Author's Note: I should probably focus on Roofies and all my embryonic fics before I start a new one, but oh well. I'm inspired for this, so I may as well deal with said inspiration.
An old amusement of mine is to take a given cliche in writing or character-building, and try to deal with it in a new and interesting way. Something In The Water is my attempt at the old amnesia cliché, and Flowers In Chaos is my high-school AU attempt. This fic, however, is an attempt at a far more prevalent sort of cliché- that of 'girl falls into fantasy-world of choice and finds the hero of her dreams'. Well, half of it anyway… You'll see what I mean if you read the darn thing.
Title: Colour Of The Conqueror
Genre: Adventure, Adventure, Adventure. :D
Rating: T for the foreseeable future.
Length: Who knows? I haven't got a definitive chapter plan yet.
Pairings: Roger/Rouge… and that's all, as of yet.
Warnings: Swearing, fighting, drinking, but that's all part and parcel of being a pirate. OC-insert, but not your standard.
Summary: A life ends in one world, and begins in another. Jory Hall meets the man who will become the Pirate King, and joins his crew in the capacity of ship's cook. Had she known what she was getting herself into, she probably would have run the other way at considerably high speed…
Colour Of The Conqueror
Part I.I: Bugger
Jory woke up early that morning. The sky outside her attic window was still pitch black, with only a faint hint of a paler blue near the mountains on the southern horizon to mark the onrushing day.
Heat rises. Jory's bedroom was the highest room in the homestead, and it collected the house's heat overnight. In winter, when the snow blanketed the ground three feet deep and ice stretched jagged fingers across the windowpanes, this was good. In summer, it was akin to a form of torture.
Flinging back the covers, Jory rolled gracelessly out of bed, stomping through the dark to the nearest window. She fumbled with the latch a moment before the window came unstuck, and creaked open of its own accord. Cool, bracing night air flooded into the room. Jory breathed a sigh of relief, and folded her arms on the lintel, leaning out and breathing deep the fresh air.
Somewhere out there in the darkness, she could hear the river rushing along its bed. It was one of the constants of life- wherever you went on the station, you were never far from it or one of its tributaries. You swam in it in summer, went fishing in it in autumn, and collected ice from it in winter. In spring, the livestock gathered in the pastures around it, their bleating and mooing drowned out by its roar.
Up here at the homestead, the roar was faint. Jory's eyes narrowed as she glanced at the lightening eastern horizon. The birds were beginning to wake up, muffled clucks coming from the henhouse to mingle with the chirping of the wild birds in the trees. A magpie chortled from its nest up in the old gum tree behind the homestead.
"Work time," Jory muttered, turning away from the window and groping for the light switch. It was almost a morning ritual- no matter how many times she turned on the light in the morning, she was always too tired to remember exactly where it was in relation to the window. Her fingers brushed an irregularity in the wall, and she slapped her hand against it. The old lightbulb flickered on, bathing the attic room in warm yellow light.
Hand on her hips, Jory surveyed her bedroom. "Bloody hell, it's a pigsty."
Actually, compared with her brothers' rooms, it wasn't that bad. There were clothes strewn across the floor, and paper from her homeschooling notes fluttering in the breeze from the open window. Her bed was a mess, and she'd definitely have to change those sheets today; she'd obviously been sweating like a pig overnight. But the rest of the room was bleak, almost Spartan. She just didn't have enough things to support much mess.
Her hairbrush sat on her bedside table, one of the few small household items that Jory bothered with. She sat down on the side of her bed, grabbing the hairbrush, and tugged the ties from the ends of her braids. Teasing the hair out with her fingers, she dragged the brush through it until the knots disappeared. Tracing her part down the middle of her skull, she pulled her hair into two sections, and quickly rewove it into two thin braids. Her hair was about the only part of herself she was happy with- a pale reddish brown colour, it was dead straight and easy to take care of. The rest of Jory required a bit more upkeep than that.
Braids done, she pushed herself to her feet again, and dressed herself, picking the airiest of her skirts and a loose tank top, with a thin jacket to go over the top. Summer in Central demanded restraint with clothing. Finally, she made a circuit of the other windows in the room, opening them all to let a steady breeze drive away the night's humidity, and stomped out into the stairwell.
The homestead had originally been a two-storeyed building with an attic, built from wood to house the families of the men that had looked after the station almost a hundred and fifty years ago. These days, only the Hall and Lewis families were left, but with their grandparents, children, and children's children, the house was full. Jory had built the staircase up to the attic a couple of years ago, when her eldest brother came home with a wife and a baby in tow. Ever since then, the attic had been her haven.
