Chapter 6: Two Names

Outside, rain pelted the windows of her cabin. The storm had come on faster than the risen had. Dark clouds rolled in from the south and unleashed a deluge. On the one hand, Jos was thankful that the rain would rinse the stench of the risen dead from her ship. On the other, the headwind would slow their progress a little. 

Sitting at her table in her cabin, she stared at the maps laid out and the chicken-scratch lines marking her revised route. Her original course—that she’d planned out with Nexx—would have brought Hiraeth much closer to the coasts of the various Sanguine Bay islands. Of course, she’d pushed for slight variation to the course, taking them across the center of the bay. Her reasoning had been to steer well clear of the pirate cannons of Laughing Gull Island. Nexx had argued that there was no need to go that far out, but she disagreed. Eventually she won. She was the captain, after all.

But the pirate cannons was only one of her reasons. Cutting across the bay would save a few hours off their journey. A few hours she could use for an unscheduled stop near Pearl Islet for a little of Beltran’s special black-cask rum. That stuff sold like supercakes. Not to mention, it had been a year or so since she’d had any, and her rum cabinet was running a little bare as it was. 

Her gaze landed on the small note Nexx had left for her. 

It wasn’t as if her detour was what caused the risen to attack the ship. They never came this far north from the old castevall. Well, almost never. Still, if they came this far, they were on the hunt. They would have attacked even if they’d hugged the coast.

Of course they would have.

Jos shook her head and snatched up the note. She’d already read the scrap of paper, but the brief message kept coming back to her. The message was simply two names. These were the two crew members who had died in the risen attack. 

Jos took a swig from her mug as thunder rumbled outside. The dark, bittersweet liquid matched her even darker mood. Each and every member of her crew was like family. Some may be distant family, but they were all under her protection. And while she told herself the attack was not her fault, on days like today, she felt like she’d failed in that duty.

“Damn it.” She took another gulp and slammed the mug and note down on the table. 

A squealing yelp came from the sitting couch. She’d completely forgotten Danni was even in the room. Jos grunted and turned back to her rum. “Shouldn’t you be keeping an eye on that cargo or something?”

“I-I’ve checked all of the container’s lashings twice since the attack, and-and everything looks satisfactory.” Danni’s voice was barely a squeak. “Do you think I should check them again? I’ve only been on a ship like this once before and never in charge of the cargo.”

Jos scoffed. “If you checking it again gets you away from me, then yes. You should check it again.”

“O-oh.” 

Clothing rustled, and an empty bottle clanked on the deck as Danni made her way to the door. “You appear to have significant empathy for your crew.”

“What?” Jos turned to the little asura, her vision blurring with the movement. It took a second for the asura’s words to process. “That’s kind of my job.”

“What I mean is, two of your crew perished in an unforeseen attack. Yet, you appear take it very personal, as if it was somehow your fault.”

Jos took another sip and let the faint burnt-molasses flavor sit on her tongue. As her anger melted, her mood shifted back to grim sadness. Finally, she swallowed. “As I said, that’s my job. I just...I just thought I was done with being a leader, you know? Being responsible for other people. This job was supposed to be simple, easy.”

A long, awkward moment hung in the air, but eventually Jos continued. “I’m just glad Nexx’s nephew is okay.”

Jos looked up at the asura. “Does that make me a bad captain? That I favored one crewmate over others because he’s my friend’s nephew?”

“No.” Danni looked at the floor. “Does it happen often?”

Jos went to take another drink and realized her mug was empty. She hadn’t drunk that whole mug already, had she?  “What?”

With one hand on the latch, Danni paused. “Coming under assault from the risen? What do they want?”

“Death.”

The word echoed in Jos’s mind, reverberated in that same raspy voice as the undead krait.

“But… why? Isn’t Zhaitan dead?”

A trickle of dark mirth bubbled up in Jos, forcing its way out as a sinister chuckle. “You… You think the dragon being dead makes a difference? These things… No. Listen to me.”

Jos climbed out of her seat, and the world twisted around her. She grabbed the table to steady herself. Maybe she did drink the whole mug. Still, it wasn’t enough. As the deck pitched a little under her feet, she stumbled over to the rum cabinet. To anyone else, it was just a regular cabinet, but to her it was the rum cabinet because that was where she kept her rum.

“Listen to me. The Pact Commander has killed two dragons, right? Zhaitan and Mordremoth…” Jos turned her head to the side and spat. “Now, each of them had a special aspect, right?”

Danni nodded. “Two each actually… Zhaitan was death and shadows and Mordremoth was plants and the mind.”

Jos scoffed and wrinkled her face. She did her best squeaky-voiced impression of Danni, “Two actually…”

Shaking her head, Jos tried to clear away a bit of the rum-fog. “My point is… Just a month ago, I saw a dragon minion that was fire and death… The damn thing was a destroyer but it was covered in green flames. Now, what—urrp—what does that tell you?”

“Well…” Danni’s head tilted to one side. “The aspects of the dead dragons are being consumed or taken over by the living ones.”  

Jos pulled open the cabinet door then stopped and stood up straight. The sudden jerking movement nearly sent her stumbling backward. At least it felt that way to her. She couldn’t be sure, the world just kept twisting around her. Furrowing her brow, she turned to small asura. “Huh. I… I was gonna say that the minions were eating each other, but your—urrp—your idea makes waaaay more sense.”

Danni’s face scrunched as she watched Jos try to pour another mug of rum. For some reason, the captain felt like her head kept wavering back and forth. No, not her head, the room. That was why she kept sloshing the rum over the edges of her mug. Of course, that only served to frustrate her because it was a terrible waste of rum. “You know, you… you don’t have to go. It’s okay.”

The young asura woman’s face creased with concern as she stepped closer and put a hand out as if to catch Jos if she started to fall. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

Jos stopped pouring and picked her head up. She could still remember the names on Nexx’s note. The faces of her two lost crewmates appeared in her head, far more stable than the real world around her. She blinked a few times then went back to pouring. “No.”