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moonsugar-and-spice · 2 years

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Chapter Two: A Terrible Mistake

(Read on AO3)

Chapter One

+++

The smell of fresh congee gusted across the deck, the rising sun bathing the Mistress of Fortune in a rosy hue.

Rizo sat atop a barrel, a bowl on his lap and Acar crouched on his wiry shoulder, swatting away a thieving swipe of the gecko cat’s sticky-toed paw.

Warm fingers of a breeze raked through Lu Da’s mohawk and the engine rumbled pleasantly beneath his boots. He leaned back against the railing as they cut through the sea, finishing his own breakfast while a crowd stooped around the jam-packed bag.

Mongkbat, or Nubs as he was known, pulled out one treasure and then another, passing them around with a mangled hand.

“Hey, Captain,” he asked, grinning over his wide shoulder, “what’re you planning to do with all these winnings?”

“Buy a better crew,” Lu Da winked.

Fang dipped a pickled egg into his congee. “Y’ever lost a game of Fame and Fortune?” he asked around a mouthful. “C’mon, be honest now.”

Lu Da shrugged and answered, “Sure, on a few occasions. Only one person’s ever beat me more than once though.”

“That right?” He raised his bowl, as if toasting to the nameless victor, or perhaps to their captain in sympathy. “You’ll have to introduce us someday, so we can buy him a drink.”

The others crowed in agreement.

“Wouldn’t recommend,” Lu Da said, plucking up a bite of congee. “She’s even thornier when she’s had a few.”

A silence swooped, and just as quick, the deck erupted in guffaws.

“She?” Fang howled, a crumb of egg tumbling from the short stripe of hair on his chin.

“You lost to a girl?” wheezed Honzen.

“More than once,” Tonqa added, “can’t forget that.”

Marik and Rizo stood by with quiet smirks, the kind that failed to go unnoticed.

“Hey, how come only a few of us know this story?” Fang groused.

“I think we can guess why.”

Lu Da raised a finger, readying to step in with a retort, when a shadow drew his gaze in the doorway up to the quarters. The air transformed again, the throng of men rising to their feet with a chorus of banter and greetings.

Hiteo shifted, eyeing them, and then stepped out at their beckoning.

“Hey kid, how’d you sleep?” asked Lu Da, not entirely sure whether to expect a response.

“I threw up,” he muttered, swiping a mess of dark hair out of his eyes and squinting against the sun's blush glancing off the ship.

Not mute then.

“Ah, well—”

“On your bed.”

Lu Da’s mouth closed to a flat line. He nodded and scrubbed his fingers over the back of his head, reigning in his annoyance.

“S’alright. We’ll get it cleaned up. Don’t worry,” he added with a light nudge, “you’ll find your sea legs before long.”

“Porridge?” Marik asked as he walked over with an extra bowl.

Half-heartedly, Hiteo accepted it and Mongkbat pulled up a crate, prompting him to sit. Hiteo startled, grimacing at the remains of his large hand.

The man once lost two fingers and part of another to a tigerdillo. It was how he got his nickname. Mongkbat had killed it to get his fingers back and kept the little bones in a pouch around his neck, along with the teeth of the very animal that had swallowed them.

Hiteo picked at the congee with the chopsticks, taking a couple small bites. His eyes climbed quietly up the bridge as he looked around, watching the dark clouds belch from the smokestacks and dissipate behind them.

“How long until we get there?” he asked at length, setting the bowl aside on the weather-worn deck and looking at Lu Da. “To my aunt and uncle’s.”

“I have a stop to make along the way, in Sao Tong. Trip there should take about a week or two, depending on weather and supply runs. Then from there, just a few more days.”

“Wonder if we’ll run into Admiral Bristles again,” mused Rizo. “That’s always fun.”

Lu Da rolled his eyes. “I daren’t get my hopes up.”

As things were, occasional run-ins with Admiral Zhao were inevitable. There had been a handful of incidents to date, but “fun” was only a word he would use ironically.

Truth was, it was the last thing they needed now. The voyage was slated to take too long already, their current course far from direct to their actual destination. Even if Zhao wasn’t privy to all aspects of his dealings with Ozai, it would be delicate enough on his return to corroborate why it took longer than expected without the hawkeyed admiral on his case.

Breakfasts were finished, Chenpo heeded orders to drive them full speed ahead, and most of the crew dispersed to their various posts and shifts.

