A Lonely Island in a Sea of Darkness

The night had become Penny Dreadful. Warm and cold air had clashed at some point, leading to a fogbank rolling in across the wharf, covering everything in a smokescreen that reduced everything to walking shadows that rushed from one dandelion sphere of illumination to the next.

Cerise perhaps was grateful that this made her approach a little more stealth. It also slowed down the manhunt the Lucy-incited Guards were up to. But it also did an excellent job of running up her paranoia.

She really tried to put those cheap dime novels out of her mind, though it had been far too evocative in describing how unassuming victims would be pulled into fog to be murdered by some lunatic or another.

Quite simply, her nerves were shot, and she reflexively massaged her packed pockets again for reassurance as she and the others stalked the wet streets in search of a “Grand Wolf”.

“Are we even going to find anything in this mist?” Andrew grumbled, his hand reaching through the fog in a vain attempt to wave it away from his face.

“It’s a river wharf in the middle of the city,” Ruben countered. “At most we’re going to find one or two ships berthed long-term.”

“We walk past the one surrounded by men standing around doing nothing but smoke,” Cerise advised, and no one said anything, understanding almost in unison that they had their own nominal disguise to uphold.

As Ruben said, the wharf was just a patch of shop-free stone designed to receive a few barges that either sailed or were pulled down the river, and needed a place to offload huge amounts of cargo into Wet Market Street. During the day, one end would be a city of rafts and junks, a market in itself for wholesalers to battle it out. But when the stores would close and business conclude, all that was left was the long-term stays that had ongoing, lengthy business to attend to.

Damon dramatically screwed up his nose and started loudly coughing into a closed first. “I hate smokers.”

Cerise let her eyes slide over to Damon, and past him to a large black leviathan moored to the riverside. With the livery of a pack white wolves, it was hard to imagine the ship not being called the Grand Wolf.

True to Damon’s warnings, two men stood near a gangplank leading up to the boat, with their feet littered with the butts of spent cigarettes. If they were pretending to be loiterers, it wasn’t convincing.

“Then get out of here, pansy,” one of the men snapped out at Damon, teeth bared in a leer.

Damon turned, face screwed tight and ready to lash out with a comeback, but Andrew simply threw an arm around his neck and pulled him along, to the shrill guffaws of the sentries.

Before long, the four sunk back into the mist, while Cerise frowned at prior offended redhead. “Don’t tell me you were actually going to fall for that.”

“I don’t take things lying down,” Damon testily answer.

“If nothing else, they’ll probably just write us off,” Andrew suggested over Cerise’s sighs. “If we just walked past he might have noticed we had an agenda.”

The four of them turned back to face the aft of the ship, where the lights of the captain’s cabin could be seen shining from within the dark ship.

“That seems to be our best way in,” Ruben noted. “But does anyone have a way in?”

It was Cerise’s turn to produce what looked like a handful of beads, which she tossed into the water. For an instant, there was silence, but before long, the rudder and rear of the ship began to be swallowed up by a growing curtain of seaweed like vines and brambles that dug into the dark surface.

A short hope, a short climb (with some grumbling from Andrew about the burning in the arms it granted him), the group pulled themselves through the rear windows and into a spacious maritime office, filled with charts, ledgers and other paperwork.

“Will we find anything in here?” Damon asked, perplexed at the mess.

Cerise had wasted no time flipping through the sheets, eyes rapidly scanning every written line as she spoke to the others. “I don’t know, just find something that sounds relevant!”

At that moment, the front door to the cabin opened.

Everyone froze for an instant, unsure of how to respond, and only granted a moment’s reprieve when they saw a man walk backwards into the room, as he pointed and shouted orders to the men outside.

“And make sure everyone is ready to dump everything to leave. Everything’s too hot to do anything!” The man, nominally a captain, shouted. The moment he shut the door, Cerise was on him, crossing the room in an instant to grab him by the neck and slam him into a wall. The Problem-Solving Drink she had taken only a little while ago was still running its course through her system, and no matter how much her captive struggled, he couldn't push or pull himself or the hand around the neck away from each other.

“Glarghk–” The man tried to say. He was another bearded man whose skin saw days of sun and salt, and Cerise felt his leathery skin as much as she saw his tan and smelt the stink of his sweat.

“I know Kanis and Syuan came here,” Cerise growled, and the alarm in his eyes at the names made her hope she had struck gold. “I know they’ve been collecting toxic plants in secret, and the only reason anyone would go through all that trouble is if you’re planning to use it on someone important here. Who is it? Don’t yell for help when I release your neck or your head is going through this wall.”

The moment she loosened her grip the man swatted the offending limb aside, and rubbed his throat, more annoyed than anything. Cerise nearly took it as a counter attack before she – and everyone else in the room – froze at the captain’s innocent remark.

“Don’t you know!? What are you two doing here? It’s too early!”

Cerise stood and stared at the captain, trying to understand what just left his mouth. Ruben, too, felt dread gnawing at his guts as the possibilities that matched the statement filled his mind.

“...What do you mean ‘too early’?” The prince hesitantly asked. “Too early for what?”

The leader of the ship just grumbled. “I know you’re supposed to be playing dumb, but at least keep your heads down until after the unfortunate death.”

“Who’s supposed to die!?” Cerise repeated with more vehemence.

But the threat only made the man grow more puzzled, before an expression of dawning glee erupted on his face.

“You don’t know,” he laughed. “I get it now. I should have known. Children wouldn’t have invented this plan, even if a Sant-Lumiere would be happy to–”

Cerise swung her elbow into his neck at near full force, and the captain crumpled into a pile by the door.

“Cerise!?” Ruben yelped at the sudden act. They were supposed to be getting a source of information, not pummelling their lone source.

“He was wasting our time,” the witch insisted, but the sudden silence in the room seemed to broker more questions than answers.

“Sant-Lumiere?” Damon muttered to himself. “What do those psychopaths have to do with this?”

Cerise looked away, and towards the door. “I don’t know, but we only have some of our answers. Let’s make our way down to the hold. Maybe we’ll get answers there.”