ENTRY THREE
The inn was bustling and loud for how poor it was – stevedores, dockworkers, fishermen, and all the sundry of the Harbour District had gathered in the Dripping Dame to complain and gamble, to brawl and sing. The watered beer sloshed onto sawdust thick floors to mingle with blood, vomit, and in some cases piss. The hearth was roaring with driftwood – the heat only causing a greater thirst as summer refused to let go.
The barnacle covered door opened and the joy died in a wave at the grim figures who entered. Men and women in drab leathers and rusted chain, ugly weapons apparent on wrists, hips, backs, and boots. The one in the lead was a small departure from the sour, almost dead, looks of those behind him. The small group entered with the door being lightly closed behind the last one in. Chairs scraped as they moved away from the group, whispers running rife through the regulars of the bar the main one being the word “Deaders”.
There’d been rumors of these Deaders for the last few years in some of the settlements to the north. All sorts of wild ideas. That they were some offshoot of one of the big holy orders fighting the undead in the north. Others claimed the Deaders were the reanimated shells of heroes willing to give the dead another fight. Some of the loonier ideas included them being some paladin sect that’d gone rogue or that they were fools who fell into void-crags during the Shattering and were spat out as they were now.
What was common in those rumors was their inhumanity.
The rumors clearly stated that the Deaders always wore those menacing masks to cover their face. They’d never been seen this far south, nowhere near this city, Eiruva. The fighting near the border of the Gravelands had been so severe for the last twenty some odd years that many didn’t dare leave for fear of the line being overwhelmed in one section or another. The Deaders were supposed to be one of the many groups holding the line resolutely, yet here they were.
Daydreaming wasn’t always a bad idea in a bar, but the daydreams of one Koss of Ulengard had gone on a little too long.
“Are you Koss?” the taller of the Deaders said to the man leaning back against the counter. The voice of the lead Deader was dry and raspy, but there was an echo of a click of his tongue as he said the man’s name.
It took a moment for Koss to respond. “Yeah? That’s me” he said with an obvious strain on his face. Deaders weren’t exactly good news if the word in the Dripping Dame was to indicate things. Already some of the men and women drinking between work shifts were eying the visitors and Koss warily.
The Deader was silent. Behind the mask, Koss could feel and see eyes boring into his flesh, an uncomfortable feeling.
“Can I. Can I help you?” Koss finally managed, gulping audibly as the imposing Deader before him leaned closer. The rust-speckled daggers clanging softly against one another on the Deader’s shoulder soon became the only noise as the rest of the bar watched the tense spectacle.
“Yes,” said the Deader, saying nothing else. With a flick of the lead Deader’s wrist, a few of the Deaders behind them walked forward uniformly. Koss hadn’t heard that each Deader had different masks, but the patterns on the two walking up to him had an odd assortment of pigments and dyes that dotted their otherwise white masks.
The Deader on the left had a pattern that could be easily recognized by any adherent of Kuoleman (he wasn’t one, but the worship of that particular god was common back home in Ulengard). It repeated in a circle around the Deader’s eyes, the Crook of Kuoleman etching itself around and into the dull eyes behind the mask. The rest of the facial mask was dominated by etchings of white-gold feathers which meant something he wasn’t sure of.
The other Deader, on the right, had a different sort of more primal orientation. Roots of some sort of tree dominated the area around the mouth and brown carvings of tree trunks dominated the rest of the face. No branches, no leaves. The eye-holes were the center of gnarls and knots. If Koss had to guess, it was either something connected to nature or a rejection of it.
His eyes finally moved back to the lead Deader as Koss finally allowed himself to look into the face of the large man. Glowing orbs dominated the eye-holes, speaking to what kind of creature or person beneath he did not know. The marks on the leader’s face were the simplest of all. Unlike the others, the Deader leader’s markings were more roughly hewn. The three slashes from what might be either claws or sharpened nail bore deep into the Deader’s faceplate.
“Koss” the Deader began, putting a hand on Koss’ shoulder, “You will find one of our numbers. They are lost. Unharmed. Now.” The voice of the Deader seemed more pained as they spoke more, the very action of speech an obvious strain.
