Well, of course things wouldn’t go the way the Boss wants.
An eagle is the largest, fiercest hunter in the sky.
A woman who bears the name of a raptor you can never take lightly, even with a wing briefly broken. Taming her is impossible; getting hearts to meet will be anything but easy.
…Not that knots like this come loose just because someone helps.
Siobhan crushed out the cigarette that had burned down in the meantime. The ember that remained should have been fairly hot, yet his expression didn’t change.
It had been a long time since he became a body that couldn’t feel pain.
CLANK…
Siobhan opened the bars and walked in to the wolf beastfolk who had been left alone all this time. He went down on one knee and brought himself level with the creature’s one remaining eye.
“Hey.”
“Grrr…”
When Siobhan came close, the man snuffled, taking his scent. He braced his hands and feet as if to lunge at any moment, but the chains binding him tight kept him from moving an inch.
Even so, watching the bastard snap his jaws at empty air over and over, Siobhan spoke:
“…I know death is the only rest left to you.”
Before others, he had questioned without mercy; alone now, an unexpectedly softened voice came out of him.
“I did too… no, all of us did.”
Just kill me. Once, Siobhan had howled that every day.
He could never forget what he’d seen: his clan butchered before his eyes, the youngest and weakest children branded with marks that would never fade.
The wounds of the body heal; the scars of the past never vanish, and the pain is forever.
“Let me put you down without pain.”
In a voice that held sincere feeling, Siobhan added and asked:
“Who sent you here to find the ‘map’?”
“……”
In the wolf’s gaze—till then only drooling in silence—a very small light flickered for an instant. The tongue, blood-smeared from being nicked by his teeth again and again, writhed under the muzzle.
Siobhan waited with patience. After a time—
In a phlegmy rasp, the wolf beastfolk whispered:
“Be… mi… nest… find…”
The muzzle made it clumsy, but Siobhan heard it clearly.
The serpent seeks a nest.
Under Siobhan’s hardening stare, the wolf split his mouth in a long grin.
“Mas… ter will… find us. Me… you… all… of you…!”
But what ran down the long-split snout were tears of red. After laughing in rapture for a while, he twisted his face again and obsessively chewed at the muzzle.
Even with cracked teeth turning to grit, he didn’t stop trying to bite his tongue. Siobhan watched with cooled eyes, then rose.
He swung his hand and chopped down on the man’s neck.
“Gk—!”
The body sagged in its chains and hung limp.
As if he’d never spoken gently at all, Siobhan growled, rough:
“Let’s see you try.”
Tendon stood out on the back of his big fist as he clenched it.
“Anyone who preys on our Paradise—I’ll rip every last one of them to shreds.”
The killing aura of a savage bear, just barely not gone mad, filled the brig.
***
Twilight light seeped in through the window.
Aquila gave the cuffs and chain a light shake, studied closely for any weak point, then let out a sigh.
I shouldn’t have said it like that.
Because it has nothing to do with you.
At the time she’d thought she was being cool and rational, but looking back, she could have phrased it more gently.
It was a sensitive subject… but I let emotion show. That’s not like me.
And the same went for that man.
Aquila thought of Noce Mostro, whose face had gone blank the instant he heard her words.
After that he had stared at her in silence, then turned his back and walked straight out.
Too vague to call it anger, too odd to call it dismissal…
The reaction she couldn’t parse left her with a bad taste.
Whatever it was, I should have handled it carefully. That one’s on me.
She should have coaxed him and at least gotten these cuffs off. Aquila sighed again. Then she glanced at the door.
…Maybe I try coaxing someone else.
Whether it would work or not, who knew.
Since it had come to this, she might as well try; she cleared her throat and carefully spoke up:
“Do you have the key, by any chance?”
“……”
“I need the washroom too.”
…Tap, tap.
From the corridor, quiet as a mouse until then, footsteps sounded.
The one who eased into view was Milena. Seeing Aquila blocked by the chain fixed to the bedpost, unable to go anywhere, she made a complicated face.
“…How long have you known I was here?”
“Not long.”
“Figures. I only just came.”
Milena clicked her tongue, displeased.
She’d come on Siobhan’s orders, but she’d hesitated right up until the last step.
And what is this human, to be so carefree?
It was very ironic that the one tied up looked far more at ease than the one free to walk.
In any case Milena came up briskly, took a key from her pocket, and freed one of Aquila’s wrists.
“How’s the wound?”
