Von Roberts was a fearsome looking man, perhaps forty years of age, the sea had etched craggy lines into his parched skin. He wore a beared of scraggly black and his left eye was covered by a black patch. He grinned at her with slightly yellowed teeth as he stepped inside and closed the door, sliding a heavy bolt home as he did so.

"You'd think Flintbrook would have better sense than to send a woman to spy," Von Roberts said as he advanced towards Emmaline. The golden haired sorceress backed up, hastily stuffing the last few handfuls of silver into her bodice.

"He didn't send me, I followed your idiot sailors back," she snapped as her rump bumped into the liquor cabinet with a clink of shifting glasses. Von Robert's grinned wickedly.

"Perhaps if he won't give up the quest for silver, he will give up the quest for you?" Von Roberts said raising an eyebrow, he was moving around the central table towards her clearly in no hurry. Emmaline snickered, causing the pirate to pause.

"He cares more about being a pirate than he does about me," she assured Von Roberts. The pirate gave her a questioning look and then his eyes grew harder and colder.

"Well I suppose at least I can sell you at the slave market, you will fetch at least ten thousand silver shcillings," he told her before making a guesture at the chest.

"A real ten thousand schillings that is," he grinned, he stepped towards her reaching out with a caloused hand. Emmaline pulled the pistol Markus had given her from the waistband of her shirt and pointed it at Von Roberts. The pirate captain smirked.

"Please woman, we both know you don't have the..." 

Emmaline pulled the trigger, the hammer snapped forward and the powder hissed and sparked for a second, then subsided without discharging the gun. Von Roberts' single eye widened with shock and anger before growing cold and deadly.

"Well it seems like the God's favor me more than you whore," he declared, "looks like you are out of options."

Emmaline hit him across the face with the pistol, the heavy barrel splitting Von Robert's lips in a spray of blood. The pirate staggered backwards with a shout that was half cry and half curse, his thighs hitting the central table and jouncing the chest before lurching forward to grab at her. Emmaline ducked under his arms and darted to the rear of the cabin, crashing through one of the glass windows with a jump. She got one foot down on the narrow balcony before her momentum carried her into the railing at thigh height, toppling her over the side in a graceless cartwheel that ended with a splash in the harbor twenty feet below.


[i]Two Hours Later[/i]

Rodrigo, one of the Estilian sailors who had been left aboard the Hammer as an anchor watch, stared disconsolately out towards the town, it was only an hour or so before dawn now and the party wasn't so much ending, as collapsing under the weight of alcohol poisoning. The fireworks had ended some time ago, but a cloud of powdersmoke from the celebrations still gave the air a faintly acrid tinge. A handful of sailors had returned, mostly staggering drunk, to collapse in their hammocks, but the majority were still sporting ashore. A sudden disturbance by the bow caught the sailors attention as a pale silvery light swelled beneath the water, resovled a moment later into Emmaline as the womans golden hair broke the water like a whale breaching for air. A silver halo around her head flickered for a moment and then vanished, transforming her from strange and exotic to bedraggled in a moment. Sea weed was tangled in her hair and around her body, and she seemed to be working very hard to tread water.

"Well don't just stand there throw me a line!" she snapped irritably. 

A minute or so later Emmaline had been hauled onto the deck. She was soaked to the skin, her hair matted with sea weed and other pieces of refuse. A small fish had become trapped in her tangled hair which she pulled free and tossed over the side. Her loose fitting sailors clothing was plastered to her body, save around her bosom where it sagged in lumpy bags which clinked metallically when she moved. Rodrigo arched an eyebrow and Emmaline reached in and withdrew a silver shilling, which she flicked to Rodrigo.

"Here," she said, plucking a strand of seaweed out of her hair.

"I'm going to find a bath," she added as shew walked wearily aft towards Markus' cabin, clinking metallically and leaving a trail of sea water with every step.