“Now-Now, or sometime today?” Koss said, clutching the beer mug he’d been swaddling since their conversation. His left arm had already been soaked with half the drink, but now he was holding it more tightly. A potential excuse.
The lead Deader’s eyes dimmed. Only a single moment. In the second moment, those dull eyes blazed red as they tossed the knife on their wrist between Koss’ legs, piercing through the chainmail leggings dangerously close to something that no man wants to be pierced. The leader said nothing, but their eyes now bored much more angrily at the man for hire.
“Now-Now, it is,” Koss said, tossing the mug atop the counter and knocking over a bunch of other patrons’ mugs in the process. Not that he noticed.
“Return the knife when it is done,” the Deader leader said, turning around in time to the rest of their group. Just before the Deader left, they turned and faced Koss one last time. “Or Kuoleman take you, boy.”
Feeling a good deal less groggy than he had before the Deaders entered the bar, Koss was now more awake than he had been all day. “That certainly happened” he whined, gingerly removing the knife from the stool and his pants. “So. Since I have all of your attentions, have any of you seen any other Deaders today?” Koss said just loud enough for the whole bar, still staring at him, to hear.
On cue, the entire bar almost immediately went back to what they were doing before the Deaders entered. Some men and women scooted their chairs and stools back to where they had been prior and the barmaid tapped his shoulder. “Going to have to pay for those drinks you knocked over,” she said, an awkward smile on her face as Koss handed her a few gold pieces.
There went the last few coins from the Temple job he did some time back. Great. He had barely enough to buy a loaf of bread if he was hungry again today.
“What was lost shall be found,” Koss said to himself, twirling the knife between his fingers, “on the road to salvation or road to inspiration”. Stashing the knife into his tunic, the finder took hold of a small misshapen pendant from his neck and pulled on it. Before he realized it, he was outside, just beside the docks as the cold ocean wind battered the side of the storefront.
Twelve years of living in this town and he still wasn’t used to the biting cold or the life that went with it. Twelve years of finding things for others, but that was the life he chose when he chose the road of Faltrusas.
She was a goddess of the lost, he’d been told. A finder of truths. On his way to Eiruva all those years ago, he’d met a hapless traveler meandering down the road toward what he knew to be mortal danger. She simply smiled and gave him the pendant before being on her way. That pendant was a sign, to him at least.
He had to find the lost Deader.
The port city of Eiruva had been built maze-like. Never expected to be a prime destination for either mercantile work or for urban expansion, the first rulers of the city had decreed that it be divided up among the various nobles who had stakes in the city. Of course, that didn’t lead to a cohesive network of roads, but much of this had been corrected at least enough to function as the years had gone by. Learning the back streets and alleys of the town meant that he had to learn its history to get heads or tails of some clues he’d been left in the past.
Since the Deaders were long gone, it wouldn’t be prudent to hunt them down to ask more details about their missing comrade. He’d been given the timing of starting right that moment, so. Yeah.
That wasn’t happening.
What did he know about the Deaders, then? Twiddling the pendant in between his fingers, Koss thought back to the moment they entered the Dripping Dame. Decaying leather. Dead looks on their face. Dull and rusted knives. Maybe that last one could be a hint. A smith might sell the Deaders new knives if they wanted. Could be why they left the walls up north; Out of effective weaponry. Something else maybe, but that was the best lead he had. Besides, he had to get that hole in his pants sewn shut with metal wire until he could afford to replace em.
The nearest blacksmith to the Dripping Dame was a few blocks down further into alleyways and small sewer channels that made up the urban Harbour District of Eiruva. There was a fine line between the Harbour District and the rest of the town given the ravages of some sort of magical disease that tore through the town during the Shattering. He’d arrived a few weeks after the disease had run its course, but by then walls were already partially built. Now those thick stone walls cramped much of the Harbour district off from the more valuable inland parts of the city. It created a ghetto divided by walls taller than he’d seen even back home.
