“I have seen things that are not of this world. Beings that shouldn’t exist. They sit astride the stars and look down at us feeble, unclean beings with disdain.”

-Enia Stockton, Astromancer, 162 U.E

 

Quintilla approached the dark, decrepit house on the edge of Flotsam.

The Tumbani told stories about this house. The children kept away from it. They spoke of a demon that lived in there which would feed on the souls of the unwary and puppet their bodies as thralls.

They were almost right.

The two-story house looked as though it hadn’t been inhabited for the better part of this generation. Patches of dry grass and hardy shrubs grew around the property, separated an old fence that had buckled under the weight of long neglect. The walls of the house leaned against one another for support, and the windows had been warped out of shape, many of the glass panes cracked and replaced with wooden boards.

Quintilla leapt the fence and walked up to the door, standing on the ragged mat that had once said ‘WELCOME’, but had faded so that the letters were nearly illegible.

Quintilla tapped her left foot three times on the mat. She then reached up and touched a rusted coin hanging from the eave by a thread. Lastly, she put one finger to the black door and traced a rune backward.

The process was important, as was the order. If she did it wrong, she would become trapped within the intricate web of dark magic that encircled the house and its premises.

A few moments later, the door creaked open with no one standing behind it, revealing a dark hallway.

Quintilla entered and the door slammed shut behind her. As soon as she started walking across the floor her boots adhered to the floor, and her feet slipped right out. An unlit brass candelabra reached out from the wall, metal screeching, and snatched the hat off her head.

Damn, Quintilla thought. Vormor’s too fussy about that.

She padded barefoot through the hallway. The house was far more well-tended on the inside. The floor was smooth and silent, and the walls had been applied with fresh wallpaper.

She took a left and ended up in the kitchen, where something smelled burnt.

An unspeakable creature loomed over an oven. Tall, thin, and many-limbed. Its torso and legs were somewhat squat, while its six arms rested on the floor by their knuckles. The thing was wrapped head to toe in yellowed bandages, even the face, but glimpses of dry, black skin showed through.

The creature spun, its multitude of arms scuttling on the floor, and faced Quintilla. Its thin, cracked lips split in a broad, wonky smile, and its narrow slits for eyes glowed an intense gold.

Vormor, the Spider.

“You’re not making an attempt at cooking, are you?” Quintilla asked, taking a step closer to the creature. “I thought we talked about that.”

Vormor shrugged with three sets of arms. “I just wanted to do something nice for you. Piracy is hungry work, so…” Vormor spun back around and opened the oven. A gout of smoke wafted in her face, and she started wheezing and rattling as she waved it away.

Vormor was one of a kind, unlike anything Quintilla had seen. She belonged to no race that Quintilla had knowledge of, and yet she was no demon, either. She was simply… different.

Vormor brought out a tray of blackened cookies, placed them on the countertop, and launched into a string of expletives in some arcane language that set the very air about her afire.

She looked over towards Quintilla and slumped sheepishly. “Oh, sorry about that, dear. It just slipped out. Anyway, enjoy your…” She frowned at the tray. “...Cookies?”

Quintilla walked up to the counter and picked up one of the cookies. She tapped it on the edge of the metal tray, and half of it fell apart into blackened crumbs.

“This really isn’t edible,” she said, stifling a chuckle.

Vormor wrung two of her hands long, bandaged hands together. “Aw, shucks. I just can’t seem to get a hang of this human cooking. I’m sorry, little one.” She hung her angular head.

“Don’t worry about the cookies,” Quintilla said. “We have more important matters to discuss.”

The six-armed creature gathered herself, propping herself up a little higher on her slender limbs. “You got it, then?”

Quintilla nodded. She reached into her satchel and pulled out the bronze plate. The map piece.

“That makes nine,” Vormor mused. “Here, let’s place it with the others immediately.”

Vormor lumbered off, her ruined baking efforts all but forgotten. She took Quintilla into the bowels of the house, where no light shone apart from red, glinting gems set into the walls that gave the hallways an eery glow.

