The fuse was lit. It wasn't exactly the first surprise of the day Das had been forced to contend with, more like, the last at the bottom of the fucking barrel of surprises that had been his day. He was going to have to teach someone a lesson. It would probably involve pain.

Right now, though, the fuse was lit and they had to move. Making a quick decision, Das turned and searched the storeroom for the other man running point on this particular operation. It was not a particularly large room, but barrels lined the walls from corner to corner in neat little rows. Clearly someone with a mind for conserving space and maximising product had designed it. Fucking merchants. It may have made sense from a business standpoint, but to Das, as he passed the barrel with that strange little knot in its side once again, it was beginning to feel like some particularly unforgiving maze.

"Grip!" He hollered finally, sacrificing stealth for swiftness. "Grip, the fuse is lit, just load up what you've got and let's get the hell out of here."

"What?" A huffing, hairy face popped up from behind the line of chest-high oak barrels that separated them. His face was as red as the bandanna tied to secure his hair back. "Easy for you to say."

"Actually, it was incredibly difficult and painful." Das leaned his weight upon the barrel his partner held jacked up off the ground. "This isn't going to be near enough."

"It'll be close." Grip wrenched the barrel out from under Das's folded arms and turned it on its side. Then, with no apparent confusion as to which direction to head in, he set off rolling.

Das ducked through the newly opened gap in the line of barrels and followed quickly after him. "'Close?' Close isn't good enough! Close only counts in-"

"You realise, if you finish that sentence, that you will have become the captain."

"You realise that neither of us are ever going to have the pleasure of gazing upon the captain's moustached face again, if you don't step fast."

Grip ignored him, as he usually did. He gave the barrel a mighty shove and sent it rolling through the open door, where a plank dropped strategically at the entrance to the storeroom led directly onto the Arrow. The barrel continued its trajectory downwards, and then hit the floor with a loud metallic clank. Das was right behind him, pushing insistently with both hands.

"Quickly, quickly now, no time for polite goodbyes, I am sure they'll understand."

From behind them, in a far off corner of the storeroom came a loud and unsettling bang. The floor rumbled ominously. Grip vaulted over the barrels they'd already managed to stack in the tiny aircraft, and slid into the pilot's seat. Das kicked the plank away, and slammed the door shut with a ‘snick.’ He attempted to right the last barrel, then settled for planting a foot to hold it steady and bracing himself against the cargo bay wall.

No one noticed the small, nondescript ship detach itself from the south-west corner of the storeroom. This particular guild of merchants kept all their stock in the same warehouses, and they were made to be discreet. Ranged side by side for almost half a mile, the floating sheet-metal buildings shone bright and blinding in the sunlight above the clouds. A low, pervasive vibration surrounded the air around them, the telltale mark of anti-gravity boosters. Secured to the bottom of every building, with one in each corner, to keep them aloft. It was a pricey technology, and still new to boot. The designers were yet working out a few major flaws, the first of which being that when one booster shorted out, they all shorted out. This generally made it hard to tell when sabotage had been a factor.

A disreputable man could take advantage of such a situation, Das's contact in the merchant guild had said.

I'll mention it to the captain, Das had replied.

*

Captain Tupolev had a thick accent, and a thick moustache, and a thick skull. It was rumoured he'd won the ship from its previous captain by headbutting him overboard, but none of the existing crew held much stock in rumours. Still, the overpowering majority of them thought it wise to make themselves scarce, when the captain was in a temper. Though to be perfectly honest, it was hard to read his expressions with the moustache obscuring half his face.

They'd landed the Arrow in the hangar bay of the ship almost an hour ago. Das had disembarked immediately, leaving Grip to unload the barrels and slowing his pace only to hurdle over one of the young men doing maintenance with an oil-stained rag. The captain liked to hear about any complications in a job promptly. Grip also had a mean right hook, so it was in his best interests to clear the hangar before the other man realised just how many barrels he was being left to clear out on his own. Now, though, after having covered most of the areas the captain could usually be found, and having seen neither hide nor hair of him, Das was rather at a loss.

It wasn’t as though the ship was very big. It was smaller than the house he’d grown up in. Shabbier, too. He liked the people better, though. Their ship may not have been the prettiest thing in the sky, but it held enough space for eight men, a working kitchen, and whatever cargo they happened to be ferrying that day. Das wrapped a hand around the guardrail that lined the front deck, relishing the feel of open air after a morning spent stuck in that cramped storage room. The wind buffeted him playfully, threatening to tear away the black headband he wore crooked to cover his bad eye. He laughed a little, out of gladness. Fairly soon they’d be descending below cloud level soon, and he’d have to join the others under-deck. The engine belched a cloud of greasy black smoke into the sky behind them, and the ship gave a shuddering lurch. Das smiled.

