The Exorcist Doctor

By the time Gael and Maeve reached the front counter, the showroom behind them was less a place of business and more the aftermath of a minor baronial succession war. Hundreds of bodies groaned across the floor between the broken ship models, the toppled display stands, the scattered ledgers, and the decorative anchors hanging from hooks on the ceiling. A few men were already crawling back upright to resume their place in the queue, but for the rest of them? It’d be a while before they regained their consciousness, which allowed Gael and Maeve to strut forward and sit down before the counter, only slightly out of breath.

“That went wonderfully,” Gael said cheerily, dropping into his chair with a sigh of satisfaction. “If only we didn’t have to hit that guy with the model sailboat, though. That was a cool model.”

“He shouldn’t have tried to bite my dress, then,” Maeve mumbled back, placing her briefcase neatly on her lap as she sat.

“I’m saying you should’ve beaten them all before they got close to you.”

“I’m saying you should’ve pulled your weight as well.”

While the two of them bickered, the clerk behind their counter didn’t so much as glance back at their path of carnage. He was a narrow-faced man in a sleeveless coat covered in stitched measuring tapes and little wooden charms carved into the shapes of boats, while his hat was shaped like a flat-bottomed barge, complete with tiny railings along the brim and a dangling anchor charm that swayed beside his ear. By Wraithpier standards, his fashion wasn’t too weird, but his expression was so tired and bored that Gael immediately respected him.

The clerk dipped his pen into an inkpot, sighing as he pulled out a questionnaire board. “Name of th’client?”

Gael snapped his head forward and smiled. “Heartcord Clinic, please.”

The man began jotting notes. “Purpose of vessel?”

“Fishing.”

“What sort?”

“Dangerous.”

“All fishin’ here’s dangerous. Size?”

“Large.”

“How large?”

Gael spread his arms and gestured as wide as he could. “Like, this big.”

Maeve closed her eyes for a moment—most likely praying to the Saintess for patience—though Gael personally thought the crooked Saint had already gotten more than enough attention from his dearest wife for one morning.

The clerk, however, merely scratched something into the board. “Heavy-duty hull, then. Armor?”

“The strongest.”

“Plating?”

“The thickest.”

“Hooks?”

“The biggest.”

“Cranes?”

“As many as you can fit without the ship tipping over and drowning all of us. We’re not very good at swimming.”

The next several minutes passed through a long, almost soothing series of questions. The clerk asked him about hull shape, deck width, canal compatibility, lake rating, towing capacity, crane strength, winch systems, harpoon mounts, fish tanks, cold storage, reinforced rails, underdeck cages, holding chambers, crew cabins, engine strength, docking requirements, emergency anchors, flood compartments, defensive shutters, lighting, water pumps, and several machines whose names Gael didn’t recognize, but he accepted immediately because they sounded expensive and dangerous. If the clerk offered three options, Gael chose the strongest. If he offered five, Gael chose the one that made him blink the least.

After several dozen rounds of the easy questions, the clerk stopped writing. He pulled down the small round spectacles perched on his nose, squinted at the questionnaire board, then looked up at Gael properly for the first time.

“Lemme get this straight,” the clerk said slowly. “You want th’heaviest, largest, strongest lake-rated fishin’ ship we can build with full metal plating, reinforced underdeck, multiple cranes, harpoon frames, industrial winches, engine redundancy, cold tanks, live tanks, holding cages, floodproof chambers, defensive shutters, and a custom bridge.”

“Yep.”

The clerk shrugged immediately. “‘Kay. Rough estimate says three hundred thousand Marks. Payin’ in cash or fish?”

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Old Gael—broke clinic Gael—would crawl out from the grave of the past and strangle present Gael for not fainting upon hearing the price immediately. Fortunately, present Gael had screw-you money.

“Cash,” he said, raising a finger. “But only in a bit. Our money’s not moved up here yet. Can we pay in installments?”

“Aye.” The clerk tossed the questionnaire board over his shoulder without looking. Another associate sprinted past behind the counter, caught it with one hand, and kept running towards a back room filled with shouting, sawdust, and rolling wheels of parchment. Then the clerk leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “If you care about colors, cabin trim, figurehead, and all that pretty customer-feelin’ stuff, come in periodic-like and bother us. If you don’t, we’ll just start workin’ right away.”

Gael grinned. “Wonderful. How long does a ship of this scale usually take? A month or two?”

The clerk scratched his cheek. “About three days. Once it’s done, we’ll drive it to a dock of your choice.”

Both Gael and Maeve blinked.

Three days later, in the morning, the canal beside the Saint’s Hands warehouse was considerably more crowded than usual.

Gael stood on the dock outside their headquarters with Maeve, Fergal, Cara, Liorin, Evelyn, Jin, Vivi, and several dozen Saint’s Hands—all of them staring up at the enormous metal ship anchored beside the warehouse. Dozens more passersby had also gathered along the neighboring bridges and market platforms, drawn by the sight of something far too large to be ignored. Even Wraithpier locals, who treated monstrous fish, canal explosions, and fistfights in offices as basic weather, had stopped to look.

