Venture to Uncertainty (#1)

16 | The Devotion of Uncertainty

The room was dark, musty and as expected, Britter was leaning against the desk towards the back of the room.

"Oh, our weapon's manager!" he said, mockingly animated.

Archer shut the door behind him with a soft click. Silta nodded to the weapon's manager and said curtly, "You've got a key for the storage?"

The weapon's manager was perhaps only a decade Archer's senior, but he suddenly looked like a very frail, very old man. "I've got a key," he muttered.

"Excellent," Britter said. "Let's see it."

"Giving you that key makes me guilty of treason," the man squeaked out, his voice torn. "Treason for...pirates." He barely managed to spit out the word.

Silta kept a straight face as her nimble fingers began to reach for something. Archer interrupted before she could bring out anything sharp, "If you don't give us the key, we'll kill your General. We have somebody just waiting for the word out there."

Silta glanced over at him. The life of the General was more important than the storage, and the weapon's manager wouldn't be guilty of treason if he gave up the key to save the life of a king's man.

Britter was confused, but Silta was tossing him a sharp look. "Crafty," she noted.

"The key," Archer reminded the weapon's manager.

The man leaned down to open the safe in the desk. He turned the clicklock a few times and then the hinge popped forward. He produced a solid golden key from inside.

"Should we take him with," Britter asked, "or kill him here?"

The weapon's manager backed into the door, reaching for the handle, but he was about two paces too short. "I did as you asked," he breathed.

"Pirates aren't really known for keeping their word," Silta pointed out, taking the key from Britter. She looked nonchalant, not necessarily concerned about the weapon's manager. Archer latched onto that quality, intent on saving a life with it.

He took a step forward. "Killing him is pointless. You just want another line on that awful tattoo? What does it prove?" He emphasized each word, hoping they'd hit their mark—or she just wouldn't care enough to advocate against him.

"You think my tattoo is awful, Kingsley?" she asked. At first, he thought she was simply being difficult, but then he realized the question was serious; the idea of anyone finding any part of her unattractive was completely foreign to her.

"Appalling things don't get a pass just because they're on a pretty canvas," he snapped, but that was the way this all worked, wasn't it? Silta's atrocities, the horrors of the Avourienne, Bardarian's bloodshed—they were so easy to ignore when they were paired with alluring golden eyes and silky crimson sails. A beautiful thing to cover up something ugly.

Silta tilted her head then, and any genuine emotion on her part dissolved. "Pretty canvas?" she repeated.

Britter interrupted by cocking his pistol in the direction of the weapon's manager. Archer took a tense step forward. "Don't shoot him," he insisted.

"Okay, Kingsley," Britter said, sliding the aim of the gun to Archer's head. "It's you or him, then." His face was caught in an unusually ugly snarl.

Archer took a step back. He looked to Silta, as if for help.

"Liam—" she began with a sigh, looking inconvenienced.

He cut her off, "Getting a little tired of Kingsley, anyway." His hand was still. "Somebody snitched today. I vote we get rid of him."