Lu Da had just carried a bucket up from below deck when he was stopped by the distinct feeling of eyes on him. Hiteo stood there, a few paces away. Head tilted. Just staring at him, no pretense of subtlety whatsoever.

When Lu Da pointedly stared back, he didn’t look away.

Must be a family trait.

“That’s a lot of tattoos,” the boy said finally, giving him a sweeping look.

The container swung as Lu Da stepped forward. “You should see how long it takes me to paint them on every morning.”

Hiteo blinked, brow folding. “What?”

Lu Da responded with the bucket, a pickle and a bowl of congee inside, shoving it before him.

“What’s this for?” he frowned, leaning away. “I don’t want that, I already ate.”

“Your gratitude is overwhelming. But it’s not for you. I want you to take this up to the bridge and deliver it to Chenpo. He’ll be the hungry guy at the helm with half his head shaven, the rest of his luscious locks loose at his back, you can’t miss him.”

“Why do I have to do that?”

“Gonna be part of the crew for a while, you gotta work like part of the crew,” answered Lu Da. “Afterward, come back and I’ll show you down to the galley. You can start helping Shu prepare for lunch.”

“But I’m not a pirate!” His face scrunched as if the word were a bad smell. “I’m a passenger. That’s sort of like a guest, and guests don’t have to work.”

Lu Da huffed in amusement, calling over his shoulder, “You hear that, fellas? He’s a passenger.”

Laughter billowed across the deck as Lu Da bent down, hands on his knees.

“You know what us pirates sometimes like to call the passengers on their ships?” He paused for the boy to shake his head. “Hostages. Now, you can either be part of the crew, or you can be part of the objectively less swag and sexy brig lickers. Which do you think you’d rather be?”

Hiteo almost seemed to consider, then rolled his eyes down to the deck and took the bucket, dragging his feet toward the door.

“Good choice.”

Men joked and boasted. Crates scraped. Cargo thudded.

An hour later, Lu Da’s attention was drawn by Tonqa, a bronze, brick shithouse of a man, who was glancing around and then back at him. The realization dawned just before he said it.

“I think we lost one.”

“Dammit,” exhaled Lu Da, “thought I told him to come back.”

He scanned the deck as he marched toward the door, inside, up the stairs.

He heard the kid before he found him. A theatrical series of “shewng, shewng, agghh!” growing louder as he approached his quarters. Despite it all, Lu Da almost felt a softening between his brows… right up until the moment he rounded the door.

Hiteo was zigzagging around the room, snarling and brandishing a particular crossbow wildly at imaginary foes.

“Hey!” he barked, suffering a brief episode of cardiac arrest as the kid startled and nearly threw it to the floor. “Put that down!”

Crossing the room, Lu Da didn’t spare him the chance, seizing it out of his young hands.

“Geeze, I was just—”

“You don’t ever touch this. Understand? Not only is it one of a kind, you could hurt yourself or somebody else.”

“I wasn’t gonna shoot it, I was just playing.”

“Soraya’s not a toy. She’s a weapon, and she’s not for kids.”

His disgruntled pout pursed aside, but the scolding didn’t seem to put him out too much. Instead, his mesmerized gaze tracked the curves and carvings along her burnished frame, caramel-brown eyes twinkling.

“It’s really cool though,” he said. “I’ve never seen a crossbow up close before.”

Lu Da couldn’t stop the faint tick of his mouth, pride smoothing out the coil in his bearing. “Well, she is pretty cool, I’ll admit. But just, no touching, alright?”

Hiteo grumbled assent as Lu Da mounted it safely back on the wall.

Behind him, he only caught the miffed mumbling in pieces, something that sounded dangerously close to, “...even know how to shoot it,” and, “...get beat by girls.”

Lu Da ground to a halt, turning with a look that pinned him to the spot.

“Why don’t you say that a little louder.”

“What?” Hiteo scuttled out the door. "I didn’t say anything.”

“That’s what I thought.”

The ship creaked in sync with the waves. Scrubbing a palm over the coarse stubble on his scalp and nursing his ego, he shouted after him.

“It was one girl. And Zuzhen’s a mean, pitiless, deadpan little shrew who… ah, dammit, he’s too far, he’s gone.”

+++ +++ +++

After that, Lu Da kept a sharper eye on their passenger, instructing the crew to do the same, but he couldn’t shake the visceral feeling that he had made a terrible mistake.

