…quickly go for the stairs and sneak about above.

It's past time to be out of here. You may not be able to help those before you, but you can end the source of their torment. If you don’t get too it soon then you may miss the chance.

The sickening sounds stop with pregnant pause, and in the quiet distracting moment you do not look upon, you move from your hidden refuge, pray no more people are coming down, and bolt through the shallow lantern light and up the stairs beyond. There is no sound of surprise behind, or people chasing. Nor are there sounds ahead of another party descending into the underworld along your path. Instead, you come to the final step and the door above it and peek out into an empty corridor.

It doesn’t seem particularly long, though perhaps only thanks to its near corners hiding the rest of its length. Fortunately the spot around your exit is reasonably shadowed, the lanterns spent illuminating its ends over its middle, and with no better guidance to your destination than chance, you go left, slinking through shadows with wary confidence.

The route takes you around a right faced corner, revealing that the corridor does in fact continue for some distance here. You try to map out the building, its little cellar window and dungeon exit, and now these winding corridors, linking them to the outside that was surveyed from the tree line. By your reckoning, you’re heading to the front face of the building, being somewhere near the back middle at the moment. Doors line the halls, each promising another rowdy bunch of rapacious pirates, but each you come too looks a poor promise of such things. Only shadows line their seams and silence fills the space beyond. The more you see, the more you could be convinced of this places emptiness, and such a feeling is only compounded by another corridor that splits off to the left, leading unlit into the dark half of the buildings right wing. Perhaps down there, you could find a window and view the garden outside; see the bush you hid under before. Standing as you are -masked in black and lit in dim light for any to see- it’s an appealing if unproductive prospect.

Instead, you continue down the corridor, to an open door at its end. The room beyond is invitingly shadowed, but also voiced with muffled mutterings that seem distant enough to peek in with only moderate caution. The room is huge and clearly adorned in the rags of once lavish decoration. The curtains may have been removed, the paintings gone, the furniture none existent, but the plaster coving is still curled with decorative patterns and the floor is still laid with the finest wood, though its polish mottled by age. It’s a room once used for dancing or lavish balls, you’d wager, though now it is stacked with rough crates and boxes of all shapes and sizes, living a new life as a warehouse of ill-gotten goods. The shallow light it bares throughout its length comes from the large windows that line the wall and the stars beyond. To the right though, a greater bloom comes from beyond a large open archway, along with the voices you heard.

While you could spend weeks picking through the crates here, for now they are only good for cover. You make your way with ease to the rooms brighter side, looking through the arch into what must be the buildings foyer and the source of the murmuring sounds. Five men stand around a small stack of wooden boxes, piled between the other side of a familiar main entrance and a long set of stairs ascending to the upper floor. They talk amongst themselves, quietly, some keeping a distance and only listening while others talk, others animated, gesturing hands insistent. All look out of place, in silks or finery that no deckhand could afford. Merchants most likely: here to purchase the goods you currently share a room with.

The foyer itself looks quite grand, though similarly worn and aged and littered with cargo around its walls. It also has another arch, across the way from your own, leading into a well lit room, not that it matters: its occupants may only be merchants, but you doubt they would keep quiet if a masked woman, dressed for obvious mischief, were to walk past them. Instead, you make to leave.

Before you do, a door opens and the men jump, all turning to look up the stairs. You shift as well, trying to get a better look, but unlike the men who all turn away and pretend they weren’t interested, you can’t help but watch. Captain Wendy ‘Go’ Washkin walks through a set of double doors at the top of the stairs. She’s a woman that you have never laid eyes on before, yet there is no doubt. Be it her long blond hair, her flowing red and white coat, her sea worn high boots, or the glitter of the prize at her neck; all were irrelevant next to her demeanour. She walks like a captain. Her head is held like a woman who earned a bounty, who earned the fear and respect of so many. You’re so struck by the unexpected presence of the woman you’re here to kill that you don’t even see the man trailing behind her, a head shorted but no less dangerous looking. You think you hear something about a map before they take a left and cross the landing, disappearing from your sight and burning themselves into your mind. Upstairs. You must get upstairs.

