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Mako

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An intrepid dawn stood between Mako and his destiny. It cracked leonine over the horizon, bled into a sea that sloshed loud about the hull of the passenger galleon Magnifience.

A bustle of activity greeted him: the captain was posted at the gangplank, wheedling thanks from wringing hands as he ushered guests off his vessel. Deckhands furled sails, webbed them in ropes slick with an overnight mist. The quartermaster took role just beyond, ticking away at a pile of loose parchment with a matching clench to his jaw; he spared no smiles for passenger or crew, mouth twisted like a puckered, soured grape.

The nattering of gull caw filled the air. Accompanied by a harsh zest of muck and salt, it stung the nose, cast Mako back into the peaceful reverie of reminiscence.

He'd lost track of the weeks spent drifting between ships following his voyage from Aetochi. Jumping from canoe to a flat bellied feeder; from feeder to passenger galleon, from galleon to shore in desperate flight from the eel-like creature—the raakgui as the shaman had named it—that hunted him. It remembered the scent of his blood, the taste of his sweat as it had meshed in the salt of the sea. No height of imagination prepared him for the lengths such a monster could go in pursuit of its own hunger.

For a time he'd mused over its sentience, whether it divined some greater purpose in his death. Foolish thoughts, truly, best held for laughter shared over the rim of night's deep cups. He'd spent too much time with the shaman, allowed her leverage with which to infiltrate his psyche—a privilege she made liberal use of, squirreling into thoughts held so many leagues away. Even should he forget her, the purpose she drove him to would remain.

He firmed his jaw, shook stiffness from shoulders, and set his gait upon the docks of White Port. Sporting a subtle limp from a still healing leg, he made slow progress. Each step came tremulous, padded soft against the cobbled streets as though to obfuscate any noise; a frivolous gesture given the crowds gathering about the area.

Thus, cloaked in such frivolity, he cut a meandering path to the city proper, never a glance or care for what laid around the corner.
 
Night's rainwater dripped from rusted gutters. The cobblestones were slick with oil and piss, the air heavy with the stink of low tide and rotting kelp. Where a rusted drainpipe vomited mist onto the stones, Daniyah knelt, fingers stained with ash and salt, candlelight trembling in a cracked mirror shard.

The thing inside the circle hissed. Not with breath, it didn’t have lungs anymore, but with memory. A gutter-wraith, old and angry, face half a child's and half a bloated drowned man’s. Its wrists were tied in rags; its mouth sewn shut, poorly. It floated a foot above the ground, thin as smoke, expressions flickering between a toothless grin and something half-dead. Eyes gone milky.

The salt circle held. The binding lines pulsed. Blood candles guttered low but steady.

Until...
Mako turned the corner.
Walked straight into it.
No hesitation. No awareness.
Right through the damn ghost.
Right through it.

Heel in the salt. A blood candle that exploded in a puff of coppery wax and hexsmoke. The wraith screeched. The mirror shard shattered. Daniyah lunged, hand outstretched, too late. The wraith surged backward in a gout of black water and hate, through Mako’s shadow, into the nearest wall... gone.

For a moment, only dripping silence.
Then Daniyah turned. Slowly. She gave him that slow, “you have no idea who you just pissed off” tilt of the head.

"Are... you... kidding ...me?!” She threw up both arms.
 
Hours passed as Mako traversed the streets of White Port. He sought passage south, unaware of the embargo on trade that sullied such wants; the free states were in disfavor, only select ports of call seen beneath the veneer of propriety. Inquires of Seax were met with silence. A wicked, barbed dismissal. The sort he'd seen from folk of the flotilla and few since. Taboo. Ground he treaded upon without the slightest inclination of consequence.

The light had faded before he found lodgings, before the coin thickening his purse could be spent on necessity. With it, he rounded an ally. Still limping, leg moving ponderously as it remembered the taste of cobble, the resistance of a path unmoved by the shifting tide...

... right into the vestige of a spectre long dead.

A sigh passed him by, breath cold and unfeeling. It left him in shivers, clutching at linens that decked his thighs.

"What?" he began staggering to a halt as his foot crossed a broken circle of salt; he smelled it more than felt. The tang crossed him alongside the chill, in tandem with them vestige of yestermore that briefly infested him.