By late afternoon the next day, he knew that he had.

They were powering through the seas, slicing waves like a hot blade through lard, when the ship shuddered. There was a horrible grinding, the gnashing of gears, and suddenly they were losing speed.

“What the…?”

Lu Da exchanged a glance with Mongkbat and Rizo.

“Why are we slowing down?” asked the latter.

“It’s Honzen’s shift, the fuck’s he doing?”

Stalking up to the bridge, it was not Honzen he found standing at the helm. In fact, there was nobody standing at the helm.

Problem number one.

Problem number two was laid out on the floor, floundering like some overturned seal turtle, wincing and rubbing the back of his head.

“It was an accident,” Hiteo cried as Lu Da grabbed him up by the elbow, grinding his teeth to stem the flood of words threatening to pour out. “I’m just a kid.”

Honzen appeared not a second later in the door, apologetic and confused—he had heard a young cry for help and gone to check—right as Lu Da was dragging Hiteo back down to deck.

“An accident,” he parroted as he stopped, whipped the kid around to face him. “So your legs accidentally carried you to the bridge where you then accidentally tripped through the door to the helm, flipping several switches on your way down.”

Hiteo crossed his arms and scowled out at the horizon, the wind whipping dark strands of hair loose from his topknot. The ship was sailing smooth again, reclaiming lost speed.

“Maybe you can’t help being young, but I’d say it’s past time you stop being stupid.”

The boy’s gaze snapped back to him. “Maybe I will soon as you get your dudou out of that giant wad.”

Behind him erupted a string of errant, stifled snickers.

“What was that?” he challenged. “Because I could have sworn you just said, ‘Hey, Lu Da, toss me over the taffrail, I’m a useless little fartcatcher who’s ready to die at this very moment.’”

Whether spurred on by a true death wish or old-fashioned idiocy, he bit back, “My family wouldn’t like that too much, you’d be in big trouble. And anyway, you’re not my dad, you can’t boss me a—”

Lu Da took a swift and sudden stride toward him, forcing the kid to stumble ass-first onto a barrel that flanked the iron taffrail, and bent eye to eye, jutting a ringed finger.

“First, your family’s gonna know better than to start shit with me, so jot that down. Second, you’re damn right I’m not, and most importantly, you bet your ass I can, because until we get to Taichun, I’m the closest thing to one you got. And as long as you’re on my ship, in my charge, you do as I say and keep your paws where they belong. Which is…” he paused to grab his skinny wrists, slapping them down atop his lap, “right here. Got it?”

Beyond the pissheaded cheekiness flashed a fruitful glimpse of fear, a tight swallow, the narrowing of his gangly shoulders, and the boy’s gaze dropped and held fast on the mottled iron deck.

“I said, got it?”

Hiteo’s insolent pout deepened. He didn’t answer.

“You are not moving from this spot until I hear you say it.”

A wave buffeted the hull, tossing a glitter of mist over the rail.

At last, the boy grumbled, “…Yeah.”

Lu Da closed his fists around the iron rail on either side of his head, a museum of bulging muscles as he leaned closer. “Yeah, Captain.”

Another stretch of silence. Hiteo’s upper lip curled and he didn’t raise his eyes to look at him, mumbling a barely discernible yeahcap’n.

Cupping a silver-studded ear, Lu Da tipped his head and leaned closer. “I’m sorry, come again? What was that? Your old man’s a little hard of—”

“Yeah, Captain!” the kid roared in his face, features furrowing in a manner that reminded him of a disgruntled moose lion cub.

A crease played at the corner of the pirate’s mouth as he resumed his full height and gave a single nod.

“That’s better.” Lu Da scruffed the dark mop of hair to a resentful snort as the kid jerked his head away. “Just one big happy family.”

“Hey, Cap.” Rizo was working on a slice of blubbered whale jerky as he sidled up, jutting his sharp, goateed chin out to sea. “A little company.”

A small approaching Fire Navy fleet dotted the horizon. There was no arguing their speed had been well exceeding the acceptable limits; so long as they were alone, it was a risk worth taking under the circumstances, provided they slowed when nearing witnesses.

Honzen knew the drill and had surely spotted them, too, but best to be safe.

“Hey, tell him to let off the—” Lu Da cut himself short, squinting.

The crew exchanged looks and followed his line of sight.

