Stoic Decay

1.

“Gone teh ground, years, Plume did,” the eel-plagued man said, coughing phlegm on the floor and leaning towards the two private operatives that sat across from him. “The stone was cut ‘A Man of Good Will, seventeen-ten teh seventeen-fifty-four.’ I shat on his grave. He was a hair pulled from a cancerous anus.”

“To ensure there has been no misunderstanding,” said Jonus Stur, a tall thin man with dark skin. “To be precise: Samuel Plume is the man we seek.”

“I don’t know who yeh seek. Yeh asked me about Samuel Plume, the Plume I knew, the only one I ever known’s dead. Fuck ‘im he’s dead. Praise Fanjis. I mayn’t have much longer, but I’ve lived years more than he.” The eel-plagued man coughed again, louder, and then spat on the tiled floor. Ronald Hoorboch, the second private op, looked down past the bulge of his own belly and studied the tiny, white, eel-like worms that wriggled in the sticky mass of spit. Grimacing, he scraped his chair back until it hit the wall behind him.

“Yer right teh move. They’ll burrow right through yer skin teh yer veins, and once ther in yer blood tis all over. Like tis for me. I don’t like spittin’ on the floor, but the nurses are afraid teh empty the jar they give me teh spit in.” He gestured at a large jar on a table beside the window. It was full of phlegm, green and yellow; milky white throughout it all the eel-like worms writhed.

“Twas in fifty-two,” the eel-plagued man said, casting his gaze from the phlegm jar to the window. “I remember it well, the year Shade Harbor whupped Sangren in the championship, Fdior got ev’ry knock in the match. I spent the next two days celebratin’ in an anuran whorehouse. I woke up broke and yeh know, I wouldn’t be surprised if twas one of those whores that give me these eels, though it could just as easily have been some other. I hung about the docks in Maritas for a week before bein’ taken up by a small caeridder, the Sea Cup twas called. The captain: Samuel Plume. I think Fanjis was punishin’ me for bein’ such a sinner, puttin’ me on that boat with such a man.”

Hoorboch opened his mouth to interrupt, but Stur silenced him with a slight nod of the head.

The eel-plagued man continued: “Three hands ‘sides myself. A tall, strong man from Seawarren by the name of Nibghe. An anuran by the name of… his name, his NAME – DAMN THESE EELS! ther teh blame, spoilt my memory, eaten his name from my mind.” He rapped on his forehead with his knuckles. “But the third, oh, the third hand was a small mangy karkie with oily grey fur whose name I never learnt, nor ever cared teh. His breath was foul. He seemed teh have spent the whole voyage sittin’ aft with a line over the side, and when he caught somethin’ he would eat it raw, bloodyin’ his muzzle.”

“What about Plume?” Hoorboch said impatiently.

“We did not see ‘im often. He told us our destination was Divers Island. He mostly remained in his cabin, only comin’ up teh plot our course or check our position. He left the runnin’ of the ship teh Nibghe. Nibghe was a good man. We became friends in a flea’s whisker. As it turned out, we had both served aboard the same cruise liner a few years before, but hadn’t ran in teh each other. Truth be told, the main reason for that was my havin’ been put ashore, after a little over a week, for assaultin’ a lady passenger, but I tell yeh I was wrongly accused for she invited me in teh her cabin. Not that I was believed. But that’s another story.

“Five weeks out, Nibghe came teh me and told me we weren’t headin’ for Divers Island. That in fact we were only five days straight sailin’ from the world’s edge. And while we weren’t caught in one of the primary fall currents, we were pickin’ up speed at a steady rate. Two days north of Divers, and three east, he reckoned our position. Not, I tell yeh, somewhere any sailor in his right mind is comfortable teh find ‘imself.

“We, Nibghe and I, confronted Plume. He acted as though he had been expectin’ us, or rather Nibghe. Nibghe berated ‘im for lyin’, showin’ real anger, not for puttin’ us in danger (the reason I wanted teh stick a shiv in his heart), but for the actual lyin’. In response Plume apologized and displayed four stacks of tentrums and a worn nautical chart that smelt of an old whorehouse madam’s mildewin’ flower. He promised us each a stack of tentrums five times as large if we helped ‘im reach a spot marked on the chart. I, bein’ a mast-licker, a simple rope-jack, paid little heed while Plume traced his finger along the parchment. Nibghe, after a moment of thought, asked why he wanted teh go ther.

“Ther’s somethin’ ther I want, Plume said, his eyes like coals, ugly smolderin’ pugs. Not that I paid that much heed either. I saw only the tentrums, for they meant cunt and liquor teh me, which was all I cared for in those days. I agreed teh Plume’s deal right ‘way and when Nibghe hesitated I urged ‘im teh accept with all the force of words my weak mind could bring teh bear on ‘im. Eventually he gave way and we took the four stacks of tentrums and left Plume’s cabin. I tried teh convince ‘im teh pocket the anuran’s and karkie’s tentrums and split them between us but he stared at me with a look of disgust that put shame in my heart. So even the cur with his foul muzzle got his share.

“Two days later, it was a westday, I remember well, for the sun set over the sea at the world’s edge leavin’ a dark blue cloudless sky, Plume came up from his cabin and, after checkin’ our position, ordered the sail drawn and the anchor thrown. But the current, now much stronger than it had been days before, was too strong and the anchor wouldn’t hold.

“Tis probably all flat stone down ther, Plume said.

“As I wondered over these words, he went below and when he returned he was carryin’ a large clatzens buoy. After switchin’ on the revolvin’ lamp he dropped it over the side. With the intermittent light hittin’ our faces he ordered Nibghe teh start the caeridder’s motor and hold our position as close teh the buoy as possible, while the anuran and karkie were teh keep tryin’ teh catch the anchor on somethin’ that would hold against the current. If it caught they were teh shut off the motor immediately, as we would need ev’ry drop of fuel for the return voyage. Then he pointed at me and told me teh lower the dinghy, that he and I were goin’ on a little jaunt. He said this with obvious excitement givin’ me a wide smile that, in the revolvin’ light from the clatzens buoy, chilled my blood.

