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Salt and Blood - Chapter 26
🕑 Added 2024-09-30 12:11:02 +0000 UTC<< Chapter 25 | Table of Contents | Chapter 27 >>
1.26 - To Steal a Crown
There’s little more tempting than a free meal. Except free money.
-Excerpt from ‘Silversea Saga’ by Norris Howell
One thing Rose realised, as she tried to sneak her way onto the docks, was just how blindingly bright a city was.
When she had run away from home it had been pitch black, even with the light of the moon sneaking through the clouds.
Tonight the blanket of clouds was thicker than it had been back then, but the sheer number of lamps, lanterns and fires in Highbream meant there were few shadows for her to hide in.
That just meant she would have to try harder. And her effort was paying off.
You have learned a new skill!
Stealth 0 > 1
Rose stifled an exhale as one of the dock workers strolled by. He wasn’t carrying a lantern—a minor blessing. Only when his footsteps faded into the distance did she allow herself a short breath.
Between the shadows she was currently hiding in and the next patch of safe darkness, there was a long stretch of the harbour bathed in the soft golden glow of Highbream’s street lanterns.
She glanced behind her, double checking that the dock worker had truly left. All that greeted her was a serene view of the docks at night.
Another shaky breath turned to mist in the cold of the night as she readied herself. The path ahead was also clear of people, but she was being extra cautious—a young girl alone on the docks at night was suspicious and she had no desire to be questioned.
As soon as her lungs filled, she took off.
Each step was soft and Rose made sure to land on the balls of her feet to make as little noise as possible, while still moving at a reasonable pace.
Her back was hunched over—she needed to make herself as small as possible to avoid detection. Every passing moment she feared that the worst would happen, and she would be discovered.
Those fears proved just that—figments of her imagination. She stepped into the shadows once again and leaned against the wall, hands on her knees as she panted to recover her breath.
Skill up!
Stealth 1 > 2
Rose had made the sprint in a single breath, fearing that even the sounds of her inhaling and exhaling could alert the keen ears of a guard. An overzealous worry, but she was new to this sort of thing and was taking the utmost care to succeed—her future depended on it, after all.
By now she had covered half the distance to her target. The Crown of Salt loomed in the darkness, only a few lanterns beside the ever watchful guards offered her a glimpse of the ship’s beautiful form.
Even now she could picture herself standing on the bow, the salty sea spray splashing her face as they cut through the Bluestone Sea, hunting for unaware merchants to pillage or islands ripe with treasure.
First, she would have to steal it.
It was far easier to move through the shadows, as sparse as they were. She still had to keep her steps silent and her movements small, but it was far less nerve wracking than the sprints through the light.
Every step brought her closer to her prize; made her heart pound harder in her chest.
Just three ships stood between her and the guards—here Rose realised she’d made a fatal mistake while planning her heist.
There was only one walkway onto the ship, flanked by the two guards. One seemed half asleep, but the other had wide eyes that scanned his surroundings constantly, like a hawk searching for prey.
Trent had promised her a distraction, but Rose wasn’t sure she had the luxury of waiting around to see if that drew the two guards from their posts. With every passing moment the chance of her being discovered grew.
Skill up!
Stealth 2 > 3
The fact that stealth continued to level was both a blessing and a reminder—skills developed faster when put under pressure. Which meant that her novice attempt was working better than she’d hoped, but also that any slip-up would lead to discovery.
As she looked to the gently bobbing galleons moored beside her, the seed of a reckless and foolhardy idea took root in her mind.
She consoled herself by thinking that she could change course and go with the original plan—if Trent’s distraction worked as he had promised. However, the adjustment was a leap of faith. Quite literally.
Unlike The Crown of Salt, which had the plank lowered at all hours of the day to allow the various crew and guards to embark and disembark from the vessel, most of the other ships had them lifted at night.
Rose bounced on the balls of her feet, mulling the terrible plan over in her head. Not terrible, just risky. Another glance towards the hawkish guard made the decision for her—she wasn’t getting past him even if her stealth skill was twenty levels higher.