The fleet seemed to be cutting it a little too close to their passage. A potentially honest, if careless, mistake, though one that could end badly if they didn’t gain distance. But as they continued closing in, it wasn’t so much that as the now familiar flagship veering entirely, broadsiding their own to obstruct their trajectory, that commanded Lu Da’s attention.

“No way,” huffed Marik.

“Speak of the yokai, and he does appear.”

“Shhhit,” Lu Da breathed through his teeth. The last thing they needed. “We gotta hide the kid.”

“Hide me? Why?” Hiteo asked as Lu Da glanced around, snatched the lid off the metal barrel.

“If you wanna reach your family,” he said, hoisting the kid inside and shoving his head down, “you keep still in there and don’t make a sound until I say otherwise.”

“But—”

The lid silenced him, jammed on just as the Mistress was slowing to a halt before Zhao’s ship.

The Admiral greeted them starboard, surrounded by Fire Nation soldiers, his arms crossed and wearing the smug smirk he favored like a noxious cologne.

“Pirate Captain Lu Da,” he hailed. “How ever could I have guessed? Your reputation is simply determined to go beyond its limits.”

Lu Da put a hand over his heart. “You honor me, Admiral.”

“How clumsy of me. That wasn’t a compliment.”

The edges of Zhao’s smirk curdled. Lu Da’s grin darkened, showing teeth.

“To what do I owe the displeasure of this unwelcome rendezvous?” he asked, just as something brushed against his boot.

Acar. The little menace, slinking in between legs and sniffing his way toward the barrel.

Lu Da tried, discreetly, to herd him away with his foot.

“You seem to be in quite the hurry. Going, what, 50 knots? 60?”

Lu Da felt himself start to tense and forced ease into his posture again. “A note of jealousy? I'm surprised at you.”

Zhao scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Some of us are grown men—”

“Yeah, better keep pounding your chest so nobody doubts.”

“And it would behoove you to remember who it is you represent when you sail these seas,” he warned through his teeth. “Speaking of, an interesting route on which to run into your lot, at such an hour no less. I can only imagine how busy, being the Fire Lord’s henchman and all. But, one might wonder what assignment he has you on out this way.”

He spread his arms and made a show of looking around as Fang attempted to toe a tenacious Acar away from the barrel with his boot.

“I’d love to tell you, Hotcheeks, but I’m afraid that’s privy information.”

There was a molten crack in his mask, a flush of angry heat.

Hot Stuff. Broom Cheeks. An amalgamation of endearment terms from the allied mission with the Navy that Ozai had sent him and his first mates on. He had to admit, Fancy-tickler had been his favorite, but he thought it best to refrain at present.

Lu Da could almost swear he saw those sideburns twitch as his teeth ground together.

“Call me that again and you’ll find my fire somewhere uncomfortable.”

A chirrup to his right as Zhao blustered on, and suddenly the words were turning to jumbled noise.

The gecko cat had made it atop the barrel despite their best efforts, eagerly nosing and frisking around the edges, as if it were a game.

All eyes on the Mistress shifted. The air seemed to tighten.

Before anyone could make a casual move to thwart it, those sticky paws were stealing under the metal lid, raising it off, when just as fast, it slammed down again. Acar chitter-shrieked and leapt straight into the air, his furry tail a riot of bristles.

The sound went off like a blast.

The admiral stopped mid-sentence. Smooth as possible, Rizo slid himself onto the barrel with an affected yawn. As if the lid hadn’t just slammed shut seemingly of its own volition.

Zhao’s honey eyes narrowed. “What do you have there?”

Caught halfway with the strip of cured blubber to his mouth, Rizo glanced down and bit off a chunk, garbling around it. “Whale jerky?”

Zhao scowled. He muttered something to the soldiers, readying to drop a plank and come across, when Lu Da cut in swiftly.

“Go on posturing, Admiral, and one of these days I may just swoon. But today, I don’t have to tell you that I’m on a schedule and this is an unauthorized hold up and interrogation. If you detain us any longer, I’ll have to include it in my official report.”

The lines between the seaman’s brows deepened with a flare of his nostrils, but after a beat, Zhao took a grudging step back.

“Very well. Though perhaps we should see just how much weight the account of a glorified thug holds against a decorated Navy admiral.”

“It must chafe, huh? All that ass kissing, the promotion so close yet still so far, and meanwhile, in walks an—”

A snarl split the air with a blast of flame, sparks seething over their ducked heads.

“Get out of my sight, earth-brained sea scum.”