A large hand landed on his shoulder, with enough force to bruise.

“I hear you’ve been looking for me,” said the captain. As usual, it came out sounding as though he’d said it with a mouth full of cleaning rags. For a man who looked as though he’d been hacked out from a tree by someone who had only a very vague idea of what human men should look like, the captain was extremely skilled at getting the jump on people. Though it didn’t help he’d come up on his left side, Das thought privately. He straightened, though, and tore his gaze away from the endless sky.

“Yes, sir, it’s about the Spitfire job –”

The captain silenced him with another wave of his enormous shovel hands.

“Forget that, Dassault, my boy, we have bigger fish to fry.”

Das raised his eyebrow, intrigued despite best efforts toward the contrary. It was rare the captain bothered to place precedent on one job over another.

“Is that so?”

The captain nodded, and then smiled as though he were particularly proud of himself. The effect was so unsettling that Das almost had the urge to climb back down to the hangar bay and into Grip’s waiting fists.

“What do you know about the royal family?”

“Ah,” Das blinked. Thought about it, and then blinked again. “Wait – what?”

The captain gazed at him with an expression of limited patience. Mist was swirling around their boots, now. They would be descending into the clouds soon enough.

Das thought quickly. “Well, the king, he’s on his…two...three – third wife now, I guess. And then there’s the twins. Wait, shit, one of them died last month, didn’t he? So the princess, then.” He finished with an accomplished nod. “She’s a babe.”

“The princess is our job,” the captain said, expression unchanged. “The king, he is concerned with all this upset, in the West. He worries someone may try to take his daughter. Use her as a bargaining chip.”

“No way,” Das snapped, before he could help himself. “What are we now, bodyguards? He’d better be paying us a lot.” Then, because the captain’s head really did look suspiciously like a weapon, he added: “Sir.”

The captain shook his head. “You are missing the point. We are going to get there, and take her first.”

The city where the palace was had very little place for men like those in Tupolev’s crew. Over the past few years, his Majesty the king had been making things more difficult, hiring on specialists in the police force, while at the same time handing out dispensations to the merchant’s guild that allowed them rig explosion traps around a shipment, or poison select amounts of goods known to be valuable on the black market. Murder wasn’t murder where pirates were concerned, seemed to be the unofficial royal policy.

Das glared at the thick, cream-coloured towers that were all that was visible of the king’s palace from across town where they’d docked their ship. He spat over the edge in disgust.

“Don’t get us evicted from another parking ground.” Grip flipped over his final card in the game a few men had assembled on the aft deck. He glanced up at Das, still staring spitefully off into the distance.

“A better use of your time would be to get in here and stop Grip robbing us all blind,” complained one of the deck hands, whose name had been something lengthy and unpronounceable at one time. Mostly now he was called Mig.

“If you were all blind,” said Das, “then I’d be king.”

“What?” Mig scratched his head irritably. He was often irritable when playing cards with Grip. The other man had a sense for the good hands that was simply unnatural. “Well fine, if you don’t want in just say so.”

Das slouched lazily against the railing, scratching the brow over his bad eye absently. “Mig, old chap, I would love nothing better than to trounce the lot of you. But our great and moustached captain decreed that I keep watch, and I –” here he paused to give a mock salute, “I am but a humble first mate.”

“Second mate,” Grip interjected, counting his latest spoils. “Just because old Typhoon got knocked off, it doesn’t equate to automatic promotion.”

“Actually, that’s exactly what it –”

“Hsht,” Mig interrupted, his eyes on something over Das’s shoulder. “The captain’s back.”

There was an immediate thundering of booted feet as everyone rushed the back of the ship at once, even those that had been engrossed in their next hand. Das disappeared momentarily under the crush of bodies. When he emerged, thanks mostly to excessive use of elbows, Grip hadn’t moved. In fact, he was still counting his money.

“You could have warned me,” Das said. He adjusted the headband over his eye.

Grip shrugged. “Seemed like you had everything under control.”

Heading towards them, above the city, was a sleek blue-silver dirigible. It skirted low over the tiled rooftops, casting an enormous shadow over blocks at a time. From their ship in the landing bay, Das could vaguely make out a few children-shaped specks chasing down the main street.

“Big ship for just one person,” he said.

