"Another waterspout, captain!" Daisy shouted from the crow's nest. "One point abaft the port beam!"

Duncan spun to the left and snapped the spyglass to his eye. "Damn it, Yorick," he muttered. "Where can they be coming from?"

"Damn," the human skull strapped to the drum above the ship's wheel muttered in that sand-rubbing-against-sand whisper of his. "Very much damn."

With a sigh, Duncan shot his navigator a glare. Yes, Yorick was the finest quartermaster on the seventeen seas, but he did have a tendency to get cryptic now and again. Which made sense, Duncan supposed. Vehemence was, after all, Yorick's crypt...

He shook his head and focused his attention back along the series of waterspouts that stretched down from the cloud cover behind them to swirl and gyrate over the gray, heaving sea. "Bear to starboard, Helm," he told the rakshasi at the wheel. "What does that make our heading now?"

Matyama growled, and Duncan glanced over at her, her orange, black, and white fur bristling along the back of her thick neck. "Due north, captain." She popped a claw from a forepaw and tapped it against Yorick's cranial sutures. "Much as I hate to agree with bone-breath here, this ain't like anything I've seen in twenty-five years crossing the Teldmark." Raising her snout, she sniffed the damp air, her whiskers spreading. "Maybe I wouldn't go so far as the call it damned, but it is damned unusual."

"Herded," Yorick said, his teeth rattling.

"Yes." Duncan hadn't wanted to say it out loud, but he'd been thinking the same thing during the two hours since the first waterspout had dipped down just off the port bow and had forced the first of the now eight course changes that had brought the Vehemence away from following the easterly trade winds toward Port Tropolis and the completion of his third voyage as captain.

He pulled at the beard he'd been trying to grow this trip and shifted his shoulders against the thick black wool of the coat that still felt too big for him. Mother would hoot with laughter about all this, of course. She had plenty of stories from her days as captain of the Vehemence, an old heavy frigate she'd bought four decades ago when the Larissian navy had decided that a hundred and fifty years without a major conflict on the planet meant that they could downsize a bit. Removing more than half the artillery had freed up quite a lot of space; she'd had it refitted for cargo, and the ship had become the flag vessel of the Hale Transport Line.

Duncan collapsed his spyglass. "Let's keep it steady as she goes for a while, then, Helm."

"Aye, sir." Matyama's tail lashed. "Though might be you'd best request that of the clouds."

Stepping to the bridge railing, Duncan looked down at the roughly three-dozen men and women, both human and non, of the starboard deck crew going about their afternoon watch duties. Most of these folk had sailed with Mother—some, like Yorick and Scupper, the joke-telling tentacle monster who kept the galley, had been with her from the very beginning—and Duncan had come to think of them as friends and colleagues during his eight years working up the ranks. So they deserved to know as much about what was going on as he did.

Which was to say as little as he did.

With a touch, he activated the spellspot embedded in the railing and winced as the blue fire of the loudspeaker magic flowed up his arm—it had a soundless hum to it that always rattled his teeth as it amplified his voice and image throughout the ship. "Attention, crew: this is the captain."

On deck, some folks turned to face aft, the rest continuing their work of setting the sails to catch the wind on this new course, though their pricked ears and shifting eyes let Duncan know they were paying attention. Putting on a smile, he exaggerated the upper-crust accent his father had worked so hard to instill in him: "We seem to have run into a bit of odd weather. Or rather, because I think running into it mightn't be the best of ideas, we'll be doing what we can to give it a miss and—"

"Captain Hale!" Daisy's croak rang out. "Two more spouts! Directly athwartships both port and starboard!"

He forced himself to merely glance up at the crow's nest, Daisy's glossy black wings standing out against the clouds and pointing at right angles to Vehemence's current direction of travel.

And that just about settled it in his mind. "Now, unless I miss my guess," he said, widening his phony smile, "we're being issued an invitation of some sort. And while I'd hate to stand accused of being a poor guest—" His gaze sought out the pixie hovering beside the main mast in her red handkerchief of a uniform. "Lieutenant Darling?"

She snapped to attention and shouted, "Sir!" with a timbre that he'd witnessed etching glass.

"I'll be calling action stations at this time."

"Sir!" the lieutenant shouted again, and as mustering cries went up, the air of the ship changed, the crew moving to general quarters with the ease of folks who had done this same thing with these same people for years. And while Duncan had been through his share of drills—and even a few engagements—when serving before the mast, it made the breath hitch in his throat to be the one giving the order.

