The air stank of blood and shit. The sun beat down like a hammer that half boiled your brain. Poverty was everywhere, made all the worse by the incredible opulence of the Sultan. Life was cheap and a murder could be purchased for a handful of coins or a cup of half spoiled wine. Calliope Blackwood loved it.


The crowd below was cheering itself hoarse as the surviving slave prostrated himself and then walked back into the pens beneath the ancient arena. The smell of roasted meat and spices wafted up as vendors carried tray laden with chunks of goat grilled on sticks, or rice mixed with milk and cinnamon to refresh the festival goers. Refresh their stomachs anyway, their bloodlust needed no stoking. Already four men, black skinned giants from the Southlands, were being lead into the arena. Each man was dressed in animal skins, lion, tiger, and two patterns Calliope didn’t recognise, and carried wooden shields and long spears with axe-like blades. Their faces were concealed with strange helmets, which Calliope realized must be the skulls of whatever animals had donated the skin. 


The Sultan was laughing as a buxom blonde Imperial girl struggled out of his lap. The girl’s stunning northern figure was too much for the Araybyian silks that tried mightily to contain it. The fat potentate didn’t seem offended by her lack of enthusiasm, nor did he pursue her as she scrambled away from him. Calliope frowned inwardly. She was no patriot, in fact she bore a death mark back in the Empire, but it bothered her to see a fellow Imperial so mistreated. 


“Does it disturb you to see a woman in her proper place Pirate?” Azim Abbasi, the Sultan’s vizer asked with the perpetual sneer that covered his skull like face whenever he was talking to anyone other than his master. Calliope’s hand rested on her hip, though her pistol and sword had been taken when she came into the Sultan’s presence. There was always magic, but the few spells she knew were both unreliable and not really applicable. Even if she tried it the court magician Nasir bin Jaffa would swat her like a bug. Instead, she picked up a grape and bit into it, deliberately spraying juice to make Azim start backwards to avoid soiling his fine green and gold robes.


“Does it disturb you to see a woman, you know, with your partiality to camels and all,” she replied in a sweetly reasonable tone. Azim glared at her, then spat onto the floor beside her booted foot.


“Pirate, I would speak with you!” the Sultan called, apparently tiring of grabbing for the Blonde. Calliope bowed and stepped towards the Sultan. She grabbed the other Imperial girl and shoved her aside theatrically. Only a very keen eye would pick out the fact that one of the broaches Calliope wore was gone, palmed to the harem girl as she thrust her aside. It was a thin sliver of metal, an enameled dragon, just the sort of thing an enterprising prisoner might sharpen to a fine edge.  


“I have given your words some thought,” the fat ruler of Copher declared portentously. It might have been a little more impressive if his fingers hadn’t been sticky with date preserves. Calliope held herself straight, the pose she would have employed if she were standing behind the wheel of a ship that was going into heavy weather.

“You say that with three ships you will be able to drive the corsair Benaro from our shores?” he asked, a trifle skeptically. Calliope felt the hot coppery taste of hate in her throat. Benaro of Savilla had been her first mate once, before he led a mutiny and marooned her on a Manan benighted sandspit to die. He had spent the past two years raiding the rich shores of Araby and so she had come to the Sultan with an offer to help, for a reasonable price of course.

“Easily my lord,” she replied confidently. The roar of the crowd behind her and the blast of brassy trumpets let her know that games were starting up again. The Sultan’s eyes were already sliding past her and she had to stop herself from grinding her teeth in frustration, the little toad just couldn’t follow a thought from beginning to end.

“Very well, I shall consider the matter and give you an answer after consulting with my advisors,” he said, all but shooing her out of the way.


[@POOHEAD189]