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Patricia knew that the fairy was an agent of the King of Opal and could contact him from a distance, but Netopyrina blocked her. How useful it is to have a fairy bat of your own!
The captive fairy, on the other hand, was a massive inconvenience. Everything shook and rang near her, and objects flew in the air.
«Stop it! You won’t get free,» Patricia shouted at her.
The fairy gave her a sinister smile that made her blood run cold. The dagger, forgotten by someone, flew into the air and swooped down on Patricia like a bird of steel.
While Patricia fought back, the fairy managed to summon a storm. The ship rocked from side to side.
There was no end to the captive fairy’s mischief. The sharp objects began to attack, the ropes twisted into loops and tried to kill the whole crew, and compasses, maps, and telescopes were dancing in the air. This continued until Zeligena and Netopyrina conspired and began to block the fairy together.
That’s when the captive beauty felt a severe headache. Her iridescent eyes blurred. The large spotted wings that made her look like a butterfly sagged.
«Take her into the hold with the cage and lock her in there,» Netopyrina ordered.
Patricia ignored the fact that the assistant had taken over as captain. To save herself from the fairy’s antics, she could give the ship’s command to the devil for a while.
«Wouldn’t it be better to throw her overboard?» Patricia asked hesitantly.
«She could start a mutiny in the Underwater Kingdom. That would be undiplomatic. The mermaids would remember such evil.»
«Is it evil to give someone a captured fairy?»
«It depends on what kind of fairy is she,» Netopyrina watched carefully as the goblins brought the prisoner into the hold. «A fairy is a valuable hostage if you want to blackmail the King of Opal.»
«The loss of one fairy won’t make him too angry. He has dozens of them.»
«Isn’t he violating the rights of the magic emperor?» Zeligena intervened. «It seems that only the lord of the Magic Empire has the right to command fairies.»
«I’ve never heard of such a thing,» Patricia admitted.
Both Zeligena and Netopyrina looked at her strangely.
«Well, I wouldn’t dare denounce him anyway,» Zeligena grumbled, «the swamp fairies don’t have a good relationship with him. He’s become very bitter in the last centuries. In confidence, his wife left him. Wives are always leaving him.»
«Did he have many?»
«How do you say?» Zeligena flapped her green eyelashes nervously.
«And the King of Opal killed his wife himself – sacrificed her during a sorcery ritual. I saw it, so I refused to become his next wife.»
Oops! Patricia faltered when she realized she had spoken. She had sworn to several black fairy vampires guarding the royal crypt that she would not tell anyone about Queen Esperanza’s skeleton that sometimes moved in the niche. The skeleton is wearing a royal dress and jewelry. Underneath the skeleton’s skull, there is still a lingering intelligence.
Now the grave fairies will punish her by taking her life. They are capable of taking lives from a distance. Patricia waited for a minute. Her throat didn’t constrict, her breath didn’t cut off. Her heart didn’t stop beating. Did the grave fairies have no power over her? Could it be the magic ship? The crypt fairies can’t affect someone in a vacuum of alien magic?
«The fairy is a valuable hostage,» Netopyrina repeated. «If you manage to get her on your side, she will reveal to you your enemy’s weaknesses.»
«It’s impossible to get these creatures on your side!»
«But the King of Opal somehow did. They served another ruler before him.»
Patricia had no idea, though the court fairies themselves sometimes hinted at it. The fairies in Opal’s court always spoke in riddles. They surrounded the courtiers, hovering over their heads and tormenting them with eerie conversations. There was no escape from the fairies in Opal, for there were more fairies than people.
Patricia wondered if she should abandon her plans for revenge. The sight of the Opal fairy was so unpleasant that she wanted to forget about Opal.
«In a couple of hours, the ship’s magic will disarm the hostage and you can go down to the hold to question her,» Netopyrina advised.
Patricia tried to delay the unpleasant meeting with the fairy for three to four hours. She really didn’t want to talk to the winged pest. Fairies can hypnotize. One look into her eyes and you’re gone. If the crew on the ship did not consist of magical creatures, the fairy long ago would have charmed everyone and would have taken command of the crew of lunatics, subject to her will.