Stepping back to the wheel as Daisy let the ship know she'd sighted two more waterspouts flanking them on either side, Duncan took his position beside the tigress demon at the helm. "You rakshas have a word, I believe, Matyama, if you'll excuse my terrible pronunciation: bhaya-sanketa."

"Forgiven, sir." She didn't look at him, her gaze instead running up and down the three masts, but she did grin. "But the actual term you're looking for is—" And she rumbled out a set of syllables Duncan was sure he could never even approximate. "My favorite translation is 'trouble magnet.'"

Yorick rattled his jaw. "'Danger drawn.' More poetic."

"Our little pedant." Matyama tapped the skull with a claw again. "Of course, your ma always preferred to say it was adventure that sought you out insteada you seeking out adventure."

Duncan couldn't help blinking at her. "Were you accustomed to discussing me with my mother?"

Matyama shrugged. "Many a long watch it was with just her and me and bone-breath to keep each another company, so naturally she and I talked of our kits." Her ears folded, and she called over her shoulder. "Ordinary!"

Oliver, a teenaged boy whom Duncan himself had signed aboard at the start of this voyage three months ago, hopped to his feet from where he'd been sitting along the railing. "Aye, Helm!"

She nodded forward. "My compliments to Bosun, but could he perhaps let out the main topgallant a bit? This is a fluky enough course without our sails being half-rigged."

"Aye!" The lad bounded down the stairs.

"Really?" Duncan eyed the ship's uppermost sail. "She looks fine to me."

"She is." Matyama's voice got very quiet. "I know how much you hate taking compliments, sir, so I wanted to send the lad away afore I told you how proud your ma's always been of you and how she never wanted any other to take Vehemence once she stepped down."

"Truth," Yorick murmured.

All Duncan's anxieties leaped to the fore—he was at best an Able-body among this crew; his weird luck made him the worst possible choice to captain a merchant vessel; nothing he'd ever done in his life could justify him ordering around any creature more intelligent than a goldfish—but when Matyama turned and gave him as gentle a smile as he'd ever seen on the rakshasi's scarred muzzle, he forced them down. "Duly noted, Helm, Quartermaster." He opened his spyglass again and focused on the newest portside waterspout. "And thank you."

---

They sailed on into the first dogwatch in this style, two more waterspouts appearing port and starboard at regular intervals and always at roughly the same distance from the ship. Duncan had asked Yorick early on if any known landmass lay along their current course, but the skull had only replied, "Doldrums."

But as bell had followed bell and the wind had kept up, Duncan had gotten itchier and itchier. "If these are the Doldrums," he finally asked, "wouldn't we have floats of sargassum weed tangling up the rudder and clinging to the keel?"

Yorick didn't reply, but Matyama nodded, snapping a chunk of meat from the bowl of stew Scupper's disconnected tentacles had been bringing up to the deck crew since three bells. "Whoever's issued this invitation, sir, well, I'm thinking if they can drop waterspouts any whichway they wish, they can clear the seaways and keep us under a favorable wind to get us wherever—"

"Land, ho!" Daisy cawed from above. "Dead ahead, captain!"

Duncan rushed to the rail. "Eyes aloft!" he shouted, whipping out his spyglass and focusing as best he could though the sheets and ropework. He could only make out a blur along the horizon, but the reports that Daisy started relaying down from the birds of prey who served as lookouts soon gave him a clear enough picture: a low island, rough, rocky, devoid of any vegetation, and perfectly crescent-shaped. About three miles in circumference, it wasn't more than half a mile across at its center, and the points of the crescent came together to form a narrow entrance to the inner harbor.

"Unnatural," Yorick said.

Matyama made a rude noise with her mouth. "And damned, too, I suppose?"

The skull again didn't reply, but more reports were coming in now as they drew ever nearer the place. The island appeared to have two structures: a large wharf jutting out straight and true from the crescent's center, and a building that the lookouts described as a mansion—"Five stories tall if it's an inch, sir, and broad enough to cover two football pitches!" Daisy shouted, relaying the words that only her crow's ears could pick up from the high-flying lookouts. "And built entirely of black stone!" The harbor, they said, looked easily deep enough for Vehemence to enter, and the wharf stood exactly high enough to reach the quarterdeck.

