Chapter Two Hundred and Forty-Two - A Tale of Two Prison Colonies

Things didn’t exactly go as easily as I may have wanted.

For one thing, I’d thought most of the work we’d have to do would be around the crashed ship. I kind of expected to be able to reach the ship first.

I hadn't foreseen that our path would be blocked by not one, but two bands of townsfolk.

To the right was a group of cervid. They had leather barding and some cloth over their backs and wrapped around their front. Tassels hung from the men’s antlers, and the women wore more elaborate clothes, dyed and decorated with little beads.

To the left was a group of sylph, maybe a dozen in all. They had clothes made of similar materials, leather and cloth of the same material, and they seemed to be centred around a sylph woman in an elegant set of robes.

Neither group looked all that happy to see us.

I took a deep breath, then stepped up. “Hello! I’m Broccoli, Broccoli Bunch! I hope we can all be friends!”

The two groups eyed each other, and two of them stepped up. One of the cervid men, with a particularly impressive set of antlers, and the sylph woman in the robes.

“I am Kevin Marques, mayor of Mistrust,” the cervid said.

The sylph woman stepped up to his side with a dignified huff. “I am Celia Fallfront, mayor of Mistrust.”

I blinked. “The town has two mayors?” I asked.

“It does,” Mayor Marques said. “It is the most effective way of getting things done here, or so we’ve found. Mistrust might not be the grandest or richest place, but we do well for ourselves, at least when ships aren’t crashing down onto our fair town.”

That last bit sounded very pointedly aimed at us.

I winced. “Was anyone hurt?”

“No,” Mayor Fallfront said. “But it was a near thing. A house was set aflame on the edge of town, and one of the ships that fell landed in a farmer’s lot.”

I gasped. “Someone lost their home?”

“Nearly. We put out the flames before anyone was hurt, but the damage was done,” Mayor Marques said. “Which leaves only the matter of reparations.”

I was about to tell them that we’d gladly pay, when a taloned hand grabbed my shoulder and tugged me back a step. “Let me,” Amaryllis said. “Mayor, and Mayor, I am not the keenest harpy that has ever hatched, but I can put two and two together when it suits me. What’s the meaning of this ambush?”

“Ambush?” I repeated.

We were right on the edge of the circle created by the five cry towers. There was a bit of greenery around them, maybe a dozen or so metres of cleared space, with a few trees and some bushes. Circling that was a beaten-dirt road that split off every which way into the town proper. We were still right on the edge of that little strip of park.

“They were waiting around for us to show up. This looks like one of the only paths out of the area, or at least one of the paths onto the main road dividing the town. My concern is more about why they’re trying to ambush us.”

The sylph mayor harrumphed. “We are hardly trying to ambush you; we are merely guarding our peaceful town. Your arrival has caused quite the stir, and disrupted an otherwise ordinary day.”

“We’re sorry,” I said. “We were tasked with delivering a cry to the Lonely Island. We didn't know that we’d be followed, or that the cry would attack us with airships and such.”

“So you’re trying to deflect blame?” Mayor Fallfront asked.

“Not at all,” Bastion said from right behind me. He stepped around me, and came to stand by my side. “The captain was merely informing you of what happened.”

Mayor Fallfront stood a little taller as she took in Bastion. “A paladin?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

I glanced between the two, then sighed. “This is all very tense. I think we might have started on the wrong foot. My crew and I were trying to help someone when we were attacked. We didn’t mean to cause trouble in your town, and we’re sorry that we did. If there’s anything we can do to help you, then tell us. I’m sure we can negotiate.”

“That’s a fair approach,” Mayor Marques said when the other mayor failed to say anything. She was too busy staring at Bastion without any expression on her face. “To be perfectly fair, I don’t think the damages to the town are that extensive. Perhaps a small remuneration would suffice?”

“Like silver and gold?” I asked.

“No, no, we have little use for currency here,” he said. “We can’t exactly travel to the mainland to spend it. Perhaps food? Seeds would be valuable, as well as any materials that are difficult to find on the Lonely Island.”

“That sounds fair,” I said.

I glanced at Amaryllis, who shrugged a bit. “It doesn’t seem like that bad of an idea to barter. We have some surplus equipment, I think. And we need materials for repairs.”

I nodded. “That’s why we’re here,” I said. “We’re going to salvage from the two airships that crashed around the town. They have a few things we need.”

Mayor Fallfront snapped out of whatever had her staying quiet. “Those fell within the boundaries of Mistrust. They, by all rights, should be ours.”

“What would you use them for?” I asked.

“Why, to leave this place, perhaps?” the mayor tried. “Or merely for parts. What we use them for doesn’t matter—they belong to us.”

“The cry are the ones who brought them down,” Bastion pointed out.

“Then they can claim them if they wish. I doubt it though.”

Amaryllis sighed. “You’re going to have us bargain for every piece we take, aren’t you?”

