Chapter 4

Pia decided to take her brother to one of the inns in the city for an overnight stay. After all, they had made quite a killing with their goods with many foreigners looking for goods that were rare in their respective nations. Some were interested in the bananas that they carried with them. There were also others who were more interested in pineapples. At the end, they had enough more than enough money for the Dubois family to last them for an entire season and enough left over to live well until the next day.

Unfortunately for the two, due to being packed with visitors and foreigners, most of the inns, taverns and places to stay were already occupied. Soon they found themselves at a tavern with a broken window. Above it was the sign “The Intoxicated Whaler” and beneath it was a hippopotamus woman who stood by the entrance.

She seemed to be staring at Pia, Vic noted.

“Dolores?” the hippopotamus woman asked. “Dolores, is that you?”

Pia and Vic looked at her.

“Um no,” Pia said. “I’m Pia, her daughter and this is Vicente my brother.”

“Oh,” the hippo’s eyes widened in realization. “That’s right. I’m Kathleen. I’m an old friend of your mother’s. Is she with you?”

“Uh...” Pia chose her words carefully. “My mother’s been gone now for five years.”

“What?” Kathleen said in disbelief. “Oh dear.”

The hippopotamus looked around herself.

“Why don’t you come in for a while?” Kathleen smiled. “We’ve plenty of food and it’ll be on the house, it’s the least I could do for the daughter of an old friend of mine.”

“Actually, we were looking for a place to stay as well,” Pia smiled. “Do you have any vacancies?”

“Of course, we do,” Kathleen smiled. “Come on in!”

+++

Zenaida eyed the newcomers, two lemmings, a young woman and an even younger man, absently. She had little to no interested in them and was more focused on any sign of trouble that could erupt while in the tavern. Brianna the mouse tavern wench and Jules the pig bartender tended to some of the bruises and welts she had gotten in the earlier barfight bur she barely paid them any mind.

“You’re one tough young woman Zenaida, you know that?” Jules said as he applied some disinfectant to one of her more painful cuts. “You should try being a pit fighter or gladiator one of these days.”

“I don’t know,” Zenaida shrugged. “How much do they pay?”

Brianna smiled at that.

“Not sure,” Jules said. “But enough to pay for a dozen or so barrels of rum.”

Brianna laughed.

“Those men fought like pirates!” Brianna said as she tended a bruise on one of Zenaida’s calves. “But they were no match for our Zenaida!”

“Come to think of it,” Zenaida said. “I think they might really have been pirates.”

“Oh?” Jules widened his brows. “What makes you say so?”

“Well, both of them, the lemmings and the raven’s gang had tattoos,” Zenaida said. “I mean, I don’t really know much about pirate tattoos and all that but they had some pretty strange ones for sure.”

Brianna stopped to think of that for a moment.

“Such as?” Jules asked. “Can you tell us what they looked like?”

“Well, the raven and his group had a black ship with tall, black sails,” Zenaida said. “The lemmings had some kind of pyre on theirs.”

“A pyre?” Brianna asked. “Like a big bonfire?”

“Yep,” Zenaida said. “That’s what it looked like.”

+++

The Black Stegosaur Inn was as luxurious as ever but even its facilities were taxed now that there were so many people in it. Lucky for Captain Meralco and her crewmen, several rooms had already been reserved for them. That said, she still had to occasionally flatten herself to a wall whenever high-profile politicians or foreign dignitaries and their entourages had to pass by. More embarrassing still were the occasional wealthy local who recognized and congratulated her for capturing Admiral Sebastian.

She accepted their congratulations without hesitation but insisted that it was through the efforts of her bravest crewmen that the undead monstrosity was finally captured and hopefully brought to justice the very next day. It was through the actions of her late third mate Caldwell the squirrel that a plan could be made to weaken the lich’s vile magic. It was through the sacrifice of brave seamen like Martins the badger, Thoreau the caecilian and Warren the Koala that Sebastian was distracted long enough that he could be attacked with powerful white sorcery. Then there was Seng the peafowl, the only capable magic-user aboard the Golden Bride who used all of her power to incapacitate the lich pirate even though she herself was gravely injured and died almost immediately after performing the rites of white magic needed to disable the undead pirate. There were many others she wanted to mention but knew that it would be pointless to list them down then.

After Admiral Sebastian had finally been dealt with, she would make sure that her dead crewmembers would be given proper burials and that the Confederate Islands would provide support to their families as a measure of gratitude for their contributions in defeating the Known World’s greatest threat.

