There were few things as exciting as an escape from an unflagged airship – on a vessel commanded by a legendary pirate.
Of course, the outlaws looked kind of washed out and the captain was in a deep depression slump. It seemed like the golden days of piracy were coming to an end, at least it looked like that from way up high in the air.
They were able to get away from the airship, but for supplies and the sake of their collective mental health, they stopped in a Sennite village that enjoyed the surprising presence of an airship station.
Ted was so tired of Captain Ligurza that he slept in an inn.
He woke up in darkness, and he was relieved by the absence of cruel morning's light for a fraction of a second.
Then he realized he had not drawn the curtains over the window. Someone else was in the room.
Ted jumped up, but the shadow with the knife and the pistol was quicker, and soon the outline of a man had subdued him in the dim light that came from the gap between the door and the ceiling.
"You scream, you die," the man said with an upper class eastern accent that would have been charming if it had not been accompanied by a blade on Ted's throat and the barrel of a gun pressing against his head.
Ted did not like his chances, at least when it came to physical resistance.
"How much do they pay you?" he whispered, the edge of the blade pressing against the apple of his throat with every syllable. "Enough? Or are you after status?"
"Those, and so many more other things," the assassin-spy growled. "Be quiet."
"You sure you don't have a family that would be sorry to see you go?"
Ted could even out his heartbeat in these situations pretty quickly. While a calm demeanor was often angering to assailants, rational thought could sway the spies and the hitmen if Ted played his cards just right.
"From your perfume…yes, I can smell it…"
He kept his voice hushed all the time while picking apart the entire being of the man.
The sun god had hardened Ted, he knew this was just a regular noble with a tough guy fantasy.
"That musk is not cheap, from that I would guess you live in the capital or somewhere near, and my partners will smell that musk and be able to narrow the group of people down to a few individuals after considering that the head of the family takes strange and long vacations…and brings no souvenirs. Why do you people never think to bring false souvenirs? It is what I would do in your position. I would -"
"Yes, I got that, what now? You think you can threaten me?"
"No, because you will have to kill me before I break, it is the woman you have to worry about. She isn't easy to catch, and she never misses her mark. I am not saying she will kill everyone on her path…I am saying that you are wearing a distinctive, musky perfume, and it has uniquely bad notes that imitate the perfume your king uses. It is stuck on me, and it will be your doom. Dogs exist for a reason."
"Dogs…curse my bones and curse this perfume. I will still have to kill you, though," the man said, already drawing a little blood from the surface veins just below Ted's skin.
"You think so? Because I could hire you instead. And I won't kill you if you happen to fail."
Ted paused for a moment.
"Unless you insist on wearing that bloody perfume. It smells like someone butchered a pregnant rabbit and left it inside a moldy loaf of bread for three days."
This made the assassin laugh, he snorted, and it sounded so ugly, so sudden that he instantly froze.
Ted pushed away the hands holding the weapons, gently, to make it look like he was making peace.
Ted had a miniature pistol in his shoe.
He knew it could have been fatal to his foot while sleeping, but he had been so very tired last night.
"Oh, curse my bones…I'll work for you, all right. Don't make your…female dogs kill me."
"What about the male ones?" Ted asked and pulled out the gun, firing at the man.
The shot was a lucky one, or in close range. It got the man by his throat and that was it, that was his life.
Ted had a body to hide, and he did not want to meet Ligurza again.
He decided that the best course of action was simply to leave the room, leave the inn, take a train, leave the city, and never come back.
He grabbed Eknie and Mad by their hands and walked them to the railway station.
He bought them the best possible places and explained the whole situation over a cup of tea.
"This would be hilarious, if this were happening to someone else," Madorn said, scratching his head. "What next?"
"Trains…the most fun thing about them is the fatalistic illusion of not being able to determine where your journey goes," Ted mused, already feeling a lot better, as all people with good constitutions did after a nice cup of green tea. "I think we should just ride the train back to where we came from."
It was a reasonably fun way to travel, but all good things had to come to an end.
Ted wanted to see the capital, the crown jewel of his homeland, and he was especially interested in the National Museum and the Worthgul Machine that was on display there.
It was the making of Madorn's idol, and even though Edain Worthgul had gone more than a bit nuts towards the end of his life, he had been the greatest of the great, an inventor above all other inventors. Ted had to agree with Mad that Worthgul had been true to his name.
He had been worth gold.
The National Museum was not as bleak as Ted had thought. There were so many items of interest that he had to pry himself away from most of them. What he was not interested in was the collection of random things that had belonged to famous people, but everything else was pretty great indeed.