Calliope took the sarong in her hands and turned it over, fastening it around her waist to the obvious disappointment of several nearby crewmen. It wasn’t surprising that the Sultan knew how to give flattering gifts, that was a prerequisite of a ruler after all, but there was more going on her than met the eye and Calliope vastly prefered to be the player rather than the pawn. 

A line of sailors was already forming at the gangplank of the Witch when Calliope came back on deck. In any port there was a certain amount of flotsam that washed up. Mostly they got too drunk and got left in port when their ships set sail, or the quarreled with their officers and got put ashore. Most of those queue looked to be of the sort, shabby men gone half native and living on the streets, desperate for a berth that would take them back to more civilized areas.

Though it was arguably her job, Calliope really wasn’t a seasoned enough seafarer to decide which, if any, of the men were a good fit for the ship. She was about to hand the task over to Sketti when he was done arranging the stowage of spices when a strange man caught her eye. He had the dark ebony complexion of a Southlander, perhaps from Punt or Kush but his face was covered with strange tattoos and ritual scars, a small bone, possibly from a bird pierced his nose and large ivory earing hung from his ears.  He was talking animatedly to a small woman with curly hair and spectacles, who was dressed in a hodgepodge of northern garments and Arad Lund attire.

“Halvar,” Calliope called, the Northman looked around guiltily though he didn’t seem to be doing anything obviously nefarious. Perhaps it was his natural reaction to being called upon to work when he'd rather not be doing so.

“Start interviewing these people,” she ordered, making a negligent gesture at the line of hopeful sailors.

“We need two or three top men and a half dozen deckhands,” she told him.

“And a gunners mate if you can find anyone that knows which end of a cannon is which,” Grimey piped up from where she had been hidden behind one of the guns.

“And a gunners mate,” Calliope agreed equibbly. Halvar smacked his fist to his chest in what Calliope took to be a salute and strode away to do as he was bid. Markus could make the final determination once he was done with Sketti.

“You two!” Calliope called gesturing to the bone studded man and his female companion. Both of them came forward, the black man striding confidently, the woman following with a nervous expression. The black man’s teeth spread into a broad smile. They were stained a reddish brown perhaps from chewing something. She gestured them aboard and took a seat on a barrel. A sail had been rigged to provide some overhead cover and relief from the hot desert sun.

“Are you looking for passage?” she asked bluntly. The blackman nodded.

“I am X’pillae,” the man pronounced, clicking his tongue to make the first syllable of his name. He struck a pose, placing a fist on each hip. Despite the overblow theatrics of it he was an impressive man, though he clearly hadn’t been eating as much as he was used to.

“And you?” Calliope prodded the hereto silent woman.

“Mari,” the woman said, looking down at the ground and blushing. She was pretty in an understated sort of a way, though the spectacles made her look older than she was in truth.

“We aren’t taking on passengers,” Calliope informed them, assuming that they were interested in renting a cabin but X’pillae was shaking his head before she finished.

“No no dragon lady, X’pillae is not cargo, I have skills to sell!” he declared grandiloquently. 

“Skills such as…” Calliope prompted.

“Among the Kinombe I was a great man,” he said with the same air of practiced theatrics. 

“A speaker with spirits, a walker of dream, a…

“A witch-doctor?” Calliope interrupted impatiently. X’pillae looked a little put out by her interruption but he went on none the less.

“That is not the term the Kinombe would use, but yes, a witch doctor,” he admitted his accent making the last word sound like dock tar.  

“Can you heal the sick?” she asked, intrigued in spite of herself. Instead of responding X’pillae drew a long dagger of some sort of polished bone from his waistband and drew it across his chest. Blood sprang from the gash immediately, flowing down his torso in red rivulets. The witch-doctor began to chant and gesticulate, rising to an undulating crescendo. Activity on the ship ceased as sailors watched the bizarre spectacle. WIth a final stamp of his foot X’pillae concluded whatever it was he was doing. To Calliope’s amazement the wound was closed as if it had never been. X’pillae brushed blood away with a contemptuous gesture. There wasn’t a single whiff of magic about it that Calliope could sense and she was impressed in spite of herself.

“We don’t have any spare cabins, but if you are still interested we will pay you as the ships doctor, a junior officers share. It wasn’t a particularly generous offer but X’pillae’s mouth split in a broad grin and he bowed from the waist. Calliope drew a single silver piece from her pocket and tossed it to the man who snatched it from the air and made it vanish with practiced ease. She shifted her gaze to the girl.

“And you? I suppose you are a mermaid?” Calliope asked sardonically. The girl blushed and looked at the deck.

“No Lady Calliope,” she half murmured. Calliope sat up straighter at the use of her name, while she wasn’t exactly keeping it a secret it was more than she expected a random stranger on the dockside to know. The woman’s blush deepened at the reaction her words had. She really was quite pretty now that Calliope had a closer look at her.

“We ah… we have met before,” Mari went on. Calliope raised an eyebrow, she certainly didn’t remember meeting the woman.

“I was a scribe with Captain Vennagas’ delegation, we stopped at Calaverde to water before we sailed south,” Mari added. Calliope nodded, Vennagas had been a madman from somewhere in Eastern Andreed, he had some bizarre notion about about a Fountain of Youth located in the jungles far to the south. It was the sort of nonsense that people with too much time on their hands and too many books sometimes came up with. He had asked Calliope for funds to underwrite his expedition, a request which she had politely declined though she had fed and entertained the Captain. An adventurous air was something which she had tried to cultivate, partly as a distraction for the mob and partly because it gave her access to intelligence she might otherwise have missed. 

“Ah, I see, and how is the good Captain?” she asked.

“Dead,” Mari replied promptly, looking up to meet Calliope’s eyes through her thick glasses.

“We were swept far south by a hurricane and shipwrecked, the natives killed most of the survivors but I ran away into the jungle. I would have died too but the Kinombe found me and carried me away to their village.

“She was to be a sacrifice to the Rain God,” X’Pillae added helpfully. Calliope shook her head, not in negation, but because it was impossible to imagine the mousy young woman surviving to tell such a tale.

“I take it you aren't a sailor then? I don’t believe we have need of a scribe on…”

Mari fell to her knees and clasped her hands together.

“Please, please I can keep the books, I know accounts and I can learn anything else I need!” Calliope considered it. The Witch didn’t have a purser at present which might eventually become an issue. At present Sketti handled the pay and food, but he could probably use a hand given all the other duties he handled. Besides the girl really was quite pretty.

“I can pay you as a landsman and you can make space for bedding in the hold,” Calliope decided.

“Sketti will show you the ropes, you can work as his mate and as a lob-lolly boy for Mr X’Pillae,” she concluded. Lob-lolly boys, or girls in this case, were responsible for dragging the wounded from the deck, cleaning wounds, and generally helping out the ships doctor. 

As Calliope was speaking a group of armed men mounted on camels made there way down towards the dock. They were dressed in the chainmail of the Sultan’s palace guard and they carried long lances across their saddles. Grimey stood up and looked at the men and then began to clean one of the small swivel guns that were used to repel boarders. The gun technically shouldn’t have been loaded, but judging by the care Grimey was showing with the flint lock, it almost certainly was. Her caution appeared to be needless however because the camel riders stopped twenty meters from the ship and the Sultan’s Vizer rode forward, carrying a roll of parchment with an elaborate seal.