The water suddenly became shallow and clear a few miles out from Adler’s Grave. I could see a barren sandscape all around us, broken only by the occasional school of fish on their way somewhere else, or by a patch of stringy green seaweed clinging desperately to life in the aquatic wasteland.

Adler’s Grave itself seemed to be nothing more than a series of steel or, sometimes, wooden platforms floating on the water, stacked on top of each other. It grew larger and taller as we approached, and I guessed it would have measured about two miles across if I’d had a mind to take a really long measuring tape to it. There were three layers to it, each of them seeming to be filled with light weight wooden buildings. Heavy concrete cylinders held the structure up, emerging from the shallow floor of the ocean here.

A dock extended from it and I could see a number of ships, and not just a few. At least a few hundred, the docks seeming to stretch around the side of the port, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the docks surrounded Alder’s Grave on every side.

There were other ships floating here and there. The people on them didn’t seem particularly perturbed by the column of smoke rising from the port. First Mate pulled us along side one of these boats.

“What happened?” Thatch asked a one legged man whose face was so sunburned it looked like a leather mask. He was sitting on the back of a little blue boat emblazoned with the word’s; ‘The Dirty Skipper’, a fishing rod in hand. It helped me relax a little, seeing him. He seemed so unconcerned I couldn’t imagine something absolutely terrible like a giant hydra attack had happened.

“Dunno.” He said, “There’s a fire on the Sun Tier, in the old district where they can afford to have buildings made out of something other than a slab o’ rock. Been burning since yesterday. Don’t rightly know why. Don’t rightly care. I live in a concrete block in the Water District.” His leather skin cracked into a smile. “I’m not one to wish harm on others, o’ course. But it’s nice to see something bad happen to them fancy folk up there instead of the other way around.”

“Thank you, sir.” Thatch said, “I wish you luck on your fishing trip.”

“Much appreciated. I’m fixing to get my leg back from the fish what took it.”

Thatch’s head cocked, but he wisely, in my opinion, did not ask for details.”

We anchored our ship on a dock where a little man in a bowler hat was waiting for us. Aside from the bowler hat, he was wearing a nice two piece suit that had once been black but had since been weathered to grey. It looked clean, but it’s edges were fraying and coming undone. He looked like a gentleman from the 1920’s that had been dunked in sea water and then left to dry on the beach for too long.

“Povold.” First Mate said, “What do you want? This our spot and we’re all paid up.”

“It is?” I asked Melody. It was a tiny little spit of wood sticking out of the main dock. Our ship wasn’t huge, but it was the biggest one on this side of the port. This area looked like it was where small fishing or leisure vessels would be launched from.

“I don’t know if you’ve seen the giant plume of smoke, darling.” He said, wiping away sweat from his forehead with a small, monogrammed cloth as faded as his attire was. “But as Dockmaster I’ve got to take a poke around. Make sure no other unsavory invaders are introduced into the beautiful, delicate ecosystem that is our community. Anything to declare?”

“We’ve got what we were asked for and nothing more.”

“What about him?” He said, raising an eyebrow at me.

“That’s Sam. He’s crew. Not really any of your business, Povold. If you want to take a look around, go ahead, but we’ve got stuff to do and things to unload so hurry it up.”

“Of course. I’ve no intention of inconveniencing you.” He said, but when we’d slid the gang plank down to him, the way he moved, with little steps and frequent stops to wipe more sweat off his brow, made me think that’s exactly what he was trying to do.

“Alright. I’m getting off the ship.” Elma said when Povold’s sun stained leather shoes ‘clicked’ onto the deck.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait here while I inspect the hold.”

Elma blinked at him and smiled.

“Nah.” She said, and simply walked down the gangplank. Povold looked cross, but didn’t stop her. “Meet me at the ‘Pike’ later for a drink, guys. I’ve got stuff to do!”

“You’ll stay there!” He said, jabbing a finger at me. “I don’t know you!”

“I didn’t even move.” I said,

“So what?” First Mate said, “What are you going to do? Send a letter back to the mainland asking for a background check? Have someone follow him around the whole time we’re here? Just stuff it, we’ve been coming here for years. We don’t even know what happened.”

“Somebody set The Local Chapter of the Sacred Trust on fire. It spread to the surrounding buildings. Killed their Chapter Leader who was inside at the time, and the father of a family of three that was living in the flat next door. Everybody else evacuated in time but there’s quite a lot of property damage.”

My spine stiffened, and First Mate met my eyes, her eyebrows raised. She didn’t seem suspicious, just curious.

“You won’t see me shed tears for the Sacred Trust Temple. They probably started the fires themselves. Half of Caligon’s laws are to try and hobble those madmen, to stop them spreading elsewhere. I just wish there hadn’t been so much collateral damage, and until arson is ruled out we need to be careful.”

I almost snapped ‘It’s a Chapter House, not a temple!’ at him, but decided to hold my tongue at the last second.