“I balked instantly, sayin’ would it not be better teh wait ’til mornin’. Which he agreed would be best but that, as ther was little chance the anchor was goin’ teh catch and hold, we could not afford teh waste that much fuel holdin’ our position through the night. I objected that if the dinghy’s motor should die and we found ourselves unable teh restart it we would be swept over the world’s edge by sunset the next day. He disagreed with this statement, sayin’ he thought it would take about three days and three nights before we tasted the mist. Then my cowardice gripped me totally and I refused teh go, tellin’ ‘im teh take Nibghe, or the anuran, or even the cur. He stared at me grimly and calmly stated that if I did not do as he ordered all tentrums that were due me, includin’ the large reward, would be forfeit. Imaginin’ all the moistness, clothed and bottled, I would be givin’ up, my cowardice gave way. Fanjis save me, I was a devil of a man, though still a saint when placed hard by Plume.

“I have often pondered why he chose me teh accompany ‘im instead of one of the other hands. Why he did not choose Nibghe was obvious teh me even at the time. Nibghe was the only one that wouldn’t pirate the caeridder and abandon ‘im if he didn’t return within the hour. Also, more teh the point, Nibghe was a good man and Plume could not understand or trust a man so unlike ‘imself. The rest of the crew, myself especially, he understood completely and placed great trust in us, in our wickedness and venality, and that through these faults he could manipulate us absolutely.

“That he chose me over the anuran and the cur was moreover not so mysterious. The cur was after all a cur, worthless, not good for anythin’ more than cleanin’ the shit off the decks and trimmin’ the sail. And the anuran, he stayed aboard the Sea Cup for the simple reason that he was a better sailor, makin’ me in Plume’s eyes the more expendable.”

The eel-plagued man suddenly stopped talking and opened and closed his mouth. “Water, would yeh pour me a glass of water?” he said, licking at his lips.

Stur went to a side table by the bed and filled a glass from a ceramic pitcher. The eel-plagued man took it with a nod of his head. After he had taken a few sips he handed it back to Stur. Little white eels now swam inside the glass.

“Are yeh quibian?” the eel-plagued man asked.

“I was,” Stur said, returning the glass to the side table. “I came as an immigrant to Novantium many years ago.”

“I’ve known a lot of quibians. They were all mediocre sailors on the open sea. They were all teh used teh floatin’ about on that damned swampy river of theirs. Though I must admit no one knows the Broken Teeth like a quibian. I did a bit of piratin’ on a quibian junk in the–”

“Please,” Stur said patiently, “you were telling us of Plume. You were in the dinghy…”

“Yes, yes, the dinghy, twas not one of those rubber jobs yeh see now. Twas an old wooden scrap with the paint peelin’. I thought it would sink as soon as we both set foot in it. It did not. As we motored ‘way from the caeridder in the direction Plume ordered, ev’ry splutter of the motor makin’ my heart leap, I thought of the world’s edge. There is a tale, ev’ry sailor has heard it, or a version of it, of a young man who was swept overboard from a frigate or a junk or a schooner. After a few days, or a week, of holdin’ on teh a piece of driftwood he goes over the world’s edge. This is where the tale really splits and becomes many. The endin’ I heard the most on my first sail was that the young man fell all the way teh the fires of hell and, though a good and righteous lad, is ther still, for ther is nothin’ the devil likes more than teh torment an honest man. Another, and the one I thought most likely, was that after fallin’ only a short while the mist became so thick that the lad’s lungs gradually filled with water and he drowned. The one that bothered me the most, the one that was repeatin’ over and over in my head on that night so long ago, was that the lad did not drown, that he was in fact able teh in essence drink the mist and it was free of salt and so he escaped death by dehydration. But as he fell for days and weeks he could not escape starvation and that is how he died, from lack of food, and that his bones are fallin’ still through the endless regions of mist.

“Of course, all the variations of this tale were told many years before Kentley supposedly took that dirigible over the world’s edge all the way down teh that great nether sea. I myself don’t believe a word of it. I think his crew and ‘im just floated ’round in the upper layers for the few weeks he was gone and then came back with a pack of lies. Have yeh seen the photos? They’re all as false as a tranny’s cunt. And the one of that ‘unknown’ creature breachin’ is laughable. Tis obviously a gore shark and the supposed snout is just a seal caught in its jaws. The gullibility of the world is fathomless. I once, on the long pier in Pinnacle, made a killin’ sellin’ horse’s teeth, which I got from a slaughterhouse for a tentrum a gross, teh the tourists for thirty tentrums each. All I had teh do was tell them I had pulled them myself from dead giant sea tortoises in the seven islands. Of course, wouldn’t yeh know it, after only a few days of my pockets gettin’ heavy, some smart prick of a cop has teh walk by that knows giant sea tortoises don’t have teeth. I spent a few months in Pindlestock for that venture.”

“What about Plume?” Hoorboch said.

“Plume?” the eel-plagued man rubbed uneasily at his forehead.

“Yeah, Plume. Samuel Plume. The Sea Cup. You were t–”

“Yes, I… I’m sorry, I… the eels, sometimes… sometimes I think I can feel them, in my head, movin’ ’round. I lose track, I forget things.” He grimaced and took a deep breath. “But I will never forget Plume, or any of the things he caused teh happen.

“We were in the dinghy. The sky was dark. The stars were beginnin’ teh shine. The moon was risin’ in the north sendin’ light teh sift like oil on the water’s surface. I could still, if I squinted, see the Sea Cup and the clatzens buoy behind us. I was so on edge that it took me longer than it should have teh realize the dinghy was runnin’ aground. That the keel was grindin’ on somethin’ below. Plume ordered me teh stop and shut off the motor. I told ‘im I wouldn’t shut it off, that he was crazy. He pulled a revolver from his jacket and pointed it at me.

“I don’t know how long this will take, he said, and we can’t waste fuel.