While the sprawling staircase calls out to you, attempting to climb it would be the height of foolishness with the merchants there and you dressed to kill. Instead, the only way forward is back, and with no way upstairs from this warehouse-come-ballroom, you quietly weave through some boxes and exit back through the door you entered by.

Balancing future planning and present caution, you wonder down the poorly lit corridor, distracted, yet ready to slip into a nearby room should anyone darken the passage ahead. The sudden presence of your target has, you admit to yourself, put you a little on edge, and you don’t walk as tall as you did before. The stiletto at your thigh feels heavy, the reality of your situation weighing it down. Can you really kill a woman like that? She looked more formidable than the man at her back, and frankly, you doubt your odds against him. You feel like a mouse challenging a cat to a duel. When you reach the dark and empty corridor you past before, you duck in and take a breath, steadying your nerves frayed by the simple presence of your target. She’s killed so many people and brought such misery upon the world, and here you are, with your little metal point, dressed in some terribly conspicuous clothing. You’ve only ever killed one person, and that all happened very fast come to think of it. Could you have done that if he wasn’t trying to kill you? Gods! It shouldn’t be this complicated!

In. Out. In. Out. You breathe and let your breathing calm you down. You know what you came here to do, and why; knew it before you setoff. You remember the faces of the widows and victims you interviewed trying to find this place. The woman you’re after is a monster, and what purpose do monsters have if not to be slain? You came here knowing you could die, but perhaps not fully appreciating what that means. Would it be worth it? Would it be worth dying to see this job done?

Yes.

By all the gods of justice and the oaths you took as an Agent of the Principalities, yes.

You take a deep breath and walk into the darkness of the corridor and the buildings unlit wing, reasoning that there must be another way upstairs somewhere, and if there is, that it’s better to look in a place where you can remain unseen. You check the first door, letting your eyes adjust to the darkness to see another large room, full of furniture shrouded in white dust sheets, making it look like some snowy glen, but no way upstairs. You check the next room and through it to the rooms it’s connected too, mapping out a small contained set of rooms, like an apartment, but no way upstairs. You check the next again, finding a small sitting room that smells strongly of exotic pipe smoke, similar to those favoured in **** lounges, but no pipes, and no way upstairs. The next contains the pipes, like some giant spider lurking in the corner, and a long flat chair fit for lounging, but oddly enough, only a whisper of the smell.

As you check the rooms, you’re breathing calms and your mind refocuses, until eventually it defocuses and the most unwanted of emotions creeps into your evening: boredom. You check room after room after room after room, sure to check the rooms connected to other rooms, until you begin to consider going back and just walking up the damn stairs in the foyer, merchants be dammed.

How long has it been? How much time have you wasted? At this point, you’d take anything, even a chimney to climb up. While it’s not what you want, you do eventually find an odd sight. Flickering light comes from a door in the dark, bleeding weakly through its cracks and spilling from the gap at its base; one room occupied out of all the lifeless ones. You creep up to it and listen close at its surface, picking up the sound of a quiet conversation. The words are lost to the thickness of the door, but sound too close to risk opening the latch. Soft murmured words come from a woman’s throat, occasionally answered by a man’s terse responses. They’re close to each other, and intimate in tone; a man and a woman snuck away, into the dark and private part of a grand old building. You doubt they’re hear for the same reason you are.

With no sense hanging around where they could come upon you, you back away from the door and reluctantly look to the next one. It’s then that it happens. A scream, sawing through the house and its walls from some grim distance away, muffled for the journey, but raw in its pain and intensity. It’s a woman’s scream, coming from…somewhere; you’re tempted to say somewhere above, but that’s not quite right. A lull of quiet -the space of a breath- and the scream sounds again, a broken cry, whatever **** suffered clearly an ongoing one.