“You saw someone wearing old leather with rusty shivs and weapons on them?” Koss said after a short greeting, “friends of theirs are in town. Lost track of em. Might be leaving soon”
“Think I might’ve seen something like that” the sweat covered blacksmith said, belching a bit as he put down the shank that he’d been eating sloppily. “Looking for a fella or a lady?”
“Not sure. This guy, their friend, just said that it was one of their company, a “Deader” I think” Koss said with a shrug.
“Oh. One of them? Must’ve been them then” the smith said between loud and obnoxious bites, “think they headed into the poorer part of the Harbour. To the church, maybe”.
“Thanks. I’ll definitely follow up on that, but first. Well. Can you sew holes shut without taking off garments?”
Chuckling, the smith wobbled to his feet, his girth shaking softly as he did so. “Sure,” the blacksmith said with a starving grin and a lick of his whetted lips.
One embarrassing incident later and Koss was walking a bit too fast away from the smith. At least one problem was taken care of. As he headed into the alley Koss closed his eyes and clutched the pendant around his neck, not letting go. “What was lost shall be found on the road to inspiration,” he said, taking his first steps into the worst parts of the ghetto.
The ghetto reminded him of that particular sickness which ravaged the city of Eiruva for a year. The powers that be created special homes that were stacked up against each other, just in case the whole neighborhood was lost to sickness. It was a place made to burn. Now that the sickness was gone it was a cheap place for the poorest of Eiruva to live in.
It was also home to the only Temple of Xjell in the city. It was an oddly small temple, but Xjell was the god of the downtrodden and the discarded. It’d make sense that a Deader would come here if they entered the ghetto.
The area outside the temple was quiet. The ground here was covered in well-trod dirt, a smell not unfamiliar to Koss. As he approached closer and closer, he took in more of his surroundings. Unlike most of the buildings in the slums, it was made of a well carved and decorated stone, making it a place of not only grace but also of relative cool compared to the sweltering buildings nearby.
It was purposely separate from everything else here. It looked like the people who had lived there prior had decided to remove their tenements rather than let the temple of Xjell be ensconced in potential fiery ruin. Remnants of foundations of other buildings littered the otherwise empty grounds outside of the temple, at least.
Carvings of the Hand of Xjell, a symbol used in pendants and emblazoned on armor alike, decorated the outer walls of the temple every two meters along the outside. The pale blue pigment that dominated each Hand leached into the stonework, either shoddy design or stone of lesser quality was to blame.
Outside the temple proper, a few people in drab robes and old leathers knelt to the side of the doors. Even from here he could see that the inside was not quite full, but there were plenty of people staying outside despite the oppressive heat. Shelter from the sun was one thing, but inside with the amount of people it had to feel like the insides of a hearth.
Koss’ eyes focused intently on the altar, where stood a man much taller than even the lead Deader had been. A thick, untrimmed beard adorned the dark-skinned man, the small curved horns curling down the sides of his face denoting him as a Tiefling or some other sort of creature. More likely the former. Closing his eyes tightly for a moment, Koss wiped his brow and finally let go of the pendant as he entered.
The noise inside of the temple had been hardly audible from the outside, but once he walked in there was a clangor in the air. The priest at the back, or the front for the parishioners, stood silently as he watched his flock discuss a variety of issues to themselves. Koss, a stranger here, sat down near the back as the din intensified.
The priest’s eyes closed softly. Slowly opening them as he raised his hand, the flat palm of the cleric pressed out to the crowd. Silence.
“Good afternoon, children of Xjell” the Tiefling began, his hand still raised in the same position, “and others. The day is long and the heat is overbearing, so I will be brief with this afternoon’s sermon.” The priest’s tone was soft, yet stern enough for Koss to understand that what he was saying was clear. “Some have come to me to ask for guidance on one particular issue. Hunger. Did not Xjell in his sacrifice nourish the soul of all who sought him? Did he not give to those in need in life and give to all in his death?” His hand closed.
“Yes,” most of the crowd said as one, the noise even repeating outside.
