"What makes you think your wife is on that ship?"
"I just... I know, okay?" Nathan half-shouted at the captain. "We have to get over there!"
One of the crew, a squat man with lank hair and an underbite bulldogs would pity, stuck his face in Nathan's and snarled. "Boy, you are a damned wizard, and with a golem in your service to boot! Whether your wife is on that ship or at the bottom of the ocean, you have no right to make demands of the captain!"
Nathan weighed the bloodstained axe haft in his hand as he considered burying it in the man's eye. Before the thought could erupt into being he ground it down, reminding his adrenaline-jangled nerves that the battle was over and no-one here meant him harm. At least, not yet.
Nathan was all too conscious of the way the crew was looking at him as they tended to their wounds, staring as though he was some creature of ancient legend− wait, that's exactly it. Now that the battle was over and the shock worn off, those same men and women who'd bantered and sung with him only hours ago now averted their eyes wherever he looked. Swalk didn't seem to share their fear, openly gawping at Nathan over his pipe as though inspecting some strange fish. Bek was the only other person not avoiding his eye, staring like a little girl whose hero had just walked through the front door.
"Nathan, listen to me." The captain folded his arms and leaned against the wheel. "We are at anchor and will not be leaving soon. There is clearly no one alive on that ship. If you are right and she is not lost to the deep, we will have time enough to fetch your wife. The men on those ships knew you were here. They called you wizard. Tell me everything." He leaned forward and the air crackled with menace. "Now."
"Not everything, young master," Jabberwisp peeped in his ear. "Once docked, any of these men may let slip what our intentions are. At the very least, do not share the identity of the assassin's target or the location of my kin."
"Don't remember the name anyway," Nathan whispered and then turned to Swalk. "Captain, even I don't know the full story, but it's true that I am a..." he winced. "A wizard, of sorts. I was brought from the old world by the woman you know as my wife." He blushed. "Uh, she's not actually my wife."
Swalk chuckled, and Nathan continued with a faint smile. "I was hurt protecting her and she brought me here to return the favor." Nathan gestured at Jabberwisp. "The golem at my shoulder is Jabberwisp. He is teaching me about wizardry, enough to keep from hurting anyone... else... before I go home."
"Home?"
"Yes. We are heading to a... a place where I can leave."
Swalk frowned. "That cannot be all."
"I’m sorry, Captain. I don’t know much of anything." Nathan pointed at the ship floating in the distance. "She knew more, but… Maggie..."
The moment came roaring back to Nathan in unwelcome clarity.
"We'll be through the Pail any minute and then they'll hit us. The other ships are waiting, just in case." She braced herself with one hand as the other ducked into her robes and emerged with a slender, almost delicate knife. "Nathan, promise me that whatever happens you'll stay in this cabin."
Nathan shuddered. "Maggie, what do you−"
"Stay here."
Her voice was… old. Old and empty. The voice from Nathan's nightmares couldn't compare, not when it came from someone so familiar.
“The crew should be able to beat our tail in a fight; a Morseran as old as Swalk is the closest thing to a god of swords there is and he trained them himself. You’ll be safe enough. the other ships, though…”
James had said before parting ways that she shouldn't use her power needlessly. Is this what he meant? Nathan shivered at the thought, disturbed beyond words.
"...Captain, she left to deal with one ship waiting to ambush us even as your ship was attacked by another. She is my only way home, and... and I care for her. Besides, judging by your crew's reactions, perhaps they could use some time without me."
"You and that golem saved our lives. If they forget that, do not hesitate to remind them," the old man scowled at his crew as they worked. "Tell me something. In your old world you have no power, yes? You would be a common man. Why would you want to go back?"
Demons, torture, swords and murderers and... dear lord, why not?
"A wise man once said that with great power comes great responsibility." Nathan didn't bother to hide just how exhausted he was, meeting the Captain's eyes with a frank stare. "Being a common man is responsibility enough."
The captain let out a rough bark of laughter that surprised them both. "Well said, wizard."
Nathan grimaced. "I really don't like being called that, if you don't mind."
"I understand."
"Can we... can we get my wife now?"
Swalk folded his arms with a wry smile. "I thought she was not your wife."
"It's... well, she's..." Nathan raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "It's a mess."
The captain snorted around his pipe. "In my experience, matters concerning the heart usually are. Come. Let us go get your 'wife' before it occurs to my granddaughter that you are a bachelor."
"So J, I've got a question."
The cobbling looked up from his perch at the rowboat's side, staring out at the waves. His body left tracings of black on the hull as he moved. "What-is-it-young-master?"
"Well, two questions now." He pointed at the cobbling's half-charred body. "Aren't you hurt?"
