The rising sun bled dawn over the harbor, its light thick as clot and just as red. An early morning mist had settled over the docks, crawling along jetties and swallowing ships in a gauzy haze so thick they looked like phantom barges washed up from the shores of the afterlife. Frank felt like he was walking through a dream. He knew that wasn't true, but still his waking mind refused to accept that crimson sea as real.

  As they'd made their way out of the sewers and down toward the bay, somewhere between the salt-stained flagstones of the lower city and the rust-caked oarlocks of the trade barges, Uqmai had changed. The buildings lost their spires. The brasswork disappeared. Painted temples gave way to sagging tenements, and marble fountains were replaced with cracked troughs. It was as though the sea itself was devouring the city slowly, implacably.

  All around him, the docks stirred like a drunk waking from a hangover, slow and bitter and full of noise. Bronze chains clanged, dragging nets from the red depths heavy with fish and eels. Sailors shouted curses in half a dozen dialects. Salt-slick ropes slapped the decks of barges, their hulls groaning against pylons swollen from the red tide. And above it all came the call of screaming sea birds, circling low and angry like hateful imps.

  Frank stood just beyond the boundary of the quay’s southern rise, cloak drawn tight against the chill. His hood hung low over his brow, his horns tenting the fabric and casting strange shadows across his face. He didn’t like being on the docks. There was too much movement, too many eyes. The place was swarming with people: sailors, fishmongers, slaves, merchants, drunks, pickpockets, brutes, whores, marines. Under different circumstances, he might have found a way to use the crowd to his advantage, hiding in the midst of all those bodies. But not as he was now, and not in the face of the oncoming procession.

  Fishmongers paused mid-haul and cutpurses slipped back into shadow as it advanced, impossible to ignore. At its center rose a brass cage, borne on the shoulders of eight plague-priests. Each wore tattered robes stitched from burlap and rat hair, their faces hidden behind old plague masks of flaking leather. The air around them buzzed with clouds of greenflies and glittering mites, rats clinging to their shoulders and chests like living jewelry. Bells jingled from their rope belts, tiny, mismatched things made from rat teeth and human finger bones, each ringing with a different, dissonant chime.

  Inside the cage, the girl knelt bound in rusted iron. Her blindfold was a strip of tanned rat-hide, still bristling with short grey hairs. She was fevered and twitching, her breath rattling in her chest not from fear, but from infection. Her body had become a battleground, riddled with poxes not born of this world, gifted by the cult as a sacrament of purification. She had been beautiful once, and still was despite all her suffering, with lustrous black hair, pale skin and a shapely body that served as a silent renouncement of her shameful garb.

  Behind the cage walked a trio of child-sized figures hunched in robes of patchwork bandages, dragging litters heavy with rat swarms. They muttered continuously in a tongue no sane man could understand, and from their hoods peered the pallid, twitching noses of human-rat hybrids, heralds of the Crown Below.

  At the rear came a vile bishop, perched atop a palanquin of bone and splintered crates. He was garbed in a pelt of living rats fused by their own tangled tails, a pulsating mass of dun-colored fur, red eyes and yellow teeth. He was crowned with a circlet of bone and carried a wooden scepter carved in the likeness of twin rats with entwined tails, like some profane caduceus.

  The sight of it all made Frank want to retch, nausea suppressing his fear.

  “What are they doing?” he asked.

  “Sacrificing a witch, if I had to guess,” Kyra said. “They look too important to be patrolling for us.”

  Frank scanned the area. Further down the quay, he saw urchins gathering driftwood, old barrels and broken creates, scrap for a makeshift pyre.

  “Why do it on the docks?”

  “So they can cast the ashes into the sea. A kind of cleansing ritual, no doubt.”

  “They don't seem too concerned with cleanliness to me.”

  “They've probably noticed bad omens recently. Your arrival, for one. Maybe they see you as a punishment for their lack of faith. Their hoping sacrifice can bring them back into the good graces of whatever disgusting god they pray to.”

