The Cacophony of Various Yells

Previously: What can I tell you. Things come to a head. There is a mutiny of sorts, a fire of sorts, a tsunami of sorts. Batya drops the very sharp sword (again) and it slices through the floor (again). A trombonist plays a sad tune (not really). The captain enlists Bat’s aid in getting the h-e-double-hockey-sticks outta there.

— 66 —

The Dandy Gorgon shudders, groans, ready to splinter under the weight of a century’s worth of bad luck. Indeed, despite the Mayor’s flood, the stateroom bar is still on fire, and in fact the flames have spread to the overhead, and, yes, now to the swinging chandelier. An unholy number of fish are flopping and gasping. The ship is thick with the cacophony of various yells. Sailors thrash about with salt in their eyes and minnows in their mouths. Roger the Harbormaster is moaning theatrically over against the redwood soaking tub, jackknifed, buttocks aloft, somehow wrapped up in the polar bearskin rug. (Sister Aether seems to be MIA.)

Batya, carrying Captain Nia, aims herself sternward at the shattered windows—an ill-advised idea, for they offer nothing but organ-puncturing shards and a straight drop into the drink, but whatever—and screeches the scariest screech she can think of. She manages to get about three feet before slipping on a school of mackerel pike. She and Nia hit the deck, exactly where the scimitar sliced through the floor, and there’s a disturbing snapping sound—tibia?—and then she’s in midair, and then the wind is knocked out of her, and then she finds herself one level lower in the ship.

She wheezes. She spits out a seahorse. She looks up at the water and fish pouring down from the new hole in the ceiling. She figures the Harmattan weakened the floorboards, and they collapsed under her weight. She notices another sword-shaped hole in the floor. She wonders if it sliced through the entire ship. She wonders if they’re taking on water in the orlop. She hopes so. And she hopes the sword is happy where it is now, maybe down in the darkness with the giant stone hand, the one that reached out for the Mayor—

Speaking of, where did he get to? Did he tsunami himself into a gross pile of old skin and skeleton parts? (That’s Bat’s phrasing, by the way, her waterlogged brain grasping for the word bones but not finding it.) Wasn’t she supposed to kill him? Or was that carrick card a load of hooey, like all the others?

Doesn’t matter. Bat checks her own skeleton parts, tibia et alia, finds herself more or less unharmed, probably because she landed on top of Nia, who is harmed. She picks the captain up and her body is limp and heavy, and there’s an ugly mark on her forehead, and her eyes—bloodshot, stunning—are looking in different directions. Bat’s ashamed that her first thought is welp there goes my payday. But then Nia starts crying a little bit—well, not actual tears just a pathetic shuddering of her shoulders, like an overtired toddler—and Bat’s relieved that she’s still with us.

They’re in a cramped room filled with swinging hammocks, most of them occupied by passed-out sea dogs, blissfully unaware of the mutiny in progress. The ship echoes with hoots and hollers and smashing glass and gunfire, but here, for the nonce, all is quiet, except—

A slurred swear off to Bat’s left. She spies a guy trying to ease himself out through one of the gun ports. Their eyes meet and she recognizes his desperate weasel face, his staggering hangover, his newly gone teeth.

“You!” she snaps. “Rat! Donny Samantha!”

“Shit,” Daniel Suwannakintho says with a bloody lisp. “Please don’t thrash me, lady, I’m just a few yards from freedom.”

“What kinda freedom?”

“O god, is that the captain? Is she expired?”

“She’s dopey is all,” Bat says, carrying her over. “What’s out there? Lifeboat?”

Daniel grips the edge of the hatch with trembling hands. “Maybe. I don’t remember. No.”

“We’re coming, let’s go.”

“There ain’t no room!”

“How many times you gonna traitor me today, traitor?”

Daniel looks off into the distance. “Two?”

“We’re almost to the weekend, brother,” Bat says, shoving him the rest of the way through the gun port. “You’re driving.”

The lifeboat bobs in the grey Halloween waves, oared by a surly Daniel Suwannakintho, now far enough out that they can see the Gorgon in its entirety, aft in flames, black smoke coughing up into the rainclouds.