Jabberwisp let out a peal of squeaky laughter that grated on Nathan's ears. "No, young master. This," the cobbling indicated the milky-white gemstone nestled inside his core "contains all that is me. I will repair my body with whatever materials I find at our destination. It seems rather more polite than scavenging splinters from the good captain's hull."
"Very," the captain snorted as he guided the rowboat alongside the silent ship.
Nathan wasn't sure whether Swalk was kidding.
"Your second question, young master?"
"Well, when I was at home and sang, music was just... well, music. Here it seems more...More." Nathan shook his head. "I'm not making sense."
Jabberwisp raised his knotted arm but Swalk beat him to the answer. "No, I think you are. There is no magic where you come from, right, boy?"
"Yes, captain."
Swalk slipped ropes through several loops hung on the hull, tying the rowboat to the ship's side. "That's why."
Nathan frowned. "I thought people couldn't use magic anymore."
"Not directly," peeped Jabberwisp. "But singing is still an act of creation. A sculptor, a painter, a master craftsman puts their soul into their work, is it not so?"
"I guess."
"The golem is right." Swalk started up the ladder and spoke over his shoulder. "You put your soul into your music, boy, as all who sing for the joy of it do. That is what you are hearing."
Wow. The poets are right after all. Nathan started up the ladder, lost in thought, so he didn't notice that the captain had stopped until his forehead drove into Swalk's boot.
"Damn, Swalk, what is...?" Nathan's voice trailed off as Swalk turned and locked eyes with him. The captain looked... haunted wasn't the word. When they’d met Nathan had quickly realized Swalk was a man for whom life held few surprises, yet now the old man's eyes glittered with emotion. Horror, shock, disgust, all of these and more besides. Whatever was waiting on the deck of the boat had rattled the captain badly.
"Swalk, what−"
"Boy, you should wait in the boat." The captain's voice wasn't commanding but plaintive, almost pleading. Nathan thought he knew what had frightened the captain and wasn't eager to see it himself. Swalk wasn't asking Nathan to stay behind, not really. He was asking that Nathan not leave him alone.
"I have to get her," Nathan replied gently. "Move, captain."
Swalk shuddered and then clambered over the side with none of his usual grace. Even before looking over the side Nathan caught an awful butcher-stink, coppery and thick in the air. It caught at the back of his throat, the taste of bile as his gorge rose doing nothing to diminish the awful taste of broken flesh, blood and terror.
The deck was a slaughterhouse.
Men and women hung in the rigging as though they'd fallen asleep while climbing, their throats gaping wide and wet with rain-dappled sheets of blood. Red drops shimmered down from the hanging corpses whenever the wind came up. More, many more lay where they'd fallen on the deck. Those on their backs were the worst, their faces so contorted by terror that they might have died of it. Many of the bodies appeared unmarked, but just as many were torn and ruined as if they'd been thrown to a shoal of starved sharks. The worst, though, were the survivors.
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They sat here and there, their eyes empty of anything resembling a soul, mouths gaping wide. Whenever the wind died there was a faint rasping noise that Nathan slowly realized was coming from these living dead. They slumped where they'd been caught by Suicide's apprentice, their last, terrified thoughts forever creeping from their lips in an endless, silent wail.
She did this. She’s a monster.
Nathan bent and vomited, not troubling to make for the rail. The dead didn't care. The captain waited for Nathan to finish, then asked "She did this?"
Wiping his mouth, Nathan nodded. Swalk looked on the verge of saying something, but as the wind came up again he frowned, cocking his head. As he did, Nathan heard a burbling sound that he recognized immediately: A baby fussing.
They both turned toward the sound in time to see Maggie coming from below decks, a bundle in her arms.
“Maggie,” he said.
She stopped, but didn’t face him. “I told you not to leave the cabin,” she said. “Why are you here?”
“I thought you were in trouble.” He glanced around. “Did you have fun?”
“Fun? What do you-”
“You killed... you slaughtered these people. You said you hate it but that’s not true, is it? If you did they’d only be dead, but you left so many of them like… like that. You’re a goddamn monster!” He started calm, but he found himself bellowing as he continued.
He expected her to shout back, to cringe, to explain or justify. Instead, she simply walked to Swalk as Nathan continued to shout. She offered the old man the bundle and, once the captain took it, turned to Nathan.
“I can’t manage your emotions right now,” she said, cutting him off, and vanished.
Nathan turned to Swalk but the captain was engrossed by the bundle in his hands, rocking it gently and murmuring. His head whirling from a storm of conflicting emotions, Nathan stepped forward and looked at the baby.
It was tiny, smaller than any baby he’d ever seen, engulfed by the blanket. Tiny, and the delicate green of a leaf in spring. The baby turned its eyes on Nathan, burbled again, and then curled back into the folds of the blanket.
“She’s one of the green folk,” Swalk said, his tone odd.