The man’s hand opened again, “Yet that is not the hunger that is sought to be quenched. It is true that the kitchens of some denominations have closed to us here in the Harbour, but have faith in Xjell that this shall be taken care of by month’s end. I swear this to you.” And his hand closed again.
No voices rang out in response. A few choked sobs reverberated in the otherwise silent chamber as the eyes of the congregation stuck close to the robes and trappings of the cleric. Some bodies in the crowd were strained, clutching themselves with concern or holding their small children close to their sides.
The priest looked uneasy at the fear and concern in the crowd as he opened his hand again. “Friends. Children. Strangers. I know that we are in a tough time. This unbearable summer is longer than the last and many farms outside of the city are still barren with neglect. I and the other speakers have been unable to convince the mayor to hand out the land of the heirless. Yet I shall try again.”
Clearing his throat, he continued, “All men and women must eat. Those who have not eaten today may take of the stores as they need. I ask that those who have refrain today. Xjell will continue to provide what he can for all who wish to him.” Hand closed.
The crowd’s eyes trained themselves on the priest as a few of the obviously hungrier or greedier in the crowd rose and walked down the steps just to the right of the priest into the cellar. His hand opened again as he spoke.
“That will be all for today. Should any of you wish to discuss my statements this afternoon further, feel free to do so after my meeting with the Lord Mayor tonight. And to the stranger at the back, come to me. You seem like you have questions.” And again his hand closed.
Koss had been rapt at attention during the short sermon. The direct speech knocked him out of his semi-reverie as he stood up with a nod. Blinking, he looked around. No one else was standing.
As a portion of the crowd finally stood and left (with the other sections making their way single-filed down to the basement), Koss approached the altar where the priest awaited him.
“You seek not salvation, I see. What for are you here?” the priest said with a more stoic look on his face than when he had been before the crowd.
“I,” he began, thrown off by the change in tone. “This is a nice place and I trust you mean what you say and talk about, but that’s not why I’m here. As you guessed,” Koss said. “I’m looking for someone wearing old leathers, rusty knives, other weapons, and wearing a white face mask with etchings in them. Their buddy wanted me to find them, so. Have you seen them?”
“Yes, I believe I did see the young woman who matches that description,” the cleric said, noticeably slouching a bit once Koss finished speaking. The Tiefling was still over a foot taller than Koss, even with the way he was standing.
New information. Was the Deader a young woman? All of the Deaders he’d seen were dressed uniformly and unflatteringly, so how did the priest know that?
“She took off her mask before she left my sight.”
“How did you know?”
“Any priest can read reactions. Your eyes are honest and open, stranger. Kind. Intentions obvious, inner thoughts mirroring your exterior. You are not the first troubled man who has asked me questions that they did not know I would answer before they said another word.”
“That.” He said with a gulp, “Makes sense.” He continued, “Is she still there? How long ago was this?”
“Shortly before you arrived. I do not doubt she is still kneeling out there. She would have entered if she thought she belonged inside. Seek her. Do not press her too hard, though. Your questions might hurt.”
“What do you mean?”
“She came to rest outside my temple today for a reason. Let her find that on her own and do not try to explain to her the actions she took.”
Koss was silent. What he was saying didn’t make any sense. The finder didn’t have any intention of making that sort of guess for her, but he did have an inkling to. He’d do it. The priest was right. “Okay.” He finally said, a guilty look on his face. “I’ll try to avoid that, then. Thanks for the help.”
“You are welcome to come back any time young man. Regardless of the God or Goddess you worship, this temple’s arms are open to all sojourners.”
Koss exited the building shortly after that. The heat had simmered and receded in the time he was in the temple, the summer sun lower in the horizon and below the skyline of the buildings. The sky above had shifted from a blinding blue to a deeper, colder navy, the beginnings of night starting to emerge from the sunlit sky just as the sun knelt. The salty spray of the ocean lay but a few blocks away, but it was still audible as Koss searched the outside of the temple for the Deader parishioner who knelt beside it.
