The tides that pull, the salt that licks,
Grow quiet when the surface black,
Mirror of perfid firmament,
That it, like sea, demoniac.
- Lvnae -
Alexandria Hypatia was a woman of science. A woman of sound and rational mind – or at least, she had been. The incident at Addermire was a dim recollection, a half-remembered jumble of unreliable memories, but they affected her nonetheless, and she thought it a mercy that she could not recall them in greater detail. Just the knowledge of what she'd done was torment enough. So she drank the spiced teas Meagan would sometimes bring her, spent her days reading the treatises of Anton Sokolov, and sometimes her dreams were pleasant. If she was able to sleep, that is. Often she sat up nights.
The rundown ship that housed her was in constant need of repair, its cabins soaked with the smell of pan-roasted tobacco and spilled fuel, its holds bursting with Orbon rum and cigars piled high around the real cargo: guns and bullets and sticky opium tar. The good doctor wasn't troubled. Here in the South, honest work was few and far between, and she had spent too much time amongst Karnaca's impoverished silver miners, watching them smoke unfiltered cigarettes until their lungs turned black and left no room for dust, to condemn the captain for the alternative. Meagan might have been ill-tempered, but not once had Hypatia felt unsafe or unwelcome.
She still wondered if the ship's name was due to a grammatical error on the part of some unlettered seaman, or if the resentful play of words had instead meant to commemorate the welt left by some brutal punishment. Hypatia thought it tended to invoke the imagery of both. In any case, it didn't take long before she came to understand what was normal aboard the Dreadful Wale… and what was not.
It started with the singing.
19th Day, Month of Harvest
Tonight marks the second time I have woken to a strange and unexplained sound. It is not a song by any traditional definition of the word; there are no words in its sweetly disturbing, high-pitched resonance, no lyrics to break up the nebulous hum – but I am convinced that it is indeed a song. I obviously cannot speak to its subject matter, but… there is something familiar about it all the same.
I am tired. I will think on it tomorrow.
21st Day, Month of Harvest
The sound fades quickly upon my notice, lingering not more than two to three minutes. I also note that I have yet to record its occurrence in daylight. I have many theories. Maybe the engines produce this sound when the mercury falls below a certain point, or perhaps it is the cry of some nocturnal aquatic creature or creatures, but these explanations seem unsatisfactory to me and I am forced to consider the possibility that it exists only in the confines of my mind.
I obviously need more time to recover, and am infinitely grateful to the Captain for allowing me safe harbor aboard her ship. At the very least, I have put on some healthy weight. The meals she prepares in the galley are bland and greasy, but I find them more agreeable than any I have eaten in years.
I told her so and she scoffed.
It felt good to see her thoughts arranged in a manner that made sense, not like the jumbled scraps of paper and half-filled journals that'd filled her desk at Addermire, right up until they'd stopped altogether. But something good that had come out of that dark time. Knowing the potential side effects of her Addermire solution, knowing that she'd unwittingly put the very people she'd been trying to help in danger, Hypatia was determined to have the elixir removed from circulation. She would make a new solution. A better solution. She didn't know how she was going to accomplish it, what with the Grand Guard holding the city by the hair, but she was confident the answer would come to her.
She also had a feeling that answer would come in the form of Dunwall's twice-disgraced Royal Protector – and the man who'd saved her from herself. He'd carried her aboard the Dreadful Wale, into a place of safety and good company, and taken time to speak with her once she'd recovered enough of herself to hold a conversation. He was an older man, taciturn and grizzled, but Hypatia sensed a kindness beneath the callouses, and when he extended a hand to gesture in the direction of Karnaca, she clasped it between her own and thanked him for sparing her life.
In that moment she felt a strange crackle between her palms, a sensation that hovered on that otherworldly precipice of discomfort where the body is unable to tell if it's burning or freezing. Although the cabin had no windows, a damp gust of air caught her in the face. It smelled of black seas, and felt of being watched.
Corvo mutely removed his hand from her grasp.
In the days and weeks that followed, she saw comparatively little of Corvo, though he occasionally ate dinner with her and Meagan when he was aboard ship. Hypatia didn't know what he did when he was away, and Meagan was reticent with the details – but she could guess. And when she caught a glimpse of Corvo mutely sliding into his cabin just before dawn, blood and saltwater trailing from a rent in his coat, she went down to the head, gathered what medical supplies she could, and returned to find his door tightly barred. Hypatia rapped it with her knuckle.
"My lord? May I come in?"
There was a snort from the other side of the door.
"I am nobody's lord, doc. Go back to sleep."
"But you are in need of medical attention, are you not?" said Hypatia. "I remind you that I am perfectly qualified and willing to treat you. Open the door, please."
When there was no answer, she added softly, "It's the least I can do."
Boot heels thudded against the deck, and the door squalled open on too-tight hinges.
"I told you before, you don't owe me anything," Corvo reminded her.
"Then consider it a favor," said Hypatia, and she gently but firmly pushed her way into his cabin.