His mouth turned, his eyes twitched. And within that moment, he felt the tack and eggs he'd dined upon heave within him, yearning for escape.

A wretch.

He cleared his throat.

"Who...?" He couldn't manage his own breathing.

"What. The fuck was that?"
 
“You absolute f-..” She bit the word off, like someone trying very hard not to lose their temper in a crowded funeral. Her pale eyes cut to the broken salt ring at his feet, scattered wide by his stumble. Her braid was half-undone, face smudged with candle soot.

She threw her arms up, pacing a tight circle. “You couldn’t have walked down any of the forty-seven other alleys in this stinking city? No, you had to pick the one alley with an active soul trap and an extremely pissed off ghost inside it. You know how long it took me to bait that thing?!" One of her eyes twitched. "That was ten days of tracking. Ten! Through piss streets, plague houses and stinky fish-gutter alleys." She stared at him for a beat. Just breathed. "I had to chant for three hours!"

Daniyah stepped closer, arms folded over her chest. A long, trembling inhale. "That was a beggar-ghost." She stopped one pace away, looked him up and down like she was examining water damage. She looked at him. Really looked at him.

"You always this graceful?”

The blood candles crushed, but their wax still warm. The sigil half-drawn on the cobbles was hissing, bleeding dull red light into the stones. The wight's shriek faded into the distance like a sob clenched between teeth, trailing off down the alley.
 
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The woman's words tumbled past Mako almost in step with her pacing. He kept her in sight throughout, shoulders and hips kicked in a wary half-crouch.

In the flickering candlelight, the one thing he was sure of was the woman's ill intent. Murderous, if the hairs standing up at the nape of his neck were any indicator. Part of it he could give to the atmosphere; the ritualistic accoutrements served the hour well, lent greatly to an impression he began to form of her. Comforting, in a way. Helped him compose himself. A little.

His head cocked involuntarily at the distant shriek.

"If this is how you chanted," he said, "I'm shocked in only took three. Can't say I'd have showed up..."

He frowned.

"Guess I did. Well. Conjured me instead of your ghost. What's the price? Or is that mine to demand?"
 
Daniyah held her breath and stared at the man. Like she was weighing whether to laugh or hit him. The kind of stillness that said: you’ve just said something so fucking stupid the world itself needs a moment to recover. “Why the fuck,” she said, voice low and coiled like a whip about to crack, “would I summon you?” She gestured at him. All of him.

“A face like a kicked door, limping and smells like wet rope and bad choices." Honestly, that was not far off from a wraith. The only difference was that this man was still breathing. “Please. If I were summoning a man, he’d at least have the ability to walk in a straight fucking line.” Then tilted her head, thoughtful.

“You want to talk prices? Here’s the deal. You broke it, you’re helping fix it. Congratulations! You’re now my apprentice." She shot him a look. “Unpaid." She turned away, shaking her head like she couldn’t believe her night had come to this. Muttering under her breath, “Fucking ‘what’s the price’."
 
"Not the worst nightcap," he said, propping himself back ankle on calf.

He rubbed a hand from brow to chin, forcing some semblance of sobriety over himself to mixed success. At least he kicked the slur from his words.

"Name's Mako. Reckon I'll help you at that. Where do we start?"

A shrug.
 
"Not the worst nightcap"

Daniyah’s lips twitched into a smirk. "If you survive the night, I might even buy you a proper one."

She crouched and began gathering the scattered candles. “Mako, is it?" She snuffed out the ones still burning with quick, irritated puffs of breath. Each flame died with a hiss, tiny ghosts of smoke curling upward. “Name’s Daniyah,” she said as she straightened and gave Mako another evaluating look, as if deciding whether he was capable of catching anything.

“Here.” She tossed the candles, one by one, toward him, an easy, lazy arc, but with just enough speed that dropping them would mark him as officially hopeless. Gave the cracked salt line a couple of swift kicks. Granules scattered across the cobbles and down between.

“You’ve got anything sharp on you?" Because if the answer’s no, she would need to get him something. She brushed off her hands, grabbed her satchel and crossbow from the mossy street corner they were resting against.

