Death Whispers 18: Mostly Dead, Mostly Right

July 30, 1722. Brewed Gambit Alchemy Shop on Harbor Street in Kingston, Jamaica. Brewing potions and stirring my thoughts…

Author’s Note: Death Whispers of the Etherwave is a serialized fiction story that is a part of Legends of the Privateers. Each chapter will appear weekly.

Missed a chapter? (or ‘Episode’ if you like!) Well, never you worry, as we’re only just getting started! The full list of chapters will appears here!

Transformed by the cataclysm of 1712, Doctor Pedro Sangre and his four courageous privateer companions confront mysterious and evil forces that plague innocent people. Together, they grapple with uncanny forces and myths come to life, risking everything to preserve peace and set right what has gone wrong.

Previously: After a desperate battle with a Death Whisper, Pedro frees a trapped ghost form inside the golem. This ghost, one former gunner named Renwick Taggert, shares some ugly truths about Captain Storm and his association with the man holding the stolen Codex. A mysterious figure that shares the same family name as Pedro’s previous employer! But, before Pedro, Elara, and Lysander can act on this, they stumble over a fresh murder victim. A man turned to wood with a look of silent horror. Giving rise, there may be more to all this than they realize.

July 30, 1722. Brewed Gambit Alchemy Shop on Harbor Street in Kingston, Jamaica. Brewing potions and stirring my thoughts…

I gently rubbed a small amount of the yellow-white cream that Morowen gave me onto the dark bruise beside my left eye. It was cool and soothing, right until I felt a sharp needle of pain. I winced.

“A day,” I growled to myself in the mirror. “We lost an entire day sorting out that murder victim.”

I closed my eyes and sighed while I leaned against the washbasin.

There had been questions and more questions from the city watch. After a while, the sergeant’s tone went from suspicious to sympathetic when the reality of what we said sank in.

We didn’t kill the man, but just had the horrible luck to be there when he died. To be there and have no way to help him.

“I feel sorry for the man who died, but why do I feel like he was used?” I shook my head a little. “Maybe I’m simply jumping at shadows.”

After our morning with the city watch, the rest of yesterday was a blur. Two surgeons and a wavebinder declared us curse and petrification free. A quiet trip to see Lyra Valtor turned up more than a few surprises about Renwick. It turned out, not all ghosts are dead.

Still, we had lost an entire day sorting all that out.

“How much damage can Captain Storm and Argall do in a day?” I muttered under my breath.

The answer was as plain as the bruise around my eye.

“A lot,” I sighed. “More than I want to think about.”

I clenched my jaw, then rubbed a little more cream over my black eye. It faded quickly into my skin.

The sea hag’s mixture had done its job well. The black and purple bruise had already started to fade back to the natural olive tone of my skin. I hated to admit Morowen was right, but she was right.

A healing potion would’ve been faster, but that can only do so much. Potions, even enchantments, repair the cuts, stabs, and breaks, but the body always remembers the pain. That it should be in pain. Potions can’t get rid of that, but the sea hag’s cream did.

Sadly, neither could help my mood.

I rubbed my eyes as I walked back to the front of the shop. The scent of slow boiling potions met me at the doorway like a perfumer’s soft kiss. Odors of garlic, clove and oregano drifted in the air, stirring memories of potions past. This one would be an elixir for bad joints, if I didn’t overcook it.

Sebastian, awake from a nap, landed on a chair I kept next to the washroom door. The gargoyle’s landing was a tumble of speckled sandstone bat wings and eagerness. I scratched him between the ears and horns.

“Happy to be home from Skaldi’s forge?” I asked with a small grin. “Nibble on his blacksmith tools again? I bet I owe him a new hammer.”

Sebastian rumbled cheerfully back at me, then jumped down to inspect his food bowl. I refilled it before I went to glance inside a pair of copper pots suspended in the fireplace. Blue-green liquid bubbled merrily inside.

“A few minutes longer will do,” I muttered. “Maybe a little more diced garlic? More garlic and cloves. The miller likes garlic and cloves in his joint potions, anyway. Thinks they add a better kick to the magic.”

I carefully measured out the herbs on a nearby wooden cutting board, then closed my eyes to concentrate. Under my breath, I sang a low shanty to center my thoughts. Slowly, I waved my hand in front of me, then pressed my palm down toward the herbs.

