BETWEEN THREE ROGUES
By Eric 'Erico' Lawson
Four: What Hope Looked Like
Valuan Capital
Lower City
Ships came and went from Valua like clockwork, timed to the turning of the distant edifice of the Grand Fortress. The well-maintained ships bearing opulent and exotic cargoes sailed for the port in the Upper City, or so the stories went. After far too long of a childhood spent rummaging through garbage bins for scraps to calm the gnawing hunger in his belly, Marco had little time for stories. Stories were what parents told their children when the clothes went threadbare, the food went rotten, and their shack either fell apart from a heavy rainstorm or was repossessed. Stories were empty, meaningless, and cruel. They taunted and teased what the poor and destitute of the mighty Valuan Empire would never possess. Down in the Lower City, the port docking fee was far less, and fewer questions were asked. The only ships he ever saw were ones bearing cargo for the black market, or poor sailors with nothing of real value worth taking.
Every part of his outfit was covered in the grime and filth of the Lower City, and his eyes had long ago lost their brightness. Only the unruly mop of red hair on top of his head had any real color, and even then, only when he got caught in the rains. He had never been truly healthy, but stubbornness and ingenuity had kept him from being a walking bag of bones, like the worst wretches down here. Marco knew the patterns of life in the Lower City. He knew when ships came in, he knew where food scraps could be found. It was all hard-won experience, a lifetime's worth of exploration and observation...and so far as he could remember, he was only ten years old.
Following the patterns of the Lower City had brought him to the edge of the docks, in search of errant valuables he could pawn off, or actual food he could steal and run off with. Sometimes he got lucky, other times he went hungry. He was getting better at it, though. It was only surviving, but down here, survival was all that mattered.
He reminded himself of that as he came up empty-handed from his third trash bin, wearing a scowl and doing his best to ignore the eternal ache in his gut. And then he caught sight of an unfamiliar flash of vibrant color approaching the docks. It was a ship quite unlike anything he'd ever seen before. At first glance, it seemed to be just another fishing vessel, gaudily painted up in green and yellow. But then he caught sight of the covered openings along its side; gunports.
This ship was something new.
It pulled into the docks at an empty berth, and the dockmaster's assistant ran out to meet it. A young man in blue and a girl his age in yellow came out onto the deck and prepared a gangplank. They were joined not long after by an older man who could have been their grandfather, and the old fellow spoke to the assistant for a long while. They eventually shook hands, money was passed over, and the ship and the dockmaster's assistant pulled away, heading for the nearby shipyards, leaving the boy and the girl alone on the docks.
They carried weapons and looked seasoned, but Marco didn't get the same sense of immediate danger off of them as he usually did with the black marketeers. He smirked a little as another thought came to mind; that they were marks. He knew the game well. Introduce himself, offer to show them around...then grab their cash and dash.
So he went on ahead of them, stopped at an intersection that they would have to pass, and waited.
Marco would have just tried to steal their money and make a break for it, but the girl had to open her big mouth and start insulting him, and the boy had been unusually canny, keeping him at a distance even while being slightly more polite than she had been. Had the goggle-wearing fellow sensed Marco wanted to pick their pockets? He had been expecting them to be complete rubes, fresh off the boat. Easy pickings for a kid who'd taken on life the hard way. It had all made him so angry and frustrated that he'd run off fuming, swearing revenge on them. He turned a corner, doubled back around, and followed them.
To his confusion, the two didn't pass through the Lower City with scorn or apathy. They didn't steer away from the inconvenient sight of a sick huskra, but petted it and gave it a bit of their own food before walking on. A young girl Marco only knew in passing who still had a parent spoke of her dream of someday eating white bread, instead of the hard black bread that cracked teeth. For her came a small bit of green healing magic that put color in her cheeks, and a walk to the grocer's, where they bought her a loaf of bread, a bit of cheese, and some meat...then sat her down and waited as she ate it, so that nobody else could take it from her. She cried almost the entire time, and they had to coax her not to eat too fast so she wouldn't get sick.
