After the third kick, Alice says, rather tiredly, "Mal." However, his name isn't enough to stop him from repeatedly kicking the door. "Mal, come on. It's locked, what do you—"
He never answers. But then, he doesn't need to. For all the many locks securing the door, there is something their captors haven't kept in mind: The ability of a determined elf with a clockwork leg to kick out the hinges.
"Uh, what...?"
Mal doesn't answer. He's busy fiddling with the door, rocking it back and forth in its frame.
"What are you doing?"
"Getting us out of here," Mal grumbles as he works. "Or were you particularly looking forward to being hung in the morning?"
"We wouldn't be hung," Alice says irritably.
"I suppose you're right," Mal continues distractedly. "We're more likely to be shot."
Alice rolls her eyes as Mal throws his weight on the door. With a splintering crack, it separates from both hinges. He pushes it open and then gestures for Alice to lead him through it. "Ladies first," he says. "I mean, unless you'd rather stay around and explain this. I'm sure the splintered door will prove that you're totally innocent of all charges."
"Like hell you're leaving me here," she says quickly, scrambling to her feet. On the other side of the doorway is an empty, nondescript hallway. Mal is close on her tail, but he spares a glance back towards the splintered door.
"I suppose they must have heard that," he says, almost forlorn. "Well, nothing to be done about that. Where do you think our things are?"
Alice shrugs. "Try the other doors?" she suggests, and so they do. One of the unlocked doorways leads to a room with a table on which all of their confiscated belongings dumped. It's suspiciously easy, but Alice is already glancing over her shoulder every few seconds. When Mal drops a heavy chest on the table, she practically jumps out of her skin.
"You doing alright?" Mal asks.
"No," she snaps, though as soon as she's said it, she regrets it. "But what do you care, informant?"
Mal frowns at her. "Alice..."
She holds up a hand to stop him before he can get any further. "While I'd love to shout at you about this, now is not the time. Let's get out of here first, hmm?"
"Fine," he says. "But first, this chest. Can you open it?"
With a sigh, Alice pulls out a few picks to test it. After a minute of frowning and fiddling, she says, "Yes, but not quickly. Is it important?"
"Not if you can't do it quick. Come on, let's go."
Mal heads out of the room. Alice scoops up her tools and follows, so she's a few steps behind when she steps out into the hallway. Needless to say, she's surprised when she sees Mal heading back towards the locked door at the end of the hall.
"Where are you going?" she asks.
"Out of here," Mal says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
"Sure," Alice says. "But why are you going that way?"
"Oh, because you have a better plan?"
"As a matter of fact, I do. Come on, places like this always have a back way out."
"'Places like this'?"
"Yeah, you know, hidey-holes. I've..." She pauses, trying to choose her words carefully. It's a new experience around Mal, but if he really is an informant... "I've gotten into quite a few of them, and they always have a second entrance — or exit, really. So the people whose hidey-hole it is can get out with their valuables."
"And how do you know this?"
She shrugs. "I've done a lot of jobs for Benny," she says, hoping it's vague enough he'll accept it. "If I can't get us out of here in twenty minutes, we can go out the front all guns-blazing," Alice says. "It's not my favorite method, of course, but..."
Mal sighs. "Fine," he says. "You've got ten minutes to find us a way out of here."
She opens her mouth to protest, but his glare cuts her off. Instead, she strides off towards the exit she's confident she'll find.
#
The two of them are crushed in a tiny alcove after a door unexpectedly locks behind them. Unsurprisingly, they're bickering about it within seconds, and not just because there's barely enough space for them to stand.
"Move your elbow!"
"I can't! There's nowhere else to put it!"
"Well, find somewhere! I can't get us out of here with your elbow in my gut!"
"I'm not exactly sure why you need your gut to pick a lock..."
"Oh, excuse me, did you want to get us out of here? Oh, and let me guess. You need your elbow to kick down the door."
"Do you want me to kick down the door?"
"It's made of stone," Alice says dryly. "I mean, if you want to break your leg, by all means..."
Grumbling under his breath, Mal shifts out of the way. Eventually he finds a position where his elbow isn't occupying the same space as Alice's stomach. She doesn't waste time thanking him before fiddling with the lock.
Finally, Alice engages the last tumbler. With a satisfying clunk the mechanisms engage as expected and the door swings open. She stumbles through the opening into the awaiting chamber, which appears to be carved into the very hillside their prison abuts. Mal stretches out a cramped arm with a groan.