“That’s Privateer sea scum to you.”

Zhao fixed him with what could only be described as the bastardized cousin of a sneer, giving the signal for his helmsman to engage.

Engines roared back to life and Zhao’s ship moved aside. As they passed, his keen eyes followed, and Lu Da dipped into an elaborate gesture that vaguely resembled a bow. If a bow were paired with a rude hand gesture.

The fleet shrank against the horizon and Marik stood between Rizo and Lu Da, fists pulling his dusky knuckles pale.

“I hate the way that ashbreather looks at me,” he grumbled. “Ever since the three of us were sent on that mission. Like he’s afraid I might vomit up a bag of dicks and drop them in his lap.”

“Maybe he’s just afraid that if you propositioned him, he might accidentally say yes,” Lu Da said, earning a sound that was half breath, half laugh, ushering a measure of tension from his friend’s shoulders. “Sozin’s law may have been abolished, but old propaganda dies hard.”

Marik glanced at him. “Think he’ll say anything to Ozai?”

“Maybe your soldier’ll cover for you,” Rizo chimed in.

A corner of Lu Da’s mouth pinched downward.

“Maybe,” he muttered unconvincingly. There was no great fondness shared between Ta Ming and Zhao, either. But Ta Ming’s loyalties and bent toward honesty, if put up against a wall, may be too much to hope for.

What was that saying again? No good deed goes unpunished.

A low, resonant banging of fists on metal. “Can I come out yet?”

Lu Da heaved a sigh.

“Let’s just step it up and get this over with.”

+++ +++ +++

Hiteo stumbled out the door. Water sloshed onto the deck as he dragged a mop and a string of grumbles and gripes behind him, finally dropping the bucket with a belligerent thud.

“This is stupid.”

“That’s the spirit,” Lu Da said cheerfully.

Hiteo shot him that moose lion cub scowl.

“I shouldn’t have to work,” he groaned, plunging the tattered head of rags into the water, and began mopping next to Chenpo.

“And I shouldn’t have been suckered in by my sick, crippled, somehow still intact limb of a conscience,” said Lu Da, “but here we are.”

Shu was on the bow, singing a tawdry pub song, while Rizo and Marik sparred upwind. From the lack of cursing, it was hard to tell who was winning.

Five minutes passed, maybe six, when Hiteo stood up and leaned on the mop stick, as if he might perish at any moment.

“Can I take a break?”

“You just started.”

“Well, I,” he stammered, “I gotta use the bathroom.”

“Sure,” Lu Da replied. “Soon as you’re finished here.”

His young guest was not pleased.

“I can’t hold it,” whined Hiteo. “I gotta go real bad.”

“Right now, huh? This very second.”

“Really.”

Lu Da studied him, that spoiled, cantankerous moue, and the gears in his head started turning.

“Fine, tell you what. Gimme a jiff to get the latrine all nice and cleaned up for you, alright? Won’t take but a minute.”

Chenpo’s gaze shifted quietly.

“And it so happens, I’ve recently procured these new super soft cloths that’re all the rage, it’s like wiping with a cloud. I’ll set one out for you.”

“Umm…” Hiteo looked around, questioning whether to trust this sudden generosity, but received no indication otherwise. “Okay… Thanks.”

“No problem,” smiled Lu Da. “I mean, when you gotta go, you gotta go, right?”

“...Yeah.”

“Back in a flash.”

Popping up to his quarters, Lu Da swiped a pair of leather gloves and a sealed box from a chest he kept shoved in the corner, before taking the stairs down into the hull.

Velvet beans were a peculiar little legume. Hailed to have all kinds of benefits, from raising dopamine levels to boosting libido to neutralizing the effects of venom, which was great, if one knew how to extract them from their pods.

The unfortunate thing about them, as anyone who had ever done so without extreme care soon learned, was that these fuzzy bean pods and the vines they grew on shed hair like crazy. And these tiny hairs contained a substance that, if so much as dusted your skin, would swiftly and unequivocally mess you up.

Grown men had been driven into a frenzy trying to quell the itch they caused, which was how they also got their other name: madness beans.

Lu Da reached the latrine, pulling on the gloves and unsealing the box to gently remove one fuzzy pod. He rolled it over the soft cloth in his gloved hand, careful not to leave a mark. Just enough to ensure a generous dusting of tiny, invisible hairs.

