The Captain threw his chair back as he stood, it bounced against the table behind him that was thankfully empty, then he stormed off toward the sound of the commotion. Ninia hesitated, looking down at her stew. Stew could wait, she decided. The Captain needed her. She got up and followed as fast as she could, exiting the tavern onto the hot cobbled street.
Three men clad in conflicting garb stood surrounding a cowering figure in a billowing white shirt stained red from a broken nose. A Yishk, one that Ninia recognized. The three men were talking amongst each other amiably. The shouting must have come from the Yishk as he was attacked. One man held a club which had nails pounded through, and all three of them had two pistol belts strapped to their chests but interestingly, there were no pistols.
Alinyaln stormed over to the men, fury burning hot. “Get away from him!” He bellowed, pushing one man to the side. “He’s my Yishk.”
“Oh, sure?” The shortest of the three men said, mouth missing some teeth. “Prove it.”
Pulling apart his shirt to expose the brand on his chest, he nodded to the man on the ground. “He has my same mark on his hip.” Alinyaln said, breathing heavily.
The man who had been shoved glared at Alinyaln as the third and final man, a pale skinned man who was balding yet he was still growing his hair out scraggly and long, reached down and pulled up the Yishk’s shirt. There, among a litany of other brands, sat Alinyaln’s symbol, a turtle.
“Sure do get around a lot, don’t ya, Yishk?” The man said with a sneer. He stood up and wiped his hands as if to remove filth. The Yishk didn’t respond, he only cowered.
Alinyaln spread his hands. “I’m willing to let bygones be bygones if you men are.” He said calmly, though Ninia could see the tremble of fury in his hands.
“Pfft, ye hear that, Yaskin, ‘willin’ to let bygones’ and such.” The short man said with a chuckle. He waved his spiked club around. “Wot if we don’t wanna let him go?”
The balding man who must have been Yaskin shook his head. “He’d go for a good price now that the market’s empty.” He drew a pistol but held it to his side casually. “And I don’t see this as being your mark. I figure this must be a random Yishk that you’re trying to abscond with.”
Alinyaln shook his head. “You’re a cursed fool. Piss off, before I get angry.”
“’B’fore I get angry.” The short man said, repeating Alinyaln again. “This guy is a hoot, wot say we break his legs so he can keep talkin’ funny?”
Ninia blanched. None of them had seemed to notice her, but at their words she drew her knife from the arm sheath, holding it in a reverse grip. The men circled Alinyaln, who tried to keep an eye on all three of them.
“Now!” Alinyaln shouted, drawing his quiat faster than Ninia anticipated, the fiery stream of power billowing outward. He used his momentum gained by the engine of the weapon to propel his swing and struck and greasy man, Yaskin, in the face with the butt of the handle, producing a loud crack in the air. Yaskin staggered back gripping his jaw.
The second man aimed at Alinyaln and fired, but Ninia leapt onto his back, throwing the shot off wildly. She drove her knife into the shoulder of the man who bellowed in pain. She must have wedged it between some bone as she wasn’t able to pull it back out. The man swung his arms and knocked Ninia off. She was unarmed now. But she still had her feet, which she used to kick out the knee of the man and he stumbled to his knees, and with another kick he fell forward and landed hard on the knife, the point now jutting out of the back of his shoulder.
He didn’t rise.
The third man was swinging at Alinyaln with the club, but Alinyaln kept dodging the weapon. He swiped his quiat at the club and where the intense heat touched, the club burned. Any more than a moment’s contact and the club would ignite. The man took a different tactic and grabbed for a gun, a move which Alinyaln had clearly anticipated as he pulled out his own gun and shot at the man.
The thug fell back and stumbled to the ground as the smoke went off, but he was uninjured as it was nothing but Alinyaln’s noisemaker. The gun was now lying out of arms reach as it had fallen along with the man. Alinyaln snorted and kicked the man’s chest and he collapsed, chest broken from the blow.
Ninia noticed that the spiked section of the quiat’s handle was now a deep orange even in the daylight, the heat too much for the weapon to dissipate in the air. There was a shimmering effect in the air near the handle as well, a penumbra of intensity wreathing the tool.
The first man, the greasy one named Yaskin, recovered from the blow he had received and lunged forward with his own pistol, aiming it at Alinyaln. The Captain quickly smacked the end of the pistol away with the quait’s handle and then swiped the fiery torrent across Yaskin’s throat.
Yaskin roared and stumbled away, hand covering his neck which Ninia could see angry red welts developing. Captain Alinyaln disabled his quiat’s fire and then grabbed Yaskin by the arm in a vice-like grip. “Who are you?” The Captain’s voice was cold and intense, the shimmering handle of the quiat just inches away from the forearm of the thug.
Yaskin tried to spit at Alinyaln, but then gasped in pain as his severely burned neck moved in a way it shouldn’t have. His breathing ragged, the man said, “Just lookin’ for a few Gins.” He said it in a slurred way, trying to not move his throat any more than he had to.
“No one put you up to this?”
“No.”
Alinyaln considered, then pressed the quiat to Yaskin’s arm. The air immediately filled with the almost sweet smell of burning flesh as smoke began to rise from the thug’s arm. Yaskin screamed, falling to the ground but Alinyaln held him up by his arm displaying remarkable strength. “Do you know Tyrnarm?” The Captain bellowed in order to be heard over the screams of the would-be slaver.
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“Y—Yes! Yes please oh Yanuan help me!” He cried, tears streaming down his face. His eyes were shut tight as if to hide from the pain he was feeling.