Which was as much as Duncan needed to hear. "Lieutenant Darling to the bridge!" he called, then aiming his voice toward the crow's nest, "All eyes to deck!"

As Daisy shrieked the order upward, a whooshing breeze brought Lt. Darling swooping over the bridge rail. "Sir!" the pixie shouted in what she no doubt considered a reasonable tone of voice.

But Duncan knew there wasn't time for another go-round with her about that. "Our potential hosts," he said instead, "seem to have spared no effort in making their intentions known. My question to you three is: do we accept their invitation?"

"No, sir!" barked the lieutenant. "Flying blind into a situation like this is only going to further endanger this ship, her crew, and her cargo! Speaking freely, Captain Hale, I recommend dropping anchor, heaving to, and waiting broadside with cannon ready for their next move!"

"Sail in," Yorick whispered, but his words seemed to reach Duncan's much more clearly than the lieutenant's. "No choice. These could destroy us with a finger twitch if they've fingers or not."

"Well, that's it." Matyama's big shoulders went up and down. "That I'm agreeing with Yorick yet again has at last convinced me: this place is damned."

Duncan nodded. "Very well. We'll continue on to dock. At that point, Darling, you'll have the conn while myself, Quartermaster Yorick, and Second Mate Matyama go ashore." He held up a hand, Darling's sky-blue face reddening to purple. "I know you'll keep Vehemence safe, lieutenant, and if she needs to fight or run, I'll want you at the helm. For now, though, return to station, if you please."

She vibrated another moment, then snapped out a salute. Duncan returned it, and she whisked away back down to the main deck.

"Just my luck," Matyama rumbled. "A formal mess, and my dress wear's at the cleaners."

"Party hats." Yorick made the whistling sound that passed as his laughter. "You and Captain can borrow from mine."

With a laugh that he tried to turn into a snort, Duncan moved to the rail and touched the spellspot. "Well, since our hosts have gone through so much trouble to prepare a berth for us, it would seem rude not to use it." He dropped as much of his act as he dared without letting the crew hear the tremble he felt in his voice. "We'll dock lightly, however, and Lt. Darling will be officer of the deck here on the bridge. I'll remind one and all that the safety of the ship is our first standing order and will ask port watch docking crews to report to stations." He pulled his finger away from the spot and shook the crackling remnants of its blue fire from his sleeve. "Take us in, then, Helm."

---

The waters of the harbor looked more like glass, Vehemence's wake smoothing out and vanishing in a way Duncan had never seen before. The wind died, too, just before Matyama could start giving her 'heave to' orders, and they coasted to a stop at exactly the embarkation point of the quay. Matyama turned the helm over to Lt. Pavichenko, a man Duncan had worked with when he was a midshipman and Pavichenko was an Able-body new to the crew, and Duncan unstrapped Yorick from his post above the wheel.

Petty Officer Grizelda, the griffin who'd been the ship's Master at Arms for as long as Duncan could remember, stood at the brow. She gave a clipped whistle and a salute; Duncan shifted Yorick into his left hand, returned the salute, and stepped out onto dock, Matyama looming in a very comforting way behind him.

The mansion sat exactly as the lookouts had said: alone on the entire island; squarely at the land end of the wharf; and with every column, porch, and balustrade seemingly carved from a single titanic chunk of matte black stone. Duncan pushed out a laugh and started forward. "At least there's no question where we're to go."

"No masking now," Yorick muttered. "In this place, be Captain Duncan Hale, not a carnival mirror image of Captain Gloriana Hale."

Matyama said nothing, but as soon as they'd progressed far enough down the quay so only the sharpest eyes on board might see it, Duncan felt her paw rest for half a heartbeat against his shoulder.

Fighting off the urge to reach for it and put it back, he jerked a quick nod and continued.

As they approached it, the mansion seemed to grow larger than the physics of such a situation would've allowed, and by the time they'd reached the end of the dock, the place had swollen to dimensions that put to shame every old-world palace Duncan had toured. A storm cloud was all he could think of to liken it to: dark and glowering and more moving toward him than he was moving toward it.

With a swallow, he mounted the first of the wide, black steps, his knees getting a bit shaky as the front doors, taller than Vehemence's main mast and broader than the entire ship, came closer and closer. Reaching at last the porch before them, he almost wanted to call for a rest break, but instead he led the way across the slightly crunchy stone, raised the hand not holding Yorick, and knocked three times.