“I shut off the motor. He smiled at me and then climbed over the side of the dinghy. It rocked gently on the waves as he stood knee-deep in the water beside it. He told me teh get out, again pointin’ the revolver at me. I obeyed. The water stretched as far as I could see with no dry land in sight. I expected my feet teh find a rocky shoal, or maybe a sandbar, or even a goddamned coral reef, but instead I found hard flat stone. Plume started walkin’ and I followed, pullin’ the dinghy behind me. The current swept past my legs and tried teh drag the dinghy from my hands, but I held tight. The stone on which we walked was unnaturally flat and I kept my footin’ with relative ease.

“After a few minutes Plume stumbled, splashed in the water, and arose with no help from me. Only now he stood a head taller, the water at his ankles instead of his knees. He glared at me, shakin’ water from the revolver. Then I saw why he had fallen. The flat stone suddenly turned up at precise right angles in a wide step that could only have been man-made, or at least had in no way been carved by the natural motions of the sea.

“I asked ‘im what it was. He told me it was somethin’ ancient and then ordered me teh wait where I was. That if I tried teh abandon ‘im he would shoot me in the back. I did not doubt ‘im. He gave me a hard look and then continued walking. I pulled the dinghy up onto the step and stood behind it, watchin’ ‘im. The further ‘way he got the more certain I became I would desert ‘im. I would pull the dinghy off the step, climb inside it, lay on the bottom, and let the current take me. When he saw I was escapin’ he would start shooting, but the wood of the dinghy was thick and the caliber of the revolver small. He would run, try teh catch me, but the current would be far faster. When I was safely ‘way I would start the motor and return teh the Sea Cup.

“Just as I was edgin’ the dinghy off the step, he stopped walkin’ and reached in his pocket with the hand not holdin’ the revolver. Oh Fanjis, if only I had left then, maybe things would have been different. But I hesitated. I watched as he knelt down and placed whatever it was he had pulled from his pocket under the surface of the water.

“Then it happened. The water started teh boil, though it felt no warmer on my legs. An odd steam rose up. Twas like smoke soaked in purple dye. It seemed teh give off its own light, luminescent. As it curled ’round me I stood paralyzed by fear for I do not know how long. I felt I could not breathe and a queer tinglin’ went through my body. Then, like a deer tide past its apex, the smoke or steam started teh dissipate. I immediately thawed and ripped the dinghy off the step and leapt inside, nearly capsizing. It was as I was franticly tryin’ teh start the motor that I felt the cold wet barrel of the revolver on my neck.

“I should kill yeh, Plume said teh me, smilin’ broadly, an undeniable joy in his face. He did not kill me, not me. We returned teh the Sea Cup, his face beaming.

“Later that night, as we motored against the current for Divers Island (this time in truth), the Sea Cup’s engine died. But that was not all that died, for the wind also abandoned us and would not stir the least hair on our heads. The current took us. Dawn came and passed, and the day waned far teh quick as the world’s edge drew ever nearer. Plume manned the wheel, while Nibghe and the anuran tinkered and prodded the engine with whatever knowledge they possessed. And yeh will not believe it, or perhaps yeh will, but the karkie, he sat aft with a line over the side, the dimwitted cur, seemingly without a care. And I, I was up in the mast on lookout for any passin’ vessels, this far east a near impossibility, and tryin’ teh read the current, all the while prayin’ in vain that we happen upon an uncharted isle or a sandy shoal.”

“What about the anchor?” Hoorboch said. “Did y–”

“The anchor,” the eel-plagued man said. “We lost it soon after the engine died, tryin’ teh catch it on somethin’ fast. The waters were deep and the seabed rocky. It snapped off and the chain nearly took the anuran’s hand with it. Those are treacherous waters, not meant for men, good or bad.

“I don’t know how close we came teh goin’ over. Maybe a day and a night. Who knows? I do know that that day up in the mast was the longest of my life. But like all things it came teh an end, for as the sun was gettin’ low in the west behind us, the engine came teh life, or half-life. Nibghe and the anuran had pulled it back from death, just barely. And it was this act of resurrection that killed them.

“We went straight against the current with great whoops of joy that soon died on our lips. With the engine givin’ us all it had we were only just holdin’ our position. Not a gain could I see. Nibghe and the anuran and even the cur began castin’ anythin’ that wasn’t bolted down overboard, and even some things that were bolted down but could be torn loose. I was still up in the mast, tryin’ teh read the current for the path of least resistance, callin’ down headings teh Plume which he mostly ignored.

“I was payin’ such attention teh my task that I didn’t notice the anuran when he went over the side, nor the cur. Twas the gunshot that brought my eyes downward just as Nibghe went over the side with part of his head blown ‘way. The anuran and the cur must have dived overboard when Plume threatened teh shoot them if they didn’t part the waves. But Nibghe, he would have known goin’ inteh the water was suicide so he must have rushed Plume. And Plume shot ‘im and he went overboard all the same. He was a good man, better than I. And Plume killed ‘im. And would have killed me.”

“Why didn’t he?” Hoorboch said.

“Because it wouldn’t have helped ‘im. It was small, the Sea Cup’s crow’s nest. Really just a crossbar at the top of the mast. Yeh had teh be lifted up teh it by rope and pulley, and once ther yeh strapped yerself teh it tight if yeh were wise. And I, though a wicked fool, was strapped teh it tight. If Plume shot me, my body would still weight the caeridder, so ther was nothin’ teh gain by killin’ me. And so he did not. He went back teh the wheelhouse and let me live.

“I saw right ‘way the Sea Cup was now makin’ some progress against the current. Though whether or not the loss of the bodies of two men and a cur had been the thing teh make the difference I did not and still do not know. I stayed up in the crow’s nest all that night and half the next day. I dozed and awoke from dark dreams. At noon Plume came out on deck. He asked if I wanted teh come down. My mouth was dry and my belly empty.

“After he had lowered me teh the deck, he stared at me with his cold eyes.

“It had teh be done, he said.