  “Maybe I am their punishment,” Frank said, his hand drifting unconsciously toward the hilt of his saber.

  “We're here for a reason.” Kyra placed her warm hand on his. “No heroes. Remember?”

  They made their way up the docks, the fog parting before them. Frank moved with shoulders hunched, trying to hide his bulk. Beside him, Kyra walked with the effortless caution of someone accustomed to disappearing in plain sight. She wore a simple traveler’s veil, just enough to show the glint of her brass-colored eyes, and a tan wrap that fluttered in the breeze off the sea.

  Thune’s head, swaddled in rags, hung quietly in the sack tied to Frank’s belt, like a bundled melon. He’d gone silent some streets ago, saving his commentary for safer quarters.

  “Not all of these people are Brass Men,” Frank said. He'd started to notice more and more sailor with skin tanned a deep red. They were generally taller and broader than the fair-skinned Brass Men, with hair that ranged in shades from black to golden brown, even a few with auburn locks. There eyes were amber colored, some flecked with blue or green.

  “You don't know the look of Bronze Men?” Kyra said.

  “I'm not from here.”

  “Bronze Men are the best sailors in all of Argos. You'll find them in every port in the world. Is this your first time seeing the ocean?”

  Frank didn't answer. A city guard patrol was approaching on the opposite side of the quay, four men dressed in lamellar armor with brass tipped cudgels.

  “You see that?” Frank kept his head down, gaze fixed in front of him, followed the guards on his periphery.

  “Eyes low,” Kyra muttered. “No sudden moves.”

  The guards passed without issue, taking Frank and his companions as just another trio of ghosts drifting through the mist. Soon they came upon a row of deep-bellied merchant barges, with square sails and prows painted with colorful eyes. Their cargo nets sagged under the weight of spools of colorful silks, amphorae filled with spices and wine, mounds of moon-white flesh flayed from some dreadful sea beast big as a whale.

  Next they passed triremes rigged for war, the battle fleet of the great houses. Their hulls were black with dripping tar, their prows beaked with bronze rams. On their decks prowled dread marines with horsehair helms and linen cuirasses.

  Beyond the triremes, a tall-rigged vessel with banks of black oars loomed like a skeletal hand, its hull made of massive bones and its sails fashioned from white hide stretched so thin the sun bled through. Even the smallest skiffs, paddled by slouching river-rats, kept a wary berth from it.

  “What about that one? Frank said.

  “Nimrazi raiders sailing a dragon bone trireme,” Kyra said. “Not the kind to take on passengers.”

  Frank scanned the harbor. “We’re not gonna find a friendly face out here, are we?”

  “We’re not looking for a friend,”

  “What are we looking for then?”

  “Someone desperate,” Kyra said. “Or drunk. Or both.”

  Thune groaned softly. “Might I suggest someone stupid, as well? Perhaps a man with no respect for maritime law and no time for questions.”

  “So the worst man for the job,” Frank said.

  “Precisely.”

  Further down the quay, a ship caught Frank’s eye, massive and fat-bellied. It had seen better days, but was still float and, maybe more importantly, not bristling with warriors. A grain-hauler, maybe, though it sat too high in the water for anything useful to be on board.

  “You recognize the seal?” he asked.

  Kyra shook her head. “Shelmeth Estates. Or someone pretending to be. An old slaver concern. Too risky.”

  The docks groaned under the weight of foot traffic. They passed longshoremen in sweat-stained tunics, net-weavers with sun-burned hands, pirate recruiters with gold teeth and flinty eyes, whores advertising a dozen infections, hooded Tariff Lords tallying ship tithes. The commotion was enough to dull his senses. Maybe that's why he felt the tug – more like a suggestion of force at his belt than a true pull – before he saw the boy.

  He turned.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The kid couldn’t have been more than nine. He was wiry and soot-skinned, his hair chopped unevenly and his ribs poking through a tunic that probably hadn’t fit him for a year. He stood frozen, one grimy hand caught halfway into the folds of Frank’s cloak. His eyes were wide.