“Maybe she has a lot of luggage.” Grip tucked his billfold into his boot.

There was an exclamation of approval from the crowd gathered on deck. Das looked up just in time to see the royal zeppelin heading into an elegant landing on the level above them, reserved for important visitors or dignitaries. The crew held off until the very last sliver of silver had disappeared, then exploded in a cacophony of whistles and comments ranging from the current budget of the royal treasury to the princess’s imaginary attributes.

“Bet there’s enough for a god’s ransom in those safes.”

“Didn’t she turn eighteen last spring?”

“Enough to get anyone stupid enough to try it locked up for life, maybe.”

“‘Locked up,’ shit, they’ll kill you for that.”

“How do you know the princess’s birthday?”

A tap on his shoulder made Das look up, and Grip pointed with his thumb. Perhaps because they’d all been assuming the errand would take longer, no one had let down the boarding ramp. He sighed, and took off at a run. There was a round trapdoor on the starboard side of the ship that led almost directly to the bridge by way of an old ventilation shaft. Das had discovered it among his first few years flying with the captain, though it remained fairly useless for the majority of the crew, who couldn’t fit through the opening. With a wrench and groan of machinery, the ship went about extending its ramp. He allowed himself a moment to relish the feeling of being alone on the bridge, every control imaginable at his fingertips. Das was not so desperate for his own ship that he’d kill another man for one, but lately he’d been thinking. It might be nice.

Now that he was inside, it seemed practical to go and wait to greet the captain and their new guests. It was still a slightly surreal concept to wrap his head around. The daughter of the king, a man less fondly referred to as the Thieveshammer in certain circles, was going to be living aboard a pirate ship for an as-yet undetermined length of time. Presumably until matters in the West had settled down.

Das leaned against the opened hatchway in front of the ramp. Arms folded and legs crossed, he cast an impatient eye around the room. One of his bootlaces had broken again, and would need to be replaced. Perhaps the princess would be a sparkling conversationalist. Perhaps she would fall over the edge, and really give the king a reason to hate pirates.

A barking laugh rang out and filled the near-empty landing bay, reverberating off the walls. Das immediately felt the beginnings of a headache. He straightened his jacket, and ran his fingers through his hair in a half-hearted attempt at looking presentable.

The captain was walking ahead, his boots clanking mutedly against the grated metal floor of the air dock. Behind him came a slim figure in a yellow dress. She had a parasol over her head, and it was only as the strange little party came closer that Das was able to tell that it was actually the man next to her who held it. He was clearly an Easterner, and wearing the dark blue greatcoat of the king’s military.

“Ah!” Tupolev bellowed. It was easy to tell when the captain was in a good mood, as the overall volume of his voice tended to double. “Good man. Your highness, first mate Dassault Ouragan.”

Das walked down the ramp to meet them halfway and stuck out his hand. “Do you have a name, too? Or is it strictly your highness?”

A thunderclap of anger passed over the captain’s face, then disappeared. “It is strictly ‘your highness,’ if you know what’s good for you.”

The princess looked at her feet. Close to, there was something about her that made Das uneasy. She was nearly as tall as him, for one thing. Yellow veils in the same shade as her dress covered her hair and the lower half of her face. It was the latest fashion in the desert provinces, or so Grip’s cousin had informed them upon their last visit.

The tall Easterner at the princess’s side cleared his throat, and her head flew up as though she’d been startled.

“This is Shen Yang,” she said, voice muffled slightly by the veil. “My bodyguard.”

“Plenty of strong and able men aboard this ship, miss. I mean, your highness,” Das corrected himself quickly, as the captain shot him another dark look.

“Yes. That’s what I’m worried about.”

With seemingly no interest in continuing the conversation, the princess turned to her bodyguard and nodded. The captain straightened at attention once more, and nudged Das aside none too gently as they made their way inside the ship. He scowled ineffectively at the back of Tupolev’s hat. Amidst the noise of the captain’s tour, peppered with the occasional comment from a higher, lilting voice, Das climbed into the old ventilation shaft in the bridge and came out on deck again. Grip was sitting nearby on the spare generator, sharpening the knife he kept hidden in his belt.

“Did you meet the princess?”

“Yeah.” Das’s smile was all points. “You wouldn’t like her.”

“Disappointing?” Grip raised his eyebrows.

“Only in certain ah, areas,” said Das. He cupped his hands suggestively in front of his chest and then let them fall.

“Oh.” Grip blew carefully along the length of the blade. He laughed, sudden and deep like the striking of a drum. “Should be just your type, then.”