Chapter 2: Chapter Two.

Erec was almost certain that he had a fever. Not surprising, he had been soaked in rainwater and working with open wounds for hours. He needed to find something to treat himself with. Norbert had told him that the ship didn’t have a barber. Apparently if any of the crew became too injured to work, they were just tossed overboard. In order to heal himself he needed something to tattoo mana onto his body. Magic was part intent part physical etching, or in the case of anything to do with the body tattooing.

After a surreptitious inspection of the ship’s hold and deck the best Erec could find was a rusty nail he manged to pry out of a bit of rotting deck.

The Cerf-volant was not a large ship. The fact that the crew of the ship was badly trained also meant that to keep it in some semblance of seaworthiness it was also overcrowded with crew members. Privacy was therefore hard to come by. Erec couldn’t just start treating himself out on the deck. For one thing it was still pouring with rain. The crew would also see him and most likely alert captain Bovin. As soon as the captain became aware that one of his new crew members knew how to use the crystals, he would throw Erec over the side. It was too dangerous to keep someone with that kind of knowledge out here, where crystals could be obtained with relative ease. Erec doubted that the captain would trust him. He was a supposed street urchin. If it was revealed that he possessed such skill the captain would likely think he was some kind of spy. Who would be spying on this cursed ship Erec didn’t know. Most crystal harvesters had some kind of noble backing though. One needed a royal mandate to legally trade in crystals in Stormbreaker city. Espionage was common practice among the noble houses of Nevares.

Erec needed to move quickly. The longer he deliberated the worse his fever became and the closer they came to the death-zone. Captain Bovin was also unlikely to listen if Erec told him they were sailing to certain death. Erec needed to either spark a mutiny or find some other way off this death trap. If he needed privacy the only options were the few cabins that the officers slept in.

Erec grimaced, “only one option then.” He whispered to himself.

Erec hobeled towards Lothair’s cabin. The crew noticed him as he made his way there. Their reactions were a mixture of smirks, winces and pitying looks. No doubt they thought he was giving in. It made sense, most people would have no choice but to capitulate.

Erec knocked on Lothair’s door.

“What is it?” came Lothair’s squeaky voice.

Erec just knocked again. Lothair threw the door open. He was half dressed in his ratty but once grand cloths. His shirt was half unbuttoned revealing his disgusting, sweaty and hairy chest. Erec wouldn’t be surprised if he had lice in his chest hair.

Lothair looked mildly surprised, then he grinned, “well if it isn’t the pretty boy. Not so pretty now are you.”

Erec adopted his most pitiable, defeated voice, it wasn’t hard bedraggled as he was, “please sir. I have a fever I heard the crew say you had some medicine. So if you could forgive me I…” Erec’s sentence trailed off. As if he couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought.

Lothair sneered, “ooh so now you come crawly back.” He grabbed Erec's chin and turned the boy’s head left ,then right. He trailed his finger along Erec’s blood caked cheek suggestively. “Well, I suppose with a bit of cleaning up you're still usable. Mind you I don’t want any more ingratitude from you. You’ll have to be a good boy from now on. Can you do that?”

Erec bit his tonged to stop from lashing out. Not trusting his voice, he simply nodded.

“Excellent,” Lothair purred as he yanked Erec into his cabin and slammed the door.

Lothiar’s quarters were anything but spartan. Almost every corner was crammed with half used ointments or sloppily penned manifests. He also seemed to have a personal supply of preserved beef in a small crate next to his bed. No doubt it had been meant for the crew, but Lothair kept it back from the general mess.

Lothair forced Erec onto the bed, “I suppose I should treat you before we can have any fun. Let me get you that medicine.”

Lothair turned around and started to shift some bottles around looking for one in particular. As he turned Erec got to his feet as silently as he could. He slowly moved the rusty nail from the palm of his right hand into his left. Keeping in Lothiar’s blind spot he positioned the nail with the point facing the base of Lothair’s head.