“Captain.” Ninia said, stepping forward and placing a hand on Captain Alinyaln’s arm.
The man spun to face her, eyes wild and for just a moment, Ninia was afraid he would turn his fury on her next. But then the madness faded and Alinyaln removed the quiat from Yaskin’s arm, dropping the man.
“Get yer knife.” Captain Alinyaln said, nodding to the fallen man who still hadn’t moved.
Ninia nodded to the Captain and went to the man. He was unmoving. Rolling him over, Ninia could see his eyes, glassy and unseeing, staring up into the blue sky.
Dead.
Something settled inside of her stomach at that. She had never killed anyone before. She had barely been in any true fights before, this being one of the only times she had used her knife for anything other than utility.
She tried to memorize his face. Ninia didn’t know his name, Yaskin was the only one of the group to have been named. But memorizing his face was something that she could do. Grey eyes, a few missing teeth, and brown matted hair that stuck in several different directions like he hadn’t taken care of his hair in months.
He seemed like a man who had given up.
At that thought, Ninia pulled the knife out by the handle, a sickening squelch of flesh and warmth as blood came free with the blade. A man who had given up was a man who didn’t have much of a life, she decided. That made her feel a bit better about what had happened.
Captain Alinyaln was kneeling down by the Yishk. Ninia grabbed the dead man’s shirt and ripped off a relatively fresh portion of it and used it to wipe her knife clean as she approached her Captain.
“—safe now,” She heard him saying to the fallen Yishk. “Where are you hurt?”
“Ma—mah everythin’ hurts.” The Yishk cried softly, still curled up into a ball.
“I know, I know,” Alinyaln soothed. “We’re gonna getcha back to the ship and Higlim’ll look you over.” He patted the man on the arm.
Yaskin groaned nearby. The thug was weeping as well, clutching his burned arm to his chest tightly, closed eyes leaking. The skin that Ninia could see was burned black in a speckled pattern, matching the heat-dissipating spikes on the quiat’s guard.
The Captain put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a small glass bead the size of a man’s thumbnail. There was an etching all over the surface of the bead but Ninia wasn’t able to see it clearly before the man placed it on the ground and crushed it with the quiat’s pommel, handle still too hot for him to hang back on his belt.
A high-pitched whistling emanated from the remains of the bead and a faint wind picked up in the direction of the sea. Ninia could tell that the whistling was somehow far louder than she could process. “What was that?” Ninia asked the Captain, crouching down to inspect the remnants.
“Signal bead.” Alinyaln said, wrapping a long cut on the Yishk’s arm with a piece of his own shirt. “Generally useless and very expensive, but Drags can hear that from a few miles away.” He explained, knotting the shirt tight.
Ninia looked over toward the Mercy of Dradinoor docked at the shore, and a shape rose into the air from the surface. Lightning fast Drags appeared, crashing down onto the ground next to Ninia. How did he move so fast? She thought to herself, awed at the Dragonkin.
Drags stepped up to Alinyaln and saluted, huffing as smoke rose from his nostrils. His wings, plated from the shell-like growth on his back, were unfurled and poised as if to suddenly act.
“Drags, good, take this Yishk back to the ship and take him belowdecks for to Higlim, he was hurt pretty badly.”
The Dragonkin huffed in response. Then, as soft as if he were carrying a newborn, lifted the Yishk into his arms. He rose into the air with a mighty flap of his sinewy wings, lifting off with his feet as he did so and he soared across the town back to the Mercy of Dradinoor. The amount of dexterity that Drags must have as such a large man was something to be admired. The takeoff seemed so gentle for the poor Yishk.
“What about this one?” Ninia asked, prodding Yaskin with her foot. The man that Alinyaln had fought seemed to have stopped breathing as well from a caved chest.
“We take him.” Alinyaln said with a dark expression. He grabbed the thug by his wounded arm, pulling it away from the man’s fetal form. A cry broke out from the man. Sickeningly, Alinyaln was grabbing him by the burned section, ignoring the disgusting patches of blackened skin.
Ninia looked around. Had the street been empty the entire time they had been out here? Was everyone so washed up in their booze that they couldn’t pull themselves away from their chairs to help someone in need? Or was this just… Normal, here in Hrinili?
“There’s no guards here.” She pointed out.
“Aye.” Alinyaln said with a nod, pulling Yaskin along. “Hrinili is one of many self-sufficient towns across Wrinthim, peace kept by those involved as opposed to an outside force.”
“Which is why you’re comfortable taking a man hostage?” Ninia asked him. “As appropriate punishment for attacking your Yishk?”
The Captain was silent for a moment. “No.” He finally spoke, “I’m comfortable taking him hostage because he knows something. And there’s nothing more important to me than finding Tyrnarm.”
“But the others don’t know that.” Ninia said. “To them, it’s only justice.”
“Justice only serves those who are able to enforce it, lass.” Captain Alinyaln said quietly, pulling Yaskin over a particularly large rock. “Grab his legs, it’ll be faster than me dragging him. We’ve probably overstayed out welcome here as it is.”
Grabbing Yaskin’s legs, Ninia turned her head to the side in order to keep from smelling his feet. “How come?”
Alinyaln shook his head. “I think there’s another reason the streets are so empty right now, not just because the slave owners are drinking more than Phinny. People might be staying away to make sure they don’t become merchandise.”
Ninia glanced around at the empty surroundings. Once the slave owners began to sober up after drinking their earnings, were they really going to force people into slavery? “Let’s get going then, Captain.” And with a heave she hoisted Yaskin higher up and they trotted back to the Mercy of Dradinoor.
