Page 4 of Wicked Tides
“What was that?”
“Cutting out their voice and selling their bodies is wrong.”
Whitton leaned back again, resting his hands on his round belly.
“Sympathizing, are we?”
Never. “Keeping them on land around all these people will turn bloody someday, and not for them. For us.”
“The fact is, Treson Harbor is the biggest town on this coast. People inland want exotic things. Excitement. We can give that to them. In a year’s time, this will be the richest town this side of the country because we have what no one else has. We have creatures of the deep. Creatures some people still think are just myths. That’s a lot of coin I could be putting in your pocket if you’d just bring me some damn live ones instead of this shit.”
He knocked the sack off the table, letting the heads roll across the floor with a wet thump. Gray, clammy faces with mouths agape peered up at the ceiling, long tresses of black hair like an ink spill on the floor.
I wasn’t buying it and Whitton could see it. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and grumbled against the fat of his abdomen pushing on his lungs.
“Times have changed, Woelfson. Those creatures aren’t feared anymore. Merchants don’t go missing like they used to. The ocean’s safer and people don’t want heads, they want product.”
Disgusting.
He waved his hand at the same servant that nearly expelled his last meal all over the dining room and the boy walked stiffly out of the room.
“The oceans are safer because I’ve hunted every damn singing temptress under its waves and those that are left have fled,” I argued. “Our merchants wouldn’t be sailing with as much confidence if I wasn’t out there hunting. Our fishermen would be too scared to go out. I’ve killed the most and if I hadn’t, children would still be lying awake at night afraid of what’s out there. We wouldn’t have bronze bells hanging over every chapel and on every dock.”
Whitton still seemed bored as the boy servant returned with a platter covered by a silver dome. He set it down in front of the governor and backed away.
“If I was focused on tongues, I’d have never cleaned the tides of those wicked monsters and we’d be a fucking ghost town. But because of me, rats like Collin Jones and Peter Michaels can hunt for tongues instead of heads. Merchant ships like the Camdonand Cornwallis leave and come back. That’s how you make your town rich. With successful trade. Export.”
“Hmf. TheCornwallishas been gone two weeks longer than expected. I wouldn’t use them as an example.”
Tucking a fresh napkin in the collar of his shirt, Whitton lifted the silver dome from his plate to reveal a small strip of red meat atop a bed of pickled watermelon rinds. I furrowed my brows at the odd delicacy, somewhat in denial. When Whitton’s knife cut into the meat and the rare insides glistened pink, my nose twitched with revulsion.
Whitton sliced off a bite-sized piece of the tongue and slid it between his teeth with a pleasured sigh. He made a show of chewing the bite slowly and then pointed his fork at me.
“You’re about to have some trouble, Woelfson. If you don’t evolve with the times, people like Collin Jones and Peter Michaels will try to take you out of the picture. And I won’t be able to stop them. See, they’ve adopted the skin trade and if you keep killing their product and leaving nothing to be scavenged, you’ll have a war on your hands with the other hunters.”
“Hunters,” I scoffed. “What’s a hunter that doesn’t kill his prey?”
“Still a hunter. Just one who values coin over his own personal vendettas.”
“What you’re doing here is dangerous. Keeping sirens on land. It won’t end like you want. Their voices grow back. Their tongues grow back. You silence them and they’ll find a way to whisper in your ear.”
He took another bite, unbothered. “Which is why I can think of no better person to make sure they’re maintained.”
“Maintained?”
“The ones we already have in Treson Harbor need regular… trimming. Not everyone can afford one of those…” He paused, staring at my chest and circling his fork in the air toward me. “One of those… things.”
“A silentium,” I said flatly.
“Yes, that. Common folk can’t afford nor do they want to wear one of those things. So,” he shrugged. “We keep them trimmed and quiet and leashed and the money flows.”
“I’m not ‘trimming’ your stock.”
He smiled, still chewing, and raised his hands out to the sides proudly. I stared at him, trying my best to mask the utter disgust I was feeling at his proposal. But if he wasn’t going to pay me anymore for the heads of defeated beasts, I wasn’t going to keep my crew for much longer.
My father would be sickened by the way things had evolved. Or perhaps he’d be proud. Almost single-handedly, I’d thinned thenumbers of those damned sea creatures so much that townspeople barely considered them a threat anymore. At the very least, I’d driven them back from our shores and into rougher waters where most ships didn’t even venture.
But with the lack of threat came ignorance. Comfort.
