The cloth rectanglesfields of black emblazoned with skulls, crossed swords, and similar devicesflapping atop several of the most imposing structures added a final note of strangeness.
Anton shivered and gave her a grin. “It’s funny. When I was under water, I never really felt wet. Now that I’m in the air, I can feel I’m soaked.”
“What do we do next?” asked Tu’ala’keth.
“The sea turned my clothes to rags. I need new ones. Even more importantly, I need a barber. The cult identified a spy with long hair and a proper Turmian square-cut beard. Accordingly, I mean to turn into a clean-shaven fellow with close-cropped locks.
“So here’s the plan. At the end of the beach, there’s a path that runs up around the edge of the town. If we take it, we can reach the fellow we need without everybody in town gawking at us.”
“But surely some people will see us.”
“Oh, yes, the lookouts manning the battlements at the very least.”
“What if one of them is a cultist and knows your face?”
“It’s unlikely, but should it happen, life may get interesting very quickly. If the prospect frightens you, you can always turn around and jump back into the water.”
She scowled. “I would never shrink from anything Umberlee requires of me.”
“Of course not. Perish the thought.”
As they tramped up the beach, Tu’ala’keth kept a wary eye on her companion. She thought he might try to escape, but so far, he showed no signs of it. She wondered if he’d found the wisdom to embrace his destiny or if he was merely biding his time and reassured herself that it didn’t matter either way. Umberlee would make use of him regardless.
Despite the magic woven into Tu’ala’keth’s gear, the sun felt unpleasantly hot on her skin, and though she’d used it for years, her long trident suddenly seemed heavy. In time, she hit on the expedient of carrying it tilted over her shoulder, and that made it easier to manage… until the shaft started galling her skin.
The path climbed as the pirate haven of Immurk’s Hold itself ran upward from the harbor to higher ground. The slope made walking all the more difficult, and Tu’ala’keth’s calf muscles and the soles of her bare feet ached at the unaccustomed motion. Once she and Anton passed the fortress, she took her mind off her discomfort by peering down the streets and alleys that connected to her route. Her initial impression was that humans shared their habitations with an interesting miscellany of animals: plump, crested, strutting birds that seemed unable to truly fly no matter how frantically they flapped their wings; fat, oinking creatures rooting in muck; a smaller, shaggier, bleating animal with hooves and horns; and by far the most numerous, little brown creatures with short legs and long, hairless tails, digging and scurrying through heaps of refuse.
“Here we are,” said Anton. He led Tu’ala’keth down a quiet street so narrow the bright sun overhead left a welcome stripe of cool shade along one side. “I hope Rimardo is still in business.”
“Is this someone you trust?”
Anton grinned. “The Red Knight forbid! But the old miser knows how to cut hair and stick leeches on a festering wound, sells clothing pilfered from the dead, and despises everybody too profoundly to go out of his way to help anyone. In the Pirate Isles, that’s all you can expect of a barber.” He pushed aside the makeshift oilcloth curtain that hung in place of a door.
Rimardo’s shop proved to be a filthy one-room shack jammed full of bins, crates, and barrels. The proprietor himself, a scrawny, wrinkled, sour-faced runt of a man, sat the strapping Anton on a tall stool then had to step up on a box to reach his head. Though the spy had warned Tu’ala’keth that folk hereabouts were likely to stare at her, Rimardo showed no interest, nor, after determining what his customer wanted and negotiating a price, did he utter another word. Tu’ala’keth wondered if Anton patronized him partly because of his sullen, incurious nature.
She watched with mingled impatience and interest as the razor scraped away the Turmian’s lathery whiskers. To her sensibilities, all body hair was disgusting, and even after the shave, he had his share, just as his muscular frame still had a lumpish thickness. But he didn’t look as uncouth as before. The brown hue of his skin was pleasant to look on, and his square features, though coarse compared to those of most any shalarin, nonetheless bespoke resolution, and the green eyes, intelligence.
Rimardo evidently had no mirror a customer might employ to approve or disapprove his handiwork.
Anton ran his fingers over his jaw and scalp to assess the results then said, “Good enough.” He rose from the stool and started rummaging through the bins and crates, strewing rejected garments on the floor. Rimardo evidently expected no less of his patrons, for he watched the process without comment.
Anton selected leather sandals; baggy, blue, knee-length breeches; a scarlet sash; and a loose, white, sleeveless shirt that opened all the way down the front. Indifferent to Tu’ala’keth’s scrutinyappropriately so, since her folk regarded nudity as normal, and there was no carnal attraction between their two species in any casehe stripped and pulled them on. “You can keep my old clothes,” he said to Rimardo.
The barber spat in their general direction.
Anton grinned. “Yes, well, that’s why I wanted new ones.” He slipped the cutlass through the sash, tossed Rimardo one of the silver coins they had taken from Umberlee’s altars, and led Tu’ala’keth back out into the open air.
“Are we ready now?” she asked.
“Almost. I’ve been many different men during my years of spying, but none of them had a tattoo of an octopus running down his left arm, and so I hanker for one now. It takes a few minutes. If I can find a secluded spot in which to work, “He cast about. “There.” He strode to a neighboring shack, tried the door, and found it warped in its frame. He shoved hard, and it yielded with a squeal.
The little cottage was empty, devoid of furniture and tenants, too. She wondered how he’d been able to tell from the outside.
Anton murmured the same arcane rhyme over and over again, meanwhile drawing on his skin with his fingertip. An image took form beneath the strokes, clear and vivid as if the digit were a needle dipped in ink. She supposed he’d chosen to depict an octopus because of his recent combat and might not even realize the cephalopods were familiars of Umberlee. Still it was fitting that he branded himself with such a sign, whether he understood the significance or not.
When he finished, she said, “Now we begin.”
He grinned. “Yes, impatient one. I wanted to be inconspicuous until I achieved the proper appearance, but henceforth, you can attract as much attention as you like. Parade as if you expect people to stare and to make way for you, too. As if you’re a personage.”
“I am. We both are: agents of the Queen of the Depths.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Now they marched through the center of town, down teeming streets and across bustling marketplaces selling what were evidently plundered goods, cringing or stolid slaves included. Unfamiliar sights, sounds, and stinks came quickly, relentlessly, now. It was almost enough to disorient her, and she watched Anton with special care lest he attempt to lose himself in the crowds.
He didn’t, though, and in a few minutes, they arrived at one of the massive coquina structures that appeared to be fortresses as much as houses. A rectangular black cloth, emblazoned with a white grinning skull above and a red axe beneath, flapped from a pole atop the roof.
“Behold the residence of Vurgrom, self-styled ‘the Mighty,’” Anton said. “With luck, he and the captains of his faction are still looking for new crewmen. They’ve suffered losses of late.”
“Are you certain?”