His stomach growled all the harder at that, and Marco almost walked out there to beg for some himself. Only the thought that he had stolen from the grocer's in the past and would be chased away on sight stopped him.
Nobody cared about others down here. You fought for yourself because nobody else would, and if you had to push someone else down to survive, it was what you did.
Who were these two? Why did the young man look like he wanted to burn down the castle and all of the Upper City, as he stared across the skyline to the opposite side of the capital, blazing with light? Why did the redhead in yellow who had been so churlish and dismissive before with him pull that girl in close for a hug and whisper words of encouragement before she smiled and ran off?
Nothing they did added up to Marco's understanding of how the world worked. He kept following them, chasing at a distance they couldn't detect as they made their way to the singular inn, a worn and rusting metal building whose corrugated roof, he guessed from observation, likely made it impossible to sleep at night during a heavy downpour. He clambered up a downspout and hunkered down opposite of a window as they made their way inside. It took them a few minutes to finagle with the lady inside, and then they finally made their way upstairs. Marco shimmied around on the rooftop and made a long jump across the gap, landing safely on the walkout balcony by their room and then pressing himself flat against the wall to listen in.
"...been forever since I could sleep on an actual bed. A real mattress, a pillow…"
"Heh, you still have it better than me, Aika."
"I take it that hammock down in the Little Jack's engine room isn't all that comfortable?"
"Hardly." The young man grumbled in reply. Marco kept silent, soaking it all in. So. Her name was Aika...and he was Vyse. And then a short while later, the old man who'd come with them came storming in, quickly passing on more information that set Marco's heart racing.
They'd come here looking for...their family? Their friends? Who were going to be executed in the Coliseum tomorrow morning?! Marco almost gasped. He'd heard enough rumors to know that the Armada had captured an entire crew's worth of Air Pirates not long ago. If these people were here for them, that meant…
It meant a reward. It meant money. It meant, for Marco, a chance at security.
The scarred young man declared they would sneak into the Coliseum early tomorrow morning, and break them out. Marco shook his head. It was foolhardy. Not impossible, if you knew your way around, but...Well. They wouldn't get the chance.
He turned to leave, and promptly slipped on a puddle hidden in the shadows. It caused him to tip over and he caught himself on the railing, but it made enough noise that the conversation inside came to a grinding halt.
Marco swore under his breath and took off like a shot along the rooftops just as they burst outside and saw him. He ran for his life, but it wasn't enough. All his quick moves, his knowledge of the Lower City failed. The young air pirate Vyse was healthier, faster, and stronger than he was. The blue-coated rogue caught up to him right as he had finished shoving the manhole cover over the sewer entrance to the side, and lifted him up by the scruff of his collar effortlessly.
"Put me down, you glass-eyed freak!" Marco howled, flailing around. Vyse gave him a hard shake that left him dizzy, and he slumped in defeat.
"What the...you're that kid from this afternoon! Marco!" Vyse exclaimed, and dropped him on the ground. Hard. Marco groaned and rubbed at his sore bottom as he pulled himself back up to his feet, not missing how Vyse maneuvered around to block his escape into the sewers.
"Vyse! Did you get him?" The shrill voice of the red-headed girl came from above, and then she poked her head over the side of the ledge overhead. Her face dropped. "Oh, great. It's that annoying kid from earlier today!"
"So what's it to you?" Marco snapped, as the old man sedately appeared by Aika's side. "I heard what you were talking about, you pirates. I bet the guard would pay well if I told them all about you and your plans!"
The old man didn't mince words, raising his metal arm and pointing his fist down at the boy. Marco's eyes went wide, seeing his death in that pose. "No reason to keep you alive then, brat." The old man harrumphed. The girl beside him seemed horrified, flailing back and protesting.