  “Let me go!” the boy spat, squirming like a hooked fish.

  Frank stared down. The boy looked up and froze. His mouth opened, closed, opened again.

  “You’re … ,” he exhaled, caught his breath. “You’re a monster.”

  Frank gripped his wrist, not hard, just enough to hold him. “Is that how you say good morning?”

  A breeze kicked up, tugging on Frank’s hood. The shadows from the horns danced across his face. The kid made to scream, but Frank clamped a hand over his mouth.

  “Please don’t eat me,” the boy mumbled behind Frank’s palm. “I didn’t know –”

  “Why would I eat you?” Frank crouched low, his voice a rasp. “You look stringy. Barely enough meat for a stew.”

  The boy trembled.

  “If I take my hand away, do you promise not to scream?”

  The boy nodded.

  “I’ll be very angry if you scream,” Frank said, dropping his hand. “You ever met a monster before?”

  “I had an uncle once,” the boy whispered.

  “Did he have horns and a face like a cracked tombstone?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Then I’m not your uncle.”

  The boy looked ready to cry.

  Frank lowered his voice. “What’s your name?”

  The kid hesitated. “Galli.”

  “Galli,” Frank repeated. “I don’t care that you tried to rob me. I’m not mad. But I need something from you.”

  “I don't have nothing.”

  “I need a boat.”

  “There’s boats everywhere.”

  “Not these kinds of boats. I need one nobody watches. One nobody trusts. I need the worst ship on this dock, and the worst man to sail it. The drunkest, most worthless sack of seaweed that ever took coin to float a boat.”

  Galli swallowed. “Apson.”

  Frank raised an eyebrow.

  “He lives on his boat. Drinks like a fish. Been arrested more times than any man on this dock.”

  “Where is he?” Frank said.

  Galli pointed toward the far end of the dock, past where the pilings gave way to driftwood and patched rope, near where the urchins were assembling the pyre.

  “Other side of the mole. You’ll smell him before you see him.”

  “Good.” Frank released him. “Now go. And if you tell anyone about me …”

  He didn’t finish the threat. He didn’t need to. The boy had already run off.

  They made their way down the rickety pier, Frank’s boots scraping over sun-slicked planks as the mists began to lift. Every board creaked beneath him like the deck of a ship already halfway to the seabed. The farther out they walked, the worse the planks became, warped by salt, scoured by storms, and stained with old blood that no tide had ever cleaned.

  The smell was worse here too. Less like fish and more like something that had once been fish but had long since given up pretending.

  They found the boat exactly where Galli said it would be.

  It bobbed low in the water, tied off to a leaning post like a sick dog too stubborn to die. It might once have been a proud fishing skiff, but was now less a boat than an apology. It was twenty feet of swollen wood and battered bronze, its hull patched with so many mismatched planks it looked like a mosaic of failure.

  Tin plates had been nailed haphazardly along its waterline, sealed as much with barnacles as with tar, and half a sail hung limp from the warped mast. The prow had been carved to resemble a woman – a sea goddess or tide-bride, no doubt – but now looked more like a bloated corpse, her face worn by time and tide.

  “This it?” Frank asked.

  Kyra tilted her head. “It has all the charm of a body that's been fished out of the bay.”

  “I like it,” Frank muttered.

  He stepped closer, peering over the side.

  A man lay slumped across the deck in a pool of congealed wine, snoring softly. He looked more like driftwood than a sailor, his clothes matted with salt, one foot bare. His hair was a thicket of greased curls, some brown, most grey, and his skin was the deep red of too much wind, too much sun, too much drink.

  Frank rapped the hull with his knuckles.

  Nothing.

  “Apson?” Kyra called.

  The man didn’t stir.

  Frank stepped aboard, the boat’s planks groaning beneath his weight, and kicked the mast twice.

