Sparrow on a Plank Chapter 6: Into The Sanctum

The next few days went fast. Hajime kept up his meditation-exercise-crow's-nest-sleep routine, and Sal and Rick began fencing in earnest. She kept to her wooden sword and improvised one for Rick. After a night or two, Hajime was sleeping alone in his berth and the pair started going to bed earlier each night. Although they kept the romance chaste above decks and limited their contact to their fencing, verbal, and swords, it didn't take a genius to figure out that they were enjoying a shipboard romance below decks. 

The crew were happy about this, especially as they disliked the first mate moping around deck. As typical, it wasn't because they cared for his personal welfare (well, okay; they did, as the first mate was well-liked), but because he became nasty and nastier the more he moped, which he would have started had he not found a distraction of some sort. As he was most definitely distracted, he left the crew to do their job. He was a little meaner on his shift, but only because he was impatient to get below decks; he didn't get as nasty as normally did.In a few days, they reached port. The crew worked like men possessed, with just mooring, unloading, and securing the ship between them and food that had to be eaten, beer that had to be drunk, and women that had to be loved. The work was finished in a few short hours, and the captain's inspection was more about the captain messing with the crew than anything serious. Hajime and Sal had disappeared into the crowd well before that. 

They had to remember to wear thick clothes. Coldport was the northernmost port on the planet, established because the original settlers wanted to be far away from any law enforcement, and you couldn't get much farther away than the northern shelf of ice of the planet. The biggest problem was that food had initially to be imported, but that was solved when a couple of sorcerers on the run had created a series of tunnels beneath the town to escape their pursuers; when things had cooled down, they ran back to more civilized lands but the tunnels remained. 

 A couple of kids found the tunnels by accident. A weathercrafter smiled, and tried something: He made the cave walls fertile while hanging some eternal lamps on the ceiling. Thus were arable acres created underneath the city, and enough greenery was created each year to support the settlement's needs (as long as the tunnels were fertilized each year, but there was less and less magic required as more of the natural stuff was made available). Over the ensuing years, the settlement flourished as like-minded individuals gathered. Within a few short decades, Coldport was as bustling as it could be.

 (The original problem regarding law enforcement became a moot point early on. Although they established a listening post (like just about everyone else), the idea of sending even an army into a port of well-trained pirates with an easily defended tunnel system was not a problem anyone was in a hurry to deal with.)

Suffice it to say, Coldport was unlike any other pirate port in that it was basically a retirement village for pirates, but that didn't really mean anything either as "retirement" for a pirate could happen anytime after the first big haul. For some, it was accompanied by their first amputation; prosthetics were sadly a big business in Coldport. But so was information; the residents still kept their ears to the ground, monitoring what happened to old bunkmates and the activities of their ships. This kept them in the loop as far as news in general, and sometimes their rumors became established facts. 

Thus, they waited, listening for some interesting tidbits. Thus, when the local group of cauldron priests found a necklace that purportedly created fireballs and sold it to one of the listening posts, Prince Ta felt it necessary to relieve them of the necklace. Thus did Sal and Hajime find themselves outside a listening post on a cold night, waiting for a report on said priests. 

The listening post was a small inn; nothing too ostensible, and it actually seemed to fade into the buildings behind it. The security was a joke; the signs and counter-signs were well-known and the post had been infiltrated several times as an initiation for the local agents. However, the inner sanctum was still an unknown. Sal and Hajime were going to penetrate it, with any luck, and bring back a rather nifty necklace. And then return the same way they had come to deliver it to Prince Ta. Or at least that was the idea. 

Sal went through the guards like a hot knife, She struck from darkness and took them out without thinking, without pausing, a panther among sheep. She used a rag and some camphor to knock out the guards and then she lay them down silently. With Hajime scouting the hallways in sparrow form and signaling her about dangers ahead while she carried his gear, her job was easy. How they ignored a sparrow with a ring around its neck was another thing, but people usually did. Fortunately, his gear was so light that it didn't cause her even the slightest pause. 

 They went through several rooms that way and then ended up against the door of the inner sanctum. Hajime flapped down and put a claw into the ring. Hajime triggered the change, becoming a teen-age boy again. At the same time, the ring glowed faintly, covering his form in black clothing and staying just ahead of the shift just enough that Hajime was never exposed. When it was completed he breathed in and smiled at Sal, who gave him his equipment. After he had his belt on tight, he reached into a pouch, brought out a pair of lockpicks, and then started picking the lock with the two small pieces of metal. After a few minutes of picking at the lock, Hajime stepped back a little bit, surprised.  

"This is weird."

 Sal didn't like hearing what she heard. "You picked it?" 

"Yeah. We thought it would be worth a try, but we didn't think it would actually work. This is…interesting." He put his picks back and let Sal move to the door.  

She hated hearing that something was interesting. "Great. Given the amount of security we've seen so far, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. No wonder they want to move it so quickly."

"Yeah, I guess."

She opened the door, and the two of them went in.

[The last chapter can be found here. The next chapter can be found here.]