Orange Town

The morning mist had yet to disperse, but Orange Town's docks were already bustling with the day's work.

The stone-paved roads of the docks were always wet, worn smooth as mirrors by countless feet over countless years.

More than a dozen ships were moored at the berths. Their owners stood by the rails, shouting out prices at the tops of their lungs. The louder voices drowned out the quieter ones, and those with quieter voices resorted to hand gestures.

Dockworkers, bare-chested with towels whose original color could no longer be distinguished draped over their shoulders, ran up and down the gangplanks, unloading crate after crate from ships onto the docks, then loading them from the docks onto ships.

Koldo leaned against a mooring post at the edge of the docks, a grass stem hanging from his mouth.

He wore a dusty old gray shirt, its sleeves rolled above his forearms to reveal two sun-bronzed arms.

His eyes were not large, but they were lively. They swept from left to right, then from right to left, like a seagull perched on a reef, watching every wave that might hide a fish.

He had been at Orange Town's docks for seven years.

Over those seven years, he had watched countless ships come ashore.

Merchant ships, fishing boats, pirate ships, Navy patrol vessels. Whenever a ship docked, he always looked at one thing—the flag.

Merchant ships flew merchant flags, fishing boats flew fishing flags, the Navy flew seagull flags, and pirates flew skull flags on black backgrounds.

A flag told him one thing: where the ship had come from, what the people aboard did for a living, and whether it was worth giving them a second look.

Today's morning mist was thicker than usual. The sea was a sheet of gray, and the outermost berths had been half-swallowed by fog. The fishing boats moored there were no more than vague outlines.

Koldo shifted the grass stem from the left corner of his mouth to the right and adjusted his posture against the mooring post.

Then he saw it.

Within the morning mist, a silhouette slowly came into focus.

It was a type of ship he had never seen before. Its hull gleamed pale silver in the morning light, its bow slightly raised, its lines clean and sharp, like a fish lying upon the water.

As the ship drew closer, Koldo's gaze rose.

At the top of the mast, a flag soaked by the morning mist clung wetly to its halyard. A sea breeze swept through and pulled it open.

Red above, white below—a round fan.

The grass stem at Koldo's mouth froze.

He had spent seven years at Orange Town's docks, and in those seven years, he had seen nearly every merchant flag in East Blue that had a name.

But he had never seen this round fan flag.

Red above, white below. The colors were as simple as they could be.

The lines were crude, nothing like the work of a professional embroiderer. It looked more like someone had drawn the design themselves, then sewn it stitch by stitch. But the simpler the colors, the more often they meant trouble.

The ship docked, and two people came ashore—a boy and a girl.

The two stood on the docks, swallowed by the surrounding clamor. No one paid them any attention.

New faces docked at Orange Town every day. No one would give a ship without a merchant flag a second glance unless it flew a pirate flag.

"Three days," Mila said. Without looking back, her gaze swept from one end of the docks' main street to the other.

Barlow had instructed them aboard the ship: three days to get to the bottom of Orange Town's docks.

Who owned which warehouse, which routes each ship sailed, and who took a cut between cargo owners and shipowners.

Roy took his hand off his sword hilt and flexed his fingers, stiff from the sea wind. "Split up?"

"Split up." Mila tilted her chin to the left. "You take the east side of the docks. I'll take the west. We'll meet back on the ship at dusk."

Roy nodded, turned, and headed east. His figure quickly disappeared into the flow of dockworkers and shipowners.

Mila turned and headed west.

Koldo spat out the grass stem and crushed it beneath his foot.

"Interesting."

He straightened up, brushed the dust from his trousers, and turned into a narrow alley beside the docks.

Barlow disembarked a little later than they did. Damian was left aboard to guard the ship and get in some extra training.

Standing on the gangplank, he pulled a ledger from inside his jacket, opened it to the page holding a sea chart, glanced at it, then closed it and tucked it away again.

