Those who seek chaos
will find chaos
~Unknown
“You are hereby sentenced to death by hanging.”
Not the best words to hear on a Thursday afternoon. Lucky for me, I wasn’t the one receiving the sentence. It was the poor fool at the gallows in the square we were passing.
Gilly Pine was an uninteresting port town that thrived on creating petty drama to entertain their bored masses. It wasn’t good for much besides fish, which meant their governor was keen on keeping business flowing. If fishermen couldn’t go out and fish the waters, they couldn’t sell anything. Their shores weren’t pretty enough. Their whores weren’t exotic enough. Their food was shit. The fish trade was all they had.
Now, the water wasn’t just plagued with man-eating sirens. A new enemy had risen from the depths. One we’d never seen before. Dahlia called them “xhoth.” The sons of Akareth. They were grotesque, toothy, slimy creatures taller than me with fins, talons,and their taste for siren meat was just as prominent as their taste for humans.
But, if nothing else, more enemies in the water meant a greater need for hunters like myself and my crew. Returning to Treson Harbor was out of the question, though. None of us in our right mind wanted to return to working with Governor Whitton. He had been insisting that killing sirens was not as lucrative as keeping them alive and selling them as exotic pets, more or less. And to ensure they could not use their voices to sway men, their tongues were cut out and sold to buyers who were no longer content eating things as generic as pork or fish.
I tasted bile just thinking about consuming the tongue of a siren. But despite my disgust, the noble population had taken to it and made it into a delicacy. They were paying absurd amounts for tongues and more for sirens without them.
That was far too dangerous and foolish a game for me to play. I knew better than anyone what a siren was capable of. Until very recently, I thought the only good siren was a dead and dismembered one.
So, I cut a deal with Governor Gregory Mancel in Gilly Pine. I was to bring him heads, siren or xhoth, and he paid my crew.
And business had become worthwhile over the past few months. Worthwhile enough to hold us over so we didn’t have to return to Treson Harbor and conform to the new way of things.
Glancing to my right, I was reminded just how dangerous a siren, with or without her tongue, could be. Dahlia was the perfect example of pure lethality. She strode beside me holding a sack over her shoulder. Inside were two ugly xhoth heads on the verge of rotting. I had a sack of my own with an additional two heads and the head of a siren. The creatures were aggressive. They came to us more often than we pursued them. Over the months, my ship had accumulated more scars on her hull than she had in the last five years with all the creatures hacking at her with their spears and knives in an effort to climb the slick exterior or sink her.
I looked at Dahlia again. On land, she kept her hair pushed up into a floppy leather hat and she wore my oversized shirts, keeping her gender more-or-less hidden to avoid questions. Women weren’t a normal part of a hunter’s crew, or any crew for that matter. For all anyone knew, she was a young man, either my assistant or a deck hand.
She looked up at me with her storm-gray eyes and I winked, trudging up the dirt path to collect our payment. It was all quite familiar. I’d walked to Whitton’s mansion up the hill from the docks in Treson Harbor countless times to deliver my spoils. Gregory’s home wasn’t quite as extravagant and unlike Whitton, he hated me bringing the heads into his house. Instead, I always dealt with his associate, Jon, just on the edge of the markets. He had a small office and since I’d been hunting for them, they’d set up a table outside to make our deals so none of the gore made it indoors.
Gilly Pine was a squeamish place. They weren’t used to the kind of violence other ports had gotten accustomed to over the years.
I walked up to find Jon outside already talking with a couple of men in navy officer’s uniforms.
Behind us, Mullins and James were tailing like they always did while the rest of the men replenished the supplies for my ship. I turned and whistled quietly, getting their attention. When they spotted the officers, they both veered to one side of the path, pretending to look at the goods at the closest vendor.
“Ah! Captain Woelfson,” Jon said, causing both officers to turn and look at us. “So it was your red sails in the harbor. I’ve been expecting you.”
Dahlia kept her head down as I approached the men.
“Jon,” I greeted, tossing my sack on the table, not minding how the still-wet black blood from the bottom of the burlap splashed on the officers. I reached over and took Dahlia’s sack, putting that down as well. “There are five less beasts in your waters.”
“Ahh,” he said, wrinkling his nose at the sacks. He could have opened them and counted, but instead, he waved a hand at a young servant boy, who then swiped them off the table into a metal basin. “Very good.”
I leaned forward, fists on the table, and stared at the older man in his yellowed great coat that looked to have once been white. He looked back at me, a bushy gray brow raised, and then blinked like he didn’t know why I was still standing there.
“The payment, Jon,” I said in a slow, steady tone.
He cleared his throat and then straightened the tiny glasses on his hooked nose. His head lowered a bit and he stepped to his right, sighing.
“Sorry, Woelfson,” he muttered. “It’s been a pleasure working with you.”
Behind him, the wooden post near his office door was decorated with a wanted poster. A very pristine, new wanted poster with my face sketched right on the front of it. I squinted, staring for a moment in awe at how dashingly accurate it was.
It was a very good sketch. It looked very much like me… unfortunately.
“Wonderful,” I huffed, straightening off the table just for the officers to step in and grab both of my arms.
From the office emerged three more men to detain me. And, as expected, Dahlia wasn’t having any of it. She lunged forward, pulling her bone knife from her belt, and jammed it into the nearest officer’s shoulder. He yelped in complaint, backhanding her across the face. Her hat went flying off her head and into the dirt, letting her hair spill out like black silk.