They went down a set of creaky stairs and entered into a dank basement. Benches laden with flickering anima charges and metal pieces holding glittering runes lined the walls. This room was lit by several magelights in the ceiling, bobbing lights held within glass domes that flickered from aged spells and worn enchantments.

A demonic imp with pale, almost chalk-white skin and blood-red eyes leapt around the floor, gathering up bits of misplaced equipment and arranging them for its master. It was perhaps a meter tall, with clawed feet that clicked on the stone floor and arms that doubled as leathery wings, ending in long talons.

The demon stopped and glared suspiciously when Quintilla entered. A wave of dismissal from the Spider, however, and the familiar went on with its business.

On the far end of the room was a large tablet that spanned almost from floor to ceiling, made of soft steel. Contained within were seven bronze plates put together in various parts of the tablet, perfectly matching the one Quintilla held in her hands.

Vormor snatched up the bronze piece and frowned at it. She turned it over in four of her hands, while the last two supported her rail-thin body as she approached the tablet.

“Ahh,” the Spider sighed. “A corner.” She put the bronze plate in its place, in the bottom left corner of the tablet. A shiver of power went through the steel frame, and for just a moment, a set of intersecting, blue lines appeared on all the gathered plates, before slowly fading away.

Vormor turned to face Quintilla. “Seven left. Getting closer. Do you have any leads?”

“The Dryden Crew hold a few pieces,” Quintilla said. “The Barandi Crew as well. I’m planning to buy them both out and see where that leaves us. However…”

Vormor scrunched her face in what might have been a frown. “However?”

“I don’t have the coin to treat with either.”

“Sounds to me like you have some work to do, then.”

Quintilla nodded and turned to leave.

She found a hand on her shoulder.

“Be safe,” Vormor pleaded. “It’s a dangerous world out there. I would be there in person for you and your sister if I could. You know that, right?”

“Safety is for those who sit quietly by the wayside while conquerors roam,” Quintilla said.

“Where did you learn something so pretentious?”

“Some book I read.”

Quintilla brushed the Spider’s hand away and jogged up the stairs, two steps at a time.

“Don’t worry!” she called down. “I’ll be back with the rest soon enough!”

Vormor was right.

I have my work cut out.

First money.

Then pieces.

Then…

Treasure.

*****

Stephan agreed to stay on the Tits Up for another day while he recovered from his… incident. Kurko grumbled at the proposition but eventually gave way.

He found ingredients waiting for him on the table in the rec room. Actual ingredients, albeit a little exotic for his taste. Attached, he found a simple recipe scrawled in pencil, spelling all off.

It was a recipe for qui-ling, a traditional Aqithi dish, consisting of fried grubs, banana slices, and rice flavored with a strong spice called ouwei.

At that moment, it clicked in Stephan’s head why this was so important to Yin.

She was homesick.

Such a young thing, halfway across the world from the continent of Aqith and in a foreign environment like this, it was easy to imagine why.

Stephan’s hands were stiff and achy from the pummeling he had dished out, but he put his all into the dish and took his sweet time to prepare every piece of it. He mixed together the ouwei and stirred that into the boiled, long-grained rice, along with the banana slices. He fried up the grubs in plenty of butter until they turned brown and crispy. Yin had fetched some chicken to serve as a substitute, so he threw that on as well. He prepared a viscous, strong paste to have on the side for extra flavor, and for dessert, he made dark chocolate pudding with the ingredients left over from the previous dinner.

Yin snuck out of her cabin when the qui-ling was finished. She didn’t speak or return Stephan’s smile when he offered one, but she dug into the food with gusto, heaping forkfuls of rice into her mouth and picking out the grubs with her fingers to crunch down on.

The rest of the crew came along eventually. Kurko grabbed himself some food and left, but the rest of them ate at the table in good humor. Quintilla returned from her errand not long after they started, and a smug smirk tugged at her lip once she saw Stephan.

