Shipboard Skullduggery

The Silvergrey Sea

Part Three: Conspiracies and Secret Orders

Shipboard Skullduggery

* * *

It had been almost a year since Abram had been aboard ship. He had forgotten how much he missed it. Hermetists were many things: bureaucrats, magistrates, scientists, collectors of lore. But what they were mostly were mariners.

From its earliest days, the Order of Hermes had been both explorers and seekers of knowledge.

The Hermetist never felt so much at home as he did now, gliding smoothly through the clement Silvergrey Sea.

As luck would have it, Abram was sailing aboard the Giordano Bruno, the same ship that had brought Harry to Hyborea. He shared a pint of grog with Mæve in her quarters after the mess one evening, swapping stories about their seminary days. He slouched in the only chair in the room, feet up on the tiny desk. She was sprawled on her cot, hat and coat hanging on a peg behind the door.

Abram ended a pause in the conversation with, “So, how did you and Harry get along?”

“Quite well, thanks.” She grinned, blushing. It was so much more obvious on someone with translucent skin. She took a sip of watered rum. “I kept him quite calm for the trip.” At that she laughed.

Knowing them both as he did, Abram didn’t doubt Harry had been more than merely calm. He joined in the laughter.

“Do you think he’d mind if I looked him up? After this business of yours is over, I mean?” She asked it casually, but the undertone of seriousness was there.

The Hermetist Superior shrugged. “I’ve never known him to turn down pleasant company. So, he made an impression, eh?”

Another nod and a grin. Another sip.

“You have a thing for dishevelled, whiskey sodden collections of bad habits, do you?”

Her laugh was loud; she rolled over, nearly falling off the bed and spilling the dregs of her rum. “Oh, feck!” through trailing giggles. She sat up and reached for the drawer of the nightstand.

Abram expected something to clean the spill, but she emerged with a full bottle of rum. “Why am I drinking this cat’s pee when you have that?” He quickly swallowed the rest of his grog and held out his mug. After she poured a generous amount her own mug, Mæve glugged a good three ounces into his.

She sat up on the bed, the better to drink and avoid the wet spot. Abram spent the next half bottle of rum telling her about his oldest friend. Despite his best efforts, she still seemed smitten with the lucky bastard.

* * *

Something about the space of the Silvergrey was conducive to deep thoughts. One morning, Abram was staring at the flickering light in the distance thinking such thoughts when it happened.

In the confused distance where a horizon would be in normal space, movement.

A ripple in the air.

It got larger, approaching.

The Hermetist could see waves of distortion in the sky and the sea.

As he thought to shout a warning, someone else did. Though he didn’t turn to look, Abram knew everyone aboard was watching, now.

Then the sound, like a returning echo of a scream.

The shockwave approached much faster than he had anticipated.

It rolled over the ship, knocking him flat. The sound was deafening and terrifying. Abram could feel it in his chest.

For a few seconds, the boat rocked. The Silvergrey Sea was never turbulent. This was something else.

It passed like a nightmare at break of day.

As he stood on a deck that was steady once more, Abram saw the same look of terror on every face.

* * *

The senior officers had a confab in the captain’s cabin. As Hermetist Superior of Noir, Abram was invited as a courtesy. Nothing much was said beyond a deciding to report the incident to the Mother Lodge. Determining the source of the shockwave would be left to others.

No one had ever heard of something like this happening.

Almost no one.

Abram kept his peace about that, for he had.

When digging for information about Harry’s client, Drago, he had encountered reports about a similar incident around the time the Hyborean must have been a captive.

Abram suspected that Drago’s abduction and the shockwave that happened back then were connected. He just had to figure out how. It had to have something to do with the Meraculus Mercurius. They’d been mining the Silvergrey Sea for information all those centuries ago.

Despite an intense investigation that Abram suspected included torture, neither the means nor the type of information the M. M. had been seeking had ever been disclosed.

The Mercurius of the time had destroyed the M. M. root and branch.

Apparently.

This latest incident meant their heirs were at it again.

Drago was very important to someone. Someone else wanted him seriously dead for whatever value he had. Abram didn’t know who was on either side. He hoped Harry did and that he wouldn’t be too hard to find.

* * *

Sleep always came easily to Abram aboard ship. Maybe that was the reason he didn’t hear anything until the smack! and the thump! that woke him. He sat up sharply, turning up the oil lamp by the bed.

