The next round arrived and Daimen paid the serving wench, with both coin and a healthy slap on the arse. He pushed one of the mugs towards Caster, who looked down on it as though it were an old friend with a grudge, come to stick him with the pointy end of a five-year-long estrangement.
“I must, uh… must be ahead of you,” he slurred.
“Aye? Ya reckon?” Daimen smiled, raised the new mug to his lips, and proceeded to gulp down the entire contents before signalling the nearby wench that he required another. Caster swayed in his chair and let out a painful moan before toppling sideways and hitting the floor, already unconscious.
Daimen lifted his empty mug. “A drink to the fallen,” he shouted.
“We’ll be joining them soon,” called back a fair few of the folk nearby.
“Ya got anything stronger than this swill, darlin’?” Daimen winked at the serving wench as she came over with a new mug. “Not that I don’t enjoy a good bit o’ grog, but this stuff is weaker than piss and makes ya do just that after every mug.”
The wench shook her head. “We ain’t exactly at the forefront of many deliveries. We’re all waiting for Captain Morrass to get back an’ fix it all up.”
“Aye, we are. Well, I reckon I need to drain the monster out back. Fancy holdin’ it for me?”
The wench’s face went from all smiles to seething disgust in the blink of an eye, and Daimen took the hint well. “Reckon I’ll manage it alone then, eh.”
Without so much as a stumble, Daimen stood up and, leaving two full mugs of grog at the table, headed for the door. It wasn’t that he trusted folk in the Righteous Indignation not to help themselves to his booze, but more that he didn’t care. He’d already made more than enough from out-drinking Caster and, if he was going to drink himself into a hangover, he preferred to do it with something worth drinking.
Outside, the air was still and stagnant. Drake might have picked the most dangerous and defensible island in the Pirate Isles, but he also appeared to have picked the only one without a single breath of a breeze, even at night. It made for oppressive days followed by sticky nights, and made New Sev’relain a place Daimen would be glad to get away from.
The tavern’s outhouse was just next to the main building and set back a little from the dirt street that ran through the town. Daimen was within a few paces of the outhouse when he changed his mind about using it to take a piss. Judging by the smell that enveloped the place, it was either occupied or had recently been occupied by a dead cat, and in Daimen’s opinion, there was little that smelled worse than a dead cat. There were plenty of places for a man in need to relieve himself – a nearby building, a nearby tree, the middle of the street – but Daimen sometimes found his bladder needed a bit of coaching, and nothing made a man feel he could let go quite like the sound of the sea.
New Sev’relain was a busy little place no matter the time of day or night, and even the stagnant air couldn’t keep the people from the streets. Some might be heading to the tavern, or to the brothel, or to some midnight tryst. Daimen knew full well he had a few weirds on his own ship, but as long as they didn’t go screwing each other while at sea, he didn’t care what they did ashore. All men had needs; women had them too, as far as Daimen was aware, and whether or not he had the same needs didn’t make another man’s any less important. Even as Daimen considered the weirds among his crew, he saw one of them walking along the street with a pretty young lad from Stillwater’s ship. They looked deep in conversation and didn’t notice the approaching captain. Daimen grinned and decided to give them a bit of a ragging.
“And exactly what the shit do we think is goin’ on here?” Daimen said as the two men made to pass him without once looking away from each other. His own crewman, a man-mountain named Hert, blossomed red around the cheeks upon realising his captain had caught him in the act. Stillwater’s lad looked more worried than embarrassed.
“We was… jus’ headin’ ta the tavern, Cap’n,” stuttered Hert, his eyes downcast.
“Aye, that so? Cos I reckon…”
A distant scream drifted down the street, and Daimen paused, straining his ears for its source. Most of the folk on the street kept walking; either they hadn’t heard or didn’t care. Daimen wasn’t one of those folk.
“You hear that?” he said to Hert and his boy.
“Hear what?” asked Hert.
“Aye, Cap’n Poole,” said the boy. “Sounded like a woman’s scream, from down that way.” He pointed to an avenue leading towards the beach.
Daimen decided to take him at his word; it was likely his young ears were sharper anyway. With a hand on his sword hilt to stop it from flapping about, Daimen set off at a jog. He found it comforting that both the boy and Hert didn’t hesitate to follow.
They passed through an alley and then across another street before climbing a hillock, and still Daimen saw no sign of whoever had made the noise. He cast his eyes first back towards the town and then down towards the beach, but the clouds were thick and the darkness was thicker.
“Down there, Cap’n Poole,” said Stillwater’s crewman, pointing at the beach.
Daimen squinted, but saw nothing. He decided to trust the lad’s judgement and set off again. It didn’t take him long to see what the lad’s sharper eyes had picked out: two figures, one on top of the other. As Daimen drew closer he could see that it was a woman lying face down in the sand, her hands drawn up behind her, and a man thrusting away on top.
“You’ll have ta correct me if I’m wrong there, matey, but that don’t exactly look consentional,” Daimen said as he came to a panting stop, deciding he was a little out of shape.
“Eh?” the man grunted. He was a pirate and no mistake, yet not one Daimen recognised – which put him as one of Khan’s men.
“Consentional,” Daimen repeated. “Consent… ing? Ah, fuck it. Looks like ya rapin’ the poor lass.”
“I paid her,” the pirate insisted, but judging by the woman’s tied hands, the gag wrapped around what was visible of her face, and the rest of that face buried in the sand, Daimen doubted the truth of the man’s words.
“Hert.” Daimen motioned to his burly crewman. “If ya wouldn’t mind removin’ that bastard from the girl.”
Hert surged forwards, and the pirate quickly jumped up and away, fumbling to put his cock back in his britches. Hert paused.
“Might be best ya grab hold of him for now,” Daimen said, “’til we can reason out the truth here.”
Approaching the lass, Daimen could see dark marks on her face; he’d seen the like before, on many a whore. A good, solid backhanded slap left a very distinct wound, and hers was certainly distinctive. With a tender touch, Daimen first untied the woman’s hands and then helped her sit up before removing the gag from her mouth.
He’d seen the woman around the town and, more often, inside the brothel. She was one of the few whores the town could boast, and definitely the prettiest of them all. With a swollen mouth and a newly missing tooth, she looked a sorry state at that particular moment.
Daimen pulled a kerchief from his pocket, accepting that it was at least mostly clean and certainly the cleanest thing any of them had on them at the moment, and handed it to the sobbing whore. He looked up at the pirate, who was currently being manhandled by Hert, and frowned.