The Silvergrey Sea
Part Two: Serious Business
A Dagger in the Night
* * *
In Drago’s judgement, Madame Josie kept a fine house. There was a library with a surprisingly deep collection of literature, some of it from Oerth. The food was good, the wine excellent, the whores amongst the finest he’d ever had. Dævara had been exceptional but the others, though not mages, where witches in their own carnal ways. Some had found excuses to visit Drago after their shifts to spend with him a little of their free time. Once there had been three of them.
Good times.
Drago was both delighted and unsettled by how well the merging of two psyches had been accomplished. He was still himself. He had just lived more, now. He had been a boy-turned-man on Hyborea, the memories sitting there in his mind as clear as those of his other childhoods. He had his conviction that his current mission must be accomplished to which the other who had been the Hyborean had added his own. There was a seamless merging of their wills.
He had tried to visit Dæv to thank her for her efforts on his behalf only to discover that she was gone. Madame told him that she had abruptly left not only the Red Palazzo, but also the moon itself, destination unknown. By her tone, Josie blamed Drago for the elf’s departure. That stung because it was likely true.
Drago had a sudden urge to find her, to tell her the help she had rendered may have saved the Thirty Aions itself. With an effort, he talked himself out of it with the promise that, should he survive the next few weeks, he would seek her out and tell her she had helped save the former Pleroma.
Meantime, he diverted himself with the pleasures of the brothel.
It was the green-skinned whore, Colamayre, visiting him in the tiny hours of the morning, who had first alerted him to the real danger he was in. Ample in body and quite skilled of tongue, she had almost killed him when, at the cusp of a splendid orgasm, he had let his guard down to watch his spend drop, chrism-like on her large firm teats.
The hand that held them together for his delectation had been gripping a stiletto.
The arc from her left armpit to his lower abdomen was a mere nine inches. The blade was five inches long and needle thin.
She was fast and expert with it.
As she twitched the last of her life away on his bed, he realized the blade had been poisoned as well.
He couldn’t wait for Tranker to finish whatever preliminaries he was engaged in.
The best-case scenario was that the Hermetists who had pulled his former self from the Silvergrey Sea had found him and wanted him dead for what they thought he was about. Worst case: the opposition to his true mission wanted him dead.
The latter frightened him more.
He’d been foolish, letting his guard down. Harry was well set on the path Drago needed him to go and likely no longer needed oversight. Even if he did, further delay was unacceptably dangerous. He’d just have to take the chance that Tranker might somehow avoid the rendezvous Drago planned for him.
It took only moments to gather what belongings he had.
The window in this room opened on a three-storey drop to the cobbles. It presented no obstacle at all.
By dawn, he was through a Portal in an alley close to the wharf—the same one Dævara had used, if he’d only known—and well on his way to the Mother Lodge.
— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, September 2026
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