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  [colpse]Chapter One Hundred ay - The Pirate's Lair

  I ped my way through dessert, which, just like the main meal, was also fish. “This is delicious,” I tried to say. A word or two might have been mangled and some of my fish might have escaped my mouth to end up oable, but I just had to speak up.

  “You’re disgusting,” Amaryllis said.

  “Worth it,” I said.

  The pirates--actually, they weren’t really pirates just yet. They had a little ways to go, so they were more like scallywags--the scallywags smiled at our antics, having fiheir meals first, sed portions and all.

  I swallowed a mouthful of fish, took a gulp of water, then grinned over at them. I was about to ask about what it was like living in such a city when three someones walked over to our table.

  They stood tall above us, three men iunics, with bandanas tied to their arms, and a really bi on the head of their leader. “Pardon me, sirs and misses,” he said with a faint at that I couldn’t pce. “But if you do not mind me asking, are you Miss Bristlee, perhaps?”

  The table tehe scallywags looked ready to bolt and I noticed Bastion l one arm uhe table while the other shifted to hold his fork differently.

  Awen stared at the man, wide-eyed. “Awa, uhm.”

  “Ah,” the man said with a snap of his fingers. “That little noise. Your uold us about it. At great length, I might add.”

  “You know my uncle?” Awen asked.

  “We flew together, once,” he said. “Is the old bas--ah, the old man around here?”

  Awen shook her head. “He’s not,” she said. “At least, I don’t think so. Uncle just shows up a lot.”

  “That he does,” the man said. He doffed his hat and bowed slightly. “It leasure meeting you at st. As, I have a few urgent matters to care for, or I’d stay and chat with your very peculiar friends here.”

  “That’s okay?” Awen said. “Um, who are you?”

  The man grinned, huge and charismatid showing off a pair of goldeh. “Rogers,” he said. “I’m Golden Rogers.”

  “It was nice meeting you, sir,” she said in a sort of formal tohat didn’t quite sound like the Awen I knew.

  The man repced his hat--which if I were to judge, wasn’t quite as as my own--and waved us goodbye before heading off with his pals.

  “That was something,” I said.

  Awen nodded vigorously. “I was afraid that he’d try for my bounty,” she said.

  I reached over and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “If he tried anything, the lot of us would teach him a lesson. And you’re not so bad in a scrap yourself.” I gave her a st pat. “Do you guys think we should head back? It would be a bit of a shame to end our exploration so early.”

  “If you want to stick around,” Two-Eyed Joe said. “We could show you our hidden base.”

  “You have a hidden base!” I said. I was instantly onboard to see the base. “Where is it?”

  “Wouldn’t be very hidden if we told you,” Oda said. “Joe, you sure we should show them?”

  “Ah, , they got us free lund didn’t sell us out to the guard for another beating,” Joe said. “They seem nice.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “We’re super nice.”

  Amaryllis pushed her pte forward and got up, which prompted the rest of us to do the same. It didn’t take much to get everyone heading over towards the sea-side part of the city. I let myself fall back a bit as we walked so that I was bumping shoulders with Awen.

  “Are you alright?” I asked.

  Awen nodded. “I am. I’m fine,” she said.

  “Hmm, sometimes when people say they’re fihey’re not actually all that fine deep down. I, ah, I know that we never got... you know, together or anything, and that now you’re with Rose, sorta, but I don’t want that to get between us?”

  Awen looked over at me, thearted to giggle. I wao ask what when she pulled me into a sidelong hug and pced her head on my shoulder. “Thanks Broccoli,” she said.

  “You’re wele,” I said. “So, you’re fine?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. I might not have been, a few weeks ago, but then a really nice girl, and also Amaryllis, kidnapped me, and now I’m a whole lot more fident than I was before. So, when I’m saying that I’m fine, I mean it.”

  I ed an arm around her waist aurhe hug while bringing an ear down to pat her head. “Good,” I said. “You’re one of my best friends you know. When you’re happy, I’m happy.”

  “You’re always happy,” she said.

  “Not always. Sometimes my friends are sad, and that makes me sad. So you o make sure that you’re always happy, for me, okay? And if you’re sad, you tell me so that I be sad too until we both make whatever makes you sad regret it, okay?”

  Awen snorted in a very undylike way and nodded into my shoulder. “Okay. Promise,” she said before pulling back. “But one day, I’ll be really strong, just like you, and uncle, and Amaryllis, and then you’ll e to me to stop you from being sad.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  “Hey, you two ing?” Amaryllis asked from out ahead. I realized that we’d been slowing down a little as we talked and the others were waiting for us around an interse.

  Needleford retty busy pce, at least around the ship docks where we were. Sailors were moving about, some carrying things in groups, others just on their own, and there were plenty of hawkers and stalls with food that would have smelled great if my tummy wasn’t full to bursting.

