Marco got the others up belowdeck, then took to the wheel and pursued the other ship with Aethe’s help. The pirates were heading in a single direction and, oblivious to their tail, didn’t even keep a watch as they sailed towards their home.

“There,” Aethe said as she pointed into the distance. “I see their base. It’s… big.”

Marco eased the ship to a stop without dropping the anchor. He took out his spyglass and looked in the direction that Aethe was pointing. The island Aethe had seen came into clear view, emerging from the dark of the early morning and revealing a volcanic island dominated by a single central peak and utterly swarmed with ships.

“How many are there?” Marco gaped at the sails in the distance as he passed the spyglass to Elisa.

“Dozens. Hundreds,” Elisa said when she got a good look and then passed the device to Riv. “More than we want to mess with.”

“Look at that one,” Riv said. Marco had a rough guess to what Riv was pointing at, even without the spyglass. There was a ship a good deal bigger than all the others docked, and even from a distance it just seemed better somehow. More real. More dangerous. “That’s a hell of a boat.”

“And it’s moving.” Aethe grabbed Marco by the arm and pulled him to the wheel. “We need to go now, before it sees us. It’s moving fast.”

Marco didn’t need to be told twice. He pushed the ship as fast as he could for an hour, taking odd turns in the meantime to try to confuse any pursuers. He kept up the speed at a lesser level for a few hours longer than that. In the end, they weren’t pursued, at least that they could tell.

“I can’t believe we got away,” Marco said, feeling entirely exhausted after the exertion. “That ship was a monster.”

“It either didn’t see us or didn’t think we were worth it,” Elisa said. “But let’s not try that again.”

“Deal,” Marco said. “Could you give me a course back to where we left the other ship? I seem to have lost my way.”

It took a few hours to get back to the general vicinity of the previous ship, and then they continued on their way. After another half hour, they doubled back on a different angle, thinking they had missed the ship. Nothing appeared on that or the next lap through the territory. Wherever the other captain had gone, they weren’t seeing it.

“Do you think he gave us the slip?” Marco asked nobody in particular. “Sort of ungrateful to do, considering.”

“Ahoy!” a voice behind him boomed. He turned to find the other captain waving at them from a small sail-driven boat, the kind people used to maneuver in the shallows around islands. “I’m here.”

“Where did you come from?” Marco yelled. “We didn’t see you.”

“That’s the tricky part. Sorry, I thought you’d run into the island for sure. But I guess things are a bit better hidden here than I remember. Just follow me.” The captain turned the rudder, catching the wind and moving away. “It won’t take long.”

It didn’t. Thirty seconds later, they were there, at the foot of a good-sized island. It had come up out of nowhere, like it had just popped into existence just for them.

“It’s always like that!” the civilian captain shouted across the water. “You can’t see it until you are right up on it.”

Aethe had the best eyes of them and just seemed to shrug at the island that had popped up under them a quarter of a mile away. They should have been able to see it for almost the entire time they had been sailing but somehow, none of them did.

“Now those pirates make more sense. They know something is out here, and they don’t have a chance of finding it by themselves. Hunting up a ship is their only chance of getting the information they want,” Elisa said.

“Two less of them now.” Marco looked hard at the island, spying a small dock in a small natural inlet that didn’t quite count as a bay. “That’s where we are headed, but let’s follow them in. No use causing any misunderstandings.”

The dock was cobbled together from driftwood and old ship parts, clearly built in a hurry and with no small amount of desperation. Children were already waiting by the shore, jumping and shouting as the two ships approached. A tall woman with broad shoulders and a cane made of twisted iron stood at the center of the little pier, hands planted firmly on her hips. Her eyes locked on the rowboat first, then shifted to The Foolish Endeavor.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“She looks like someone’s about to get yelled at,” Riv said. “Who do you think?

“Probably everyone,” Elisa replied. “Her friends just limped in on the wrong ship, and we are the new people who smell like burnt pirate and cannon smoke. She does seem like the type who can be reasoned with though.”

“I think it’s just her face.” Aethe stepped forward beside Marco, narrowing her eyes. “She’s not angry. She’s ready.”

“Ready for us?” Marco asked.

“Ready for whatever comes her way. Expected or unexpected,” Elisa answered. “It’s the same look that Garrick had from time to time.”

Now that she mentioned it, Marco could see the similarities. Both the woman and Garrick had the same alert but relaxed look in their eyes, like they had seen far worse and knew they could weather whatever came at them.