Nia Muto seems functional again, and her eyes are back in alignment though her golden eye shadow is a smeary horrorshow, her hair a tangle of tangles, her lace collar stained crimson. She’s staring up at the galleon and shaking her bruised head. “Look at her. Look what you did to my baby. My darling dying baby.”

“Sorry,” Bat says. She’s feeling twitchy at being in open sea. She can’t decide if that’s the city there on the horizon or just spume trickery.

“That ship is cursed,” Nia says, collapsing back against Bat, curling up next to her for warmth, or security, or some such.

“That’s what I hear.”

“You can’t outsail a curse. All you can do is hope it strikes the fool next to you.”

“Guess I should sit somewhere else then.”

“You stay put, I like you where you are.”

“Looka there,” Daniel says, pointing up at the helm of the ship. “The new captain.”

And there’s the Mayor, the Angler, the Founder, silhouetted in flame, looking disturbingly spry and agile, like someone half his age, or rather one-tenth his age. Bat can’t make out his face from here, but she knows he’s looking right at her.

“The new captain,” Nia scoffs. “You did a poor job ending that chewed-up piece of rawhide, Miss Batya.”

“He’s the Mayor. Why would I want to end him.”

“You want to be a nobody your whole life?”

The Mayor gives Bat a little salute, and she returns it.

“Reckon I’ll see him around,” she says to herself.

Nia rubs her eyes and they make a noise. She says, “Everybody listen to me. I hereby declare a new phase for Muto Enterprises. The beverage industry has nothing more to offer me. I have lost myself in an endless parade of board meetings. I have forgotten what it is to truly plunder and despoil with my own two hands. I will start anew with nothing but my own terrible ambition and a sizable stash of funds. And I will need an aide-de-camp.”

Daniel stops rowing. “Just so happens I am suddenly in want of employment.”

“Not you, turncoat.”

“I already have a job,” Bat says, though the words sound false as soon as she says them. What’s waiting for her back at Hawthorne HQ? Mina with her assassinated leg? Those furious teenagers? The boss lady murderously disappointed in how this delivery turned out?

“I’m sure I can offer you a competitive salary,” Nia says.

“I’m sure too, seeing as I ain’t exactly been paid yet. You need a cook?”

“Why would I need a cook?” Nia says. “I need muscle.”

“I don’t wanna be muscle, I wanna cook. I got my own truck but it got totaled. That’s why I’m in bad with the Hand, he paid for it.”

“Here’s my offer,” Nia says, turning to face Bat, making the boat wobble. “I square things with Hillers, that sick degenerate, and then you’re mine. You do what needs to be done, you understand me? If you insist, then, perhaps, from time to time, you can prepare me…I don’t know, what sort of things can you cook?”

“Mulitas.”

“What is mulitas.”

“Tortilla, meat, cheese. Fried up. Whatever toppings you want.”

“That’s it? That’s all you can make?”

“Yeah.”

“But you can also do what needs to be done, right? Those mitts of yours, you were born for making things go the way I want them to go, I’m sure of it.”

Bat lets out a slow breath. She adjusts her sitting position and her damp slacks make an unpleasant squelching sound. The air tastes like kelp and embers. She thinks back to being cuffed in the pool of milk and raging at what her sister said: You’re an animal that’s good at hurting people and that’s it.

Nia spits in her hand. “We have a deal?”

“I wish you’d stop doing that.”

“Do we have a deal?”

Bat studies the bite mark she left on Nia’s neck and it satisfies some part of her. “Yeah,” she says, and they shake.

“Goody,” Nia says, nuzzling back into Bat’s arm. “How long till we’re back at the docks, you rat bastard?”

Daniel squints at the thickening fog. “Forever,” he says.

“How should we pass the time?”

“Well,” Bat says, “we could sit here and think about all the dumbass decisions that brought us to this moment. But what I like better is sitting and thinking about nothing.”

“That does sound nice,” Nia says. “Let’s do that instead.”

+++

This concludes Part Five of Chokeville, a novel by Josh Fireland. Part Six is the final part, and pretty short. It’ll ship out soon.