“Atalaya.” Cirilli whispered in the dark, her voice urgent. “Wake up.” Soft fingers shook Atalaya’s shoulder, urging her to wakefulness.
The room rolled gently in the lapping tide, the oiled timbers creaking in the quiet darkness. Cirilli was standing beside the bunk, her face pinched and her eyes wet, as if they would spill over at any moment. “Joanie needs your help. Mr. Boswell’s taken a turn. I gotta go get Macterah.”
“Macterah.” Cirilli whispered in the dark, her voice urgent. “Wake up.” Soft fingers shook Macterah’s shoulder, urging her to wakefulness.
The room rolled gently in the lapping tide, the oiled timbers creaking in the quiet darkness. Cirilli was standing beside the bunk, her face pinched and her eyes wet, as if they would spill over at any moment. “Joanie needs your help. Mr. Boswell’s taken a turn. I gotta go get Atalaya.”
Lamps flickered on the crew’s dining table, throwing shifting shadows as the dim, yellow light pooled and guttered around the bulkhead supports and across Joan’s leather-clad back. She was sitting on a crate she’d dragged over to the hammock alcove where Boz was recuperating, and helplessly trying to soothe and calm him as he tossed fitfully in his berth. She glanced over her shoulder before turning her attention back to her stricken friend. “He’s out of his head with fever,” she grunted, laying her sturdy paw along this side of his face before sweeping back the soaked strands of dark hair from his brow. “And maybe something else, I don’t know. A lot of weird shit happened tonight. Macterah, you got anything for him?”
Seraphina, dressed in an oversize man’s shirt that hung on her tiny frame like an ill-fitting chemise, lugged a basin of icy water over to the alcove and Joan shifted to allow her to enter. “I think the Tasties might have affected him. That ugly bugger that bit him was covered in it.” She wrung out a rag and mopped Boz’s sweating face with it. “Or perhaps the flayer. You know he’s sensitive to that sort of thing. Maybe it did something to him in his head.”
Boz’s eyes shuttered open, incongruously green and bright against his grayish skin, but unfocused and wild. “Wave,” he mumbled as if he was revealing some arcane secret. “Whelm. Black razor.”
Seraphina exchanged a look with Joan. “There. He said it again.”
Sorrow materialized from the darkness wavering around the next bulkhead alcove. “Yeah.” He leaned over Joan’s shoulder. “I heard it that time.” His silhouette against the bulkhead was too dark, too big. It didn’t quite sync up with his movements, throwing spooky, monstrous shadows behind him. “Boz, brother,” he muttered, leaning hard against the bulkhead. “You’re scaring me.”
Joan glanced at him and gave him a disapproving glare.“Stop picking at your stitches, dumbass,” she growled. “Does what he’s saying mean anything to you?”
“No. Hell. Maybe.” Sorrow shifted his nervous scratchings to the fine stubble across his chin and cheeks and blinked, his silver eyes glinting eerily in the darkness. “I don’t know why that seems familiar.” He leaned back over Joan’s shoulder “Maybe I should have paid more attention in Arcana class. What are you trying to tell us, brother?”
Boz closed his eyes, tossing his head and muttering incoherently in an unknown tongue.
“Dammit, Boz,” Joan said. “I don’t know what you’re saying. “‘Phina, did you catch any of that?”
“I’m not really fluent in Gurrish.” Seraphina grabbed Boz’s hand and squeezed it. “What I know is mostly swears.” She shook her head. “Eye. Uh...bad. I get that. Bad. Death.” She looked up helplessly. “I can’t make it out.”
“No, wait. Wait.” Sorrow padded barefoot over to the table, his tail swishing restlessly behind him in what his friends had come to recognize as agitation and stress, and took the glass chimney from one of the lamps. Running his finger along the inside, he collected lampblack on his finger and wiped the greasy soot across his palm. He then took a pinch of salt from the salt cellar. Rubbing the salt into the black mark in his hand, he softly whispered in a sing-song cant.
The Weave* responded to the spell, and magic curled across Sorrow’s palm, spilling between his fingers like curling motes of incense. The light in the lamp guttered, flickering and sputtering as the air shifted, ruffling through the lightless curtain of Sorrow’s hair. The sudden scent of books and dust wafted through the berth deck.
Boz gasped, muttering in his native tongue, and once again intoning the three words they could all understand. “Wave. Whelm.” He tossed his head. “Black razor.”
“Oh.” Sorrow’s eyes widened as the magic granted him comprehension. “He’s just...uh...” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “...talking off his head, mostly. I think.” He raised an eyebrow and a startled look crossed his face. “Uh...no, wait, that’s not all. I see what this is. He’s having an episode. Alright, he’s saying ‘Wave, Whelm, and Black Razor for the ritual’. What ritual? What ritual, brother?” The mist wreathed Sorrow’s horned head like pipe smoke. He inhaled it, holding it in his lungs before slowly letting it out between pursed lips and puffing it into rings. “Destroying the eye? Whose eye?”
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