Fata Morgana Read online

  Fata Morgana

  Thomas J. Radford

  Fata Morgana

  Copyright © 2019 Thomas J. Radford

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage & retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright holder, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this story are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead would be really cool, but is purely coincidental.

  Published by Tyche Books Ltd.

  Calgary, Alberta, Canada

  www.TycheBooks.com

  Cover Art by James F. Beveridge

  Cover Layout by Indigo Chick Designs

  Interior Layout by Ryah Deines

  Editorial by M.L.D. Curelas

  First Tyche Books Ltd Edition 2019

  Print ISBN: 978-1-989407-01-1

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-989407-02-8

  Author photograph: Devin Hart

  This book was funded in part by a grant from the Alberta Media Fund.

  This book was going to be dedicated to Nel & Violet, because this is their story. But they’re both dead, so this one’s all mine.

  Unless . . .

  Chapter 1

  “FILTHY STARCHIES.” THE Kelpie on Nel’s right turned her head and spat into the sawdust covering the floor. Spittle was flying fast and loose from the maw, drool hanging from the fleshless lips and dagger-teeth. A courtesy really.

  Despite the show, her drinking companion hunched low over her vessel, head parallel to the table. This one had a stain of red on only one side of her face, mottled scales, whatever passed for birthmarks on Kelpies.

  Mother must have spilled her wine on this one when she was a wee hatchling. Wrong colour though.

  The cause for her not-quite-friends, her companions who didn’t remind her of Loveland Quill at all, was the true-to-their-name, starch-pressed sailors marching into the drinking hole. It was long forgotten bells after sunset with only firelight and gas-flares to fight off the gloom. Plenty of patrons were deep in their cups and some already kissing the timbers.

  Prime recruits.

  “And how are we this evening, lads?” One of the recruiters sauntered over to their corner of the dank and gloom. The Kelpies both ignored him, the Troll just belched in his general direction. It might have been intentional. Might not.

  “Cups are looking dry,” the recruiter noted. The man had eyebrows, Nel found herself spotting. Hairy caterpillars, two of them, that appeared to move independently of one another in opposite see-sawing directions. Because of that she found herself meeting the recruiter’s eyes.

  Hells, call it what it is, the press-ganger’s.

  “And you, lass?” He held up a coin, tarnished and dull and already with several sets of bite marks. “You’ve the look and the mark of a sailor. Work’s scarce, we all know it. The fleet is always on the watch for experienced hands. Might even be a rating in it for you if you were to volunteer.”

  Nel didn’t look away, starting to push her tankard forward. The recruiter’s grin widened as he dropped the coin into cup. It made a clang as it hit the bottom.

  Empty after all.

  “That’s a quarter silver mark,” Nel said, rolling the cup, making the coin swirl with the dregs.

  “Man, or woman,” the recruiter said, “could do a lot with a coin like that.”

  “Could do,” Nel shrugged. “Could buy a horse or a cow, if they’ve a mind. Or book passage from here to the middle of the High.”

  “Figure it would buy you a room here for six weeks,” one of her companions threw in.

  “Be the longest I’d ever stayed in one place since I was a wee one,” Nel rolled her eyes. She set the vessel and its coin down flat and began driving it with one finger. “Thing of it is, folk who take this coin don’t get to spend it, now do they?”

  The mug grated along the coarse wood of the table as she pushed it closer to the edge.

  “Gotta pay your own way when you join up, lads and lasses,” Nel addressed her drinking companions. “Can’t sleep so a hammock’s a must. Got to have a belaying pin. And the uniform, because we must be neat and trimmed and ever so pretty, mustn’t we?”

  Nel looked up, her chin low to the table, on eye level with the cups, meeting the recruiter’s eyes. The lip of the cup with the coin teetered over the edge, tottering on a lean. Nel leaned back, folding her arms and nudging the table leg with her foot. It was enough; the press-ganger went to grab. A server got there first, plucking the falling vessel out the air before it could shatter on the ground. They swept past with a glare at Nel’s group as they burst into raucous laughter.

  “Best be chasing that one, limey,” Nel chuckled. “Or they’ll be taking that from your pay!”

  “I like you, human.” The wine-stained Kelpie slapped her on the back.

  “It wears off,” Nel muttered, pushing herself to her feet. The room only swam slightly. Good, might have a chance of making it back to my room without heaving in the bushes then. Assumes I can remember where is my room but life is an adventure, right?

  “I thought you cut from the same cloth as them,” the Kelpie motioned towards the recruiters who were pressed three to the bar trying to retrieve the lost mark. The servers pled ignorance.

  Might even be telling the truth there. Not my problem though.

  “But you are welcome at this table any night,” her new friend proclaimed.

  “Beat you at cards,” Nel reminded her. “Weren’t such happy about that a few hands ago.”

  “A price I am happy to pay tonight,” the Kelpie bared her teeth. “And it will not happen again.”

  Nel snorted. “Be seeing you soon then.”

  Making friends with Kelpies, she thought as she made her way into the crowd. The gloom wasn’t too bad, smoky overhead and muddy timbers underfoot, but few gave her more than a glance and that suited her just fine. Her room was outside. A long walk. Too many people that way. Nel paused to lean on the bar. Just for a moment.

