Black & Mist

by Thomas J. Radford

  It was the third time he’d suggested this since they’d left the Tantamount. For herself, Nel was glad to get away from the Tantamount. She was missing Piper again, not least because they still had a warped timber hole in the hull, the sort of problem she would have left to him. It was something she was avoiding, but that didn’t mean the captain got a free pass on this trip.

  “Sand is going to want an explanation as to why we arrived with a hold full of ice cuts instead of her cargo,” Nel said. “Better if we front ourselves before they come calling with ledgers and debt collectors.”

  Horatio’s sigh echoed how Nel felt. Losing their Vice-bound cargo on Cauldron had hurt, both their reputation and their finances.

  No idea how we’re going to explain this one. Alliance blockades, Guild agents, smuggled cargo, at best we’d be blacklisted. At worst they might sell us out.

  Regardless, they were shown into the factor’s office. An air of calculated officialdom, predictable and almost cliché, a tired theatre they were forced to play the roles of. And sit patiently while the clerk finished filing whatever meaningless paperwork was at hand.

  “Now,” the man said at length. “Who might you be?”

  And there it was. The moment of confession. Nel let her captain take the lead. It was only fair.

  “Captain Horatio Phelps of the Tantamount,” he recited. Then a sidelong glance at her.

  He wouldn’t . . .

  “And my first officer, Chanel Dominica Vaughn.”

  She gave him the most withering look she could muster. They’d be coming back to that later.

  “Yes, yes, the Tantamount, inbound cargo of opiates. We expected you some time ago.” The man looked up and reached for a small brass bell at his side. Nel tensed as it rang but all that happened was the appearance of a Draugr. Neatly dressed for one, almost in liveries.

  “Bring me the green, wrapped package, Roam. Second shelf next to the outbound expenses.”

  “We were delayed,” Horatio said, the words tumbling out. “Unavoidably so, repairs were needed. Significant repairs, multiple repairs.”

  “Indeed?” the man said. “My, that does sound serious. I do hope your ship is able to pass muster again. I imagine you might struggle to make your living if not.”

  Nel resisted the urge to look to the captain. Had they just been threatened? “Same as any other crew. The ship is seaworthy though, more than. Fully crewed and awaiting her next contract. What we came here to discuss.”

  The Draugr manservant returned, cradling a wax-sealed parchment in two cupped hands. The factor took possession of the letter and waved the Draugr off. It went to stand awkwardly in the corner.

  “Captain Phelps, you are expected, it seems. This was delivered at the same time as your cargo with instructions it be handed over to you. Mistress Sand will see you now. Roam, be a dear and show them in.”

  Horatio looked as stunned as Nel felt. Had she heard that right? The cargo had been delivered? The same cargo they’d returned to Cauldron to find vanished without a trail?

  She kept her mouth shut on the subject. So did the captain, or else he was too shocked to speak. Either way.

  They followed the Draugr Roam into Sand’s office, a spartan affair as far as furnishings went, only a single chair in front of the desk that Horatio quickly occupied, forcing Nel to stand at his shoulder. She tucked her hands under her arms to keep from fidgeting while they waited for Sand to arrive. Aside from the mounds of papers covering every flat surface, there wasn’t much to see. It seemed the clerk’s fastidiousness didn’t extend to his employer’s office.

  The side door opened and Sand came through it. Not walked so much as invaded the room, the woman was all business, heavyset and a face carved out of granite. This wasn’t Nel’s first encounter with the woman. Sand ran a significant part of the shipping interests through Vice. Anyone who did more than the occasional stopover through the port was likely to be aware of her even if they hadn’t outright done business with her.

  “Horatio, Nel, good to see you both,” she said curtly, dropping into the seat behind the desk. She looked down at the piled papers on the desk, as if she was perplexed as to how they got there. A sweep of one arm sent most of them fluttering to the floor. Nel imagined a despairing wail from the other side of the door. Not an unpleasant thought.

