68 Subterfuge.. (1/2)

Angella fingered the hilt of her rapier as she looked out at the yellowish white moon. Her feet moved stealthily off the hammock that she had pitched for herself in the barracks. A dull pink cloth had been pitched to divide between the place that she slept in and the places that the guys slept in.

Even then it had been only after Fawkes and Terrick had campaigned against the dull and ludicrously clueless questioning of the previously youngest crew member.

With a dull swish she pushed through the thin paper screen and trudged silently to the hammock of the newest crew member. With a quick and silent movement of her hands she tied his hands to the edges of the hammock, getting a tiny line of fabric over his mouth to muffle him.

Beside him slept the otherwise drooling form of the crew physician, his dark sleeveless shirt hung loosely over his chest, rolling up towards his belly making him look like an adorable child.

His black hair stood combed to one side and his round chin had a line of drool running down it.

Even though Angella had made up her mind back in Las Camp, she couldn't help but look down at the child with a small amount of sympathy.

She remembered the time when she had just forced her way into this crew, the boy had been the first one to warm up to her enough to approach her for something that was not an order. He had come up to her with a childish frown and had asked her where she was from, having not paid any attention when she had introduced herself. He had been the first one in her entire life to call her ”Big sister…”.

It wasn't just him, no one on the crew had ever mistreated her. The first mate had been the very epitome of gentry, getting her well acquainted with the rest of the crew, with the ship and as an extension all the things that existed on the boat.

Terrick had taken care of her as she was a slave, she was not naïve enough to believe that he was some paragon of virtue but now that she thought of putting a sword to their neck, she could not help but get cold feet…

Everyone on the crew had done a lot for her, never made her feel left out and never accorded her with a condescending or patronizing attitude. The captain had been the first one to give her a task. He refused to pity her and treated her as he treated any other member of the crew.

But, they were all pirates. She had personally seen as Sorren cut a bloody swath through a group of people. She had witnessed the callous nature that they associated with life, treating it like a tuft of grass..

These were the same kind of people that she despised, the same type of people as 'her'! How could she with any semblance of a piece of mind, ever consign another innocent to the level of brutality that these pirates were capable of?

And with that she got to work. The one she was most worried about was the assassin who had joined the crew with her.

How could she pose any form of challenge against someone that was used to dealing with the night.

To her luck it turned out that she didn't have to. The assassin had knocked himself out earlier that night when he had been practicing his archery.. Angering the first mate who immediately clonked him on the head.

If it wasn't to kill him then she was sure that she would not be found out, and so she brought out the ship's spare rigging.

As she worked around the room, she thanked god for the unexplained injury that the first mate of the crew had that forced him to fall into deep enough sleep that he snored from time to time.

As she finished the bundling of all of the crew members that slept soundly on the bottom deck, she could not help but run her hands through her sweaty brow.