Clephesia iníon Mab, Princess Heir of the Winter Court, Mayor of the Palace serving under the Sundered Throne of the Split Horizon, Grand Duchess of the Emerald Forest, Knight under Queen Mab, the Scion Unseelie, was covered in the shadow of a great sailing vessel before her, its wood painted so immaculately she wasn't sure if the ship was made of gold. Even as it cast shade over her, she felt like it was emitting light into her eyes, and her sister Alifa seemed to agree as she cast her gaze down.
Clephesia slapped the seed of her Living Armor against her chest. The seeds roots began to grow downward and wrap around her while the branches grew around her arms and up to her collarbone to grant her a protective shell. Her left hand twitched, impatient for her sword to grow.
Líf, however, shook her head at her sister. "We can't fight this," she insisted. "We need to get the crew to surrender."
"Surrender? A Knight of the Winter Court--"
"These people aren't Knights, Boots. They're refugees. Double refugees," Alifa reminded her. "They are going to die. We need to surrender and drop our sails. Glen! Does this ship have a sign of surrender?"
The former stowaway in the Crow's Nest shouted a yes.
"Show it! Bek! Weigh Anchor!"
"That means lift it," Bek informed her.
"Oh. Well... Sink Anchor! Saer! Drop the sails!" Alifa was a little proud of herself for getting that one right as the sails were lowered, rather than furled, to immediately lose the wind. The ship came to a very fast stop, throwing Alifa off of her feet, and the warship contrasted by bringing its motion to a smooth, graceful end nearly upon them. The crewman in their crow's nest moved a few handheld flags around, and Glen shouted down: "They've accepted our surrender and will be boarding us!"
"How does he know that?" Boots asked Alifa. "I thought the whole crew was stowaways."
"The Captain probably told him how to surrender," Alifa mused. "He knows that a crew of all land lovers on a merchant ship can't fight off basically anything." She looked down to her own sea green skin, then at Boots's more vibrant leaf-green tone. "Think we'll have time to disguise ourselves?"
"Not much point, Princess." The ship's Ledger, Zaria, told her. "Look up, those are telescopes trained right on you two." She squinted. "Mostly at Buataisí."
"Buataisí" was Clephesia's native Faerie for "boots," which was her family nickname. Alifa had let it slip before they could come up with a more human name, but it ended up not mattering when their disguises fell apart anyway.
"Well, I was always the looker," Clephesia teased Alifa.
"And now you're the one armed and armored. Put that away, you don't look like you've surrendered."
Clephesia's left hand closed around her wooden sword's hilt. She thought of drawing it, of heroically battling her way through the entirety of the enemy ship's crew! But the fact was... they'd have weapons of steel or iron. As a daughter of a nymph, Clephesia was a fae creature, particularly vulnerable to those alloys. Even having iron shavings thrown in her face could drain her. She kept her armor on, but didn't draw her weapon.
A wide plank was laid down across the ships, and the first two men to walk across it drove stakes through iron rings that stabbed into the deck of the ship, locking the walkway in place. The ships bobbed in the water, but remained in sync with one another. A half-dozen tall men, each bearing an identical bronze breastplate with an emblem of a mountain spewing fire. They were holding spears, with short swords strapped to their belts. The tips certainly looked like steel. Under the bronze, their raiment had long red sleeves ending in gloves matching the color of their breastplates.
Alifa stepped up to them, Clephesia a half-stride behind.
It ocurred to the Princess Heir that they might not share a language with these people. Prior to her mission that took her aboard the Canard, she thought there was only one human language. With the aid of her sister's magicks, she had learned the new Eastern Human language over the last week and a half. Who knew what these men could say.
"Greetings," she tried in Eastern Human.
Crisply, like it was the only sentence he really knew, the nearest of the soldiers responded in the same language: "You two go aboard. This ship's new Captain shall choose which of your crew follow."
"Who is the new captain?"
"You two go aboard," he said louder.
"Whoever they are, I hope they know the language better." Alifa unsteadily stepped on the plank and wobbled horribly, almost falling off until Clephesia held her. The two Princesses walked across together, leaving their crew behind... though Boots noticed a small, grinning creature in Lif's pack.
The deck was somehow immaculate... the Canard seemed to have grime and odd smells all about it, but Boots could have been walking along the crystaline floors of her mother's Frigid Fortress, the Sodalite Citadel with how smooth and clean the slaughtered trees under her father's boots were. They were brought down the second staircase Boots had ever seen, to a set of doors with what appeared to be gold hinges, and windows that Boots could easily recognize the material of: Diamond.
They were opened by two women, one in silver chains making a mask in front of her eyes, almost like a half-veil of thin metal, with more of the same material looped around her neck with more chains wrapping around her body. It was very easy to see that she was not wearing a single thing underneath. The woman opening the other door was clad in a similar, though not identical, garb of gold chain with no corresponding veil. Clephesia found it very hard to focus on the rest of the room, which seemed to be mostly filled with soft cushions, though there was a circular table of an opaque, black, glass-like substance that the Princesses recognized from the volcanic lands of the Fomori: Obsidian. The circle dominated the front of the room, and upon closer inspection as the sisters were ushered in, it had a map carved into it with islands and landmasses Boots didn't recognize, with names she couldn't read.
Leaning on the table was a man who looked prim and proper, like those who had boarded, tapping at the map with a long pair of scissors for some reason. Behind him was a large bed with a woman seated atop it. Her skin was almost pearl white, a shade Clephesia had never seen on a human before. Every other one she'd ever seen was far darker, and she'd met only one nymph with pale skin, Chonaic. Both of them had skin that Clephesia would nearly describe as transparent.
The woman in the bed scooted forward in a most unregal gesture, seemingly more hungry than domineering. "And what are these? Actresses? Courtesans? People making some odd statement about plants and oceans?" She asked the question in fluent Eastern Human, so it seemed she at least knew that the ship she'd just captured was of that region. Alifa made a mental note not to underestimate this woman.
Clephesia gave a knightly bow. "Greetings. I am Clephesia iníon Mab, Princess Heir of the Winter Court, Mayor of the Palace serving under the Sundered Throne of the Split Horizon, Grand Duchess of the Emerald Forest, Knight under Queen Mab, the Scion Unseelie. And this is my sister--"
"Alifa," the younger princess interrupted.
"Well met. You are received by Her Royal Highness Tanaquil the Radiant, Divine Majesty over the Sea at the Center. Empress of Batillus Unas, Lady of Imis Ulus, Admiral of the Great Navy of the Eruption, Domina Flamecaller." She rattled off the titles, just as practiced as Boots. "And I believe I asked already... what are you? I will not repeat myself again."
