Chapter Three Hundred and Fifty-Five - Prisoner Swap

Calamity and one of Caprica’s guards were told to keep an eye on the pirates. The pirates weren’t fond of that, but those who complained the loudest were also those not nursing split lips, brown eyes or nasty arrow-wounds, so they were usually told to shush up by their friend, only none of the pirates used any kind language.

It seemed like one of the requirements to be on this particular crew was having a foul mouth.

I was too busy to chastise anyone though.

Awen ran to the kitchen and rooted around for stuff to feed people with. The easiest solution, as it turned out, was simple bread. The cooks had obviously prepared a batch already, and there were some harder loaves that I imagined came from the day before. Some soup was bubbling away within a big cauldron and it smelled really nice too.

We gathered all of the bread into a few stacks, and Awen started to ladle soup into some bowls as well. Then we brought what we could into the room with the cells.

“Okay,” I said as I inspected the room. More of the prisoners, the hostages, were standing. “We’re going to get everyone out of here. Please, please be nice to each other. We have enough food for everyone. If you’re hurt, go to... uh...” I turned to the remaining royal guardsman.

“Major Icearm,” he said.

“Go to Major Icearm here, and he’ll look you over. He knows some healing magic,” I said. “I’m going to use some magic on you too, okay? Just to get you all cleaned up. And you can gather in the main room and eat and try to rebuild your strength.”

Amaryllis and Caprica helped the hostages moved out, first only one or two of the braver ones, then a trickle as they saw that we were handing out food and my Cleaning magic, which I was pushing out at a steady stream that made the air sparkly-clean, wasn’t hurting anyone.

I calmed a bit as my cleaning magic washed over them and the gunk evaporated from their feathers and clothing. Even those with wounds looked a little better after I had purified their bandages and cleaned out any infection.

But by their sunken eyes and hollow looks, I knew it would take more than a little cleaning and some bread for them to feel any peace.

"Who are you?" one of them asked.

I startled. That was the first word I'd heard out of any of them, so far.

He was a younger blue-feathered harpy, maybe Amaryllis’ own age. He was wearing half of what looked like a uniform of some sort, black pants with a stripe running down the side and a white, sweat-stained button-up shirt.

“I’m Captain Broccoli Bunch, and these are my friends,” I said. “We’re, uh, from the Exploration Guild, but we spend a lot of time trying to make the world a nicer place. And sometimes that means fighting pirates.”

“The good captain here employed us to assist,” Caprica said. “The sylph you see are mercenaries, and nothing but mercenaries.”

I nodded, because what else was I supposed to do, disagree? We hardly needed to confuse the ex-hostages more. “Let’s get you all patched up,” I said. We have some airships coming in soon, so we’ll be able to evacuate everyone.”

“What if they don’t arrive?” someone muttered.

“What about the pirates?”

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

There was a snap-pop, and everyone flinched except for Amaryllis, who had a talon raised. “World-damn it. We’re here to rescue you, not play hatchery games. You’re all harpy, aren’t you? Now act like the proud birds you are and grow a little spine.”

“Amaryllis, don’t be too mean,” I said. “They’ve been through a lot.”

Still, her little admonition worked to calm everyone down. We hurried to give everyone enough to eat, and a few of the ex-hostages moved over to Major Icearm who checked them out with a glowing hand that I imagined meant he was using some sort of healing magic.

Healing magic was supposed to be one of the things the sylph were really good at, and it didn’t surprise me that someone in the royal guard knew a bit. It seemed like a useful skill for a bodyguard to have.

Once everyone was out of a cell--a few needed help to stand, and those were the ones that Major Icearm fussed over the most, he even had to dip into his packs for some medicine and potions for some, though it looked like he was rationing what he had--we left the room with the cells.

The main space of the first floor was pretty clearly divided in half. The pirates-turned-prisoners were on one side, the freed harpy on the other. There was a lot of glaring across the invisible line between the two sides.

“Major, are we going to have complications?” Caprica asked.

“Possibly,” the guard said “"Many of the captives are injured. Some seem to have been wounded back when they were captured - of course all the pirates did was slap on some bandages and throw them in a cell. About half of the wounds were infected, but the good captain's cleaning helped in that regard." He nodded at me. "The worst is that one of them's lost his right arm from the bicep down ... he doesn't seem fully aware, either." He grimaced, then schooled his face back to professionalism. "Others were beaten more recently. They all have signs of mana depletion. Chronic mana depletion, though I imagine it can’t have lasted more than a few days at most. Lots of bedsores and stiff muscles and the usual side-effects you’d expect to see in people allowed only limited movements.”

“They’re all wearing bracelets around their ankles,” Amaryllis said.

I blinked, then turned to look at one of the nearest prisoners. Most were barefoot, which wasn’t unusual with harpy. Even Amaryllis only wore a sort of wrap around the base of her talons. They also, as she said, all had bracelets around their ankles.

“Um, sorry, you, sir, can you come here please?” I asked one of the harpy. The same harpy who’d spoken up earlier.

He glanced around, uncertain, but came over all the same. “Can I help?” he asked.

