Jeff stood on the aft deck of the ship- a sloop, actually, he'd been informed-and tried to strike a dashing pose in the best Jack Sparrow tradition.
After all, he was captain of a pirate ship- er, sloop- and he was sailing into the harbor of the greatest pirate city in the world for his first time ever, and he wanted to make a good impression.
He hadn't been able to find a hat or a long jacket like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean, but he at least had a loose-fitting white shirt with big, puffy sleeves, and a wide red sash with numerous edged and pointy things of various lengths thrust through it, and he was feeling kind of cool.
The sloop was a prize of war: his band had liberated it from its previous crew by stealing it away while those pirates had been engaged in attacking a large merchant ship.
They had rowed close by in Jeff's folding boat- a miraculous little contraption in itself, which had several very useful properties, not the least of them being to be able to hide in plain sight (what Jeff thought of as a cloaking device)- until the pirates had committed most of their crew to the attack.
Then they had swooped in and struck. The fact that there were only four of them, and that they had been cramped together into a little rowboat for hours was mitigated by the fact that one of them was quite the bloodthirsty pirate herself, one was a nearly ten-foot tall Cyclops, and another was possessed of numerous sundry magical weapons and contrivances.
The fourth --his trusty manservant Giton-wasn't a whole lot of good in a fight, but he could serve the useful purpose of cutting the lines and grapnels that connected the sloop to the merchant ship and then steering them away while the others took care of the crew.
It had been neatly done, and when the pirates still aboard the merchant ship saw what had happened to their own vessel, they surrendered en masse, which made a grateful man out of the captain of the merchant ship.
Grateful enough to give a handful of the pirates back, enough to make a skeleton crew for the sloop, a hand-picked lot that Jeff had no doubt would gleefully stick a knife in his back if they thought for a moment they could get away with it.
But Saetha could handle them well enough, and at any rate the ashlander pirate was planning to draft her own crew as soon as they hit port: once Jeff had ransomed his friends and returned them to safety the ship was going to be hers.
The four of them had escaped the island of the Goddess for different motives, but all due to the same over-arching reason: the ascension of Celeyth to the court of the greater god Enlil had left a community of religious fanatics in its wake.
Sure- the religion was largely based on sex, which in itself made it a hell of a lot more palatable than most to Jeff, but most everyone who had seen the events seemed to think of Jeff as semi-divine himself now.
Which surprisingly enough got old in a hurry, despite making him the center of attraction at the nearly non-stop orgies that went on in the name of the goddess.
Besides, he was still headed to Kardis to save his friends Bette and Elvira from a life of slavery.
Saetha remained cynical and unimpressed with the whole god/goddess thing; Jeff figured it was just her nature to be naturally rebellious, anti-social and (some would say) borderline sociopathic. So she had jumped at the chance to get off the island, especially since her former partner Mesthines was practically the high-priestess of the newly forming religion, and out of the pirate business for good.
Dina was just bored: her sister was surprisingly enough also a pretty prominent figure in the faith, and Dina didn't see herself getting off the island anytime soon if she didn't go with them right now. Besides, since Jeff could now use the bracelet to shift to any size he wanted from six inches tall to over fifteen feet, he could occasionally be talked into shooting up to a size large enough to give her a good swiving. And with him gone the only other suitably sized cock on the island belonged to a centaur, who had both sharp hooves and a persistent odor.
Giton was simply going to go where ever Jeff was.
One of the parting gifts of the goddess had been an understanding of the all of the magic items in the remaining chest. These had been hitherto un-catalogued and un-defined, and Jeff had found some of them to be the most powerful and useful items he had yet seen- the boat among them.
So here they were, coming into Kardis in style- and as captain of a ship, Jeff would get a discounted ransom rate on the girls.
They were being guided to a berth by a little pilot-ship, and they sailed up to spot on one of several long, wide stone quays.
There was a ship docked at the next quay, separated by less than a hundred feet of water. It was much bigger, and what crew it had left aboard was all leaning on the rails watching Jeff's sloop put in.
"Hey- aint that the Murderer's Row?" one of the men shouted across. "Where's Captain Boran?"
"Nope." Jeff yelled back. "This is the SS Minnow. Just got back from a three hour tour."
"You better watch your back when our first mate gets back- he's Boran's cousin!"
"Aw, shit." Jeff said. "We had to pull up right next to the last captain's cousin?"
