A great green dome of trees emerged from the sea with a ring of sandy beach that came to a sudden halt with a jagged rocky mesa on its far end. Hookthorn Island was so forested that there were no visible structures from any part of the Sunseeker’s approach. Using both the official charts and information supplied by Professor Pluramon, they were able to work their way around the narrow inlets and rocky coasts, past the entrance to a cove surrounded entirely by the tall rock of the mesa, and around a long wide beach that brought them at last to a long and skinny comb of wooden docks emerging from the forest itself. Rather than taking a buzzer the rest of the way in, Pluramon convinced Hardwick to undergo the somewhat tricky task of bringing the destroyer as close as possible to the furthest dock in hopes that the ship’s crane would be able to reach down and pluck up whatever gear was brought from his lab.
The maneuvers were extremely tight tricks with both the captain and the helmsman urging each other on between turns at the con. Tiny little uses of the motor that seemed to have absolutely no effect on the ship’s movement whatsoever were declared to be ‘a hair too much’ or ‘not quite enough’ while both men shared nervous, mischievous grins at the wheel. At some point, Hardwick sent Davrine, the engineering section’s signal lieutenant, out to the balcony around the superstructure to shout out clearances to them while the ship inched closer and closer to the dock in short bursts and wiggles.
Finally, looking for all the world like he was the man who had discovered sex for the first time, Hardwick came to the back of the bridge and announced that they had dropped anchor close enough to the dock that if anybody cared to break both their legs they could jump off the ship directly onto it.
The joke had done little to cheer up Arlo, who emerged from the bridge blinking into the searing sunlight with an expression of dogged misery. The weather had warmed up significantly in their five day trip northwards from the ice wall, so he wore only his shirt and waistcoat while he trampled down the shipladder from the bridge holding onto his sabre by its scabbard to keep it from bouncing against his thigh. His ponytail bounced behind him while he rounded the corner to the crane and moved towards the middle of the ship with such alacrity that he found himself disappointed that he was waiting for some forecastlemen to rig up a rope ladder onto the narrow little strand of wood below.
What accounted for his hurry was discovering, upon finishing his breakfast with Satai Mirana, that Placelle Lamella was following Irina around the ship while the two of them prepared for the upcoming landing on Hookthorn Island. He had, for some reason, expected the woman to stay behind since she had left him alone so obediently following the horrors of Lortar’s seafort. Just seeing her, even with her meek bovine countenance, filled him with apprehension and distaste. Every night since Lortar he had alternated between drinking enough rum to pass out and fitful, restless bouts of short sleep that always ended with nightmares.
In his dreams he heard her lively, joyous merriment. The childlike glee she had shown while she burned Baxter before his very eyes, the joyful giggling audible between the heavy wet impacts of her hammer with the fat man’s head. He heard the screams and cries of the men she’d killed while he cowered tightly in Baxter’s grip waiting for her with his own gun jammed against his temple. Arlo’s stomach turned just thinking of how he had looked up at her, black-wet blood in his periphery and his heart pounding while she stood over him bottomless with that unmaintained pink shrubbery that passed for pubic hair; her eyes hungry and leering while his own flashed back and forth between her and the mess she’d made.
He was haunted by the sounds of her crying, as well. He would see her and the sweet feeling of her lips would flash through his mind, such a welcome sensation she had ruined with such a horrid time and place, and then the guilt she had heaped upon him with her heartbreak. He hated her not just for what he had seen her do, but for how she’d made him feel. Worse, every time their eyes met when he started to feel this way again she would give him a very soft and gentle smile while the tears started to mass in her eyes again. Arlo considered begging off the trip altogether, but thought that would draw Irina’s ire. He considered ordering Placelle Lamella to stay aboard the ship, but knew how it would probably make her cry again and then he would spend the entire day eaten alive by his own guilt. He considered taking Hardwick’s joking advice and just jumping off the side of the ship, but in the end just shoved a dog biscuit into his mouth and got on with it.
Hookthorn Island was his last task, or so he told himself, and then he could move on to his safe and predictable dead-end counting house job on the mainland. Arlo descended the ladder with this in mind, hoping it would lift his spirits somewhat. The toe of his boot brushed the wood tepidly before he actually let his weight fall full onto the wooden walkway. He looked up and saw the armor-clad form of Placelle Lamella looking down at him from the top of the ladder with a curious expression that made him feel like a fly caught in a spider’s web, and quickly turned away and strode down the planks of the dock before he could make her start crying again. With his hands crossed behind his back, Arlo walked towards the shore and eyed the shapes of buildings barely visible in the shade of the towering trees that started as soon as the grass of the beach ended. They were sparse, uneven clay things of pink and orange with occasional tin shutters or rolling doors that seemed unnaturally perfect amid the bulbous chaos of the buildings they were cut into. Some had perfectly square windows as well, while others had little more than holes in their wall covered by circles of frosted glass with frames of baked clay trapping them against said wall.
