The crew know, by this point, how to ascertain when one should stay out of your way, and the Merciless Modiste’s. A crewman salutes instinctively upon spotting you in the shadows beneath the funnel but masterfully translates this motion into a wave towards the Longshanks Gunner, herself shimmying out onto the barrel of the foredeck gun, as he spots the glint of the knife in your hand and realises you would probably prefer that your presence were not acknowledged. You steal inside and descend to the cargo hold, sliding balanced on the handrail the way that you used to as a child in order to avoid the loud ringing your footsteps would otherwise have made on the steel steps.
You steal across the hold’s dark, silent wooden floor, slipping as close as you dare to the crates of mushroom wine without brushing against them and prompting the jingling of the bottles within… and of the jars of red honey secreted into the compartments on the bottoms. Too close, you fear, for a clink rings out in the darkness. But wait! It isn’t close, but up ahead, and the crate you are skulking beside contains bales of parabola-linen. In the still air you perceive a curse, under the Modiste’s breath but nonetheless evidently her haughty voice.
You circle around the tall crate stacks into the pitch blackness beside the wall, creeping up through the gap between the hull and the crates on softened shoes until the crouched form of the Modiste, with the unmistakable silhouette of her hat and large fascinator, comes into view before you. She is facing away, watching intently at another dark corner, coiled to pounce like some regal London housecat getting up to mischief of which its noble owners could not imagine.
You lunge, grabbing her around the neck and twisting her to fall onto your waiting arm, gazing up at you as your knife meets her throat. It’s not quite perfect- there’s a clatter of glass from the crate next to you, although you could be sure neither you nor she touched it. She gasps quietly, excitement and reverence crossing her face, a recognition of your victory.
“Oh Captain.” She breathes deep against the razor sharp blade in your hand. “It seems I am bested once again. Are you counting? By my measure that is your fourth win in a row.” She sighs. “If I must be so thoroughly humiliated, I am glad that some of my best work graces the arm that bars my neck, but I fear that our little jaunts have begun to stagnate. I tire of them, like I have tired of so many other beautiful things in this world. You will draw your blade across my neck ever so gently, ever so masterfully… and I shall wake up in my bunk, defeated once again; with new scars to show for it, but nothing else. It bores me, Captain. This world bores me. I often wonder if perhaps my soul is too large for its vessel… if as much was true of all of us on Irrepressible, and that is why the Set collapsed. A tragedy, if so, for nothing in this world, certainly not in the neath, will be able truly to satisfy me. I am unsustainable! Insatiable!”
She purses her lips and avoids your gaze, and you see through her deception. This thought has not come suddenly to her cradled in your arms. That speech felt almost prepared. She always intended to say what she is opening her mouth for at this moment.
“Finish me, Captain.” She breathes, passionately. “You have been a gracious winner all this time, and your sportsmanship is admirable, but you have been denied your prize long enough, and me being as I am I will always be fated to meet my end by way of my own art, or my own pleasures. Finish me, and do with me what you will.”
As the words leave her lips, so too does her tall, tight collar leave her neck and peel in half, ever downwards, exposing her breast below as you undo the buttons, determined to give her the basic dignity of not tearing or bloodying the dress she values so highly. It will crumple, of course, there can be no helping that when she is cradled in your arm and the thing cannot be fully removed, but you manage to pull it down to her waist, slipping her arms out one at a time under your keen-eyed supervision, confiscating her knife as you go. She bares her pale breast to you, almost rapturously eyeing the glinting blade in your hand, and to her credit offers only a sharp intake of breath as it plunges downward and pierces her soft stomach. You slice upward until you hit her ribcage, sawing at it a little before you plunge your hand in and up and grab hold of her still beating heart. The light in her eyes begins to retreat and she goes slack in your arm. You take the opportunity to lower her to the floor, and free your off-hand to slice with her knife at the trappings of your prize, liberating it from its cradle of fat and muscle. As the Modiste expires, her lolling head staring back over your shoulder, you can almost swear you hear her gasp in surprise, her voice almost imperceptible, but then she is gone, and all that once fuelled her campaign throughout the pleasures of life and art drips quietly in your soaking hand. You heft the heart higher and regard the Modiste’s prone and eviscerated form with a touch of poetic regret, ruminating on the beautiful tragedy of ending such a driven artist and such a talented rival at knife and candle, before a dark-sleeved arm closes around your neck and the glint of a third, clean blade appears before your eyes, threatening your collarbone.
