The house was dirty.

If you could even call it that. It was built into the side of stairs that led up to the city proper. The entire dock was more than a whole level below the rest of the city, but the old man had to go down a few steps to get to his door. The ground under my feet was moist and there were a few puddles from whenever it had rained last and water had run down the stairs instead of flowing off the docks that we were across from.

I’d seen crazed Touched that were housing Zombies like they were children, and some of those places were cleaner than the shack that the captain called a home. Eveth gagged at the blend of the smells of too many different types of different containers that should have been emptied at least daily. It looked like instead of carrying them out of the cave, the old man would just stack them up in the corner. There was a hint of decomposition that told me that a lot of gardeners would love to have some of the fermenting fertilizer that he was brewing underground.

The rest of the house was full of broken wooden items, torn cloth, scraps of pottery, and a few weapons that were way past the point of usability for even an emergency. It was like this had been the place where dockworkers had thrown their trash instead of burning it or tossing it into the water. The old man used his wooden leg as a rake to push the piles aside as he trudged through the sea of mess to the wall opposite the door.

“Don’t just stand there.” He looked over at us as he lit a lantern and hung it on a hook hanging from the ceiling. “You can’t see nothin’ from out there.” He squinted as he looked the two of us over. “Unless you two Backers got really good eyesight!” He laughed like he had just made a joke.

“I’d hate to mess up your organization.” Eveth looked at me, then took a step back. “I think I’ll wait out here and let Byler explain it to me.”

“Don’t be shy!” The bald man playfully kicked a pile, which made the offensive smell worse. “Sometimes you got to stir things up a bit to get them movin’!”

“Why don’t you just bring the map out here?” I didn’t want to go into the dump either. In fact, I was a little curious how the place wasn’t catching on fire with all the gas that was coming out the door.

“Never known Backers to be afraid of nothin’!” The old captain yanked a four foot wide piece of faded paper off of the wall and began wading back out to us. “But I guess everyone afraid of somethin’.” His eye twinkled like he’d just found treasure.

I didn’t care if he thought we were afraid of the mess. I’d cleaned far worse things off of myself more times than I could count, but just because I had and could didn’t mean that I wanted to again if I didn’t have to.

“Nothin’ to put this on…” The former captain grumbled as he looked around.

Eveth backed up the steps, so he could put the map down at the top of them. He set the lantern down on one corner, then smoothed it with his right hand.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“We’re here.” He pointed at the castle icon that was labeled Port Reggo. He dragged his finger over to the crescent island that was just to the east. “We’ve seen the ghost ship on the backside of this cursed island.”

I looked at the map, then across the water. I couldn’t see anything, but there was barely any light out, which I doubted would help me see much more than what I could see with my enhanced vision. I turned back to the paper on the ground. It went as far north as Carthage and went as far south as Port Town, though it didn’t have anything below that. Which was fine because I knew Port Town was at the very southern tip of the peninsula. It also went far enough west to include the entire peninsula, though it didn’t have much of the geography from inland, just the shore filled in. Whoever drew the map had probably never left a ship, or if they had, they’d not gone far from the shore.

“That looks like a pretty big island.” I looked at the old captain. “Why wasn’t the city moved there?”

Islands were invaluable. Zombies couldn’t swim and while they didn’t need to breathe, for some reason, they would crawl out of water as quickly as they could. Which meant that any island could be considered fairly safe, unless the water iced over. As far as that island was from the shore, I doubted winters would ever get cold enough that enough ice would form that the Zombies could get across.

“Cause it’s cursed!” Jace sighed. “Weren’t you listenin’?”

“How is it cursed?” I glanced over at Eveth. I’d heard of curses, but that was something that required magic to fix, which had been way outside of my experience as an apprentice.

The blonde had moved away from the map, though I wasn’t sure if that was because of something she knew or just because of the odor that was leaking out of the open door behind the old man.

“If I knew that, then it wouldn’t be a curse!” The former captain laughed, then his voice got serious and his tone lower. “But anyone who tries to set foot on it, never comes back.”

“And you’re sure that’s where the ships are?”

The bald man put his right hand over his chest. “As sure as the sea is deep.”

“Well…” I stood up straight and nodded to Eveth. “We’re going to keep looking around, but we’ll let the Master know what you found.”

“If you want me to take you out there…” Captain Perrous roughly rolled up the map. “You know where to find me. Cause ain’t no one else here brave enough to do it.” His face beamed as he stuck out his chest.

“I thought you didn’t have a boat anymore.” I tried not to sound like I was accusing him of lying.

“I still have a boat.” He pointed at the dock. “It’s just a small one, but it’ll get you there!”

“Thanks.” I started walking away.

Once we were out of earshot, Eveth leaned closer to me and whispered. “Are we really going to go to a cursed island?”

“Maybe.” I glazed back at where the old man had been before looking at her. “It won’t take us too long to look into it and if we can figure out what this curse is, then maybe we can fix it so that all of these people can move over there.”

She nodded, but didn’t say anything.

I left her to her thoughts as I looked around. In a few hours people should start waking up. Maybe then, some other people would have better information for us, though I had a feeling that regardless of whatever else we’d learned, Val would want to check out the island before we left.