“Adnihilo.” It was the first time Adam had spoken to his friend since the incident. “What are you doing out here so early? It’s cold. You’ll catch a chill.”
The half-blood stayed silent for a moment. He looked a wild thing: dirty matted curls and stringy hairs on his lip. And the brand. The same scar Ba’al had left on him showed clear and white on Adnihilo’s bronze skin: a four-sided diamond from which a trident fork arose coiled as by a serpent, all in crude silhouette. The half-blood held a hand over the mark as he answered, “I overheard some of the crew talking last night. They said they’ve seen you out here a couple of times.” Adnihilo paused and sighed through his nostrils. “They were placing bets on when you would jump.”
“Adnihilo—”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” he cut the Messah off. “You were thinking about it, weren’t you. Gods, Adam, you were just going to leave me alone with these monsters? You’re all I have left. Cain is gone, and Jez, and Eemah, and everything.”
Adam stepped away from the balustrade. “It wasn’t just you. I was there too, remember? And I lost just as much: my home, my father. The church.”
“Then why?” the half-blood cried, holding back his tears. He stole a step closer.
At once, the pastor’s son was returned to Venicci’s cabin. It was in his mind, of course: the salt-rusted iron hooks on the wall above the cot, the well-worn ropes, a rank bowl of fat and drippings, and a dirty cloth bundle soaked in rum. And Jezebel—she was there as well—bound in chains and bawling. Those sounds would never leave him. He would never forget that night of torture, not even in his sleep—no, the dreams were worse. But what could he say to Adnihilo to make him understand? The Messah didn’t know, so he stared deep into his friend, digging his fingers through the thin linen of his tunic, into his skin, searching for answers to hold whole his soul.
“Adam!” shouted the half-blood, but a clamorous pair of footsteps interrupted.
“Oi, Skivvy! What in Hell are you do’n? The bishop’s look’n for you, and here I find you ruin’n the merchandise!” It was Venicci’s first mate, Luigi, a long and lanky man with thinning black hair and fewer rotten teeth—the wooden ones he wore always on the verge of slipping between his flapping gums. He squinted in the sun with beady eyes at Adam’s wounds. “You best not keep that up. I’ve seen a few of the captain’s used muffs get thrown over cause they marked themselves just like that. Hell, I’ve seen em tossed for less. Surprised we still have the girl on board—bad luck, and the whole crew knows it. We got enough to worry about with all the privateers and the patrols and the rumors.” He stopped a moment and adjusted his crotch, snorted and spit, then he wiped a finger under his nose. “That was before we took up the bishop—the things gibbered in the ports o’ Mephisto, I tell you. Everybody was blather’n about some slant-eyed pirates spotted around God’s Grasp. They say the captain’s a woman with three arms and a golden cock. Fuck’n rag-hats will believe anything—but what in Hell am I tell’n you for? Just get your pretty ass up to the bishop.” He spit again onto the deck of the ship then smiled wide, his false teeth askew. “He’s in the captain’s quarters. I’m sure you know the way.”
The first mate didn’t wait for a response, and for that Adam was glad. It was enough to be reminded of the place and time in night terrors, by his friends, by his enemies; but to be made to return there—to bear sight of the old ropes and the rusted hooks, and to breathe the vapors of rum which fogged the room—he felt as though it would do him in. “I can’t go back,” escaped his lips.
Luigi had already turned and was jaunting away when the pastor’s son uttered the words. At once the vice-smuggler stopped and, chuckling, tilted his face toward the sky as he spoke, “The bishop thought you might say that, and he said to let you know that him and your girl will be lonely getting along without you.”
“He’s got Mags with him?”
“Aye,” shouted the smuggler, resuming his jaunt. “And you best hurry, or they’ll have all the fun without you!” And with that, he laughed his way to the other end of the carrack and disappeared below deck where the rest of the crew could be heard stirring.
Adam looked to the half-blood. There was a reticence in his eyes. He had been quiet the entire time since the first mate arrived, never meeting Luigi’s face or even glancing higher than his feet. The same proved true when it came to Adam, yet somewhere among the Messah’s toes—between the filth and the blisters—he rediscovered his voice, albeit steeped in disbelief.
“What he said to you just now, what in Hell did that mean?”
“You know what it meant,” said Adam, taking another step further from the balustrade and toward the aftcastle—the captain’s cabin where the demon bishop waited.
He passed under three masts in crossing the carrack, from starboard bow to the soaring stern, each step of the way stumbling with the waves. His journey seemed longer than the ship’s length warranted. And that was fine by him. As much as Adam was desperate to attest to Magdalynn’s safety, he was in no hurry to return to the cabin. Instead, he took his time weaving around wound ropes and sails and the occasional sailor. He listened to their half-drunken stories: tales of fish-maids luring men to their doom, and of a young Tsaazaari mystic wandering under the nose of the Black Beast—a legend