Lothair found the bottle he was looking for, “aah here it is, now…”

Before he turned around Erec used all of his strength to drive the nail into Lothair’s spine. He fell forward using the weight off his body and gravity to add to the force of the blow. The nail was a good five inches long, so long, it burst through the front of Lothair’s neck.

More out of futile reaction than any thought of defending himself Lothair tried to throw Erec off him. Too weak to resist Erec fell to the floor. However, it was too late for the quartermaster. He tried to scream but the blood that was spilling out from his neck only allowed him to make a few gurgles. He too fell to the floor next to Erec. Luckily the raging storm outside overpowered the noise of the two crashing down to the floorboards. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Lothiar did not have a gentle reputation. Perhaps the crew would have thought the noise was just ‘rough play’.

Erec panted on the floor. This new body off his was not very fit. He was malnourished and injured. Out of curiosity he reached over to the fallen bottle that Lothair had planned to give him. Sitting up he opened it and gave it an experimental sniff. The sweet smell made him sneeze.

He deserved death, Erec thought to himself with a snort. The bottle was filled with an aphrodisiac. It would have made him mad with lust and done nothing for his fever. Standing up he searched the rest of the room for what he needed. Unfortunately, the nail was still his best option for tattooing himself. It would have to do. For this kind of rushed job all he needed was to pierce the skin. The patterns needed to fix crude breaks and cuts were comparably simple to the complex ones needed to treat diseases.

He spent a minute or so prying the nail out of Lothair’s neck. The man looked uglier in death, his face was fixed in an expression of loathing and shock. He was the type to only ever go after weak prey. None of his victims had likely ever fought back.

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Erec cleaned the nail in water to get the blood off. Then he soaked it in vinegar to remove as much of the rust as he could. Finally, he soaked it in alcohol. It likely wouldn’t help much. He already had a fever, and the nail would never be a perfectly sterile instrument. It was the best he could do under the circumstances. It grated him to know he would be doing such an inadequate job. Making do wasn’t a comfortable experience when you knew how the task could be done so much better.

Lastly, he took out the pea sized green crystal he had swiped. He placed it in a small bowl Lothair had been keeping dried olives in. Focusing his mind Erec tried to connect with the crystal. He knew how to do this, but he had never actually done it before. A part of him worried that he would lack the inherent affinity needed to connect with mana. After a brief period of struggle, he made the connection. It was strange, in the physical world all that happened was that the crystal liquefied. It appeared to have the viscosity of syrup. In the aether however Erec could feel his connection to the substance. It felt like an extension of his own body. He could not move it but he could feel it nonetheless.

Erec dipped the tip of the nail into the liquid mana. At first it did not adhere to the metal. After Erec willed it to do so however, the liquid crawled up the nail until the whole bowl was dry. The nail was coated in a thin layer of luminous green. There were far better metals for holding and diffusing mana but any type of metal would do.

Erec pressed the semi-sharp nail against his skin and using a small shellfish hammer began to tap the nail’s head just hard enough to break his skin. It did not hurt. Green mana was a natural anaesthetic. He started to outline a pattern onto his torso. His first priority was to fix his broken rib and any internal tears it had caused. It took him fifteen minutes to etch the needed symbol into his skin. As soon as he finished the last line he gasped as a cool sensation swept through his body. The bone mended and a portion of the worst bruising around his ribs healed. It was if he never had a break in the first place.

The relief at the cessation of pain was quickly replaced by ravenous hunger. Magical healing always required a lot of energy. Only a portion came from mana. One had to eat copious amounts of food to replace the nutrients the body used up in the process. Erec quickly raided Lothair’s ample food supplies. The preserved beef was horribly prepared. In future Erec would have to prepare his own food. He had a feeling that if he didn’t prepare it himself, he would find every meal wanting.

Healing his rib had used up most of the mana on the nail. He only had enough to place a general rune of low-grade healing onto his thigh. Its colour would slowly fade over the next few hours as it generally healed his whole body at a slow rate. That would be enough to get rid of any infection that lingered and close his still open cuts and scrapes.

