The Exorcist Doctor

Nights in Wraithpier were relatively dark. Unlike Ironwych, the northern ward had no industrial lamps burning across entire districts, and unlike Bleakhearth, the northern ward had no entertainment spotlights, moth-lamps, or gaudy signs screaming at passersby to give them attention. Here, light sources were more old fashioned: ordinary lanterns. Hanging lanterns beneath eaves, lanterns swaying from rope bridges, lanterns nailed to docks, lanterns mounted along canal posts… all flickered weakly through blue mist and rain.

If nothing else, the lanterns added to the eerie atmosphere of the ward under rain.

Dark storm clouds smothered most of the moonlight, and the rain falling over the canals turned every wooden walkway around them slick and black. Gael’s ship had spotlights of its own mounted along the deck and bridge, but even those only carved narrow tunnels through the rain. Beyond the ship, Wraithpier remained a maze of shadows, water, lantern-glow, and crooked rooftops. If not for his night vision lenses—and his prismatic vision mutation he could use to see faint heat signatures and ultraviolet marks—he’d basically be driving a fortress blindly through the ward.

But that’s why we’ve got Saint’s Hands standing along the sides of the canal with lanterns.

As long as I can see them, I won’t crash into them.

With both hands on the wheel of his ship, he squinted out through the front glass walls again.

… Probably?

Oh well. He’d figure it out. After glancing back once more to check on Maeve, Fergal, Cara, Liorin, Evelyn, Jin, and Vivi—making sure they were all in the bridge with him—he leaned his head towards the coral speaking tube mounted beside the wheel. According to the instruction manual, it’d magnify his voice across the ship’s internal speakers and deck horns as long as he spoke clearly enough, so…

He cleared his through into the tube.

“Good evening, my lovely crew. This is your captain speaking,” he announced, his voice booming across the lower deck and the underdeck rooms. “Please be prepared for departure. Tonight, the Heartcord Fishing Company begins its glorious career of doing the Fishermen's job better than the Fishermen. I don’t think you’ve gotta hold onto anything while we churn the engines, but just in case, find something to hold onto while we head out to…” He paused, turning towards Jin. “What’s the deepwater lake called again?”

Jin, leaning against a wall, pointed up.

Everyone looked up.

Sure enough, the shipwrights had painted a rough map of Wraithpier across the ceiling of the bridge. The canals were black lines, the residential islands were pale patches, the deepwater lakes were drawn in dark blue, and several routes were marked with little brass pins that looked like they could be slid along grooves. In particular, the deepwater lake Jin and Vivi had scouted out over the past three days as being the hotspot for Mymur fishing was called ‘Gravesend Deep’, and… it didn’t take Gael long to find it. It sat just northeast of their warehouse, not too far from the shipwright district. A few turns through a few major canals and they’d get there.

“How thoughtful of them,” Gael murmured. “They put the map where I’d only notice it after embarrassing myself.”

Then he looked back down, glancing only once more at the instruction manual he’d nailed to the wheel before he started pulling levers and pushing buttons around the control panels.

The anchor chains groaned on the lower deck. Somewhere below, the engine rooms coughed, churned, then roared with a deep mechanical growl that vibrated even through the bridge. Outside, dozens of Saint’s Hands shouted over the rain as the ship’s side lights flickered on, signalling their departure to everyone within a five-neighborhood-radius.

Still, when the ship suddenly lurched forward, everyone had tograb onto something in the bridge just to stay up.

“Oh, we’re movin’!” Evelyn laughed.

“Ship walks!” Liorin cheered.

And as the two teenagers raced out of the bridge and down onto the lower deck to get a better feel of their movement, Gael gripped the wheel tight and stole another peek at the instruction manual.

“... You do know how to drive this thing, right?” Maeve asked worriedly, her gaze shifting between his face and the manual. “If I were to take the instructions from you, would you be able to get us to Gravesend Deep safely?”

Gael grinned at the rain-drenched darkness ahead. “Sure thing. It can’t be that hard.”

Thirty minutes later, their ship finally sailed out the widening canal into the vast expanse of Gravesend Deep. The locals may call it a lake, but as he’d told Maeve before, it was more akin to an inland sea than anything else. A person on one side of the lake would have to squint really hard to see any lanternlight on the other side of the lake, and at this time of night, only a few other fishing vessels were anchored out here, which meant they almost had this entire lake to themselves.

Gael wiped a bead of sweat from his chin and smiled, both hands still on the wheel.

“See?” he said cheerily. “I told you it can’t be that hard.”

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Nobody answered him immediately. Probably because the ship was burning down and everything around them was pure chaos.

On the lower deck, dozens of Saint’s Hands were sprinting back and forth through the rain with repair kits, rope coils, tools, buckets, and fire-smothering sheets. Evelyn shouted something about a lower hull breach. Liorin yelled that one of the engine rooms was making a church bell noise. Smoke curled from four of the eight side vents, and rain even dripped through cracks in the bridge ceiling where something had apparently loosened during one of their gentler collisions.