“You go captain.”

You jump at the woman’s voice, no longer mumbled and sounding frightfully close as a result. You don’t understand what she means, especially by the congratulatory tone in her voice, so at odds with the distant yelling. Could her Captain be the one hurting that woman? Perhaps the speaker is a crew-woman, either of Captain Washkin or the man you saw walking behind her; the subordinate captain that captain Washkin is here to meet .

“Sounds painful.” You make out the man’s response, idly underselling the distant woman’s plight quite considerably.

“She will be fine.” The more the woman talks, the more you pick out an oddness to her accent; a lilting northern quality that leaves her sounding her words with a steady deliberateness. “You know that, if she needed help, she wouldn’t make noises like that.”

It’s hard to follow what they are saying, what with the ample distraction ringing in your ear, but one thing gets through: the scream is coming from where the captain is. What’s more, it’s not coming directly from upstairs, as you’d think, but from several doors down your current corridor.

“Yeah.” The man sniffs, and a smile can be heard in his words. “Bet I know where she’s taking it.”

“I bet you do.”

“I bet I can-“

You don’t stick around to see what he bets. A quick investigation gets you to the right door, and a quick look tells you why. A set of blessed stairs, bundled in a very narrow and easy to overlook doorway, clearly for servants only, lead up to the upper floor, where the sounds found easier passage to your ears than through the ceiling above.

You ascend, or make to do so. Your first step kills the sound, as though your black pumps are placed on the woman’s throat instead of the wood board, and you can’t help but stop momentarily with the coincidence. Silence, ominous and complete, as though the building itself held its breath. You hope the woman is alright; that she is freed from her harm rather than her life. The rest of the stairs quickly take you up to a little room, dark, but open and empty, with a door shining with light beyond. You cross the creaky floor and listen, still hearing nothing in the unnatural post scream stillness of the house, before tentatively opening the door to an empty corridor.

It’s long; clearly as long as the building, with windows at both ends. Moonlight can be seen through the nearest in a thin sliver, but the further is so far as to be a keyhole in the dark, with only stars beyond. No other walks the threadbare carpet of the hallway, only a little more lush where you stand for its lack of use, and the doors that line the way look as unoccupied as far as you can see. The middle of the hallway is a bright square of light; the landing with the stairs and lanterns of the foyer and its attendants. So long as they still talk among themselves, it should be possible to sneak through the main door or beyond to the other side of the building. The last you saw of the captain, she left the main double doors at the top of the stairs and walked into this half of the long landing hall. Is she still here, or did she return? A part of you doesn’t want to know.

As if on que, the screams begin again, a little louder thanks to your closer presence, yet a little quieter in their general ferocity. The woman sounds fatigued. What’s more, she sounds as though she’s right where the captain came from; the double doors mid-landing acting as the last stopper for her cries. Who could she be? Captain Washkin never struck you as purely sadistic; even her most monstrous raids had an air of practicality to them. Perhaps if she was making an example of someone, but why hide it away, and why upstairs? You’ve seen the cellar and know her usual method. She, being a woman, is also considered of the less rapacious class of pirates, though perhaps only thanks to a lack of equipment to do so, so it’s unlikely some similarly barbarous act. Perhaps the man you saw earlier is helping her. Or he’s…could the woman actually be-?

A door opens down the way and you duck sharply back inside your dark little room. Fortunately, your door swings inward and your able to peek half an eye beyond its frame into the corridor, letting you see the open door far beyond the other side of the landing disgorge the shady silhouette of a man into the hallway. It’s hard to pick out anything, but he wears what could be the clothes of a servant and stands with an uneasy quality, like a teen caught under the eyes of a suspicious parent; a parent prone to the belt. The screams animate him, making him look from door to door; every door but the door that matters.

