Chapter 46

C decided he didn't like the Archipelago.

For one, it was cold. The island was just starting to come into view, but he could almost make out the ice and snow on the island itself, and the air was absolutely freezing. At least the grey trench coat he'd gotten back at Turtle Bay provided more heat than his normal suit, but still, breathing hurt.

Second was the scent. The smell of harsh, burning smoke seemed to fill the air, just thin enough that he couldn't identify the source. Underlying it was ice...and the strange, brittle scent of frozen blood.

He could see towers filling the skylines of several of the islands, and plumes of smoke. Communal fires? For something like this place, he could understand.

He looked back at the officers and the Oni, all assembled. Brother looked back, and beckoned for C to join him. He hurried over.

"Remember the plan?" Brother asked.

C nodded. It was a simple plan. Which was odd, because the old man had made it and Brother and The Captain said that the old man was complexity-addicted.

"Form up, everyone except Gin and Lauren joins the other officers, we go to the palace and meet the person in charge. The Dog?"

Gin snickered. C did what Pravilno had taught him to do to people who laughed at him, and firmly raised his middle finger at Gin.

"The Doge, C," Brother said. "From there, we'll have to trust Grenzer to take charge and do something useful." He looked towards the islands. "Doesn't look like we'll have that much trouble getting there. No obvious battles…"

"I can still tell there's blood," C said.

"Hmph. Maybe we're too late and it's all over bar the looting."

"That'd be nice," The Captain said. "Get paid to do nothing. But luck is never that good for us, is it?"

"You're being fatalistic today, captain," Herman noted.

"Being near a gigantic island that is filled to the brim with toxic minerals and metals will induce a great degree of fatalism, yes," The Captain said, leaning on the haft of his scythe as he watched the approaching islands. After a moment, he squinted, and rubbed at his eyes, before making an annoyed sound.

"Problem?" Brother asked.

"Nothing. Headache," The Captain said.

"If it's a headache, it ain't nothing," Brother said.

"You know what I meant, Kaneki," The Captain said with a sigh.

"Sure, captain. Just don't have a stroke in the middle of meeting this gilded asshole, alright?"

"I'm not going to- you are just fucking with me, aren't you?"

Brother grinned. "If that's what you think, captain. Right." He turned to the Oni. "Each of you take three guys from the crew, spread out, start figuring out what the hell's going on."

Cousin Eka raised an eyebrow. "You want us to be spies?"

"Nah, just keep an ear to the ground and figure out what this place is actually like."

"We hear ya, boss," Cousin Eka said, the other Oni nodding wordlessly. They were growing ever more quiet. Probably smelled what was in the air.

"Everyone else should be more than enough to handle most people who come to see our ships...and on that note, look at what's approaching."

C looked. It was a very strange ship that approached them, like a fatter, angrier version of the Steel Shield longboats, even though it had oars and sails like the Marquis's galley. It had a prow shaped like a dragon's head...which Brother Kaneki was glaring at for some reason.

"Do you not like lizards, brother?" C asked.

Brother blinked, and shook his head. "Reminded me of something," he said shortly. "Not sure what, exactly…feh. What's that symbol on their sail?"

C squinted at it. It looked like a double-headed weird bird. And the words…

"Ultimum...Iudex?"

"The Last Judge. It's Latin," The Captain said, before grinning. "Looks like that's one of the Doge's personal ships. Heh. Seems more a pleasure yacht than anything else, have to wonder where they keep the real warships."

The Captain's grin widened as the oared ship the Marquis was in charge of skittered ahead to meet its larger brother. "Either way, I bet we're going to have an interesting welcome."

They were going to have to be on the lookout for frostbite casualties, Vinci thought idly as they walked down a near-deserted main street, led by a squad of the Ducal Guard- men in fur-covered armor, anonymous behind squarish fur hats, goggles, and balaclavas.

The entire street seemed...frozen over, icicles hanging from eaves and snowdrifts lining the gutters and alleyways. There were very few people out and about, and most of them...most of them gave wary looks to the column of soldiers, mercenaries, and pirates, as if they expected trouble.