Mæve, wearing nothing, was standing over another Hermetist whom Abram didn’t recognize. She was still holding a wrist that looked to have been thoroughly broken. A long thin blade was clutched in a now useless fist. Abram spared a second to admire her trim figure.

“Morning, Abram. Sorry to wake you.” She was flushed from face to upper chest and panting.

The Hermetist Superior didn’t waste time with foolish questions. He scampered over the bed to get a better look at his would-be attacker. A closer look didn’t help. Abram had no idea who this man was. Mæve was leaning over him, fingers pressed against his neck at the join with his chin.

The look in her green eyes told him the man was dead.

“How hard do you hit him?”

She was shaking her head. “Not hard enough to kill him.”

“Do you know him?”

“Never seen him before. He’s neither crew nor passenger.”

“How did you know to be here? I’m grateful, you understand, but…” Abram let it dangle.

She concentrated on the body as she spoke. Abram noticed a bit more of a blush, “I was on my way here, anyway. I got to thinking you might want some company.”

Abram certainly wouldn’t have minded. “Oh.”

She smiled a little, still not meeting his eye. “Rum and good conversation always make me randy.”

“It’s been known to have a similar effect on me.” They shared a carnal smile.

“Anyway, I was just outside your door when I saw it closing, slowly. I thought you were still up, so I ran to grab it before it closed tight. I surprised him—” she pointed to the corpse with her chin—”and got two punches off before he could make a sound. That’s what woke you, evidently.”

“Why is he dead?”

She opened the corpse’s mouth and began gingerly digging around, looking into cheeks and under his tongue. “There are some white flakes of something in his teeth. I think he suicided.”

The two Hermetists shared a look that asked questions for which neither had answers.

* * *

The ship’s chirurgeon confirmed it a suicide. A search of the records also confirmed the man had not been a Hermetist. They couldn’t get an ID on him at all. Nor was there any explanation of how he got aboard ship, though stowing away was just possible. The captain ordered a search of the holds in case he’d left anything that could give them information.

He also had questions for Abram.

Many.

The Hermetist didn’t have any answers for her other than his guesses about the Meraculus Mercurius. She was frankly incredulous about that and Abram couldn’t blame her. It sounded crazy when he said it aloud. There was the fact of an assassin posing as a Hermetist currently in a meat locker in sickbay, though.

Abram kept his knowledge of Drago to himself. Not knowing whom to trust, trusting no one was the best course. Unless Harry had been postcoitally loquacious, which would have been uncharacteristic of him, Mæve didn’t know anything about the Hyborean, either. The captain seemed to sense Abram was holding back, but she’d been a Hermetist long enough to know there was no point in pressing.

* * *

Two mornings later, The Bruno arrived at Hyborea’s port.

After the ship docked, Abram had spent a full day aboard ship in his cabin, napping and doing research, trying to dig up info on Harry’s whereabouts. The detective had been gone from Phrygia for some time, now.

Late in the day, Mæve stopped by. Despite another bottle of rum, neither of them was particularly horny that evening. She did bunk with him, though. It was quite pleasant, having her warm, firm body snugged up next to him. Once again, he envied his friend, Harry.

Once ashore, the Hermetist headed straight for the chapterhouse. Abram had only been on Hyborea once before and hadn’t stayed long. He brought some shaded specs to keep off the glare.

He was granted a meeting with the local Superior of the Order, Nija Hermit, in only few minutes. She was a native, something that stuck in the craw of many a man in these parts, he was sure.

Abram asked after his friend.

“I got your message about him. I’ve been making inquiries, but he’s no longer in the city.”

“How long was he here for?”

“Less than two days. He came asking after a native male who disappeared three centuries ago: name of Drago. I offered him lodgings here, but he seemed anxious to move on when I told him we had little to give him in the way of info.”

“He didn’t mention his plans?”

A headshake, “No. Sorry. I can confirm that he didn’t go offworld.”

“There’s only one place he would likely go, then.”

A nod and a grim smile. “I took the liberty of booking you passage on a Hermetist ship sailing south this evening.”

As he turned to go, Abram caught the beginnings of a scowl on Nija’s face. She was not best pleased about something.

— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, September 2026

© Gideon Jagged
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