Another door opens, on your side of the corridor, and terrifyingly close to where you stand. You freeze, hoping the lack of movement will keep whoever steps out from seeing you, and soon a form does, and closes the door behind him. It’s a boy, or a young man, not too much younger than yourself, and he wears the brown coat, grey shirt, and tight brown trousers of a servant: unbuttoned, untucked, and unbuckled respectively. He looks reasonably handsome, though his face shares the same slightly panicked quality as his dress and stance, the latter mirrored by the man down the hall. His looking from door to door thankfully stops as he sees his college doing the same, and he lifts his arm in silent communication and receives a frantic wave in return. You don’t think, and you don’t beg, but standing so close to the servant’s stairway down, with nowhere to hide should he choose to descend, you will him to go to his comrade. Anywhere, as long as he doesn’t take a close look behind him. The universe relents to your wishes and he trots away from you, both fast and silent, looking like a mouse as he crosses the screaming door. A fiercely animated whispered conversation follows before they both leave through some unseen exit.

You take a breath, wincing a little as it coincides with a similar gap in the woman’s cries, and pausing for a moment before letting it go, simply so you’re not in sync with the unfortunate woman. What next? Moving from here would be good; whether from above or below, you don’t fancy standing in a place people have a reason to pass through. The way seems clear in the corridor, and several doorways line its length and lead into promising darkness. You slip out, intent on drawing as close as you can to the cries.

As you move down the corridor, towards the light of the middle of the landing, you see that all the doors, save the one the young man came out of, are on your left hand side, leading to the front face of the building. The one nearest to you is the only one you can see light coming from, and its door is slightly ajar, showing a room with a dim lantern as well as many maps and charts. No one is present to look at them, at least that you can see or hear, and it was clearly the captain’s goal when she left her room prior. The temptation to look through them is a strong one, but not as strong as the desire to remove their owner from the world and leave them irrelevant relics of her passing. You move on, the next door leading to a corridor; unlit but still too far from your prize. Eventually, you make it to the landing, or the space before it, made far darker for the cutting light coming from below. The door the young man came out of stands on your right, though no light comes from under it. Was he sleeping on the job? It would explain his hasty dress and the darkness beyond. You open the door, intent to take a peek.

As if on cue, the screaming stops once more, leaving you looking into silent darkness. You step inside when you see no one; strips of moonlight coming from some oddly thin windows, lacerating the bare floorboards with pale and dusty beams, are the only things standing to greet you. The room is long, which would explain the lack of doors along this side of the corridor, and it has almost the same air as the ballroom below, though more abused by its new station. Crude shelves mix with grand cupboards, making little inlets of habitation; cubicles used for sleeping, based on the bedrolls and personal affects, like a barracks without the weapons. At its far end, a set of closed double doors, their glassy windows showing a stone balcony and the tops of distant trees, while at the fore, the end you stand, is a wall from which emanates ominous silence, bordering the captains room.

The quiet leaves you creeping, avoiding the more warped planks of the bare floor lest they creak, but your paranoia still makes you take a few steps along the room; just enough to see into each of the little living spaces. They’re empty. You’re in a dark room, more or less, and surrounded by furniture you can hide behind at a moment’s notice. With the captain you seek next door, you can hardly think of a better spot to catch your breath. This is it: the curtain has risen on the final act.

Muffled words draw you to the wall, connecting you to the captain’s quarters. Placing your ear against it, you manage to make out the words, spoken by a man who sounds quite exhausted.

“Definitely gonna do that again...” They’re followed by a pause as he breathlessly swallows. “...when the job is done.”

Oddly enough, the words come clearest from the far corner of the wall. Perhaps, beyond the double doors, there is another room or a wall of some kind? It’s hard to tell, especially as the man goes silent. You don’t hear the voice of Captain Washkin, or the woman who was screaming; only the occasional bump of movement or feet comes clear.

“I hope you enjoyed yourself too! Ya pervert! Ha ha!”