Saetha smirked. "No matter- the story would have gotten around soon enough. Better we know where trouble might be coming from."
That made me a little uneasy. "What kind of trouble can we expect?"
She shrugged. "Let's get squared away first, then we'll talk."
The ashlander quickly saw to it that the ship was berthed safely, and detailed Giton and a couple of the rescued pirates who had stated they'd like to stay on as part of the new crew as a rear-guard. Jeff armed the scrawny little manservant with a couple of toys that would make sure he could keep the ship safe.
As they gathered on the dock to head into the city, a stubby little man in a blue suit that had probably once been very expensive trotted out to meet them, flanked by a couple of soldiers armed with a pike and a crossbow, and a half-naked boy toting a big leather bound book.
"That'd be the guy from the harbor-masters' office." Saetha said to Jeff. "You're going to have to declare the ship in your own name. All you have to do is rename it and claim that you want to join as a free-captain in the brotherhood of Kardis, and we'll be safe enough for a while from being attacked.
The clerk pulled up in a huff, wiping at his forehead with a handkerchief. "You're flying the flag of the brotherhood- what ship is this and who is the captain?" He pulled out a big feathered quill from somewhere and the boy deftly propped the book open on a sort of shelf built into a pilon of the dock.
"Um- that'd be me. My name is Prince. And the ship is the.....SS Minnow."
"The Minnow? Doesn't sound very pirate-like." The clerk observed.
Jeff shrugged, cursing at himself silently for coming up blank- he'd seen the Pirates of the Caribbean movies a half dozen times, and even several books about pirates like Captain Kidd and Blackbeard, and then suddenly whiffed on the names of all the ships involved.
Luckily all those Gilligan's Islands re-runs had come to the rescue.
"Anyway, I'm here to claim membership in the brotherhood." I said.
Saetha stepped forward. "He means to petition the mayor for a Captain's rights straight off."
"The clerk looked up over the page he was scribbling on and eyed me. "Does he, now? Then make haste: the new mayor will be eager to embrace her first captain."
"New mayor? What happened to Bloody William?" Saetha asked.
"An unfortunate argument at the last conclave resulted in a challenge. Bloody William declined to use a champion, while Captain Evans chose his first mate- the Minotaur called Taker. It did not go well for the late Lord Mayor. The Lady Xandes is mayor now."
Saetha sputtered. "Xandes? How the hell did that fish end up in the chair of office?"
The clerk raised his eyebrows as the two soldiers shifted uneasily. "Better watch your tongue, my dear lady." He admonished. "The new mayor runs no less a tight ship than the previous ones, and disrespect can be punished."
To Jeff's surprise, Saetha clamped her mouth shut and just nodded. She took over the proceedings in a more subdued manner, answering the clerks' questions about the cargo and making arrangements for porters to cart the goods to the shops.
That done, the clerk and his entourage trotted off to the next ship that was pulling in, and Jeff's party turned and began the trek into the city itself. Dina carried the wooden chest that held Jeff's hoard of magical weapons as they walked. Saetha cursed and spoke in a quiet voice as they walked.
"Damn, Bloody William was an old ship-mate of mine. We had a guarantee of you being recognized as a captain with him in the chair. Now you're going to have to be interviewed by Xandes. She can do whatever she wants- demand money or cargo for a flat fee, or set some kind of test for you, or even give you a quest before she accepts you as a brother captain."
"What sort of test are we talking about?" Jeff asked, suddenly uneasy again. "And what about this cousin from the other ship- if I'm not a captain, he can just jump us, right?"
"No- you're registered already as an applicant. Until a decision is made you and your ship are as safe as anyone else's."
As they entered the city itself, there were streets running off in two directions. One was obviously full of warehouses, the other was full of saloons, shops and taverns.
The streets were wide and neatly paved with stones. There were gutters with barred drains and raised sidewalks fronting the street with the shops. All in all, it was a remarkably cleaner and more orderly city than Avincor had been.
At the first intersection of streets there was a sort of small courtyard in the middle of the square, and there were half a dozen naked folks of either sex chained by the neck standing in it.
"Is that the slave-auction site?" Jeff asked eagerly, craning his neck for a glance of the green goblin skin of Elvira or the brown hair of Bette Willsmith.
"No- that's in the main city courtyard and it's a lot bigger. Some of these are slaves who are being punished by their masters, but most are just free citizens serving time on criminal charges."