Marco just ducked his head and chuckled in defeat. "Go ahead. Do it." Only silence answered him, and he looked up to see the old man just staring at him. "Do it!" Marco repeated, angrily. "It's not like anybody's going to miss me, not even the rats! At least if I'm dead, I won't have to dig through the garbage for scraps anymore!"
"No regrets, lad?" Drachma's mouth quirked into a little grin. "Good."
"Cap'n, you can't!" Aika exclaimed. "He's just a kid!"
Marco was surprised again when Vyse stepped around him and then stood between him and the old man protectively.
"Nobody's dying here, not today." Vyse vowed. "You got that, Captain Drachma?"
The old man growled, swore, and spun around in a huff. Vyse turned and looked down to Marco.
All Marco could do was stare back incredulously. "Wuh…"
Vyse looked past him, to the open manhole cover. "Hey, kid. What's down there?"
Marco rubbed at his face. "The old Catacombs. Or they used to be. Now they're just used as the sewers. I live down there."
Vyse got a strange look on his face. "Do the sewers go under the Coliseum?"
"Yeah...why?" Marco blinked.
"If we use them to sneak in tomorrow morning, we can get past the guards." Vyse declared, grinning like a madman. Marco stared at him some more, then busted out laughing.
"You're crazy! You think you can get past all the guards inside the Coliseum and free your friends? You'd be signing your own death warrants! Just give up and go home!"
Vyse took the insult and let it roll off his back without a care. "Can't do that, kid. Blue Rogues never give up. Especially when their friends are counting on them." Vyse set his hands at his waist. "Marco, if you ever went sailing with that attitude, you'd probably give up the first time you went into a squall. That's a poor attitude for a sailor, much less a man, to take."
"Shut up." Marco looked away and sniffled.
Vyse exhaled. "No matter how bad the storm is, kid, there's always a way out of it. I've been in bad situations before and always gotten out, and I'm not giving up now." He turned and looked up the stairs. "Aika, Captain, we're using the Catacombs tomorrow to get under the Coliseum."
Marco stood back up, picked his nose, and flicked away the dusty booger he found. "Aren't you supposed to kill me?" He mumbled. "What if I told on you?"
"You won't." Vyse replied.
"You don't know that for sure."
"Yes, I do." Vyse snorted. "You've given up on life, Marco? Then you'll be at the Coliseum tomorrow. I want you to see something interesting before you die."
"What?" Marco blinked, not sure what the older boy was thinking. Vyse just grinned at him, tossed him a bit of dried meat from his pocket, and climbed up the ladder after his friends.
Marco watched them leave, stared at the jerky in his hand, and found himself unsure of what to do next.
For the first time in his life, he didn't know what to do next. Something unusual had come to Valua.
He hardly slept at all that night, and earlier than most people did, Marco shoved his feet into his shoes and made his way to the Coliseum. Even here, there was separated seating between the upper and lower classes, a divided partition that kept those from the Lower City with interacting with the elites at all.
He got there early, but the lines were still long. An entire crew of Air Pirates? This was the kind of show that Valua loved to put on, and the people ate it up. He'd been to plenty of these. The Queen's soldiers kept guard, a lucky few were given bread that was usually fought over while the upper crusts laughed about it, and somebody, or a lot of somebodies, ended up dead while the crowd roared. Sometimes they were allowed to fight for a chance at their lives, but today, there would be no fight.
Nobody ever said it in earshot of the guards, but Marco knew that a lot of the crowd in his section of the Coliseum liked to imagine that the people being executed were the ones in charge. They talked about it after, when they spent what little money they did have on cheap alcohol.
The Coliseum orator whipped them all up into a frenzy, screaming about the crimes of the air pirates, and especially of their leader, Captain Dyne of the 'Bloodthirsty Blue Rogues.' There was no way of knowing just how much was truth and how much was fiction made up in the heat of the moment, but it didn't matter to the crowd. It was part of the show, and the show was distraction from everything in their lives that was rotten and wrong.