She clumped down the stairs, avoiding the creaky floorboards outside her parents' room, and descended the second set of stairs in much the same manner. The ground floor corridor led her out into the homestead's kitchen.
The light was on, and the range was going already. Her grandparents sat at the table in the corner, silence stretching around them. Granma Hall lifted her eyes to smile at Jory, a spiderweb of wrinkles stretching across her face. Grampa merely grunted, too absorbed in the science journal he was reading. Two of the station's many dogs stretched out underneath the table, dark eyes dolefully staring out at Jory.
"You're up early," Granma commented, reaching back to the bench for the muesli box. "Do me a favour and get the milk out of the fridge, there's a good girl."
Granma Hall was the ruler of the kitchen, beyond all doubt. Round and fat, she had a face like an apple that had been left out in the sun too long, and was almost as dark from years of hard work outdoors. Her husband was lanky and whipcord-lean, as if to contrast directly with her soft and pillowish appearance. But Jory knew that Granma's flabby arms held muscles like iron. Years of kneading bread and shearing sheep will do that to a person.
Jory retrieved the milk from the fridge, and collected herself a bowl, pouring half the remaining milk into it before passing the carton to Granma. "We're going to need more soon. There's only one of these left in the freezer out back."
"I'm well ahead of you there, girlie." Grandma's smile grew wider, her eyes threatening to disappear between wrinkles. "Amanda down the road is going into town today, and I've arranged for you to go with her. No, have a break from the work," she said, as Jory opened her mouth to argue. "We're not so short-handed that everything will go to pieces without you, even if it is shearing time."
'Town' was a tiny village down on the plains, three hours' drive from the station. Its only merit, in Jory's opinion, was a rural supermarket, and a brilliant pie shop. Tourists passing through it on the way to the Fiords were the only reason it existed.
"How come Amanda's going today?" Jory settled for asking. "She only went a couple of days ago."
Granma grinned. "I suspect she has a beau, an object of amour. It goes without saying that I expect you to investigate this possibility most strenuously, granddaughter mine."
Jory sighed, smiling as she rested her chin on the heel of her palm. If Granma had lived in a town, she would have been the queen of gossip. As it was, there wasn't much to gossip about out here at the station, so she got her kicks poking into the business of the various neighbours. The woman who rented the cottage down by the river was a particular favourite of hers.
"Sure, Granma. So what else do we need?"
"Well, I was just working on a list before you came in." She turned to Grampa, plucking the journal out of his hands. "Can you think of anything else we'll need, dear? And don't think I didn't notice you being rude to our dear granddaughter before."
He silently eyed the journal hanging from her fingertips, and shook his head. Granma sighed, and gave it back to him.
"Well, here's the list, anyway." She handed Jory a sheet of note paper; Jory took it, quickly skimming through the list before folding it up and stuffing it in her jacket's pocket.
Breakfast was a quiet affair- Jory and Granma both took food too seriously to chat while they were eating, and Grampa still had his nose buried in the journal. Jory ate slowly, watching the dawn slowly appear outside the kitchen windows. Birds sang their hearts out, and fluttered between the trees, looking for the morning's insects.
"I reckon there's a falcon out there somewhere," Granma said, setting her empty bowl down on the floor. The blue heeler curled up at her feet dragged it across the linoleum floor, and licked the dregs of milk from it. "You remember those two pigeons that were hanging around? One of them is gone."
"Smart falcon," Jory chuckled, watching a thrush tug a worm out of the lawn. "It waited for them to get fat from our leftovers."
"Maybe, maybe!" Granma opened her mouth to continue her story, and at that moment, the phone rang.
Without looking up from his journal, Grampa reached behind his shoulder and grabbed the phone, passing it across the table to Jory. She hurriedly took it, pressing the receiver to her ear.
"Hello?" a hesitant voice said, distorted by the crackling in the line. "Is this Emma Hall?"
"Jory, actually," Jory replied. "How's it going, Amanda?"
"Oh good, you're up." Amanda sounded surprised. "I just wanted to check when you wanted to leave for the village. The weather report says the river might rise higher than usual when the dam opens their floodgates this afternoon, so it would be best for us to head off soon, so that we can get our shopping done and get back before the fords go underwater."
"Yeah, that sounds good." Jory covered the receiver with one hand. "Oi, Grampa, did you catch the weather report this morning?"
He nodded, his eyes still fixed on the journal. "There's been heavy rain up in the mountains, so there'll be more water coming through the dam than usual. I don't need the radio to tell me that."