You jump as the man yells out before looking around you. Obviously he isn’t talking to you, but it’s also clear he isn’t talking to someone in the room from the way he yelled it. It was a bellow meant for the deck of ships or the heat of battle, and was more than enough to reach you though the walls. Perhaps he was shouting to the merchants in the foyer? They would have heard the woman’s ordeal at least.

You trace the chuckles as they cross the room, riding the heavy footfalls of hard-soled boots, until they come to a door which is opened carelessly and swung shut with a slam. Following your prediction, the door is far from the set of double doors at the landing, meaning that there must be another room or antechamber before the captain’s lair. As if to confirm, the footsteps cross the second room with easy confidence, and the sound of the double doors is clear as they are opened and closed in an equally uncivilised manner.

A moment passes, then another. Silence seems to echo from the room, which is odd, if Captain Washkin is still in there with the woman. Then again, what can be said after whatever caused such screams.

“You alright Cap’n?”

The voice is a man’s, and oddly enough, it doesn’t come from the room. Instead, it comes from a nearby window; one of the narrow slits letting in the moonlight. You approach it and look though, seeing a small tiled roof as the floor below just out a little further than the floor you’re on. There is no one outside; just the still summer air.

“Yes, thank you Narnen.”

This voice stops you in your tracks with its calm and dignified control. It was the voice of the screaming woman. It was the voice of mystery man’s captain. They’re one and the same. The realisation that you’ve been following your targets screams is…confusing? What’s going on here!? Who was that other man? Why did he do…whatever he did to brutalise such a powerful woman? Why did she take it? Or fake it? Her voice still carries a horse quality from all her yelling.

“I need you to go and tell the merchants, and our other guest, that I won’t be seeing them tonight.” It doesn’t sound like a feeble cop-out, rather the lady of the manor choosing not to bother with trifling things. Did you imagine the pain in those screams? You don’t think you did…

“And tell Misty to get up here.”

Her final words are met with a “Mam!” and you realise finally where the other man is. The response came from above you; from the roof. As you look out the narrow window, you see the building extend further back than your current room, showing an open window leading into the Captains chambers. The shadow figure of a man blots out the stars above it, though only for a second before his orders carry him away.

Why shout out to the man on the roof for such an order? There are many things going on here which you don’t fully understand, but you feel that that particular question holds the most merit. If there were others in the connecting room, between the landing and her, surely she would have given such an order to them. Why the roof guard otherwise? She must be alone.

Alone, off guard, and in some way brutalised. You lick your lips with thought; is this not all you could have asked for?

She’s already said that she will be seeing no more visitors, save this ‘Misty’ she called for. She’s also already screamed and had no guard come to save her. The nearest guard to give orders too, who himself was on the roof, has been sent away on orders. You draw the stiletto blade, feeling its weight in your hands. It’s safe to say that everything has come together. As much as it’s ever going to.

You move to the door and open it, peeking out into the long corridor and finding it as empty as you left it. Could the roof guard step out into it? The only people you’d seen up here are the two men who disappeared somewhere down the far end, and neither of them looked like a ‘Misty’. If ‘Misty’ is downstairs, the guard could come out into the hallway to descend the main stairs. That’s assuming there are no other ways down, similar to the stairs you ascended by. There’s probably another set on the buildings other side. Maybe that’s where the two men went?

You can’t know for certain, but judging by the speed of the roof guard’s departure, you should have seen him by now if you’re going to. The distance between you and the main double doors in the middle of the landing is also quite short, and as well-lit as it is, staying low should keep you from the foyers eyes, thanks to the height of the stairs. You count to five, as though giving the guard every opportunity to appear, then step out.