Only when the orator at last seemed satisfied with the howls and the boos pouring down into the bowl of the arena did he gesture to the guards at the gates underneath the arena's seating. They slowly raised up, and a line of chained men in worn and soiled sailor's clothing were marched out, their hands bound behind their backs. At the forefront was a tall and proud man in black leather trousers and a blue vest that still gleamed under the harsh yellow electric lights with its natural color. He stood erect and unflinching as the people around Marco hurled insults, epithets, and rotten produce down at him. By the color of his hair, Marco at last realized who Dyne was. This was Vyse's father, weathered by hard years, but unflinching in the face of his death.
They were stopped before the wooden platform erected near the center of the arena, where the helmeted executioner waited beside the chopping block with his wicked, long-handled axe. The boos were deafening as Captain Dyne was leg up onto the platform and forced to his knees.
The orator gestured to the crowd for silence as Dyne stared at the grooved wooden block where his neck would soon lay. It took some time before the noise dwindled enough for anything to be heard.
"Does the condemned have anything to say in his final moments?" The orator bellowed, using the echo of the arena to be heard by all. "Beg for forgiveness and you shall receive the mercy of Valua, and have your life spared and spent in servitude working in the moonstone processing plants."
Marco shook his head. The processing plants were as good as a death sentence anyways; they had nothing in the way of safety, and the harsh chemicals the Valuans used were poisonous. There were plenty of people in the Lower City who had once worked in those factories. None of them had come out of it without scarred lungs or blinded eyes or terrible burns...and the unluckiest ones were the workers whose minds had been taken from them. "Moonstone madness", they called it.
This was it then. He chuffed once and smiled grimly. For all of his talk about saving his friends, his father, Vyse was nowhere to be seen. Marco looked to the large sewer grate at the center of the arena, set there so blood could be washed away. The older boy had been all talk after all.
Marco blinked, and looked again.
The sewer grate had moved...just a little bit. If he hadn't been staring right at it, he would have missed it completely. Marco opened his mouth and a strangled noise got caught in his throat.
Unaware of the events playing out behind him, Captain Dyne lifted his head up from the block and glowered at the audience. "BLUE ROGUES FLY FREE!" He yelled in defiance.
As though it were a signal, a figure in gleaming blue came running out into the arena, swords drawn. Before anyone could react, he had gutted the guard over Captain Dyne and kicked him away…
The audience, already quiet, fell into stunned silence…
And the world snapped back into movement as the rest of the captive Blue Rogues quickly kicked out at the rest of the guards, then ran back towards a screaming girl with red hair by the sewer grate, urging them forward. An old man lurched up out of the sewers at last, and as each of the air pirates reached the girl, her bladed boomerang sliced out, cutting away their bonds. Captain Dyne was the last to reach Aika, and with a grin and a wink once his hands were free, he descended down below.
The executioner sliced out with his weapon, throwing a sickle of pure energy out that cut off Vyse's retreat below. Within seconds, the Blue Rogue was joined by his comrade and the old man, and the rest of the guards formed up around the executioner.
The crowd roared, but this time…
They were cheering for Vyse. Urging him to kick the Valuan's asses, to cut that bloody executioner's head clean off his shoulders. The arena orator let out an undignified squeal of panic and went running for safety, and the battle was joined.
Marco stared at the fight for only a few seconds, long enough to see that Vyse was grinning like a man possessed. Like he already knew the outcome.
Which, Marco supposed, Vyse did. Because Marco knew what would happen as well.
He turned and went racing through the crowds, searching his mind-map for the nearest sewer entrance.
Vyse had told him he was going to see something interesting, and he'd delivered. Marco didn't like being in anybody's debt. Luckily, he knew how to clear this one.
By the time that the other Blue Rogues made their way to a familiar bend in the catacombs, Marco was already waiting for them, opening up a secret passage and urging them through. He lingered by the open stone doorway for Vyse, Aika, and the grumpy old man who had gone with them, and shouted for them to hurry up when they finally appeared above, running down the slope of the storm drain.