"Right." She uncovered the receiver. "I'll come down now, Amanda."
"Oh, good. By the way, do you think you could collect my stuff from the drop-off point before you come across the river? It shouldn't be too heavy for you to carry on your own."
"Sure, sure. See you in a bit, then."
"Yes. Bye." Amanda hung up.
Jory passed the phone back to her grandpa, who set it back in its cradle on the shelf. "I'd better get going," she said, and rose to her feet, pacing across to the outside door. Her boots sat on the floor there, among the dozens of other pairs belonging to the homestead's inhabitants. "Have fun cooking without me, Granma."
"Oh, you're not still sulking about that, are you, dear?" Granma chuckled as Jory pulled on her socks, and slid her feet into the boots. They were tough leather, steel-toed hiking boots, bought for her birthday two years ago. With them, Jory had tramped around the entire station, all two hundred thousand hectares of it.
"What do you think, Granma? I like cooking." She pulled open the door, and stomped out, calling back over her shoulder, "and goodbye! I'll say hi to the guys in town for you!"
"Bye-bye, dearest!" Granma called.
The door shut, and Jory was alone with the dawn.
The homestead was built halfway up the flank of the mountain locals called the Devil's Thumb, with sweeping views across the terraced valley of the Waiatoto River. The far side of the valley was covered from river to peak with thick beech forest, while the home side was all tussock and flocks of sheep. A fantail flitted through the air, peeping insistently.
Jory started down the hillside, her boots scuffing against the grass. There was a driveway that came up to the homestead, but it was quicker to take the cross-country route when you were on foot. She hopped over the home pasture fence with surprising agility for someone who looked like a younger, slightly plumper version of Granma, and wove her way through the sleeping flock of sheep.
The air was cool, but it wouldn't stay that way for long. The sky was already bright, though the sun itself hadn't yet appeared over the surrounding mountains. The clouds in the distance had a little of their sunrise glory left, but as Jory climbed down the mountain, it faded. The sound of the river grew steadily louder.
This was where the road terminated. There was nothing further east of here, other than mountains. Jory scuffed down the last field, and hopped the wire fence, landing on the gravel surface of the road.
Amanda's place was across the river, but she had a letterbox and a covered drop-off point beside the road. Jory didn't know what she did, but she got things delivered quite often, and whenever anyone went to visit her, they would pick up these deliveries and take them across the river for her.
As she reached the track that led down to the river, Jory spotted three bags sitting beside Amanda's letterbox. They were made of hessian, and when she peeked inside, she saw honey, flour, a lot of cans, and a frying pan. Amanda had been right- they weren't too heavy for Jory. Hefting the bags up, she followed the track through the grass and down to the riverbank.
The Waiatoto River flowed too fast and too deep to be forded this high up in the mountains. Instead, someone had strung a cage between two giant old manuka trees on opposite sides of the bank. Jory climbed up into the old, clunky contraption, and reached up for the gears. You wound yourself across with this cage, slowly and steadily so you didn't stress the rope too much. No-one was sure who had built the cage, but it sure was useful, so no-one really bothered with questioning it.
Jory watched the river rush past underneath her as the cage slowly moved out across the river. At first it had scared her, seeing all that white water boiling past, but these days, she was far too used to it to give it much thought. Instead, she kept her eye on the bags that sat on the wooden floor of the cage, leaning against her legs.
She was nearly at the other side of the river when it started. The gears creaked to a halt, giving a rusty screech as they jammed completely. Jory scowled, trying to pick out the rust that had jammed them.
A gust of wind roared down the valley, rocking the cage violently from side to side. She grabbed for the bars surrounding the cage, simultaneously trying to stop the bags going over the side. A pair of cans leaped out, falling five metres into the blue water.
"Bloody hell," Jory growled, wrenching at the gears. They remained stubbornly stuck, little flecks of rust drifting down to nest on top of her head.
Suddenly, Jory became aware of a rumbling sound above the usual roaring of the river. It seemed to echo down the valley from upstream, and she quickly spared a glance up the river. Nothing could be seen- it was just the wide river, the golden terraces on either side, and the mountains reaching up to the sky around them.
Then she noticed something much further up the valley, in the riverbed. A white wall rushed down the valley, reaching up as high as the first terrace, and slamming over everything in its path- trees, rocks, sheep. Jory spotted boulders the size of houses being pushed along by the torrent.
The dam upstream was older than Jory- almost as old as her father. She'd been to see it once, when she was about six. She'd stood on top of the concrete and looked down at the spillways, feeling the rumbling of the water going through the turbines reverberating through her bones. There was more water that went through there every second than Jory had ever imagined.
