Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty-Seven - Piracy in the High Skies

“Pirates?” Calamity asked.

“Pirates,” Amaryllis confirmed.

“Pirates!” Calamity cheered.

“Pirates!” I cheered with him, because it was fun.

“Pirates?” Awen repeated.

Amaryllis huffed. “Okay, enough of that. I’m aware you’re all excited, but can we please take this seriously? This is an important matter.”

I nodded along. That was a fair thing to ask, even if the news was quite exciting. “So, what does the book say?”

Amaryllis held the manifest open in the crook of one wing and ran her talons across the other page. “Alright, let’s trace this back a little,” she said as she flipped back a couple of pages. “Here. This ship was one of the first to meet with the main delegation vessel. The Royal Plumage. They took off from Fort Sylphrot then headed north. They collected new crewmates at Farseeing and waited two days at dock for the fleet to assemble. There are some notes from the quartermaster.”

“I think we can skip those,” Awen said.

Amaryllis nodded. “Alright, here, the ship left Farseeing and headed north again. They stopped by Walker’s Rest where they picked up a few more nobles and another couple of escort ships. The Hunter’s Eye was one of those, as well as its sister ship, the Hunter’s Fang.”

I nodded along. I could more or less trace the trajectory in my mind. “How many ships does that make?” I asked.

“Including the main delegation ship, which was a government yacht, there were two corvettes, two frigates, and a single cruiser.”

Calamity whistled. “That’s an awful lot of ships,” he said.

“More escorts than you’d ever expect for a commercial venture, but for a political one, this is more or less par for the course.” Amaryllis tapped the page. “This ship, the Remiges Crown, I think it belonged to a noble of the Canary family. So not a Nesting Mountain Navy vessel but a privately owned and operated warship.”

I looked around the deck, noting all the weapons on it. “Really? This is a private ship?”

“A merchant escort. It explains why it’s so lightly armed,” Amaryllis said.

This was lightly armed? It had a lot more going for it than the Beaver did. Then again, the Beaver Cleaver was an adventuring ship first and foremost. “Anyway, then what?”

“So, all six vessels headed further north. They crossed to the east of the mountain range through Walker’s Pass, then they headed towards Sylphfree using a fairly circuitous route.” Amaryllis turned the page. “Ah, they hit a storm coming from the south maybe... a week ago.”

“I remember that one,” Calamity said. “Nasty storm. Way worse than what we slept through.”

“That threw the fleet in disarray. They regrouped to the west of Fort Middlesfaire and continued north. I think they were planning on slipping to the south of the Greenstone.”

Calamity frowned. “That’s daring.”

“What’s the Greenstone?” I asked.

“It’s an area to the north of here, thataways,” Calamity said as he pointed. “It’s all dead. Like a small desert, with a nearly perfect edge. There’s this huge green pillar in the middle of it. All glowy and magical.”

“What’s it do?”

He shrugged. “Kills nya, mostly. Don’t rightly know who put it there or why.”

“Giant mysterious pillar, got it.” I turned back to Amaryllis. “Then what?”

“Then, the pirates. The fleet was trying to move at double-time but they ran into complications. Doesn’t say what. The log only says that they saw... well, here, read this passage at the bottom here.” She turned the manifest my way and pointed to the very last paragraphs, all done in a neat hand.

0909h - Ships sighted. 340-345 North. Six vessels. No sight on flags.

1017h - Ships approaching. Three vessels turning to intercept. No flags. Unknown vessel type.

1037h - Alarm raised from the Concordance. Ships are Snowlander. Two frigate-tonnage vessels. Two corvettes. One cruiser. One heavy vessel (cargo converted?). Bearing on fleet.

1100h - Flags raised. Pirates. Preparing for boarding and combat.

That was the last entry. The rest of the page was all blank. I was kind of impressed by the steady hand of whomever wrote the notes. “So, pirates. For real-real,” I said.

Amaryllis nodded. “And this ship and the Hunter’s Eye were taken out. They didn’t come down to salvage, but the looks of it. And this was a while ago. The delegation was going to be late because of the storm. This just made it worse.”

“I guess they had bigger things to worry about than being late,” Awen said. “Like pirates.”

Amaryllis nodded. “Their route is strange. This isn’t the fastest path to Sylphfree, not by a long shot. The timing isn't adding up.”

“Think someone on the inside told the pirates?” Calamity asked. He was pretty excited by it all.

“It’s possible, though I’d hope not. The last thing we need is a political element within the country consorting with pirates and scoundrels.” She snapped the manifest shut and locked it up. “We need to report this.”

“Going to take a couple days to reach Fort Middlesfaire from here,” Calamity said. “Longer if we intend to loot the ship before we run off.”

Amaryllis narrowed her eyes in thought, then shook her head. “No, that’s too long. I suggest that we use the ring we have to contact our friends in Slyphfree for pickup.”

“They’ll be able to find us out here?” I asked.

Awen nodded. “It shouldn’t be too hard to triangulate where someone is with that kind of ring. Not for a Paladin team, I imagine. Also, we’ll be telling them where we are, which should help.”

Calamity slowly raised a hand to ask a question. “Sorry ny’all, but what are we talking about?”