  “To the point,” Sand looked up, as brusque as ever. “Your cargo turned up late but not nearly so late as you. Some of my partners don’t care for sub-contracting runs like that. Myself, I’m just happy the goods turned up at all with what I’ve been hearing.”

  “Yes, well, happy to oblige, my dear Sand,” Horatio said. “More so, guaranteed delivery, that was our bond and our word is our bond. A given contract, nothing more sacred, a captain’s word is a sacred oath, one which I take seriously.”

  “You were as surprised as I was the cargo arrived at all.” Sand leaned back in her chair.

  “Cards on the table?” Nel put her hand on the captain’s shoulder as he slumped with a theatrical sigh. “Yes.”

  “Cards on the table,” Sand repeated. She flicked a card down between them. A black queen. “Recognise that?”

  “Should we?” Nel frowned at the card. Then at the captain. Cards were much more his problem than hers. And yes . . . he was smiling.

  “My last card,” he chortled. “Won me the round. Near cleaned him out with that card. Luck turned after that, like the man could see my hand, every time. Kept calling my bluffs. Terrible luck. Great play though, the black queen. One of my best.”

  Nel sighed, rubbing at her face. “Cauldron,” she muttered. Now it was starting to make sense.

  “That came pinned to the bill,” Sand told her. “Along with that letter you’re holding, Horatio. Don’t open it here. Whatever Guild fracas you’re involved in, I don’t want any of it. Keep it to yourself.”

  Guild, Nel thought, as Horatio turned over the letter, exposing the seal, a complicated conglomerate of lines and angles Nel couldn’t have drawn if she tried. She ought to be grateful to Ebon for following through on their original contract to Vice. Only . . .

  “Regarding payment for the run,” Nel said.

  “Tendered to the ship delivering the cargo,” Sand said. “Standard sub-contractual arrangement.”

  “Of course.” Damn him, that was a good run. Mind you, we’re better off than when we walked in the door, thought Sand was going to have us up against the wall for this one. No coin and no rep. Now it’s just no coin but thanks to Violet’s ice run . . .

  Where to from here though?

  Sand was watching her. Not smiling, the woman never smiled, didn’t know how. Congenial enough if you did what she asked, which worked just fine for Nel. She could respect that. But if she doesn’t know she must be guessing.

  “You had another run lined up for us,” Horatio said what Nel was thinking. Brave question, give the man his due.

  “Had,” Sand nodded.

  “Had, past tense, in the present, yes, yes,” Horatio actually sounded irritated, tapping his private Guild message on the arm of his chair. “Do you have a job for us or not? Or are we done here?”

  Sand regarded them both with those cold slate eyes. “I have a job for you.”

  The tapping stopped.

  “Just not the job we had talked of. That run had to be filled. You understand.”

  Not much choice here. Beggars can’t be choosers.

  “Let’s hear what you have for us. Start with a direction.”

  “The High Lanes.”

  Hells.

  “We just came from there. Wouldn’t be my first choice of ports,” Nel said.

  “Nor mine,” Horatio said firmly, immediately aligned with her. “And there are few shipments we could undertake from Vice that would be welcomed there.”

  “With open arms,” Nel added. “Running to Vice is one thing, folk here are relaxed as a drunken troll. Folk in the High are that same troll but the morning after.”

  “Normally
you would be right,” Sand agreed. “But in this case the cargo will be something both in demand and perfectly legal. Believe me when I tell you they won’t clear you through customs fast enough.”

  “And just what is this invaluable trade good?” Nel said. “Last I knew there’s little out in the Free that those in the High care about.”

  “Have you been to the Allied worlds of late? To the Central Band?”

  “I try and avoid it.”

  “Things are difficult there,” Sand said. “An outbreak of disease, some call it a plague, left the work force on several major worlds devastated.”

  “The fog,” Nel said.

  Sands eyes drifted over to Horatio, for the barest moment.

  “There’s no known cure for it.”

  “It’s not something you cure, Sands. And it’s not a plague, either.”

  “The Alliance would disagree with you on both counts.”