The surface felt cold and crumbly as old snow against his knuckles, but it didn't crack or flake off or anything of the sort. The doors simply and soundlessly swung open, the interior beyond even darker than the exterior had led him to expect.

A warm puff of breath washed over the back of his head. "No butler," Matyama said. "Must mean they're an egalitarian bunch, eh?"

This time, Duncan didn't try to cover his laugh, and crossing the threshold, he stopped to let his eyes adjust—

And found he didn't have to, hazy light streaming down from somewhere above them to sparkle through the dust-filled air that seemed to fill the single vast room around them. A quick glance left and right confirmed that the only feature in the entire hall lay directly ahead: a dais carved from the same black rock atop which stood a solitary throne of a simple, square, and painfully austere design, although it being perhaps twenty feet tall at the back added some character to it.

Something shifted on the throne's seat, and Duncan's gaze moved down to see a figure nearly lost amid the plain grandeur surrounding it, robed, cloaked, and cowled completely in black as it was. A single head, as far as he could tell, without shoulders, arms, a torso, and legs with what appeared to be a single knee joint. Humanoid, the biology books still called such a shape, something that had caused Duncan to fidget in school though the planet's non-human beings used the term as well. Some with more rueful a chuckle than others, but still...

He shook his head, the scene making him feel stuffed with cobwebs. Starting across the room toward the dais, he put on as bright a smile as he could manage. "Good evening! I'm Captain Duncan Hale of the merchant vessel Vehemence." He raised Yorick with one hand and gestured back to Matyama with the other. "These are my First and Second Officers, Yorick and Parrarakash Matyama. I believe you wished for us to call upon you?"

The figure cocked its head so slowly, Duncan wasn't even sure it was doing it till they'd arrived at the foot of the dais and he could see for certain that its position had changed. "Merchant vessel?" a baritone voice asked, rustling cold and smooth out of the air rather than issuing from the figure as far as Duncan could tell. But at least the tone meant he could stop thinking of the figure as an 'it.'

The voice went on: "Did you not call yourself the captain of the Vehemence? And isn't the Vehemence the deadliest warship ever to sail the seventeen seas?"

That made Duncan blink. "Well, she was, sir. But, well, times and tastes change, and—"

"Don't patronize me!" Their host flared both his arms outward, dark purple energy coruscating around at the end of the sleeves where his hands should've been. "You stand within the Temple of Destruction, Mayhem, and Death! I've been searching for my missing colleagues, and the massive amount of death your ship has wrought in the world has drawn my attention in a way that few other mortal workings have! I must know why, and I will unleash myself upon you all unless you—!"

"It is I!" Yorick's eyes flared the dark, flickering red of a bonfire's last embers, and he floated slowly up from Duncan's hands. "I have cheated you, Death, and I shall recline willingly within your embrace if you spare the crew!"

"The Hell with that!" Matyama surged to Duncan's side, her arms bulging and her claws unsheathed. "You'll have to get through me to take him!"

Yorick spun in place to face her. "Cease your prattling, beast! I felt my damnation calling me when first those seaspouts appeared!"

"The Hell with that, too!"

"Stop it!" The voice's smoothness cracked. "I'm not—! This isn't—! Are you two crazy?" Their host raised an empty sleeve, the edges of it curling to point at Yorick. "Your death still awaits you as it does all mortals, so no, you're not here about you! You're here because of the ship! I want the Vehemence!"

Something tugged at Duncan about their host's manner, something familiar, but it merely tickled at the edges of his mind. Hoping for more time to observe, he asked, "And what would you want the ship for, sir?"

"To retake my place in the world!" Their host leaped from his sitting position. "For I should be a storm raging to every corner of the map, falling upon all mortals and showing them the truth of my power!"

"Your power?" That was a key phrase; Duncan was sure of it. Because— "It sounds more to me like you're describing the powers of those colleagues your mentioned, Destruction and Mayhem. They've gone missing, you said?"

The figure on the dais went completely still—except, Duncan saw, for a shiver in the area of the chest, a shape pressing for an instant against the cloth, a shape perhaps as large as Duncan's forearm.

Cold certainty shot along Duncan's spine. A mask. This whole place was nothing but an elaborate mask.

He took in a dusty breath. "Destruction and Mayhem: they were your parents, weren't they?"

The shiver in the figure's chest again gave him a tantalizing hint of a shape, but then the entire figure was drawing back and straightening to a height of over seven feet. "You dare?"