“It twinges a little if I put strength on it, but I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”
“I wasn’t asking out of worry. I asked to see if it would get in the way when I tie your hands behind you.”
“Ah.”
When the hand that had just regained its freedom was moved behind her back, Aquila nodded.
Not as careless as last time.
If both had been freed at once, she’d have overpowered and bolted.
Hiding her regret, Aquila spoke with compliant calm:
“The pants I’m wearing—they’re yours, aren’t they? Thank you for the loan.”
“As if. I’m not taking back something a human wore.”
“I see. Then I’ll accept them gratefully.”
One of Milena’s brows twitched.
She’d snapped back out of spite because she hated hearing thank you from a human, and still the thanks kept coming.
What kind of creature is this?
Whether she knew Milena’s dumbfounded look or not, Aquila flexed the hand now fixed behind her back and asked:
“May I go to the washroom?”
“…If it’s not urgent, hold it a bit. We’re going to the galley now. Use the one there.”
“Me? To the galley? Is that allowed?”
That’s what I said!
But showing she agreed with this human would be absurd; Milena answered with needless irritation:
“How long are you going to freeload, then? I’ll see to your meals myself!”
“……”
At that, Aquila’s expression turned peculiar.
You could just starve me, couldn’t you?
Even if it was at Noce’s will, she had to be anything but welcome among these pirates. She had even kidnapped Milio and raised a ruckus.
And yet—Milio, who’d been kidnapped, had turned around and made her meals; Milena, who snapped at her, was still seeing to her food. Little by little she began to wonder if her definition of pirate had been wrong.
Milena, on the other hand, thought she’d come up with a very plausible excuse and turned her head with prim neatness.
“Humans. Always think every otherfolk is their servant. You think I’m going to wait on the likes of you?”
“That… wasn’t what I meant. So do I just walk out like this? Did Noce—your captain—give permission?”
“Why would I be in the boss’s room, doing this, without the boss’s say-so?”
“Ahaha, right…”
From the moment she realized she was bound, Aquila had assumed she was a confined prisoner; she gave an awkward laugh.
…Was he really tying me just to keep my hands off my neck?
Granted, if he’d wanted her truly immobile, he’d have tied her feet as well.
Aquila glanced down at her free legs; under Milena’s prodding gaze, she slowly slid both feet off the bed. On the floor, long soaked in the color of dusk, sunshine still held a trace of warmth.
And just as she started to rise—
THUD—
“Huh? Hey…?!”
Her knees buckled.
Milena, who had been standing with her arms crossed, started and grabbed Aquila’s shoulders as she pitched forward.
Then, flinching at her own reflex, she grumbled again:
“Khmm—no. Are you an idiot? If you couldn’t get up alone you should have said so from the start—”
But Milena didn’t finish.
“Hey—why is your body this hot—h-hey, what’s this now?”
The human’s skin under her hand was strangely hot. And that wasn’t all.
Milena recoiled at the mark on the right shoulder where her hand touched—through the loosened bandage, the scar was flushing up, dark red like a bruise.
“Hey, hey? Stay with me!”
“Ah…”
Aquila, too, was losing her grip.
Moments ago her body had been fine; all at once her strength drained, and in an instant heat spiked. And then—she felt a burning pain radiate from the shoulder that should have been fine.
Aquila knew this sensation. It was the very reaction to the poison that had driven her to death’s door.
Why…? It was healed…
She remembered clearly how, after her body had joined with Noce’s, she’d been all right. Her shoulder had ached, but she had thought it was only from the wolf beastfolk’s bite.
It wasn’t.
“Hey, human! What is this? Are you all right?”
“…Call him.”
Sweat broke cold over her skin as Aquila’s lips moved:
“Call your boss… Noce… for me…”
But Milena didn’t have to answer.
Thump, thump—. With impatient footfalls, a flamboyant black-haired man burst in.
“Boss…!”
Milena, flustered and at a loss to lay a hand on the human for fear of making it worse, looked at him with a startled face. Lest there be any misunderstanding, she waved both hands in a panic.
“I—I didn’t do anything! Really—”
Without so much as looking at Milena, Noce took one look at Aquila collapsed and swept her up at once, then gave a curt order:
“Got it. Out.”
“Ah…?”
“I said out.”
“Y-yes!”
Milena stared for a beat, stunned at a panic she’d never seen on the boss’s face, then jolted upright under the irritable glance he threw her way and bolted out.