Mutiny Paranoia

The tension on the ship was unbearable. Spade said he was aware of it and pestered Serenica to keep an eye on Seppei. There was little she could do, though, as the young man seemed to be consciously avoiding her.

She avoided the captain as well. It seemed like a bright idea to stay away from someone so closely linked with death.

It became hard, though. Spade followed her around as a vast, silent shadow, guarding her every step. She thought he feared for her sake, but what he imagined he could do against the Mother of Worms, that detail Serenica didn't know nor did she particularly like to imagine it in detail. All she knew was that his grandiose delusions were getting worse. He spoke of himself as if he could decide who lived and who died. In a way it was true, of course. The captain had the final say on many things, the most important of which was whom to keelhaul if the rumors of mutiny got serious.

Serenica had not heard anything about an actual mutiny. She was anxious. The paranoia was getting to her, too.

"You people are insane," the Admiral repeated during one cathartic pipe session.

Those moments were rare and precious. With the first mate, Serenica could relax for a while, but he was worried as well and there was nothing else he wanted to talk about.

"I know," Serenica said. "If I could help, I would."

"Have you given them herbs?"

"I have," Serenica confessed. "In the soup. It didn't help."

The winds were unfavorable. They had been that way for a while, despite the promising start from Aja Vana. The voyage to Neul would take far longer than expected, and it could be costly. The way things looked right now gave little hope of them all getting to see Kinley beheaded.

"There must be a reason for this madness," the Admiral said. "It isn't Spade. Don't think of him like that. He has been chatting with the dead for so many years. You think they'll just start acting up all of a sudden like this? With no reason? No. My guess is that this is a combination of mutiny paranoia and something else, something far more concrete."

"Do tell." Serenica was desperate for anything that could have turned the tide.

The first mate shook his head. "I don't know. I'm not sure."

Serenica blew a smoke ring with a trick she had known from her girlhood.

"You have to teach me that," the Admiral said.

Serenica stared at the ring until she was certain that she could see the Mother in it.

"Could it be in the tobacco?" she asked. "What if it's been poisoned?"

They did some important tests on the tobacco that most of the men used, either as something to chew or in their crude little sailor pipes.

There was nothing unusual about the brown, dried shreds of the delicious leaves.

Serenica went to bed early. She was feeling nauseous as well, and the last thing she wanted to do was to vomit in front of everyone.

Myorka came to apologize to her.

"I don't know what's wrong with me. All I can think of is dying on the seas without a chance of ever meeting my son."

"How do you know you will have a son and not a daughter?" Serenica asked.

"I just know. Please, Serenica, you are the closest thing to a doctor we have. Please make us sane again."

"It's a bit hard to do that while going crazy myself," Serenica said. "I have tried many things, none of which have worked at all. No hostile entity has poisoned the water or the food, I have tested everything. I have ways of knowing if someone drops some ink of the snake or something like that into the soup with bad intent. Those thoughts are hard not to hear, even to witches like me with little to none scrying experience. A poisoner's mind is a loud one. If it weren't so, I'd kill Kinley by putting a lethal amount of something into her corna or her wine. The tobacco's all right as well. I don't understand what it is."

After her monologue she felt she had nothing useful to say or do. It had been in vain, from the murder of her landlord to this irritating silent space between her and her dear friend, the bookkeeper, who was just as desperate as she was.

"Talk with William," Myorka said as she was leaving. "He is still in his senses. You'll figure it out. Or at least I hope so."

Spade came to her, wanting to talk about the possibility of a mutiny again.

"Are you sure you're not imagining things?" Serenica asked him. "I am tired. Some of the men, including your beloved Seppei, whose thoughts you are so invested in, they really believe it's Little John's ghost plaguing us for what you did to him. They say that one should have been thrown overboard the minute he died."

"So that's it!" The captain snapped his fingers. "The poor boys imagine the halfwit has the power to come back on his own! The only thing I have to do is show that weaklings do not, in fact, come back to life."

Serenica yawned. "So you're going to kill a weakling?"

"Exactly! Thank you, Serenica Ingram. You're worth your weight in gold."

Serenica jumped up instantly. "You are not going to kill anyone. Not even those you have bad thoughts about."

"And how are you planning to prevent me from doing so?"

"I will personally see that your corpse is properly buried and Deim will never get you to fulfill your end of that sick deal," Serenica snapped.

She was talking big for a woman so small, but the rage she was feeling right now was everything but tiny. She stormed out of her own workspace, filling her pipe as she walked across the deck towards the only sane man left on the entire ship.