As Arlo got closer, he noticed that there were no other boats at the dock; no trawlers nor fishing boats of any kind, not even little gigs or canoes. Lortar had been suspiciously quiet at the dock, and it had few boats either, but it was still populated. Hookthorn was a ghost town. As he neared the houses and saw that some of them had their doors wide open and gently swaying in the sea breeze, Arlo suddenly felt like maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Placelle Lamella were a bit closer to him. This, of course, drove him to resent her and then that transformed into its customary guilt; a bitingly familiar transmutation that was broken by the sound of the woman’s voice behind him as he stepped onto the sand.
“Be careful, Arlo.” she said quietly just over his left shoulder while she gently moved around him and stepped towards the empty houses with one hand on the head of her hammer, having already eased the Oath to make sure it wouldn’t snag if she drew it from her holster, “Something happened here.”
Irina passed by him next, her carbine already in hand with Pluramon and Razor taking up the rear. Arlo watched them for a few steps before looking down at his own weapons with his eyebrows raising. Eventually, more for the sake of comfort than actual safety, he unsheathed his sabre and held it against his shoulder with the back of the blade bouncing gently off it while he moved with long steps to catch up to the others.
“How do you know something happened here?” he asked once he got close again. There was the obvious, of course, the doors to the buildings being open and the boats being absent; but those were the sorts of things that Placelle Lamella did not seem to pay attention to.
The Oathkeeper turned over her shoulder to give him a considering look before responding, emotionlessly, “There’s nobody here for as far as I can stand to reach out and taste.”
“Additionally,” Pluramon put in now, in a much more helpful tone, “The absence of the islands’ large population of fishermen, the lack of radiographic response to the Sunseeker’s hails, the failure of a short little man named Cogram to come out and greet us, the lack of apparent interest from the local inhabitants, and finally the distinct lack of smoke trails from the cottages or campfires in the woods.”
“Except for that one.” Irina added, pointing the muzzle of her carbine extended in one hand up to a little black wisp emerging from the tree line. “Which is it’s own uh-oh-oh-no of sorts. No smoke on an island is better than one smoke.”
Arlo attempted to swallow the lump in his throat, only to discover it was his throat. He looked up at the single trail with a sigh and proceeded closer to the first open door. They went through the houses nearer to the shore in a state of heightened caution, but they learned little. It was as though the people had left with no warning. In one house they found a table with two place-settings; one of which had an untouched meal while the other hadn’t been served yet. Whatever happened had been important enough to turn off the hobs on the stove, but not important enough to finish eating. Nothing seemed to be missing from the house, at least not in the sense that the place had been ransacked.
The next house was the same, though perhaps more cluttered because its occupants preferred not to clean. Still, it was easy to tell that the disarray was the result of neglect rather than rough handling and none of the clutter had been hastily disturbed. Since the two communal methrollers were not to be found, the group followed a winding road through the woods. With fat oaks and sycamore trees looking down over them, they wandered the curvy gravel path and at every house they knocked. When none answered, they stopped and tried to enter.
Every house that was left unlocked had been abandoned in a similar state; in a hurry but without apparent violence. As they grew nearer to the lab, Arlo found himself casting furtive glances up and down the tree-crowded hills on either side of the road, sensing somehow that there was an ambush waiting for them. He felt watched, but could never spot a watcher. Irina would’ve had a better chance with the prism sight on her carbine, but every time he peered over at her, she was only holding the thing and not looking through it.
In time, they emerged at a concrete oasis in the wooded hills. Pluramon’s lab had been a pair of simple concrete buildings with tall antennae reaching up into the sky from the clearcut they’d been built in. The ground was smooth white concrete leading up to a pond that itself was surrounded on all other sides by towering trees. One of the island’s advertised meth-rollers was parked here, a tall thing of faded blue paint with wide-set wheels and a small cab for two. It had rings over its bed for a tarp or cover, but none was attached. As they got closer, it became apparent that a roller-door on the side of one building had been opened and the truck was in the process of being loaded when whatever had happened took the residents away. Most of the items in the space had been crated up already, with two tall crates already in the bed of the truck. Empty counters ringed the undecorated walls occasionally interrupted for even emptier spaces on the floor where the lack of grime could be used to determine the shape of what had occupied the space before. In the center of the space was an island of brushed steel and granite with a half-built crate on top of it.
Between the nailed-together support struts of wood and piles of straw, a ‘coffin’ of sorts could be seen. It had a solid top of blued steel with some sort of console on its face, but the walls of the object were transparent and showed the occupant to be a man. He was a cinnamon-dark, slender man with rounded boyish features; hairless save for an extremely close-cropped layer of extremely tight wispy black curls that barely left his scalp.
“Oh, Blood Moon take me.” Pluramon’s voice moaned from the headset as he caught site of the coffin. He urged Razor forward, but stumbled in his steps and the huge red creature tumbled to the ground. Irina rushed up and knelt to help him up, but Pluramon’s voice issued from the headset saying, “No, I can manage, let me–”
Robotically, the arms of the huge beastman bent, spread, and then pushed against the ground. His long legs walked him into a squat and he raised himself up on both legs again so Pluramon could stumble him up to the capsule and lay one red, taloned hand on top of it.