The ship deserved it.

When the shipwrights had asked Gael if he wanted to name the ship or give it some sort of theme, he’d jokingly said it should resemble a fortress on the sea. Well, the shipwrights had done exactly that. The hull was fully plated in dark metal, layered thick along the sides and reinforced with riveted ribs. No sails rose above it. No shit. Instead, squat exhaust stacks, crane frames, winch towers, harpoon mounts, and reinforced railings crowded the deck. It may not be as tall as the warehouse was, but it was almost as long, and for how large it was, it looked strangely comfortable sitting in the canal as well. He had to thank the Saint’s Hands for having the foresight of choosing a headquarters they could anchor their ship beside.

“... They weren’t kidding when they said three days, huh?” Maeve muttered, squinting as she craned her head back to take in the ship’s full size. “You think they employ Ironwych engineers with this sort of speed and efficiency?”

“Do Wraithpier guys look like they’d hire anyone outside of their immediate neighborhood?” Gael muttered back.

“True.”

Evelyn and Liorin were the first to move, grinning from ear to ear as they flew and leapt up the side of the ship with street-born confidence. Jin grabbed Vivi by the waist and jumped up without warning as well, though Fergal glanced at Cara, then awkwardly cleared his throat as he spread his arms.

“Want me to carry you up?”

Cara grabbed onto one of his spider arms in response, and that was all the physical contact Fergal was ever going to get, so the gangster boss leapt up as well, followed by the few dozen Saint’s Hands who were more than curious to see what was on the ship.

Moment of truth, I guess.

Is the ship as well-equipped inside as it looks from the outside?

He leapt up in a single bound with Maeve, landing on the deck with a soft tap.

Two decks: lower and upper. The lower deck made up the majority of the ship, and it was crowded with machinery. Six heavy cranes were installed on each side, mounted on rotating bases with chains thick enough to drag a Blight-Class Myrmur across half the war. Giant hooks hung from each of their reinforced arms. Harpoon frames also lined the rails between each of the giant rails, fitted with crank mechanisms and aiming wheels. Otherwise, there were grated panels all across the floor that peered down into underdeck tanks, cages for live catches, cold storage compartments, and reinforced holding chambers that Gael immediately marked useful for restraining Hosts. Several metal shutters could also rise along the railings to create barriers against strong waves.

Well.

‘Fortress’ really is the right word for it, then.

As Evelyn and Liorin started running their hands along the harpoon frames, eyes shining—and Jin and Vivi were also standing before some of the larger machinery, absolutely in awe at the architecture of it all—Gael, Maeve, Fergal, and Cara trudged up the stairs to the upper deck at the back of the ship.

The upper deck was where the bridge was: a control room with glass front walls that overlooked the entire lower deck and the waters beyond it. Gael had specified for the most advanced and complicated bridge the shipwrights could build, but apart from the steering wheel, some pressure gauges, the speaking tubes, and some signal levers, he really didn’t recognize any of the other weird-looking machinery and control panels built around the room.

“But would you look at that?” he murmured, immediately eyeing an instruction manual hanging from the steering wheel. “How kind of them to leave a booklet for us.”

While Maeve looked down over the deck by the front windows, Fergal inspected the many doors at the back of the bridge, and Cara studied the control panels with a frown, Gael snatched the instruction manual and flipped through it quickly. It’d been a while since he’d read a medical report, but the amount of diagrams, labels, warnings, and procedures in the first few pages already made him want to toss it aside. Still, he forced himself to power through it. Apparently the doors at the back of the bridge led down to the engine rooms, the steering rooms, the tank draining rooms, and countless other underdeck functionalities that required raw manpower to operate—he wouldn’t be doing his due diligence as a self-proclaimed ‘intelligent’ man if he didn’t at least try to read the manual.

After a minute, he snapped the manual shut and tossed it to one of the Saint’s Hands standing near the bridge door.

“Make copies of this and give them to everyone in the warehouse,” he ordered. “I want only the smartest Saint’s Hands we’ve got on board, and everyone needs to have a role. Split them between the engine crew, the underdeck mechanics crew, and the lower deck fishing crew. I want about… eh, fifty crew members on this ship by the end of the day. Tell them they’ll get a pay raise if they can do this job properly.”

The Saint’s Hand nodded, then turned and ran out of the bridge, already shouting for the others to follow him back to the warehouse. Gael watched him go, satisfied.

Right.

With that…

He stepped towards the steering wheel and placed one gloved hand on it.

“... No more waiting,” he said sternly, looking out the front glass walls. “The longer we wait, the more artificial Myrmur Hosts the Breeder can make. We’re sailing out tonight to start fishing.”