What she was about to do was far more difficult than the simple sneaking she had been doing so far. She wasn’t even sure she could pull it off—but that made it all the more alluring.
She crept to the edge of the dock and looked out to the closest ship. The human eye was notoriously bad at judging distance, but she reckoned the gap couldn’t be more than three metres at a push.
It would be better to try and get on the ship right beside her target, but the piercing stare of the guard swept across his domain and a shiver went down her spine. Her hand wrapped around the handle of her flintlock pistol—she didn’t want to hurt them, but she would if she had to. Sneak in first, shoot only if necessary.
Trent had told her that the mark of a successful heist was the victims not realising they’d been robbed until the perpetrators were long gone—vanished into the tides like the dreams of so many aspiring seafarers.
In theory that was sage advice, but she found it hard to accomplish in practice. There was already a layer of sweat on her brow and far too much adrenaline coursing through her system and she hadn’t even made it on board The Crown of Salt.
She braced herself and then began to sprint. One foot in front of the other carried her body to the very edge of the dock wall. And then she leapt.
Rose flew through the air, nothing between her and the cold, dark kiss of the ocean except her nimble fingers and the anchor of the nearest ship—a two-pronged, wrought iron weight that seemed sharper and rougher the closer she drew to it.
Her body soared through the air until she reached the apex of her leap. And then started to drop to the still water below.
Fear gripped her and she almost fumbled the catch, but through sheer force of will managed to focus once more and though one of her hands slipped on the rusty iron, the other gripped it tightly and kept her from a cold, dark death—she was a capable swimmer, but icy waters had claimed many an experienced seafarer.
Cold shock was lethal.
Two sounds echoed in her ears and she held utterly still, not even daring to take a breath for fear of alerting the guards—the first was a gentle splash and the second the not so gentle clanging of the anchor against the hull of the ship.
You have learned a new skill!
Athletics 0 > 1
Weird, I would’ve thought all my childhood endeavours counted towards that one. The seconds stretched into infinities as she clung to the anchor, now with both hands, waiting and fearing the worst.
It felt as though years had been shaved from her life, but nobody came to investigate the noise. Either the guards hadn’t heard it, or just assumed it to be the regular creaking and clanging of the ships as they bobbed in the harbour.
As Rose breathed in, the heavy tang of iron assaulted her nose. Her left hand had a loose grip on the anchor—it felt wet. She had thought it was just sweat from her nerves, but when she briefly pulled it away to look, she saw a deep gash across her palm, the edges tinted orange from flakes of rust.
She had heard from her mother that rusty metal could lead to deadly infections, but she had no time to worry about her wounds—she had to hide before someone noticed her hanging from the anchor.
Every time she grasped hold of the rope with her left hand a wave of stinging pain shot through her arm, but she grit her teeth and pushed through.
The final jump was tricky—she had to balance on the tiny hole which fed the rope to the anchor and leap up to the railings along the edge of the deck. Rose made sure to catch the varnished wood with her right hand.
Skill up!
Athletics 1 > 2
Before she pulled herself up onto the deck, she had a furtive look around the ship to see if there were any crew on board. She offered a small prayer to Sylack, seeing that all the lights were out and there was no one guarding the ship.
Without a medical kit, she would be able to do little for her wounded hand. For now she tore a strip from her shirt and wrapped it around the gash after wiping away the rust—it would have to do.
There were a few crates lying around, but she figured they wouldn’t have anything valuable inside, given that they’d been left unguarded. And she had more important things to worry about.
Foremost was whether she would be able to make the jump from this ship to the next in line. A few metres from the dock to the anchor was one thing, but even her most conservative estimate put the gap between the two galleons at around four and a half metres—further than she’d ever jumped.
Not that she’d done much jumping in her fifteen years of life. Her two levels in athletics would have to be enough.
Rose backed against the railing which she’d hauled herself over, took a deep breath, and started to race across the wooden deck.
Keeping her steps quiet while also trying to maximise her speed was tricky, but she felt she was managing rather well. She was aiming for a gap in the railings and as she leapt from the edge, her breath turned into a cloud of mist that trailed behind her.
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