“It’s completely ruined.” he told everyone, his voice clearly deeply crestfallen. “Oh, they unplugged it and everything. There’s cavities for the dry ice, just as I instructed, but it must have sublimated long ago.”
“Is this what you meant when you said you had something very valuable here, Pickles?” Irina asked, concern crossing onto her features while she slung her carbine and tried to make sense of what exactly they were looking at. “Were you doing something with this man?”
Razor Skunch was huge, towering. His tusks caught the light as Pluramon turned him to loom over the Tribune, and they cast an eerie shadow on the ground while his long, stick-like arms lifted in the manner of a marionette to rest on Irina’s shoulders so Pluramon could affect shaking her gently back and forth to really drive home how upset he was as he replied, “This man is me, Madame Tribune! This is my body! It’s ruined! I’m ruined! I’ll never leave this tank on this huge fellow’s back!”
Irina opened her mouth to respond while her head was lolling back and forth, but was interrupted as Razor’s hands snatched away from her so Pluramon could raise them into the air to pose in the universal stance of a person who has lost hope and is seeking guidance from the heavens.
“My Queen! I served you my entire short little life,” he told the ceiling, or perhaps the sky, delivering a dramatic line that was entirely out-of-character for the matter-of-fact thinker he’d presented himself as before. “Please, goddess, grant me strength to ignore this horror!”
Irina’s eyes bulged awkwardly and she leaned past the beastman to make sure the others were watching with a questioning glance. Arlo matched her expression with a bug-eyed look of bewilderment of his own. Placelle Lamella, however, had her hands raised to form a globe and her head bowed in prayer. When it was apparent Pluramon would say no more, she added in her own soft voice, “Goddess, hear him. Watch him.”
Razor whipped sideways with that uncanny machinelike animation and Pluramon moved the beastman towards the Oathkeeper and presented himself upon his knees at her feet. Seeing the two of them close together, it was almost possible to forget how much larger they were than most other people.
“Please, Lady Oathkeeper,” the scientist said now, “Please bless me.”
Arlo shot another awkward look to Irina as if to ask her, ‘Should we be doing something, too?’
The Tribune seemed distracted, however, looking over at Razor with a sincere feeling in her eyes. She was not a particularly pious woman, but the professor had not seemed like a particularly pious man until he saw his own corpse laid out in front of him. Admittedly, it was a fairly powerful event for anyone. Irina gave Arlo a sad smile and moved to kneel next to Razor on the floor of the lab. With one knee down she reached to put a hand on Razor’s shoulder, but stopped short and instead put her hand on the tank containing Pluramon’s mind. Reluctantly, feeling incredibly ridiculous, but also feeling way too guilty to say anything about how ludicrous this entire situation was; Arlo joined her by kneeling on Razor’s other side and pressing his hand on the tank as well. When he looked up at Placelle Lamella, he was surprised to see her looking directly at him, her half-lidded gaze filled with something like admiration.
The Oathkeeper formed a sickle shape with her right hand and used it to draw a half-circle in the air in front of Razor Skunch. She then used both of her hands to form the same shape over her chest and inclined her head.
A long moment passed before Razor’s head hung limply and Pluramon’s voice said, “I thought that would make me feel better.”
Placelle Lamella gave a thin, tragic smile down at the beastman and the scientist he wore, and said, “The only thing that will make you feel better, sir, is time.”
The Oathkeeper’s sleepy eyes panned over the other two and she added, “It was kind of you two to join.”
Arlo got to his feet again with a bashful look and tugged at this ponytail a bit before turning back to the deceased former Pluramon and trying to decide how he felt about the whole situation. Part of him couldn’t help but feel the natural regret that he hadn’t spent more time talking to the professor even though he could still talk to him just fine the way he had been up until now, not to mention the fact that this corpse had already been dead when they’d first been introduced. He also didn’t understand what processes had been used to preserve the corpse, or how those processes had somehow been subverted and the corpse rendered ‘ruined’. It looked perfectly fine in its box. No apparent decomposition had taken place. But then, Pluramon seemed absolutely heartbroken. It was Irina, however, who asked, “So, if you know it’s ruined, do you know how long it’s been here like this?”
With a surprising return to calmness, Pluramon got Skunch to his feet and went back over to the box to report, “The dry ice being completely sublimated and there being no lifestone response in the unit indicates it’s been sitting for at least a week. I would guess it’s been here at least two or three, however, just based on my correspondence with the locals before the radio blackout.”
“I guess that makes our radio blackout the suspected date of disappearance for the island’s inhabitants, then.” Irina put in next, crossing her arms and cupping her chin. “Not an Imperial island, so there’s no obligation to investigate; but I cannot help wondering what happened to the buggers.”