Quick as you can, you move into the bright light of the landing and the doors at a crouch, reaching up to the latch and opening them just enough to enter. Your heart fills with relief as you see a room, empty of any potential guards as you surmised. It’s dominated by a large table in the centre and many chests and cabinets at its sides, lit by hanging lanterns which would leave you conspicuous to look at were there anyone to do so. You cross its length to the single door leading to your target. The image of the powerful looking woman you saw flashes in your mind, tarnished only slightly by the memory of her howls; a skilled pirate and an expert swordsman, baring the amulet of Abyet and an unprecedented bounty. You take a breath, hand on the latch.

Wait!

You pull out the vial of poison at your leg strap and add poison to the blade, letting the clear liquid run down its length and drip from its point. You catch the droplet with one of your black pumps, and align your mask with your other hand so it fully covers your face from the bridge of your nose down. Not that it should matter, but better to do this properly. Placing the empty vial on the floor, you once again ready the latch for your entry. A deep breath. The door opens.

It opens inwards, speeded by your ramming shoulder as you charge. Captain Wendy ‘Go’ Washkin stands before you, in the middle of the room, rapidly filling your vision as you close the distance. She’s naked, save for a sparkle at her neck, but it slows you no more than her size, standing more than a head taller than you. It’s all information taken too quick to process. You lunge. She turns, avoiding your stab with wide eyes and clear shock. She’s fast! Her reflexes are clearly well honed. You stop the thrust and turn, swinging it into a slash at her midsection, and she steps back, her arms grabbing for your own as you halt the slash to push forward again, looking to drive the blade into any part of her you can reach. She grabs at it, pulling it and you past her as you fall together to the floor. The blade bites the wooden planks and the hard surface proves better than your wrist, sending the metal blade clattering away.

You’re on top, clawing for her neck, hoping to somehow strangle her, and she grabs for your face, raking and scratching you, pulling at your mask. When she gets a grip, she tries to pull you off her, but you tilt your head in the direction, letting the mask be pulled off so you can maintain your **** grip. Her hands grab at your black top instead, and hauls, pushing you back to the sound of popping stiches before succeeding where she failed previously, throwing you to the side like a rag doll.

You scrabble to your feet, looking for the knife, but see that she has done the same, running for something else. You see the glitter of her sword and dive for her, catching her ankle and sending her to the floor again. Surprise is gone, and wrestling with the bigger woman is not a good move, but letting her get to her sword is suicide. You pull yourself up her, struggling to gain any purchase on her soft skin. She has no such limitations. Flipping over to her back, she grabs your top again and drags you up to face her, audibly ripping the fabric with the **** of her pull. Her arms bulge with the effort, toned and strengthened far more than your own, which were hoping to rely on your blade to make up the difference. She drags you close and tries to slam her head into your own, but being on top, you have more room to push from her and move back, and she has no backswing to put **** into her blow. Instead, she lets go with one hand and punches you with it.

It’s a **** blow, ill positioned, but clearly with a savage **** behind it, and it catches your cheek, sending you reeling. You fly backward off her, left stunned, shaking your head and immediately making your confusion worse for it despite your efforts, before you look at her again. Black fabric remains in her gripping hand, clearly abandoning you and its fight for your modesty.

She’s trying to stand, closer to her sword than ever, but something is wrong. She’s reaching for the sheathed blade resting against the wall, grasping for it, but she’s too far, her hand wavering back and forth as it grips air, drifting, as though to catch the blade. Then you see it: blood dripping from her grasping hand. Not much, but if it’s from where she deflected your blade, it doesn’t need to be. A savage thrill comes upon you.

You’ve won!

She collapses, from her knees down to her face, landing hard on the wood floor before trying to pick herself up and crawl again. According to the alchemist, she should be well past the tingling pain and numbness, if she ever felt it. Ever increasing dizziness leading to **** in the heart should be her fate now. You let her flounder like a fish as you walk back to your fallen blade, scooping it up and bringing it to ease the passing of the dying woman.

When you return, she’s no longer reaching for her sword, perhaps realising what’s happened. Instead, her hand now holds something else: a pewter mug taken from the floor. You don’t remember it falling in your struggle, so perhaps it was already present. She turns to lie on her back again, facing you with unfocused eyes and a smile.