“Masterfully played, Captain.” A familiar voice whispers behind you. “But, alas, inattentively celebrated.”
The knife nicks your throat and you drop the Modiste’s heart, collapsing backwards into the arm at your throat. Blackness draws in to collapse the world almost instantly and the last thing you see is a single familiar eye triumphantly regarding you from beneath a large green hat…
You awake in pain, though not so much as you might have feared. Your joints are stiff and the wound at your neck is sticky and sore, but what immediately draws your attention is your inability to move your arms… or your legs… or your neck. You strain against the leather straps that bind you to the steel table beneath you as the harsh environs of the Cladery Heir’s operating theatre swims into focus above you.
“You’re awake.” The woman herself steps into view, a smug smile protruding from behind her curtains of russet hair. “How do you feel, Captain? None the worse for your unexpected little tumble I hope.”
You reply that you feel well enough, thank her for her attentions and ask her to release you from her table now that you are awake.
“No… I don’t think I will. Not just yet.” The Heir’s smile persists, but hardens with something almost like a knowing cruelty. “I think first, Captain, you and I need to have a talk. One that I realise now has been rather necessary for quite a while.”
She steps over to the dainty steel crank at the side of the table and winds it a little to tip your feet a little toward the floor and give you a wider view of the space, then locks it off again. She steps around in front of you and you see that she is dressed as she normally might be for surgery, with a large blade in her hand. You decide it must be a scalpel, but the edge is rather longer than you might expect, and it gives the implement an altogether threatening knife-like quality.
The Heir shakes her head as she spots you eyeing the blade. “As I suspected, you really can’t help yourself, can you? Oh dear, Captain, what an embarrassing and deadly little secret you have.”
You writhe in the restraints again and demand to know what she’s talking about.
“Tell me Captain.” The Heir teases. “Tell me truly: why does the Gunner continue to travel with us? She is competent, of course, and no doubt you look fondly upon your childhood together, but more skilled weapons officers have more than once presented themselves for your perusal. Not only that, but we have passed the Khanate several times, and no doubt you, attuned as you must be to your childhood friend, can feel far more acutely than I the yearning she feels to step upon its streets and let her life begin.” She purses her lips. “It’s a yearning I could relieve her of, for certain, but why should I? What is making you keep her here? Are you unable to let go of the last souvenir of your childhood, even though she wishes for it so? Perhaps. But I think it’s something else. I think that you’ve had plenty of opportunity to see what a violent girl she can be, has had to be, and it brings you a certain pleasure to know that she carries a switchblade in her boot.” Here the Heir massages her upper arm under her sleeve. “A fact that I had to find out the hard way.”
You protest to the Heir that she isn’t making any sense. What does the switchblade in the Longshanks Gunner’s boot have to do with anything?
“And the Modiste!” She continues. “That poor woman. I stitched her up again for you, by the way, she was in danger of making a mess. Her heart’s in that jar over there if you still want it. But what a business...”
You look over to the slab on the other side of the room to see that yes, the prone cold form of the Merciless Modiste lies there, with her heart floating in a jar of yellow fluid beside it.
“The two of you have been stalking each other like horrors out of the unterzee for months now.” The Heir says in an accusatory tone. “She made no secret of her addiction to Knife and Candle. But you! Anybody who dared to ask you just told that she was an engaging opponent, and that you were indulging her love of the game.” She leans in under the light so that the brim of her hat shadows much of her lean face.
“Nobody plays that much Knife and Candle as a favour, Captain.” She hisses. “Give our intelligence a little respect.”