“Based on our preliminary observations,” Pluramon suggested, using Razor’s hand to idly toy with the instrument cluster on the top of his coffin, “I currently speculate they observed a hostile fleet of some kind; perhaps one they believed to be pirates or slavers. Based on the missing boats from the dock, I surmise they sailed some distance away in hopes the marauders would take what they wanted and go on their way.”
“But then, why not come back?” Irina argued, turning and leaning against the island with her arms still crossed, “And why isn’t anything missing?”
It was Placelle Lamella who said, “Slavers would not have even landed if their merchandise packed itself neatly onto boats for them.”
“Is this really something that happens out here?” Arlo asked now, looking incredibly incredulous, “Slavers just sail around and nobody stops them?”
Both women looked at him sadly, and Irina answered, “Who would? No Imperial seafort, no Orderhood chapel, no batteries, no Guild warehouse, no Council ships, no clans, no tribes. People who live on islands like this have an idyllic life, and no mistake– but this is the risk they take. At least back on Lortar there’s House Haradin. You didn’t see them, but there’s batteries on the refinery-side fit to sink all but the heaviest ships. Before your family took over, there was an Imperial seafort with mortars.”
“That’s why The Goddess,” said Placelle Lamella, putting a gentle hand on Irina’s shoulder that Arlo was surprised did not make the woman wince, “In her aspect as the Jade Queen, that is– That’s why She commands us to expand the Empire, Arlo. It has to cover all the Ten-Thousand Seas so things like this won’t happen anymore.”
Some small part of Uncle Treistan and Agatha’s idealistic vision was revealed in this to Arlo, and he considered the room around himself thoughtfully for a long moment. The patriotic glow he had been attempting to fake, hoping that if he pretended it long enough he would start to believe his own self-deception, seemed a little more real in light of that notion. The skeptic inside him still didn’t buy in completely, of course. He was certain that leaping, sword-drawn, aboard a Guild merchant warship or a crusading Cult marauder would still land him in an early grave. He still did not think of himself as a fighter, and however more this idea of his country as being able to prevent these atrocities crystallized to him in the moment; it did little to alter his recent memory. His having been chased off Lost Pip by Guilders, humiliated by a governor’s personal toad, being assaulted by a talking bear, ‘good-naturedly needled’ by a talking wolf, thrashed by a jealous man who was supposed to be training him with the sword, captured as a hostage or potential slave by bandits, witness to the cruel and gruesome deaths of said bandits– not to mention the frequent barbs and insults from Irina, the disapproving shipmates, the off-puttingly forward nature of Placelle Lamella that set him on edge.
Everything that had happened to him in recent weeks had such a strong effect on him in this moment of revelation that the Imperial Kingdom of Corovokia might actually stand for something good, might help people like the islanders that had gone missing. The ugly, painful memories hardened his heart and all Arlo could drum out of his patriotic sense was a retreat to his desire to discover artists and sculptors, to once again bask in the glow of a lover’s smile. He even had the nerve to picture not Moriah who had been nothing but kind to him and gave him a sincere hope for a chance to build some kind of relationship, but Valentena who had stolen everything from him and left him to die.
He could see Placelle Lamella looking at him, and though her face was perfectly neutral he could see the intensity of her gaze.
It made him feel seen in ways he was not prepared for.
“I need to go for a walk.” he blurted suddenly.
Irina’s face scrunched up in anger as she jutted a thumb over her shoulder to the truck waiting outside while she shot him down. “Ah, negative, shipmate. You have got to stay here and help us load these crates.”
Arlo looked at the other three, then looked at the remaining crates that hadn’t been loaded into the truck. His eye fell on Pluramon’s corpse in its case, where Pluramon himself was still looking down at it from Razor’s head. He drew a ragged breath, but still could only say, “I need space. I’m no good at this kind of work, anyway.”
“No good? No good!?” Irina cried, throwing up her arms in sheer and utter outrage. She shuddered with visible anger, clearly wishing she had something she could stand to throw down and stomp on. “You spineless, dog-shite, rat of a man! You self-indulgent, skinny, silly, bloody-stupid bugger! Are you so determined to be useless even in this? We are in no danger, Harkon, you heard Pickles; it’s been weeks since anybody was here! Just get under one end of the lightest crate while I get my tiny arse under t’other! What could be simpler, you gutless, worthless man!? To the red end with you!”
Placelle Lamella stepped in here and held up a hand in front of Irina’s face, but only got out three full words uninterrupted, “No, it’s my f–”
“You be quiet, Fat Tits!” Irina growled now, going so far as to draw her boarding axe and menace the larger woman with it, “Or I will jolly well chop those milk trucks off of you and play kneeball with them! Why on the Stone would you take his blinkin’ side after he’s thrown you out? You’re obsessed! This man has spurned his duty at every turn with that bloody excuse!”
Irina squared herself, her grip on the boarding axe white knuckled, her feet vibrating on the ground while she raved in a mocking tone, “Oh, he’s ‘not a fighter’, ‘not meant for that kind of work’, every time there’s something to be done! Rich, spoiled! No blinkin’ initiative and a trail of corpses behind him while he broods.”