She tried to rest in the room given to her but found that she could not. She still felt very troubled by all that had transpired. The lost of some of her valued crewmen and her ship and her worry for her children who now stayed with their grandmother in the island of Palwar. She also tried writing a letter to her children, since the room she had been given had both a table and a kerosene lamp. However, that failed too and soon she found herself wandering the corridors of the Black Stegosaur.

Soon, she wandered into the lobby where she found Councilor Sage, the well-dressed baboon earlier, speaking to a young lion whom she almost recognized.

“So let me get this straight,” the lion said. “You’re telling me that the governor wants the credit for capturing Admiral Sebastian to go to the Xenjese Navy and not the privateer captain who did all the work.”

“That is exactly what I meant, Prince Gaius,” the baboon said. “And indeed, Emperor Pu of Xenji is somewhere within the Black Stegosaur as we speak.”

The lion laid back on a chair and grumbled.

“Ah, speak of the she-devil,” Sage said, after spotting Beryl looking in at them. “And she shall appear. Prince Gaius, this is Captain Beryl Meralco, the privateer captain I told you about. Captain Meralco, this is Prince Gaius Faulkner, second son of King Fabius and Queen Babette of Delmaron.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Ms. Meralco,” the prince stood and, much to Beryl’s surprise, moved to kiss her hand. “You are as beautiful as Councilor Sage described.”

Beryl accepted the kiss but made sure that the prince saw her wedding band before kissing her wedding band.

“That’s Mrs. Meralco,” Beryl looked at the baboon councilor who only smiled back at her. “So, what else hasn’t the councilor told you?”

“Quite a bit actually,” the prince smiled and led her to one of the seats in the lobby. “He was going to tell me about how you’d lost your ship out there while you were trying to capture Admiral Sebastian.”

After Beryl sat down and was about to say something about the matter, four people barged into the lobby and fell to the floor just in front of Beryl, Gaius and Sage.

“Oh my!” the councilor exclaimed. “Are those burns?”

Indeed, there were patches black soot on their clothes that showed that they indeed had contact with open flames.

They were a large crocodile, a female bat, a rat and a scorpion.

The rat and the scorpion immediately stood up when they saw Prince Gaius looking down at them.

“Your Highness,” said the rat. “It’s so embarrassing for you to see us this way.”

“It’s alright Zobel,” the prince said. “What happened to you and McGrath and who are these people?”

“They’re part of my crew,” Beryl said, surprising Gaius. “Khayyam, Yvonne, explain yourselves.”

The scorpion, probably McGrath, uttered a series of unintelligible swear words and a few details like “lemming” and “pyromaniac”.

“If I may, captain,” Khayyam said, then bowed low to Prince Gaius and Councilor Sage, both of whom he recognized immediately. “And Your Excellency and Your Highness.”

+++

The councilor called for the innkeeper to gather four chairs for the four who had just recently returned from the city. When Khayyam, Yvonne, Zobel and McGrath were seated comfortably, the prince had some coffee (for Zobel and McGrath) and tea (for Khayyam and Yvonne) brought to them post-haste. Gaius knew well that it was best to question them when their nerves had settled down so as to get the clearest answers.

“We were looking for a place where we could get a meal and maybe a spot of ale, beer or rum,” Khayyam began and they all listened closely. “Most of the pubs, inns and taverns were crowded what with all these people from out of town coming in all of a sudden. That’s when we decided to go to a place we wouldn’t ordinarily go to. After a while of searching, Yvonne and I found this place called The Burnt Offering and thought it would be worth checking out. That’s when we met these two gentlemen over here.”

“Aye, we were there before they were,” Zobel the rat said. “We pretty much went there for the same reasons though. McGrath here was hungry and I wanted some ale. What I didn’t expect to find was a rather strange collection of lemmings who were all wearing the same thing.”

McGrath mumbled his assent that only Zobel, it seemed, understood.

“So when these two others arrived,” Zobel went on, indicating Khayyam and Yvonne. “We were a little more at ease since we saw people in the pub who weren’t lemmings in a black coat and hat.”

McGrath made gestures with his pincers and mumbled a few words that neither Gaius nor Beryl could understand.

“That’s right!” Yvonne the bat said, raising her wings and surprising everyone, including McGrath who thought that only his friend could understand him. “There was someone chanting inside the pub, on the second floor above us.”

“Indeed, Yvonne is right,” Khayyam nodded. “There was the sound of chanting above us that seemed to fill the whole pub.”

