17 The Plot

They loaded the cargo into the hold of the Maiden's Mercy and left the merchant with just enough supplies to last them until the next port.

Bastian felt like his bloody play was faltering a bit as he saw doubt in the eyes of some sailors, but the captain was convinced enough that they could still get away with it. It was better to leave some survivors to tell the tale, and therefore they left the merchant crew shivering in the dark and parted ways.

"That was a success," Amanda told Bastian with a wide grin.

"I wouldn't have counted on it, but the risk was worth this," Sammy agreed, running her fingers on the silk that they had taken from the boxes. It seemed like Sammy compensated for her plain, no-nonsense presence with expensive fabrics. Bastian made a mental note to make her sew a dress for herself using some leftover silk or something. He didn't actually know what people usually did with silk. He just assumed that sewing had something to do with it.

He retreated into his cabin with a bucket of water in order to get rid of all the dried blood on his skin, but alas, he did not have any spare clothes, and he was doomed to look like a butcher until he could buy a new shirt.

He tried his best to see if he could find anything useful in his cabin. Having been largely illiterate, the old Bastian had not managed to pile up any books on the shelves, but there were many things that were eye-catching…and possibly of some occult importance.

There was a wooden statue representing a frog on the shelf, with a small, round mirror on its belly. When Bastian turned it around in his hands, the candlelight bounced off the reflective surface and made him see all sorts of things that were not really there.

He saw the reflection of a dark figure, a glimpse of a smile, but once he turned around, no one was there.

A sudden knock on the door jolted him awake from his dreaminess. He put the frog away, somehow feeling like it was a smart idea to hide it.

It was Amanda. She had managed to wash off the chalk and the blood, looking now as fresh as ever, her lips tinted with the slightest shade of wine red. Her eyes were burning with something that could have been mistaken for desire. Bastian, though, was not so easy to fool. He saw that she had some ulterior motives, he saw the bottle of wine in her hand, and he was sure about it - she intended to get him drunk enough to extract something from him. And it would not be the stuff he wanted her to get out of him, no. It was perhaps an useful piece of information, as in useful to her, or then she was about to make him promise something to her. Or something even more nefarious. He was not an idiot. He knew that Amanda wanted him, but he also knew that she was hard to please and just having silly Halloween games to participate in would not be enough for her. She had ulterior motives, yes. It was his next mission to find out what said motives were.

If Amanda was about to become an easy skank for the sake of making him do something, though, he would be more than a bit sad. Even though he liked for things to go smoothly, he still valued a certain level of virtue in a woman, no matter how fake, how constructed.

"Can I come in?" she asked coyly.

Bastian let her through, but only gave so much way for her body, and her assets pressed against him as she pushed herself into the cabin, slipped into a chair and managed to conjure two beautiful goblets from a secret pocket inside her skirt.

She smiled, and when she had that expression, she looked even more devious than she usually did. Amanda was one tricky woman, angelic and demonic at the same time. It was no wonder that she was his favorite out of them all. At the moment, of course. If Sammy was to pull off the next trick like this one, or if it was about to be Rowena coming knocking on his door with a wine bottle and a smirk, it was obvious that such an event would change his answer. But for now, Amanda was the best one, the most charming, complex, and also the most beautiful.

"What kind of wine did you find from the hold?" Bastian asked her, observing her pouring some high-tannin stuff into his goblet. It was a dry red, unlike his favorite Shiraz Merlot back in his home world, but any red wine was better than white wine, which made him throw up in a second.

"This is a Lavenderianian wine," Amanda explained. "While working in the Poisoned Grog, I had to get familiar with the cheap stuff. Don't get me wrong…despite the initial taste, this is one of the most affordable Lavenderian reds. It is not a high quality bottle, I think you left it in the hold for a longer time than Lavenderian Shroud Two should be -"

Her melodious voice resembled a lullaby. While Bastian always loved some real good infodumps provided by beautiful women, he just could not concentrate while drinking the wine itself and drinking her cleavage with his eyes. He nodded along and forced his eyes to look like he was staring at her face in a sharp, focused manner.

"That is not what you actually wanted to talk about," he said, interrupting her in a smooth way that caused her to blush a bit. "Name your desire. I think you and I are already familiar enough that we can work something out. Unless it's an outrageous request, and I doubt that, since you showed up with cheap wine instead of expensive rum."

Amanda cleared her throat. Her blushing cheeks took on a deeper shade of red.

"I want you to kill Sammy," she said, her eyelashes drooping over her eyes in a way that suggested a strong feeling of shame.