In the Wake of the Kraken

by C. Vandyke

  “I scry true, Captain. I see an orc with an elf’s ears and a noble’s blood.”

  Tempest swallowed thickly, suddenly wishing she’d thought to procure a drink.

  “This orc is on a journey,” Helga continued. “I see—”

  Tempest stood without realising she meant to. “This is what my coin buys? I asked you plain for the whereabouts of a map, and all I get is riddles and nonsense. I heard rumours your fortunes were cursed. I should have listened to my gut and kept my money in my purse.”

  Helga’s head snapped up, two leonine eyes glaring from the shadows of her hood. “It’s all lies. I’m not cursed, never was.”

  “Maybe she ain’t cursed, but she couldn’t prophesize her way out of a bag of cats.”

  The three women turned to find an old man sitting in the corner, nursing a small mug of beer.

  “What do you know about it?” Tempest demanded.

  “I know that old sea hag ain’t telling fortunes, she’s just repeating what I told her last night.” The man stood as Helga tutted in indignation, his arms spread wide in a grand gesture. “I am the Wizard Cazuuli.” A drop of beer slid from his greasy grey stub of a beard and fell to join the tobacco stains creeping across the front of his vest.

  “You’re the Wizard Cazuuli?” Mary asked. She positioned herself before her captain, though the man hardly seemed to pose a threat. “You’re the only person alive to have glimpsed the Map of the Multiverse?” Her forehead creased as she regarded his salt-stiff long johns. “Where are your clothes?”

  “Back on sodding Torganal with the rest of my belongings,” the man spat. He drew himself up on stockinged feet, oblivious to the jagged yellow toenail that had ripped a hole through the right toe, and scowled at Tempest. “Your delightful girlfriend spirited me away in the dead of night. Said Undercurrent had surfaced. The Map is free and clear of the water, sitting pretty for any passing thief to snatch. She wanted me to take her there.”

  “Why would she need you if she knows where the Map is?”

  “Your girl might be rum-pickled, but she’s not lost all her wits. She knew I was also the only person alive to have made it past the undead ghouls what guard the place.”

  “Stop calling her my girl.”

  “But that’s what she is, ain’t she? Everybody on Torganal knows she was joint-captain of the Screaming Harpy. She talks about it enough when she’s in her cups.”

  “She does?” Tempest paused, took a breath. “So where is Sheena now? Is she here?”

  “Buggered if I know,” Cazuuli said, reaching to scratch beneath an armpit. “I was finally able to convince her that even if I could remember how I made my way into the Nexus in the first place, I would need my specialist equipment, and that was all left behind on Torganal. She dumped me here and sailed away in her rig, probably on to Undercurrent alone.”

  Tempest considered the wizard’s story. She knew she should be heading out to open waters, scouting out a merchantman or a trading sloop, something for her crew to get messy with. Something to scour this whole affair from her brain. She knew these things, but a hard place in her chest was vibrating with a dull ache. After almost a decade of silence, Sheena was abroad in the world at last. She looked back at Cazuuli.

  “You’re coming with us.”

  “No, I’m bloody not. I’ve just been dragged halfway across the sea by a deranged pirate, I’m not about to let it happen again.”

  “I’m not giving you a choice. Mary, grab him, please.”

  Mary looked as if she’d rather do anything but touch the sweating man, but she followed orders and stepped around Cazuuli to bring his arms up behind his back, keeping them locked into place as he thrashed.

  “Let me go, you miserable old sows. I want no part of this.”

  He was soundly ignored. Tempest snatched up her coins from Helga’s dish as they turned to leave and the fortune teller jumped to her feet, upsetting the cards still spread on the table. A silver card fluttered to the floor, etched with a faded portrait of two mermaids entwined beneath a cobalt moon. Tempest kicked it away.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Helga screeched. “I read your fortune, I earnt my payment.”

  “Sod off, Helga. You’re lucky I don’t carve out every one of your lying eyes.”

  The eyes on Helga’s coat all blinked in slow, sticky unison as the pirates clattered back down the stairs with Cazuuli staggering between them.