“Then he produced a large pouch full of tentrums and handed it teh me. He stared at me again, told me teh take the wheel, and disappeared inteh his cabin. Over five thousand tentrums. I’m ashamed teh say it, but the weight of all that money was heavier than the lives of Nibghe and the other two. He had bought my compliance and he knew it.”

The eel-plagued man stopped talking, staring at the floor. His head and torso moved back and forth with every slow inhale and exhale of breath. Late afternoon sunlight was splashed across one wall and the room felt uncomfortably hot.

Hoorboch cleared his throat. “What happened then?”

The eel-plagued man at first did not respond. He leaned heavily on his metal cane and then looked upwards catching Hoorboch with pale tired eyes. “The wind picked up,” he said, “and… and now sufficiently out of danger, we shut off the motor and unfurled the sails. We reached Divers Island a week later. At night. I was at the wheel and I did not hear ‘im. He stole up behind me and cracked me hard ‘cross the skull. When next my eyes opened I was bound hand and foot, coiled, and hangin’ arm’s length above the sea. I spun and the lights of Divers in the distance gave ‘way teh Plume, knife in hand.

“I’m sorry, he said, this also has teh be done. Yeh are hardly a man teh be trusted.

“I will not say a word, I said, have mercy, please, have mercy. Are yeh not a man? Is ther no mercy in yer heart? Are yeh not a man?

“He stared at me as I twisted in the wind.

“I am a man, he said, and like all men I am a monster.

“Then he cut the rope. I went under teh darkness. I struggled, oh Fanjis, how I struggled. But Plume knew his knots. I was goin’ teh die. My lungs were burning. It was only moments ’til I gulped in the sea and drowned. Then I felt them. Whiskers, hard spiny whiskers, brush against my hands.”

Hoorboch leaned forward, his face anxious. “A gore shark,” he said. “Was it a gore shark?”

“Twas. It took a quick bite, a taste,” the eel-plagued man said, pulling up the sleeve of his loose hospital gown. In a warped half-circle around the elbow of the exposed arm was a row of scars, shiny and pink. “They don’t like man, our flesh. Dolphins or seals is what they like. He took a taste and then went on by. But the devil tore the ropes just as well as he tore my flesh. I got one arm free and then the other. I didn’t bother with my legs. I didn’t have time. As soon as it bit me I had taken the sea in my mouth like a whore, and swallowed. I didn’t wait. I was suckin’ water. I swam for the surface. I don’t know how I made it, but I did. I gasped and coughed and puked up water, and with my throat raw I freed my legs.

“In the distance I could see the Sea Cup motorin’ on in teh Divers. And I followed. At least for a while, I did. I swam a lopsided stroke, the sea-water stingin’ my wounded arm with salty little knives. I soon lost it, the Sea Cup, but I kept going. Tis one of the few things in my life of which I’m proud. I didn’t give up. I kept on going. And after a while, a very long while, I pulled myself up onteh a breakwater and passed out.

“I woke up in the hospital the next day. A fisherman, bless ‘im, had eyed me as he was settin’ out at dawn. He radioed the harbor patrol and that was that. By the time I got out of the hospital Plume had gone. But I followed. And I found ‘im, or rather his grave, a few months later. Right here in Shade Harbor. Tis a dark place, cemetery where he’s at. No grass at all, at the bottom of a gully. All grey stones and, in the spring when the sun melts the snow on the ridges, a stream flowin’ down the middle of it all, makin’ it a cold damp place.”

“Yes it is,” Stur said.

“What?” the eel-plagued man said. “Y’ve been ther?”

Hoorboch picked at the dirt under his fingernails. “Yeah,” he said, “last night. We did a little digging.”

The eel-plagued man cocked his head to the side, his mouth gaping. “… what?”

“We dug up his grave,” Hoorboch said. “And he wasn’t in it.”

“… what?”

“It wasn’t empty. There was a corpse in it. How tall was Plume? How tall was he?”

“… tall… he was, he was taller than I…”

Hoorboch looked at Stur and smirked. “I told you Shade Harbor was corrupt. You can buy anything. The coroner, the police, and the politicians, well you can buy them everywhere. But I mean they weren’t even trying. Putting a man in Plume’s coffin that wouldn’t even come to his shoulders. God that’s lazy.”

“What is this?” the eel-plagued man said, his voice rising. “What are yeh talkin’ about? What are yeh tryin’ teh pull?”

Stur stared at him calmly. “Samuel Plume faked his own death twenty years ago.”

The eel-plagued man leaned back, shaking his head slowly. “What…” he whispered, “what…”

“Please,” Stur said, “listen carefully. You were arrested on the twelfth of Ezen seventeen-fifty-four for defecating on Samuel Plume’s grave, correct?”

“Y–Yes.”

“Where were you arrested?”

“Right outside the gates.”

“Of the cemetery?”

“Yes.”

“Then Plume knew you were alive,” Stur said.

“He must have paid the cops extra to watch the cemetery and keep an eye out for you,” Hoorboch said.

“I always wondered, always, how they found out,” the eel-plagued man said, “or why they even cared. I figured some old bitch puttin’ flowers on her geezer’s grave must have seen me and raised a stink. But that never really explained it. That GOD-damned fucker, he’s still alive?”

“Perhaps,” Stur said.

“What do yeh mean perhaps?”

Stur looked at Hoorboch and, after a moment of consideration, he shrugged. Hoorboch sat up in his chair and said: “A girl came to us a week ago. A pretty girl. I guessed her age to be about twenty-two. I was only off by a year, huh Jonus.” Stur smiled slightly and nodded his head. “She walked in our office,” Hoorboch continued, “and asked us to find a man: her father and her uncle.”

“That’s two men,” the eel-plagued man said. “Unless her uncle made a habit of fuckin’ her mother.”

“That’s exactly what I said. And after she stopped crying and after I apologized for a few minutes, she reluctantly decided to stay. She told us a story. Her mother had died the month before and she had finally built up enough strength to clean out her mother’s house. While going through the stuff in the attic she came across a photo of the man she thought was her father’s brother, her uncle, and he was standing in front of a church having just recently married a woman and that woman was her mother.”