“He needed to get away from me.” the Oathkeeper argued back in a much quieter but still firm tone, having the decency to leave her hammer in its frog while she regarded Irina with a sleepy glare from above. “He wanted privacy because I could see him feeling something private. If we’re in a hurry, I can load these into the meth-roller myself right now so he can get his space.”
“We all have to put up with it from you, soul-sucker!” Irina shouted back now, “You can’t just give him everything he wants! He is a grown man but you treat him like a child; which I suppose figures since you act like a bloody child yourself! I’m sorry, so-called ‘Lady Oathkeeper’, but you lost your playmate because you cannot keep that blinkin’ hammer to yourself. Stop trying to get him back by letting him get away with everything.”
They continued arguing for quite some time with their voices reaching past the tree line and into the woods, but Arlo could no longer hear them well enough to really know what they were saying because he’d already walked away. Thoughts of both women oppressed him while he walked through the shaded trails. Even when they advocated for him, neither seemed to understand him and when they fought each other over what he should do neither seemed to actually care what he wanted. Even Placelle Lamella who could peer into his very soul and see what he was feeling, practically reading his very mind in all but the meanest sense of the phrase, still decided things for him in the end. Arlo’s fingertips drifted to his lips and he remembered the flash of pleasure he’d had kissing her in the blood-soaked seafort. It was easy to give in and indulge in the anger that followed as he imagined her forceful, aggressive attention wiping away the faint echo of true good feeling that Moriah had shown him when she’d kissed him.
He thought of Gromlaw’s kiss next, the messy impression of the dead woman’s lips engraved on his memory for the rest of his life with the unflinching guilt of her sacrifice. He thought tortuously of Valentena’s kisses, passionate little things usually delivered in passing. His feet took him endlessly down the woodland trail while his mind took him diving into a spiral of regrets and heartache. It was probably what Irina meant by suggesting he indulged in ‘brooding’.
He brooded for a long time before he realized he was lost. Arlo caught himself on a low-hanging limb and that was what had roused him from his reverie, stumbling in the packed dirt and flailing his hands out in front of him. By some miracle of balance, he managed to keep his boot side facing down and right himself; though he felt ridiculous standing there with his arms out and his wide eyes in the middle of the woods. With a sigh, he drew out his watch and checked the time while he tried to calm himself down with the strong ticks of the pinset. His free hand toyed with the dangling prayer charm in his lower buttonhole while he examined the dial of his watch.
At nearly four in the Day Watch, it was well-past time for them to have finished their work and gotten back to the ship for whatever Ali the Implacable was putting together in the galley for a mid-day meal. Arlo felt a surge of guilt pouring into him at the extreme passage of time he’d allowed with his childish attitude, but was also powerless to wind back the hour he’d wasted– about as powerless as he was to reckon his location on the island with his foolhardy wanderings. The road he was on looked like any other they’d gone across on their way to the lab, but Arlo had no recollection of what forks they’d taken then or which he’d taken now. A dim memory of some soldier explaining to him how to find directions as a child fluttered briefly to the surface, but he couldn’t quite make out the actual procedures involved.
He looked straight up, but between the time being so close to noon and the trees occluding so much of the sky, he couldn’t decide which was north or south. He tried to remember something about moss growing on stones, but looking around revealed neither stones nor moss. Arlo felt panic starting to well up to mix with his guilt as he settled onto the ground with his knees in front of him and tried to focus his thoughts. He could walk back the way he’d come and hope for the best, but if he got turned around on a different path he might make it even harder for his shipmates to find him.
If they even decided to look for him.
Without having turned in his letter of resignation to his uncle, Arlo was sure that Elroyal would at least dispatch a search party before outright leaving; but at the same time he had a vision of Irina gleefully ordering them to leave him behind with a good riddance for bad rubbish. He thought about what he would eat on the island, if he could use the radio set, if there were any fishing rods, if he could figure out how to use a fishing rod–
“Ho, there!” A broad, manly voice from straight ahead startled Arlo out of his panic spiral and he jumped up to his feet with his heart pounding. There was a stranger coming up a hill from the woods towards him. It was a tall, smiling man in his late forties with a huge salt-and-pepper beard and caramel skin like Arlo’s own.
“Are you okay, young man?” the man asked when he got closer. He was sopping wet and nearly naked, wearing only a pair of soaking wet brown half-breeches and sandals. A dry sash of orange silk was wrapped around his waist, protecting a leather belt with pouches and a bearded axe inside of a leather thong. The man moved with confidence, broad steps up the slope and swinging arms bringing him in front of Arlo. His dark face and eyes showed gentle, fatherly concern.
“I–” Arlo croaked, then smoothed down his clothes and stood up straighter to say, “I thought there was nobody else here on the island.”
The man laughed, a good and hardy laugh, and agreed, “You’re the first actual person I’ve seen on this rock. The rest have all been animals.”
