Chapter VIII

The Lost Heir

'She could be a siren! Are ye trying to kill us all?'

Relena flinched lightly at Wufei's accusation even though it was directed more at the captain beside her than at herself. Heero did not seem at all affected. He had exposed the facts as they were and asked if any of the crewmembers would like to volunteer themselves to look after the mysterious woman they had 'rescued'. Until she woke up, they would have no idea of who or what she was, if she would maintain her status as 'guest' or become a 'hostage'. All they knew was that they had to keep her, in order to use the map on her back.

'We don't need her to be alive, in order to use the map…' Hilde observed. A thoughtful look on her face as she sat on a barrel with her wounded arm in a sling.

'Lass's got a point.' Howard agreed.

'So how are we going to do this?' Trowa asked with a troubled frown.

'Wait!' Quatre protested. 'We can't do that! We can't just… murder a woman in her sleep! We don't even know who she is!'

'Are ye offering to take care of 'er?' Duo asked and all eyes turned to the blonde pirate, making him feel more than just a little self-conscious.

'No! I… I just have a strong feeling that she isn't a siren. Wouldn't we already have gone mad if she were?'

'Just by looking at 'er?' Chang frowned turning to Heero then Howard for some sort of confirmation.

'I haven't gone mad yet.' The captain gave them as much reassurance as he possibly could.

'That's 'cause ye were crazy from the start.' The braided pirate informed him.

'No sane man would've walked into that cave knowing the risks. Ye do what ye must in order to survive!' Howard tried to make the captain understand what it was that made him mad. 'Except Lowe… That man was always trying to get 'imself killed… Seems ye have something in common with yer father after all.'

Heero ignored them, turning instead to Quatre. 'You're our strategist and she's the key to finding the treasure. Ye don't think she's a siren and are not worried that she might be. Ye look after 'er.'

'But she's a… She's a…' he tried and blushed. 'She's a she.'

'Heero…' Relena took the captain's arm and – for once – he did not pull away. 'Wouldn't it be best if I…'

'Nay. Quatre needs to analyse that tattoo. Ye may help him dress and undress the woman as long as she remains unconscious, but – hopefully – that won't be for long.' He turned back to the blonde man. 'Now, if you'd take that map off my bed and back to yer hammock, Mr Winner...'

XXX

Quatre paced around his hammock as he watched their sleeping captive and tried to figure out what to tell her when she woke up or what to do if she did not. It was a wonder how old she truly was or how long she had been sleeping, but it was certainly not normal for anyone to be asleep for as long as she was. His only conclusion up to that moment was that if she did not wake up by herself then only something just as unnatural could awake her. He was at a loss as to what that could be… It had occurred to him that the key to waking her up might be written on her back, but he had yet to get comfortable enough with the idea of seeing her naked – or at least partially – without her explicit permission to do anything about it.

'Quatre?' Relena halted a few feet away, her smile both apologetic and sympathetic. 'How are you doing?'

'She hasn't woken up yet… Or moved… Or anything.' He told her as he watched their sleeping map with a keen eye.

'Have you slept at all?' she asked, now worriedly.

'I can't. Not until I've figured this out.'

'Do you want me to…' Relena saw him turn back to the sleeping woman, a conflicted look on his face.

'If only we knew each other… But we're not even friends! I don't even know her name! How am I supposed to just… Examine her body like that?'

'Well… Is there any other option?'

'Nay…'

'Then you must do it. I'm sure, if you explain it to her, she'll understand.'

'You think she can hear what we're saying? Wherever her mind is…'

'I don't see why she wouldn't be able to. Unless she's dead, that is…Which we're sure she's not.' She added when Quatre's expression grew troubled again. 'Why don't you tell her about yourself? I too would like to hear your story.'

He seemed to reflect on that as he watched Relena carefully unwrap the woman from the cloth they had used to cover her, in order to expose her tattooed back to them. It was a real work of art and it must have been excruciatingly painful… The blonde man felt like touching it, but he was crossing too many boundaries just by looking at it. He pulled a barrel closer to the hammock and placed a burning lamp and a piece of parchment on top of it. 'I'll make a copy of this drawing so we don't need to undress her anymore...and, while I do, let me tell you… My story.'

XXX

Quatre Raberba Winner was the youngest child and only heir of the Winner family. One of the richest and most influential families of the entire African continent. He lived in an unbelievably large estate, in a huge manor filled with enough servants to cater to his every whim. An oasis in the middle of the desert. But that was not how the blonde young man saw it. Fifteen year old Quatre saw his entire life as a prison, for which his father – Zayeed Winner – was the administrator.

