Chapter Text
The ship pitched for three days. It was enough to make the most seasoned sailor turn green, and Vander watched with apprehension as good men retched that morning’s breakfast over the side.
Vander was glad for his broad feet that kept him steady on the deck rolling under him, constantly slick with seawater. He was even more glad for the heavy coat he’d agonized over buying last winter. The waves that surged up over the sides were icy cold, the sheets of rain just as frigid. The storm tossed their ship about like one of Powder’s ragdolls. The best any of them could do was hang on for dear life and ride it out.
Not that the ocean’s fury was anything new—he knew her moods as well as any man could know such an inconstant mistress. But something about this storm felt different, darker than the familiar tyranny of an angry sea. The waters here churned with outright malice. A spiteful sort of sea.
And when the storm did finally stop, Vander found he liked the stillness that followed little better. The Felicia crept upon the lonely bay like a child out of bed, tiptoeing past rocky crags that rose up out of the water on either side of them, a narrow passage opening up onto a great black pit of water.
So this was their destination. Vander looked out over the ghostly bay. Fog clung low to the dark water, and thick clouds stifled out the stars and the waning moon. He shuddered. This bay seemed every bit as cruel as the storm that led them here.
It wasn’t often the crew found themselves in unfamiliar waters. They had their favored hunting grounds, and they tended to stick to them; usually the Felicia prowled trade routes in search of unsuspecting merchant ships to pounce on. There was no cause to come to a lonely bay like this one.
Well. Until now.
They didn’t usually take private contracts, but for the right price, they could be persuaded. And the moment he’d walked through the iron gates of that enormous bloody manor a month ago, Vander knew they had a client with the coin to make them play nice.
He recalled the fussy gardens full of topiaries trimmed into the shapes of ugly dogs, the statues of blandly androgynous youths stark naked, all their tender bits hidden behind a few well-placed leaves. He walked right on past the grand marble steps of the front entrance to climb a stair more fit for boots like his. Simple wood led up the back way in, a discreet servant’s entrance where he wouldn’t scandalize any well-bred ladies.
And then a vast, dark room with plush carpet under his feet. An enormous opening in one wall, a drop of the sea captured behind sparkling glass. Fish the likes of which Vander had never seen. And sitting in front of it, face cast in shifting shades of blue, a perfectly manicured slip of a man with hair and skin so pale they seemed to bleed into one another, prim and regal in a high-backed chair. Their benefactor offered a special request, and the words still echoed inside Vander’s head.
Bring this one back alive.
“I don’t like it,” Vander groused. “We’re not fishermen. What do we know of nets and trawling lines? And why out here, middle of bloody nowhere? Not our territory. Not our trade.”
Benzo chuckled. “Still here though, aren’t you? You’ve been whingeing since we left port, but you got on all the same.”
“Feeling more and more like a damn fool for it. Should’ve sat this one out.”
“Payout this big’s worth’s a little risk. Besides, we both know you’d sail off the edge of the world if the price was right.”
Vander huffed at his old friend and didn’t bother to reply. Easy to mock from where Benzo stood. He just had the one lad to worry about, and he got to keep him at his side, raise his boy on the open sea. Vander had no such luxury. Every voyage meant leaving four young whelps to fend for themselves, each time hoping as he walked out the door their faces wouldn’t change too much by the time he walked back in. But the alternative, watching those four starve or waste their brains and youth as Vander had, was even worse.
Not that it was such a waste when Vander had been their age. Born to the life he was, having plenty of brawn and not much to crow about in the way of brains, a sailor’s life made sense. But his four had the sort of smarts he never had, and they could reach for more. Vander would do all he could to help them climb, but school was expensive.
Would be nice not to have to choose between trousers that actually reached Mylo’s ankles and food that month. The only thing hungrier than four growing children was the education it took to keep their sharp minds busy. School books. Rucksacks. Bloody uniforms. All those damned materials for Powder’s projects. If they could truly catch what that deranged Piltie was after, he wouldn’t have to worry about any of that for a good long while. And maybe he could afford to stay home a few months, spend some precious time with his children.
But they’d drifted a day and a night in this godforsaken bay, and so far they’d caught nothing more exotic than a mackerel. The prize they were after—assuming such a creature actually existed—had eluded them thus far, and Vander’s hopes were waning with the moon.
He might have brooded another hour, staring over the water feeling sorry for himself, if not for the piercing scream that shocked him back to himself. His feet, steady as stone during the raging storm, nearly slipped out from under him now in his haste to jerk upright.
“What in the blazes was that?” he muttered.
Benzo jolted away from his perch against the side of the boat and hurried towards the crew’s quarters. “Fucked if I know, it—Ekko?! What’s the matter?”
Benzo’s boy, a scrawny lad of ten, limbs just starting to turn long and coltish, came darting out of the open door. He skidded to a stop in front of them. “Wasn’t me,” he said, and the tension eased out of Benzo right away. “It’s—it’s Sevika.”
“Sevika?” Vander felt his stomach drop. “If it’s got her to shout, it must be something serious.”
“It’s something alright,” Ekko got out. “It’s—we—it—”
“Out with it, lad,” Vander urged. He’d never known Ekko to be shy a day in his life, and the lad picked now to learn? “What is it?”
Ekko’s throat bobbed. “We got it,” he panted. Ekko looked up at him, and Vander caught a flash of terror in his wide eyes that made that split second of triumph curdle into dread. “But it’s not a bit like what we thought.”