Nathan had seen a handful of green folk in Wyvern’s Run, tiny creatures that the people of the merchant city had given a wide birth. Nathan hadn’t thought to ask why, but he had been preoccupied at the time. “They make good pirates? I don’t see any.”
Swalk blinked. “They make good slaves,” he said grimly.
“What?”
“Slavery is outlawed here, and my own people burn slave ships whenever we find them. The continent, however, quietly embraces the practice. Green folk are sturdy little things with almost no fight in them if you remove those talons.” He nodded at the chubby little hand in view, indicating the thornlike claw sitting where a human baby would have had a pinky and ring finger.
Nathan grimaced, then paused as he remembered the knot of strange minds below deck, radiating terror. “There were more,” he said. “There are more below deck.”
“How do you know, boy?”
“I… I saw it…”
Swalk nodded as though that explained it, then knelt and beckoned to Jabberwisp. “Golem, can you take the child?”
Jabberwisp leapt from Nathan’s shoulder and bent over the baby, gently prodding at her before nodding. "Give me a moment, captain."
The cobbling skittered to a wire-hilted sword on the nearby deck. Jabberwisp deftly uncoiled a length and pressed the tip to his core. The wire writhed, twisting through the air to form a thin, braided skeleton beneath the Jabberwisp's twigs. The cobbling flexed his body, then grunted squeakily and skittered back to the infant. Nathan watched as the little golem wrapped her in a blanket and hoisted the child in his arms.
“Thank you,” Swalk said, and drew his sword. “Let’s have a look below decks, boy. If I’m right, your wife and I are of like minds.”
The compartment was cramped, filthy, shackles bolted to the walls in horrible parallel to what Nathan had seen in the wizard tower. There were at least forty of the little people there, their hands all maimed as Swalk had described. And all of them were dead.
Swalk was expressionless as he considered the tiny bodies. “Anyone caught transporting people as chattel will be killed, boy, but anyone transporting green folk risks even more. They are valued as slaves, it is true, but what they bring of their own accord from their homeland is beyond price. To offend the green folk as a people is to risk the medicines they offer in trade. Better to kill them all than let even one return home to tell his people of such a crime.”
“That’s…” Nathan couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Yes,” Swalk said. “If your wife saw this…”
Nathan nodded, ashamed. Of course she had. She had more than seen it, much more. “Why doesn’t anyone tell the green folk?”
“No nation will risk it,” Swalk said wearily. “Those who sent envoys to their lands were rebuffed, those who went with force never saw the green folk on their shores again. Thousands die every year if the medicine stops, most of them children. That men can risk so much for only themselves…”
Nathan shook his head. There was nothing more to say. “We should leave, captain. We’ve checked everywhere else, there’s nothing left.” He turned and started toward the main deck.
“There’s still the ship, Nathan.” Swalk said gently, following. "There's still her... her leavings."
“Not for long,” Nathan replied, rolling back his sleeves.
“What are you doing, boy?”
“You said you burn slavers, captain.” Nathan said, his hands seething with sudden heat.
There was a long pause as Swalk considered that.
“Good.”
Maggie appeared in their cabin late that night looking resigned. "Nathan, I... Nathan?"
Nathan wanted to rush to her but only stood there, facing her and trying to remember the things he'd wanted to say, praying they'd be enough. "I am sorry, Maggie. I am so, so sorry. I made assumptions. The things I said, what you must have seen me thinking..." Nathan shook his head and sat on the bed, at a loss. "I'm so sorry," he said again. "You didn't deserve that."
"It's my fault," Maggie said wearily. Evidently she'd been braced for a fight but not an apology. "No, don't argue, think about it. I flew off the handle when I sensed what that ship was before I even set foot on it. And after... well, you saw. If I had told you what was happening, what I was going to do, you would never have seen... seen that." She scowled halfheartedly at him. "Of course, you wouldn't have seen if you had listened to me, either."
Nathan hung his head, nodding. "Swalk told me a little about it when we... when we saw them. Guessed the rest. Once you were on the ship, once they realized what was happening, they sent someone to kill the slaves. You didn't make it in time, and finding them... finding them like that set you off. That about right?"
Maggie nodded, sitting beside him. "I see you have the baby with you," she said tonelessly.
Nathan considered her, then turned to Jabberwisp. The little cobbling had been tending the baby ever since they'd left the slave ship in flames. "J, the baby's probably hungry. Could you take her to the galley, see what's to be had?"
"But... but young master, I just..." Jabberwisp paused as he looked Nathan in the face. "Very well."
Jabberwisp scuttled out the door with the baby. The moment he was gone tears shone in Maggie's eyes.
"You saw. I didn't want you to see, I never wanted-"
Nathan threw his arms around her, shaking his head as he rested it against her shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said again, his cheeks suddenly wet.
