Chapter Text
On The Dreadful Wale, Billie scrubbed her gloves in the galley sink until the leather cracked. Her hands and clothes were covered in that disgusting rat-booze the Eyeless brewed, thanks to that contract she took, but at least she had some more cash on hand now. She was also a few bonecharms richer: these were handcrafted with boons of healing and strength, one of which she tucked into Daud’s coat pocket while he slept off a month of imprisonment and abuse.
The portrait of The Outsider glared at her from in the hold, and Billie glared right back as she passed it on her way to her cabin. She wished she hadn’t kept the spare frame from when Anton Sokolov was her passenger. The portrait gave her the creeps.
Daud was still sleeping. He’d been passed out on the spare cot when Billie returned to the ship, an open book resting on his chest. Most of the vines and flowers had concealed themselves, but one cluster of those strange orange blooms remained on Daud’s lapel. They didn’t smell sickly sweet like the Brigmore Witches’ roses did—the orange flowers barely had a scent as far as Billie could tell. The petals had ridges like the fins of a hagfish and were sturdier than roses. Billie wondered if the ivy and flowers had any magical properties, or if the curse chooses what grows in its host. She briefly touched a petal before pulling her hand away and leaving Daud to rest.
In her cabin, she shrugged her bandoliers off and laid her knife on her desk. Billie looked at Deidre’s sketch on her wall, posted alongside articles about Emily, Anton, and Aramis. Deidre’s kind eyes stared over Billie’s shoulder, fixated on the wall by her bed. Billie scooted her desk chair back and sat down, resting her head on her arms. “My sweet Deidre,” she said. “What would you say about all this?”
Deidre’s portrait did not respond. Billie reached into her pocket and pulled out the carved heart Deidre gave her and ran her thumb across the swirling motifs covering its surface. With the heart’s magic she could hear the rats in the engine room whispering and scurrying along the pipes. Billie closed her eyes and listened to her ship to try and calm her racing mind.
The Dreadful Wale was her pride and joy. Ever since she was a little girl, Billie wanted to be the captain of her own ship. The Wale was just big enough for her and a few passengers, and she’s fixed it up nicely from the sorry state she’d bought it in. Though, despite this dream-come-true, she’d been finding less and less happiness from sailing recently. Keeping a ship was a chore, yes, but she’d been having to force herself to leave her cabin ever since she dropped Anton off in Tyvia two months ago.
Suddenly, the air shifted and everything around her froze. She heard the distinct shattering sound of someone blinking into her cabin and she reached for her knife. Billie wheeled around to face the intruder, swinging the blunt edge of her knife towards the figure sitting on her cot.
The Outsider lifted his hand and caught hold of the knife blade. “The waters are calm today, Billie Lurk.” the deity greeted. The tight-lipped smile he wore didn’t match his stony glare that bored into Billie’s soul. “The ocean and those who traverse it are so similar, don’t you think? One minute the sea is flat and easy, then turns raging and—”
“You,” Billie spat. She yanked her knife away from The Outsider, still keeping its tip aimed at him. “What do you want from me?” It seemed all too coincidental that The Outsider would appear now, just after Daud spoke about the Knife. Billie returned the god’s glare with twice the intensity as he blinked up at her.
The Outsider’s eyebrows raised in shock that Billie had interrupted him, but he quickly composed himself and began pacing around her cabin. He said nothing until he disappeared in a swirl of Void-rock, then reappeared in front of Billie and grasped her arm. “What in the Void—” Billie gasped, struggling against The Outsider’s vise-like grip.
“Most people want something from me, but you don’t want my usual gifts, do you, Billie Lurk? Curious, seeing that you’ve missed using the Arcane Bond these long years,” the deity said. Billie scrunched up her nose in confusion at the sadness in The Outsider’s voice, but her attention quickly turned to the searing pain in her right arm. Void magic twisted thick around her flesh and burned like hot oil. “Hey—wait! What are you—” Billie shouted, cutting herself off with a cry of pain as The Outsider shoved something hard and freezing cold onto her face.
Billie stumbled backwards against her desk and clawed at the cold thing over her eye. The Outsider watched patiently as she gaped at the shattered, corpse-like thing her arm had become. She was acutely aware of her veins and tendons pulling against bone as she clenched her right fist. She lunged at The Outsider, who merely disappeared and rematerialized behind her. “You will never be the same, Billie Lurk. Such change would’ve happened to you even without my help. I’ll be eagerly watching for your next move,” he said with a sharp-toothed grin.
Time resumed and The Outsider vanished back into the Void. Billie stared at where the whale god had stood, chest heaving as her arm and eye prickled and seared. She caught her reflection in the dark glass of her lantern and saw her eye had been replaced with a black stone that glowed blood red in the center. Her fingers ghosted over the stone’s jagged surface, feeling the skin around the edges. The stone had cut her above her eyebrow when The Outsider forced it onto her face, and she could feel a thin trickle of blood following the slope of her nose. She didn’t want to study her “new” arm too closely; when she moved it she could hear bone clacking together.
“Billie? What happened?” Daud’s muffled voice called from in the hold.
Billie opened her cabin’s door to find Daud sagging against the wall, frowning at her. “Did you feel him? The Outsider?” Billie asked. Her right arm twitched and she clamped her other hand down on the remaining flesh. She took a few steps towards Daud, but stopped short before she could reach out to him.
Daud nodded. “Yeah, I felt him come through. Didn’t see him, but—” His eyes fell on her ruined arm and eye. “Billie…” Daud rasped.
Billie shook her head and set her jaw. “Nothing I can’t handle. At least I can still see and use this,” she replied, wiggling the dry fingers of her right arm. Daud huffed out a laugh and a ghost of a smile flickered on his face. “Of course, of course,” he said. He used the wall to help turn himself around and limped back over to his cot. Billie followed him into the hold to see that he got settled, and to grab something to eat. She glared at The Outsider’s portrait again as she passed it. This time when she looked closer, it felt like the painting was smiling devilishly back at her.