The huntress gestured toward the shadows swallowing the end of the street. “Come on, stranger." She led the way down the alley.

“It’ll be moving toward warmth now. Not fire... people. Anything soft. Anything happy." That's why she had been chanting a bloody lovesong for three hours. Three. Hours. Three hours of whispering sweet nothings to the night like some lonely bard. Hummed lullabies, whispered devotion, even said ‘please’ at least twice. Apparently, Danoyah wasn’t convincing enough. Should’ve cried a bit, maybe.

"It’s cursed to wander these streets it died on, feeding on everything life denied it, decency, warmth, love, the little scraps of humanity most people piss past without a thought...”
 
Even drunk he managed to catch the candle. That was a good sign. Still, that last bottle of dock-diluted wine might have been a mistake. One hours gone and long past the point of care.

He patted down his trousers, palm crooking the handle of a knife that he presented to her as he followed on behind. Not the prettiest of blades nor the longest, but it was what he had on hand.

"This serve?" he asked. Hearing tell of the blighted dead might have lent a quaver to his voice on a sober night. Tonight, however, curiosity blanked apprehension's stride. Haunted alleys, scary women with salt circles brandishing chants and flame. Life off the flotilla was strange indeed. At least the possibility of drowning was lower. Probably.

"Happiness, huh." He considered that a while. "In this dockside bit of port? Can't say there's much of that to be found in earnest. Warmth... there's a troupe showing some lover's play over in the crier's square. Might not exactly speak to 'soft' emotions at this hour. Tawdry maybe. How genuine does it need to be?"
 
Daniyah eyed the knife he offered. She plucked it from his hand, tested the weight with a flick of her wrist, then handed it back hilt-first. “It’ll cut. That’s all it needs to do." Kept walking, deeper into the maze of alleys. "There’s only one place you stab a beggar ghost, sailor." She dragged her fingers up until they rested just beneath his throat, pressing lightly where his collarbones met.

“Here. The little V at the base of the neck." The hollow between the collarbones. "Right here is the last breath they swallowed. The last plea they choked on. That’s where their tether forms. Their anchor. So that spot, only that spot." She dropped her hand. "I'll bind it and you'll get the honor to stab it."

She shrugged at what he said about the harbour. “Thing probably died around here..." Starved, stabbed, frozen, forgotten.

"It's a beggar ghost, it will go where the scraps fall... Happiness is happiness. Tawdry or not, that play’s a feast to a wretch that died with empty hands and an empty heart." Her boots struck the stone harder as she picked up the pace. The thing about ghosts. They did not need genuine. They did not give a shit if it was real, earned, or bought for a copper. They just needed the shape of it. The echo. Warm skin. Laughter. Someone holding someone.
 
"Should be this way, street or so down," he said, lengthening his stride to keep pace with her as he pointed the way.

It brought them out of the alley and onto one of the main throughways where people filtered by even at this subdued hour. Most, he noted, were drunk. Likely sailors at that by their bare-chested dress. Unsurprising, given where they were. The White Port was, after all, among the greatest ports of call in Khurun, and certainly the best Ilica had to offer.

Mako kept his eyes ahead, forcing focus into the kaleidoscopic landscape that assailed him. Nauseating to an extent, lessened by the purpose that hastened his step.

"There," he said, catching the distant murmur of theatrics ahead. Chasing after it led them to a crier's square accentuated by a marbled fountain and a set of wagons converted into a makeshift stage.

"The Pauper Prince, not so tawdry as I'd have thought." Almost disappointed. "Should be a kiss or tumble, eventually. What now?"
 
Daniyah slowed as the square opened up before them. Lanterns hung like low moons. Laughter rose in bursts from the knot of onlookers gathered around the little stage. Actors in crude costumes, with loud voices, tumbled over each other on the stage. Breath and wine made the air warm. She slipped into the crowd, zigzagging through bodies with the ease of a snake. A shoulder brushed at most. A curse as someone spilled ale near her boots.

She reached the mouth of a narrow alley just off the square and opened her sack of salt. “Mind your feet this time.” Light thinned there, stretched long and mean across the stones.