“I suppose that would depend entirely on what you take. Mistrust has a smithy, and some very talented carpenters,” Mayor Marques said.

I wasn’t sure what to think of our strange reception. They could have been a lot worse. As it was, they didn’t feel... friendly, exactly, but they weren’t mean either. They felt more greedy than anything else.

That wasn't the best, but it was better than being hostile. "Amaryllis, do you think you could handle the negotiation part? We should get to the ship sooner than later, especially if we want to see what’s worth taking.”

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Amaryllis said. She smiled, and it was the kind of smile I’d expect to see on a hawk that stumbled across an injured bunny. “I’ll be sure to get us a good deal.”

“Let’s all stick close,” Bastion muttered, low enough that I only just caught it with all four ears peeled.

I nodded and stepped forward. “So, Mayors, could someone maybe guide us to the crashed ships? If we need any additional materials, then I’m sure we could negotiate for them once we know what we need.”

Everyone seemed to think that that was perfectly reasonable, so off we went.

Mistrust was a sprawling town. The homes were built with yards around them, some with gardens and others surrounded by trees. It was actually hard to see how big the town was from ground level. The cervid homes tended to be larger, but they didn’t have second storeys to them most of the time. The doors were also scaled up in size.

The sylph homes were more like mini-towers, tall and thin, with as much space around them as they could manage, and they frequently had balconies around their upper floors.

What was most interesting were the hybrid homes. Short, fat towers with big doors and ramps around the outside.

“Do the two groups here live together?” I asked the mayors.

Mayor Marques hummed, his head tilting back a bit. It was rather imposing to have someone so tall nearby. He was taller than Emmanuel had been, with much bigger antlers. “Once, we both settled in this area as two camps. We both had something the other needed, so an alliance was formed, though it was initially tenuous.”

“But it’s better now?” I asked.

“Oh, certainly. We had two mayors because we were two towns. But some folk trusted others, and the settlements grew closer. The cry were here long before us, of course, and their towers became the centre of our community.”

“That’s so cool,” I said. “But if you’re just one town now, why are there two mayors still?”

“Some issues are unique to either the cervid or sylph, and while we have grown closer, we are not all in agreement about everything, so rather than elect one leader, we have two.”

I nodded. “That’s kinda cool; I like it. People getting along is something I can get behind.”

“Does the town have difficulties, what with the population being made up nearly entirely of convicts?” Bastion asked.

The mayors both sniffed. “I’ll have you know,” Fallfront said. “That most of the population here are the children of those originally exiled. Or their children’s children. The vast majority of the convicts here are or were the non-violent sorts. Oh, we have a few thieves, but everyone knows who they are, and when something goes missing we know who to poke at to get it back. We don’t abide the dangerous sort of criminal. Mostly, we have people who disagreed with how things were being done, in Sylphfree or the Trenten Flats.”

I gestured to Bastion to drop the subject. We didn’t need to antagonize the townsfolk. I figured most of us were safe, but Bastion’s job was literally the sort of job that might lead to him arresting some of the people that were here.

“Ah, there it is,” the cervid mayor said.

The first of the two crashed cry airships was slumped before us, its hull leaning up against a few trees. The engine at the back looked like it had burned itself out, but not before leaving a blackened streak across the grass.

The ship was rather barge-like from up close, without much depth to its keel. The sails were torn up and shredded, likely when the airship crashed through the bit of forest around us.

“Is it safe to go aboard?” I asked.

“Probably not,” Amaryllis said as she moved past me. “But it still has some balloons.”

She was right. There were a big chunk of the ship’s balloons still left, though it had torn open in a few spots, and looked like a plastic grocery bag that had spent some time as a kitten’s chew toy.

“Right! Okay. Let’s see what we can do with those remaining helium sacs. And, uh, are there any cry crew left on it?”

“No,” Mayor Marques said. “A couple of cry were seen flying away from it before anyone from town came to inspect this one. The local cry poked at it too. I think they found one cry stuck in the frame of the other ship that they took with them.”

“Oh,” I said. That was good to know.

I was a bit surprised when Oda stepped up next to me, then wiped at his whiskery teenager mustache. “That engine looks dangerous. I don’t know how rockets work, but it was giving off a whole trail of flame earlier.”

“So we take our time, and we make sure to be careful,” I said.

“What do you plan on taking here?” Mayor Marques asked.

“Mostly the balloons,” I said. “Ours were perforated, so we need more helium. Maybe they have some tanks of that here, but I don’t know. We could use some of the tarp that the sacs are made of too.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, that sounds like a rare and valuable resource then.”

Amaryllis sighed. “Broccoli, go take care of overseeing things. I’ll handle the mayors.”

“Alright,” I said. Amaryllis really was the best at negotiating that among us. I’d just do my part to help gather the things we’d need to get the Beaver back in the air.

***