He stepped down from the gangplank. Rather than heading toward the docks' main street, he turned into a small alley on the western side of the docks.

Mila had just passed through this alley, but Barlow went deeper in.

He passed through the alley, went by two shops with their doors tightly shut, and stopped before an unmarked wooden door. A row of numbers had been written on it in chalk—the day's fish prices.

It was a code commonly used among fish vendors. The arrangement of the numbers indicated who the buyer was.

Barlow looked at the numbers, then at their order, before turning away.

Roy walked through the warehouse district on the eastern side of the docks.

The warehouses here were larger than those on the western side. Their walls were made of stone, iron locks hung from their doors, and people stood guard outside.

Dockworkers carried crate after crate out of the warehouses. Marks he did not recognize were printed on the crates.

He had made half a circuit through the warehouse district when he stopped at a corner. He could feel it—someone was watching him.

That gaze had been on his back ever since he passed the rope seller's shop.

Roy did not turn around. He kept walking at the same pace, his shoulders swaying with the same rhythm, but his right hand dropped beside his sword hilt.

Mila felt it too.

She walked through the market on the western side of the docks. Fruit stalls lined both sides, oranges and apples piled into small hills as vendors shouted their wares.

As she passed an orange stall, she bent down, picked up an orange, weighed it in her hand, then put it back.

Using the motion of bending over, she glanced behind herself through the space beneath her arm.

A figure stood against a wall more than a dozen stalls away, watching her. She straightened and continued onward.

At dusk, the three returned to the ship one after another.

Damian still sat by the rail, a dagger laid across his knees and a whetstone at his feet. He glanced at the three of them without asking anything.

Barlow sat down on the deck and opened the ledger. Mila leaned against the mast, while Roy crouched by the rail with a hand resting on his knee.

"Someone's watching us," Roy said first.

"At the market on the west side of the docks. One person, standing against a wall. They watched me from the moment I entered until I left," Mila said.

"The warehouse district too," Roy said.

Barlow turned a page in the ledger. "At Orange Town's docks, there are at least eight or ten unfamiliar ships docking every day. Merchant ships, fishing boats, pirate ships—every kind of person comes through here. There's a group at the docks that does nothing but watch newly arrived ships."

He lifted his finger from the ledger and pointed toward the docks. "Then they figure you out—how many people are aboard, how much cargo you're carrying, whether you have weapons, what you do for a living. Before long, whoever needs to come knocking will come knocking."

"What do they come knocking for?" Roy asked.

"Depends. If you look like fat sheep, they carve off a piece. If you look tough, they either leave you alone or try to recruit you. If you look like Navy men, they stay out of your way."

Barlow closed the ledger. "So we don't have much time. Before they figure us out, we have to figure them out first."

Damian picked up the whetstone and ran it over the blade once more. "I'll guard the ship."

He looked at the three of them. "The ship is our root. As long as the root remains, no matter where you go, you can always come back."

Mila pushed herself away from the mast, walked to the rail, and watched the deepening dusk over the docks.

"One hundred thousand Beli."

"What?" Roy looked up at her.

"The money the old man gave us, plus the 'inheritance' from those pirates." Mila's voice was low. "One hundred thousand Beli. What can one hundred thousand Beli do in Orange Town?"

Barlow pulled the ledger from inside his jacket and opened it to a certain page. It was densely filled with numbers.

"Enough to rent a warehouse by the docks, enough to secure a stall in the market, enough to buy our first batch of goods, and enough to make everyone at the docks see us as a fat piece of meat."

He closed the ledger.

"So the money can't be shown."

At dusk, Koldo emerged from the narrow alley and leaned against a wall, staring at the white ash single-masted sailboat at the end of the docks.

Its hull had turned dark gray in the fading light, while the flag atop the mast snapped sharply in the sea wind.

The red-and-white round fan remained eye-catching even as the sky grew darker.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned away. A little tune he hummed drifted out from the depths of the alley.