“Candles,” she said. “One at each quarter. North, south, east, west." Just assumed any man would know the cardinal directions. She walked as she poured, slow and wide, pouring a wide ring. Wide enough room to fight, to fall, to bleed without crossing the line by accident.

“Tell me about the happiest you’ve ever been,” Curiously, she turned her silver-blue eyes towards him.
 
The skies, blessedly clear, simplified Mako's process for identifying cardinal directions. This was known to him, to any who grew up among the flotilla. Any less meant suicide for a vessel bereft its Navigator.

He went through the motions by rote, plopping down candle after candle, lighting the wicks with a bit of flint the woman had offered. The first was handled with utmost caution, set down gently and fiddled with to satisfaction. He paid it due respect, ensured even his ambling stride could not set it astray, and, as a consequence of diligence, was rewarded by taking far too long in the act.

When he settled the last in place, the woman's last command washed over him.

"Happiest memory," Mako said, rolling his tongue against the inside of his cheek.

Even half-lucid, drenched in sweat, and soldiering along to the whims of a mysterious ghost hunter those words elicited a reaction from him. It took him into reverie, brief images of an autumnal, shoreside tryst; the faint smell of perfume, fresh peach, open sea. He tasted more than felt the experience in a bout of synesthesia that thrummed in his wine addled thoughts. He smiled, part in fondness and part in dumb reminiscence.

"Easy enough. When I was set adrift by a moons' cursed raakgui in the eastern seas"—he rambled on, the telling slurred in haste but told in a familiar manner—"I was rescued by a woman on the shores of Aetochi. A shaman, she called herself. I spent months together with her while my body stitched itself back together. Those months, I reckon, were the happiest I've ever been. The summer fell into fall, the leaves bled vibrant hues across the wide open fields..."

Hesitation.

Maybe not the brightest of thoughts to share that particular memory.

She had said tawdry suited the spectre just fine, however.
 
The square behind them laughed and clapped and lived. His words drifted like warm breath in winter. His memory spilled into the dark. Autumn leaves in burning oranges, yellows, and reds. One woman’s kindness. A breeze slipped down the alley, like the draft of an inhale. It wasn’t cold so much as hungry. Her eyes, a pale milky blue, narrowed.

She touched his arm, just pressed her hand and guided him a step inward. This was not the first time she baited with a poor bastard and his brightest memory. “Was she beautiful?” she asked, gentle as a priest, all while she coaxed Mako to stand in the center of salt and flame.

Her palm rests on his shoulder for a heartbeat. "Stand... riiight there. Yes… good.” Not that she fussed like Tusk over every angle. Botch the geometry and the damned thing would still screech and blister. But this was about baiting it, about the beggar-shade to drag its hollow heart across the threshold.

The candles strained, tiny flames bending in the direction of a strong yearning for a life never known. The hollow thing dragged closer. Drawn to the warmth inside this man's memories. “Go on. You were smiling...” At his hesitation, her mouth twitched, an almost crooked smile. The wraithbinder moved out of the circle, eyes on the darkness collecting at the alley’s mouth.
 
He scoffed having taken offense to her insinuation;

"Beautiful? Of course she was. All women are beautiful," he said, and continued just beneath his breath, "even the scary ones."

A shiver wracked his spine, wringing gooseflesh from pores puckered against what had once been a warm stirring in the breeze. He kept his eyes closed against it, preferring to occlude himself from what ghoulish sights the woman offered. Instead, he focused on the memory, dragging familiar tale after familiar tale up from the drunken recesses of his mind. Despite his efforts, a finger twitched on the flat of that dagger she had gifted him.

It was more of a struggle than he anticipated to keep himself still.

"You know what she told me after my wounds closed and I could again walk unaided? She said, and maybe I'm embellishing who knows, but it was to the flavor of by the celestial, by the stars, by the Mother, know that you will be King. An odd oracle, no? King of what, king of whom?"

Laughter filtered from the last.

"King of my own poor decisions?" That came with no trifling amount of derision.

"She kissed me, you know, and sent me away without another word. The local custom called it bad luck to look at a guest's departure. Pity, that. Might have been my own bad luck that I couldn't help but gaze back until that little island bled into the foggy distance."
 
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