That wave coming down the valley was almost forty metres high.
Jory found she couldn't move. Her arms and legs were frozen. She stared at the wall of water rushing for her, pale and deathly calm.
"The dam broke."
The water hit her, first white, and then black. The cage splintered, and Jory died.
Light, warm and bright. It shone through her eyelids, turning her world into soft mists of pink.
She blinked, and slowly became aware of something digging into her ribcage. The ground underneath her back was softer than she might have had reason to expect. It felt almost like a mattress.
It was a dream?
Blinking wearily, Jory opened her eyes. It was hard work- her muscles didn't seem to want to cooperate, and her vision consisted entirely of black and white spots dancing in front of her eyes. Impatiently, she waited for it to settle.
Slowly, out of the mists behind her eyes came a forest. It wasn't the sort of forest she was used to at all- this one was airy and open, light filtering down through sparse leaves perhaps half a metre in width. The trees themselves were true giants, with thick, stout trunks and giant boughs, covered with smooth, pale grey bark. There was very little undergrowth, limited to a few scraggly bushes huddling around the roots of each tree, and unlike the beech forests that blanketed the mountains around the Waiatoto River, these trees were bare of creepers and vines.
A flash of the water coming down the Waiatoto emblazoned itself across Jory's vision, and she shook her head, kneading at her eyes in a desperate attempt to rid herself of the nightmarish vision. "What the hell is going on?"
She rolled over, and pushed herself to her knees, soft loam and bits of old leaves sticking to her pudgy hands. This forest seemed dead compared to her beech forests, where she could sit and find dozens of insects crawling around in a square foot of ground. Here, there were only ants.
She lifted her head and looked around, glancing forward, left and right, and back over her shoulders. The land sloped slightly downhill to her right, uphill on her left. Either way, all she could see was more forest.
She could feel a thunderous headache building up in her temples, and brought one hand up to gently massage her head. This was too confusing. The last thing she remembered was the white spray around her, the shockwave of the wind in front of the water battering her backwards. Then, nothing- until this.
The scientific journals her grandfather read sometimes had some interesting articles hidden away among the techobabble that dominated most pages. Jory had read about wormholes a few times- was this what had happened? She certainly didn't recognize this place- there was nothing like it anywhere on the station. Probably not in the surrounding country, either.
Standing around being confused isn't going to get anything done about it, she reminded herself. As if that was the key, her limbs sprang into action almost automatically. She stood, shakily at first, but as her legs got used to her weight again the trembling ceased. Downhill, I think- that should take me to water sooner or later.
She wandered downhill, her eyes taking in the sights of the forest- not that there was much to look at besides trees. A deep dread was beginning to sink into her bones. She didn't know the place, and she was way out of her depth. She knew a little bit of bushcraft, but there was no way she could survive on her own for any long period of time. On the station, there were places where you could go for months without seeing anyone else if you didn't know your way around.
Beyond that, she was confused to the very core of her being. I thought I was going to die- but where is this? Am I dead? Is this heaven, hell, or Limbo? There was nothing familiar anywhere, and it was jarring. Even the seasons were wrong- from what Jory could see, the sun was way too low in the sky for summer.
I want my mom, she thought, and was instantly disgusted with herself.
A pale patch on the ground to her right caught her eye, and she turned towards it, studying its shape. It looked like fabric, bulging over irregular shapes. She hurried towards it, and realised that it was one of the bags she'd collected for Amanda.
Jory squatted by the bag, investigating its contests. There was the frying pan- cast iron, good metal if she was any judge- as well as a pair of fruit salad tins, a three-kilogram bag of flour, a pack of plastic forks, a two-kilogram bucket of honey, a cheap romance novel, and a tube of toothpaste.
Jory stared at the bag for a long while. The frying pan might be useful if she could find a kitchen, or at the very least, start a fire somewhere. The honey and flour she might be able to sell, and the toothpaste might be worth holding onto, but the rest was rubbish. She took out the book and the plastic forks, then on second thought tore open the packet and retrieved four forks, putting them back in the hessian bag. She looked at the fruit salad cans for a long while, and put them back in the bag too when her stomach gave a long and pointed grumble.
She stood up then, and headed off downhill. It took the rest of the afternoon to get anywhere, and as the sun neared the horizon and the evening cicadas started chirping, she emerged out onto a broad coastal plain. In the distance, she could hear surf booming- and what was more, streaks of smoke marked the horizon in the northwest, picked out in glorious detail against the best sunset she had ever seen. Red, gold, orange and purple warred for dominance across a sky dappled with fluffy clouds, showing faint patches of pale blue between the edges of the clouds, and pale pink streaks of cirrus high above.