  “I lived through it. The so-called cure was worse than the disease.”

  “Nel . . .” The captain started to turn towards her.

  “It’s fine, Captain,” she said firmly. “What does this have to do with anything? The plague was years ago.”

  “As I said, with much of the labour classes decimated by disease, the good citizens,” of which Sand didn’t even try and hide her derision, “had to find other solutions. The most successful of which were the Draugr.”

  “Hells,” Nel said it out loud this time. “Captain . . .”

  “I quite agree, Nel,” Horatio pushed himself to his feet. “I believe we’ll be taking our search elsewhere, Mistress Sand. A pleasure, as always.”

  Sand could have waited until they’d gotten to the door. It would have been more dramatic, more traditional. Hells, Nel didn’t expect to get out of the room without some last word. She’d barely turned around when it came.

  “The run pays half again what your original job would have.”

  Hells.

  THE NEST USED to make Violet queasy. The black below didn’t bother her, but being up high with a visibly long fall did. It made her think about falling but even that wasn’t the problem. It was the idea of hitting. And the all sorts of wrong that would be.

  Only now it didn’t bother her, not so much. Leaning forward and arms slung over the cradle, she watched the crew lounge about on deck, flexing the fingers on her injured arm, scraping the outside of the nest with her nails, making patterns. They were going stiff from all the scrapes she’d picked up, didn’t even feel like hers sometimes. Ropework was out, couldn’t manage the knots. Meant more watches, more idle hands. And they were all at idle hands now, mend and make clothes the captain had said before he and the skipper had trooped off into town to see about business. Most had took clothes to mean dice or cards. The sailors were huddled in small groups atop the deck, the weather being of the inclination to make it much preferable to below. There was still a chill to the timbers and the Tantamount’s insides hadn’t dried out as yet.

  Someone looked up at her, shading their eyes from the sun. Mugs. Violet raised a hand to wave when a shoving match broke out. It wasn’t much of a scuffle but when the players returned to their seated circle they all looked firmly down.

  What’s that about?

  A creak and a chirp told her. Bandit, perched awkwardly on the signaller, getting grubby paw prints all over the stained glass. Sunlight was bouncing off both frame and lenses, half blinding her.

  “Off of there, furball,” Violet shooed him. “They think we’re shoulder spotting up here.”

  Maybe if I had the captain’s spyglass I could. See someone’s hand, work out a system. Jack would be up for it. Hounds too, I bet. Naw, can’t see it working. Mugs just got a stomping and we weren’t even being underhanded.

  Violet lay her head back in the bottom of the nest, feet to the sky.

  Much more comfortable, though blue sky is a strange sight. Got used to black. Black and mist . . .

  Something was digging into her back, something hard that crunched as she shifted around. Violet reached under and scraped it out. Whatever it was caught on her clothes. In disgust she saw it was a piece of dry, moulted skin. It could have been Quill or Mantid, she didn’t care to look close enough, and both had been looking mottled and scabby since the ice run. She threw it away, over the edge to wherever it would go. There was enough castoff littering the nest as it was; blankets, mugs, a few bedraggled playing cards, scraps of uneaten food that even Bandit wouldn’t touch. She pitched that as well, not really caring where it landed. With any luck the previous owner would be walking by and take the hit. Probably Mantid on both counts, more she thought about it. Fellow had been spending much of his off-duty time up in the nest, like a second home. Or an actual nest.

  Violet’s eyes narrowed with a dreadful suspicion as she looked more carefully at her surroundings. It had more than a touch of lived-in to it, like someone had indeed been sleeping there. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed a natural fit for Mantid. Whose body was a most unnatural fit for any kind of hammock, at least any hammock or hammock-like arrangement she’d been able to hang.

  He had been sleeping here. He’d never wanted or needed an actual hammock at all. Even though both Hounds and the skipper had . . .

  Damn them . . .

  And now the light was in her eyes.

  “Hells, Bandit!” Violet snapped at the loompa, reaching for something to throw at him. He was still balanced on the signaller, staring down at her with bared teeth. In a right mood these days, the miserable rodent.