  “Buy you a round?” This from a Korrigan seated just down from her. Their perch put them on eye level with Nel. Female and maybe half the age of Nel’s former crewman Jack. She’d seen this one around before, played a few hands with her at the card table. Name escaped her right now. Had green hair though─was that an affectation or an affliction? Or was she just seeing things?

  “Have I said no before?” Nel said.

  “Never offered before. But a performance like that deserves a toast and you just lost your cup.”

  “A worthy sacrifice,” Nel agreed. “One I’d happily make again.”

  “To worthy sacrifices and unworthy beer,” the Korrigan lass toasted. She winked. “Can’t stand the cheap stuff. Tastes like what you step in.”

  “To beer and song and oceans, then,” Nel said, the first thing that came to mind, “so long as none of them are flat.”

  “That’s a good one,” her benefactor said. “I’ll have to remember it.”

  “You’re not a sailor then.”

  “Not even if you paid me.”

  “Avoid the streets after last call,” Nel advised. “The walk home is the pressers’ favoured hunting ground. Plenty a sailor was one who walked out happy and woke up at sea.”

  “One for the walk home then?”

  “As long as there’s coin to spend there is no walk home.”


  “Excellent, Barkeep, a round of the good stuff, top of the shelf there.”

  SHE WAS RIGHT. There was no walk home. The drinks and cards carried on through the night and into what passed for morning. The dark of the morning anyway. Her nameless Korrigan friend turned out to be a better card player than Nel was, bordering on a shark. Woman couldn’t hold her liquor though, snoring loudly with her head thrown back, leaning against someone who had been a stranger only a bell ago. Nel was the only one awake when Loveland Quill arrived. She wished that weren’t the case. She had no desire to speak with her former navigator and the look on his face made it clear he was equally disgusted by what he saw. But it wasn’t the first time he’d visited the tavern. Far from it.

  “What now?”

  Nel didn’t remove her boots from the only other stool, meaning there was nowhere for Quill to sit. He seemed to have no such inclination anyway, throwing down scrap paper onto the table beside her.

  “Table’s wet, Quill,” she told him.

  “Read quickly then,” he suggested.

  Nel sighed, flicking up the corner of one. The whole sheaf was fighting a losing battle not to roll up into a scroll. Only the lower half becoming sodden in spilled beer was preventing it.

  “Running steel and coal to Scallop. Been there, place is a miserable coastal shipyard. Fishing and water tubs. Sometimes it rains so much you can grow fish in the tubs.”

  “The ship listed requires officers,” Quill said.

  “So?”

  “You prefer the other?”

  Nel read it, if only to appease the Kelpie. She snorted and crumpled it in her fist. “Quill, this is to run tender on a barge storing dried manure in high transit. You want to stick your maw into a ship piled with dried dung bricks you be my guest.”

  She threw the note away. “Where do you find these?”

  “The board on the town square. And the other by the merchant docks.”

  “Meant to leave them there for other folk to read.”

  “Few others can read. I intended for you to read them and I did not care to try and attempt to move you from your . . .”

  “Yes?”

  Quill shrugged.

  “Well, read them and don’t intend. We done?”

  “Ships and sailors rot in port, Vaughn.”

  Nel squinted at him. “Since when do you care?”

  “Since I began to lose respect for you.”

  “That hurts my feelings, Quill.”

  “I would see it stop.”

  “I would see more beer. Have a drink with me, Quill. Damned all else to do here.” She waved to the bartender, fishing through her pockets.

  “This is your plan?” Quill was incredulous. Nel ignored him, passing over what had to be the last coin either had to their name. The bartender gave her two foaming tankards, carried over in both meaty hands. They were huge, the largest the tavern sold and bigger than Nel’s head, both of them.

  “Ain’t a plan, Quill.” Nel stood, taking the vessels and holding one out. “Take your damned drink or I will.”

  Quill didn’t, so Nel put it down on the table. But she didn’t release her grip on it. She raised her own drink, coughing as she inhaled a swallow bigger than she should have, spilling beer down her front.

  Waste of good beer.

  “You think this will help?” Quill sounded angry. “This . . . this is the answer?”

  “It’s my answer, Quill. Don’t have to be yours. Don’t have to be a good one. Just gotta be.”

  Quill made no move to accept the offer.

  “Take the damned thing, Quill, or I’ll find someone who will.” She gestured around her table. Her Korrigan card player was gone, Nel realised, probably slunk home to count her winnings. There was a man she didn’t recognise on the floor and someone she might have punched the night before next to them. None were capable of managing speech, let alone drink.

  Quill stared daggers at her. He did reach for the tankard, and Nel released her grip. With deliberate precision he raised it in front of himself, then upturned the vessel and emptied the contents on the floor.

  Nel stared blankly at the spreading puddle. “Well done, Quill. Really, well done.”

  Quill slammed the empty vessel down hard on the bar, making half the tavern turn to look. “You are a disgrace to your ship, Vaughn.”

