บท 22: The Admiral and the Deadrouser
"Why are you so hysterical about Kinley?" the Admiral asked her as they resumed their smoking.
"I just don't see how Spade could beat her. He has, what? He has around sixty men and a bookkeeper that can kill. Kinley has more than that. She has double the men and she could probably curse me until I turned into a pig."
"He hasn't told you he's a witch himself, has he?"
"What?"
This was in no way a bad thing. Karshaan witches were valuable. It was always nicer to have a man or a woman of the profession as company as well. Serenica couldn't understand why the captain hadn't come out with that information himself.
"I can understand why he didn't tell you straight away. Deadrousers tend to creep people off."
"He is a WHAT?!"
Right now Serenica experienced such a transcendental panic attack that it would have required a whole barrel of the paw. She was on a ship captained by a worshipper of death. Who knew, Spade might be dead himself, dead and walking from the command of some unknown witch of yore.
The Admiral apparently saw her distress and walked with her to a spot on the deck that couldn't be seen from the helm.
"Look, it happened to me, too, when I heard about him, and look where that got me."
"How on earth did you manage to get him to fear you?"
He didn't answer the question.
"He's even more dangerous than Kinley."
"That's exactly the point I was trying to make," the man said impatiently. "I have my duties as a first mate, I must go, but you should come to me in the evening. I'll calm you down."
"It's very nice of you to trust your verbal abilities so much."
"Go see if someone has the scurvy. The four Johns always have it."
There were indeed four Johns aboard. Thankfully, they were quite different in appearance. Two of them had nasty spots in their gums. Serenica contemplated about getting more information from them, but when she tried to ask questions, the men laughed nervously and spoke of things that made little sense. The captain was apparently trying to make himself a human sacrifice to the Mother or a similar entity, if the John speaking could be trusted. Serenica did not feel safe. She was free, yes, now more than before, and she could reasonably expect to be paid handsomely at the cost of only her own soul. She had already gone too far with the mouse and its blood.
Serenica didn't fancy herself a coward, but neither was she particularly brave, and having a mouse haunt her body didn't make things much better.
Night fell upon them quickly. She went to ask the Admiral about some things that had been bothering her. She had performed a routine check on as many men as she could, and though Myorka had been curious about her findings, she had been far too anxious to meet the bookkeeper behind closed doors.
"Why are we sailing north if Spade is so confident about his abilities?"
"Well," the first mate said and blew smoke towards the deep blue sky. "It's not himself that he doesn't trust. It's just that there's so few of us, like you said. We need more men. Aja Vana is the answer to this."
It was only now that Serenica realized what she was in for. Aja Vana, she would have the chance to see it with her own eyes. The sacred jewel of the hot north, the home of pirates and artists, the unholy center of trade on the ocean that left Neul far behind It when it came to opulence. It was rumored there were gargoyles fashioned after extinct species, gargoyles that came alive at night. It was rumored there lived a sea monster under the island. There were many rumors and Serenica wanted to prove them all wrong, she wanted to show herself that all cities were the same, and she intended to do this on a nice, mild paw buzz.
The Admiral must have seen something change in her expression.
"It's dangerous out there. I'm not saying this to patronize you. It's just that you don't know anything about piracy. You know even less about raising the dead if the subject gets you so antsy. It's really not all that peculiar."
Serenica sighed. She felt that she had been somehow manipulated to join a sailing mental asylum.
Deadrousers attracted all sorts of unseemly spirit folk. To Serenica, it seemed like Spade had already caught the attention of the Mother or something far worse. She had had nightmares of such entities for as long as she could remember, a wriggling mass of maggots vaguely resembling a woman following her after a blood sacrifice – and now she had actually messed with the forces of life and death. She had taken another's blood for herself.
Even though she was afraid of the captain, she felt she simply had to seek him out.
"You've heard about me," he said, pulling a strange brown roll of tobacco from a little box in his pocket. "I can tell."
"Have you ever considered your willingness to die might come from your magic?"
"You speak to your captain like that? All right, then speak to me like that. A witch to a witch – hm, that's how it's supposed to be. It's the other way around, actually. I am a deadrouser due to events that gave me a willingness to die."
"Tell me," Serenica said. "A reason to become a witch is always worth listening to."
"I got foolish and believed in myself too much as I started to have success with my raids. I sent some money back home and long story short, my father and my brother drank themselves to death with that gold."
"That sounds so painful. I am sorry."
"Don't be. I miscalculated, and it was fatal."
"Does your girl like this whole thing? Doesn't she want you to stay by her side as the father of her children?"
"I don't listen to her opinion on this. She'd have everything I own. She could be safe."
Serenica shook her head. "What if she doesn't want to be safe? What if she wants to be with you?"
Spade looked away with such stubborn fervor that it made Serenica think he knew something she didn't. Perhaps there were secrets about death that only its priests knew, unholy things that made sense only to the initiated. Perhaps it was true what they said, that everyone had one half of a dead star inside them and they only had to join forces with someone else, that everyone needed a half of someone else to be whole. Perhaps Spade would meet his beloved again in the depths.
Perhaps it was true what they said. That there was an ocean with blazing stars in the bottom of it, the Sea of the Dead as the old folk called it, that only the deceased could sail. Serenica wondered if life went on after the white bag of linen was tossed overboard.
"The water belongs to the dead," the captain said, once again reading her thoughts. "We will be together once again, in a place where there is no suffering."
"No suffering, that sounds like a fat old lie," Serenica said with a sad smirk.
"Can you say you wish for anything else? Because I can't."
"It's true that death must be a bit different from life, but wishful thinking is dangerous…"
"I'll show you what danger is," Spade said and grabbed her arm. "A witch to a witch, like it's supposed to be. I have been so lonely! And now I meet a woman of the craft. Do not take yourself from me. I have been lonely."
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