The Winners were idealists. In a continent where humans were captured, taken from their families, bought and sold as slaves and nature was destroyed without a second thought by rich-seeking explorers and mercenaries, they defended freedom, equal rights and conservation. Quatre agreed with those ideals, the ideals of his father and his family. He agreed with representing them as was befitting of a true Winner heir, but he wanted to do things his own way. While Zayeed insisted on taking the long way and reaching his objectives through politics and negotiation, his son wanted immediate results, he wanted to organize militias and retaliate against those who enslaved and trafficked, those who held power in their hands.

'How many more times must I tell you that we are a family of pacifists?' his father's patience seemed to be growing thinner and thinner as time passed and Quatre's ideas remained. 'Our purpose is to set an example, to stimulate others to follow our lead. Tell me, Quatre, what kind of example would we set if we advocated against the use of force and yet employed our own private army in fighting the opposition? What would we look like?'

'But, Father, you're not—.' the youth tried yet again.

'Hypocrites, Quatre. We would look like hypocrites.'

'Yes, Father.' Quatre sighed resignedly. He would find no understanding here, but that did not mean he would stop fighting. The Winner name would have been a great help, but he was confident he could make a difference without it as well or, at least, he could try to.

'There are some errands I need you to run for me in the city… Make sure you stay out of trouble while you are there. I will fill you in once I've made all the necessary arrangements.'

'Yes, Father.'

Zayeed seemed satisfied with his son's sudden submission. Perhaps he believed the young man had finally understood the importance of following the family's principles and protecting its name. Once Quatre had understood, he would be ready to marry his first wife and give continuation to a long line of Winners, taking over his father's place and becoming the new face of hope for an entire continent and an enormous contingent of unfairly treated poor miserable people. That was what his father hoped.

XXX

In the early morning hours, under the cover of the still dark skies, Quatre guided his followers through the empty alleyways towards the city's richest qaurters. The rebel group called Maganacs consisted of a select number of mid-eastern men all trained in the art of war, fighting and stealth. They were dangerous, but good men. Men that shared not only his ideals, but also agreed with his means of reaching his objectives and therefore were willing to follow him anywhere, putting to action the blonde's most reckless and risky plans. That night – for one – their goal was a particularly ambitious one… They were going to rob the house of one of the most powerful and influential slave-traders of the entire region.

The loot would be distributed among the poorest neediest families while the slave-trader, unable to pay the services of his slave-hunters, would be able to do naught other than watch his enterprise crumble around him. Quatre was incredibly confident in his plan. He had been to the man's house before… Accompanying his father during a formal meeting and he had seized the opportunity to study the construction, memorizing the location of each room so he could formulate his strategy.

Abdul, the newest member of the group, kneeled in the shade provided by the threshold as the others kept a lookout, listening attentively for the guard who patrolled that area at the slave-trader's request. The money the man provided the government with would have been enough to pay a private army to defend his property, but – thankfully for Quatre and the Maganacs – most powerful men were overconfident and therefore tended to be careless.

The blonde had calculated the interval between the guard's comings and goings with precision and Auda was ready to start a distraction in case they needed it. They did not. The interior of the house was as empty and dark and eerily quiet as the streets around it. Quatre had examined many of the rooms during his visit and had found the large heavily decorated study to be the mostly likely to hide the slave-trader's vault. As usual, he was right. His opponents were far too predictable. It took them a few minutes to find the hidden passageway, but there were no signs of life within the house and together Abdul, Ahmad, Rashid and Quatre carried all the man's gold and documents with them back to the streets.

Auda's whistle reached them just as they stepped out. The guards were coming. As planned, each of them took a different route, hurrying away from the crime scene. Quatre headed south past the market district and into the shadiest parts of the city. He would have turned around and headed home a lot sooner were he not being followed and, since whoever was doing the chasing was going through no great pains to hide it, he could only assume it was a guard so he kept moving, trying to look like any other casual night stroller.

By the time he noticed his pursuer was purposefully leading him towards the docks it was already too late. Quatre found himself in a dead end with nowhere to turn but around. The man who had been following him was already there, standing between him and the exit. It was too dark in the alley for him to be able to discern who it was. With the slave-trader's gold and documents weighing him down, Quatre did not want to take any chances. He looked up at the houses that flanked him only to discover there were two more pursuers and they were standing on the rooftops, hovering each on one side of him like vultures waiting for their prey to drop dead.