Folding it carefully, he set it in a conspicuous spot by the latrine, replacing the sealed box in its chest, and tossing the gloves in a bucket before returning to the deck.

“All set for you, big guy,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Enjoy.”

Hiteo dropped the mop beside the bucket, and then hesitated. He side-eyed him narrowly as he shuffled past, and there was a moment when Lu Da thought the jig might be up, before he continued on his way down.

+++ +++ +++

“Aagghhh!”

Hiteo was writhing, snorting even, making sounds that were almost more animal than human and scratching furiously as his hindquarters.

Lu Da sat on the deck a short distance away, flipping lazily through the pages of his ledger. Watching the scene unfold with barely contained glee over the top of his book as Rizo walked past and up to the kid.

He stopped, cocked his head over the wriggling brat on the ground, and stroked the trimmed outline of his goatee.

“You okay there, champ?”

“Do I—” Squirming. Grunting. “—look okay?!”

“Hmm,” he said pensively, “let’s see. Cold sweats, red mottled face, unbearable ass itching. Let me guess. He tricked you into wiping with a cloth covered in madness bean hairs.”

The lines of Hiteo’s face twisted in a thunderous snarl.

“I’m gonna… get him… for this.”

Rizo only donned a languid smile.

“Careful, if I were you. That’s a war you’re not gonna win.”

+++ +++ +++

They arrived in Qinyeong two evenings later, just in time, an hour before the sun would descend to sleep.

Lu Da gave strict instructions for Hiteo to stay onboard with the crew while a couple of them went ashore to stock up on provisions and fresh water.

Shadows were stretching long and thin over the port’s curve of land. Lu Da approached a booth occupied by a man with peppering hair, his mouth set in a sullen line. He did not want to be here, that much was certain.

That made two of them.

Three booths later, Lu Da was slapping the final coin down on the weathered wooden stand, bagging up the last of the supplies, when out of the corner of his eye Marik glanced over his shoulder.

“I thought the kid was supposed to be staying on the ship.”

“He was,” Lu Da said, casting him a brief look.

“Ah.” His quartermaster smiled wryly, blue eyes creasing. “Child-rearing is going well, I see.”

Shouldering the bag, Lu Da turned to him slow. “What do you mean?”

Marik didn’t need to answer.

The shriek that pierced the air from the other side of the market did it for him.

Lu Da didn’t know what was happening, only that one second, he caught sight of the miniature hellion poking about a weedy rock pile and the next, the neighboring vendor’s monkey was flying into a tizzy with the screams of its holder, who clambered to cower atop a stool.

Bowls teetered and crashed as the monkey zipped around the stall, overturning a cart of moonpeaches as onlookers gasped and edged away, alarmed and confused.

Lu Da clenched his fists—so much for not leaving a trail—stalking toward the scene, all hope of discretion abandoned.

That mischievous glimmer was jarring—a mirror, taking him back in time. It shattered just as quick as Hiteo tensed, snapped upright, skittering back from Lu Da’s approach.

“No, Dad, please! Don’t hit me!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, and Lu Da could feel the growing heat of eyes on him like tiny, searing brands.

A fresh spike of dread-laced wrath quickened his step. The pirate’s ringed fingers closed around his skinny arm.

“I thought I told you to stay on the ship,” he seethed.

Hiteo sulked silently.

The woman had begun reaming them out from upon her perch, trying to calm her anxious monkey, and Lu Da’s cut-off apologies only seemed to rile her more.

“That boy caused this mess, spooking my poor Koko with a snake. He ought to be apologizing, too.”

Lu Da’s skin tightened. He lifted one boot off the ground, checking under him and then around the stall. No snake that he could see. But he wasn’t given the chance to ask.

“And you,” she spat, stabbing a finger at Lu Da. “You ought to keep a better eye if you can’t be bothered to teach your son basic respect. Though judging by appearances…” Her eyes raked a path up the tattoos mapping his exposed skin—arms, neck, face—to his piercings and the boorish strip of dark hair running down his head. “I should hardly expect otherwise.”

A raw lick of anger lashed through him. He resisted the urge to clapback with some smartassery and instead leveled Hiteo with a look that dared him to challenge him again.

“You heard the nice lady. Apologize. Son.”

Hiteo frowned at his feet and managed something that might have passed for an apology from a half-dead skunk fish.

Setting the cart right, Marik started salvaging whatever moonpeaches hadn’t split open or been bruised beyond recognition as Lu Da shoved the lightest of the bags into the kid’s chest.