When Povold turned away, I flexed and activated my augments. Within moments, I was invisible.

Hawthorn and First Mate gave each other a quizzical look, but didn’t say anything.

“Regardless…” Povold continued, turning again and noticing my absence.

“First Mate! Where did your man go? I explicitly told him to stay here!”

“Come off it, Povold.” First Mate sighed as I crept off the ship. The rocking of the boat masked any creaks my feet made on the loose gangplank. It wasn’t as if an arrogant little man like Povold was sharp enough to catch me if I didn’t want him to, anyway.

I ducked behind a nearby shack that smelled strongly of rotten fish and headed into town.

I faded back into existence and hurried away. Someone had burned down the Chapter House? Right when I needed it? Not long after I met Aster and crushed his little spy bug? I didn’t believe in coincidences at the best of times. I needed to do some digging and make sure whoever didn’t set the fire didn’t set their sights on me, next.

Adler’s Grave, at least this portion of it, was just one giant pier. Long straight wooden walk ways with homes and places of business built on top of them. In between these walkways salt stained, rotting platforms of wood floated in the water, connected to each other by unstable looking bridges, sometimes nothing more than planks slid across the water. I had a feeling this area was not in the plan when Adler’s Grave was made.

I watched as a pair of kids wrestled on one of these bridges, the older girl pushing a little boy no older than seven into the water. He went into the shaded ocean with a ‘PLOP’ and immediately resurfaced, shouting profanities at the now laughing girl I would not have expected out of the mouth of a child so young.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The ceiling was plain, bare concrete, like on the inside of a parking garage. But it was high up enough not to feel oppressive. In addition, the ceiling was broken up into sections. In a place this big they couldn’t just pour out a singular concrete platform two miles long. Each of the huge concrete pillars, each marked with a letter and numbers in a ring around the pillar below it held a number of platforms so there were breaks in the ceiling, the gaps connected by bridges I could see people using, that also let light down into the lower levels. That wasn’t quite enough for everyone's needs, and there were a number of electric lights humming in varying states of distress. I doubted the salty humidity was terribly good for them.

The people down here were like their town. Rough, poor looking and distinctly nautical. I saw a male Water Folk fishing, completely naked, in a little boat he had apparently paddled into the middle of town, in between the planks and bridges. That wasn’t the norm, but shirts in general seemed to be out of fashion for even human men and young children, who all ran around bareback. The women weren’t much better. Most of them wore tank tops and shorts, or T-shirts that were several times too big for them and acted more as a dress than anything else. I guess I wouldn’t wear anything nice either if I knew stepping outside was probably going to involve getting soaked in salt water. I definitely stuck out here, in the dark button down and black pants I wore. I was beginning to sweat unpleasantly.

I thought I knew where I was going. I wanted the center of town, heading for the base of Piller H section 4.

Naturally this seemed to lead me across the most rotten, unused looking platforms and onto a pier that had less natural light and buildings that looked so disreputable rats likely didn’t even live in them.

I saw a Barbershop, the white, blue and red pole next to the door neither lit nor spinning, that likely wasn’t really a barber shop owing to the number of angry looking men and women clad in bandanas and wife beaters that were loitering around it. That and the smell of something unpleasantly chemical that I recognized as Kaul Poison seemed to be wafting out of one of it’s open upstairs windows.

I sped up when a man, who upon closer inspection I realized was actually one of the Water Folk if his clawed and webbed hands were any judge, straightened and stared in my direction. Kaul Poison was used for a variety of lovely things, from drugs to an acid so strong it could eat through diamond in seconds and, to be fair, if distilled, a type of tonic that would leave your hair startlingly lustrous, if painful to touch.

They didn’t follow me, thankfully. I had no idea if Kaul poison was illegal here like it was in Caligon, but either way I wanted nothing to do with anyone that was messing with the stuff.

Eventually I made it to the base of Pillar H which seemed to be what the other areas of ill repute were all striving towards. Planks in the Pier were missing, every other building was boarded up, and with a start I realized that the giant, messy sphere on the roof of what looked like some sort of fresh water tower was actually a harpy nest. Several sharp featured, vaguely avian faces poked their head out of it and looked down on me. Not only them, but others were looking at me as well. Odd, to be in a place where I would be looked at strangely, when Harpies and Water Folk didn’t merit a second glance.

“You’ll want some lighter clothes, friend.” A woman said when I reached my destination. She was leaning in front of the door to a building that was about as non-descript as the others, only the sign ‘Hannity’s’ differentiating it from anything else. It was supposed to be a bar, I knew, but I wouldn’t have guessed otherwise.

“Thank you for the advice.” I said, and before I could stop myself wiped the sweat from my brow with my sleeve. “But I’ll be fine.”

“Right.” She said, smirking, and I noticed that sticking out of one of her jean short pockets was the same red and white bandana the people outside the barber shop had been wearing. That wasn’t ideal, but I wasn’t exactly surprised.