My friends and I shared a look, and I was elected the spokesbun. “Well, we came here to discover what happened to the delegation right?” He nodded. “Both Sylphfree and the Nesting Kingdom want to know. So we’re in contact with Slyphfree for this mission. They’re the ones who helped us get all the way over to here.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, I’ll be. Proper spies from another land.”

“We’re not spies,” I said.

“It’s true. At worst we’re mercenaries,” Amaryllis pointed out. “But in reality it’s more that our goals happen to align with Sylphfree’s. It’s a matter of mutual convenience. The sylph need to know what happened to the delegation so that the harpy won’t be angered with them. Ideally, we’ll also be able to prove that the Trenten Flats are innocent in all of this.”

“Innocent?” he asked. Then his eyes lit up. “Because the ships went down over the Flats. Right, I can see why that might ring some bells. Like discovering one of your hens died in the neighbour’s yard.”

“Not the analogy I’d use, but yes, something like that,” Amaryllis said. “I need a moment to pen a response.” She glanced around. We were still in the officer’s quarters, which happened to have desks and writing implements. Most of the latter were scattered across the floor, but they weren’t far.

“Want to keep snooping around while she does all that?” I asked Calamity and Awen.

“Sure, I’d love ta.” We left the cabins at the rear of the ship and made our way to the centre of the deck where a staircase led to the main deck. “So, are nya really an airship captain?” he asked.

I nodded. “I am! I’ve only been one for a couple of months though.”

“Busy months,” Awen said.

“Oh yeah, very. This won’t be our first run-in with pirates.”

“You’ve seen pirates before?” he asked. “Like, in the air?”

I nodded. “Awen was kidnapped once!”

“I get kidnapped a lot,” Awen noted with a heavy sigh. “Twice since I met Broccoli. But the first time it was by Broccoli, so I’m not sure if it counts.”

“I think it technically needs to be involuntary for it to count,” I pointed out. I hardly needed Calamity to start thinking I was some sort of evil bun mastermind, kidnapper of cute friends and hug thief.

“That’s incredible. You must know a bunch about airships then, like, ah, what kinda loot we can find in one of these here airships?” he asked with a gesture around himself. The lower deck of the Remiges Crown was fairly open, with netted shelves to the sides and an area near the fore that was filled with hammocks

“Uh, I guess food, some normal supplies, maybe weapons?” I asked. The Beaver didn’t have much by means of treasure on it. Maybe a few personal items, but that was it.

“A ship this big might have an armoury,” Awen said.

As it turns out, she was right. We found a heavy metal door at the rear of the ship with three big locks on it. None of them were actually locked though, and the door was left half-open. I imagined that the crew had grabbed what they needed when pirates showed up and were a bit too busy to lock up on the way out.

The room was narrow, shoved up against the side of the engine as it was. One wall was entirely made up of racks which had held a bunch of weapons once. Now it was down to a few that had been left behind. Calamity was still excited about it though. “Oh, crossbows. And grapples.” He picked up a cutlass, then compared it to the one he’d grabbed earlier.

I looked around at things too, but I wasn’t super interested in weapons, and there wasn’t much else there. The kitchen proved a lot more interesting. It was also at the rear, and seemed nearly intact.

That made some sense, all the food was in cupboards with strong latches or in racks that were meant to endure a good bit of turbulence. There was a magical rune-empowered fridge at the back filled with all sorts of goodies, and the stove was also powered by mana.

Awen and I started cooking, mostly noodles with whatever sauces we found in the fridge. It would let us save up some of our other supplies in case we needed them.

“You’re getting the hang of cooking, huh?” I asked Awen as she mixed a pot-full of a tomato-like paste.

“It’s not too different from assembling something, in a way. And... I like it when you and Amaryllis are happy that I cooked something nice.”

“Aw!” I cooed before grabbing her for a quick cheek-squishing hug. “I like it when you’re happy too!”

Amaryllis came down a few minutes later with a bit of a frown on her face. “Ah, there you are,” she said. Calamity was in what I guess was the mess. Though the table was clearly meant to fold up against the wall to be out of the way. “Are you cooking?”

“Early lunch!” I said.

“I suppose there’s no point in letting anything go to waste. Anyway, I finished contacting Sylphfree. They can have a flight of wyverns here to pick us up by tomorrow afternoon.”

“That’s a long ways off,” I said.

“We’re not exactly close by. Though I had hoped they would have a ship ready for departure with less delay than that,” Amaryllis said.

“So, we hang around here until the sylph arrive, then I lead the ponies back?” Calamity asked.

“No, not quite,” Amaryllis said. “They want us to keep investigating things in the region. Calamity, you said you only saw two ships coming down, right?”

“Yeah, but it was from afar. I don’t doubt my eyes, but I know their limits.”

“Then maybe we can find a vantage and look around, just in case. We have time to kill before the sylph take off, and they can home in on us. We don’t need to sit around and wait.”

“That sounds fine,” I said. “But first, let's get something warm into our tummies, huh?”

Amaryllis rolled her eyes, but when Awen came out with a big bowl full of steaming noodles and sauce, she didn’t complain any.

A small break, then a pinch more adventure. Just what we needed to cap off the day!

***