“Carry this and get your ass back up to the ship. Now.”

This time, he did as he was told.

Lu Da set about helping clean up the damage until the vendor squawked that they leave well enough alone and get lost.

The little menace avoided him the rest of the evening. Fine and dandy by him. Hiteo took his dinner alone and went to bed quietly. Mellowed, it seemed, by the healthy dose of fear Lu Da had imbibed him with.

Good.

Troubles were shaken off with music and drinks and several rounds of Hazard late into the night, until finally Lu Da dragged himself to bed.

It took a while for him to find sleep. And once he did, his dreams were disjointed and strange.

Vestiges of voices. Echoes of faces. Some close enough to touch, others lost to time or place.

An endless hall full of doors he didn’t want to open. Searching, searching for an exit. The floor, shifting sand beneath his feet and he was swallowed whole, shackles rising up to receive him like the arms of a lover.

The tight embrace of a noose falling pliant, cool and smooth and caressing. Slithering around his neck, up to his face.

A gentle hiss at his ear. A feather-light tickle on his cheek.

Lu Da’s eyes snapped open to bright sunlight. His entire body went rigid, sleep’s fog dispelled on a sharp inhale.

He had just enough time to register the rope of brownish-yellow scales, the forked tongue skimming his nose and tasting his fear, before the breath tore back out of him in a high-pitched scream.

He threw himself back with such force he tumbled ass over head off the bed and onto the floor. In the corner of his eye, a small shadow darted back behind the folding screen, and Lu Da uttered a string of profanities so colorful it could be tossed into the air and called a rainbow.

Oh. Oh, he is so dead.

Scuttling back for good measure, he dragged himself up and recoiled again, skewered by those beady black eyes.

Lu Da pressed himself flat to the wall, along with intrusive thoughts whispering admiration for the prank’s execution, and slid his way across the room. One eye on the serpent, the other on the crouching silhouette.

So when the boy attempted a break for it, Lu Da lunged and seized him by a fistful of tunic, reeling him up against the wall, nostrils flared.

“Listen here, you little slank,” he snapped, cutting himself off.

Deep breath, deep breath, watch your tongue, stay c—

“Keep this up and I will grind your bones to make cement outta your spleen milk, and then pour it into your ears until you like it.”

Footsteps thundered, then a voice rushed, “What’s the matter, what’s going on?”

He braced himself to see Marik in the doorway, Fang’s and Mongkbat’s heads popping in behind him.

Lu Da cut a look back at Hiteo that was half warning, half pleading, and all ire as a wicked light flashed in his eyes. The young face arranged into a picture of boyish innocence right before he twisted back to answer Marik.

“The captain just told me he was going to crush up my bones—”

“No, he’s—”

“And milk my spleen—”

“He’s lying, kids are liars—”

“To make cement and pour it in my ears.”

Marik leaned on the doorframe, crossing his arms and raising one brow to Lu Da, who silently seethed as Hiteo honed his act.

“You won’t let him do that to me, will you?”

Before anyone could respond, there was a soft hiss.

Gazes swerved to the captain’s bed. The coil of blotchy golden-brown peered up at them, tongue darting as it slithered between the ruin of blankets.

Marik cocked his head. “Why is there a snake on your pillow?”

He glanced first at Lu Da then, pointedly, to the boy beside him, whose blameless façade fractured under the knowing scrutiny.

“Hiteo.” The kid tensed as Marik brandished his dad voice. “Good timing. I’ve just been informed that the latrine needs cleaning.”

“W-what? But I don’t know how t—!”

“Don’t worry. Tonqa drew the short straw, he’ll show you.”

His mouth worked, then in a huff, the boy sulked out the door, shoving past Fang and Mongkbat, who had returned with a rod and a sack, all sniveling grins as they approached the reptile.

“Never thought I’d hear the infamous Lu Da scream like a twelve-year-old girl,” Nubs said under his breath.

“Knowledge of which you will kindly take to your graves.”

Marik came to stand beside Lu Da with a smirk. “Nothing to make you realize how much of an asshole you are like a miniature version of yourself walking around and fucking with you daily.” He clapped him on the shoulder. “Welcome to parenthood.”

“Entirely sure you can’t claim this one, Captain?” Fang called out.

Mongkbat chuckled. Lu Da blew out a breath, pinching the bridge of his nose.

+++

Chapter Three

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