The smoke was more important. Smoke meant fires, which meant people. Jory tried to block out pessimistic thoughts of grassfires, and headed towards the northwest.
At this stage, she had been walking for hours. She didn't mind walking a lot, and it was what her boots had been made for, but after a certain while, the blood seemed to have rushed to her feet, and every step sent a fresh flush of blood to her soles. It was bearable, but had the potential to get quite uncomfortable. She really should sit down and have a rest, but that would have been like giving up.
Jory doggedly pressed onwards.
The stars came out, twinkling brightly between the gaps in the clouds. There was a fat gibbous moon hanging low in the sky above the southern horizon. It felt peaceful, walking across the flat plain as the breeze rustled through the long grass. The temperature dropped quite low, and Jory found goosebumps rising on her forearms. She shivered, and drew her jacket closer around herself.
She was no stranger to night, and this one was lighter than most. The moonlight was sufficient to light her way, illuminating all the obstacles in her path.
Eventually, she figured out what sort of a place she was in. The horizon to her right was flat, running across miles of flat plain to a low ridge, covered in small trees and scrub. To her left were the hills she had come down out of, covered with a blanket of trees shining reddish-silver underneath the moon. The plain seemed to curve around these hills, the ridge flattening out behind her to run down to the sea. In the dark, the smoke plumes she had seen ahead of her were all but invisible- she could only hope she was heading in the right direction. This was good, however- if she couldn't see any fire, it means that what fire was making the smoke was inside something. There were people there.
Her mouth was dusty, her throat was parched, and she was dying for a drink. There were no streams crossing this vast plain. Eventually, her need outweighed her urge to save what little she did have, and she dipped a finger into the honey and slurped it down. It didn't make much of a difference, but by this time, her thoughts had dried up a long time ago.
A small, dead tree loomed up out of the landscape. She had seen it coming from a mile off- it was the only thing to have broken the monotony of the plains in hours. Moonlight traced its thorny branches, revealing a hollow in the dirt at its base.
At the moment she reached the tree, Jory's limbs decided to announce to her their exhaustion. Her legs folded up without warning, and she tumbled to the ground underneath the protectively outstretched branches of the little tree.
She was asleep before she hit the ground.
For the second time in less than a day, Jory opened her eyes and stared up past the branches of a tree into a bright blue sky. It took her a while to figure out why she could see the sky- her bedroom roof wasn't there.
She looked around, wincing as she noticed how exposed the hollow was. Anything could have found her there- or anyone. She hadn't seen any wild animals yet, but that didn't mean they didn't live here, not by any means. She rose to her feet and stretched, wincing as her legs and feet protested the movement. Then she found her bag- lying where she had dropped it last night- and skedaddled.
She tried to ignore the voice in the back of her head that said RUNrunrunrun before it's too late-
The plain was warmer under the morning sun. Jory felt its warmth on her back, and the foul mood that had settled in sometime last night lifted, at least for a while. She still had a way to walk, but now, she could see the thatched roofs of a collection of huts on the horizon. Low, wide trees grew between the old-fashioned houses, big boulders like the ones she'd seen in the glacial valleys on the station laying scattered across the ground. Some were huge, monoliths as big as- even bigger than- the houses themselves.
Up here, the seaward ridge flattened into the ground. She could see the sunlight glinting off the water past the shore, and the murmur of waves was quieter than it had been last night. It looked like the town was quite close to the sea- and smelled it too, odours of kelp and brine borne on the wind.
A plaintive baa startled Jory, and she spun wildly, turning to see a sheep sunning itself on the leeward side of a rock that stuck up out of the loam of the plain. Suddenly, she could see sheep everywhere. The trail she was following bore the marks of hundreds of cloven hooves.
Sheep were good. Jory knew sheep. They were idiotic, but they were hers. She'd helped out with the shearing and drenching and lambing more times than she could count. She'd raised a few orphaned lambs, collecting them from dead mothers in the late spring snows and bringing them back to life in the old oven. There was a state they got to in the snows, where they looked and felt deader than a corpse, but warmth brought them springing back after a few hours. Jory wished she had an oven with her- she felt like one of those lambs right now.
But here, in the adventure into lands unknown she'd had thrust upon her, sheep made Jory feel like she might be getting back into something she knew. Sheep were her warm oven.
She walked onwards, and into the town. Sheep nibbled at grass right up to the very outskirts, and a crèche of new lambs bounced around near someone's back yard. There was a woman sitting on the doorstep of the first hut Jory passed, a drop spindle in her hands. She watched Jory come closer with open curiosity.
