Corvus (Stars and Sails, Book 1)

Thirty-three (Part 1 of 3)

Dav, a boy of fourteen was the hired cook. After feeling a little upset about another dinner of beans, Aiden tried them and realized that beans could actually taste good. Tanner usually asked Hale to just heat up a can, but it was clear that Dav was in the practice of adding spices and whatnot. By all measures, Aiden was impressed.

Aiden loved the look of a morning after a foggy night. The mist still lingered over the water like gossamer. On the sails, the water puddled. Earlier, when they hauled up the foresail, the water fell onto their heads. It was as cold as a Greyportian Winter.

He leaned back on the gunwales and let the back of his pants soak with dew. He balanced his plate of beans in his hands. They thawed him out real nice like.

"Where's the Cap'n?" Dav peeked onto the main deck, balancing on the ladder with a bowl.

Aiden swallowed a bite. "Haven't seen h—"

"Probably still stuck in the hay," Haworth muttered. He took up a spoonful of the dark beans and stared at them. He glared at Dav. "What's up with you giving him a mammoth portion like that? I'm hungry too."

Dav leaned his chin on the deck. "He hired me, sir."

Haworth examined his food. "I don't want to call you a brownnoser, but if your head was any farther up his—"

Aiden cleared his throat. "You should make this again," he interrupted. "It's good."

Dav pulled himself up onto the main deck. His feet were bare. He plodded across the deck and went into the other cabins. "Mister Noble, sir! Gotchu your beans, sir," he called from below decks.

Aiden kicked Haworth in the shin. "Ouch! What the dash?" He jumped on his good leg, his beans nearly spilling into the ocean.

Aiden offered an apathetic shrug. "Stop being so ornery."

Haworth set his food on the gunwales. "You think I'm ornery?"

Aiden nodded. He ate a spoonful of the beans. They were rich with foreign spices. He kept eye contact with Haworth. "Yeah, kind of."

Dav shouted, his words incoherent. Aiden pulled back from his conversation. He set his plate down and jumped into the deckhouse. His feet hit the ground hard, searing at his ankles. He stumbled forward to Silas Noble's open door.

"What's going on?" Haworth shouted from the main deck. Aiden ignored him. Silas Noble's private cabin was sparse of belongings. His suitcase was messy with the haste of an impermanent stay—garments and shoes draped over top. Dav's plate of beans was on the ground, staining a white button up. Dav approached Noble's cot with a hand pressed over his mouth. The blood on the white sheets had dried to look like rust. The pillow was cut through, feathered down spilled out onto the floor. Faint hand prints traced the walls like someone had been trying to scale them. Aiden shuddered.

There was no more blood, no other sign of a struggle. If it could be believed, Silas Noble had vanished.

Aiden tugged on the back of Dav's shirt. He stepped away from the bed, his face shaken and his fingers quaking. Aiden moved forward. He pulled at the sheet. It unraveled, tumbling across the floor. A glass vial trundled out and rolled across the cabin.

It was empty, the top gone. At the sides, little flecks of powder were still left over. He rolled it up in Noble's shirt and stored it away. It was just like the vial he saw at the lighthouse, only this time, it had caused a man to vanish.