The stranger gave Arlo a good pat on one bicep that left a cold, wet feeling through his shirt. Arlo ignored this and smiled genially at the stranger, admitting, “I’m sorry to say you came across me at a bad time, sir. I had just gotten myself lost.”
“Is that so?” asked the man kindly, then with a dismissive wave he said, “Don’t fret, young friend. I know my way around fair enough. If you will indulge me in sitting for a few minutes and smoking my pipe, I can lead you exactly where you need to go. I just have to rest a spell, for I’ve just finished a swim in one of these ponds and my bones are tired.”
“Truly, sir?” Arlo asked, perked up immensely. In truth, he had forgotten up until this moment that they had spotted that plume of smoke on the way in, but now figured it belonged to this very kind stranger. It gave him a powerful sense of relief, both closing off his lingering fear and letting him nibble on some hope in the process. “I would be very happy to meet back up with my friends.”
“Why don’t you sit and tell me about your friends while we pass the pipe back and forth?” the older man asked with a broad grin while he sat down in the dirt on the side of the road; seemingly indifferent to the way it would no-doubt soil his wet breeches. He produced a long pipe of bone, worn so much that it was closer to yellow-tan than bleach white. Stuffing it with fuzzy brown strands of tobacco and striking a waterproof match from another pouch, the man reclined and puffed for a while before asking, kindly, “Do you think we should introduce ourselves first?”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry!” Arlo laughed, and extended a hand to shake wrists with the man. “I’m Arlo Haradin-Harkon, Bonded Agent of House Haradin. At least for the time-being anyway.”
Oddly, instead of grasping his wrist, the man reached up and squeezed then shook Arlo’s hand. “I am Ordon, Son of Claron. I am happy to know you, Friend Arlo.”
Arlo looked down at his hand with his head tilted to one side, unsure of what to make of the unusual greeting. He had read that people all over the Ten-Thousand Seas all had their own customs and procedures; that many islands had gone since The Unfurling without meeting the Empire and even many of those who had kept their old customs unmolested. Still, the handshake was a novelty to him. It reminded him of the way tradesmen would clap their hands together after spitting on them, but it was a longer and more intimate gesture that didn’t cross the thumbs.
“So are you dissatisfied with the life of a ‘Bonded Agent’, Friend Arlo?” Ordon asked since it seemed like Arlo was going to examine his palm until interrupted.
Arlo started again and then bashfully admitted, “I don’t think I’m cut out for it. I’m not very good at any of the things I’ve been asked to do so far, my shipmates don’t seem to like me very much, and… Ah, sad to say, I feel I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”
Ordon nodded in understanding, then offered the pipe up to Arlo. “I know your struggle, Friend Arlo. I, too, once felt that I was not fit for my calling. My peers loathed me for my nature, which is beyond my control. My faith alone got me through the crucible. Tell me about your friends who I hope to know soon as well, then, and we will speak no more about our struggles.”
It was then that Arlo first realized he had called them friends. He thought about this for a moment while he puffed absently on Ordon’s pipe, considering how the term had slipped out when he was fairly certain that Irina hated him despite the kinship they’d shared that morning, Pluramon could take him or leave him, Razor was a complete and utter stranger, and Placelle Lamella was misguided at best. Even still, since he had to answer, he tried, “Well, there is a Tribune with me who I think cannot stand me, but we have had some few pleasant moments. There is also a man of science, who is hard to explain…”
There was a chuckle from Ordon who admitted up to him with shining, joyful eyes, “A man of science by any stripe is hard to explain. I have not got much use for science myself, nor Tribunes for that matter!”
Arlo chuckled back and took a long draw from the pipe before passing it down and going on, “Perhaps the closest thing I have just now to a true friend is an Oathkeeper who dotes on me immensely. She followed me around constantly for days after we first met, but she is far too pushy and wild; so though she seems quite friendly I find myself withdrawn from her. I suspect this bizarre nature is because she has the heartleech curse; but I must confess I know little of it myself.”
Ordon seemed to understand this, as well. He nodded again and contemplated the answer at length before saying, “I can imagine why she may be drawn to you. You’re a very complicated man.”
“I am?” Arlo asked, suddenly leaning away from the older man and pointing a finger inwards to his own chest. “I mean… What gives you that impression?”
There was a smile on Ordon’s face as he rose to his feet and stretched with the pipe clenched in his teeth. He knelt to smack the bottom of it and eject the burning cherry of tobacco onto the dirt before stamping it out while answering, “Why, it’s your whole being. You’re sad, you’re guilty, you’re determined to change, you’re panicking on and off. You’re a very emotional man, Friend Arlo. It’s an irresistible lure for a heartleech. Think of it like comfort food.”
“I am? It is?” stammered Arlo with a sudden sense of wary agitation. He furrowed his brow and took a cautious step away from Ordon, who matched his step but with such a sincere veneer of casual calmness that Arlo was not sure if he was being pursued or not. “You… can tell all that?”