"Come on, this way!" Marco hissed, already hearing the shouts of Valuan guards from behind them. Not one to pass up an escape, the two Blue Rogues and the grumpy prosthetic-wearing captain turned towards him, though Vyse still had his eyes narrowed. Marco looked up at the ceiling. "Relax, your dad and his crew are waiting for us. Now come on, we've got to close this passage up! Get inside already!"
They dashed through, and Vyse and Drachma quickly worked the mechanism, sliding the stone wall back into place, making the secret passage vanish from sight. They lingered in the darkness, breathing as shallowly as they could while the noise of the pursuing guards increased to a fever pitch...and then faded away, as they turned the corner along their supposed route, further into the depths of the sewers.
"How did you…" Vyse finally started, when it was safe to talk again. Marco just grinned at him.
"I told you. I live down here. I know these old catacombs better than anyone alive. From where I've got your people waiting, you could make it back to the docks easy."
"What about the palace? Upper Valua?"
"What?" Marco frowned. "Why would you want to do that? You need to get back to your ship and make a break for it while you can!"
Vyse shared a look with Fina and shook his head. "Later. Come on, we've kept my dad waiting long enough."
There were laughs, hugs, and backslaps all around the Blue Rogues as they reunited, and after that was done, Captain Dyne just stood there and smiled at his son. "You had me worried for a bit there, Vyse. I was beginning to think you wouldn't make it."
"Well, you know me, captain. I had to make a dramatic entrance." Vyse chuckled, rubbing at the back of his head awkwardly. Marco looked between the two of them, amazed that the bold young man who'd stormed the Valuan Coliseum and fought against impossible odds could even be embarrassed.
"I'm proud of you, boy." Dyne said, setting a hand on Vyse's shoulder. He looked around. "And you've made some interesting friends." He held out a hand towards the old man. "Dyne, former captain of the Albatross."
After a slight delay, the old man returned the left-handed handshake. "Drachma. Captain of the Little Jack. Your boy and his girlfriend here were pretty damn insistent on making it here to save your asses."
"Girlfriend?" Dyne questioned, glancing towards Aika with a raised eyebrow. Marco looked between them, because that had been his guess as well, but he was startled to see Vyse looking like an animal caught in a spotlight, while Aika went red from her knees to her forehead, sputtering.
"I am not his girlfriend!"
"She's not my girlfriend!" They stammered, mirroring each other. Dyne just ended up laughing his head off even more, and looked back to Drachma.
"Well. Captain Drachma, do you think we could impose on your good will a little further, and charter a return voyage to our home?"
"Aye, I s'pose." Drachma drawled, uncaring as Vyse and Aika struggled to get themselves back under control. "I came here to get a new harpoon cannon installed on the ship. They should be done by now, but if we're going to get you all out of here, we need to hurry."
"Where's Fina?" Vyse suddenly cut in with a frown. "They captured her the same time as you, dad."
Dyne shook his head. "They took her to the Upper City, to the palace. The Admiralty and the queen wanted her for their own reasons."
"Then that's where we're going." Vyse declared, looking over to Aika with his familiar, determined glare back in place. "Blue Rogues leave nobody behind. Right, dad?"
"When we're on board a ship or on a mission, boy, it's captain! I've told you that!" Dyne tried to correct him, but sighed and let it go. "I liked her, too, Vyse, but…"
"Captain." Vyse stared at his father, and the tension between them made everyone in the dimly lit catacomb alcove go still. "Either the Code applies, no matter what, or we throw it all away. What's it going to be?"
Marco knew that there was something important about that moment, but he was too young to know what it was exactly. He just knew that whatever it was, Vyse ended up winning it. His father looked away with a bittersweet smile.
"The unwritten rule." Dyne said quietly. "We never do things the easy way."
