"Treasure Tree Adam!"
Roger's eyes flashed brighter than gold, as if he could already see the ship of his dreams cleaving through the waves. Rayleigh and Gaban wore the same longing on their faces.
"Ku ha ha ha! What are we waiting for? We'll buy it! How much?" Roger thumped his chest, all bravado.
Master Tom took a pull from his bottle, then held up three thick fingers.
Roger's grin froze. He looked to his first mate for help. Rayleigh quietly shifted his gaze to the filigree on his sword hilt, suddenly fascinated.
What an exquisitely made sword.
Roger turned to Gaban. Gaban tilted his head back and studied the sky like he was pondering why the weather was so nice today.
What a very sky-like sky.
On this ship, the priciest things might be the bounties on their heads.
Kael could only shake his head. The Roger Pirates' eternal tradition: never any cash when it matters.
"Ahem." Roger cleared his throat, trying to salvage a little captainly dignity. "So, Master Tom, money is a bit tight at the moment. Any chance we could start on credit?"
"Wah ha ha ha!" Tom's laugh boomed like a bell, shaking sawdust from the rafters of the yard. "Kid, you're even more interesting than I thought. DON!"
When he had laughed his fill, his gaze sharpened. "Adam Wood isn't something you buy just because you have money. It only shows up at top black-market auctions, or in the hands of certain very important people. I don't keep any in stock."
Their excitement sagged.
"But." Tom clapped a hand on Roger's shoulder, the blow so heavy it made him stagger. "I, Tom, respect men who chase their dreams. Money is nothing. If you bring me Adam Wood, I will build your ship for free. I'll pour every ounce of my craft into a kingly vessel that can conquer the sea. DON!"
Free.
Roger blinked, then seized Tom's hand. "For real? Tom, you're a great man!"
"Don't celebrate yet." Tom pulled free. "No Adam, no ship."
They left Tom's Workers and returned to the ship. The news spread fast, and the deck turned into a buzzing beehive. Where did one even find the stuff of legends?
"Forget the black-market auctions. We can't even afford the entry fee," Gaban said, direct as ever.
"That leaves the important people," Rayleigh reasoned.
"Speaking of the richest and most overbearing in the world." Spencer polished a wineglass with elegant fingers. He did not finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
The World Nobles. The Celestial Dragons.
"I did catch a whisper," Moguren drawled around a curl of smoke, eyes turning steely. "A World Government convoy will pass nearby soon, escorting Heavenly Tribute from a member nation. Word is the cargo includes a special building material for a certain Celestial Dragon's new palace."
All eyes snapped to him.
Silence congealed in the air.
Rob a Celestial Dragon's shipment. That was madness even compared to shelling a Marine base. It meant defying the World Government itself, a direct slap at the highest authority in this world.
Newer hands like Nozdon swallowed hard.
"Ku ha ha ha!"
Roger's laugh cracked the hush. He planted a boot on the rail and faced the wind, eyes blazing.
"What are we waiting for? Adam Wood, Heavenly Tribute, we'll take both. All hands, get ready to work!"
A roar of voices shook the rigging. Whatever hesitation had lurked was burned away by their captain's fire.
Kael pressed a palm to his forehead, yet the corner of his mouth tugged upward. He went to the charts and began plotting courses and contingencies with Rayleigh and Spencer.
…
Three days later the sea lay calm as glass when a convoy under the World Government's flag rose on the horizon.
Three Marine warships guarded an enormous, gaudy merchantman. The formation bristled with guns.
"All hands, stand by." Roger drew his saber and grinned. "Time to show them who the true leads of this ocean are."
The battle ignited in an instant.
"Tidecalling Pulse!"
Kael pressed both hands to the rail. Rippled force spilled across the surface. Two walls of water, each more than ten meters high, reared up and slammed into the flanking escorts, breaking their line.
"Open fire!"
The Marine commander's roar tore across the waves.
"In your dreams." Kael's lips curved. "Light Mirage."
The light around the pirate ship warped. An identical phantom hull shimmered into being off their beam. Half the incoming volley screamed into empty water and burst into fountains of spray.
"Now. Drive straight through!" Roger bellowed.
Their ship leapt like an arrow loosed. They punched right into the convoy's heart.
"Leave it to me." Aizak's eyes hardened as his blade whispered free.
He tapped the rail with one toe and launched like a hawk, cutting clean through a warship's mainmast with a single precise stroke.
As the toppled mast crashed down and chaos bloomed, the Roger Pirates landed on Marine decks and turned the storm loose.
On the gilded merchantman, Roger, Rayleigh, and Gaban cut down the responding CP agents with contemptuous ease. Roger's Haoshoku Haki rolled out like thunder. The weak folded in frothing heaps. Those left standing met Rayleigh's swift sword and Gaban's great axes and fell just as quickly.
It ended faster than anyone expected.
Roger kicked open the main hold. He did not find mountains of gold.
He found a reek that gagged the throat, and a silence that chilled the bones.
Hundreds of human beings in rags huddled in cages, eyes empty, bodies crammed together like livestock.
Slaves.
Roger's smile died. Cold killing intent settled over his face. Rayleigh's grip on his hilt went white-knuckled. The blood on Gaban's ax blade looked obscene beneath the hold lamps.
"Filth," Gaban ground out.
Kael had guessed at this, yet anger still surged, hot and choking.
A child's eyes stared at them, huge with terror. The girl whimpered. Her mother clapped a shaking hand over her mouth, bracing for the beating that always followed.
Roger walked over and crouched by the bars. The killing edge vanished from his expression, replaced by a warmth Kael had never seen.
"It's over," he said softly.
One light cut and the iron lock fell open.
"You are free."
The slaves' dead eyes flickered, the first sparks of life kindling.
At the far end of the hold, they found what they had come for. Several enormous timbers that gleamed faintly, each impossibly dense and unscarred. Adam Wood. Next to them sat crates heavy with Heavenly Tribute.
"Captain, what about the money?" Miller Pine asked.
"We take half," Roger said without a glance for the jewels. "The rest gets turned into beli to start their new lives."
"And these people…"
"We bring them to the nearest island and hand them to the Marines," Rayleigh decided at once.
"The Marines?" Nozdon blurted.
"That's right," Kael said. "Right now only the Navy can protect them. We are pirates. Keeping them with us would only invite worse."
"Ku ha ha ha. Settled." Roger laughed, the gloom blowing off him like cloud. "Do good in secret. Give Garp a little homework while we are at it."
Under night's cover they eased toward an island with a Marine branch.
Kael threw a Light Mirage over the harbor and laced it with sound to throw guards to the far side. Rayleigh, Gaban, and the others ferried the freed slaves ashore with several crates of treasure and left a note.
By the time the Marines realized, the Roger Pirates were gone into the dark.
On deck, the crew watched the island dwindle and said nothing.
"One day I am going to drag every last one of those self-styled gods down from their thrones," Roger said to the night. His voice was steady. Iron.
Kael stood behind him, eyes on the Adam Wood stacked along the rail.
It was not only timber for a hull. It was witness. To the highest freedom the sea could offer, and the deepest sin it could hide.
From the moment Tom laid hand to it, the ship born of Adam and Master Tom's craft would be bound to a dream that would shake the world.
"Back to Water Seven," Roger said, turning, his spirit blazing again. "Let's show Tom the treasure we brought him."
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