Chapter 78: The Secret Task (1/2)

I take one last look at the note in my hand. It contains an invitation to visit the 26th Dorcer alley to meet an informant regarding mentors of the mystical arts. I had been looking forward to learning magic, so the letter was welcome. The problem now is quite obvious.

There is no 26th Dorcer alley.

The street is a dead end with a brick wall between a tailor shop and a writing supply store. Only the lack of ambushers convinces me that this was not a trap.

Or is it?

Two footsteps and two heartbeats come from my back. I turn around and stare at the newcomers as they make their way down the deserted path.

They do not exude danger at all. If anything, the taller one is apprehensive while the shorter one, still a head above me, struts around as if he owned the town.

The taller man is clearly the muscle here. He has the keen eyes and clean make of the mercenary rather than the common arm breaker. He checks corners and roofs with experience but no matter what, his attention invariably returns to me. When it does, he frowns and displays signs of incredulity.

Intriguing.

The second man is queer. There is something about him… I cannot quite put my finger on it…

He has a greying beard and the air of a perfect gentleman, with an impeccably ironed dark blue vest and slack that suit him perfectly. His appearance is unfamiliar. And yet, and yet…

The man stops a few paces away from me and extends his hands disarmingly. His smile is smug beyond reason. In fact, his behavior screams amused superiority and condescending confidence in a way that I have only ever seen…

Oh no. It cannot be. I extend a trembling claw at the man and hiss in anger.

“You… You! ARG.”

“Tut tut, poppet. Manners! You are embarrassing me in front of my friend.”

“Sinead! You dare! Do you know what this town is?”

“Vampire central? Bloodston?”

“It’s the last place you should be! I swear to the Watcher if you get caught stupidly I will drink you dry before I let the others have you.”

“Oh so sweet, my precious poppet, but fret not, I took all necessary precautions to mask any hint of my presence. And we’re leaving soon anyway!”

I frown with suspicion.

“We are?”

“Yes, on a glorious quest to save one of my kin. He is being transported as we speak across the ocean deep. We will have to engage into a tiny bit of piracy to rescue him. You will have to kill a vampire I’m afraid.”

“I am not sure this is a good idea. Not while I finally gained some legitimacy.”

“He is a distasteful man who enjoys torturing his prey before drinking.”

“Your point?”

“Ah, your heart truly is cold. He is also a Lancaster known for his tendency to go after his foe’s human entourage out of spite.”

On one hand, the risks.

On the other hand, the return of the Dread Pirate Ariane the Bloodthirsty, Queen of the Waves.

“Let me just make a few arrangements and summon some interesting help. We do not want to leave witnesses right?”

Sinead’s smile would make any mortal tremble.

Captain Smollett’s tale

It had been a bad year.

The night carried an unseasonably cold wind that chilled Captain Smollett to his very bones. It had been a bad year and it could still get much worse.

Frowning, the man knocked on the wood of the railing for good luck and kept an eye on the endless expanse of waves before him. A passing gust tried in vain to alter his unflappable countenance. Captain Smollett of the Blue Jay may have fallen on hard times, that was true, but he would never forfeit discipline nor manners. No sir! And not honor either.

As for tradition…

Some things had to be sacrificed.

It all started with the Compromise Tariff of 1833. Congress had passed a bill to reduce taxes on import to a more manageable level. Some businesses had flourished, mostly in the south. Some others, which heavily depended on protectionism to be viable, had collapsed. Such was the case for the Blue Jay’s main employer.

To make matters worse, one of his ship’s two masts had split right in the middle during a particularly vicious storm, forcing her into drydock so that she could be repaired.

Now his Blue Jay, his beautiful schooner, was at risk of being lost through bankruptcy.

It was all because of bad luck.

Desperation had led him to consider employment that he would have scoffed at a few months before. Now, even the notoriously underpaid sailors threatened to leave his ship. There had been no choice but to accept Simon Nead’s proposal. His letter of marque had been genuine, as far the captain could tell, but the very act of privateering was distasteful and the guests Nead had brought on board…

There were ten mercenaries trained to kill. Smollett knew that kind. They did not look at you so much as through you and it only meant one thing, that when lead would start to fly, they would lodge an inch of steel in your gut like some shove a loaf in the oven. Clinical. Uncaring. They patrolled around the ship in pairs like bloodhounds and never mixed with the rest of the crew.

Nead himself was entirely different.

The man cheated at cards, the Captain was certain. As sure as the sun rose in the East! And yet his men did not care because he did not cheat to win but to make things more interesting, more alive. Every night now, the men off watch would gather around the table on the lower deck and throw their fates and fortunes on the table, at the mercy of painted paper and bone cubes.

Spades and Hearts would mix with numbers in an unholy dance under the greedy eyes of breathless spectators. They would scream and moan and laugh until drunk with emotion. With feverish fingers and wild abandon, they would count coins and tokens and throw them with panache and far too little thought.

Princes and first sons of merchant houses could not match their flair and passion. Glittering casinos could not match the fire burning in their veins nor the madness in their eyes, while enthroned in the midst of those improvised bacchanals, Nead himself would govern like a sultan of old.

He would needle here and tease there. With one of his words, fortunes would change hands, then again in the other direction but no matter how much they lost, they could never stop. Every night the players were back and every night they would throw themselves at the game as if their life depended on it.

And then there was the woman.

A woman.

On his ship.

It was a non-negotiable clause of the contract bonding Smollett to the service of the enigmatic gentleman. The strange lady would be on board and that was it.

She was a quiet one, and that worried him greatly. She would only come out at night and walk the bridge under the fascinated eye of the sailors at work. She would wear a proper dress that left nothing uncovered and yet hinted at a great figure. The others looked at her with more adoration than lust. She was unattainable, as ethereal and distant as the North star to rustic seamen unused to the fairer sex, for the only gentler contact they had were their relatives and the shore harlots, ugly things who would spread their hairy legs for a quarter a pass. She might as well have belonged to another species.

Perhaps she did.

The others would only steal glances but he did not have to. She was beautiful, of course, with hair like ripe wheat and eyes the color of the sky at summer’s height. Her skin was fair and her manners graceful and yet there was something odd, something that grated him. It was her demeanor. His men saw her and thought she was an aristo, a blue blood or some such. Smollett knew it was a lie. He had attended wealthy parties where the richest scions of the land had gathered to intrigue. He had seen them, and they had not been her match. They had lacked the predatory grace, the unnerving movements and the perfect poise. She was something else.

The woman would walk on the bridge with an incongruous tricorn sat on her pretty head, singing a queer song. It stuck to his mind like shells to a keel. She sang it with a beautiful voice, and slightly off-key. The whole thing was eerie and captivating.

“Here twelve poor men remained on a sinking frigate.

So many lives were lost to a dreadful pirate

Neither tide nor the sky gave the crew no quarter

Off the coast of Cuba they would meet their maker

Oooo, off the coast of Cuba they would meet their maker”

As she sang, she would brush the railing and look out to the sea, where Smollett knew there was nothing, and follow some phantasm with a knowing smile. She was doing this right now.

As he watched, her hand stopped on something and flicked it away with such speed that for a moment, he believed he had hallucinated the gesture. Then she resumed her stroll, humming under her breath.

Smollett stepped forward as soon as she was away. On that piece of familiar railing used to be a stuck nail. The captain had damaged the sleeve of his favorite jacket on the protruding piece of metal, months before. It was gone now, as well as a long sliver of wood. Someone had dug a ghastly furrow through the salt-encrusted oak.

Smollett closed his eyes and prayed.