  Tempest could still hear Cazuuli cursing their names from the brig, a deck below. She gazed up at the graven face of the dryad pressed into the dark wood of her cabin wall, monstrously large and grown over with dank sea fungus. The ship was hungering. Soon, the mouth would fall open and, if left unfed, the dryad’s pained howling would cut through all three decks. Tempest lifted a small dagger to her forefinger and broke the skin with one swift, practiced stab, coaxing forth a bright bead of blood. She lifted the finger to the dryad’s waxy lips and smeared the offering inside. A long sigh filled the room, borne on an unnatural breeze that roused images of mountain forests and icy streams. Tempest closed her eyes to breathe in the new life creeping across her skin.

  An elf’s blood and the innate power it contained in exchange for life, for years beyond even those a long-lived elf would naturally live: that was the deal they had made with the dryad. Entreating the tree spirit to become a part of the crew, a part of the ship itself, had been Sheena’s idea; but ever since their ill-fated journey to Labruma, the blood-offering was tinged with regret. Tempest had wanted nothing more than to sail the oceans with the half-orc hellion at her side until the end of days and, for years, they had captained the Harpy together, flying their beautiful crimson ship into skirmishes and raids that were sung about in taverns across the Archipelago. Then Sheena looked into the Death Waters Fountain, and everything had soured.

  A loud, fiery burp startled the captain from her communion with the ship.

  “Broomie,” she admonished, eyes snapping open. “What are you doing in here, you little bastard?”

  The bilge-dragon manifested from the shadows beside Tempest’s dresser, slowly coagulating into being like smoke filling a jar. Two eyes sparked from a pointed face twisted with contempt. It took a slow, deep breath and exhaled a stream of ashy smoke that filled the room with the sulfuric smell of rancid eggs.

  Mary knocked at the door. “Captain Brack?”

  “Enter.”

  The quartermaster pushed open the door, raising a sleeve to her face when the putrid smoke rushed from the room to engulf her.

  “Broomie got in my cabin again. What have I told you about keeping your eyes on that miscreant?”

  “So sorry, Captain. It won’t happen again.” Mary made shooing motions at the little black dragon. “Come on, Broomie. Out you go.”

  The dragon sat back on its haunches and rustled the tattered wings on its back, only yielding when Tempest drew her cutlass from her belt. Even then, it moved infuriatingly slowly, claws skittering across the floorboards and long, razor-whip tail swinging languorously behind it.

  Tempest resheathed her cutlass. “What can I do for you, Mary?”

  “I’d like to know what I should tell the crew,” Mary said, shutting the door on the retreating dragon.

  “About what?”

  “About our destination. They were expecting to be underway on an expedition.”

  “The crew go where I tell them to go.”

  “They won’t be happy, Captain. They spent most of their coin on rum and company back on Saltskiff. They’ll be looking to make our next score.”

  “This is just a detour.”

  “But what of the Pirate Kings’ treasure? They’ll never stop chasing the Harpy down if we don’t have something to trade.”

  “That will have to wait.”

  “But, Captain—”

  “That will have to wait, Quartermaster.”

  Mary nodded and exited the cabin, leaving Tempest alone amidst the enduring drift of bilge-dragon smoke.


  Undercurrent was an ugly, haunted place. Tempest helped Mary pull their boat up onto a coarse sand beach in a dismal cove, then brought out her spyglass to survey their surroundings. In the far distance, stands of warped trees waved fronds like decomposing tentacles in the air.

  “The Seawood Woods,” Cazuuli said at her elbow. “A reeking scourge of a place, to be sure.”

  She turned from the wizard to join Mary at the water’s edge. “Glimpse anything?”

  “All clear, but I don’t much like the feel of this place. Can I ask you a question, Captain?”

  “Speak. I didn’t make you up to quartermaster for being meek.”

  Mary leaned on a boulder, metallic limbs grinding against the rough stone. “Are we here for the Map, or for Captain Sheena?”

  “The Map of the Multiverse doesn’t mean much to me, though I suppose it would fetch decent coin on Brig Island.”