You open your mouth to protest but she has already moved on to the next paragraph of her monologue.
“And that poor girl, the engineer.” She chides. “You don’t trust her, do you? Not completely. Fair enough of course, neither do I, though naturally I sympathise with her quest for her mother. But I’ve come to think you select for that. You can’t wait, can you, for an excuse to put a blade in her hand? No doubt it’ll come soon if you’re not dealt with.”
“Finally, of course, there’s me. You’ve been a help, thus far, and I’ve enjoyed my time here, but there comes a time when I can no longer ignore the truth of why I’m here, why you hold my services in particular to be so valuable when any number of cheaper surgeons can sew up the superficial wounds of your crew’s day to day lives without ever having to worry about injuries of the soul.”
You strain against the leather straps with all your might, but they won’t budge. The Heir puts a calming hand on your shoulder to quiet you as she stares at you sternly.
“You’ve a weakness, haven’t you, Captain?” She relishes the words as if she has caught you in a uniquely compromising position. “No matter how hard you try, you can’t resist a beautiful woman… with a knife.” Only her grin is visible beneath the shadow of her hat as she leans in close and holds the end of the scalpel by your breast.
Cowed, you can only stare at her, unresponsive. But you feel excited, your heart pumps violently in your chest as you regard the shapely form of her chin and the glinting metal tool in her hand.
“It’s a dangerous weakness to have.” She straightens up, taking the scalpel away. “There aren’t so many like the late Modiste here, tending to pick up a knife in fun. Most of us, when we do, intend to use it for one purpose or another.” She shakes her head in mock despair. “No doubt you’re keeping a beady eye out for some pretty jobbing chef or other to take up the knives of the kitchen, just so that you can feel a perverse little kick whenever you see her hard at work, barely daring to imagine yourself as the catch she’s expertly gutting with a long, sharp blade…” The Heir smirks at you as her eyes flick downwards toward your crotch for just a moment.
“Because that’s the other thing, isn’t it? You indulged the Modiste, and well you might, in your position I probably would have done too. But you don’t want to be the one claiming that grisly prize, not really.” She laughs, a rare and not altogether pleasant sound. “You dream of one of your blade-gripping beauties putting an end to you. Perhaps that way. Perhaps more slowly.”
At this point you are struggling not to weep. It’s humiliating to be spoken to this way, spoken to of truths of your own mind and body that you hadn’t even allowed yourself to truly know, by your surgeon, an officer under your command! You feel powerless, and not just because of your inability to escape her restraints…
“This is a problem, Captain. It has become a distraction.” The Heir paces back and forth in front of you. “And before I let you go, I must offer you an ultimatum. Well, not quite a true ultimatum. A choice.” She steps forward and fiddles with the strap about your right wrist, stepping sharply away from you as she frees it before circling the table to attend to the left. You fiddle with the strap around your neck, but it’s no use! It seems that can only be undone from behind the table surface itself, and without it free you can’t reach your ankles.
“The first option, and the more sensible, if perhaps the more dull, is this.” The Heir says matter-of-factly as she undoes the strap on your left wrist. “You allow me to relieve you of this little burden. It won’t cost you so much- twenty minutes and your backmost left bottom tooth, in fact, and you will no longer feel yourself drawn to ladies with blades. You will be free once again to captain this ship, and more masterfully than before.”
She looks at you pityingly, and in a hoarse whisper you ask her what the second option is.
“You restrain yourself.” She states, plainly. “You accept that your little fascination will ultimately bring you to a sticky end, and you control it as much as you can. You will let the Gunner go if she pleases, you will leave that poor engineer girl alone, you will keep the cook we have, and the Modiste’s replacement will be somebody competent but uninteresting.” She brings up the scalpel again and considers it in the harsh light. “And in return I will be your knife-wielding woman, and I will be your eventual sticky end.”
Your heart races and you feel the itchy closeness of sweat manifesting across your skin. You ask her what she means by that.
