Turn 3

While their comrades untangle themselves, the remaining two giff make a rush for the gangplank, then pull up as they see the _Invincible_'s approach. Meanwhile, Brother Pham continues to saw at Melkin's unwanted accessory, which finally parts beneath his knife. Pham is now holding a thick strip of red leather, decorated with tiny rubies, garnets, and other semi-precious stones. Words in an unknown script mark the inside. Now that it has been removed, a buckle is visible, and beneath his startled eyes the cut in the leather mends itself.
    Melkin licks his hand and pants happily.
    Aboard the _Fair Enough Lass_, Val silently curses himself for *not* knocking over the gangplank like he'd thought of originally. This could get ugly.
    There is the unmistakable snap of another crossbow, but this time the sound comes from Bral -- from the uppermost balcony of the Three Trees building, to be specific, and the heavy bolt sinks into the _Fair Enough Lass_'s mainmast, out of reach from the deck. There is a rope attached to it. On the balcony a cloaked figure makes the other end fast to the railing. It could be a woman, lightly built man, or elf; not even ibn Fadil can tell for certain.
    Now it's five against two, ibn Fadil notes, dismayed to see the odds rising in the pirates' favor, and to find himself actually drawing his sword. Five to three if Zeremin has something else to contribute, he amends. Not good. He wouldn't bet on those odds if he had all the gold in Bral to spend.
    The tattooed man's expression is unmistakably relieved. He turns to Emmett and Val and says, in a faintly surprised but almost friendly tone, "You really shouldn't be here." He glances over to where the hammership is now nearly in range, and _her_ crew aren't playing around -- they're readying the forward ballistae.
    Emmett nods at the tattooed man's assessment, thinking to himself, _I was close, I just didn't account for them having additional support on Bral. Still, he doesn't want to waste time fighting us with that Hammership breathing down his neck - if we just hustle off the ship we can end this gracefully._
    Emmett opens his mouth to issue some witty response to the pirate captain when all hell breaks loose.
    "Tell me about it," Val mutters, then hurls his dagger at the tattooed man just as the deck shudders. It was more of a distraction than attack, and the dagger glances off the man's mail and skitters over the side as Val springs for the mainmast, intent on preventing the cloaked figure from boarding. If he could get that bolt loose or cut the line....
    The spiral-marked man makes a sharp, exasperated hissing sound. On the balcony, the cloaked figure swings over the railing, grasps the rope, and begins to slide down it to the raider ship.
    _Crap,_ Emmett thinks, quickly interposing himself between Val's exposed back and the pirates. _Val thinks we still have backup coming. He's in this because of me, and now I have to back his play._
    "Make it fast Val," Emmett yells as he strikes a defensive stance that is both instinctive and, he knows, short lived - good as he is, he can't hold off three or four attackers for very long. Still, he calculates, the longer he delays them here, the more likelihood there is of help from land - eventually even the Giff will have to act unless they want their culpability revealed. Any thoughts of witty repartee fall by the wayside into the cold mindset that grips the former flyer when he's forced to battle on the ground - defend yourself, watch for openings, strike to disable or kill.
    "Get below," the tattooed man snaps to the men with him. More lightning flickers above.
    "But --" He glances at the figure making its way down the rope.
    "Go! There's no stopping it now." He remains on deck, however, as they hurry aft and disappear.
    Emmett's guts unknot as the number of immediate opponents drops from three to one, not that there's any sign of that relaxation on the half-man's face. His back still a bare yard from the shaky mainmast, he is confident enough now to consider talking. "No stopping *what* now? I knew you had to have something down there to think you could pull this off."
    "What, and spoil the surprise?" He grins, but Emmett can see his tension.
    Val quickly climbs the mast to where the bolt is wedged deep in the wood. Is is his imagination, or is the mast swaying? He draws one of his multitude of daggers, vaguely aware that underneath him the ship is making sharp creaking noises without apparent cause.
    _Sharp creaking noises, muffled bangs, and a really loose mast? What, is this thing just a shell for a smaller 'Jammer?!_ Val thinks to himself.
    The bolt was wedged too tight to pry loose, so Val thinks of a plan.... With a grimace, he begins going out hand-over-hand on the rope, as far out as he is high on the mast. If he cut the line just right, he could use the rest to swing down and give Emmett a much needed hand. Not to mention, it would drop the figure that's sliding towards him. Seeing him out there, the cloaked figure clearly tries to move faster.
    On the dock, Alais is barely able to think for the feverish excitement that has gripped him; the only thing the young wizard is entirely certain of is that the cloaked person should not be allowed to escape. From the inner recesses of his somewhat bedraggled robe, he draws a long, narrow wooden case, and removes its contents gingerly. The wand is the length of his forearm and made of heavily carved ivory, with a crystal of palest blue at the tip.
    With all but one opponent off the deck and that one's attention on the rope and its occupants, ibn Fadil sees his best chance so far. Cautiously and smoothly, he steps out of his concealment, trying not to make a sound or a sudden move that might attract the pirate's attention. Getting up the gangplank will be the hardest part; with a little luck, a quick rush might catch the tattooed man by surprise. Suiting actions to thoughts, ibn Fadil runs lightly up the gangplank.
    Several things happen almost simultaneously.
    Emmett feints toward the Tattooed Man, trying to distract him as ibn Fadil approaches, but a board creaks beneath the half-elf's light tread. Their quarry glances in his direction, startled -- things are quite clearly not going anything like the way he hoped at this point -- and then ducks to port, his back to the rail as he now faces two opponents.
    Trying hard to keep a steady hand, Alais points the wand at the figure moving rapidly down the rope and speaks the command word. A whiteness erupts from the crystal and engulfs the figure on the rope, who screams. (19 points. That'll leave a mark.) It lasts only an eyeblink.
    "Hell," says the man with the spiral tattoo.
    Barely beyond the wand's reach, Val sees frost forming on his bracers just before the rope snaps, weakened by the sudden brief plunge in temperature. He takes advantage of this, trying to angle the swing of his body to bring him crashing into the tattooed man.
    The cloaked figure falls heavily to the ground, too stunned to control his or her fall well. (another 5 points, talk about a bad day)
    The angle of Val's swing is abruptly changed as the mast begins to topple; he makes an awkward landing on the deck but manages not to either crash into Emmett or to injure himself in the process. It is now abundantly clear that the ship is coming apart underneath them, and the two of them plus ibn Fadil scramble back over the gangplank as the deck tilts dangerously. The tattooed man has disappeared.
    "Fire one!" bellows a man aboard the _Invincible_. The ballista bolt rips into the target's port side even as the old wood begins falling away.
    Val's guess is proven entirely correct; concealed within the shell of a battered old galleon is a far smaller dragonfly-type vessel, stripped down to her bones for speed. The _Audacity_ rises phoenix-like from the wreckage of the _Fair Enough Lass_. There is a rope dangling from the aft cargo hatch on the underbelly, near the "tail."
    "Fire two!!"
    The ship is visibly jarred by the broadside, but it waits -- perhaps gambling that the hammership won't try to ram them so close to the docks -- until the person on the dock has caught hold of the rope and been hauled to safety. Then the pilot brings her up and around, above the _Invincible_, where her catapult will be more difficult to use, and begins moving away -- toward Haven. The far slower military ship gives chase.
    Soon thereafter, under the astonished eyes of the people of Bral, pirate ship and pursuit are both swallowed by the storm.
    "What the--*what in the seventeen hells is going on here?!*" Melkin shouts as the spell finally wears off.