“My name is Deshaun Green. Your employer should have received a letter from me a few weeks ago.”

“Hannity isn’t my employer, he’s my pop, but you can come on in anyway, Mr. Fancy Pants Green.”

She stepped aside and let me push the door open into a surprisingly cozy bar. It wasn’t big, but it was clean and it was lit with a dim, warm light and, most importantly, had an airconditioner humming away behind a bar that was decorated with empty bottles of beer and wine all standing in little cubbies above where the patrons would sit, or in the square pillar corners that connected the bar to the ceiling. In one of the cubbies just above the bar, sitting in what looked like the place of honor, was a wine bottle that when I took a few steps closer claimed it was a product of France.

“France? Wasn’t that country lost in the Skybreak?”

“Sure.” The bartender said. He was a massive man. Not just in height, and he was more than six feet if I had to guess, but also in girth. His belly spilled out over his belt, and it looked like one of his meaty hands could wrap around my head. He looked like a giant in this tiny bar. “Sometimes we find stuff like this in the shallows. Europe had to go somewhere, didn’t it?”

“Some people say it just vanished. Or went to wherever the Ocean came from.”

“Bullshit.” He said, “It’s still here. In bits and pieces. Adler’s Grave is centered around a mausoleum, you know. Written in German, that is, the language of the old country of Germany. The shallows are centered around it, as is our town. You must be Deshaun Green.” He grinned, knowing as well as I did that the name was fake. Who would use a real one around here?

“I am. May I assume that you are Hannity?”

“Assume away!” He said, laughing.

“I apologize. That was politeness on my part, but I’ve got to ask for at the very least verbal confirmation that you claim to be Hannity.”

“Oh ho. A precise one. Yes. I’m Hannity. I could be lying, though.”

“Maybe. Can I have a drink?”

“What’ll you have?”

“Just a beer. Whatever you have.”

After a moment he put a bottle of beer in front of me, a brand I’d never seen. ‘Aqua Spike Pale Ale’.

“Local specialty.”

I took a sip of the beer. It tasted exactly like every other mediocre Pale Ale I’d ever had.

“That’s quite good. Line me up with another, if you please.”

“So long as you pay, I most certainly do please.” He said, and I handed him ten Bills which I assumed covered the two beers as he didn’t ask for anything more.

“So The Chapter House burned down. I’d like to know why, and I don’t really want to dance around the question so if you’d just be straight with me that would be appreciated.”

“Somebody took offense to them, from what I hear. Not any of the local gangs. Either someone from out of town, or one of the important folks on the upper floors. My girl keeps me on the up and up when it comes to the street level politics” He said, smile fading slightly. He liked to play games, I could tell. Maybe I should have let him. I wanted to keep him happy and talking to me. I’d already paid him a while back, but relying on money, especially money that I couldn’t prove I had given him didn’t sit well with me, even if I had promised him another pay out when I next returned. Hannity was considered neutral and trustworthy, as smugglers went, but being careful wouldn’t harm me.

“Any survivors?”

“Sure. Just not the Chapter Leader. I was keeping the goods for him anyway. With Gerald dead that means they’re yours. I’m assuming he was holding them for you anyway?”

I breathed deeply out of my nose. That was good. Either I wasn’t the actual target, or they hadn’t realized that the stuff I wanted wasn’t with Gerald. It was tragic that The Chapter Leader here was dead, but I hoped whatever conflict there was to be had died with him, or that it had been an accident, even. Aster should have no reason to come after me this hard. Perhaps I was seeing a threat where there was none?

Then again, he shouldn’t have had any reason to try and plant a bug on me, either.

“Can I have it?”

“Sure. I’ll be right back.”

Ten minutes later he was back with a small, iron lock box. It looked old, stately, painted red and plated in gold leaf. I took a closer look at it and noticed, outlined faintly where the paint didn’t get into it’s etching, the words ‘Made in China’.

“Is this really necessary?”

He grinned,

“People like a show. Especially when we’re dealing with Deep Ocean relics. It gives it a little more gravitas if we present these things in something that looks like it came out of Atlantis.”

“Makes it seem more expensive, you mean.”

“That’s what I said.”

I undid the clasps and opened the box to discover what looked like three polished stones in a little jar. Next to them, in a protective foam casing, was a knife.

“Cat Stones and what I call a Ghost Knife, from debris collected off the Necropolis Isles. They’re worth a fortune.”

“I’m aware.”

“Sure you do. Meaning, if you can’t or don’t pay me when you come back this way I’ll put a bounty on your head that's so high the one that’s already on it will look like chump change, Sam. I expect a Greater Cat Stone, you understand? Nothing less. I don’t care about trinkets no matter how interesting they are.”

I froze.

“What?”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“It’s just business. I don’t want to have you killed.”

“No. What do you mean by ‘the bounty already on it’?

“You didn’t know? Well. This is awkward. Especially since a Caligonian Law Man will be here any minute to shoot you dead.”