Summary: If the Red Haired Pirates would kindly fuck off, it would make your job a lot easier.
Pay the Piper Master Post
Chapter warnings: language, implied threat of murder at sea
“They’re stealing our wind.”
The mass of sails grew in your spyglass. What the crew had whispered might be a Jolly Roger clearly wore Redhaired Shanks’ stripes over the left eye, and the Red Force’s dragon figurehead bared its teeth in your direction.
For fuck’s sake. It couldn’t just be any pirates. You had to run across a whole-ass Yonko.
Lowering the glass, you blinked, taking the moment as your vision adjusted to consider your options. Without the telescopic lenses, the puff of white gradually eating the horizon could almost be mistaken for a cloud. It looked so harmless and far away.
“Even if your ship was faster, captain, they’ve taken the advantage.” You held the spyglass out to the beef-brained Marine you’d been bullied into accompanying.
Grinding his teeth, he ignored you, lifting his binoculars to see the same vision of approaching doom.
Apparently he liked you even less when you were right. “We can’t outrun them like this.”
“What’re you gonna do?” he growled. “Sing ‘em to sleep?”
A few of his favorites tittered, anxiously holding onto fading hopes that their commanding officer knew what he was doing. Marines usually buried their heads in the sand, up to the waist if need be. To be fair, it was what most were trained to do, and it kept (some of) them sane as they climbed the ranks from Entirely Helpless to Relatively Hopeless.
Without the constraint of rank and oath, you were much more realistic. The Red Force was gaining, and the pirates would close the distance even faster now. Your hand drifted to the railing, thumbnail digging into the paint. Even with the wind, you couldn’t win a race with that monster of a ship. The Marine’s tub was old. Even the mild breeze that kept the sails from falling entirely slack brought shrieks from the aging masts, and despite the good weather, the hull groaned like an old man.
You dug deep, working a splinter out of the rail to ruin the smooth white finish.
Fuck old men and the ships that sounded like them.
“This isn’t my first time sailing around pirates I’m ill-equipped to fight. We’ll try a few tricks and play it by ear.”
“Tricks, huh?” The captain’s voice dripped derision – for your lack of strength, for your very presence, for all the rules you could slide under without entirely breaking.
But even if you weren’t in the pecking order, you weren’t above yanking on the invisible leash of command.
“If Vice-Admiral Garp thought brute strength and speed would do it, would he have bothered with me?”
The ship shuddered as the Marines unfurled another sail, hoping to catch even half a knot’s more speed.
The captain grunted and dropped his binoculars to his chest. “Do what you want.”
He didn’t even glance your way as he left, and you smiled at the “Justice” signature scrawled down his back, spyglass tapping against your thigh.
You kept time with the captain’s receding footsteps, wandering the quarter deck with an eye on the billowing cloth overhead, tracking the sun’s path behind it. It would be dark in another three hours. Give or take. Enough time to launch Plan B, and Plan B almost always worked. The pirates would have just enough light to recover the wager, and once the pirates had what they wanted, everyone could use the moonless night as an excuse to lose sight of each other.
Plan B had never been tested against a Yonko, though.
It relied on giving the pursuers what they wanted with the least amount of fuss. No risk. All reward. The only gamble was that the prey had even more loot on board, but few crews were all that interested beyond a good haul. Seas knew if a Yonko wanted the same thing as any other pirate.
You wrote a letter, a reverse ransom of sorts, and set it on top of the glittering Berries in the small chest brought for just this situation. Self-funded, of course, because if the Marines couldn’t spring for a proper escort, they couldn’t dream of providing expensive countermeasures.
You kept the message simple.
Apologies for our trespass in your territory. We are not seeking a battle and sail on a humanitarian mission. Please accept this modest token as toll and tribute.
The Marine captain would not see the letter. As amusing as watching him turn a dozen shades of puce would be, you had a job and a will to live besides. Stroking one man’s ego while sparing the other’s might be the difference between ending the voyage in a port or a shark’s belly.
The chest went in a barrel packed with straw, and you attached a tall rod with a yellow flag. Not white. Because the Marines would have a conniption. And the Yonko may get the wrong idea. Yellow caught the eye and reflected what bounty lay inside, so it would work well enough.
With a deck full of men staring at you, you rolled the barrel to the side and heaved it over. It landed with a terrific splash, and even at your tub’s leisurely speed, the peace offering soon floated far behind. You watched to ensure it flipped the right way up, flag streaming over the water with the demanding poise of a News Coo.
Half an hour. You watched the barrel sway and bob, picked out new details of the Red Force as it closed in, and kept time with your foot where you sat on the rail. The hiss of spray, the song of old wood flexing under its own weight, and the work of a dozen trained men boiled into something you could pick a tune through. Minutes dripped orange into the sinking sun, and you hovered in the rhythm of it all, caught in the song’s sway.
At last, your pursuers reached the barrel.