She hugged him back, crying silently. they sat like that for a while until Nathan finally stirred. "Maggie, I have to ask. What didn't you want me to see? Slavery? Death? What you... what it is you do?"
"All of it?" She said, sniffing. "You don't need it. Any of it. You don't deserve any of this."
"Deserve has nothing to do with it: you're trying to shut out the world and that shouldn't be on you. Trying hurts both of us, today proves that."
She turned to him, face expressionless. "It doesn't matter. You'll go home and forget all of this. It's for the best."
"How could I... No," he said, pulling away. "No, you're not doing that."
"Nathan, I-"
"Yes, you. You listen, Maggie. You say I don't need any of this, that I need to forget it. This is life we're talking about. At the end of the day, all the bad things I'm seeing here are no different from what happens at home, just closer. Forgetting this, forgetting you..." He shook his head, taking her hand. "It's hiding, and I won't. Not anymore. Next time something scary is on the horizon, just talk to me. We'll find a way to handle it together. I promise it's better. Besides, I don't think you want me to forget. Not really."
"It's for the best," she said again, her hand tightening on his.
"Do you really believe that?" he asked, searching her face. "Do you really want it?"
She was quiet for a long minute. "No," she whispered finally. "No, you're right. I don't want you to forget me."
The darkness was waiting.
"Why do you resist? Behind the timid illumination of the stars, behind the flickering lamps of the human spirit, in the end of all things only this remains, the howling black. You know. You understand, why−"
"God, just shut up already. I'm here to talk, not listen to demonic slam poetry."
The empty dark fell into a stunned silence.
"I know what you are. I even left off the sleeping potion so we could have this little chat. I'm giving up on a good night of sleep after a damn long day, so at least do me the fucking courtesy of meeting face to face."
The scene assembled as they do in dreams. In a seamless moment of perfect, invisible motion Nathan went from floating in a sea of empty night to the deathbed of his brother.
The sterile scent of a hospital, the burnt stink of Jack's half-gone body, the quiet sounds of the monitors, his brother's artificial breathing, even the heavy gray rain outside the window. The moment was perfect to each degree save one: where once Nathan’s parents stood crouched a dark, hooded thing. It was vast beyond understanding and yet no bigger than a man, lines of inhuman muscles straining at the woven midnight curling about it like robes. The earth groaned beneath it, not because of its weight but because it did not belong. It was something that, even in dreams, the world had no place for, and the ground cried out beneath its shrouded feet.
"Nice, very nice. Good setting, great look, though I gotta say the whole cloak-and-cowl thing is nine ringwraiths too late."
"Little creature, little wizard." Hooked talons shone in the folds of the demon's robe, catching the light of the florescent bulbs and sending it back tainted with raw unreality. "You dare to call me out, I that−"
"Stow it." Nathan stood and folded his arms, staring up at the shape with cold, tired bravura. "Listen up, you primitive screwhead. I know you−"
"You know nothing."
"If you keep interrupting me we're never going to get anywhere. Here's the score. I'm leaving in a couple weeks, it will take you a lifetime to break in. We are at least equals or you'd be in already. Go bother someone else. Play chess with death or something, I hear he loves it."
The hood bobbed in a silent pantomime of laughter. "You think your presence in this world is an accident, wizard-child? These events were prophesied long before you were born. You speak of chess? You are merely the latest move in a game that began before the stars first lit the mewling ball of rock you call home." The talons flickered again, and Nathan caught a glimpse of long, slender threads glittering in those barbed fingers. "I 'bother' you for my amusement before the next move is made. The pieces are all around you and yet all you see is your own square, little pawn."
Nathan shivered, regretting his decision. "Is that it then? You're just baiting me?"
"You are the bait, little wizard."
"I am not a wizard."
"Words," the figure waved a claw-hand. "Vague, worthless things, as the tools of ephemeral beings always are. I own you. I was one who pulled the strings to cast your ancestors into decadence and depravity. I am of those who laid the cornerstones of your past, who will reign in the ashes of your future. We are not your equals. We are eternal, and you are but a mote upon a mote, a worthless grain upon which to build. For our amusement."
The words sank into Nathan as they always had and he knew that he'd made a terrible mistake. The demon surged closer and suddenly the walls of the hospital were gone. Only Nathan remained in the pool of unlight cast by the beast's attention. He shrank beneath the towering demon, unable to see how he could possibly stand against such ancient, timeless power.
"You begin to see. Good. Little wizard-kine, I mean you no harm. Not yet. There will be time enough for that later. For now, know this: you were born to end. Your life, your world, your reality itself is naught but a game for our amusement, and your only purpose is to end. All will fade, wither and die, even as your brother withered and died, and nothing will remain but the empty night."
The darkness swept down upon him like a wave, like the raw firmament of heaven crashing down upon him, claws spread wide. Nathan cowered and screamed, praying, but there was nothing to save him...