The woman's house was small, built from battered-looking weatherboards and roofed with a thick thatch of straw. It had no fence, and its lawn merged with the sheep pasture. It had glass windows, with wooden shutters over the top. Jory wondered what for.
"Excuse me!" she called to the woman, biting back a sudden attack of shyness. "What is this place called?"
The woman frowned, looking more confused than anything. "'Tis th' Luminarium, on Argent Island. Where have ye come from that ye don't know?"
It was Jory's turn to frown. She'd never heard of either of those places. Luminarium sounded Latin, and wasn't 'argent' Latin for silver? Only, there wasn't anywhere she knew of that used Latin for place names- not in her part of the world, at any rate.
The woman looked her up and down, her gaze lingering longest on Jory's checked skirt. Jory suddenly felt more self-conscious than she had in years, and compensated by staring straight back at the woman, meeting her suspicious gaze with a cool, composed look. "Ye look fine… ye weren't shipwrecked. Mutiny, maybe- ye look plenty sassy enough."
Mutiny? Jory just managed to keep herself from blurting out her outrage. What do you think I am, a pirate, or some sort of bandit? Then, a smaller thought: I can't believe I just thought that.
"I've been walking for days," she said, deliberately not answering the woman's question. "This is the first town of any size I've come to."
"That's 'cause it's th' only town on th' island," the woman chuckled unkindly. "We're a real backward sort o' place out here. What're ye doin' here?"
Jory shrugged, and moved on before the woman could irritate her anymore. She had a short temper at the best of times, and ever since she'd woken up in the forest, it had been simmering away just under the surface. With a dehydration headache beginning to pound behind her eyes, her temper was even shorter than usual. She knew she tended to react to uncertainty by getting angry, but now was not the time to give into the urge to throw a massive tantrum in the middle of the street. Even though I'd like nothing better…
She made her way further into the town, down a sloping, dusty main street. There were a few people about- mostly children and old men. The children stared at her with wide eyes as she passed, shying away when she glanced at them. They all wore the same uniform- dirty overalls and ripped and tired shirts. The woman she'd seen had worn loose pants and a shirt. Jory figured she stuck out like a sore thumb.
But there was a fellow in the middle of the town who stood out even more. He wore the same shirt-and pants combination as most of the townspeople, but instead of the canvas shoes they wore, his feet were encased in simple sandals. There was a red sash around his waist, flapping merrily in the seaward breeze. His hair was black and scruffy underneath a wide-brimmed, battered straw hat.
He was sitting on top of the drystone wall outside the only two-storeyed building in the town, the expression on his face looking rather put out. His gaze was firmly fixed on the sea, the glinting sunlight playing across the water. Jory followed his gaze down to the wide, open bay that stretched out in front of the town. There was a little ship down there- and Jory didn't know much about ships, but she was fairly sure that ships didn't have sails anymore.
As she drew nearer (what for?) he raised a callused hand in a casual greeting, and grinned at her. She hadn't realised he'd been watching her.
"Good day, huh?"
He looked twenty-five or so, but with that grin, Jory wasn't going to trust her judgement on that. Her frown deepened to an all-out scowl. "If you're talking about the weather, sure."
She brusquely brushed past him, her steps speeding up as she tried to put some distance between the man. She'd decided she didn't like his companionable manner- it wasn't as if she knew him at all in the first place! (Wherever this was, was there anyone she did know?)
But now she had a problem. Where was she going? She paused for a moment in the middle of the dusty street, sun beating down on the nape of her neck.
Shops lined the street on either side of her- normal houses for all the world to see, with only small indicators that they had goods for sale inside. There was a cleaver nailed to the door of one shop- a woman squeezed out the door with an armful of meat in bloody cloth packets. Jory guessed that the house with the horseshoe above the lintel was a blacksmith.
Her frown slackened as an idea formed in her head.
She had to get off the island- that much was clear. Luminarium- never heard of it, and Geography was my best subject. She didn't know how she was going to do that, but as things stood, she had about a snowball's chance in hell of doing what she wanted.
First, she needed money. Selling the honey might be a start- if she could find a bakery, maybe they'd take it. After that… she'd figure something out when it came to that.
Mind made up, she continued down the street, inspecting each shop. She hit pay dirt on the intersection of two larger roads- there was a house with a grain mill out the back, and a rock bun sitting on the windowsill. Jory curiously tapped the crust of the bun; it was as hard as its namesake, covered in dust and grime from the street. Grimacing, she ducked inside the shop.