  Apson gasped and sat up. He blinked, eyes adjusting as Frank’s figure emerged from the early morning gloom.

  “Gods preserve me,” he mumbled. “I’ve died. Drowned in my sleep, haven’t I?”

  “You’re not dead,” Frank said.

  “Then I’m dreaming. I must be salt sick, plagued by visions.”

  “You’re awake,” Kyra said, stepping onto the boat.

  “That’s even worse.”

  Frank crouched low. “You Apson?”

  The man propped himself up with a grunt. “I don’t give my name to demons.”

  “I’m not a demon. I’m a customer.”

  “A what?” The old man had a beard like storm-wracked kelp, framing a face that looked like it had lost more fights than it had started.

  “I need a boat,” Frank said. “You have a boat. Let’s make this simple.”

  “I’m a fisherman,” Apson leaned forward. “I don’t take passengers.”

  “You do today.”

  “I said no.”

  “And I said simple.” Frank moved his hand to rest on the hilt of his saber.

  “Where?”

  “You and this … ship … are going to take us north. A small fishing village on the edge of the salt flats.”

  “Half a day’s sail, tops,” Kyra added.

  Apson squinted at them through bloodshot eyes. “Why me?”

  “We need someone discreet.”

  “What are you hauling?”

  “Just our bodies.”

  “What’s in it for me?” Apson said.

  “Coin.” Frank reached into his purse and withdrew four silvers, laying them in a neat stack on the deck. “That’s enough to keep you wine-soaked for a month. And all it’ll cost you is a half day of sailing.”

  Apson burped, scratched himself, sighed. “I want double.”

  “And I want a bindle of coke and two percocets. What's want got to do with it?”

  “What the hell is percocets?”

  Frank shook his head.

  “Fine. Give me an hour. I have to make a few preparations.”

  Frank looked to where the makeshift pyre was being assembled. He hadn't seen any cultists yet. But after they'd finished parading that poor girl around the docks, they were sure to stop here.

  “We need to lay low,” Frank said. “Out of sight.”

  Apson pointed to a squat, soot-stained tavern on the pier. “Go to the Bitter Wake. Tell Rosha you’re friends of mine. She’ll serve you slop and not ask questions.”

  “Your friends don’t ask questions?”

  “They know better,” he muttered.

  ***

  The tavern loomed out of the fog, crooked and waterlogged, as though cobbled together from shipwrecks. It had no windows, just a sagging door hanging from bronze hinges and creaking loudly in the breeze. A rusted iron harpoon served for a sign.

  Inside, the air was a rancid stew of spilled ale, sweat and smoke. Everything was damp – the walls, the ceiling, the patrons. The floor was scattered with sawdust and teeth, and drunks slouched over mugs of something sour and brown. A pair of off-duty deckhands played the knife and finger game in a corner booth, while a man with one eye counted half-coppers at the bar. A few heads turned. None lingered. It was a crowd of people who didn’t want to see anything, who didn’t want to be seen.

  “Lovely,” Kyra muttered, adjusting her veil.

  They moved toward the back, slipping into a crooked booth half-swallowed in shadow. Frank positioned himself so his back was to the wall, the sack at his belt bumping the edge of the table, but not hard enough to elicit a noise from Thune. He kept his hood up, horns tucked low.

  Kyra signaled to a barmaid, a bony woman with a widow’s peak and teeth like cracked shells.

  “We’re friends of Apson’s,” she said as the woman approached, palming a few coins into her dirty hand. “We’d like something to drink. And a little peace and quiet, if you can spare it.”

  The waitress appraised Frank for a moment, her eyes flicking over his horns and the grim expression on his face. Then she nodded, one slow, deliberate motion.

  “I’ll bring you our finest,” she said. “You want something to eat?”

  “What do you have?” Frank asked.

  “We’ll take it,” Kyra said. “Whatever it is.”

  The barmaid disappeared into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a pair of mugs filled with spiced wine.

