[img]https://i.imgur.com/t76eYv1.jpeg[/img]

Inez Domenique de Galva hated Free Sail.  She hated most of the Antillies in fairness, the choking jungle, the dilapidated buildings, the general disorder. The Castilian islands were not much better, lorded over by degenerate aristocrats and pseudo-aristocrats who couldn’t make it back in Castille, half of them were idiots, the other half cretins. It irritated her to see her national stock so degraded. Free Sail itself had once been Castilian but it had been a minor settlement, abandoned in favor of more prosperous islands when war with the jackals of Albion had forced Castile to consolidate.


“Are you sure this is the place?” the watch commander, a one eyed man named Rodriguez asked, his eyes wide as he beheld her. It wasn’t that Inez was any great beauty. She was closer to thirty than to twenty and her face was sharp and hard. Nor was she possessed of the kind of figure which attracted artists and poets. She was hard and muscular, wiry strength wrapped over a slender frame. Her hair was gathered into the loose bun typically adopted by the women of the Castilian army. It was her family name rather than her looks which impressed Rodriguez for the Galva name was a famous one in her distant homeland. The Dukes of Parma, as the Galvas had been for ten generations, were neither the richest nor the most politically influential but they had piled up honors as soldiers and generals in the unending wars in Medicia and up into the Central Kingdoms. Inez herself had tramped the Golden Road many times, from Videyo to Buucsh and everywhere in between.


“Si, this is where you will find the pirate capitan, an Albionese as I have told you,” she repeated. The watch captain nodded and turned to his men snapping an order. Like a single organism they lifted their weapons and stormed inside. For a moment there was nothing, like a slow match touched to a cannon. Three heartbeats passed then she heard a shout and the crack of a musket.  The sudden eruption of noise was enormous. Howls of rage and pain merged with the gunfire, the thwack of musket butts striking flesh. Half a dozen pistols went off and several windows shattered spraying glass out into the streets in glittering arcs. The doors flew open and one of the patrons tumbled out, grappling and biting at one of the town watch. Inez drew her hanger, a broad bladed infantry sword, once ornate but battered and work worn with use, and clouted the pirate over the back of the head with the pommel, dropping him bonelessly to the street. She seized the stunned watchman by the collar and dragged him to his feet, then shoved him back through the door and into the fray.


“Al diablo con eso,” she muttered, and followed the watchman through the door. She had intended the watch to handle this business but it seemed she might have underestimated the clientles willingness to progress to violence.  The interior of the tavern was utter chaos. Watchmen were locked in combat with patrons, lashing at them with their heavy cudgels. The Black Fleet pirates were fighting back with bottles, barstools, and other improvised weapons. Swords flashed and pistols cracked, blasting chunks of crumbling plaster from the ceiling. Perversely, an organ player, safely shielded by the bulk of his instrument, was continuing to play a spritely reel as the tavern tore itself apart.  Inez ducked a flying bottle and then was caught around the waist by a charging pirate who tackled her into the wall, driving the breath from her lungs, she wrapped her arms around her attackers shoulders as she bounced off the plaster wall, then drove her knee into his crotch sending him staggering back. Spinning, she thrust out her hands against the wall and kicked out with both feet, catching the pirate in the chest and sending him flying into the path of one of his comrades. Both of them went down in a tangle of arms and legs that emitted quite the most sulfurous curses Inez had ever heard. Inez glanced around wildly, seeking the man she had come for. It was impossible to focus on the swirling melee. Here a pirate headbutted a watchmen sending teeth and blood flying, there a watchman smashed a chair to kindling over the back of a roaring Black Fleet man, then picked him up and pitched him over the bar at one of his compatriots. A blond prostitute stood on a low balcony naked to the waist, Inez watched as she took a swig of rum from a bottle before pitching it into the crowd, laughing delightedly and completely indifferent to which side it struck.


Inez struck out towards the most intense knot of action, she snatched up a fallen musket and battered left and right, clearing her way towards the ruck with all the subtlety of cutting through jungle with a machete. With shocking rudeness the ruck exploded as a tall man erupted up from under the table in a shower of peanuts. He snatched up the table like a pavisse shield and charged through the combatants like a siege ram, screaming at the top of his lungs. She had just enough time to curse before he crashed into her, sending her sprawling backwards. Inez crashed onto her back just in time for him to stomp on her chest. Fortunately the half plate she wore beneath her black and buff coat saved her ribs. She seized his leg and yanked hard, sending him spinning to the ground with a stream of anatomically improbable profanity. She leaped onto his back, her hand moving rapidly. The Albionese easily threw her aside and tried to make another dash for the door, but the delay in tangling with her had given the portwatch time to catch up. Half a dozen musket butts and cudgel blows rained down on him in the space of a few seconds and he tumbled to the ground. The watch, hard pressed by the rioting pirates, many of which were now brawling with each other, seized Neil by the arms and dragged him from the tavern, forming a rearguard that bristled with muskets, broken bottles and cudgels. The embattled posse burst out onto the street, dragging their captive as well as their wounded with them. Everyone sprawled in the street gasping for air. A few seconds later several unconscious port watchmen were tossed unceremoniously through the shattered windows.


“You had better be right about this guy,” the port watch leader snapped at Inez, wiping blood from a split lip with the sleeve of his tunic. Inez reached into Neil’s pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper. She appeared to withdraw it anyway, in truth it had been up her sleeve in exactly the same fashion on might use to palm a card in a game of whist. She unfolded it and handed it to the watch commander.

“Just as I told you, a plan to hand control of Free Sail to the Black Fleet,” she declared, nudging Neil with the toe of her boot.