* * *

Aside: The Oligarchal Complex on Bral

"Please, Captain! You must help me!" Sidney Volant suddenly realizes that his tone has descended from the polite demand he intended to issue into something far less dignified.
    "Must I?" his guest replies coolly. "Their ship was almost certainly destroyed, and I've already sent all available flitters to Haven to search for the wreckage. What more, exactly, Œmust' I do?"
    Volant draws a deep breath and goes on in a more moderate tone. "I beg of you. We must get word to Janik of the... the theft."
    "Then you will have to do it yourself," Captain Greywing replies briskly. "You know that I do not involve myself in Bral's affairs beyond its defensive measures -- which I believe I have mentioned in the past, and as you will perhaps now agree, are less than perfectly effective."
    His slightly jowly face reddens. "Evidently."
    "Besides," she leans back in the chair with a faint smile on her narrow elven features, "you haven't even told me what was stolen. I'm supposed to put men and ships at your disposal merely to keep you from losing face before these other... merchants?" The word has a slight twist, not quite a sneer.
    The interview is clearly going nowhere; Volant gives in, and with an exchange of empty pleasantries has the captain escorted from his office. He glances around with a shudder at the thought that the raiders might have decided to strike here instead of at the docks -- but no, they had known what they were doing, far too well.
    He _must_ get the word out -- preferably without letting the competition get the slightest whiff that would spell weakness. Of course the thieves' ship must have been destroyed, he tells himself, but that's no real help; anyone who guesses the truth will descend on Haven to look for the loot, and eventually someone will find it.
    He goes to the window and looks down, across the chaotic rooftops of the city. Out there beyond the docks his employees have been working busily, salvaging what they can of the old ship the raiders used for their disguise. There is really on one thing he can do.

