait, staring at it for a while. It was a young man, a man who in fact, looked very much like a young version of himself, in distress. His face was twisted in a visage of agony, and two spears were visible; one was a radiant orange-yellow, and pierced the man’s right shoulder from the front, while the second, which was a blackish-purple, and seemed as though it had small lights and clouds swirling inside of it, struck his opposite shoulder from behind.

  With a trained haste, he stood up expeditiously, retrieving a small, concealed gun from his waistband. Jeyro also took to his feet, not drawing a weapon yet, but standing at the ready. “Where did you see this man?” Hearnah asked.

  “I, I, I -” He stuttered, holding his hands up in submission. The crowd in the bar had started to watch now, and thus the pirate stowed his weapon, “I saw him in a dream. Some call it a gift, but - but I’ve had these… persistent prophetic visions, ever since I was a child.”

  “Explain this one.” The pirate demanded, looming over the painter, glaring down at him. “I believe this man may be my son.”

  “I just…” He rambled, and furthermore, started to hyperventilate. He hadn’t intended to talk to this man for this long, and was quite out of his depth. “He - he was getting stabbed. It was a small room, short, thin, there were… There were windows, and, I think there were chairs.” His words came out to little more than a mumble at this point, “It was moving.”

  “Please, you have to tell me everything you know.” Hearnah said. His normal facade of being collected and in control slipped with each second, and it didn’t go unnoticed by Jeyro, who watched on with ever-narrowing eyes, “I’ll pay you triple what I agreed.”

  “It was him, and a few others who looked to be on his side.” The half-angel continued, “There was… so much fighting, blood. The Three Points!” He exclaimed, “They were fighting someone from the Points. That’s all I know.”

  “Alright, here,” Hearnah took an envelope of money out of his coat, opened it and shoved a few more bills inside, slapping it against Louren?o’s chest, “Thirty dollars. Go.”

  Immediately, the man scurried away, leaving the case and painting behind as he did so. For a few more moments, Jeyro and Hearnah stood there, soaking in the atmosphere of the bar, before they paid their tabs and left.

  “What was that back there?” Jeyro asked, angrily stepping in front of his guardian as they walked together.

  “A fortuitous coincidence is what it was!” Hearnah replied, exasperated and pushing back his hairline, “For all I know - my son is in danger as we speak! Or will be shortly!”

  “I didn’t know you had a son.” His ward replied, a stiff finger pressing into the older man’s chest.

  “And since when do I report to you?” Said older man replied, his voice dropping an octave or two. “Alright, change of plans - we’re busting through the port controller. We can’t waste three days getting approval to deport.”

  “Is this the whole reason we’re going to Machiave?” The younger man demanded, “To go see some man who has no relation to our mission?”

  “No.” He looked around, as though paranoia was now setting in, and he was getting more and more frantic, “No, we’re still very much so going for our original objective. But if I have a chance to save my son, I’m going to take it.”

  “How do you even know where he is?” Jeyro asked, “And when this is going to happen?”

  “Just have a little faith.” The captain said, “Don’t you believe in destiny?”

  —

  Back at the Star, the two men, as well joined by a number of other officers of the ship, were in the maproom. They were all staring at a map depicting the entirety of the shell on which they were.

  “Why am I here again?” Parkna asked. Her hairs were standing on edge, and her rubbing of her arm belied her nervousness. “This room always makes me feel nauseous.”

  “Yes, you have to be here.” Jeyro said, “You’ll be fine. You’ll wanna know where to disembark, anyway.”

  That still doesn’t explain the nausea. She thought, her stomach rumbling uncomfortably, “What’re the darts for?”

  “I know many of you are wondering what the darts are for.” Hearnah said, his voice booming in the small wooden room, “Well, due to a set of circumstances outside of anyone’s control, we have to make an educated guess as to where we’ll disembark in Machiave. Everyone, hold your darts aloft,” Everyone, including one of the new recruits, who looked with quite the intense gaze at the captain, did as instructed, “On the count of three, throw. One, two, three -”

  The darts, all twelve of them, flew, narrowly colliding mid-air before they found their course. They were scattered all over the landmass at the center of the shell, in roughly equal distribution between north, south, east, and west.

  “Wow, none of us are gonna be marksmen anytime soon.” One of the older crewmembers guffawed.

  “It’s whatever,” The captain laughed back, eyeing the darts, “I was never a good shot either.”

  Then, he grabbed the edges of the map, shaking it vigorously. He was always a proponent of elaborate rituals to determine his course of action. And, as such, he waited until all but one dart had fallen off the chart.

  “Well then,” He said, dusting his hands off and collecting the darts, “Finota it is.”

  The assorted crew members filed out of the door, with the last one being the new recruit. He paused for a moment at the door, gripping it, before he took another step.

  “Hold on a second, son.” Hearnah said, “Come here for a second.”

  “Sir?” The recruit asked.

  “What’s your name?” The captain asked.

  “Henrique.” He replied.

  “You know, Henrique.” Hearnah said, a slight grin on his face, “Most new seamen are nervous around the captain.”

  “I have a little experience, sir.” Henrique replied, “My father was a sailor.”

  “A soldier, too?” The captain asked, “You’re standing at attention.”

  The atmosphere then got very tense, with both of them being onto each other. “Henrique” lowered his shoulders and unclasped his hands, hoping to lower the tension. It clearly did not work, and before long, the tension grew unbearable. So, “Henrique” produced a gun from under his waistband, pointing it at the pirate.

  “I’m Lieutenant Henrique Souza.” He said, “Don’t move, or I’ll shoot.”

  The captain sighed, putting his head in his hands, “Do you know how many times I’ve heard that? Lads!” He shouted, “Get in here!”

  “They’re not coming.” Henrique warned him, “Now, you and I are going to have a little chat.”