The ships slid into place, ropes were thrown, tied, and tightened until the ships were secured. Marco decided to stay on the boat a few moments longer, just enough to make sure the woman wasn’t going to sic an entire island on them to make sure they weren’t problem a new problem for her to deal with.

“You’re the one who fought off the pirates?” she asked. Her voice was lower than Marco expected. “Floater told me about it.”

“That’s me. Marco. Captain.” Marco gestured vaguely toward his ship. “Of The Foolish Endeavor.”

“You brought my people home,” the woman stated. She glanced around at the others on the island and seemed to make a decision mentally. “You went to see the pirate base?”

“Sort of,” Marco answered. “Just a quick scout, there were hundreds of pirates. More than we can take on. Not that we’re looking for a fight right now.”

The woman nodded. “For that and helping my people, you’ll be fed, watered, and given a place to rest. You bought yourself three days. After that, we have to make a deal.”

Marco nodded.

“That seems fair.”

She gave them a slight nod, then barked a few quick words of assurance over her shoulder, mixed with a stern order that the new arrivals weren’t a show to be watched. Whatever villagers had been hiding or trying to catch some early gossip to share jumped back to work, getting to work on unloading the rowboat.

“You want us to just tie to the dock?” Marco asked. He gave Elisa a quick glance, but she seemed equally unsure of what the etiquette for half-pirates docking on an island was. “We can also drop our anchor.”

“If you trust us, we’ll unload you. Make sure your stores are good and help patch any holes on your ship,” the woman said. There was something about her tone that made Marco trust her. He nodded his assent.

—

The bathhouse wasn’t the first surprise the island gave them, since appearing almost under their feet had taken that title. It was the first nice one, though, even if it didn’t look that way at first.

It was a squat, wide building at the base of the hills, its slanted roof patched together out of what looked like three entirely different kinds of wood. The outside looked rough, slapped together in a big barn shape and without any extra care. But inside, it was something else. The air was hot, damp, and clean. Smooth wooden slats lined the floor and walls, and each individual tub was fed by a quiet trickle of steaming water.

Marco stood blinking in the doorway.

“I thought you said this place was new. The settlement was just getting started,” he stated numbly. “This doesn’t look anything like that dock.”

“That’s true,” Floater said. “The dock’s a special case. Kelda said that we should keep it less repaired for a bunch of reasons. But that there was no reason we had to live the same way. We have a lot of talented people. Opportunity tends to do that. Ladies, your room is down that way. There’s a big curtain that closes the whole thing off once you’re in there. Enjoy.”

Elisa pushed past him, already tugging at her boots.

“You don’t have to tell me twice. See you guys in a bit.”

The water was clear, not just by bathwater standards but truly pure. Each bathtub was separated by privacy dividers that gave a modest sense of enclosure without closing anyone in completely. Someone had gone to a lot of thoughtful effort to make this a nice, sociable place. After a lot of time in dangerous, often dirty parts of his journey, Marco was glad to find somewhere that just seemed normal and perhaps even luxurious.

Within minutes, clothes were set aside, bruises were soaking, and Marco had set his saber and armor in a big tub that Floater assured would scald them clean in no time. Marco eased into the hot water, leaning back and letting the heat creep into his tired bones.

“Three days,” he muttered. “We should make the most of them.”

Riv, two tubs away, sighed in agreement.

“Tomorrow, we get to work. Tonight, we’re off the clock. Floater, you said there would be dinner after this?” Marco asked.

“Anything you want. Meat, grain, bread, even cheese. It’s all set out on one big table, except whatever needs to be kept over the fire. It’s a pretty good spread,” Floater answered. “Take as much as you want. We’re still keeping a communal feast while we build other things that take higher priority.”

“Again, not what I’d expect from a remote island.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not a normal island. Care to take a guess how many times I visited before anyone settled here?” Floater asked.

“I don’t have any idea.” Marco reached down and used his fingers to scrub some grime from beneath his soles. The water seemed to actively help with the process, like it bore its own soap inside it. “None?”

“More like ten. I didn’t really count. This place was always just an island I’d stop at for water. Before things changed. It used to not have any food or any resources worth having. Hell, it used to be smaller. Now it’s bigger and full of everything anyone would want. We have a whole team building warehouses just to hold the stuff we are pulling out of this place.”