XIV. Belles to the Walls Part II

“Oh my gods… I can’t… breathe in this thing!” Majel yelled from behind the boutique’s changing room door. 

“Breathing’s overrated!” Winn yelled back, her legs kicked up on a chair as she filed her claws. She was waiting to see Majel’s new dress… 

…for the last fifteen minutes. She had offered some help, but an attempted face-scratching had caused her to keep her distance. 

“It would be… a lot easier… if I could move my frickin’ torso…!” the cat grunted. 

“Everyone zere is going to be wearing some sort of corset or girdle,” the skunk assured her. “Well… except for me, of course. I have a naturelle hourglass figure.”

Then, the grunting came to a halt and the invisible fog of silence filled the room.  

“Majel…? Did you pass out?” Winn asked with a mock sincerity, still focused on her nails. 

There was no response, only a loud THUNK that shook the boutique around. Its walls haven’t seen motion like that since the devastating earthquake that struck Saint Khan’s years ago, the one that managed to give a cay a mountain range. There were a few more thunks from the dressing room before the groans returned. 

Finally, the door creaked open. Out stumbled Majel, shoved into a tan, frilly dress like a sausage in its casing. Her stagnant, gloveless arms were hoisted up from the puffy sleeves. Strands of her slicked-back hair had fallen onto her face. High heels, along with the dress’ skirt, forced her to only take small, uneasy steps. 

“I want to kill my—” Majel groaned before the skunk cut her off.

“Oh! My! Goodness!” Winn beamed. The skunk started to circle around the cat, tugging on the dress to make it even and admiring her work. “So… how do you feel?” she cooed, pinching Majel’s face. 

Majel wanted to hiss at her, but she just didn’t have the breath. “I feel like… I should just skip right over grog… and go straight to rum…” 

Winn shook her head. “No, no more rum! Not only is eet low-class, but eet also says ‘Look at me, I’m a pirate! Arrest me, please!’”

Majel rolled her eyes. “Fine, wine and champagne, then…” 

“Small amounts of wine and champagne,” Winn added.

Majel groaned. She tried to rub her forehead in frustration, but she still couldn’t move her arms.

“Are you not going to finish your pie, captain?” D’anna asked. 

“Wha…?” Cain asked, broken from his trance. He looked down at his plate and the untouched seagull pie on top of it. He didn’t really know why he ordered it in the first place—food didn’t have much appeal when you didn’t have taste buds anymore, let alone a stomach. 

He slid the plate towards D’anna. The elf gladly dug in, but after a few bites, she gave her captain a puzzled look. “Is something wrong? You keep muttering something under your breath.”

“It’s about the payout concernin’ this plunder. Can you believe that the skunk’ll be takin’ a 75% share of tha profit?!” 

D’anna’s eyebrows raised in astonishment—Cain’s moments of generosity were as common as Majel’s moments of soberness. “Woah! You agreed to that?” 

“Absolutely not! Well… not at first,” Cain said before pinching the bridge of his nose. “I just…” 

He sighed and looked to the side. “Here be a tip fer ya, D’anna: Whenever ye’r tellin’ someone a plan, make sure that ye don’t give them all tha details right away. Usin’ that to her leverage, me choices were ta either collaborate with her an’ get a measly 25%, or have her cut me off an’ leave us with nothin’. And while we both know that—” 

“—treasure’s better at the bottom of the sea than in someone else’s hands…” they both said in unison. The skeleton had repeated that phrase so many times that it could be the ship’s motto.

“...I figured that it be best ta not risk it.” There was a moment before he added, “I know ye have people relyin’ on ya, D’anna…” 

“Oh, Captain!” the elf teared up. Cain liked to horde his share of the profits, Majel liked to squander it immediately, but D’anna always sent the majority of her shares back home, to support her struggling dairy farm on Veridia.

Cain, never one to bask in emotional moments, looked to the side. “C’mon and shove tha rest of that pie in yer pie hole, elf! I don’t like leavin’ tha Wound alone for this long.”  

“Ooumph,” D’anna obliged, looking like a pointy-eared chipmunk.

“Hm…” Winn pondered before shaking her head. “Nooonn, I zink zat ze first wig looks better. Eet matches your facial structure and accentuates ze color of your dress…” 

Majel rolled her eyes as she took off her beehive wig. “What do you mean ‘looks better,’ they’re the same bloody style!”

Winn gasped. “Language, mademoiselle! Mes dieux, you swear like a sailor!”

“I am a sailor!”

“Non! You are not! You are a well-to-do socialite and bachelorette!” Winn yelled. She leaned over Majel and dug her finger into her collarbone. “Remember this, if you blow your cover, you blow mine, too!”

“Get your—” Majel began before Winn slapped her. 

“Not finished!” she yelled, covering the protesting Majel’s mouth with a hand. “If our cover gets blown, I will not be afraid to leave you behind. I will not be there to help you back up if you fall. I will not defend you during your trial. I will not try to save you from the gallows. Understand that I am only doing this for that coronet money, and if I have to be the only one sailing back to Saint Khan’s to cash out the prize, then so be it…”

She picked up another orange beehive wig from the mannequin. “Now, put zis godsdamn thing on…”

Cain walked around the Captain’s Quarters of the Festering Wound, his hands behind his back, while D’anna sat in a chair.

The elf thought about it. “You want to rob people’s houses because they would be at the Duke’s party?” 

“Mansions, D’anna, I be wantin’ to rob people’s mansions. All we’ll do is take some trinkets an’ pocket change layin’ around, then soon, that profit margin won’t be 25% fer much longer!” 

D’anna squirmed in her seat. “I don’t know about that, Captain… it feels… personal?” 

“That’s because it be personal, D’anna!” the skeleton said as he took a seat at his desk and began fiddling with a coin between his bony fingers. “It’s not like we be takin’ pennies from cobblers or anything—that’s what these types of people do fer a livin’! And they don’t just steal from the cobblers, it be everyone who can’t fight back—bakers, mothers, fishers… dairy farmers… ”

D’anna gulped. “I-I still don’t know…”

Cain leaned towards her. “Winter’s almost here, elf—do ye really wanna start skimpin’ on hay right now?” 

“Of course not! I just—” D’anna cried before the skeleton interrupted her. 

“—Then how are ye gonna feed those cows of yers with, uh…”

He paused before trying again. “Then how can the farm can get by with only, uh… shit! What’s 25% split into three?” 

D’anna shrugged. “I have no idea. I usually ask Majel when it comes to stuff like that…”

“Well, ya get me point, arithmetics aside!” Cain yelled. He walked to a nearby window and looked at the waves. “Soon, they’ll learn that they can ne’er be safe, not even in their precious abodes. Let the gods serve as my witnesses,” he said, stroking the hilt of his sheathed sword, “After tonight, I’ll see to it that they’ll never feel a moment of safety again…”