“I mean I’ll kill you.” She says, blithely. “With a blade. Probably this one, honestly, or maybe the larger one on the table there. Not right now. Probably not ever so soon. Not at any time you can predict, and not at any time when my own life or those of the crew might be endangered by your loss. But whenever you please and we both have the time, I will indulge your weakness by picking out a blade and explaining to you, in detail and via visual demonstration, just how I would like to cut you up with it. How I plan to slice you apart and dissect you ever so carefully, while you still breathe, because it’s what you want and you are too much of a worm ever to take the sensible option and have me remove that desire, and one time…” She smiles very widely, her thin lips revealing teeth of undoubtedly human provenance, but which menace like those of a devil. “...I’ll do it, there and then, and that will be the end of you.”
She straightens up. And looks away from you. You frown. You wriggle in the remaining restraints. And then, emboldened by the faltering tone you just managed to pick up in her voice, you strike. You ask her that one critical question, the one weapon you have managed to amass against her during this entire strange ordeal.
She turns, her eyes betraying surprise and more vulnerability than you anticipated.
“What do you mean?” She asks, a little trepidatiously.
You repeat the question, latching onto her uncertainty like a bound-shark lunges at a ship.
“Does that matter?” She asks, adjusting her hat nervously.
You say that you think it does, that perhaps it will not change so very much, but that it matters a great deal, given all she has said and done tonight. That perhaps it matters the most of anything.
She is quiet for a while. You watch her chew over your question, searching desperately for a reason to dismiss it out of hand, to refuse your turning the tables on her this late in the game. But she can find no such thing, and after a few moments, she sighs, and avoids your gaze.
“Yes.” She says. “I would very much enjoy it, and I want to do it. I would enjoy teasing you about what I want to do to you, and when the time comes to cut you up for real, something I strongly desire, I will enjoy that quite a lot.”
You remark that that rather suggests that she possesses a weakness of a similar, if perhaps complementary type to your own, and that she should be careful how haughtily she speaks of your penchant for blades and pretty girls.
“I agree.” She sighs, in a manner that suggests this admission comes against every fibre of her being. “And if you choose to have me operate on you, then it’s only fair I remove my own foible as well. I will, I promise you. On my oath as a surgeon, if you allow me to expunge your weakness, I will amputate my own in kind.” She looks over to you, the smug smile returning to her face as the balance of power swings back to her. “But I rather think, Captain, that you’ve already decided that that is neither here nor there.”
You have. You consider denying it, having some dignity, even lying impulsively and forcing your own hand. But she has you. You admit your feelings, and there in the Cladery Heir’s dingy operating room, you ask her to end you. Some modifications to the original ultimatum are possible, and make them you do: She will not speak of your secret to any of the other officers, or to the crew at large, and if at any time before she cuts you up you decide that you would rather be free of its burden, then she must arrange to remove it with no questions asked, and then remove her own, as she promised. But these are formalities, trifles with which you can play at clawing back some power. She has you well and truly in her web, and like the sorrow-spiders of Saviour’s Rocks, she will have her satisfaction from you and from your body.
“Well then Captain.” She smirks. “Congratulations on your most entertaining decision. In light of it, perhaps you might wish to unbutton that lovely shirt our dearly departed friend made for you. I think you might be surprised at what is beneath.”
You attempt to do so, fumbling with the buttons, but unable as you are to see what you’re doing while strapped to the table she is forced to undo the belts at your neck and legs. You stand up, sliding off the table, and from there easily relieve yourself of the shirt, which you notice surely is one that the Merciless Modiste made for you, but not the one you were wearing when you killed her. Of course, that one was likely ruined, stained with blood from the Modiste’s corpse. But that must mean… you place the shirt aside and look down at what the Heir did to your unconscious body before reclothing it from your own wardrobe.
Across your torso are dotted lines, marked in thick black ink. One runs from your groin to your collarbone, and various others mark loops around your arms, swoops under your ribs, lines from your shoulders to your breastbone, and so on.