He did not have to search far. To his right there was but one person. A small woman in old leathers, her weapons shinier yet still rusted. She was facing the wall, close enough for her to all but press her forehead to the stone edifice. Her prayers were mostly muted as she spoke in silent reverie to the God housed inside the temple. The mask that all Deaders wore, hers, was on her lap. There was but one carving on the mask, more intricate than even the lead Deader’s ceramic visage. The Hand of Xjell. The same Hand adorning this temple adorned the outer face of his quarry.
The other Deaders were far more imposing than this one.
He didn’t know how tall she would be if she stood, but if he had to guess it would have to have been a head shorter than him at least. Maybe that was why their leader was concerned? Or perhaps they were worried she was abandoning them.
The priest’s words rang back to him. “Let her find that on her own” he’d said. Right.
“Oh blessed be you, kind ruler of the heavens. Tis kindly that you granted me another year whilst others did not receive thy gift. Thine glory and virtue shall not be wasted on me, I swear it” the Deader mumbled, her voice coarse in delivery yet soft in the intonation of each word. Her accent was decidedly different than the Deader at the bar, but at the same time, the way she spoke had the same dryness. Different origins, same parched words. There was an eloquence missing from the rough tumble that their boss used in their speech as well. She didn’t notice him.
Koss blinked, his mouth agape as he struggled to not say anything. Minutes went by as the Deader repeated her prayer over and over. She had been doing this for a while, then.
Thirty minutes of the same short prayer and she finally stopped. The Deader slowly leaned back on the heels of their feet, grip soft, yet firm on the masonry as she rose from her position with one hand while her mask was held in the other. As she turned to put it back on, she finally took note of Koss and leapt back in surprise, dropping the mask in the process.
Frightful eyes looked into Koss’, his own shock reduced by the lengthy wait until now.
“Who, who might you be?” she asked, her archaic-speaking tongue stuttering as she righted herself.
Koss could see her face now that. Her face was pocked with plague scars, where some foolish healer had either dug out the lesions from her face with a dull knife or had failed to properly treat them. The Deader’s left eye was dusty, covered in a few small scratches from some unknown source. Despite all of that damage to her face, she looked otherwise normal, if not horrendously underfed. The scars were not the difficult part to see.
“I’m a Finder. Koss. Your commander or captain or whatever, they didn’t really introduce themselves with a title, told me to go find you immediately.”
“Do you have proof, Finder? Tis not common to be approached by a sneakthief such that you may be.”
“Proof?”
“Deadspeaker Kadash does not care for dullards or liars. He must have given thine hand something to hold, right? Did you sell or lose it, then?”
“Something to hold. Oh. That.” Koss said, shivering at the uncomfortable memory as he withdrew the dull knife from his tunic and handed it hilt first over to the Deader. “Please don’t throw that at me like he did.”
The young Deader covered her lips for a moment as she struggled to stifle a laugh temporarily unable to respond. “I should hope that you do not give me a reason to, Finder Koss,” she said as she took hold of the knife in her free hand and clicked it into place on her wrist.
For a long moment of silence, she looked clearly at his face. There was a sort of tension in the air as she looked mildly contemplative. Suddenly, a small embarrassed blush raced from her chin up, followed by her diving for the mask by her feet. As she slipped it on, Koss visibly cringed.
“I hope my visage failed to scare you”
“Visage? You mean face, right? You don’t need to wear the mask while we talk.”
“Then, why did you grimace at me?” she said incredulously
“What?”
“Frown. Looked concerned. I am quite sorry if my speech is not clear”
“Oh.”
The Deader kept a firm grip on the mask as she waited for his answer, silently.
“Not the first time I’ve seen scars from a plague, miss. Doesn’t make you unpleasant to look at, at all.”
She looked at him in suspicion for a moment before she slowly slid the mask back off her face and kept it close to her side. “Very well, good sir Finder. Should we not be on our way, then? I am sure the Deadspeaker is awaiting our return at the fallback position in town.”
“Fallback? Why would, forget it. Lead the way then. Your commander didn’t exactly tell me where to meet him after I found you.”
