A Beginning

The night was chilly for June, and bathed in silver mist that drifted inland from the harbor. Men that worked the wharves huddled in close groups for warmth, whispering about the still air and thickening clouds. In the pubs, crowded with roughly clad seafarers, there was little of the usual scurrilous chatter. There was something in the saline breath of the breeze, hovering and indistinct, that weighed heavily on the mind of every sailor worth half his salt.
In the gloom of The Serpent’s Tongue, a bar infamous for its shifty customers, a man smoked lazily in a corner, reclining in an ancient driftwood rocker and wrapped in shadow. The gleam of the embers from his long clay pipe illuminated his eyes, the gray-green of windy waves. Scraggly amber hair and beard concealed the remainder of his sun-browned face, and his raiment was worn, though neatly kept. The man spoke to none of the few fellow sailors in the bar, but watched, eyes flickering in the pipe-light, expectantly, as if waiting for something to happen.
A gust of briny air gasped into the bar as the door slammed open and shut quickly. A figure in a blue-black cloak made its way to the corner where the man sat in a cloud of his own grey smoke, keeping its head hooded and obscure. Only when it reached the man, who dragged a chair out of the smoke and gestured to it silently, did the figure uncover its face.
There sat a woman of uncommon beauty, with black hair curling in the humidity and cheeks rosy with exertion. She carried her head proudly upon an elegant white neck, and the necklace at her throat bore a gleaming jewel of no small value. Her hands were small and soft, like pale spiders, and her nails had been carefully polished. She looked entirely out of place in the bar, amidst the smoke and shadows, but her face was visible for only a moment, before any but the gentleman with which she had business had seen her.
“What news?” spoke the man, with a leer that might have been an attempt at a smile.
“She’s escaped, Truske. Sometime in the night. We…we can’t find her.”
“Ah.”
Truske and the woman sat in silence for some minutes, each brooding on fate and fortune, each hungrily curious for the thoughts of the other. Finally the woman broke the quiet.
“Aren’t you angry with them?” she asked. “Aren’t you going to punish them?”
Truske raised his eyebrows. “What would that accomplish? She is gone, and me raging and storming won’t do a bit of good. Besides, I’ve been expecting this.”
The woman nodded.
“Do you sail again?” she asked, her voice impassive.
“Yes, within the week. To the Islands. What of it?”
“Nothing. I merely thought you might...”
“Might what? Search for her? You know as well as I that any search we could commence would end fruitlessly. She will come back in her own time.”
“Aye, I suppose.”
Truske noted the low disappointment in his companion’s voice, but ignored it. He hadn’t time to chase escaped prisoners all over the land. There was much to be done before his voyage.
“You ought to be getting back, before this storm breaks,” said Truske, nodding at the door. “It isn’t safe here for –”
He broke off. The woman knew for whom the wharves were and were not safe. With the slightest bow of the head, she stood and departed. The door banged shut behind her.
Evening dragged on into night. The air reached a new level of suffocation, and heat lightning danced along the sky, veining the clouds with icy blue. Truske remained in the chair, smoking the last of his tobacco, observing the rumble of the waves from the filthy window, his mind on the prisoner. He did not know what fate had in store for her, though he thought he could guess. He believed that she did not know herself. She would not know until Truske returned to find her, and who could ever know when that would be?