"No." Vyse agreed. "But we do them anyways." He looked over to Drachma. "Captain Drachma. Take my father and the rest of the Albatross crew to the Little Jack and get yourself launched. Once you're airborne, come looking for us in the Upper City. Aika and I will have Marco show us how to get there, and then we'll rescue Fina, one way or another. We'll need you to pull our fat from the fire afterwards."
"It's a poorly planned escape, boy." Drachma complained. "Who's to say that you won't end up captured and killed yourselves?"
Vyse chuckled, and a shadow of something grim passed over his face for just an instant before he shrugged it off. "We've gotten this far, haven't we?" He extended a hand out to Captain Dyne. "Good luck. Give Drachma all the help you can. Aika and I will see you on the other side."
Dyne pushed his son's hand away and pulled him in for a tight hug. "You come back alive, son, and bring the girls back with you."
"You've got it." Vyse said, hugging him back. They held it for a while longer, then Vyse turned to Marco. "Okay, kid. Directions. Where are they going, and where are we going?"
Marco did his best to not lose it in front of them all, but the sight of such warmth and familial love was chipping away at the hardened wall he'd built up over the years.
"I...Yes. This way." He settled for numb words and a blank expression, doing his best not to look at them.
They were full of hope, and life, and courage, all the things that had been ground out and stampeded over in Valua. It hurt to think he'd forgotten what that was like.
He shouldn't have followed Vyse. He should have just sent them all on their way, then put them out of his mind. But there was a lingering ache in his chest, a bitter taste in his mouth, and salty water tracking through the grime on his face.
Marco's feet moved on their own after his tears broke him, and it took him almost no time at all to catch up to the brown-haired pirate and his red-headed accomplice. He was breathing hard at the end, and caught them right at the bottom of a ladder that led up to the streets of Upper Valua. Panic had driven him the last hundred yards, because he knew better than most what was waiting for them up there.
Vyse stared back at him, waiting expectantly as Marco panted for air. "You...you can't go up there." He begged Vyse. "Please."
"I have to, Marco."
"No, you can't!" Marco yelled at him. "That's what my parents did, you idiot! They tried to escape Valua, and they were killed. I can't stand to watch you go like they did! Nobody can get past the Grand Fortress. It's impossible!"
There was shock on Vyse's face as he at last learned why Marco was so hard-hearted, but it faded quickly. The Blue Rogue shook his head, determination taking hold once more.
"Impossible is just a word to make people feel better about themselves when they quit." He told Marco. "When somebody tells me something's impossible, it makes me want to prove them wrong. What would have happened if the first sailors had listened to the people who said they were crazy for sailing away from the safe shores of their floating islands? If they'd listened to the people who said it was impossible? They would have never sailed off to other lands, and the world would be so much smaller."
Marco snuffled a bit. "Are all sailors as crazy as you, or is it just an air pirate thing?"
"We're Blue Rogues, Marco." Vyse corrected him warmly. "Being crazy helps."
Marco laughed a little at that, and wiped his nose. "You'd better not die then."
"I'm not planning on it. There's too much of a world for me left to see yet."
"Good." Marco bit his lip. "Vyse? Do...do you think I could be a sailor?"
Vyse grinned at him, threw him a thumbs up. "Absolutely. And when you do, Marco, I'll be waiting out there for you...in those wide open skies." Marco returned the gesture, thought about saying something else, but decided he didn't need to. Everything important had been said already, and he was smiling.
"Vyse, come on!" Aika hissed, already halfway up the ladder. "We've got to move!"
Vyse nodded, and started up after her, sparing Marco one last glance at the top of the shaft before stepping out into the world above. The manhole cover slid into place soon after, leaving Marco alone in the solitude of the sewers and catacombs once more.
He turned around and headed back the way he'd come wearing an unbreakable smile. He'd have to spend more time hanging around the docks after this, just to keep tabs on the rumors.
He had a name to listen for now...And something to be hopeful for.