"Come on," Alice says. "Let's hope this leads us somewhere we actually want to be."
Not having many other choices, they let the underground tunnel deposit them back outdoors on a near-empty gravel path. They follow that until it becomes a quiet back alley. As soon as they can, they break away to weave through city streets until they reach the Nameless.
The dock is fairly deserted as they approach. Remembering that Mortimer had been able to name his ship, Mal waits until he's nearly on board to call out. "Gunny," he hisses loudly, but there's no response. "Gunny!"
After a moment of silence, he glances at Alice, and then pointedly at the pistol strapped to her thigh.
"Can I trust you not to shoot me with that?" he asks.
"So long as we have mutual enemies," she mutters. He rolls his eyes but heads towards the edge of the ship, easily pulling himself over the railing. He lands on the deck with soft feet, Alice a few steps behind him.
There's no one about, not even on the decks of nearby ships. It sets Alice on edge, and makes Mal outright concerned. So the first thing he does is carefully approach the edge of the hatch and hiss for Gunny. Again, he gets no response.
"If you hear shooting, wait til it's over," he tells Alice, drawing his own pistols.
"And if it's quiet?"
He gives her a look she finds unreadable. "Follow as you'd like," he grunts, and then jumps through the hole in the deck. Alice listens for gunshots, but before she's made up her mind about whether it's safe to climb down, Mal shouts out. "Alice!"
She jumps down. Mal has already approached the cabin door, but it's not hard to see why. There's a trail of dripping blood that leads towards it.
Mal hammers on the door. "Gunny? Gunny, it's Mal. Let me in."
"I come," says a familiar, gruff voice. A moment later, the cabin door opens to reveal a shaken Den. He looks incredibly relieved to see Mal. "Mal! Good. Gunny needs help."
He pulls the door open all the way so Mal and Alice can step through. When they do, they see Gunny with her arm hastily bandaged, sleeping in Mal's bunk. Mal curses angrily.
Then, abruptly, he becomes all business. "Alice, in my chest there's some bandages," he says, already crossing the small room to Gunny's side. "Den, could you boil me some water?"
"Mal," Alice says quietly, "we need to get out of here. Fast."
"And I suppose you know how to wrap a proper bandage?"
"Better than I know how to sail us out of here."
Mal sighs deeply. He knows she's got a point — it's far easier to wrap a bandage than to sail, and it looks like Gunny's already done a halfway decent job of it herself. "Fine. I'll need your help to get off the docks, though. Then I want you to go with Den and get some fresh bandages boiled. And if she wakes up, come let me know."
With that, Mal snaps his goggles into place and heads for the deck. Alice follows suit and, together, they release the Nameless from the Lonely Palms docks.
#
When Gunny comes to take the watch from Mal, she's alone. At least her bandage is in better condition. Mal pointedly raises his eyebrows at her, nodding at her arm, but they're going too fast to bother with a conversation. She shakes her head, giving him a little smile. She's fine; they'll talk about it later.
Then, she nods towards the wheel. With the usual amount of fanfare they trade the watch. Only once Gunny has both hands on the wheel does she actually speak to Mal. "Go talk to her," she says.
Mal gives her a quizzical look, but she's wearing a carefully neutral expression. With a sigh, he heads below. First, he checks the cabin, but he's not surprised when Alice isn't there. Nor is she in the boiler room, though he does find Den stirring vegetables into a large pot of water. He errantly wonders if the stew will taste like the bandages that the pot first boiled.
"She was here," Den says, straightforward as ever in response to Mal's question. "She went below."
Into the hold? Mal wonders, but he thanks Den for his help. He grabs a lantern before heading off to find her.
Even though the hold is empty, it's a good thing he brings the light. Alice is standing in a corner of the hold, nearly out of the ring of illumination his lantern offers. Without it, he never would have noticed her.
"Alice?" he asks hesitantly.
"Fuck off, Mal," she snaps.
He's surprisingly taken aback. "What'd I do now?" he asks.
"You're still a fucking informant," Alice grumbles.
"Oh, you're still hung up on that?"
"Of course I'm still hung up on it!" she exclaims. "What did you think was going to happen, I was just going to stop worrying about the fact that you're an informant?"