"But you can't be them." Duncan stepped around the still-floating Yorick so he could fix his attention completely upon the figure. "That storm you mentioned? That's not you. You're the calm at the center, don't you see?" He moved his hands sideways in front of himself. "Destruction is the front of the storm, but when he's passed through, it's you who follows, picking up the dead he's left behind. Then Mayhem is the storm's trailing edge, stirring her madness among the survivors."

Silence filled the hall. Duncan turned his palms upward. "We've had no call to summon Destruction and Mayhem for nearly two hundred years, and my guess is they've moved on to another world more in line with their habits. But while your vocation remains, all this—" He waved at their surroundings. "This isn't you. You bring sadness and grief, yes, but you also bring relief and release. You're not meant to be storming the world from some fiendish redoubt, whether it be this edifice or my ship. You're meant to be visiting the world body by body, touching it, knowing it, changing it, and moving on. And that's a service we can assist you with."

"What?" all three of the others cried out around him.

"Indeed!" Duncan rubbed his hands together. "You come aboard the Vehemence as a passenger, and we'll take you away from this unhealthy isolation and get you back to doing what you're supposed to be doing rather than what you think you're supposed to be doing." He spread his arms. "What say you to that?"

The figure remained motionless for another pair of heartbeats, then the cloak and cowl began to slump, collapsing to the dais like a balloon deflating.

Duncan felt another chill—had he somehow killed Death?

But the hem of the robe shifted, and out from within it crept a long black tomcat, so lanky Duncan could see his ribs through his fur. His eyes shone with a green iridescence, and Duncan wasn't entirely surprised when two bat wings unfolded from his shoulders. Leaping aloft, he flew down to hover directly in front of Duncan. "I shall work my passage, sir," a softer version of that baritone voice said, the cat's mouth not moving at all. "But with that one proviso, I accept your offer."

---

A quarter of the way back up the quay with Yorick in his arms, the winged tomcat drifting along easily on his left and Matyama moving a bit more bulkily on his right, Duncan realized he'd forgotten two rather important details. He glanced left. "I'm thinking we shouldn't call you Death once we get aboard. Have you any other names we can use?"

The tom blinked those green eyes, shining even in the cloudy twilight, but it was Matyama who spoke up. "Mort," she said.

Duncan swiveled his head to look up at her, and she shrugged. "It's still correct, but it won't be so 'on the nose' with the crew." She gave a grin that showed most of her various teeth. "Not many polyglots among 'em."

"Perfect," Yorick added, and Duncan had to agree.

"Yes," that shimmery voice said, the cat's whiskers curling into something that might have been a smile. "That will do nicely."

"And secondly," Duncan pursed his lips. "I can't think how we're to muster you. Normally, we sign new crew on as Ordinaries, but I doubt there's anything of that word about you. A more experienced recruit, we would call Able-bodied, but, well—" He gave Mort an appraising look. "I'm going to guess you've never been to sea before."

Mort shook his head. "Mother and Father preferred that I do my visitations remotely. I've not physically left the Temple in thousands of years unless I was accompanying them on one of their sorties."

Trying not to grind his teeth—anything that made the paperwork more difficult in this job, he'd discovered, was to be avoided at all costs—Duncan wracked his brain. "Then what berth can we give you? What station would be—?"

Yorick vibrated against his chest. "Ship's cat. We're done."

Matyama gave a full-throated guffaw. "Perfect! We've quite a crowd of non-sapient bugs and rodents nosing around belowdecks. Likely you can just flick a whisker and dead 'em up good, huh?"

Mort's ears folded. "I don't take those whose time hasn't come."

"Well?" Duncan raised a finger. "You're the final authority on these sorts of matters, aren't you?"

"Mother and Father always said—" He stopped and swallowed. "But no. As you showed me, Captain Hale, this has all been about me becoming me." Another possible smile slid onto the cat's face. "So I shall begin by applying myself tooth and claw to whatever you designate to be vermin."

"Baby steps," Yorick said, nodding.

"And?" Matyama was stroking her chin. "If I recall the regs, Ship's Cat goes in the junior wardroom." She nodded at Mort. "Doc and Padre and the rest'll be just the crowd you need to show you the ropes."

Duncan couldn't keep from laughing. "Then, Ship's Cat Mort—" He gestured to the prow of the Vehemence, rising up now only a few hundred feet away. "Welcome aboard."