  “It’ll just be a minute. The new kitchen boy is slower than shit.” A puking sound came from the far corner of the bar, and the girl wandered off with a sigh.

  They hadn’t been seated long before trouble scented them.

  Two Bronze Men at a nearby table stood from their chairs. They were dockhands by the look of them, broad-shouldered and sun-beaten, with the dull confidence of men too drunk to recognize consequences. The taller of the two had braided whiskers and a belt that sagged under the weight of an old gutting knife. The other had a face like a rotten plum and eyes so bloodshot they looked painted.

  “Evenin’, sweetheart,” the bearded man said, leering at Kyra. “Have I seen you here before?”

  “Not interested,” Kyra said, without bothering to look at the man.

  “Didn’t ask if you were,” said Plum-face, crowding in behind his friend. “Just sayin’ you’re sittin’ awful pretty for a girl in a place like this. You expect not to catch someone’s eye?”

  “She’s with me,” Frank said, his tone flat as the tabletop.

  Easy, Kyra whispered in his head. We don't want to draw attention.

  The braided man sneered. “And what are you supposed to be? Her bodyguard?”

  “Something like that,” Frank said.

  The bearded man leaned forward, trying to peer through the gloom under Frank's hood.

  “Eyes over here,” Kyra snapped, finally looking up at the man. She let her veil drop, her eyes bright as brass and full of storm.

  “Gods,” the bearded man said, practically stumbling backward. Kyra's beauty was arresting, even by the standards of a royal court. But in a place like this, it was unfathomable. She might have been a goddess come to walk among her worshippers.

  “Do me a favor,” she said.

  “Anything for you darlin'.”

  “Leave.”

  “That's no way to talk to a couple of nice guys like us.”

  “If you two don’t leave,” she said sweetly, “I’m going to make you fall in love.”

  They blinked. Plum-face laughed.

  “What?” he said.

  “Hopelessly. Eternally.”

  “It's a little late for that, sweetheart,” the bearded man said.

  “No, I meant with each other.”

  “The hell are you talking about?”

  Kyra raised her hand, palm out, and the air around it shimmered faintly, like heat off a forge. She tapped the men on theirs foreheads quickly, one and then the other. A faint pop went off, more a feeling than a sound, and the heatwaves disappeared.

  The two men staggered back, blinking rapidly.

  The bearded man looked at Plum-face, and Plum-face looked back. It was like they were seeing each other for the first time.

  “What …” Plum-face murmured.

  “You smell nice,” the bearded man said, horrified.

  Frank stifled a grin.

  “Wait,” Plum-face said, reaching for his companion’s hand. “Have your eyes always been that … blue?”

  Kyra leaned in. “Leave. Now. Or I’ll make it permanent.”

  The men turned and bolted, bumping into tables and spilling drinks as they fled, half-fighting and half-holding each other.

  The tavern barely reacted. Someone let out a low chuckle. A man snored loudly in the corner. The bartender glanced up, then went back to wiping mugs with something that might once have been a towel.

  “What was that you said about not making a scene?” Frank asked.

  Kyra smiled, pulling her veil back up.

  For a few minutes, it was quiet. Frank nursed his wine, enjoying the way he didn't have to look over his shoulder, savoring the dark.

  We belong in the dark, you and I.

  Then the door behind the bar banged open, and the kitchen boy emerged, waddling through a haze of oven smoke. True, he was short, no taller than four feet soles to scalp, but he was no boy. He was a dwarf, broad as a barrel, with skin tanned a deep red and golden brown hair sheared short. He carried a tray of roasted eels slathered in something that steamed in the open air.

  The dwarf’s gaze swept the room. Then he froze.

  Frank looked up and recognition flashed between them.

  The dwarf dropped the tray with a clatter, a steaming eel hitting the floor with a splat.

  “Shit!” he barked, and bolted back through the kitchen door, apron flapping.

  “Who was that?” Kyra asked.

  But Frank was already up and running.