It had all been so well executed he had not even noticed those extra men until that very moment. He could have laughed at his misfortune, and he probably would have, had not a fourth man appeared at the mouth of the alleyway, walking past the silhouette that already stood there and towards the blonde.

'Master Quatre Winner, aye?' the stranger stepped close enough for Quatre to see he was a pirate and not a city guard. He said nothing, despite his curiosity, lest he admitted to something he should not. 'I saw what ye did tonight… My crew and I have been accompanying yer criminal career for a fortnight now…'

'I don't know what you're talking about, sir. I am no criminal.'

The pirate smirked. 'Oh, but ye are…and I have a proposition for ye.'

'A proposition?' Quatre snorted, returning the man's smirk with one of his own. He could barely hear anything over his thundering heart and his mind kept trying to work out an escape plan, but it would not do for him to look intimidated or he would be devoured like a lonely sheep by a pack of hungry wolves.

'Aye.' The stranger stepped closer, his expression now serious. 'Name's Odin Lowe, Captain of the Peacemillion, and I'd like ye to come with me. Ye will stay on board of me ship, pretending we have kidnapped ye, while we wait for yer father to pay the ransom. Ye will have a cut yerself, I assure ye.'

He frowned in his confusion. 'What?'

'Either ye come with us willingly or ye come with us unwillingly, Master Winner, so let us be reasonable, aye?'

As if to illustrate their captain's point, the men on the rooftops dropped down behind him. Quatre gave the pirates a quick wary glance. The one to his left had the longest braid he had ever seen and a very creepy grin on his face while the one to his right was tall and lean, his face was scarily blank. There was still the one standing behind Lowe, too far for him to see, but clearly also young and in good shape. He did not stand a chance against all of them. 'Why?' he questioned.

'Why?' the pirate captain laughed. 'How much do ye think yer father would pay to have ye back? His only heir…'

Quatre was not sure his father would pay much to have him back, especially given the circumstances in which he had been captured, but he did not think Lowe would believe him and he still had hopes of making his way out of that hairy situation. 'My father's a simple artisan. There's very little he can offer you.'

'Ah…' the pirate clicked his tongue in mock disappointment. 'And I thought ye would be kind enough not to force us to use violence…'

The blonde saw him nod towards the men behind him – an obvious sign to attack – and raised the heavy bag he had been carrying. 'Perhaps this will be enough? To pay for my freedom?'

The captain's amusement only seemed to multiply and he could not help laughing at Quatre yet again. 'Ye keep underestimating my intelligence, Master Winner. I know who ye are and I know yer father's got a treasure worth at least a thousand times whatever's in that little pouch.'

He sighed in defeat. Where his father's fortune was concerned, Lowe was not that far off. 'Very well… You may take me if you so desire, but I fear my father will not be as willing to rescue me as you suspect.'

'We'll see about that.' He snapped his fingers and his growing smirk was the last thing Quatre saw before the world turned black.

XXX

'Any word yet?' he looked up at the quartermaster, who had been assigned the very important task of keeping him confined to the gun deck. Quatre had been on board the Peacemillion for a week and the man had yet to leave his side. He was like an automaton, following his captain's orders without question or thought and he did not seem to need much sleep or food either… The blonde captive was impressed, however not in a good way. 'From my father?'

As usual there was no answer, merely a sideways glare and he had to focus on something else lest he should get seasick again. The first couple of days had been hellish… Quatre had never been on a ship before, having been born and bred in the desert, and his discomfort seemed to have become a source of amusement for the tripulation. Thankfully, he had been far too sick to care. At least his guard had not laughed… It was the only time the Winner heir had been grateful for the man's stoicism for, as he grew used to the rocking of the ship and his stomach settled, he had started missing the sun and being confined to one of the lower decks with a statue of a man had turned out to be far more boring than he would have expected.

By the end of the seventh day he had already told the nearly mute quartermaster his entire life story and still no answer had come from his father. The journey from the city to the Winner estate and back took exactly six days on horseback so the answer should have arrived the day before or at least earlier on the seventh. It was beginning to gnaw at him…

'Have you heard from my father yet?' he rephrased the question, insistently, and part of him wanted to irritate the other young man enough to elicit a response of some sort, even an aggressive one would have made him happy.