Between tune and concentration, I felt a flow of power, like a trickle of water, run from the Etherwave Arcana through me. The amber-gold energy felt soft, almost damp, like potter’s clay. Quickly, I shaped the light into symbols to paint across the herbs.

My mind wandered back to the bookshop. Notes in a ledger drifted through my thoughts, followed by Captain Storm’s laugh. Then came the image of a petrified dockworker that screamed with the shriek of a Death Whisper.

Also, there was that voice I heard when I freed Renwick from the golem. Solid. Deep. Yet it was a soft whisper that seemed to roar like distant waves.

The amber-gold magic evaporated instantly, and a small headache punched behind my eyes. My right hand suddenly burned, and the room swayed. Desperately, I grabbed a nearby vial of my lime green medicine that I had named the ‘graveyard syrup’, and downed it in one swallow.

It still tasted like toad sweat and despair.

“Maldita sea!” I swore in my native Spanish and scowled while I hammered a fist against the counter.

Jars and spoons jostled on the table. Even my shoulder bag I’d left in a nearby chair tumbled to the floor. Its contents spilled across the dusky stone floor tiles, including the Codex page.

There was a sharp scent of brine, followed by a fog of black mist, as Renwick materialized next to both the page and my worktable.

The page was where, and how, I hid Renwick in a fit of desperation. Fortunately, my guess was right that the man could ‘hide’ inside the page as a ghost. Especially since he was cursed to protect the Codex, even if it was just a single page.

Unsettling? Yes. But when compared to everything else? His entrance wasn’t that difficult to deal with.

“But, then again, I’m not sure ‘normal’ and my life are on speaking terms right now,” I muttered to myself.

The ghost of the sandy-haired gunner’s mate with the faded red headscarf yawned once, then rubbed his spectral-cloudy eyes. He gave the pots, bottles, and brewing apparatus a dubious frown.

“So, this is what you get up to when you’ve got yourself in knots?” Renwick said in his usual Scottish brogue.

“What?”

I gave him a puzzled look while I picked up my bag and spilled contents from the floor. Most I returned to the chair, but the Codex page went on the table.

“Brew and hit tables, I mean.” He crossed his arms. “I felt that punch all the way inside the page. Most folks I’ve known just whittle when they’re upset.”

“It isn’t like that,” I replied, a little more sharply than I intended. A frustrated sigh later, I shook my head.

“Maybe it is,” I corrected myself glumly as I ran a hand through my hair. After that, I reached over to stir the bubbling potions so they wouldn’t burn.

“I just need to sort something out,” I added. More than a little frustration underscored my words.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Renwick glance at me with a sad, almost bemused expression. Then he nodded.

“Ah,” he said in a wistful, haunted voice. “Well, you’ve no reason to trust me. Not a bit. But mark me, I’ve known others like you, Doctor. You’re the kind willing to dive in on your own with both hands to save a life, or solve a problem. Good on you for it, too. They’re too many in the world who don’t bother. You saved me, and I owe you.”

The ghost walked back around the table to run a spectral finger lightly across the Codex page.

“I’ve no love loss for Storm or his crew.“ Renwick’s spectral eyes turned hard. “They press ganged me into service. My own crew? Storm and his people killed them.” He shook his head sadly. “I have no crew.”

Then he leaned over the worktable toward me and stabbed a ghostly finger in my direction.

“But you do,” Renwick said in a stern tone. “It looks to me you’re about to try to carry all this yourself. Don’t do it.”

The ghost lightly tapped the Codex page.

“I don’t understand all of what’s happening. After all,” he grinned, “I’m just a man who’s only ‘mostly dead’, with a body frozen by magic on a ghost ship.” Then his expression turned serious. “But I do know when things get bad, you trust those close to you. You trust your crew. Otherwise it’ll eat you up inside.”

I met his gaze, then glanced down at the cutting board without a word, my thoughts in a whirlwind. After a deep breath, I hummed the same shanty as before, pulling down the Etherwave Arcana’s power to me. This time, when I molded the magic into glowing alchemy symbols of growth and renewal, it worked. Both the diced garlic and cloves gave off a soft green light as I dumped them into the lightly boiling potions.

