I.iv
Creature Comforts
Kal and Sorin stepped out into the dirty street and turned to face each other.
‘Where are you staying?’ Sorin asked her.
Kal had to think for a moment. ‘I’ll probably curl up in a coil of rope down by the wharf. I’ve done it before. I’ll try not to get press-ganged this time!’
Sorin laughed. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said seriously. ‘I’ve a mansion up on the hill. You can stay tonight.’
Again, Kal had to take pause. It was a chill night - the chilliest she had ever experienced in Port Black. The fog was piling up at both ends of the street. Sleeping outdoors didn’t hold its usual appeal.
‘You have a spare room, right?’
Sorin’s grin split his face like a red wound. ‘Kal, I’m not trying to seduce you. I need you. Tonight, but for the turn of a single card, I was struck with a fate that had ended the lives of all that have come before me.’ He casually rolled the cursed coin between his fingers - from thumb to little finger and back again with a practiced, nonchalant ease. ‘I need you, Kal … to protect me from whatever comes for me.’
Kal shivered. ‘Toss it away,’ she said. ‘Whoever picks it up off the street can deal with whatever awful death that comes sniffing around.’
Sorin shook his head. ‘Holding it for a mere second is enough to damn you. I may as well keep it now and see if I can at least buy something nice with it in the morning … if I see the dawn.’
Now the chill settled on Kal’s shoulders, and her whole body shivered. She recalled studying the coin while at sea in her coracle … staring at it, tracing the bat with her fingers … biting into the gold …
And Sorin knew it too, but she had little choice.
‘Show me the way to go home,’ she sighed.
*
All roads in Port Black flowed like a river from the jungle gate at the top of town, to splitting like a delta down to the harbour. The cobblestones and walls were slick and shiny with water, and the fog smothered the roofs of the buildings. Climbing Main Street was like ascending through a tunnel.
Sorin walked slowly but confidently up the camber in the dead center of the street, while Kal wandered left and right, checking shadowy sidestreet porches and awnings. Shops were boarded up extremely securely, and some shutters were conspicuously new. But one thing that the foul weather or strange dread could never overcome was the colourful murals that decorated every available brick and stucco wall. Kal stopped in front of a twenty-foot-high grinning pirate complete with eye patch and gold tooth. He was holding up a gold coin as if for inspection.
‘Carlos Barracuda,’ Sorin said. ‘He owned a chandlery on Wharf Lane. Popular fellow. Not a real pirate. He was killed last week.’
Kal looked again at Carlos’ cheerful face. ‘How?’
Sorin stopped in the middle of the street and looked up at Carlos almost wistfully. ‘He sold a boat.’
Kal wasn’t slow. ‘Let me guess. Someone paid for it with a certain unlucky coin.’
Sorin nodded. ‘The boat was found adrift a few days later, full of bodies. Carlos was working late one night doing ... I don’t know, whatever store owners do. Stock taking? They say the creature got him. The store was looted pretty soon after and the coin moved on …’
Kal had only one question.
‘The creature?’
Sorin continued his stately walk uptown, and Kal fell in line. Every alleyway and street corner now breathed extra menace.
‘A big dog.’ Sorin said. ‘Nobody knows where it lives - some cellar or warehouse in town perhaps, or the ruined abbey - nobody generally dares follow it. It tends to go about its business after midnight.
‘We should have stayed at the bar,’ Kal said.
Sorin shrugged. ‘What difference would it make? It’s going to find me wherever I am, and my house is more secure. Besides, I have you to protect me now.’
‘Lucky you,’ Kal said. ‘Just how far is your house?’
‘I rent a mansion at the top of town, on the cliff overlooking the harbour.’
Great, Kal thought. Just about as far as it’s possible to be, and as close to the creepy as it’s possible to be too.