'Actually, Master Winner…' the captain's voice had the fifteen year olds turning their heads towards the stairs. Odin Lowe had a scowl on his face that was barely enough to show just how displeased he felt. He seemed to exhale unhappiness from every pore, Quatre could sense it and he swallowed drily when he realised just how little it would take for the man to snap. He turned to the quiet quartermaster for reassurance, but the frown on the brown haired man's usually impassive face did not bode well. 'Ye will be pleased to learn that ye were right after all…'

'I…was?' he asked quietly. He had been talking non-stop for so long and he had said so much he could no longer be sure what the pirate meant.

'Yer father says Winners do not support any manner of violence or unlawful conduct, therefore a man caught looting another's residence cannot – by any means – be a Winner… Least of all his own son.'

Quatre snickered, unsure whether to be happy he had been right or devastated his own father had given up on him so easily, and met Lowe's unsympathetic gaze. 'What will become of me now?'

'It seems ye can no longer be called a Winner.'

'So it seems…' he conceded with a smile, however bitter, and could no longer look into the captain's eyes. Quatre looked down at the man's boots and sent his friends – the Maganacs – a silent apology because he knew he would not be going back to finish what they had started and that was extremely unfair of him. He hoped Rashid would have the heart to take his place and keep fighting.

'Heero?' Lowe's surprised tone had the blonde youth raising his head again. His eyes widened when he noticed the quartermaster now stood between him and the captain who had a very threatening eyebrow arched.

'Capt'n.' The brown haired young man finally spoke, his voice neutral. 'I think ye should let him go on account.'

The captain burst out laughing. 'Let 'im go on account?' he questioned incredulously. 'This landlubber? Of what use would he be? The lad can barely make it on his feet without hurling.'

'He's got brains, unlike most of the crew.'

'And yet we've got more than enough brains as is.' Lowe's eyes fell on their hostage once again. 'I can think of so many entertaining ways to kill 'im…'

'And what purpose would that serve? Quatre could not help contesting nor frowning in disgust at the man, the quartermaster's unexpected support boosting his confidence.

'Ah, the exiled son of the Winners still defends his family's ideals… How absurdly preposterous. Do ye really think he's got the makings to be one of us?'

'He has nowhere else to go.' Heero's statement was so clear and simple it made the blonde man feel like he had been stabbed. 'I figured that would be enough.'

The captain shook his head, not in denial, but in disappointment. 'Sometimes I wonder if ye truly are my son and not… that man's.' he commented, sad and disgusted, before turning back to Quatre. 'Would ye like to join the crew? Or swim back to yer father to beg him for forgiveness? I could send ye in pieces too… It can all be arranged.'

'I wish to join.' He said immediately and without a second thought. There would be time to mourn his life and his home and his family later. At that particular moment, he had no other option.

'Very well then… Don't make me regret me decision.'

'Thank you.' Quatre shouted after the quartermaster as he made to follow the captain back to the main deck.

Heero met his eyes for a fraction of a second. 'Don't mess up.'

XXX

'I'm sorry about your father, Quatre.' Relena laid a hand on his shoulder, her gaze sad and sympathetic. He gave her a reassuring smile. Time had lessened his pain, it had made him appreciate the chance he had been given, the new life he had lived since his father had abandoned him. He might not have belonged here at first, but he had conquered his place, he had made friends and become as good a pirate as he possibly could. 'Why do you think he saved you?'

'Heero?' the blonde man finally finished his copy of the woman's tattoo, holding it close to the original for comparison. 'I've asked him time and time again, but I'm not sure he knows it himself… I think he must have seen something in me, however unconsciously, that led him to make the decision to spare me. Or maybe he just didn't wish to witness any more bloodshed… He's never really been fond of violence for the sake of it.'

She nodded thoughtfully, stepping closer to the hammock to admire Quatre's work. 'That doesn't look at all like a map now.' She confessed with a troubled frown.

'That's because it isn't.' he covered the sleeping woman's back carefully. 'Thank you.' He whispered with a gentle smile and moved a couple steps away to nail his drawing to one of the stilts. Then he returned to Relena's side and from that distance they gave the image another look.

'It's…'

'A cypher, yes. And it's in Latin.'

The blonde woman cocked her head to the side, trying to make sense of the jumbled letters and words. Quatre too was squinting and frowning at the drawing. Neither of them turned around at the sound of steps or said a word when the captain joined them. 'It wasn't a map after all…'

'No.' Relena confirmed with a slow shake of her head.

'I don't think I can decipher this, Heero…' the strategist confessed a moment later.

'Hn.'

'Can you?'

Heero walked past them to examine the image more closely. They watched him with bated breath for a very long minute, but at last he shook his head. 'No… But I know someone who can.'