“Of course!” Ordon replied with a good, sturdy pat to Arlo’s shoulder that could’ve been a cannon blast. The pat ended in an affectionate grip that itself was a little too tight for Arlo’s comfort while Ordon explained, “I’m a heartleech myself, Friend Arlo. How do you think I knew to walk up here to meet you? You think I finished my swim and it just-so-happened that I walked uphill to some random part of the road where you were already waiting?”
There was a momentary resurgence of panic, then a sinking feeling in Arlo’s stomach. He could not say exactly why, but this interaction was starting to make him feel like he was in danger. He tried gently easing his shoulder out from the man’s grip, but Ordon moved that grip to the back of Arlo’s neck and huddled even closer, saying, “What is the Oathkeeper’s name, Friend Arlo? I want to meet her most of all.”
The thumb and forefinger digging into Arlo’s neck came with a dull ache, and he found himself flinching slightly, but in the direst hope of salvaging the situation he muttered, “Her name is Placelle Lamella; and she is quite protective of me.”
“Good, that’s good.” Ordon replied with another powerful laugh, “I am so excited to meet her. A heartleech is an extremely valuable thing, you know, Friend Arlo? It’s a gift from above, not a curse.”
Arlo winced again and started trying to pull away, but Ordon’s hand dug in harder. In a sudden flurry of desperation, Arlo’s hand flashed down to the hilt of his sabre, but Ordon dropped his pipe and wrapped a vice-like grip around Arlo’s wrist at the same instant.
“Arlo,” he chastised with a pitying, but still fatherly expression and a tiny shake of his head, “I can tell what you’re about to do before you decide to do it. Don’t you think it’s a bit silly to try and do anything dangerous to me?”
Arlo shuddered in the man’s grip, his eyes bulging. “Sir, I don’t–”
“Don’t worry,” Ordon interrupted with his face still smiling and serene. “I am not going to kill you, Friend Arlo. I just want to take your Placelle, and then maybe I kill this Tribune who hates you. But you? I like you, Arlo, you’re a morsel and so polite as well.”
Arlo tried going limp in the man’s grip, but the pain of all his weight suddenly hanging from his own neck in the heartleech’s hand was discouragingly excruciating. Arlo found himself making a rather pitiful noise while he shuffled his feet despondently. His left hand worked around his belt to the flap of his holster and he almost had it open when Ordon bodily threw him sprawling onto the ground. After catching himself, Arlo rolled over onto his back and fumbled with the holster using both hands. He was pulling the revolver out when Ordon took him by the ankles and cracked him like a whip, sending the pistol flying as Arlo’s head rebounded on the packed dirt and his back seared in sudden, stretching pain.
Fueled by panic alone and with his head throbbing, Arlo reached for his sabre pressed flat against the ground under his thighs and struggled to loose it from its scabbard. Ordon simply whipped Arlo against the ground again with that broad, powerful laugh, then repeated his feat a third time when Arlo gave the sword another tug.
“You’re too fun, Friend Arlo!” Ordon called down to him while Arlo rolled onto his side, the pain in his head so intense now from being whipped against the ground that his vision was dotted with sunspots and he couldn’t focus on anything but dark shapes moving in his periphery. “But if you don’t stop, I may end up hurting you!”
“You already have.” creaked Arlo rumpled and clutching his head in both hands with watering eyes. Ordon chuckled in appreciation of the comeback and even patted the bottom of Arlo’s boot affectionately. Strong hands grasped his shoulders. Groggily, Arlo put up meager, token resistance while Ordon stripped him of his belt and waistcoat. His head lolled and jerked as Ordon tore away the cravat he used to bind his hair and converted it into a rudimentary gag that fell out on its own and draped over his neck after a few more movements. At some point, Arlo felt some little trickle of his strength returning and he instantly used it in a mad attempt to scramble away, but his hands only scraped useless against the packed dirt of the road for the space of time it took him to bend his knees before Ordon clobbered him with another blow on the back of the head.
“Why do things like this keep happening?” Arlo asked himself in a subdued, crushed voice while the shoulder-strap of his garrison belt was wrapped around his arms and tied behind his back. He stared straight ahead at the winding road shaded by towering oaks and sycamore trees, peering through darkening vision while lamenting what seemed to be his new lot in life.
“I am truly sorry to hear that they do,” Ordon told him from behind, delivering another affectionate pat on the shoulder before grabbing the belt and dragging Arlo behind him on the path. “I had expected this to be the first such event for you, what with how soft you seem to be and really– I hate to hear how you’ve suffered.”
Arlo looked at the tips of his boots and the twin trails his heels left in the top layer of sediment on the winding road and remarked, “Somehow, I doubt that.”
This brought another broad laugh from Ordon, who explained, “Everyone I spend time with is so humorless, I really mean it when I say you are grand, Arlo. I hope you will be friends with me when all this is over. Maybe I can take you to my home where none of this wild stuff will happen to you anymore.”