“Reconsidered my offer, have you?” she asked and had a seat.

“I’m afraid not,” Stephan said. “I had a bit of an incident while trying to find a ship that would take me, that’s all. I thought that perhaps I could stay here, just for a night, until I’ve recovered from the experience. That, and I owe a favor to little Yin here for getting me out of trouble.”

“Not little,” Yin grunted, chewing on a grub with grease smeared on her lips.

“Oh, well, by all means,” Quintilla said. “Make yourself at home, Mr. Lordling. We’re probably not heading out for another few days, anyway, until I’ve come up with a new lead. Your cooking will be much appreciated in the meantime.”

Once everyone had eaten their fill and set off to do their own thing, Stephan cleaned up. There were some leftover, so he went to Yin’s cabin to ask if she wanted them kept. She seemed to have enjoyed the qui-ling well enough, having had almost three full helpings.

He knocked on her door.

No response.

He knocked again and called her name.

Still nothing. When he listened more closely, however, he did hear something.

Muffled sobbing.

Stephan leaned against the door. “Hey, do you want to talk?”

The crying stopped.

Silence.

Then a key turned in the lock on the other side of the door.

Stephan stepped aside and the door swung open. Yin wiped snot and heavy tears with the back of her hand, shoulders slumped.

“You’ve already repaid your debt,” she said. “You can go now. I won’t keep you.”

“I want to help, if I can,” Stephan said firmly. “Talking usually does.”

Yin hesitated. “Why do you care?”

Stephan searched himself for the answer. He hadn’t really thought about it. He just felt that this was a thread he had to tug on. “I… I suppose I feel like I understand how you feel, in some sense. So far from home, surrounded by strange things, strange people. You’re just a child, to boot. You deserve a safe place. A family to care for you. Not fighting and death.”

“Not a child.”

Stephan shrugged. “You sure look like one.”

Yin’s smooth face wrinkled with rage. “I stopped being a child the day those monsters got a hold of me.” There was venom in her voice. She stepped back into the murk of her cabin. “I didn’t choose to be like this. I wanted to be normal. Just a normal girl. I…”

She turned her back to Stephan. She looked small and fragile, the opposite of the lightning-quick wraith he had seen her as twice now. “That was never possible for me.”

Stephan took a step into the cabin.

He had always wanted children. Maya, not so much. He had consigned himself to the fact that she would likely never agree to the prospect.

“You don’t know that,” he said. “Childhood is precious. Don’t give up on it so easily. Becoming an adult before your years is time you’ll never get back.”

“With who I’m running from, what I look like, there’s not a place in this world that’s safe for me,” Yin said somberly. She walked over to the window and looked out over the sapphire-blue Shipbreaker Sea. “I can’t have a family. I can’t have friends. I can’t have a job. All I can do is the one thing I’m good at. The one thing I was made for.” She glanced back at him, black eyes glittering with specks of amber in the afternoon sun. “Killing.”

“I don’t understand,” Stephan said.

“You don’t need to. It’s not your business to understand. We’re not friends, either.” She turned back to the window. “You’re just another face.”

Stephan wanted to hug her. He wanted to tell her it would be alright. He wanted to help her.

But he didn’t do any of that. He stayed where he was.

Don’t make promises you can’t keep, he told himself. I’m out of here tomorrow. There’s nothing I can do to fix her life.

He couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t make him sound like either a liar or a hypocrite, so he didn’t say anything at all. He made to leave and give the girl her privacy.

“Thank you,” came Yin’s muffled voice.

Stephan looked back. Yin sat on the floor, curled up against the wall with her face in the crook of her arm.

“Thank you,” she repeated. “For the food. It made me remember better times.”

Stephan’s heart twanged with a bittersweet ache.

“You’re very welcome,” he said. “There’s leftovers. I put it in the fridge for you. Just ask me if you want it reheated.”

She nodded as she sobbed into her arm.

Stephan slowly closed the door to Yin’s cabin.