“What’s this have teh do with me, or Plume?”

“Samuel Plume is her father.”

“… what?”

“And her uncle, at least that’s what her mother always told her when he came for a visit. ‘Give your uncle Ted a big hug. Hasn’t she grown, Ted. Wouldn’t Sam be proud of her, Ted.’ And other lies like that. She was brought up believing her father had died in a car accident right here in Shade Harbor. She showed us his death certificate, and then her birth certificate. She was born in seventeen-fifty-one, a year before your voyage on the Sea Cup, a year and six months before Samuel Plume supposedly died. She claims the last time she saw her ‘Uncle Ted’ was in seventeen-seventy-one. He’s a sailor, just like his brother, owns his own ship. She was lucky if she saw him once a year. She gave us this…” Hoorboch began to search his pockets. “I can’t find the–”

Stur pulled a photo from his jacket and held it up. “This was taken in seventeen-sixty-nine.”

“But… that can’t be,” the eel-plagued man said, grabbing the photo, his mouth opening and closing as if he were chewing on something sticky. “He hasn’t changed. He’s the same. Exactly. Not a day. Not one day.”

“What?” Hoorboch said.

The eel-plagued man held the photo up in trembling hands. “Tis–tis like someone put a mirror up teh his face the moment he cut the rope. Fanjis…” He doubled over, coughing convulsively, the photo dropping from his hands. Before it could hit the floor Stur caught it deftly and returned it to his jacket pocket in one smooth motion.

Still coughing, a string of saliva hanging from his chin, the eel-plagued man tried to rise. His cane found no purchase, sliding on the spit on the floor, and he fell sideways, striking his hip against the chair before going all the way down. Stur reached out to help him, but his hand was knocked aside. “Get ‘way. NURSE! NURSE!”

“Please, calm yourself,” Stur said, again trying to help him.

“I said get ‘way, yeh cocksucker. I don’t know what yer tryin’ teh pull, what kind scam yer tilling. I’m broke yeh fuckers. Not a half-tentrum teh my name. Leave me be. Samuel Plume’s dead. He’s dead. He killed them all, and he’s dead. Leave me be. He killed them.”

A nurse entered warily and surveyed the scene. “Out,” she said to Stur and Hoorboch. “Now.”

As they left the room, a doctor entered it. They waited in the hall until the doctor emerged ten minutes later. Stur stepped before him. “Will he be alright?”

“That man,” the doctor said, “alright? That man should be dead. The eels are so thick in his veins that the blood can barely flow. I don’t know how he’s still alive, maybe sheer tenacity. I come in every morning expecting to hear he died during the night, which is when most of them die, and I find him in his room looking the same as the day he first arrived.”

“Which was when?”

The doctor flipped through the pages on his clipboard. “The tenth of Amnis, seventeen-seventy.”

“Four years,” Hoorboch said.

The doctor slapped the clipboard against his leg. “Yep, four years. And who are you again?”

“Oh, we’re his nephews,” Hoorboch said, smirking, before Stur gave him a light shove and they walked away.

2.

Shade Harbor at night was aurally distinct. The creypilar trees made it so. Or rather the leaves and the wind to be more precise. Long serrated leaves that created a sound that was half whistle and half exhale of breath, a haunting sound, the sound of a man’s last breath before dying. Even on the waterfront, where the creypilars were less dense, the mournful sound was audible above the sounds of the ocean.

“Is this it?” Hoorboch asked, playing his flashlight onto the dock’s beginning and the buildings on either side.

“Yes,” Stur said.

“Are you sure? The harbor master said to look for a red sign and I don’t see no red– oh wait, there it is. Damn.”

Stur walked past him, his feet making barely a sound on the wooden planks. Hoorboch scowled and then followed loudly.

It was a long dock, long and thin, and in poor repair. It was also empty.

“We should have gotten something to eat,” Hoorboch said.

“We did.”

“Yeah, I know. I meant for while we wait,” Hoorboch said, stopping. “What about here? This should be good. You don’t want to go to the very end do you?”

“The end would be best,” Stur said, continuing at his steady pace.

“Nah,” Hoorboch said, reluctantly starting to walk again. “I still think the shore would be better. We might spook him standing out here all alone.”

“He has no reason to be on edge.”

“Two guys he doesn’t know coming up to his boat just as he pulls up asking to talk to him won’t set him on edge? Yeah, okay.”

When they reached the halfway point Hoorboch coughed loudly. “We passed a bar right over there,” he said, waving his hand at the shore, “where we could see him coming easy. Why not wait there? Wait until he ties up. Then go on out.”

“It seems to me,” Stur said, “it would be best to stand at the end as if we are waiting for another boat and then after he has been moored for fifteen or twenty minutes, we make our approach. Your point is arguable, but we are almost there already. Do you really want to walk all the way back?”

“Yeah, yeah, alright. We’ll play it your way.” When they reached the end of the dock Hoorboch pulled his revolver from his jacket, inspected it, and then returned it to its holster. “What did you think of that sick fuck’s story?”

Stur took a deep breath. “It sounded as if he had told it to himself many times. Perhaps too many. But I would judge there to be more truth than falsehood in it.”

“Yeah, probably.”

They waited only a matter of minutes. A small caeridder motored in past them. Stur pretended to check a watch that wasn’t there, and then turned away, staring out at the open sea. Hoorboch had his head back, seemingly oblivious, watching the stars above. The caeridder pulled in close to the dock, near the shore, and a man leapt down and tied off a line, stretched lazily, and jumped back aboard. The motor shut off and the sound of the ocean lapping at rotting wood became dominant.

Hoorboch tapped at his chin. “Was that it?”

“The running lights were off, but I was able to make out – The Sea Cup. A quarter of an hour and then we will move in.”

“Alright.”