Which, to be fair, was entirely reasonable. They were here to cause trouble for certain people. Hopefully not the normal people, but you never knew.

He glanced over his crew. Kaneki had his scarf and gloves, and seemed happy enough in the same battered and patched jacket he always had. Jack was growing his beard out again, and had donned a khaki double-breasted coat to deal with the cold. Herman dressed the same as always, a looming tower of black furs, armor, and leather that made Vinci question the man's mental stability and/or ability to discern color. As for himself, a fur lining to the old lab coat had been easy enough to sew on, and it was quite comfortable. His own internal improvements to his circulatory system rendered gloves and scarves and the like unnecessary.

The skies were clouded, but it didn't look like it was time for snow yet, he thought, looking upwards. Decent fighting conditions, even if things were a bit dim, the sun hidden behind said clouds. Likely wouldn't stay that way for long, though…

He took a deep breath, relishing the bite of the cold. He had little to no idea of conditions here, still, and he didn't yet have a finger on the pulse of the island chain...but he already could figure some things out.

The Archipelago was five islands, a rough circle of them linked by ancient bridges. But they only had a single Log Pose setting. The reason was simple, once you looked at the shape of the islands, their geological activity, and the actual direction the Pose pointed.

The Archipelago was one island, not five- the five that were above the waves were merely bits of a crater rim or something of a similar construction, like fingertips connected to a hand.

The Archipelago was rich in mineral wealth, and little else. He had little idea how long the Doge had been halting trade, but from what Jack had managed to find out on the voyage (apparently sufficiently large bribes to News Coos could get quite a few things delivered to you, much more than just newspapers) pointed to it not having been long. The Archipelago grew what little food it did in greenhouses, the Winter Island far too cold to support much more than that. With imports and exports cut off by the Doge's decree- probably an attempt to keep word from spreading about the rebels- there'd be bodies in the streets from starvation soon enough, and their absence now was a decent indicator that things hadn't completely fallen apart just yet.

Last of all...well, that was Edwyn Roberts. An enormously rich man, nearly as wealthy as the Ducal family itself, who'd come into his wealth by a combination of capitalistic ruthlessness and ingenuity in mining techniques, ending up controlling four-fifths of the Spice mines in the Archipelago. It was said the man could literally smell the valuable veins of the various kinds of Spice in the Archipelago, and avoid the dangerous, miner-killing ones just as easily. One of the briefings Jack had put together included a picture. The man was a caricature of a rich buffoon, features swollen, a bowler hat and tuxedo-clad fool with black, piggish eyes.

Apparently this rebellion, according to the Marquis, was about Edwyn having objected to a minor tax increase on his holdings and injunctions to reduce the activity of the mines, which had been suffering record losses in miners for months...but that didn't fit at all, unless the pirates he'd hired were so dangerous that they could cow a significant number of the Archipelago's subjects into not resisting in the slightest...because even from here, Vinci could tell the mines were still running. The traces of their operation were in the air itself…

Their party came to a stop, and Vinci shook himself out of his thoughts to stare up at the bulk of the Ducal Palace. It was a massive structure, laced with snow and ice covering the bright gold woven into what looked like the very mortar, the lower half red and the top painted white in imitation of the background of the Ducal flag. Despite that, though, the walls were windowless save for gunports, and off to either side the bulk of towers bulged out from the corners of the walls.

The gates were filigreed iron, pretty- and, if Vinci wasn't mistaken, sturdy enough to resist cannon fire. As they creaked open, he saw murder holes lining the lengthy tunnel that passed under the palace walls, places where guns and boiling oil could make mincemeat of anyone entering.

His grin widened as they walked under, past those silent and menacing defenses, and towards a building that, by contrast to the grim massiveness of the walls, seemed almost normal. Large, yes, and painted and gilded in the same fashion, but...it was only four stories high, and resembled a large manor more than anything else.

As they approached, there was a brassy ring of trumpets, and the doors of the manor opened, as a crowd of Ducal Guard and various people in fancy clothing walked out, spreading out to either side in a choreographed fashion.

Well.

It was time to meet the Doge, then.