The Third Crossing

9. The Way of Mages

The provocative mage shrugged. "You have come to me voluntarily. I didn't ask you to do so, did I?"

Now he was treating her as if she was a fool; another reason to be enraged. "The fireball floating above you; you created it to show me where you were."

The robed mage gestured toward the sea. "Because I saw that you needed to repair your overestimated ship."

Calling the Wraith 'overestimated' irked Natsu, she had to admit. "What do you know about my ship, to begin with?"

"More than the tales say about it. That it is not faster than the lightening as the seafolks believe."

With anybody outside her crew, Natsu would deny the existence of the Wraith. But that mage mentioned it for a reason. He is here for it, she thought, and the idea scared her. How could you stand between a mage and something he wanted?

"How did you know about the ambush?" she asked, and at once, a guess came to her mind. "It was you." She gaped at him. "You and your people set that ambush for us."

"My people?" Leaning forward toward Natsu, the masked mage clenched his fist. "Did you hear anything about them?"

Natsu didn't get what that menacing tone was for. Regardless of the consequences, she said, "That they are planning for the Third Crossing. It's not a secret now, I presume."

"It is not. And it's why I sent the Turtles after you. I wanted to see for myself if you could outrun them." The mage relaxed his hand. "Plainly, it needs some enhancements."

"You almost killed us just to test our ship?"

"My demon wouldn't have let them kill you. You saw for yourself, didn't you?"

His demon? "Those huge hands..."

"They belong to Shnakar; our servant in the Koyan Sea."

Natsu was wrong about the masked man standing two feet away from her. He was not just a mage; he was a summoner. The rarest and most dangerous kind of mages. "I thought demons only occupied the Boiling Eyes."

"We have left them untamed in the Boiling Eyes to limit the naval access to our islands."

Blast! "You tell me we have been sailing over them across the Koyan Sea all this time?" Natsu exclaimed.

"They are confined here." The mage shrugged. "They can't harm anybody unless we decide so."

Still digesting what she had just learned, Natsu held her temples with both hands as she ambled for a moment. "You control the demons. You control the Koyan navy. What would you need from simple people like us?"

"Something neither the navy nor the demons could help me with. But as I said before; your ship needs a little enhancement."

The fact that a summoner stated clearly that he needed her help instilled some confidence in her. "With all my due respect to your unparalleled powers, I doubt your eligibility to give me this advice. You don't understand how the Wraith works, to begin with."

The masked mage folded his arms across his chest. "You mean the ship that works on a steam engine? It's a brilliant idea, but we all know it wasn't his."

How dare he? "What is this nonsense?" she snapped. "All know that Botan the Squid was the one who built this ship."

"Using the documents he had bought from the Goranians. Darov's stolen documents."

"Botan didn't steal anything," she said without thinking, but after pondering her statement, she realized how ambitious she sounded.

"Someone else did when the Rusakian chemist was in prison. That 'someone' sold the documents to the Byzonts, who in turn sold them to your late husband. He did a great job in building the engine, though."

The father of the Wraith; that was how Botan had cemented his name in the smuggling business. Being the Squid's successor as the commander of the mythical ship was a way to earn her rivals' respect, if not their fear. Realizing now that a major part of the father's legacy was based on a lie would be a shock to Natsu's crew.

"You know about us more than we do," she said bitterly.

"Your deputy's spies were not the only ones who were doing their job," the mage scoffed. "We have eyes as well."

Again, the mage won in the game of leverage, but Natsu wouldn't admit her defeat. He needs the Wraith, she reminded herself. "What kind of enhancements you are talking about?"

"You rely on coal as a source of heat to produce the steam that will eventually move the rotors, right?" The mage was not waiting for her answer, obviously. "I can augment your engine by adding a faster way of heating."

Now he piqued Natsu's curiosity. "And what is that faster way?"

The mage spread his palm, then flexed his fingers without totally closing them. A small fireball appeared out of nowhere, floating a few inches above the mage's hand. "Our way."