The approach to the submerged temple required a boat, and Maren's coastal guides, despite their professional competence, grew visibly uneasy the closer we drew to the specific stretch of water the local superstitions marked as cursed.
"We don't sail this route after dark, normally," our lead guide, a weathered sailor named Corrin, admitted as we anchored near the ruin's barely visible outline beneath the waves. "Not just superstition, though there's plenty of that too. Pirates favor these waters — old grudge between a few independent crews and the Crown that goes back further than most people still living can properly explain. The temple's reputation keeps most legitimate sailors away, which apparently suits the pirates just fine."
We hadn't traveled more than another twenty minutes before Corrin's warning proved prescient — a trio of fast, low-riding ships emerging from a hidden cove along the coastline, flying no recognizable flag, closing on our position with the practiced efficiency of a crew that had done this many times before.
"Pirates," Kai confirmed unnecessarily, already loosening his sword in its sheath.
I appraised the approaching ships and their crews, and found something more interesting than simple opportunistic banditry. [ Notes: Crew affiliated with the Sundered Fleet, an independent pirate confederation with longstanding grievances against the Maren Crown dating to a disputed territorial seizure four decades prior. ]
An old grudge, exactly as Corrin had described, rather than random criminal opportunism — which meant, potentially, a conversation rather than an immediate fight might actually resolve this more usefully than simply overwhelming three ships' worth of desperate sailors with power they had no way of anticipating.
"Let me try talking first," I told Kai, who raised an eyebrow but didn't object.
The lead pirate ship drew alongside ours, and its captain — a weathered, one-eyed woman who introduced herself simply as Captain Vashka — regarded our small party with the calculating assessment of someone deciding exactly how much resistance we were likely to offer.
"Maren guides," she said, eyeing Corrin with obvious recognition. "And some fancy outsiders poking around waters that aren't any of their business. I'll make this simple — hand over anything of value, and we'll let you sail home with your boat intact. Refuse, and we'll take the boat too."
"Captain Vashka," I said, keeping my tone level and genuinely curious rather than confrontational. "I understand the Sundered Fleet has a real grievance against the Maren Crown. I'm not here on the Crown's behalf, not really — I'm investigating something considerably older than your dispute, something that I believe threatens pirates and crowned nobility in exactly equal measure."
Vashka's single eye narrowed. "That supposed to mean something to me?"
"It means," I said, "that whatever's stirring in these waters near that temple isn't interested in your forty-year-old grudge, or Maren's trade routes, or any other mortal conflict currently dividing this coastline. I'd genuinely rather not fight you over a disagreement that has nothing to do with either of us, when there's a much larger threat neither of us can afford to ignore much longer."
There was a long pause, Vashka clearly weighing the odds of a fight against three strangers whose confidence seemed entirely unbothered by the prospect, against the possibility that this outsider was telling an inconvenient truth.
"The temple," she said finally, something shifting in her weathered expression. "You're not the first to go looking at it recently. Two weeks back, a ship flying no flag at all anchored near that same spot for the better part of a night. Came back considerably faster than they went out, crew looking like they'd seen something that put the fear of every god they'd ever prayed to straight back into their bones. Haven't seen that ship since."
"Did you get a look at who was aboard?" Kai asked.
"Just one figure on deck the whole time, far as my scouts could tell," Vashka said. "Cloaked. Didn't move like it was in any hurry, even with half its own crew looking ready to jump overboard rather than stay anchored there another minute."
I exchanged a look with Kai, the same cold certainty settling over both of us. Whoever — or whatever — had visited that temple two weeks earlier, unhurried and unbothered by whatever had terrified an entire pirate crew, matched a description I'd unfortunately grown all too familiar with.
"Captain Vashka," I said. "I think we might actually be investigating the same threat, from very different angles. Care to compare notes properly, rather than fighting over a boat that's about to become considerably less important than what's waiting under that water?"