I nodded. “What’s that around your ankle?”

“Oh,” he said. He raised his leg up, standing on the other with relative ease. “They put these on all of us when we arrived. They weren’t gentle about it.”

The anklet was made of thick, rusty iron, with a rivet punched through an eyelet holding it locked in place.

Amaryllis came closer and squinted at the device. “It’s a magic item. It’s casting something.”

“It’s casting light,” he said. “We have a few people that know magic well enough, they checked them out. It’s casting a light spell, but the weave is really poor.”

“A poorly cast spell, and I imagine the device is designed to cast on touching someone,” Amaryllis said. “Clever, I suppose.”

“So it uses up all of someone’s mana?” I asked.

Amaryllis shrugged. “That kind of device can’t force your mana out of you. Here, touch it.”

I reached down and touched it after the harpy whose leg it was on gave me a nod. The ring instantly started to glow a bit, tiny motes of light flickering off of it. It wasn’t even as bright as a candle. I frowned, and with a smidge of concentration was able to stop it from glowing without removing my hand. “Um, this doesn’t seem effective.”

“Can you hold your mana back while sleeping?” Amaryllis asked me.

I had no idea. “I’ve never tried casting stuff while I sleep,” I said.

“Exactly. I imagine it mostly drains mana while the hostages aren’t paying attention, or while they’re asleep.”

The harpy boy nodded. “That’s right. We wake up drained. You can rebuild your stores during the day, but ... it's hard to focus on retaining your mana when you're hungry, and they only fed us every other day.”

“The room with the cells was probably drained the entire time,” Amaryllis said. “Or, lightly drained. The space would be filled with raw mana otherwise.”

“You know your magic, ma’am,” he said. “I’m Theodore Bluem, I was aboard the Remiges Crown. Did you come to find us?”

“We did,” Amaryllis said. “I’m Amaryllis Albatross, I was part of a separate delegation to Sylphfree. When yours never arrived, we imagined something terrible happened, so we came to investigate.”

“What did happen?” I asked.

Theodore glared at nothing in particular. “Betrayal happened. We ended up having to go further north than intended. It was one of the ships, it kept drifting off course, and it signalled that something was wrong. Nothing big, just a stuck rudder. Combined with that storm and... it doesn’t matter. The pirates came out of nowhere but we could have taken them, except one of our ships turned on us.”

“What!” I gasped. That was terrible.

“It makes sense,” Amaryllis said as she stroked her chin. “The pirates couldn’t have taken on as many ships as they did with the numbers they had, not without someone getting away.”

“Wait, what happened to the ship that betrayed the others?” I asked.

Theodore shrugged. “I don’t know. But Baron Vonowl came down to gloat a few times. He’s staying somewhere above, I think.”

I turned to Amaryllis, and I think she caught my question before I even asked it. “I don’t recognize the name. If he’s actually a baron, then he’s some low-ranked, unimportant one. Speaking of which... are any of the nobles with the captives here?”

Theodore shook his head. “They were taken away early on. We’re the hostages that aren’t worth much. I... don’t know what they were planning to do with us.”

“We should inform Bastion to keep an eye out,” Caprica said. “In the meantime, we should get all of these people upstairs and away from the pirates down here.”

“What are we going to do with the pirates?” I asked.

Caprica narrowed her eyes, then sighed. “Legally, we can’t do anything. This isn’t our land, and while there’s some vague justification for coming in and freeing the hostages, we don’t have any legal basis for carrying out proper justice.”

“So no beheading the lot of them?” Amaryllis asked.

I slapped a hand over my mouth.

“No, nothing of the sort. I say we truss them up and toss them into the cages the captives were in,” Caprica said.

I liked that idea a lot more.

We started moving the pirates over in little groups so that we could manage them if they tried anything. They weren’t happy about being shoved behind bars, but when the alternative was being separated from their heads... they grudgingly listened to what we said.

Once they were all divested of weapons, tied up, and locked away, we got the captives sorted. Some of them insisted on grabbing some of the pirate’s old weapons, and I didn’t have the heart to stop them. If it made them feel better, then that was for the best. I could understand wanting to arm up after being in a cage for so long. They also ate through all of the things in the kitchen which were easy to eat and didn’t require any cooking. Major Icearm insisted that they eat slowly and carefully, but a few went ahead and stuffed themselves only to be sick all over again.

I wouldn’t say they were in good shape for a fight, but it was better than nothing. The fact that most of them were experienced airship crewbirds meant that maybe they could help us once the ships arrived.

We climbed back up to the second floor where one of the squads was waiting for us. Their medic immediately jumped to help the harpies.

“Where’s Paladin Bastion?” Caprica asked one of the nearby scouts.

“Above, ma’am,” he said. “Seventh floor.”

Good,” Caprica said. She turned to the squad leader. “Watch things here. Keep the harpies safe until rescue arrives. We’re heading up.”

“We’re going to go poke at things upstairs?” I asked.

“Ah, isn’t that what we always do?” Awen asked.

Calamity grinned next to her. “Man, I joined the right group of misfits, didn’t I?”

***