The burbling sound of the cooking potions filled the empty space around us.

“You have a good point, Señor.” A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth before I let go of a soft chuckle. “Lysander would accuse me of being dramatic. Elara would give me that ‘stop brooding and get moving’ look. Skaldi and Durner? Well, I won’t even go there.”

I reached over and pulled both pots away from the fire to let them simmer and cool. No one likes to drink hot potions. Well, almost no one, but those were potions with scorpion peppers.

“Think it through,” I muttered. “I just need to think it through.”

My thoughts churned like well-oiled gears, spinning in a clock. Pieces clicked and snapped while the portrait of a plan took shape. I glanced at Renwick.

Trust was hard, but it needed to start somewhere.

Ghost, half-ghost, or something else, I felt Renwick had been nothing but honest. Both relieved and honest, really. So, he deserved the same in return. Besides, he’d been around the source of the problem, so he might’ve heard something helpful.

“This started with Joshua Argall,” I said, staring off at nothing in particular. “A bookseller here in Kingston.”

“The one whose kin you’re thinking is aboard the Rising Eel?” Renwick asked curiously.

I nodded.

“The same.” I half-crossed my arms, leaned back, then tapped my chin. “Señor Argall mentioned a ‘wood boned man’. That, and these murders that turn people to wood, don’t seem to fit. So, setting those aside, the bookseller’s ledger had notes about a brother, and mentioned an illness.”

Renwick shrugged. “The man with the book aboard the Eel was coughing enough for two people.”

I raised my eyebrows at that.

“If he’s the brother, and is dying, it explains a few things.” My expression turned pensive. “Such as why Señor Argall, the bookseller, wanted the Codex, and why he lied to us, saying it only held maps.”

Renwick looked an equal blend of shocked and disturbed at the same time.

“Oh, well now. That explains the man’s ravings about ‘curing death’ and ‘freeing him’.” His eyebrows bunched together. “Also, it means that hell-cursed arcane engine is some sort of necrotic engine, doesn’t it?”

“Something like it,” I confirmed. “Supposedly, it’ll rip a hole right into the land of the dead to yank a very bad man free.” I sighed a bit. “It’ll also let out whatever nasty thing that wants to come crawling through, too.“

I snapped my fingers.

“Captain Storm is after me to put the book back to stop this, because he can’t. But the man you saw aboard the Eel? That’s different.” I leaned forward and tapped my worktable. “He’s gotten desperate.“

I counted off the reasons on my fingers.

“First, he tried to power the necrotic engine with Storm’s crew. That didn’t work, so he went after the sea hag of Port Royal. When that failed, he put a fishing town to the torch, but even that didn’t give him what he wanted.”

Renwick flinched at the mention of the fishing town massacre.

“True,” Renwick said, then frowned. “You’re going somewhere with this.”

I gave him a thoughtful look.

“You could say that. The man with the Codex doesn’t want power. He wants a certain type of power. Not victims, not anymore. He’s looking for an amplifier.” I reached over and patted the yellowed, torn page on the table. “Probably because he doesn’t have this.”

An idea or two leaped to mind. I didn’t like either one.

“I think I know where he’ll strike next.”

The bell at the front door jingled as the door opened.

I exchanged a look with Renwick, and he vanished back into the Codex page with a brief burst of dark fog and the scent of brine.

Elara walked briskly between the scant shelves and two lone chairs toward my worktable. Once she caught sight of me, her shoulders relaxed a little, wings looking more like a cloak and less like sharpened glass knives. A subtle, silent sign of relief.

“You weren’t at the docks or merchant row this morning,” she said, sounding a bit tired. “I was worried.”

A smile tugged at my lips again.

“You’re just in time, querida. I was about to stop myself from running off like an overdramatic fool.”

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Hoist the Colors is a work of pure, unabashed fiction. Actually, when it's not swinging off the rigging, or shivering some timbers, it's rather shy and retiring. Did I mention it enjoys baking? Names of characters, places, events, organizations and locations are all creations of the author’s imagination for this fictitious setting. So he really is all to blame here.

Any resemblance to persons living, dead, shoved overboard, or reanimated is coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author's, since the characters and the author tend to disagree a lot.