«It’s about time!» Netopyrina urged. She didn’t even need a watch to tell the time. As night approached, she felt a surge of strength, but during the day she grew weaker. Apparently, her mouse nature had its own clockwork mechanism.
«Come on, let’s wait a little longer. Let her calm down,» Patricia paced the deck and played with her saber. Swinging a saber was a familiar and simple matter, but dealing with the fairies of Opal was complicated politics. Politics gave Patricia a headache. She didn’t know how to negotiate. The last time the King of Opal had negotiated with her, it had turned into a massacre and tragedy. Now Patricia was ashamed to even remember how she had run away from her native shores on a small boat ruled by a dwarf.
«It was a pity that one could not live by physical strength alone, one needed magic and politics. Otherwise the art of swordsmanship would be enough for me…» Patricia did not find support from the two fairies. They respected magic more than martial arts.
Well, to hell with them. Fairies have their own mentality. It was time to interrogate the hostage. Zeligena, Netopyrina, and a few goblins descended into the hold with Patricia.
Instead of a lantern, there was a perch with a sleeping firebird at the entrance to the hold. Zeligena had found a real glass lantern somewhere, with a firefly inside instead of a candle.
«We must ask the firebird not to fly close to the barrels of fire wine, or the whole ship will explode,» Patricia thought.
«It won’t explode, but the firebird will get drunk,» objected the more experienced Zeligena.
Well, if so…
«Where I am?» Patricia looked at the caged fairy, who had already managed to spit out her gag. The ropes used to bind her wrists and ankles were set on fire by the fairy using a spell. She muttered incoherent words to herself, and the ropes caught fire. The fire did not burn the fairy’s own skin.
«Oh, here we are!» The fairy laughed wickedly, and the sharp pins from the walls darted at Patricia. Patricia was barely able to dodge them. Then the barrels started dancing. Dozens of them rose into the air and began to circle in a circle.
There’s fire wine in them! If it spills, it’s the end of everyone.
«Stop it!» Patricia demanded.
«What can you do?» The fairy grinned. «You lost your authority as our ruler a long time ago.»
«I never was. If you remember, the King of Opal didn’t have time to make me his next queen.»
«I didn’t see that,» said the captive fairy defiantly. She tried to break the bars of the cage and failed. The gray bars of enchantment looked fragile, but they were strong.
Patricia looked closely at the fairy’s face, which was covered with a light web of sequins. They made the fairy appear starry-eyed, only her iridescent eyes giving away that she was of the Nightwalker caste.
Indeed, this fairy was not present at the dinner where Patricia had dared to accept from the king a gift of a black ring, which made all the wearers sick with the black plague.
The fairy hostage had a typical heart-shaped face.
«Are you Riabella? Flotel? Alyssandra?» Patricia couldn’t recognize her, but she knew not all the court fairies by name.
«Aleandra,» the fairy corrected, and smiled predatorily again. The teeth beneath her graceful mouth were sharp as needles. It was as if she had a mouth full of needles. You wouldn’t envy whoever she bit.
Netopyrina was giving signs that it was time to begin the interrogation, or the captive would gain strength. While the fairy was distracted by the negotiations, the flying wine barrels were slowly falling back down. The fairy didn’t have enough concentration to do everything at once. She must have been exhausted as she tried to break free from her captivity.
«Where was the fleet headed?» Patricia began to question her.
«Why do you want to know?» Aleandra was wary.
«It is curious.»
«It wasn’t sent for you,» the fairy grinned as if her words were a lie.
«Then who was it sent for?»
«The fleet might have sailed with good intentions.»
«Armed to the teeth?»
«Well, in these times, security is not unreasonable,» the fairy said sullenly. «There’s a war going on. It’s everywhere. Only people don’t know about it. The Emperor and Empress of the Magic Empire are sharing power. Who’s who?»
«What does the King of Opal have to do with this?»
«Ask me what fairies have to do with it?»
«Don’t tease me!» Patricia swung her saber in retaliation.