With only a quarter of that quarter of an hour having elapsed, Stur turned sharply and stared at the shore. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“Listen.”

Hoorboch cocked his head to the side. A high metallic clang, followed by an inebriated shuffle. He held his hand up to his ear. Clang, shuffle, clang, shuffle. At the dock’s beginning an indistinct figure appeared, hunched and wheezing.

“Fucking hell,” Hoorboch said. “It’s that sick old fucker.”

“We told him too much,” Stur said, springing forward with Hoorboch close behind.

They reached the eel-plagued man just as he was reaching the caeridder. A blinding spotlight hit them. The eel-plagued man pulled a revolver from his tattered clothing. A gunshot sounded. The eel-plagued man fell. Hoorboch drew his own revolver and fired two shots into the spotlight’s center. It burst with a flash of sparks, bringing darkness. Stur ran forward and leapt onto the caeridder, a tricern – a length of supple metallic cord – uncoiling from his right hand. A figure jumped from behind the hissing spotlight. Stur caught the loose end of the tricern in his left hand and with a swift twirling movement snared the figure’s arms in a tight loop. “LIGHT, Ronald!”

Hoorboch clicked his flashlight on and swung it about wildly until he had pinned Stur and his captive in its yellow circle. Stur grabbed both ends of the tricern with one hand and tore a revolver from his captive’s grasp. “You are,” he said, “Samuel Plume?”

The man stared at him a moment and then nodded his head.

Hoorboch, hearing a sound he knew and hated, played the flashlight’s beam on the dock around him. The eel-plagued man lay on the wooden planks jerking spasmodically, blood spurting in timed bursts from a large wound in his neck.

“Will he live?” Stur asked.

Hoorboch knelt down an arm’s length from the dying man. “No,” he said, watching the tiny white eels twisting in the droplets of blood, which grew into pools, which then ran in rivulets between the wooden planks to fall into the sea.

The light from the flashlight reflected in the dying man’s eyes. His hand was stretched out, reaching for Hoorboch. Hoorboch scowled in disgust, cursed, and holstered his revolver. Reaching out, he took the man’s hand and held it. “Poor bastard,” he muttered. A few moments later the hand went lax and he let it fall from his grasp. He stood, studied his hand, and then wiped it vigorously on his jacket.

“I had no choice,” Samuel Plume said.

“SHUT your FUCKING mouth,” Hoorboch said, sweeping his eyes along the buildings on the shore. The ones that had been dark remained so, and in the few that were still lit no movement could be seen. He drew his revolver and said, “Let’s take him below. It’s cold out here.” His face was dark as he climbed aboard the caeridder.

3.

Plume’s cabin was large but relatively bare. Cushioned benches ran along both sides to a wide embedded bunk covered by a richly colored quilt. Above the bed was a tall front-railed bookshelf that was full of books, most of them old and tattered.

“Sit down,” Stur said, uncoiling the tricern from around Plume’s arms and pushing him onto one of the benches.

Plume looked up at them speculatively. “We aren’t just going to leave the body there for anyone to find, are we?”

Hoorboch took a few quick deliberate steps and struck Plume across the face with the butt of his revolver. Plume gave up a short groan and a trickle of blood started to flow from a cut above his right eye. Hoorboch raised his arm to strike again. Stur caught it and shook his head. Hoorboch lowered his arm with an expression that was part grimace and part disgusted smile. “If you give me another reason,” he said to Plume, “I’ll open a hole in your head with my hands. Remember that.”

Plume watched them, holding his hand to the cut above his eye. After a moment of silence, Stur gave him a handkerchief. Dabbing at the cut, Plume said, “Who are you?”

“Private operatives, hired to find you.”

“Hired by whom?”

“We will get to that, maybe. First, why did you kill him?”

“Like I said, I had no choice. He is, was insane. He meant to use that revolver he pulled. Though I don’t know how he found out I was alive. Was he the one who hired you? Did you lead him to me?”

“Inadvertently,” Stur said. “We were looking for information on you and we came across a newspaper article about him being arrested for defecating on your grave. We had already dug it up and discovered your stand-in. And the fact that ownership of the Sea Cup had been transfered to your ‘brother.’ You did not cover your tracks very well.”

“This is Shade Harbor, I didn’t have to.”

Hoorboch moved to the bench opposite Plume and sat down, fingering his revolver. “He told us quite a tale. Murder is nothing new to you, is it?”

“I can guess what he told you, unless he’s modified it over the years. He told you I killed them, the other three hands on that voyage, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, he did,” Hoorboch said. “And I believe him.”

“As well you might, because in a way I did. But not in the way he told you, which I’m guessing was that I forced them over the side at gunpoint.”

Hoorboch leaned back and began to watch Plume closely. Stur, standing between the two, studied Plume with the same calm bearing he did everything.

“He told you about the engine dying?”

Stur nodded his head.

“When we finally got it started we were deep in a primary fall current. We weren’t making any headway at all. We tossed everything we could overboard, but it wasn’t enough. So I decided we would have to draw lots. I took five matches and burnt the tips of three. I held them upside down in my hand and they each picked one. He picked an unburnt one, and after they had all picked there was an unburnt one in my hand also. The unlucky three got in the dinghy with some food and water, a flare gun, and as much extra fuel as they could take without capsizing. We weren’t kidding ourselves, they had a one in a million chance of survival. It was pretty much a death sentence. As soon as they were away the Sea Cup started to make gains. And the next day the wind picked up, a strong wind blowing from the northeast, the kind mariners pray to the gods for. We reached Divers Island in about a week and there parted ways forever, or so I thought.”

Hoorboch laughed cynically, slapping the revolver against his thigh. “Yeah, he told us how you parted ways, or was he lying about that too.”

Plume looked at him, perplexed.

Hoorboch shook his head in disgust.

“He told us,” Stur said, “that you bound him and cast him overboard.”

“And then what,” Plume said, with anger beginning to show in his voice. “He somehow, miraculously, escaped from the ropes before drowning. Gentlemen, I have spent most of my life on the sea. What kind of a sailor would I be if my knots were so easily undone.”