You kept your spyglass to your eye as grappling lines flew from the deck, hooking the prize and hefting it up, up, up to the deck. They’d drawn close enough that you could make out vague figures, but no faces, and you had a shit angle, besides. Once the barrel was aboard, you lost sight of it. The next move was theirs, but you’d prefer knowing what it was sooner rather than later. Any little move could tip you off. A reaction. Laughter. Signs of discord. Anything.
The Red Force didn’t lower any sails or shift course, but you’d doubted they would until dark. Nothing else seemed to change, and you swore under your breath.
Dawn would reveal how screwed you were.
Just as you prepared to give up your watch and hunt down dinner, a glint near the pirate ship’s prow snared your attention.
You weren’t the only one watching.
For a beat, it wasn’t a game of survival between ships. It was you and a stranger linked by line of sight. You felt marked. Noted. Like if you spoke, the other would hear you. You’d begun a correspondence, and the reply glimmered back, intangible and compelling as a ghost.
You pulled away from the connection, lowering the glass, going below decks, and trying to shake the feeling of the pirate’s eye.
“Douse the lights at twilight,” you told the captain. “With luck we’ll lose them in the dark.”
You rose before dawn, leaning on the rail with a cup of coffee to greet your fate. Even before the sun’s disk broke the horizon, you saw the Red Force in the pre-dawn gloom. You didn’t raise an alarm. No need. The warship hadn’t gone dark, and the men on watch must’ve seen the inevitable truth swimming along in their wake all night.
The coffee wasn’t terrible. Since you wouldn’t have time for a proper breakfast, you drank it down slowly, savoring the fresh air and spinning out next steps.
The captain likely wouldn’t listen to you after this failure, and that really was a concern. But the Red-Haired Pirates had such a mixed reputation – if the captain hadn’t insisted on flying the Marine colors, your hunters might’ve eased off. This ship really wasn’t a great prize in any traditional sense, and no rare wonders sat in crates below deck. But you made such a sad little target with your shitty boat and your scant crew that you must’ve sparked some curiosity.
The last of your morning brew hid a mouthful of grounds, and you nearly gagged forcing it down. At least there was something solid in your stomach now.
Rosy light flushed the world red and gold. The fanged face of the pirates’ ship was close enough you didn’t need the spyglass to make it out anymore. It looked hungry. You’d have to feed it some answers.
How much could you reveal without giving the game away? Finding the sweet spot between enough of the truth to bore someone and so much of the truth they took interest always frustrated you, and the stakes had never been this high.
“They didn’t go for your trick.”
The captain, binoculars up, appeared beside you. Even in a life-or-death situation, apparently you were only worth half his attention.
Since he clearly didn’t care much about manners, you left the conversation at that and started crafting your back-up peace offering. No pre-packaged loot this time. You made the rounds with an empty box, asking for anything of value the Marines cherished less than their lives. Most sniffed in disdain (and poverty). A few shakily removed wedding bands, fetched little heirlooms from their lockers, and dropped in their scant wages.
You took the little hoard back to the workspace you’d stolen for yourself below deck and penned another letter.
The coffee burned in your gut, threatening to return as you considered your own sacrifice for the tithe. It was a gamble. One you didn’t want to make either way, but it might work. It wasn’t the sort of token someone would surrender lightly. And it might underline your point that there was nothing of value left.
If, on the other hand, this was purely about the fact that Marines dared sail through a Yonko’s territory… well, you’d all be dead, and it wouldn’t matter how much your heart bled to give up the thing, would it?
You pulled the pendant from around your neck and immediately missed its weight. Your shoulders were too light to hold down breath, and you chewed the inside of your cheek to banish the burning in your nose.
When had you last taken it off? To clean it, maybe, a few months ago? You hadn’t suffocated without it then. You'd live now.
Two things mattered more to you than anything else in the whole world, and here you were, giving one up without a fight.
You allowed yourself a minute to look at the smooth stone and delicate silver, rubbing your thumb over the little masterpiece like you could press it into your skin. Keep it. Memorize it or absorb it or anything except –
A little cadet helped you find another barrel, and together you put together another flag to ensure your suffering wasn’t all for nothing.
Over the side and into the sea, the barrel rode the wake of your sad little tub until it was close enough for the pirate crew to snatch with hook and line. This time, you only had to wait ten minutes.
You were ready with the spyglass.
A figure approached the prow, and as he came out of the sails’ shade, you spotted the telltale hair. Red Haired Shanks lifted his own spyglass, looking straight back at you with your pendant glittering in his hand.
You snapped the glass from your eye and – confident he could see you – made a grand and exaggerated shooing motion. Ushering him away like a persistent gull.
If his sense of humor was anything like you’d heard, maybe he’d spare you for the laugh.
But when you peered through the glass to see if he had an answer, you could’ve sworn he was laughing.
Laughing and shaking his head.