There was flour everywhere in the house, a pair of big, deep bread ovens lining the back wall. Like kitchens everywhere, it was baking hot, flames roaring in the bottoms of the ovens. She could see them through the soot-encrusted glass on the oven doors.
"Who the hell are you?" The baker- a big, wart-nosed man whose arms were covered up to the elbows in bread dough- strode into the front room from a smaller adjoining room.
Jory swallowed, his blatant hostility making her nervous. "I'm just passing through. I've got too much with me, so I'm trying to sell what I can-"
"Not interested," the baker said flatly. "Go find someone who cares."
"They told me you might be interested in some honey!" Jory said, her voice higher than usual with nerves. The baker halted, turning back to her.
"Show me." It was a command, and that set Jory's temper boiling again, but she bit back her anger and dug the tub of honey out of her bag. The baker took it, setting it on the bench and prying the lid off.
"What's this?" he said, turning the tup around so he could stare at the brand name. "Hollands? Never heard of that brand before." He gave the honey a cursory glance, and his lips twisted into a mirthless smirk. "Decent honey. Not my usual quality, but I might be able to do something with it. I'll give you 20 beli for it."
Beli, huh. So that's the currency. Jory nodded. "I'm a baker myself. I figured you might want it. Twenty beli, you said?"
"What sort of a back-country hick are you? He's ripping you off."
Jory froze. She quickly looked up at the baker, and with a feeling of dread sinking in her stomach, she caught the flicker of contempt that passed across his rough featured before he realised she was looking.
Then she spun around, bruising her back on the hard edge of the bench in the process, and stared at the scruffy, straw-hatted man, her face darkening and fists bunching up in fury. "What the hell do you think you're doing," she hissed, "sneaking up on me and eavesdropping like that?"
His easygoing grin didn't falter as he tipped his hat to her in a very gentlemanly fashion. She suddenly noticed the sword buckled to his hip, and anger gave way very abruptly to fear.
"Um…" She licked her lips, searching for something new to say. "Who are you?" She had to look upwards a bit in order to meet his eyes- at 5 foot six, she wasn't the shortest, but he was at least six foot. The beginnings of a neat moustache perched on his upper lip. What a dandy, Jory thought despite herself.
"The name's Roger," he said, and nodded towards the honey on the counter. "Tiny little backwater island like this, you wouldn't get that much honey for less than seventy beli. How come you don't know?"
"What idiot told you that?" the baker blustered, stepping backwards. Evidently he too had seen the sword at Roger's hip. "Outsiders like you shouldn't come blabbing your mouths off about what you don't know!"
Level black eyes gazed at the baker. "I'm a pirate, mate. I make it my business to know."
Jory's mind was in a whirl. Pirate? What sort of a place is this? Sailing ships, wooden buildings, farms without fences… it's like I've stepped backwards in time. A good couple of centuries by the look of it.
Smoothly, Roger stepped forward, picking up the honey, slapping the lid back on it, and retreating. He gave Jory a wide grin, and the baker a derogatory salute, before he spun around and slipped out of the shop.
Jory blinked.
"OI!"
Both she and the baker ran for the door at the same time. Jory got there just ahead of him, and slammed the door in her face, racing off down the road after Roger.
He was walking quite calmly, as if he didn't care that they might be after him, the honey carried securely in the crook of his arm. Jory slowed as she caught up to him, her heavy footfalls slowing rapidly as her breathing sped up- she really wasn't built for running. She reached out and grabbed Roger by his shirt collar, hauling him to a halt (he might be tall, but she was heavy).
"That's mine," she growled, stabbing her index finger at his purloined honey. "I know I owe you for the whole warning and all, but you can't just walk off with it."
"Why not?"
Jory's eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to let out an incredulous squeak before the twinkle in his eyes told her that he was joking. Reaching up to detach her hand from his collar, he fussily resettled the shirt around his neck before he handed the honey jar back to her.
"There you go, and I promise I haven't stuck my grubby fingers into it. Well, maybe once, but what's a bit of honey between friends, eh?" He laughed uproariously at his own joke. Jory felt her headache intensify in leaps and bounds.
"A lot!" she snapped. "Who said we're friends? I certainly didn't!"
"Well, like you said, I saved your ass back there, didn't I?" Roger looked her up and down, raising one scruffy eyebrow. "Though there's more of it than I'd realised."
That rude asshole…! Jory felt her rage reach boiling point, and then abruptly, strangely, die off. It was somewhat true, after all.
She gave a gusty sigh, folding her arms across her chest. "Bloody hell, you're the cheekiest bastard I've ever met."