“He said a gore shark bit him, took a taste, and then let him go, in the process cutting the ropes enough to free his arms.”

Plume began to laugh long and hard.

Hoorboch jumped up, furious. “SHUT UP, SHUT the FUCK up, we saw the scars, you sadistic prick, I’m going to bash your head in.” Stur, while still keeping all his attention on Plume, stepped forward and placed a restraining hand on Hoorboch’s arm.

Plume, no longer laughing, looking nervously at Hoorboch, swallowed and said, “The scar on his arm, the one around his elbow? He had that already the first time he set foot on the Sea Cup, and there is no way he got that from a gore shark, maybe a notch-tail or a black-fin, but a gore shark, even if it let him go which is unlikely, would have torn the flesh clean from the bone, not leave a few nasty puncture marks. And even if it had done so little damage, he still would have never made it to shore, not with that much blood in the water. Gore sharks may not be partial to human flesh, but there are many other creatures in the sea that are. I’m sorry, that’s totally ludicrous. I left him on Divers Island, alive, walking away arm in arm with a whore and a bottle of hard liquor. Please, you listened to his tale, please listen to mine. And then you can decide whether to believe me or not.”

Hoorboch shook his head angrily, and then returned to his seat on the bench. “Go ahead you fucking liar, finish your tale.”

Plume stared hard at Hoorboch for a moment and then directed his attention to Stur. “From Divers I sailed directly here, to Shade Harbor, and I had only been here for a few months when he started coming to me. He must have already been infected by eels because he was pale and haggard, and grew progressively more so with each visit. At first he accused me of cheating, of sleight of hand with the matches, of rigging the drawing of lots. But by the last time I saw him he had come up with this tale of me forcing the other three hands over the side at gunpoint. I don’t know if he was already unstable, or if the eels were beginning to affect his mind, but he was going insane. Maybe it was guilt. During the voyage he became friends with, or rather wanted to be friends with, the first mate, a man from Seawarren. The man barely tolerated him, but he still followed him around like a puppy. After we had drawn lots, he tried to convince me to allow the first mate to stay onboard. I finally told him if he wished the first mate to stay onboard then he would have to take his place on the dinghy. He stopped bothering me right away. But there was a look on his face that was full of self-loathing, as if he felt that was what he really should do, make the heroic sacrifice. But he could not because he was a coward. So he let his ‘friend’ die for him, and over time he found he could not live with that fact, and he convinced himself that he bore no responsibility for any of it. That it was all my fault, everything.”

“And you felt no guilt?” Hoorboch said. “It was your ship, your voyage.”

“Yes, I felt guilt,” Plume said. “It was my ship, and my voyage. But they all knew the risks when they came aboard, every sailor does, it’s part of the life. And I paid them extremely well. I was sorry when the first mate pulled a burnt match. He was a good man, unlike that eel-plagued racist. You know, only a few days into our voyage he beat one of the other hands, a karkajuan, half to death for getting fish blood on his shoes. It was the first mate that pulled him off the poor old creature. He thought it was funny, beating up on an old mangy karkajuan. He made jokes about it and couldn’t understand why the first mate didn’t laugh and told him to shut up.”

Plume glanced at Stur and then Hoorboch. “That last time he came to see me, he was drunk and he brought a pistol with him. He started waving it about, ranting that he was going to bring me to justice. That he was going to turn me in to the police or that he was just going to do it himself and shoot me in the head. He sat down, pointing the pistol at me, his head nodding. Then he passed out. I considered killing him. It would have been an act of mercy. As I understand it, being plagued by eels is an extremely discomfiting malady. In the latter stages, which he was in for years, and in which he would have remained for eternity, you can feel them moving in your veins, at times painful and others like a terrible itch that can’t be scratched. Maybe I should have done it, but I couldn’t bring myself to.”

“Maybe you should have drawn lots,” Hoorboch said. “Or were you out of matches?”

Plume gritted his teeth. “He was half dead already. In mind and body. Sooner or later he was going to try to kill me, or try to get me locked up which would have been even worse. What was I supposed to do?”

“Fake your own death,” Stur said.

“Well, yes, that’s what I did eventually. And it worked, for twenty years, until you,” he looked at Hoorboch, “fucked it up. You know, by revealing I was still alive, you as good as killed him.”

Hoorboch leaned forward and then back, baring his teeth in a harsh smile. The barrel of his revolver now in a direct line with one of Plume’s knees. Plume looked away and studied his hands.

“Why would incarceration be worse than death?” Stur asked.

Plume looked up nervously. He rubbed at his palms. “Did he tell you of our jaunt on the dinghy?”

Stur nodded his head.

“You will not believe this,” Plume said, hesitantly. “But I will never grow old. I might also never die.”

“Are you sure of that?” Hoorboch said, tapping a fingernail against his revolver.

Plume stared at him coldly. “No, I’m not,” he said. “The texts were not clear on that point.”

“What texts?”

“I… I found them when I was a young man. I was running guns to one of those rebelling tribes of natives in north-western Quib. On my last run, right before Tatonnen seized power and things got too hot, I was paid with an assortment of items that had been looted from a monastery deep in the jungle. One of the items was a small statue with tiny emeralds for eyes. I was in the process of prying loose the emeralds when the head of the statue popped open on a cunningly devised hinge. There were four rolled parchments stuck in the neck. A map and three short texts. It took me five years to translate the texts and another seven to find the key with which to trigger the enlexqia.”

“In eternity,” Stur said quietly. “I think I understand now.”

Plume studied him closely. “I thought you looked Quibian. But still, it took me months to figure out what enlexqia meant. It’s hardly a word that’s used every day. How did– wait… you know Dur Fen Rii very well, so you must have spent some time in a tanctes monastery?”

“Many years,” Stur said.

“I went to one once. Asked if they could help me translate the texts. They refused. Told me I would have to enter the order, become an initiate, and that eventually I would be able to translate the texts myself. I considered it, but I was young and impatient. So I told them to go fuck themselves and they politely escorted me out.”