“Did you understand them?” Beryl asked. “Can you tell us what they were chanting?”

“No,” the crocodile shook his head. “At least not me. There was very little that made sense in that place, to be honest. I was planning to just eat there and when all was said and done, we would leave.”

“Well, I could pick out words like ‘flesh for the pyre’,” Zobel volunteered. “I don’t know what it meant though and the more I think about it now the scarier its meaning seems to be.”

“So then what happened?” Gaius asked. “Did you find out more?”

“That we did,” Zobel said. “It happened when the young lady there started screaming.”

He pointed at Yvonne who only looked around and then at Beryl and Gaius fearfully.

“They were doing some kind of weird ritual in there,” Yvonne said. “I didn’t really understand what I was seeing and I didn’t want to.”

“It’s okay Yvonne,” Beryl assured her. “Go on and tell us.”

“I wanted to go to the bathroom at that point but, since my companion was male, I hesitated to ask,” Yvonne began. “And so I went alone.

“The bathroom was actually an outhouse behind the pub but that wasn’t really where I wanted to go. I wanted to go where the chanting was coming from. I didn’t know what got into me then. I just wanted to see what the fuss was all about. I thought it might be something like when my grandmother would lead us all to pray the rosary back when she was still with us. I dearly missed her and their chanting kind of reminded me of how I used to pray with her. I didn’t really mean anything bad. I just wanted a peak at what they were doing and then I’d go to the outhouse.

“So I sneaked up the stairs to the second floor and I carefully opened the door to see what was happening inside.”

Yvonne hesitated and a single tear rolled down her cheek.

“It’s okay,” Beryl said to her. “You can go rest now if you want to.”

“No, I’ll finish it tonight,” Yvonne said. “They... They were... They were gathered around the burning body of a man and were chanting loudly. Then I saw that the burning man who was laying on the floor was somehow still alive and he looked at me with angry eyes. It just didn’t make sense to me. He stared at me with so much hatred that it was like he was burning me with his own stare.

“That was when I screamed and then everything else happened.”

“I ran towards Yvonne’s screams as fast as I could,” Khayyam said. “I was expecting the worst as Yvonne was never the sort of woman to scream so shrilly without good reason.”

“That was when McGrath and I stood up as well,” Zobel added. “We knew there was trouble the moment that woman screamed. I mean, if we were anywhere else, I’d probably think it was none of our business. Hell, I didn’t even want to get involved at first myself. It was McGrath here that convinced me that we should do something. That there was something wrong going on here and that we needed to help if we could.”

McGrath once again mumbled unintelligibly and made gestures with his pincers.

“Right,” Zobel said. “That was when the fight started.”

“I tried to talk to the lemmings who were menacing Yvonne,” Khayyam said. “She was crying and could barely speak as she was backing away from the lemmings who were walking toward us. I told them that we didn’t want trouble and that we wouldn’t tell anyone anything if they let us go. It was clear that they weren’t interested in anything we had to say when they rushed at us with clubs and torches.”

“That was the strangest thing though, Mr. Crocodile,” Zobel said. “The torches I mean. They didn’t just want to beat us up or kill us. They wanted to burn us.”

“My name is Khayyam,” Khayyam said. “But yes, I noticed that. They wanted to burn us alive I think now. Just like what they did to the poor man Yvonne was talking about.”

“They almost had us too,” Zobel said. “If they weren’t so dumb.”

At that McGrath laughed and mumbled more unintelligible words to which Zobel also responded with a laugh.

“So what happened was that we knocked over one of the guys with a torch who fell over near a window,” Zobel continued. “His torch fell on a curtain which caught fire and, next thing you know, the whole window was on fire.”

“Yvonne and I ran out then,” Khayyam said. “There were a lot of the lemmings behind us but we had no hope of fighting them all so we ran towards the entrance and that’s when we saw the fire. Of course, by then, the fire had spread from the window to the rest of the wall. The lemmings were divided between attacking us and putting out the fire that was consuming the pub.”

“We fought those who came at us,” Zobel said. “But we ran out when the rest of the buggers tried putting out the fire.”

“And we followed behind the gentlemen,” Khayyam finished. “Of course, by then, the entire first floor had already caught fire.”

“Well, that is indeed something,” Sage said. “By tomorrow morning, I’ll take your statements to the local police. By the way, the head of the Pyrilian Constabulary, Rocco ‘Rock’ Ward is here today. However, I must forewarn you that the issue probably won’t be addressed until after Sebastian’s execution. For now, I think it best that we all get some rest.”