An odd look crossed the Deader’s face as she contemplated telling him something. Koss wasn’t quite sure the reason she was even considering that, but the indecision faded as she slipped the mask back on. “Apologies, sir Finder. If we are to travel together, the mask is to stay,” she said as the pair of them began to walk.
Ducking into an alleyway back toward the harbour, the two moved at a gentle pace, an obvious lack of hurry on the Deader’s part slowing their movement through the ghetto to a crawl. What heat remained was much less apparent in the shadows of the wooden structures. The Deader couldn’t habe been in the city long, but to Koss, it was clear she knew exactly where she was going even in the expanse of the labyrinthine paths ahead of them.
“I don’t think I ever got your name, miss.”
“Do you truly need it?”
Koss paused before he said anything else.
“No, but when I’m walking around with someone, I’d prefer to have a name other than what they are.”
“I am not sure I follow, sir Finder.”
“It’s rude to just call you Deader or Miss the entire time. That’s how I grew up. I don’t call people by their profession or non-name stuff unless they are stiffs I don’t care to know.”
They both kept walking, both digesting the conversation. The wooden structures gave way to a less convoluted series brick as they entered the “nicer” part of the Harbour District. The maze remained. There weren’t many people around these alleyways and those that were about had other things to attend to.
“Maroe,” she finally said in response, “I am from a small town near the border to the Gravelands.”
Koss bit his tongue at the ambiguity of the information she gave him, which was still more than he’d asked. “Thank you Maroe,” was all he said as they kept walking.
The pace slowed more, with the Deader occasionally shooting a look at him as they walked. She paused as they got within sight of the sea. Before them, the sun was still in the process of sinking beyond the horizon. “This would normally be when we’d be on duty,” Maroe said, her body drooping a bit. “But I do not believe we need to worry about that again,” she said more quietly.
Koss stiffened at the words. Her head had been turned away from him as she spoke, so she could’ve been trying not to be heard. Koss felt the air cool further as the wind from the ocean sprayed just hard enough to counter much of the lingering heat in the air. Even from this distance, he could smell the salt. His hand twitched on his hip as they stood there, watching the sun set miles and miles away from them. Would that odd priest approve if he asked?
“Do you want to talk about it?” he said without thinking.
“What?” she said, suddenly turning around.
‘Breathe, Koss,’ he thought to himself. “I heard you. A moment ago. Something about not needing to worry about something guarding something again.”
“Oh,” she said shakily, “you need not worry about that, sir Finder. When you return me to my people, your journey with me shall end and I doubt you shall ever see me again.”
Koss frowned at that, but a surge of confusion in his mind staggered the feeling of sadness. She was right. He’d probably never see her again after he escorted her. There was no reason to expect to see her again, yet there was for some reason remorse.
“I know,” he said, “but I feel like I’ll worry. Not sure why, but the feeling’s there Maroe.”
She clutched the mask on her face softly as she disengaged it, sliding it off as she looked to him. Her face was tense and sad, yet there was a smile on her face. “A mutually felt sensation, then,” she said. “I suppose you are a rather curious man, Koss. I shan’t repeat what I am to say again.”
Koss’ face tightened for a moment as he focused in on her face, agreeing.
“We are exiled. What few of the Deaders remain are traveling down the coast. I have been in town for the last week, yet I dared not go to the temple until today because I thought that any day now the Deadspeaker would arrive and I should be prepared to meet her. Yet here I am, late to that meeting purposely and. And. He is expecting us, we should tarry no longer,” she said, cutting herself off as the beginnings of tears welled up at the corner of her eyes. The tears were interrupted as Koss wrapped his arms around her and held her close to him. Her eyes shot open in shock, but that too receded as she closed her eyes.
She didn’t respond more visibly for the first few moments, but soon she carefully wrapped her arms around him, careful of the knives at her wrists and the other weapons on her clothing.
After a full minute of this, Koss let go.
“Why?” said Maroe, a small whine to her voice in incomprehension. “I do not understand. Why did you do that?”
“Would tell you if I had an answer for that, Maroe.”