  Tempest could see Mary had more questions, but she didn’t much feel like dredging up the answers. Behind them, the wizard hopped from one foot to the other in a loping circle, stopping to pick up stray shells and stones and stuffing them into the pockets of his long johns.

  “Lead on, old man,” Tempest called to him. “It’s time we were away.”

  By mid-afternoon, they had reached the Ruins of Curranthis. Ruined, but not abandoned. The smoke from several fires wound grey tendrils amongst the shattered rooftops, and at its centre was an immense domed structure, lights glittering in its oval windows.

  “I’ve brought you this far,” Cazuuli said. “Now, I’m off.”

  Tempest placed a hand on the wizard’s shoulder, digging her fingers into his sinewy collarbone. “I haven’t given you permission to leave.”

  Cazuuli grinned. Before Tempest could stop him, he pulled a heavy stone from his pocket and threw it through the broken wall of the building in front of them. A chittering echoed back from the darkness, a dry rasping that heightened in intensity until four figures climbed through the gaping rift in the brickwork. As Tempest and Mary reached for their weapons, Cazuuli took his chance to slip away.

  “Get back here,” Tempest shouted, but the wizard was already gone, hooting like a deranged seabird as he vanished into the recesses of the city.

  Tempest drew her cutlass. The figures grew closer, clutching long halberds tipped with cruelly-carved coral, and stepped into the light. Tempest tightened her grip on the cutlass as Mary stiffened beside her, legs locked into a fighting stance.

  The figures did not appear to be wholly alive.

  They rushed at the pirates, dead-fish eyes stark and staring. Their clothes were little more than tattered strips, revealing skin and muscle parted by damp decay and the hint of mouldering bone beneath. As they ran, their wide, webbed feet slapped against the stone.

  Tempest took one out with a clean swipe from gut to gills, while Mary split the skull of her assailant with one perfectly timed kick of her clockwork leg—but behind them were two more, and from the building at their backs poured another dozen.

  The gaol cell was cramped and chill, the walls swathed in the creeping slime of a particularly tenacious seaweed. Tempest supposed she should be grateful the undead fishguards hadn’t executed them on the spot. She’d been separated from her quartermaster, and could only glimpse the Wizard Cazuuli sitting cross-legged in the cell across from hers.

  “See where your treachery has gotten us, you old maggot?” she hissed at him.

  The wizard was hunched over the floor, his back turned to her as he recited a dry chant beneath his breath. Tempest snarled, lunging through the bars of her cell to flail uselessly at salt-damp air.

  A snoring stranger in the next cell woke with a start.

  “Shut up, would you?” they said. “Screeching won’t get you out of this hole. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

  Tempest knew that voice; knew it as intimately as she knew her own.

  “Sheena?”

  The figure grumbled and moaned, turning its face towards the wall.

  “I know that’s you, Sheena.” Then, quieter, “Sheena, it’s me, Temp.”

  Sheena sat up abruptly and swung around to look at her. Tempest fought a sickening urge to drop her gaze and shuffle backwards into the shadows, suddenly aware of every change the dryad’s magic had woven into her face over the years since they’d last seen each other. The fact that Sheena looked no different only made the feeling worse.

  “What are you doing on this squid’s arse of an island?”

  And just like that, the spell was broken. The tired old anger returned.

  “I haven’t seen you in a kraken's age, and that’s the first thing you say to me?”

  She was surprised when Sheena lowered her head, one hand reaching to grip the bars separating them.

  “I never thought I’d see you again, Temp. You took me by surprise, that’s all.”

  “You didn’t think you’d see me? Or you didn’t want to see me?”

  “What difference does that make after all these years?”

  Tempest hadn’t chased Sheena across half the Archipelago just to argue. “I came here for you.”

  “For me? I thought you would have given up on me by now. You’re getting on alright, aren’t you? You’ve got a new quartermaster, you don’t need me to help captain the crew.”

  Tempest sat back, her joints aching. “I just needed to see you well. I thought you were on Torganal, ferreting out kraken secrets. Trying to change your fate. Then, I heard you’d washed up here.”