Roger chuckled. "Wow, you swear too? They told me I'd meet all sorts of people out on the high seas. Although you're stranger than most. How come you didn't smack that guy when he gave you such a tiny price? Twenty beli ain't enough to get… anything that's worth the money, really."
"I… it's none of your business," Jory said flatly. What did he know, after all? She might be young, but she was practical, and she didn't need some weird guy running around after her, sticking his nose in where it didn't belong.
"Aw, don't be like that." Roger folded his own arms, in a perfect mimicry of Jory's own stubborn stance. "You said you were a baker before? Were you telling the truth, or just trying to get the man to buy?"
Jory scowled at him. "I don't lie. I practically live in the kitchen." Used to, anyway. "Why?"
Roger beamed at her. His teeth gleamed, shining slightly yellowish in the morning sunlight. "Because I might have some work for you. My crew needs a cook- one who can actually cook, that is, because right now it's Rayleigh and Buggy who have to do it, and they're useless." Roger shuddered, as if to illustrate his point. "We're stuck eating hardtack and beef jerky. So, how about it?"
Jory blinked, and automatically said: "Hell no."
Roger slumped. "Please?"
"No," she repeated, turning away. "I've got something else I need to do." The weight of the frying pan in her bag thumped against her thigh.
I'd get to cook again, she realized.
Jory abruptly realized Roger was watching her. No longer slumped, he stared straight at her with a gaze that seemed more knowledgeable than she would have preferred.
"Is that so?" he said. "Well, I won't get in your way." Waving a casual goodbye, he turned and ambled off down the road.
Jory stood, frozen, and could only watch him go.
The problem with Jory, she reflected later, was that she was too damn stubborn. Too practical, too focused. All qualities she'd been praised for time and time again (though the stubbornness had gotten her into trouble a few times as well).
She found Roger hanging around outside the only tavern in the town, lurking near a stand of bushes as he watched the waves roll in over the beach. He spotted her coming from quite a while off, and waved her over, his face alight in an eager grin.
"What's going on? I thought you had something to do?"
Jory frowned at him. "Sure I do. But first I've got a couple of questions, and I can't find anyone I'd trust more than you to answer them."
Roger grimaced. "The way you say that, I'm not sure that's a good thing." He sighed, and linked his fingers together, stretching his hands out and loudly cracking the knuckles. "So what did you want to know?"
"Where exactly is this place?"
Roger's eyebrows nearly disappeared underneath the brim of his hat. "Wow, you really must live out in the middle of nowhere. Some sort of hermit, eh? You don't look like one, but…"
Jory glared at him until he got the message and answered the question.
"Sorry, sorry. This is Argent Island, in the South Blue. Otherwise known as, a great big hole in the middle of nowhere." He chuckled, looking slightly put out when she didn't laugh along with him.
"South Blue?" Jory repeated, just to make sure that she'd heard right. The name sounded like something her little brothers might come up with in their games of pirates versus ninjas.
Roger nodded. "South Blue. Big ocean, you know." He waved his hands and made whooshing noises to illustrate his point. "I'm from the East Blue, originally. That's a long way thataways." He pointed out across the sea, in the direction of the setting sun.
Jory's expression didn't change. "The East blue is west?"
Roger shrugged. "Sooner or later everything is. The earth is round, you know."
"So Galileo did exist here," Jory muttered under her breath. "Okay, second question. Say I accepted your earlier offer… what would I have to do? You're pirates, right? So the navy, or someone, won't be too happy about that, right?"
"Oh, the Marines." Roger waved his hand dismissively. "Don't worry about them. I haven't yet a Marine yet who was worth his salary. Mind you, we are just starting out, so it's only the small fry that come after us. Lucky, huh?"
"Yeah, but what happens when they do?" Jory insisted. "I can't fight."
"'When'?" Roger grinned at her. "You changed your mind."
Jory grumbled, looking away. "So what if I did? It's not like I'll be able to get off this island anytime soon otherwise. And I'm pretty damn sure that what I'm looking for ain't on this island."
"That's very good to hear." Roger grinned, and reached out to pat her shoulder. Jory gave him a frosty look, and he thought better of it. "Touchy, aren't ya? Well, it's no matter. Welcome to the Roger Pirates! From now on, I'm your captain."
"Hmph." Jory folded her arms, regarding her new captain out of skeptical eyes. "So, captain… how many people are there in the crew?"
She could have sworn she saw Roger twitch.
"Oh… counting you… six. Like I said, we're just getting started."
Word Count: 7,543