  “Ain’t got no ship, Loveland,” Nel retorted, matching him name for name. “Or did I miss something? Seems I recall telling you to save her.”

  “I tried to save her!” Quill seethed. “Her! I made a promise. Or did you forget that too?”

  “And how did that turn out?” Nel glared at him. “Who’d you save, Kelpie?”

  Quill hit her. As hard as he could. Nel was sure her face was broken, the whole side of her face stung, and she could smell singed flesh. Hers. And she was lying on the floor. How did that happen?

  She pushed herself back to her feet and turned to her former navigator. He was cradling his punching hand. From the way he was holding it he might well have broken his bones on her face.

  Nel broke the oversized tankard on the top of Quill’s scaly head. The pewter tankard crumpled and tore in her hand. Quill reeled but didn’t go down like she had. The Kelpie could take a punch better. Maybe she was getting old.

  They stared at each other in mutual loathing for a long minute. Quill turned and vanished into the crowd. Everyone stopped paying attention.

  Nel took her broken vessel and shouldered a seat at a table. Her poor tankard was empty, a pathetic lining of foam was all that remained to her.

  Waste of good beer.

  The drink in Nel’s hand had been sour and barely cold. Cheap and nasty. Everything that drink could do wrong. But it had been hers, and now it was gone. She nursed what was left, holding it protectively in the crook of her arm, hood pulled low over her face. People passed by her chosen corner but few gave a second look. She sat with legs pulled tight against her, arms wrapped around them. Safe and secure.

  Nel didn’t look up as a commotion stirred through the crowd, even as it drew closer. She didn’t care. It didn’t concern her. Then it did. People in her space. Too close. Too loud. Hit one with her drinking vessel and they stopped being loud.

  The quiet was almost bearable.

  Until that scaly hand reached out and plucked her from her safe and secure corner, dragging her to her feet. Her drink spilled from her hand, soaking into the rushes on the floor. She stared forlornly at the criminal waste, but not for long as she was pulled away from her corner. The room spun around her and she might have fallen if not for the hand pulling her relentlessly forwards, her feet staggering along under her. Cold air hit her face and she realised they were outside. Light stabbed at her eyes; street lamps. It was night time. How many nights had there been since they’d returned to port?

  “Get off me, Kelpie,” Nel swatted at the hand, dragging her heels into the dirt. Stumbled and fell, landing in the dirt and the mud and looking up at her former navigator. Only it wasn’t Quill. Was the barman’s goons, the hired muscle that rolled out the drunks in the morning. Backlit by the inside of the tavern and blocking the way inside.

  “The hells is your problem?” she demanded of them. Sounded fine in her head. Didn’t make much sense to her ears though. Just noise, mushy noise. The words were slurred and her tongue thick when she tried to form more. Drunk? One could hope. Then the drink wouldn’t have died in vain.

  “Take a walk,” one of them told her.

  “Got a room here.” Nel made it to her feet. Somehow. More, the words sounded like words. The kind people used. “Paid up till week’s end.”

  “Week ends tomorrow.”

  “Paid up till tomorrow then.”

  “Walk it off and come back,” another told her. “Let you back in when you won’t start a fight.”

  Nel made to throw her tankard at them. Her hand came up empty. She stared at it, confused.

  “You take my drink?” she pointed at them.

  “Wal
k it off,” was all the reply she got. They turned away. Shut the door on her. No more light.

  Nel sighed. Alone again. At least the ground was comfortable. The stars were bright tonight, she mused. Bright silvery pinpricks in a midnight canopy. Piper would have liked that. He would have liked it a lot. Stars so big and so bright you could almost touch them.

  “Hells,” she said. The stars were street lamps.

  “Walk it off,” she repeated. Seemed good advice, best to take it. Feet first, upright then one in front of the other. How hard could that be?

  Boots clipped on the cobblestones. Sounded like horses’ hooves. Reminded her of nails on deck. Deck always had scratches from them. Kelpie used to pace the length. Only there was no more deck to scratch. Maybe no more Kelpie to scratch them neither.

  Where was she? Roads led to the town square. Quill had been trying to take her there for days. Maybe weeks. It was all one messy blur in her head. But that was fine. That was the plan. Not being able to tell. Not to think. Not to feel. There was a pounding in her head.

  Hangover came early. Or not? Hells, an actual hammer. Who’s working at this hour? A blacksmith? Don’t see no forge. That the square?

  The far side led to one of the municipal buildings. Whatever passed for government in Vice; legislation and clerical duties were not Nel’s strong suit. Fancy ceremonial doors of self-grandiose importance right now struck her as nothing better than a convenient place to relieve herself. The thought made her grin, almost laugh. But her throat was dry and the chuckle died silently. The sound was coming from there as well. Nails on wood. Made sense.

  Skipper.

  The hells was that? Who’s yelling? That big shadowy thing, what’s that now?

  Quill’s notice board? Where he goes every day. Big wooden thing. Square. Solid. Bits of paper stuck to it. Fine, let’s see what Quill wants to see. Read the pretty pictures and look at the squiggly lines. Someone was just here, where’d they go? Just me? Good, don’t want no one watching for this.