“Just a first draft.” The Heir muses. “I think I’d like to slit you from stem to stern, up the middle like this. Like you really are a fish to be gutted. Perhaps not immediately, though, that would be too much too quick. First I’d want to get rid of all the extraneous parts of you. Your arms and legs, cut into slices for further examination later on. Perhaps not your pretty face, but that tongue will have to go, we don’t want you blabbing too much. I would of course leave you your… other area, because it’s so useful to use as a sort of thermometer for how much you’re enjoying yourself.” She removes her hat with a swoop and presses her forehead up against yours, brushing her hair aside so that both of her dark eyes look directly into your own, and you take in the fullness of her slyly smiling gaunt face.
“I want to know exactly how much of a pathetic little worm you are throughout the entire process.” She asserts, running her tongue along her teeth with relish. “I want to be in no doubt whatsoever as I cut more and more of you away exactly how much pleasure it’s causing you, against any reasonable appeal to sense or self-preservation. And do you know what? When I finally slit you open and start measuring out your guts into some neat little jars like these-” she taps the jar containing the Modiste’s heart. “-I’m going to make you thank me for ending your existence. You’ll expire in such exquisite agony and you’re going to be so grateful for it.”
She looks down and laughs. “It would be very reasonable for you to refuse now, Captain. To tell me that I’m insane and you will do no such thing. But unfortunately I fear your own body has betrayed your true feelings.” It’s true, and your face reddens as you try to look away from hers.
“Why don’t I make use of you?” She sneers, leaning away and unfastening her belt. She pulls down her breeches and her underwear beneath, then pushes on the top of your head to guide you down. When you make to refuse, the scalpel comes out again and gently nicks the corner of your lip.
“What is it they say about tongues in situations like these?” The Cladery Heir smiles cruelly. “Oh yes… use it or lose it.” She directs you once again to her oozing nethers. You don’t need telling a third time and acquiesce to her forcing her cunt onto your face as you kneel down on the cold operating room floor. A bead of blood running down your chin is quickly smeared away as she roughly buries your face into her sex, laughing softly as you begin exploring her with your apparently endangered tongue.
“Once you’re no more I’ll have to think what to do with the leftovers.” She muses aloud, pausing only to groan as she enjoys your subjugation. “I could box a lot of you up and salt it, sell it on to the Chapel of Lights. We both know what goes on there, don’t we? As for your more esoteric parts, I’m sure the University in London would be interested, at least that rather alarming scholar you’re so fond of would be. How does that sound?” She massages your scalp as you devotedly lick and suck her, putting a hand to your own groin as your eyes close in ecstasy. “Hmm… yes, I can see you very much approve. An academic collection it is for this at least, then. No doubt some of your less savoury parts I’ll just throw into the zee for whatever wishes them. And your heart… well, I think I’ve earned that for myself. Not as decisive a Knife and Candle lead as yours over the Modiste, but I did beat you on my first try, I’m sure that counts for something. Keep going, I’m… nrgh... almost there.”
She is, and in a few short moments she moans- a restrained, courteous moan, and guides your face away from her groin. Ever so gently, she tips your face upwards with the scalpel at your chin, but it is nevertheless so sharp that another bead of blood wells at point of contact.
“Clean yourself up, Captain.” She instructs. “For the moment, you are needed on deck. We’ll have time together again once our schedules align. Who knows, perhaps when you step through my door next time, you won’t be stepping out again.”
You wipe the various fluids from your face with a towelette that she immediately immerses in cold water to stop the blood staining. You go to splash some of the water on the ink but she puts a hand on your breast and menaces your throat with the scalpel.
“Leave those be.” She commands. “I haven’t decided if I’m keeping you yet, and it would be such a pain to redraw them when they’ll last a fair few days on their own.”
You put on your crumpled shirt, accept the Modiste’s heart in its murky jar (considerately hidden under a velvet cloth to spare the nerves of the crew) and slink out of her surgery with your heart racing, wondering how many days in the neath you have remaining before the Cladery Heir and her razor sharp scalpel decide you should have days no more...