Cara and Vivi were seated along the side table of the bridge, both of them with their heads lowered and their arms propped against the wood. Unfortunately, that was their fault for not getting any medicine against seasickness from him before they departed. Fergal and Jin were doing slightly better, in the sense that both men were leaning against the wall with crossed arms and blank faces while pretending they were completely fine. In truth, it was also their fault for not having asked him for medicine. It couldn’t have been his driving, because if it really was that bad, Maeve wouldn’t be standing beside him with her umbrella open, shielding both of them from the rain dripping through the ceiling.

Of course, that didn’t mean her scowl couldn’t carve her initials into his bones.

“... You said you knew how to drive.”

Gael looked at her, offended. “We got here in one piece, didn’t we?”

As he said that, a loud metallic groan caught their attention. They both looked through the side window just in time to see one of the six giant cranes tilt sideways, shudder, and collapse overboard with a tremendous splash. Several Saint’s Hands on the lower deck shouted and scattered as the crane’s broken base sparked uselessly in the rain.

Cara, without lifting her head from the table, opened her accounting book and scribbled something down. “That’s another fifteen thousand Marks gone,” she muttered. “Repair fees for the ship alone are now at sixty thousand Marks.”

Gael waved her off. “We can pay for the repairs.”

“That’s sixty thousand for the ship,” she muttered back. “Not counting the four canal walls you scraped, the two storefronts you half-demolished with the cranes, the sixteen bridges you ran through, the dock awning that caught fire, the fish shrine you knocked into the water, the lantern line you tore down, and the private eel pen that is now free-range. Rough estimate… we owe the locals of Wraithpier eight hundred thousand Marks in reparation fees.”

“We don’t technically have to pay anyone anything,” Gael countered, grabbing his cane and pointing it at her. “The Fishermen don’t police the ward, so they won’t be knocking on our doors, and I doubt the people whose bridges and stores we just ran through would dare sue the Saint’s Hands, so—”

“First of all, you’re broke,” Fergal groaned from the wall, still clutching his head. “You do realize I handle over ninety percent of our combined income, and that I’m the one who pays for all of your collateral damage, right?”

“Well, technically speaking, without the Heartcord Clinic’s backing of the Saint’s Hands—”

“Shut it. From now on, I drive.”

Gael squinted at Fergal.

Then at the wheel.

Then at Fergal again.

“Alright,” he said, “but just one more spin.”

Before anyone could stop him, he spun the wheel eagerly with one hand and reached for the bottle of 98% alcohol he’d placed beside the control panel with the other. Unfortunately, Maeve snatched the bottle out of his grip before it reached his beak.

“No more drinking and driving,” she grumbled. “This thing is probably why you were so bad at it.”

“Boo. You’re no fun. But just give me a few more spins and I’ll—”

Fergal and Jin stepped forward before he could touch the wheel again, grabbed him by the shoulder, and tossed him out the front door. The windy rain immediately made his coat snap back, and he grunted the entire time he rolled down the stairs to the lower deck, somehow managing to land on his feet at the end.

Woo!

I’ve still got it!

Adjusting his top hat and twirling his cane, he immediately looked around Gravesend Deep. The rain struck the water in countless sharp ripples, and while the waves weren’t particularly strong, he did wobble over to the railings and hook his cane around a metal rod just so to put less effort on gripping the floor with his sealant setae.

He peered out across the black water, one hand pressed across his brows to shield himself from the rain. True enough, even with his night vision lenses and prismatic vision, seeing under the waves of Gravesend Deep was difficult. He was faintly aware of the so-called ‘radar’ technologies of the far east, but the shipwrights in Wraithpier didn’t know of them, and neither did he, so the ship didn’t come equipped with such functionalities.

They were going to have to look for their Myrmurs the traditional way.

“Turn on the spotlights!” he shouted back towards the bridge.

A moment later—while the Saint’s Hands were still running around trying to patch all the holes in their ship—four massive spotlights snapped on from atop the bridge, and cones of white light tore through the rain to illuminate sections of the lake around them.

Shapes revealed themselves beneath the waves.

It was immediately obvious what they were, since they fled and scattered the moment they were illuminated by the powerful spotlights. Long bodies twisted away from the light, broad shadows vanished into deeper blackness, and one brave shape passed close enough beneath the ship that Gael could see the outline of a jaw larger than a coffin before it, too, turned away and disappeared.

His smile widened as Maeve, Jin, and Vivi emerged from the bridge as well, bracing themselves against the wind and rain.

“And how are we going to do this?” Maeve shouted, grimacing and struggling to hold onto her umbrella as she trudged down the stairs. “With the cranes? The harpoons? Some machine hidden under the deck?”

In response, Gael reached behind his coat and began rummaging through one of his spinal repositories. He rummaged for a while. A little while longer. It wasn’t until Maeve finally reached him that he made her flinch by yanking out a giant extendable fishing rod, black metal segments snapping out one after another until the entire thing was twice as tall as he was.

He rested it over his shoulder and turned towards everyone with a bright, cheery grin.

“Alright, everyone!” he shouted. “First one to reel up a Myrmur gets a massive pay raise!”

From the bridge, Fergal gave him the finger. Gael pretended he didn’t see it.