  The scallywags brought us past the docks, and into a part of the town that looked a bit rough. Not slums, exactly, but a bit seedier, with older homes and streets that didn’t look quite as maintained.

  “It’s in here,” Joe said as he gestured to a brick wall between two tes.

  “That’s a wall,” Amaryllis said.

  Sally pushed past us all and pressed a hand against the wall, then grunted as she pulled up. A segment of bricks about two feet wide shifted, then swung in, leaving arance just big enough for someone small to squeeze through.

  “Head first is easiest, but feet first is faster and safer oher side,” Joe said.

  Sally moved in first, then Oba hopped through, followed by Joe.

  “I’ll take the vanguard,” Bastion said, his wings beat a couple of times and he darted in through the hole in a lunge.

  “Easy for him to say,” Amaryllis muttered. “Sylphs are sneaky enough to fit into any hole. I bet he’s dohis before.”

  “If you want,” I said. “I could carry you and jump over the wall. It’s not that high.”

  Amaryllis huffed and scrambled through. I heard her squawk as she fell oher side. Awe , moving through with careful, methodical motions. It retty obvious she wasn’t used to climbing or sneaking around.

  Finally, when it was my turn, I hopped up, grabbed the upper edge, and slid i-first. I patted down my skirt when I nded oher side, and took a moment to look around.

  The door into the alley was made from a heavy, rusted fixture screwed into a sort of mesh that held a bunch of bricks together. Other than that, the wall was a normal wall. The alley wasly dirty, but it had rotting leaves in the ers and a faint stench that I associated with water left out for too long.

  “Oda made the door,” Joe said as he smacked his friend on the shoulder. “He works for a mason sometimes, and sometimes for a local smith. He’s good with his hands. Our future ship meic!”

  Oda flushed and nodded. “I like making things. Sometimes I draw too.”

  “He’s going to icle all of our adventures as pirates,” Joe said. He waved us over. “e on.”

  The alley led onto a very narrow street that we crossed right away to step into the backyard of an old church with boarded up windows. “Who was this church for?” Bastion asked.

  “Dunno,” Joe said.

  Sally shook her head. “The Void God, of the Empty Sea. The church was abandoned when Needleford became bigger.”

  “I’m not familiar with that one,” Amaryllis said.

  “It’s a Pyrowalkian religion, at least inally,” Bastion said. “I ’t say much about what they worship. I know that they became very unpopur a few decades ago. They're mostly found in any port city past the Grey Wall now. They never had a presen Sylphfree or the Harpy Mountains. Rare to worship a sea that’s not even in sight.”

  “It’s here,” Sally said as she moved ahead of us. The back of the church was on the dipidated side of things, with broken windoeeling paint. Sally tugged out a step dder from o a little shed and pced it against the wall right under a little window.

  “Oh great, ainy hole to squeeze into,” Amaryllis muttered. “You kids really didn’t pn this with adults in mind, did you?”

  “Hey, we’re not kids,” Joe said.

  “He’s right. They’re pirates,” I corrected Amaryllis. “Scallywags like them have no age.”

  Joe didn’t look reassured by my standing up for him. “e on, it’s not hard to get in.”

  Sally climbed up first while pulling out a bit of wire from a pocket to slide it between the shutters of the window. It opened outwards and the girl squeezed in. And then it was time for the rest of us to do the same.

  As it turned out, the window led into a tiny little room with a dder at the bad a bunch of very old ing supplies ying around and colleg dust. We went up the dder and ended up in a loft above the main floor of the church.

  A look down revealed rows of chairs where I might have expected pews. Which was really too bad because ‘pews’ was more fun to say than ‘chairs.’

  “Careful with this bit,” Sally said, she crossed the entire church by walking across a wooden beam with her arms outstretched. It was only a two meter drop to the floor below, but it was still a bit creepy to pass.

  And then, at the very end of the church, Sally opened up a small sliding door that led right into the church’s bell tower.

  It was a cozy space. Made more so by having seven people in it. They had a little cot to one side, with some bs, ao that some thread and knitting needles. A few little boxes held tools, and there was a stack of old neers and books at the baext to an unlit dle.

  The bell was gone, but parts of its meism remained. It gave the room a strange sort of feeling, like being somewhere you weren’t supposed to. I had once been in the corridors behind the shops at a mall, and it felt the same there that it did in the bell tower.

  Joe moved to the far end of the room and, with a bit of smag, opened a pair of shutters.

  “Whoa,” I said as I moved closer.

  The ey of Needleford, or at least the half he sea, stretched out below. Ships were ing into the docks, and the air that wafted in and kicked up the yer of dust ohing smelled like salt and fish.

  In the distance, I could make out the airship docks, looking tall and proud with stately airships parked ihe Beaver Cleaver was easy to make out, what with his yellow hull.

  “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I see why someone would want to be free, with a view like this before them every day.”

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