Another search of the cabin resulted in Erec obtaining a dagger and a leather backpack. While he sharpened the dagger Erec thought through his next steps. He needed to get off this ship. He wouldn’t be able to do it alone or at least he couldn’t do it alone unless he killed every crew member on shift at the moment. While they were in the storm the ship would be working around the clock. Split into two different shifts, day, and night. He and Norbert had been on the day shift.

Abandoning ship was upon reflection not the best solution. Erec would have to take a chance that one of the row boats would survive the storm. This deep in he wouldn’t be able to steer with any accuracy with just the oars. He would have to rely on the tides to bring the boat to shore before it was ripped apart.

His only other option was to convince the captain to turn around or convince the crew to mutiny. After some consideration Erec decided that the captain was his best bet. Rifling through the papers in Lothair’s quarters Erec found out that the Cerf-volant paid a portion of its profits to the house of Leon. Leon was a minor noble house of Nevares. Erec also found out that it was actually Lothair who was in charge of finding recruits for the ship from among the street urchins of Stormbreaker city. It was also clear that Lothair had some less than savoury connections to the criminal underworld of the city. Some of the recruits he took on were people that whatever criminal syndicate he worked for wanted to disappear from the city. Any kind of magical tracking could not find a body out here in the storm. There was too much interference. He would take on a ‘crew member’ keep them quiet, and then toss them over the side when the ship was far enough out to sea. All of this gave Erec a plan.

Erec began to forge a letter in Lothair’s handwriting. He addressed it to Quinton, Lothair’s syndicate contact.

‘This is unacceptable. I don’t mind taking care of your trash Quinton, but this brat is noble. Did you think I wouldn’t beat it out of him. You know I would not be able to resist this face of his. The Leon family will kill me if they find out that I helped you get rid of their heir. You are lucky I kept him drugged if he talked to Bovin it would be both our hides. You owe me more than the stand fee for this disposal. I need at least…’

Erec trailed the ink down the page as if the writer had been suddenly interrupted. He took some of Lothair’s blood that had not yet dried and sprinkled it on the page. Hopefully it would look as if Lothair had been interrupted while writing.

The plan wasn’t perfect, but the only member of the crew Erec had spoken too was Norbert. Hopefully the man would keep his mouth shut. Even if he didn’t Lothair did keep a drug in his supplies that could be used to induce memory loss. It was plausible that he used it to keep his victims confused and compliant. To make the scene more believable Erec added a little water to Lothiar’s wound, to make the blood less coagulated. It wouldn’t fool any close inspection, but Erec doubted the captain or any of the crew would bother to look closely.

Preparations made, Erec straddled Lothair’s dead body and started screaming at the top of his lungs stabbing the body repeatedly with the dagger he found, “take that you peasant. How dare you try and touch me. I’ll have your whole family strung up for this.”

In no time at all one of the crew burst through the door. He saw Lothair’s new toy stabbing the quartermaster’s mangled corpse and screaming incoherently. Panicking he yanked the boy off of the body and pushed him against the wall disarming Erec at the same time.

Erec adopted his most haughty aristocratic accent, “unhand me you brute. How dare you try and stop me. My father will have you hanged for this.”

More crew members stared gathering around the door and seeing the grim scene.

One of the men shouted, “quick wake the captain. Lothiar’s dead.”

Erec followed up, “yes get your captain I demand and explanation.”

The ship became a flurry of activity and confusion. The crew member held Erec against the wall and stared at the bloody quartermaster in horror. All Erec had to do now was wait. This was a desperate gambit, but he could not see any other option. One of the crew members milling by the door was Norbert. Erec caught his eye and subtly motioned for him to play along. Norbert took another look at the body and then looked back at Erec. He gave him a slight nod.

Erec breathed a sigh of relief. Mentally settling into to his new role of a scion of minor nobility he waited for captain Bovin to make his appearance. He just might be able to save this ship.

 

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