It’s… disconcerting; a literal last laugh, mocking and genuine.

Despite that, you see that you underestimated your effectiveness. Not only is her hand cut, but thin lines of red mark her chest and stomach, taken from a back stepped slash and a sidestepped lunge respectively. She was dead after the first second and neither of you knew it. The line at her chest is broken by the silver chain leading to the delicately decorated blue stone between her ample breasts. The amulet of Abyet; the only thing she wears and proof of her bounty. Still smiling, she grabs the jewel and pulls it from her neck, breaking the chain, and a half second later, it’s on the floor beside her, and the mug crashes down upon it.

You rush forward, driving the dagger down into her chest and silencing her ragged breathing. She dies with the smile still pulling at her lips. Her hands fall. The mug rolls away.

You look at the amulet, its fine parts broken and its gold and silver seals dented. The stone remains and the damage is minor over all; it should still pass for evidence, and while you doubt its true owner will be happy, it could still be fixed. Probably. You bush up the broken parts and hold them in your hand leaving the stiletto in its place for now. Your top is a mess; split down the middle and turned to rags hanging off you. Your target is dead. You’re tired; so much so that you do not move from straddling the captain’s body. Gods but you could-

“What?”

You turn and look at the woman in the open doorway. She looks at you and the dead eyed woman you ride.

“W-what?”

She asks again, shocked as you are. You have no answer. She’s clearly a maid, dressed in the typical -if a little short- brown skirt of such. She has a northern look -narrow eyed and high cheek boned- and long black hair strait enough to shine in the lantern light, and you connect her quickly to the lilting northern voice you heard downstairs. Her expression twists from shock into something ugly.

“YOU!”

You get up and run, sprinting for the open window you saw before, still wide from her shout to the roof guard. Just a table between you and it.

You take a few steps and as suddenly as you stood, you hit the floor, feeling you ankle tied but a sudden tightness of your trousers. You look down and see the woman, her hand on your trouser leg as she dived to catch you, the same manner as you did for her captain, but no poison flows through your veins. You kick at her with your free leg, stamping her face.

“HELP!! SOMEONE!!!”

Her cries cut through the house, guiding others to the room. You kick harder, until your kicking is caught, pump sole pinned in the fallen woman’s hand. Not good.

“HELP!!!! SHESKILLEDTHECAPTAIN!!!!”

You twist, stamping for freedom with all your might, kicking and flailing your legs with all you’ve got. The pump comes off your foot, leaving her hand gripping it foolishly. She drops it and tried to block the kicks you aim for her screaming face.

“SOMEAHHH!!!!”

She catches the leg again, but by the fabric of your dark trousers this time, but your kicks don’t stop. She looks down, shielding her face. The fabric falls, your ankle slipping up the leg hole. She still holds your other leg by the fabric, but a frantic idea forms. Pulling your shoeless leg back, it comes completely free of your trousers, and with your toes, between suppressive stamps, you unhook your other pump from your heel, letting that leg free as well. A series of pummelling kicks against her and you’re free. Unseated from your trousers and pumps perhaps, but free.

Boots come running from the stairs and landing, and the sound of the double doors crashing open seems to throw you to your feet. The window frame passes, a short roof slides below you, and soon the jolt of earthly impact rocks up your legs and sends you rolling through grass and dirt.

“CAPTAIN!!!!!!” The cry from the window above is full of such despair. The skies would cry in sympathy if summer were not so heartless.

You sprint barefoot across the uncut lawn, aiming for the woods to the north, to the back of the island and escape. To those shouting from the window, the sight of a woman, naked from the waist down, fist clenched around a broken necklace, sprinting for the treeline, is a short lived one. Your frantic running and the dappled darkness of the waiting foliage soon swallows you whole, but you don’t slow; not in the pace of your step or the pounding of your heart. Trees whip past you, branches reaching and raking unseen. Roots in the darkness, avoided by instinct. Small stones and dried leaves crunching against your unslowed feet. The fatigue you felt at the captains **** is long gone, replaced with a mad energy storming through you. You feel you could run forever, and perhaps you will, or would have if the trees didn’t give way to sea.