“They do not reveal knowledge to those who have not learnt the basic precepts of wisdom, for knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

“That’s almost exactly what the head priest, the water sage, told me. Perhaps I would have saved a lot of time if I had become an initiate.”

“If you had,” Stur said, “you would have never tried to trigger the enlexqia, for you would no longer be afraid of death.”

For a moment, an odd look formed on Plume’s face. “That’s not why I did it, I…”

There was silence, and then Hoorboch said, “Come on, Jonus, what is this?”

“There is a chance he is telling the truth, at least about this.”

Hoorboch sneered. “What? That he’s going to live forever?”

“Over the years,” Stur said, “we have both seen things that, before we witnessed them, we would have thought were impossible.” Stur turned to Plume. “But why did you believe, why did you spend so many years trying to translate the texts?”

“The texts were sealed,” Plume said, “and when I broke the seal the wax, if it was wax, melted. It floated upward, ran along the ceiling and out the window, disappearing into the sky. That kind of thing makes a lasting impression on you.”

“Fuck, Jonus, this is bullshit. I don’t give a damn whether he’s going to live forever. Let’s turn him over to the cops.”

“No,” Plume said, “that would be a mistake. If you do, I will muddy the waters. I will lie. I will accuse you of the crime.”

“Fucking manderjay,” Hoorboch said, his hand ivory white on the revolver. “It was your gun. You–”

“Was it?” Plume said. “I think you’ve forgotten where you are? Money buys anything in this town.”

Hoorboch surged forward. Stur placed a hand on the large man’s chest. “This is getting repetitive, Ronald. Calm yourself. The information we have is inadequate to justify action on our part.”

“He’s lying, Jonus. We can’t just let him go.”

“I have not told one lie,” Plume said angrily.

“Yeah, then how did you kill that old fucker with a single shot? If something happened to you both, how did you kill him?”

Plume leaned forward, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. “He was not in the foci! I WAS! I am no longer a man. I have not aged a day in twenty years. I am unique. I will live forever. He was not even on the platform. He should’ve been dead years ago. It was the enlexqia that was keeping him alive. You don’t know anything. I’ve told you nothing but truth…” He stopped talking. He was breathing hard, visibly disturbed by his sudden loss of composure.

“You very well could be,” Stur said. “But you could just as well be delusional. I would not be surprised if, upon checking your face, I found marks of plastic surgery. And as we have no way of testing the veracity of your statements on what occurred twenty years ago everything you say becomes as light as a feather.”

Plume wiped at his mouth, his brow furrowed. “Yes… you have only my word and in this day and age, as in every other, a man’s word is… worthless.” He lowered his head. “Why did you have to come here.”

“Because your daughter hired us to find you.”

“My daughter…” Plume whispered, his voice high, his head still lowered. “Yes, of course. It had to be her… my daughter. How is she? Is she doing well?”

“Truthfully,” Stur said, “I could not accurately tell you. If I had to guess I would say she is doing well. Though she is still in mourning for her mother.”

“What?” Plume said. “Tillene? Oh, oh…” His body rocked to the side as if he were trying to escape something.

There was a long moment of silence in which Hoorboch carefully stared at a point above Plume’s head, while Stur calmly scrutinized the man’s every slightest movement.

Finally, Plume lifted his head. “She knows I am her father?”

Stur nodded.

Plume closed his eyes, deep in thought. “I will have to sell this boat,” he said, “without a paper trail. It is the last link. I should have done it long ago.” He brushed his hand across his face. “The last time I saw my daughter she remarked more than once that it looked like I hadn’t aged a day. Maybe, I mean… I could have saw her a few more times, but…” He stared at his hands, embarrassed. “Even if I had remained an ordinary man, I would have been no good for her. For either of them.” He reached down slowly and pried a floorboard loose with his fingers. With Hoorboch’s revolver following him magnetically, he lifted a small metal box from the hole and said, “Tell her I am dead. And give her this.” He held the box out to Stur. “Sixty-thousand tentrums and government bonds from eight different nations worth twice that much. Tell her it was bequeathed to her in my will.”

“What makes you think we won’t just take it all for ourselves,” Hoorboch said.

“You might,” Plume said, giving Hoorboch a bitter look. “But your friend never would.” He again offered the box to Stur.

“If you would open it first,” Stur said.

Hoorboch smiled. “You’re right about him being an honorable man. The most honorable I’ve ever met. In fact, if he wasn’t here I’d put a bullet in your head, just out of curiosity. But a man in our profession who does not carry a gun, stays alive only by being extra cautious. Open the box.”

Plume shrugged and opened the box, shaking it so the contents shifted around.

“Looks alright, Jonus.”

Stur took the box and closed it.

“Now,” Plume said, “if you’ll help me get the body onboard, I’ll take it out to sea and give it a proper sailor’s burial.”

4.

Stur and Hoorboch watched the Sea Cup motor away from the dock. The sun was rising in the east at the point where the shoreline dwindled and met the horizon.

“It will be a beautiful day,” Stur said, turning and beginning the walk back toward the shore.

Hoorboch looked down at the spot where the eel-plagued man had died. Though splashed with buckets of water drawn from the sea, the wooden planks still showed faint stains of blood. “I don’t like the way things played out,” Hoorboch said, falling into step beside his friend.

“Neither do I,” Stur answered. They walked on in silence.

When they reached the dock’s beginning Hoorboch glanced back over his shoulder. He stopped and then turned around. “Jonus,” he said, “you’d better look at this.”

The Sea Cup was diminishing into the distance, an odd purple smoke coiling about it. Stur turned his head for a moment and saw a figure lift itself awkwardly from the aft deck, trailing a white tarp in the wind. Moving like something newly born the figure staggered to the cabin below.

“Come along, Ronald,” Stur said, continuing on his way. “It is of no concern to us.”

“But what–?”

“Justice. Revenge. Or an eternal cycle. We will never know which.”