There was silence between them for the next few long moments. Neither of them moved. His eyes finally traveled back to the now dim horizon. “Kadash or whatever their name is said I had a day. It’s night now and I don’t want to get stabbed because we’re running late.”
The Deader clenched her jaw at that in worry. “He. They will not do that, Koss. I doubt he will treat you that badly.”
Koss turned to Maroe as she slipped the mask back on. “Why?” he said, his mouth moving again without a thought.
“Trust me.”
Koss was quiet for the rest of the walk. At this time of day, most of the stevedores and other dock workers had already moved everything off the ships still in the harbour. The only ones who stayed behind were “merchants” or people expecting some boats to arrive later in the night. Smugglers or families, it was difficult to tell which. Dried vomit and salt spray littered the boardwalk. They were getting closer to where the Deaders were waiting. From the land side of the docks they looked like an inhuman mass of metal and leather, but as the pair of them got closer it was obvious that there was just more of them than had entered the Dripping Dame earlier that day.
The Deaders stood in three lines, with the lead Deader, Kadash, waiting at the front for the pair of them. The wind began to die down as they approached, the cold night encroaching upon the crowd as the two groups met.
“Have you done what I asked, Finder?” Kadash spat out, his throat sounding hoarse.
“That is not necessary, Deadspeaker. I am unharmed,” Maroe said, cutting off Koss before he could respond, “and unamused with the methods you have used today. I do not believe that our leader would have approved of such tactics should they still be on this side of the cycle.”
Koss looked on in confusion. Maroe was speaking with the same tone, but her voice held more authority than before. Kadash’s red eyes burned for a moment before fading into swirled cauldrons of sickly green.
“Scribe, don’t speak of that. An outsider is present.”
“I keep with the bylaws. Based on my conversation with the kindly Finder, you did not. Threatening outsiders is against the Code.”
“Had to get his cooperation.”
“There are more peaceful ways to receive aid, Deadspeaker. But, I appreciate the effort and thank thee for thine diligence.”
Kadash leaned back as he appraised Maroe. Something in Kadash’s eyes lit with the same rot-brained confusion, but it faded back to a dull red as the Deadspeaker moved forward. The tall Deader caught a sack thrown by one of the closer Deaders and handed it over to Koss. “Services rendered. Speak to none of this event,” he said as the party of Deaders’ first column walked orderly onto the boat. Kadash turned away and boarded the boat after the starting group finished.
Maroe looked back to Koss, her hands shaking as she moved to the boat. Koss slowly followed, sliding the bag onto his shoulder as he watched the procession.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. The stars above began to appear, slowly filling the sky with tiny lights shining down.
“I wish I could do more to help my people,” she said as she began to speak, turning her face back to Koss, “And I wish I could leave, but as you can see I can’t. Kadash maintains order, but he forgets things now. He is much older than the rest of us who live, and if he should die there will be problems.”
A short rush of wind brushed by the two of them and the rest of the Deaders as she finished speaking, the gust hiding a sigh from Maroe. Her movement was still visible.
“Why tell me all this?”
“Because you care. And,” she began, “I have no one to talk to about these things, Koss.”
Koss took a moment to reply. “Ok,” he said with a mournful look on his face.
“I may never see you again, good sir Koss, but I will remember you. I shall hope you remember me.”
“I will remember you, Lady Maroe.”
Maroe’s eyes opened a little wider beneath her mask, her head tilting as she looked at him. “That is all that I can ask, then. Thank you.”
Silence dominated the air as the last column of the Deaders boarded the ship, the Deadspeaker on the deck looking down at the two. Wordlessly, Maroe turned her head and boarded the ship.
As the Deader ship sailed southward out of the harbour, Koss walked to the edge of the pier and sat down. His feet dangled as he watched the boat get further and further away until it faded into the horizon. “The rumors weren’t true,” the Finder said, leaning against one of the pillars of the pier.
Koss placed the bag down next to him. Carefully, he untied the knot keeping it closed and looked within.
He smiled and retied the knot.