"What's there even to worry about?"
Alice finally turns fully towards him, just so he can receive the full force of her glare. "You're worse than Piers," she spits.
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me. You're worse than Piers. At least he was open with his loyalties."
"Oh, really, was he now?"
"More so than you! He never acted like something he wasn't. Sure, he bought people's loyalty, but at least he was open about it."
"And you don't think, perhaps, that a reaction like this is exactly why I didn't tell you about it before now?"
"You really thought you could get away with not telling me something so important?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, yes, I did, because — if you recall, when we met, you had hired me for one job. To take your cargo — or should I say, you — to Tuanaki. And I certainly did that. Did far more than that, even. So, now, tell me. When exactly should I have told you? Before or after I'd tried so hard to keep you out of the Company's sight?"
"Oh, right, because you've done so much to avoid the Company. Except — well, doesn't it seem like a bit of an oxymoron, trying to avoid the Company when you also work for them?"
"Please," Mal says dismissively. "They'd never hire an elf."
Alice gives him a pointed look. "Except maybe to do something like inform for them," she says, as if he's too stupid to realize it on his own.
"Those are two rather separate things."
"No, they aren't! They both help Piers!"
Mal sighs deeply. "Alice, I know you're only a child, but—"
"I'm not a child!" she exclaims angrily, stamping her foot in anger. "I'm twenty years old! I'm a perfectly responsible adult!"
"One who apparently doesn't understand the difference between making ends meet and betraying your morals."
"They're the same thing if they take you to Piers!"
"No, they aren't!" Mal exclaims, frustrated. "Being an informant isn't the same as sharing everything you know."
Alice gives him a look of clear disbelief. "Right. Because you just get to choose what you tell Piers."
"As a matter of fact, I do. And not that you'd care, but I haven't gone anywhere near my contact since I picked you up."
"I should fucking hope not! Otherwise why the hell did I pay you to keep me away from them?"
"Who better to keep you away from the Company than the one who knows them best?"
"Right, because that's exactly how you want to convince me that you're not working for them."
Mal shakes his head. "This is pointless," he mutters.
"You're telling me! I was perfectly content to wile away the hours all by myself, but no, you just had to show up and demand that I forgive you for being an informant!"
"I don't want your forgiveness," he snaps, as though the mere idea is beneath him.
"Then what do you want?"
Mal gives her a hard stare. She returns it with a glare of her own, firm and unyielding. Finally, he says, "You're my crew. Forgive me for caring."
With that, he turns on his heel and walks back to the ladder. He hasn't noticed himself approaching Alice, but it sure feels like his way out has retreated to the far side of the hold. Still, he's got his feet on the second rung by the time Alice calls out his name. It hardly stops him.
Her question does the trick. "Does Benny know?"
He has no words for her. Instead, he spares her only a look. A pointed one, sure, and rife with implied meaning, but a look nonetheless.
What do you think I do for him?
#
A few hours later, there's a timid knock on the door to the cabin. "Mal?" calls an uncertain voice.
"Enter," he says brusquely, and the door opens slowly. Alice steps through and takes her time closing the door. "What is it? We don't have long before the watches change."
"Then I'll make it quick. As soon as we're back on a belt island, I quit."
Mal frowns at her. "Well, that didn't take long. I thought it'd take longer for you to go from 'please please give me a job' to 'never mind, this is too hard'."
"It's not too hard," she says quickly.
"What is it, then?"
A million thoughts run through her head: I can't bear to work for someone who's worked for the Company. I can't trust anyone who sells information to Piers. I've already escaped his control once; I don't want to have to do it again. None of them are good enough, not with Mal looking at her like she's deathly wounded him. I don't want to walk away, she thinks, and that hurts as much as anything he's done.
"I just can't," she says. "I'm sorry. I'll pull my weight until we get back to somewhere civilized, but then we go our separate ways."
Mal sticks out a hand. "It's been a pleasure working with you," he says. "You keep your watches, and I'll get you back to Aparo."
Alice shakes his hand. "Deal," she says.
"Now, speaking of watches," Mal says, getting to his feet. "I've got somewhere to be." After putting on his goggles, he strides past her. Alice watches him go, a little forlorn. She's sure of her decision, but that doesn't make it any easier to leave Mal or the Nameless behind. Still, she's got a few last days to enjoy herself, and she wouldn't miss that for the world.