One Piece Galley La Novels & Stories

Chapter 68: The Gold-Weavers The eastern river docks of the capital were usually a bustling hive of working-class Omegas and heavy timber barges. Today, they were frozen in a state of rigid, uneasy silence. Moored against the central stone pier sat a vessel that didn't belong to the mainland's rugged aesthetic. It was a slender, triple-decked galley forged from pale birchwood and reinforced with polished white-gold filigree. It didn't belch soot like the iron leviathans of the West; its sails were woven from fine, shimmering silk that caught the pale autumn sun.

The crew had been liquidated centuries ago, their bodies turned into smooth, grey statues of solid graphite that sat at the oars, their hands frozen to the slate handles. But at the bow of the slate galley, standing over the figurehead, was a single, active terminal. Xander and I dropped down onto the frozen punctuation reef, our boots slipping on the slick, ink-coated surfaces of the stone characters. We walked up to the galley’s bow, where the terminal was pulsing with a weak, dying violet light. The screen didn't show a ledger or an impairment notice. It showed a single, loop-coded message that had been repeating since the first reformat of Volume One:

A yuppie place, not a getaway, Collins thought, glad that Leonard had chosen to buy a house on an untamed shoreline. The restaurant they were heading for was called The Galley, built above the sailing club on the other side of town and facing towards theHaven, a sheltered little bay where yachts rode at anchor. The main street traffic was heavy and slow. By the time they got through it and reached the parking area adjacent to The Galley, it was precisely eight o'clock.

Flashback Chalk-white rocks jutted out of glass-clear water, sharp as the teeth of some sleeping sea god. The little island was almost deserted, save for a few twisted pines and a lone wooden shack in the distance, probably owned by a retired fisherman who’d traded storms for seagulls. Isola del Gallo. A name that sounded like either the title of an Italian erotic novel or the setting of an upscale murder. In reality, it was prettier than both.