The pirate had pissed himself.
Kael found him behind The Salty Anchor, sprawled int he scrub bushes, like something tossed out with the garbage. The man's beard was crusted with vomit, flies orbiting his open mouth.
He snored through it all. Deep, wet snores that suggested he wouldn't be waking up before noon tomorrow.
Not the worst thing Kael had seen this month. The island was dying a slow death, and drunks were just getting a head start.
He glanced back at the tavern, lamplight spilling out of its warped plank walls, and people were inside, laughing their ugly forced laughs that only came from drinking far too much rum.
Kael stood in there for twenty minutes, nursing the smell of other people's drinks, because a single ale cost copper he didn't have. Now he was out back, trying to decide whether the sound he'd heard was worth investigating or anotehr one of Driftwood Point's many small tragedies.
The drunk pirate snored again. A gull shrieked somewhere over the tide line.
Kael stepped closer to the drunk.
The man wore a coat that might've been blue once, back when things got washed. Now it was salt-stained, torn at the shoulder, and there, down in one of its inside pockets, was a glint.
An eye-catching sheen of metal glinting in the moonlight where the fabric gaped open exposing it.
Kael crouched. Reached out, and then.. paused.
He wasn't a thief. His mother had been clear on that, back when she was still here. You took fish from the sea because the sea didn't have a face. You didn't take from people, even if the people deserved it.
But his mother had been dead six months, and the fish weren't biting anymore, and this drunk bastard had tried to sell something in the tavern tonight. Kael had heard the slurred pitch from across the room, and nobody had coin for whatever he was offering. The man had drunk himself stupid on disappointment and stumbled out back to die, or sleep, or both.
Was it really theft if the man was too drunk to know he'd had it in the first place?
This is how Kael justified it to himself. Kael pulled the thing free from the pocket.
It was smaller than he'd expected, fitting easily in the palm of his hand. Metal framework, rusty and crusted with something that might've been barnacles but could just as easily have been age, and at the center, a shimmer of crystal that caught the light. There were runes etched into the metal, not letters he recognized, but symbols that looked deliberate. Geometric patterns twisting strangely around the edges, making his eyes want to skip past them.
Old. Definitely Old.
Which, more often than not, he thought, meant valuable, if you could found the right buyer.
Kael shoved it in his pocket, stood up, and walked away before his conscience could make a better argument.
He went back into the tavern. The Salty Anchor smelled like sweat, fish guts and the particular sourness of men who'd given up on bathing. Kael found a spot near the door where he could lead against the wall inconspicuously and look like he belonged to be there.
The relic was in his boot. Safer there. Cold metal pressed against his ankle.
Old Tam Farrow was talking.
Tam talked most nights. He spun stores for whoever would buy him a drink. He'd been a merchant sailor once, back before the trade routes has shifted and Driftwood Point has fallen behind, now a place that ships typically avoided. Nowadays, he was just another drunk with a voice and a past. That counted for something in a tavern, even if it didn't anywhere else.
"I'm telling you," Tam said, one gnarled finger stabbing the air. "The captain had one. Called it a star-reader. Made before the world broke."
Someone laughed. "Before the world broke? Right. And I suppose they left instructions too?"
"Mock all you want, Jens. I saw the damn thing with my own eyes." Tam's voice had the flat delivery of a man who'd told this story a few times before. He couldn't care less if you believed it. "Metal and crystal, covered in marks nobody could read. Captain used it a single time. We ended up in waters that didn't look right. Sky was the wrong color. Half the crew felt like they were going mad."
"Half the crew was already mad," someone muttered.
Tam kept going. "The old things remember the world before it broke. That's what the captain said. The device sang when we got near other old things. Like it was calling to them. Or they were calling to it." He took a long drink. Slammed the mug down. "Captain sold it to a Scholar in Paradise. Enough coin to buy a fleet."
"So where's the fleet?" Jens again, grinning.
"Dead. Died of the flux two years later. Maybe the thing was cursed." Tam shrugged. "Old world's dead, boy. Let it stay buried."
The conversation moved on. Someone started complaining about the tax collector's last visit. Someone else mentioned the merchant ship docked at the pier. Restocking for the voyage out.
Kael's ankle itched where the metal touched skin.
Star-reader. The old world. Scholar buyers in Paradise.
Half of Tam's stories were shit. That was always true. But the part about coin rang true. Scholars collected old things. Everyone knew that, even on an island this forgotten. They paid for artifacts. They paid well. The Regime didn't like people poking at history and Scholars made it their business to poke anyway.
If the thing in Kael's boot was old enough, strange enough, maybe it was worth the risk.
Get to Paradise. Find a Scholar. Sell the damn thing. Buy passage to anywhere that wasn't here.
He left the tavern before anyone noticed him listening.
The merchant ship was called something he couldn't read. The nameplate was painted in script too fancy for a fisherman's son. It was big enough to have a cargo hold and small enough that the crew wasn't watching every shadow. Kael had been down to the docks three times in the past week. Watching. Timing the watch changes. Memorizing the gaps within which he might be able to slip by unnoticed.
Pre-dawn was best. Crew tired from loading. Bosun more interested in scratching himself than counting heads.
Kael waited in the space between two storage sheds. He watched the gangplank. They were loading the last of the dried fish. Barrels of the stuff, bought cheap because Driftwood Point's fish were worth nothing and the island needed the coin. One of the crew shouted something about water casks. The bosun turned away.
Thirty seconds.
Kael made his move.
He snuck up the gangplank with feet light on the creaking wood. The deck was cluttered with rope and crates. He didn't stop to look around. He just headed for the cargo entrance and dropped through into the hold below.
Dark. Smell of wool and tar and something that might've been dried herbs. He found a space behind crates of textiles. Squeezed himself in. Pressed his back against the hull. Splinters bit through his shirt. The relic dug into his ankle.
Above, someone shouted orders. Ropes creaked. The hull shuddered. Then the ship was moving. The dock falling away with the soft slap of water against wood.
Kael didn't look back. Driftwood Point had nothing left for him. No family. No fish. No future. Just slow death and the smell of rot.
Wherever this ship was going, it was better than here.
He closed his eyes and let himself breathe. The hold rocked gentle with the waves. Many hours ahead of him. Maybe days before they made port. He could wait. He'd gotten good at waiting.
The relic was a weight in his boot. A promise. If it was real. If the tall tale from the bar was real. He'd have coin. He'd have a future that wasn't this island. That wasn't this ship. That wasn't waiting for death to come slow.
He woke to shouting.
Not the normal kind. Not crew calling orders or complaining about the wind. This was sharper. Urgent. It felt like panic.
Kael's eyes snapped open. The hold was still dark. But above deck feet were running. Someone was yelling words that made his stomach drop.
"PIRATES!"
Metal scraped. Boots pounded. Shouting erupted closer to the hold. Voices barking about positions and the starboard side and where the fuck the bosun was.
The hull shuddered. Not waves. Impact.
Kael pressed himself flatter against the crates. His hand found the relic in his boot. Pulled it free. Clutched it like it might protect him from whatever was happening up there. The metal was warm now. Warmer than it should've been.
Above deck, someone screamed.
The relic pulsed against his palm. Once. Twice. Like a heartbeat that wasn't his.
Outside the hull, men were dying.
And Kael, seventeen hours away from Driftwood Point and clutching a piece of the old world he didn't understand, had one thought: *I'm fucked.*