The fairy just laughed insolently. The floor of the hold shook and the glass in the lantern burst. The firefly broke free and flew away.
«Your outfit is strange,» Aleandra gave Patricia an unpleasant look, «as if you were a gypsy or a beggar.»
«I am not a gypsy, but a pirate captain.»
«What kind of lady would degrade herself to a man’s profession?»
Patricia felt herself covered in mud under the fairy’s gaze. Fairies are such schemers! One word from them would turn any fame into shame.
«It suits me,» Patricia cut her off.
«You could have been queen.»
«One night of ritual and the next morning you are a skeleton in a crown.»
«At least I wouldn’t have to swing a saber. You could stand in a niche like a palace ornament. The grave fairies would serve you well. I think they recognize you for letting you go. I recognize you too.»
The fairy smiled greedily, as if she had met an old rival who was about to be torn apart.
«And the dragon will come for you!»
Patricia didn’t know what she’d done to the dragon. Maybe she had stolen some magical thing that the dragon had left unattended on the coast or in the mountains. Patricia saw strange marks burned into the sand. They had definitely been left by the dragon’s breath. Maybe she shouldn’t have touched the burned sand. She could have broken some dragon spell by scooping up a handful of that sand.
Patricia remembered the strange sounds that had been heard on the coast then. If only she could apologize to the dragon for intruding on his magic then.
«He can smell you in any guise,» the fairy cheered. «You can’t hide from him. Masks won’t help.»
By any guise, she must have meant a bandit’s clothes. Patricia dusted off the lapels of a smart camisole that the goblins had taken off the corpse of the captain of an enemy ship and presented to her.
«Fairies are nothing but trouble!» Patricia muttered.
She must have insulted Zeligena and Netopyrina, because they hissed nervously. You have to be careful what you say when you’re surrounded by evil spirits.
«Or maybe he’ll come,» Patricia decided to mock the evil fairy. «I saw a dragon ship.»
«You saw it?» Aleandra was interested. «Where it was?»
«I won’t tell you.»
«You are a liar! You haven’t seen it, or you’d be burned.»
«And if we meet it now, we’ll burn.»
«Yes,» nodded the fairy in the cage.
«Is it everyone? Is it even you?»
«Uh-huh. You can’t fly away from him. The whole sea will burst into flames. The waves would surge to the heavens, burning anyone who tried to fly away.»
«Is he a living dragon or is it a ship?»
«It is both.»
«How is it so? I’ve never seen it fly. Its bottom always touches the water and the water beneath it catches fire.»
«He’ll either burn up all the seas or find one that hides from him. He probably thinks she is in the Underwater Kingdom, so he ruins the water. Before, fire falls only existed in Tioria, but with the advent of the dragon ship, entire seas become fiery.»
«I saw it myself.»
You have only seen it so far, and then you’ll burn,» the fairy giggled insolently. «You’ll get your ass kicked.»
She probably intended to get free and fly away somehow.
«Keep an eye on her!» Patricia told the goblins.
Her own mind suddenly went blank. There was no need to look into the fairy’s hypnotizing eyes. Patricia staggered out of the hold and into the fresh air. She was about to faint like a sourpuss. And she’s a pirate captain. It’s a shame she’s staggering around like a drunk. That’s the worst thing you can do when you’re dealing with an insolent fairy.
There was no flaming ship on the horizon, but a clear picture suddenly appeared in her mind: the silhouette of a slender aristocrat coming out of the fire and treading on the water, leaving fiery footprints. It’s a young man. He would be very handsome if he were not entirely made of flames. He reaches out to her and wants to say something to her, and the picture fades.
Patricia woke up from her reverie. There was a burn on her elbow, as if someone had really just touched her with fire.
A fiery stranger
As soon as she fell asleep, she dreamed of the fiery young man again. He was treading on the water, and the water under his soles became fiery. There was a solid bonfire in the sea. The young man looked at Patricia with orange eyes fused from the fire. Behind his back fluttered a fiery cloak. What was the cloak! His eyebrows, eyelashes, hair, skin – everything was composed of fire.