  She squinted at him, trying to convey the levels of her contempt for him at this very moment through a puckered face.

  Bandit was holding something, turning it over in his paws. He took a testing bite of it before she could stop him, to the sound of cracking. It was enough to startle the loompa into dropping it. Whatever it was hit the floor of the nest to the sound of breaking glass.

  “What’d you do?” Violet sat up, speaking more to herself than to Bandit. He went back to ignoring her. Maybe he was in heat or some such. Seemed he didn’t much care for her lately.

  It was a scrap of twisted metal with a very thin glass pane fitted to it. The glass was curved, broken tableware or a window maybe, not something designed as a lens for the instrument. It was held in place with a few spots of tar, and the makeshift lens had been crudely coloured; a deep red.

  “The hells are you for?” Violet wondered aloud.

  Whatever it was, it was broken now. Or as good as. A fine web of cracks covered a third of the face, spreading out from where Bandit had tried to bite it. Violet felt a hot flush, an immediate sense of guilt that something important had just been broken.

  Best to front up and get it over with, she thought glumly, tucking the broken trinket into a pocket. Maybe she’d catch the skipper in a good mood.

  Chapter 13

  “MY VOTE SAYS we don’t take the job,” Hounds said.

  “We do not vote, this is not a vote,” Quill snapped at her, though his attention was mostly focused on Mantid, who stood silent and still behind her. It made for a crowded meeting in the captain’s quarters.

  “Wasn’t so long ago you were suggesting this very idea, Quill,” Nel reminded him, then wondered why she had. She didn’t want the run, not a bar of it. But the captain had tabled it in front of the officers and now it was up for discussion.

  “Things change,” Quill said, twisting this way and that awkwardly. Nel could see he wanted to pace but the cramped confines didn’t allow it. It had the amusing effect of transferring all that nervous energy to his tail.

  “What doesn’t change is a ship needs runs and a crew needs paying,” Hounds told him. “I’ve been to the High, more of late than all of you. Work is scarce and it’s these Draugr that are to blame, by the large.”

  “You just said we ought not to take the job.”

  “Stand by it, too, Vaughn.” Hounds shook her head. “You take a run into the High Lanes, you’ll make a pretty penny, but
you won’t have time to spend it. Soon as we make port the gangs will be on us. The fleet needs bodies, both warm and cold.”

  “Just how bad are things?” Nel asked. Hounds was right—she hadn’t been in the Free Lanes in a long time. Nel hadn’t been closer than Border to the High since she last wore white.

  “Bad.” Hounds fixed her with a stern look. “There’s a lot of jobs Draugr can do, lots more than most people think. And each job they take means one more soul to push and shove for those jobs that they can’t do. It all flows downhill, Skipper, and folk like us are at the bottom.”

  “Not quite at the bottom,” the captain interjected. “At least not yet.”

  “Closer than you think, Captain,” Hounds said. “Respectfully. You know what Draugr can’t do? It’s crew. Can’t sail and splice. Can stand fast with the best of them but can’t trim a sail to keep from capsizing in a pond. You take a run into the High Lanes you’d best be running a cache that looks prettier than you do, because we’re all just warm bodies to the gangs.”

  “Colours already run with Draugr,” Nel said. “Have for a year or so.”

  “Running ain’t crewing, Skipper,” Hounds pointed out. “But it’s the turn of the tide.”

  “A run such as this would be accompanied by official writs,” Quill argued. “Protection enough, I think, from these gangs you are so fearful of.”

  “Writs expire the moment you step ashore,” Hounds said.

  “Didn’t think you’d be so keen to head back to the High,” Nel said. “Seems like tempting fate.”

  Quill just shrugged.

  “The offer remains,” the captain said, not giving away his own feelings on the subject. He regarded each of his officers in turn, waiting for them to finish thrashing out their opinions.

  Nel rubbed at her face. “I don’t like this,” she admitted. “Not one bit.”