* * *

Aside: The _Audacity_

The ship floats at rest, hidden within one of the tangles of Haven's floating vegetation. It's never particularly "night" on the air world, but between the clouds and the surrounding brush, it is fairly dark as the crew gathers on the small ship's upper deck to consider their situation.
    "That went better than I expected," Fang rasps; it's clearly painful for her to talk.
    "In that case I can only assume you were _expecting_ to get killed," Shane snorts dourly. He'd had to carry her up to the deck; she'd twisted her ankle badly on landing, and the beyond-freezing cold of the wizard's wand has left much of her skin painfully red and swollen, her hands bandaged now where they were scraped raw by the rope as she'd made her final escape. And then there's her hair....
    "Next time we're there I'll steal that wand," she smiles irrepressibly. "As it is, we didn't lose anyone."
    "We came a lot closer than I'd have liked. I can't believe those damn fools boarded us."
    "We should have brought them along. They seemed to have the right spirit."
    "More guts than sense, I'll grant you...."
    The others join them -- the three who had accompanied Shane onto Bral, Otto who had remained on board and triggered the bolts that loosed the _Audacity_ from her shell, and the wizard Tokala.
    "If you will," their captain nods at Shane, who sighs theatrically but produces a bottle of wine and set of cups.
    Fang raises her glass high, cupped in both aching hands. "First -- to the _Fair Enough Lass_. Well did she serve, and well-deserved is her rest. May she fly again one day. And second, to you, my intrepid crew. Bral will be talking about this ten years from now -- and we'll still be living off the money." The men laugh, and drink. "Now. What's our status?"
    "Not terribly good," Otto admits. "That ballista hit took us pretty hard, and while the storm was something of a stroke of luck, it would be hard to say which kind. I can jury-rig us for now and if the gods are kind we'll make it to the rendezvous point, but I'll need a week or three someplace where we can do real repairs before we get into any more fights with hammerships."
    "Which means we can't stay here," Shane puts in. "Speaking of hammerships. Plus the _Swift Star_'ll be looking for us as soon as she gets word of this."
    "I'm of no mind to become a feather in Greywing's cap. We'll be on our way as soon as Otto gets us rigged to his satisfaction, then," Fang declares. "Tokala? What do you say?" The quiet wizard shrugs amiably. "Did you have a chance to look at what we got?"
    "Some of it," he admits. "The papers are in code -- you can have a look at them later. The trinkets Volant left around to impress the customers will fetch a pretty penny in any number of places, I think. This, however...." He pulls a many-faceted crystal from his sleeve. "You've outdone yourself."
    "What is it?" Otto asks.
    "A map." He leans back against the rail and holds the crystal up in a bar of faint sunlight. Colors spring forth in mid-air, floating traceries between pearlescent bubbles. "A Three Trees' map of the Flow, the accumulated knowledge of two hundred fifty years of their operations."

* * *

It is the second day after the raid, and Bral is still buzzing furiously with debate about how it was done and who was actually responsible. Comparisons are made to the legendary Mad Cavalier and other notorious pirates. An elven man'o'war lurks near the asteroid as the captain makes a rare visit to the oligarchs. The docks have been even busier than usual as salvage workers gather the usable timber from the fragmented ship, and the _Invincible_ has repairs made to the minor damage it sustained during the chase through the storm. Her crew have already clashed with that of the _Magnus_ over the latter's failure to contain the "incident" to Bral itself, with a couple of serious injuries resulting. No one has seen Melkin since the crimson-faced mage snatched the collar from his unthanked helper's hand and stormed up into the offices.
    And now Three Trees has put out the word that it's looking for men to crew a small ship. Interested parties should report to the Clockwork Dragon, just across the way from the Oligarchic enclave itself, on the following noon and be prepared for immediate departure. Some insist it's a false rumor, since no 3 Trees ships have come into dock, no name is given for the ship, and no one knows who's going to captain her -- but it's an awfully persistent rumor if that's the case.
    That morning, both Alais and Brother Pham receive a visitor, both well-dressed gentlemen with a certain bureaucratic air.
    "I beg pardon for interrupting your day, sir, but might I have a moment of your time?"

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