You slow and cast a considering look at your surroundings. The cliffs here are a little high, but they slope down a little to the west. Your destination is also in that direction, floating on the night’s horizon: the closest island to this one, holding a cove and a wizened old man in a boat, for anyone with the strength to swim there. Putting the jewel of the broken amulet in your mouth, you work your way down to the sound of many distant cries, each drowned out by the lapping of the waves.

---

The island nook was peaceful. Remote. Just as he remembered. Time has no place in the archipelago, and he could not recall the last he was here. Five years? Ten? It was not unusual to lose track of such things, especially for a man of his years. For him, time was both a precious resource and a lazily spent nest egg; sand down a waning hourglass, accepted and sent off with a smile.

Silver minnows catch the moonlight in a cloud no greater than a winter’s breath. There was a reason no self-respecting fisherman would come here; everything worth catching wasn’t worth the effort, and Black Longs hunted in shoals of their own, keeping numbers low as they filled their poisonous bellies.

Black Long and a mug of sea water; a **** man’s last meal.

He heaved a sigh, letting it rattle his old bones and blow out his thinning beard. Despite his best efforts, his thoughts had returned to **** and danger. He shouldn’t have let he go alone. No, he shouldn’t have brought her at all! That dammed island was far too dangerous for an old man like him, but still he brought a naive slip of a girl there! And for what!?

He felt the 15 silver pieces in his pocket. He didn’t need them. Not because he was rich (far from it) but because he had all he needed. The fish were still biting. His wife was still kicking. His kids…

His kids…

The girl looked just like Marea. He sucked on his gums a moment. Ok, so she looked nothing like Marea, not in the face and body, but she had the same energy to her. She looked the same age as when little Mere died in birthing as well, and to add salt to the wound, she looked about the same age the child would have been if it lived. There would be no one to inherit these 15 silvers, save his wife if she held true to her threats to outlive him.

He should have turned the girl down like the others. Been kind. But he could see she would have found some other way of getting there. A worse way. He should have taken her to the wrong island.

The waves lapped his boat, splashing on the distant stony coast, bubbling and breaking in little frothing waves to starboard.

To starboard, and to port.

For the briefest moment, while her head was down, he let a big relieved grin split the leather of his old face. The girl swam like a landlubber.

A silver pale arm tipped the boat, hooking over the port side at the elbow. It was bare and dainty, and connected to an equally bare and dainty shoulder, reminding him of a story he’d heard many times, from many drunk sources.

“Mermaid is it?”

He reached over and pulled on the arm, reeling in his catch and letting her flop to the midsection. His mirth was cut short. Her hair had come loose from its bun since he last saw her. It was long, but not enough.

“Or a siren.”

She was naked; as wet and as naked as the day she was born, shining in the moonlight and clearly tired. Putting her rump on the stern thwart, she held out her hand before her, and spat, letting a little blue stone wrapped in precious metals fall into her palm. It glittered blue, lighting up a tired smile.

The smile fell quickly as she looked up at her guide, then down at herself. She crossed her legs and with the dignity of a queen, wrapped an arm across her chest.

“Ummm.” The blue light reflecting on her cheeks turned an amusing shade of purple. “It, ah, appears… that is, in my escape, I, er…appear to have lost my clothes…” She cleared her throat, grasping at her fading dignity. It doesn’t work. “I don’t suppose, I could buy yours off you? Er, before we reach the shore?”

The island nook was peaceful. Was. For the first time in a long time, for island and man both, it shook with laughter. 15 silver pieces. He was overpaid.

Oars cut the water, but it was quite some time before he stopped laughing enough to answer.