Jonathon Worthington: Strangelight Investigator

Case #18: The Mystery of the Purloined Past (Chapter 10)

The memories flowed of their own accord, intruding upon my senses as I studied at the Crimson Harvest and her crew with my sanguinary sight.

"Get those bodies loaded, we got a schedule to keep!"

That was my former bosun, Jannis, once a bear of a Khard. He'd been one of the surviving crew of the Khadoran vessels we'd destroyed, a born turncoat who executed his fellow survivors to prove his worth to me. His backstabbing ways had been paired with a surprising efficiency at directing the crew; despite my natural distrust of the traitor he'd proven his worth again and again. The years had not been kind to him, and much of his muscle had turned to flab. The scarlet vision responded to my thought, actually peering within the confines of his flesh for a moment and separating muscle and fat with tiny pulsing lines indicating the best trajectories for bullet or blade to penetrate vital organs. I shook my head to clear the nauseous analysis, temporarily dismissing the blood-soaked sight to instead strain my eyes against the shadows. My fragile sanity needed a respite from the terrible powers I commanded.

Passing by my hiding spot in the shadows was a man who had lost his claim to mental stability long ago: Advocate Bertran. A devout Thamarite with a penchant for knives, Bertran claimed as his portion of raiding spoils the lives of innocents to sacrifice to the Dark Twin. Although I vaguely recalled the crew having a prohibition against worship of Thamar, it had been an open secret of sorts, and no one had said anything about missing prisoners when the man had been so keen to trade his share of the booty for blood. He was quiet, unassuming, the picture of a stooped father figure you'd expect to see wearing the robes of Morrow and smiling benevolently through his thick glasses. Bertran's short gray hair had receded into a tuft that only added to his fatherly demeanor, putting all who met him at immediate ease and off-guard. He was one of the most dangerous men I'd ever known.

Two of the other crew working on the docks barely tickled my memory, part of the forgettable cannon fodder that lived and died in relative obscurity under the ship's sails. How they had survived the last two years I did not know, but the whispers of my mind said it was by chance rather than any skills they might claim to possess.

The fifth man on the docks was quite recognizable to me though: he was the lowest ranking member of the crew, despite his abilities, and always would be. Tattoos barely darker than his own mahogany skin shone around ritual scarring, the markings clearly identifying him as a native of the Scharde Isles. As bulky as a cantankerous laborjack, and half as pleasant, the shirtless man was a mountain of muscle and attitude, and the two years I'd been gone had changed none of that. Vague flashes of fierce, violent arguments flashed through my mind, mutinies led by him and put down with clockwork regularity. I shook my head in wonderment. Although it was difficult to clarify the sequence of events in my mind it appeared the man, Kerne, had rebelled on several occasions and tried to murder me. For some reason I let him live each time, adding to his collection of facial scars with my blade to denote each failure, which only drove him deeper into frenzy as he tried again and again to lead a successful mutiny.

With a jolt I realized the scarification procedure for denoting a traitor was two angled slashes with a third perpendicular across them. That thought opened up others, and before I knew what was happening I found myself interpreting the marks across Kerne's body, reading his life's story in the damaged skin. He was the second in his clan, and the scars told how he had followed his leader and slaughtered their small community of people, bathing in their blood to take the power of the murdered. The two killers were as brothers, bonded by death rather than any familial ties, but Kerne grew jealous, turning on his clanmate to try and wrest power for himself. His life was forfeit with the betrayal, but Kerne continued to serve as an excellent reminder that no one was to be trusted. It didn't hurt that with him alive the source of all mutinies was easier to track. But I didn't need Kerne's scars to tell me his story. I remembered it from witnessing it firsthand.