Page 15 of Wicked Tides
“What are you looking at?” Voel asked, striding toward me, a strip of torn flesh in one hand.
“I don’t think we’re the first sisters to have visited this ship,”I said.
~ 7 ~
Vidar
Their voice alone, you may not hear
But when bronze bells hum,
you know they’re near.
~A Bronze Bell Engraving
“Move your asses, boys! We don’t have all day!” I shouted.
My crew chuckled as they hauled supplies onto the boats to be taken to the ship. Sacks of beans. Jars of pickled vegetables. A fresh stock of hens and a few goats. The list was standard and therefore easy.
Gus stood leaned up against the dock’s wooden post where a small bronze bell hung over his head, lightly swinging as the foot traffic vibrated the flooring around it. He had one hand tucked into his belt while his other held a pipe to his mouth. Streams of white smoke puffed from his nostrils as he let his gaze roam over the docks, watching every person tying nets, gathering gear, or knotting their boats.
I followed the direction of his gaze to a boat packed with a dozen men rowing to shore from around the bend. I recognized theobnoxious purple color of Collin’s hat before I could recognize his face.
“Prick,” I said, taking a lean on the post next to Gus.
“Oy, would you look at that,” someone said. To my left was a fisherman holding a bundle of torn nets. He was missing teeth and his hair wasn’t far behind, but the drink was so potent on his breath that I doubted he cared about any of it. “Cap’n Collin is back.”
“Wonder if he’s seen any of them weird fish,” someone else said in passing, dragging barrels of crabs across the mud.
“Weird fish?” I spoke up.
“Aye,” the man with the nets replied. “Thought they was sirens at first. But I’ve never seen sirens move like they did. Almost thought they’d sink me boat the way they kept bumping ‘er hull.”
“You get a good look at one or are you just talking about your drunken stupor?” Gus asked.
The man laughed. “Who knows anymore? Ocean’s full of things my head will never be able to wrap around. I saw what I saw or I didn’t see what I saw, but in the moment, it sure felt real enough.”
He staggered away with his damaged netting and I took note of how the fibers of the ropes were shredded in multiple places like someone had taken a knife to it. Could have been sirens. Could have been rocks. Could have been anything, but it was enough for me to spare a thought.
“Madman, he is,” Gus said under his breath.
“Around here, madmen are mad until they’re not,” I said.
We both let out a mild chortle before turning our attention back on Collin.
An eerie silence passed between us as we watched the man and a fraction of his crew float up to the docks. It was then that I noticed why Gus was on edge when he was usually relaxed.
Crammed between two men sat a woman in a poorly fitted dress made of stained cotton. Long auburn hair was a stark contrast to her pale, almost bluish skin.
She wasn’t human.
And she was very much alive.
The woman’s body was as voluptuous as a Greek statue. Her clothes were loose and clearly not her own. Tiny wrists were bound with irons that had already made her bleed and around her face was a leather strap that covered her mouth and buckled in three places behind her head.
I glared, the pit of my stomach twisting with warning. The woman sat stiffly, but when the men started to stand and shuffle off the boat, her head turned, eyes quietly observing. She was absent worry or fear. I’d never met a siren who showed either of those emotions. Collin himself with his expensive coat and embroidered hat with the stupid feather in the band, grabbed the woman by her arm and hauled her to her feet, forcing her off the boat. She didn’t struggle or protest but rather kept her eyes blankly forward.
“What the fuck,” I muttered to myself, scrubbing a hand over my face.