There was no response from Arlo to this, partially because he didn’t believe his captor and partially because he didn’t want to admit how nice it sounded to go and live somewhere that he could be left alone. It was the draw of the counting-house job he’d foolishly turned down back when he still had some hope that he might get together an art-collection again. At this point, his mother’s dream of an auction house seemed so far out of reach that Arlo would’ve been happy just to own a single painting or sculpture to gaze upon for the rest of his life and perhaps be able to afford a monthly bottle of Astermoth White or Mainlander Red.
When Ordon saw Arlo was not in a talking mood anymore, he satisfied himself to just drag the younger man through the dirt at a jocular pace with a happy spring in his step. They wound their way around a wide curve and then crossed over a fork leading down a hill. As they moved onto the fork, Arlo could see other trails like the ones his heels were leaving. Just like him, many others had been dragged this way, one after another. Some, clearly, had been dragged two at once.
Arlo perked up, fear and indignation working together and propelling him to say, “You lied to me. You said you hadn’t seen anybody else since coming here, but clearly I am not the first you have dragged like this!”
“I don’t lie, Arlo,” Ordon protested. The large man stopped dragging Arlo for a moment and walked around. As soon as he was in view, Arlo started wiggling around onto his stomach and started trying to worm himself down the hill; but did little more other than seeing a bit more dirt and leaves before Ordon flipped him over and reattached his gag. Once Arlo was gagged by his cravat again, Ordon continued dragging him and explained, “I said I had seen no people, only animals. That is my belief. I guess, being that you are in the employ of a Great House and in the company of an Imperial Tribune as well as an Oathkeeper; that you probably think of some animals as people. But just because they can talk, doesn’t mean they’re people, Arlo.”
Now, desperation started to take over and Arlo started to wriggle harder in his bonds with his feet kicking as he was dragged down the trail. He screamed into his gag, which seemed to make Ordon chuckle behind him.
“Don’t make such a fuss, Friend Arlo, I’m not going to kill you unless I have to. Sincerely, I like you, and I hope to make you a man of my faith. You’ll get to stay friends with your Oathkeeper! Of course, she won’t be an Oathkeeper anymore.” Ordon promised while they rounded another corner and Arlo saw what had become of Hookthorn’s boats. Most of them had been gathered here at a little shore where the road met a cove. Those which remained were flipped upside down in the sand, some with seagulls perched placidly on their hulls. Most of them had been chopped up and reduced into planks, however. A trench had been dug on the shoreline and filled with these planks and they had been set on fire. This had happened so long ago that there was almost nothing left of the planks except a few ends and pieces that stuck out from the trench in certain spots. Only embers and ash remained of those that had been in the center. As Arlo was dragged alongside the trench he got a good view of the ribs and trusses of the various boats both large and small that had been used as kindling for the great long bonfire that must’ve once lit up the entire shore.
Then, he noticed the bodies.
The first thing he saw was a reaching hand, five fingers charred into a black claw. Then he saw a leg, another leg without a foot, a leg that ended in something like a talon. Arlo winced as he realized that he was being dragged past a mass grave full of beastfolk. He shook his head hard, willing himself to unrealize the horror of what had transpired here. His thoughts turned to Moriah, the symbol in his heart of hope, and the realization that she would’ve been killed by Ordon without hesitation. Fear, anger, and hatred bubbled up in him in a way it never had before. Ordon certainly had tasted it, because not only did the man laugh, but he also said, “Good, that’s very good, thank you, Friend Arlo.”
Arlo screamed uselessly into the gag, kicked his feet impotently while hate scorched his heart. He wanted to punish Ordon, he wanted to escape his imprisonment, and most of all he desperately wanted to live and not find himself charred to a blackened crisp like the innocent people who’d been thrown into the trench. Soon the trench was retreating from view and Arlo found himself looking up at a gunboat in the cove. It was painted crimson red all over, even at its stubby tower and labeled quite simply, white block letters spelling out ‘KS GB1126’ at the top of its hull near the taffrail. Men in red jumpsuits were working on the deck, some cleaning fixtures and others practicing drills with simple mass-produced dussacks near the prow where a solitary turret stood pointed at the narrow entrance to the rocky cove. One of the seamen saw Ordon below and raised his hand in a wave. Arlo couldn’t see if Ordon had returned the gesture.
Ordon put Arlo in one of the little leftover boats and rowed him to the side of the gunboat before he was lifted up in a bosun’s chair onto the deck while Ordon climbed a chain shroud behind him. Two of the men in red jumpsuits took Arlo’s sword and revolver from Ordon and carried them into a door the big man had pointed to in advance, leaving Arlo wondering if there was any point in him even carrying the things other than that he would get captured and people would have something interesting to take away.
When Ordon removed his gag, Arlo immediately spat at the man’s feet and asked, “Why have you brought me to your ship, murderer!?”
To which, with a gentle laugh, Ordon replied, “This is not my ship, Friend Arlo. You’re on Khaldon’s ship, on Khaldon’s seas, on Khaldon’s world! Show some respect!”