  “Aye.” Sheena smiled at her in the half-light, the same grin which never failed to disarm Tempest when she was a young elf. “I’m here for the Map, but every other bugger with a dream or a death wish came looking for it too. That’s why the fishguards are on high alert. No one’s getting in or out of the Nexus.”

  Tempest shook her head, confused.

  “That’s where they keep it,” Sheena explained. “The selfish bastards.”

  “But why do you want it?” She thought about lacing her fingers through Sheena’s between the bars. “Why are you running around looking for a mystical map when you could have been—”

  “With you, back on the Harpy?” Sheena finished for her. “Things changed after Labruma, Temp. I changed. I wish I could better explain what happened when I looked into those cursed waters.” She seemed wistful, almost sorry.

  Tempest raised her fingers to Sheena’s, brushing her knuckles and grasping her hand, inching closer to the bars as the wizard’s moaning chant became louder. She glanced over her shoulder. He’d marked a ring of sigils into the dirt with a stick and was placing shells and stones around the circle as he rocked back and forth.

  “Magdalene's mercy, wizards are annoying,” Sheena said. “You should have left him back on Saltskiff. I did.”

  “I sorely wish I had.”

  “I didn’t know the Map existed when I rucked up in Vista,” Sheena went on. “I went to learn about the kraken, to prevent my death so I could return to you and the Harpy. That’s the truth of it, Temp. I always meant to come back.”

  “But you didn’t come back. The Harpy has life to spare for both of us. All we had to do was stay away from the bloody kraken.”

  “I didn’t want to live like that. That’s what I could never make you understand. What joy is to be found in preternaturally long life if you spend every moment of it looking over your shoulder, praying today won’t be the day the kraken swallows you whole?”

  Tempest didn’t have an answer for that. She removed her hand from Sheena’s and cradled it in her lap.

  “It’s not all bad though, love. I really did find answers on Torganal. This map opens the door to worlds you can’t even imagine. Places where pirates sail the skies.”

  “So, you’re going to escape the kraken by running off to join the crew of a flying ship? You really are rum-pickled.”

  “Not quite.” Sheena leaned closer. “I’m going to find out where the beast is planning to send me when it finally gets its tentacles ar
ound my throat. See, I’ve been wondering if I was wrong about seeing my death. I’m wondering if what I was glimpsing was my future.”

  Tempest pulled herself up against the bars. “I wish you’d never looked into those waters. I wish you’d stayed behind with me in Refuge and left that cursed rock with nothing but a hangover.”

  “Aye, love. There’s been many times in the long years since I’ve wished the same.”

  A whistling scream, followed by a juddering cracking sound, sent them both sprawling to the floor of their cells. Fire ripped across the ceiling and Tempest turned to see Cazuuli cackling with glee as he knelt inside his flaming circle of sigils. The stones and shells placed around the circumference were blackened and smoking. Before him, a large chunk of the gaol wall had been completely blasted away. Cazuuli rolled through the last of the dying flames, briefly paused to tamp out a stray ember smoking in his beard, and lifted his middle finger in Tempest’s direction before climbing through the broken wall and disappearing.

  Tempest strained to see through the smoke. “Sheena, you still with me?” There was no reply.

  “Are you hurt, Captain?”

  Mary appeared at the door of her cell, crouching like a spider on four bent knees. Tempest roused at the comforting sight of keys swinging from her hand.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “How did you escape?”

  “The wizard's fire tore right through my cell. Buckled the door. I found these keys on a smoking fishguard.”

  “You have the luck of a turtle dragon, Mary. How fares Sheena?”

  Mary moved to the adjoining cell and shook her head. “She’s escaped, Captain. The explosion took down this wall, too.”

  “She left me here to burn?” Tempest kicked at her bars with a hoarse roar and Mary almost dropped the keys. “Unlock the bloody door, Quartermaster.”

  They escaped the rubble of the smoking gaol and hauled themselves up onto the roof to watch the fishguard swarm around the Nexus. If Tempest interpreted their jerky hand gestures correctly, they were searching for two intruders.