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"He is a highly respected warlock," said Magnus. "You are, in fact, getting two warlocks for the price of one. "
García had not made his fortune by turning his nose up at bargains. He was instantly and forevermore silent on the subject of sea monsters.
"Welcome," he said instead.
"I dislike boats," Ragnor observed, looking around. "I get vilely seasick. "
The turning green joke was too easy. Magnus was not going to stoop to make it.
"Would you care to elaborate on what this job entails?" he asked instead. "The letter I received said you had need of my particular talents, but I must confess that I have so many talents that I am not sure which one you require. They are all, of course, at your disposal. "
"You are strangers to our shores," said Edmund García. "So perhaps you do not know that the current state of prosperity in Peru rests on our chief export - guano. "
"Whats he saying?" Ragnor asked.
"Nothing you would like, so far," Magnus said. The boat lurched beneath them on the waves. "Pardon me. You were talking about bird droppings. "
"I was," said García. "For a long time the European merchants were the ones who profited most from this trade. Now laws have been passed to ensure that Peruvian merchants will have the upper hand in such dealings, and the Europeans will have to make us partners in their enterprises or retire from the guano business. One of my ships, bearing a large quantity of guano as cargo, will be one of the first sent out now that the laws have been passed. I fear attempts may be made on the ship. "
"You think pirates are out to steal your bird droppings?" Magnus asked.
"Whats going on?" Ragnor moaned piteously.
"You dont want to know. Trust me. " Magnus looked at García. "Varied though my talents are, I am not sure they extend to guarding, ah, guano. "
He was dubious about the cargo, but he did know something about Europeans swooping in and laying claim to everything they saw as if it were unquestionably theirs, land and lives, produce and people.
Besides which, he had never had an adventure on the high seas before.
"We are prepared to pay handsomely," García offered, naming a sum.
"Oh. Well, in that case, consider us hired," said Magnus, and he broke the news to Ragnor.
"Im still not sure about any of this," Ragnor said. "Im not even sure where you got that hat. "
Magnus adjusted it for maximum jauntiness. "Just a little something I picked up. Seemed appropriate for the occasion. "
"Nobody else is wearing anything even remotely like it. "
Magnus cast a disparaging look around at all the fashion-challenged sailors. "I feel sorry for them, of course, but I do not see why that observation should alter my current extremely stylish course of action. "
He looked from the ship deck across to the sea. The water was a particularly clear green, with the same shading of turquoise and emerald as in a polished green tourmaline. Two ships were visible on the horizon - the ship that they were on their way to join, and a second, which Magnus suspected strongly was a pirate ship intent on attacking the first.
Magnus snapped his fingers, and their own ship swallowed the horizon at a gulp.
"Magnus, dont magic the ship to go faster," Ragnor said. "Magnus, why are you magicking the ship to go faster?"
Magnus snapped his fingers again, and blue sparks played along the weather-worn and storm-splintered side of the ship. "I spy dread pirates in the distance. Ready yourself for battle, my greenish friend. "
Ragnor was loudly sick at that and even more loudly unhappy about it, but they were gaining on the two ships, so Magnus was overall pleased.
"We are not hunting pirates. Nobody is a pirate! We are safeguarding cargo and thats all. And what is this cargo, anyway?" Ragnor asked.
"Youre happier not knowing, my sweet little peapod," Magnus assured him.
"Please stop calling me that. "
"I never shall, never," Magnus vowed, and he made a swift economical gesture, with his rings catching the sunshine and painting the air in tiny bright brushstrokes.
The ship Magnus insisted on thinking of as the enemy pirate ship noticeably listed to one side. It was possible Magnus had gone slightly too far there.
García seemed extremely impressed that Magnus could disable ships from a distance, but he wanted to be absolutely sure the cargo was safe, so they drew their vessel alongside the larger ship - the pirate ship was by now lagging far, far behind them.
Magnus was perfectly happy with this state of affairs. Since they were hunting pirates and adventuring on the high seas, there was something that he had always wanted to try.
"You do it too," he urged Ragnor. "It will be dashing. Youll see. "
Then he seized a rope and swung, dashingly, across fathoms of shining blue space and over a stretch of gleaming deck.
Then he dropped, neatly, into the hold.
Ragnor followed him a few moments later.
"Hold your nose," Magnus counseled urgently. "Do not breathe in. Obviously someone was checking on the cargo, and left the hold open, and we both just jumped directly in. "
"And now here we are, all thanks to you, in the soup. "
"If only," said Magnus.
There was a brief pause for them both to evaluate the full horror of the situation. Magnus, personally, was in horror up to his elbows. Even more tragically, he had lost his jaunty hat. He was simply trying not to think of what substance they were mostly buried in. If he thought very hard of anything other than the excrement of tiny winged mammals, he could imagine that he was stuck in something else. Anything else.
"Magnus," Ragnor said. "I can see that the cargo were guarding is some very unpleasant substance, but could you tell me exactly what it is?"
Seeing that concealment and pretense were useless, Magnus told him.
"I hate adventures in Peru," Ragnor said at last in a stifled voice. "I want to go home. "
It was not Magnuss fault when the ensuing warlock tantrum managed to sink the boat full of guano, but he was blamed just the same. Even worse, he was not paid.
Magnuss wanton destruction of Peruvian property was not, however, the reason he was banned from Peru.
