“Don’t make yourself too comfortable on my ship, lass. I’ll be wantin‘ her back… as well as a few other things.”
Holder slapped a hand to his forehead and shook his head in mock sorrow.
“No style. I’ve tried to teach him, but he remains utterly clueless.”
“Pricked your pride, did I?” I grinned, ignoring Holder to salute Corbin with the leg, a tiny bit surprised at how much I’d enjoyed the encounter with the computer pirate. “I think you’ll survive the blow to your ego, Corbin. It’s a game, after all. None of this really matters. It’s all just pretend.”
“Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not,” he said mysteriously as I marched out the door into the bright tropical sunshine.
Chapter 3
Hold, monsters!
—Ibid, Act I
Corbin’s comment rang in my ears despite its soft delivery. What did he mean by it? Was it some sort of a virtual reality reference?
I paused in the middle of the busy square and looked around, admitting to myself that the game designers really had outdone themselves with the creation of a virtual world. The noise of a couple of dozen people talking, laughing, shouting, and generally just getting on with the business of living filled the air, as did the accompanying sounds of donkeys, dogs, geese, sheep, and pigs. I closed my eyes for a minute to block out the computer visions, and drank in the environment.
The sun beat down hot on me, so hot it made a line of sweat prick to life on my forehead. The air was rich with the heavy scent of tropical flowers, counter parted pleasantly— and not so pleasantly—by the heady odor of spices that came from a market stall, and the more earthy smell left by a passing donkey.
Even the salty breeze that swept up a slight hill from the harbor and caressed me, sending my gauzy rags fluttering in its wake, seemed real.
“Sight, sound, scents, touch—it’s all here. I wonder if the glasses send some sort of signal to my brain to make me think I’m experiencing all of this? Regardless, this virtual reality guy really outdid himself,” I said aloud.
“Who would that be, dearie? Ah, ye’re new here, ain’t ye?”
I turned to look at the soft voice at my elbow. A tiny, wizened woman in a tattered skirt clutching an equally tattered shawl to her chest smiled at me, exposing several brown, rotting teeth.
“Yes, I am. You wouldn’t happen to know where I could get another leg, do you? I need it to become an officer.”
She glanced from me to the leg I held clutched in one hand, her lips pursing ever so slightly. “Ye have yerself an extra leg there already.”
“Yes, I know; I took it off a dead man. But I assume I need a couple of them to become an officer. Would you know where I can find others?”
Her lips pursed even harder. “Ye’re lookin‘ a mite lost, and I’m doubtin’ ye’re anxious for the type of attention yer clothes is attractin‘, not with the trouble that’s brewin’ hereabouts with Bart and Corbin about to knock heads. Come with me, and we’ll sort out yer problem.”
A surprisingly strong hand clamped around my wrist, tugging me through the doorway of the building in front of which I’d been standing. I rallied my wits together as I ducked to enter the low doorway. “I’ve met Corbin. He is definitely trouble, although he’s a little less trouble now that I took him down a peg or two. What trouble is brewing between him and this Bart person, if you don’t mind me asking?”
The old woman chuckled as she hauled me into a small outer room. Three women in low-cut bodices sat clustered around an open, glassless window, sewing what looked to be long white dresses. They looked up as we entered the room. “Ye’re full of questions, ain’t ye? ‘Tis the way of it. Those be me girls—
Mags and Suky be the biddies on the left, and that be Sly Jez on the right.
Reggie, some as patronizes me business calls me, but me rightful name is Renata.”
I had no more time than to nod at the three women who eyed me curiously as I was pulled through the room toward a long dirty red curtain that hung in the doorway.
“I’m Earless… eh… Amy Stewart, and I’m delighted to meet you, Renata. And your daughters as well. None of them have spare legs, do they?”
Renata chuckled again as we passed through a tiny dank room with an open fireplace and a couple of sorry-looking couches. She paused outside a door, giving me a long look. “Nay, they don’t. Wouldn’t be popular with the customers if they did, ye see.”
“Not really,” I said, working hard on my “go with the flow” policy. “But that’s okay; it’s probably somewhere in the game documents. Where exactly are we? I mean, does this place have a name?”
“Aye. Ye be on the Turtle’s Back now, dearie.”
“Turtle’s Back,” I said, looking down at the floor. There were no turtles to be en.
She laughed as she pushed open the door and waved me inside. “Nay, Turtle’s Back be the name of the island we’re standin‘ on. I’m imaginin’ that ye’d be likin‘ some real clothes, though, not those rags that are showin’ all yer God-given assets to any who has eyes in his head.”
