Page 22 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
The Docks at Shattered Point
Following that night’smisadventures, Ms. Haas retired to her chambers, whence she did not emerge for several days. When she at last reappeared, bursting into my bedroom still in the tattered remnants of the outfit she had been wearing during our previous excursion, I was perturbed to note that her eyelashes were caked in blood and her forearms adorned with myriad injuries that appeared to be tiny bite marks.
“Come, Wyndham,” she said. “To Ven.”
I was not, at this stage, so accustomed to my companion’s violent changes in mood as I would later become and was, therefore, unprepared both emotionally and logistically for this unexpected call to action. The hour was already uncomfortably late and, having completed my logs of the day’s dispensations at the hospital, I had undressed to my shirtsleeves and was making ready to retire. “Is now really the best time?”
“Now is always the best time.”
“It is after midnight and you appear to be injured.”
She glanced at her arms with mild curiosity. “My, my, they were voracious this time, weren’t they?”
“They?” I blinked. “And also... this time?”
“Really, Captain. If you are going to insist that I explain myselfevery time an otherworldly being assaults my psyche and attempts to devour me, our conversations are liable to become both repetitious and disruptive.”
“It has been my experience that one’s comrades being devoured is generally rather more disruptive.”
Sighing, she scraped the blood from her eyes with the edge of a fingernail. “Do be sensible. If an entity attempts to destroy me and fails, it will impact your plans only minimally. If it succeeds, I will be quite incapable of describing its nature to you afterwards.”
“You could always warn me in advance, and thus engage my assistance against whatever forces assail you.”
“I told you that I was not entirely lying when I said that the Ossuary Bank would pursue redress against me for my insult to Mr. Donne. That you, despite this knowledge, left me to spend two days being assaulted by their invisible enforcers and I, despite your absence, was able to overcome the attack suggests that our current arrangement is perfectly serviceable. You can be of most assistance by protecting me from tedious distractions and minding your own affairs. Tasks that you have, hitherto, accomplished admirably.”
I conceded the point.
“Now then, if you’ve finished trying to coddle me”—Ms. Haas strode across the room and flung open my wardrobe—“I suggest that you change. You are about to become very, very wet indeed.”
From my companion’s promise of incipient saturation, it was clear that she had decided—for whatever reason—that now was the most opportune moment for us to interview Mr. Enoch Reef, the Vennish information broker with whom Miss Viola had worked some years previously. Not wishing to delay our endeavour (for I had been conscious for much of the past week that Miss Viola’s time could easily be running out), I hastily donned a set of striped waterproof undergarments over which I fastened my most expendable doublet and breeches. For her part, Ms. Haas had selected a deep blue bathing dressof a type that had been modish some six years before and an oiled greatcoat that sported no fewer than six bullet holes and a long rent down one side that, by my judgement, had been made by one of the serrated weapons commonly used by the sky-pirates of the Blackcrest Mountains. A bandolier holding several harpoons, and a harpoon gun barely concealed beneath the greatcoat, completed the ensemble.
Satisfied with her attire, and with my own, she hailed us a hansom and, within the hour, we were standing upon the docks at Shattered Point. For those amongst my readership who have not journeyed to Khelathra-Ven I should explain that the sunken city of Ven is accessible from various locales via public submersible and that the docks at Shattered Point are the most frequented and most convenient of these points of ingress. I should perhaps further explain that, although the city of Ven is wholly underwater, the strange magics of its eternal overlords, in combination with the industrial ingenuity of Khelathran entrepreneurs, allow some districts to retain a breathable environment into which surface dwellers can safely venture. It was in just such a district that I had lived during my years at university. It was not to such a district that we were currently journeying. This meant that we would require the services of a reputable wormerer and a disreputable pilot.
The wormerer Ms. Haas located stood at the end of a rickety jetty halfway along the dock. His wares writhed in a barrel beside him, their strange keening song barely perceptible at the edge of hearing.
Ms. Haas prodded the barrel with the tip of her harpoon gun and then peered into the murky waters. Apparently, whatever she witnessed within was satisfying to her.
“Two, please,” she said.
The wormerer had the webbed digits and needle-like teeth common amongst the inhabitants of certain parts of Ven. Both features were displayed to advantage as he held up four fingers and grinned. “Four rials.”
“You, sir, are having a laugh.”
“Folks as buy cheap worms tend to get their brains ate.”
“What a coincidence. The same thing happens to people who mistake me for a tourist.”
He made an odd burbling noise, the emotional timbre of which I was unable to discern. “I can go to three, what with you being a pair and all.”
“I will give you two rials, which you know is more than these beasts are worth, and I shall select them myself. This is my final offer.”
“Moonlight robbery is what it is, but I’ll take it.”
Ms. Haas handed the gentleman his payment and, in return, he gave her the two small grey tablets that we would need to take in order to destroy the worms before they took control of our minds entirely. Then she spent some time considering, and poking at, the contents of the barrel before plucking out two of the slick, eel-like creatures and transferring them into an oilskin bag.
Our next order of business was the commissioning of a submersible, a task that would prove somewhat more straightforward, as Ms. Haas appeared to be on quite familiar terms with the captain whose services we eventually engaged. The gentleman in question went by the unlikely name of Saltpetre, and his dress and manner were no less outlandish than his moniker. He was clad in rough and dusty leathers of a design I had never seen before, and his face was concealed partly by a set of aviator’s goggles and partly by a pattern of intricately inked tattoos. His vessel was distinctive even amongst the idiosyncratic craft of the submariners in that it appeared to lack a name and several aspects of its design suggested that it had been intended to function amphibiously. Of greater concern was the vehicle’s obvious state of disrepair. Its armour was scored and shell-marked, and its hatches—although they appeared watertight—were mottled with altogether too much rust to inspire confidence.
As our pilot set about his preparations for departure, I took theopportunity to draw Ms. Haas aside and convey, with as much discretion as could be managed, the extent of my reservations.