It was much smaller than her own, the extra space taken up by luggage crates and tankers of spare whale oil that'd been pushed against the walls, and Hypatia was struck by the sudden feeling of being underwater – of being in a ship that'd sunk into bottomless waters. She took a quick breath to reassure herself of the air that filled her lungs, but the feeling did not abate. Hypatia determinedly shoved it down. She had a task to perform and having some delusional, psychotic relapse would not do at all.
"Have a seat, please."
With a sigh, Corvo sat down on the edge of his bunk. His loose-fitting shirt smelled of sweat and other, even less pleasant odors. One side was soaked in blood. Hypatia disinfected her hands, then knelt to remove the garment. Beneath was a patchwork quilt of scars, some inflicted by blade, others by bullet. Hypatia inspected the new gash along Corvo's ribs and recognized the short, deep graze of an attempted stabbing.
"You certainly have interesting hobbies, Mr. Attano," she said.
Corvo made a noncommittal grunt, missing her attempt at brevity. Hypatia flushed the wound with a diluted solution of alcohol and water, amazed that her patient didn't utter a single sound during any of it. His dark gaze was fixed on the desk across from his bunk, though Hypatia doubted that any of its knickknacks were the true focus of his attention. She prepped a needle and a length of waxed thread.
"They say your duties to the crown included those of Royal Spymaster in addition to your other responsibilities," she said. "I presume that means going through the nobility's garbage?"
She got a response that time; a tired huff of air that might have been a laugh, and might have been something else entirely. "If going through the trash was my only task, I would have considered my life an easy one," said Corvo.
He didn't flinch as Hypatia threaded the needle through the ragged edge of his flesh.
"Ah, but you don't deny it," she jibed.
Corvo offered her a rueful smile.
"This your secret, doc? Getting your patient to talk so they don't notice what you're up to?"
"One of many. It's not just children who respond to briberies of candy," Hypatia answered in a conspiratorial whisper. "Everyone likes sweets, and anyone that says otherwise is a liar."
They lapsed into silence while Hypatia mopped the glut of blood that'd dribbled into the waistband of Corvo breaches. After a long moment, she gathered her thoughts.
"They also say you're an assassin, that you kill on a whim – but I've read the newspapers and know that every solider at Addermire was found alive. Crammed into debaucherous piles in many a dark and fetid place… but alive nonetheless."
She looked up to meet Corvo's eyes.
"Why not kill them?" she asked.
Corvo studied her for a long moment. "And here I thought the physician's oath was Do No Harm," he observed, watching her for a reaction.
Hypatia shrugged. "It's not that I am pleased… or displeased, as the case may be… it's only that I knew many of those men to be… barbarous. Oftentimes cruel. And they didn't come to me as patients. I only ask why you chose to spare them."
"Wanton butchery invites Chaos. I do not- I try not to take the lives of innocents," said Corvo gruffly.
"He brings no death. No blood. Only silence."
Hypatia whipped around to look at the desk.
A young man was sitting on the edge of it, elbows upon his thighs with his pale, clever hands dangling between his knees. He wore an inky black peacoat over plain trousers and sensible boots, no different from any of the whalers who frequented the docks and flaying beaches… except, of course, for his eyes. They were filled with endless darkness, a void so deep no light could ever pierce it.
Hypatia caught her breath. She knew the stories. Everyone did. They were as old as civilization on the Isles – and presumably even older, when man were little more than primeval barbarians gathered around a sputtering fire. Tales of a jagged gray realm so utterly indescribable, generations had spent their entire lives trying desperately to recreate what they'd seen in paintings and blood-smeared charcoal sketches. Whaling trawlers were rife with stories of raw-boned youths and graying seaman who'd drowned in icy seas, only to be hauled back aboard, their chests massaged and air blown into their mouths, and returned to life with the haunted look of those who'd glimpsed that dread place beyond reality-
-and the Black-Eyed God who dwelled on the threshold.
"Even hunted like a beast, he still tries to act with honor – sparing lives where and when he can," the Outsider continued, in a voice both painfully young and older than brooding time. "But do you know he's condemned men to a fate worse than death? Their heads shaven… their tongues ripped out… sentenced to die in the silver mines from which they once turned a tidy profit."
The words were not said in malice, merely delivered as a statement of fact, and Hypatia gulped air into lungs that felt increasingly tight. She jumped when she felt a hand on her knee.
"Hey. You doing alright?" Corvo asked.
Hypatia jerked around to face him, then directed an urgent look back at the desk.
Corvo flicked a cautious, narrow-eyed glance in the same direction. "Alexandria?"
The Outsider was gone.
"N-Nothing," said Hypatia quickly, returning her attention to Corvo. When the older man looked doubtful, she reluctantly added, "I'm still not well, Mr. Attano. I am still hearing voices and other… deliria."
Corvo made another of his noncommittal grunts, not necessarily agreeing with the explanation, but not pressing for another, either. Hypatia tied off her sutures and examined the neat, angry-looking crease they made against Corvo's skin. It would heal well, she surmised. So long as it didn't become infected – like the deeply inflamed scratch running the length of his neck. Hypatia gave him a dirty look.
"I was getting to pointing that out," said Corvo, his expression almost amused.
"Of course you were," Hypatia deadpanned.
She disinfected the area and applied some salve scrapped from the bottom of the tin. "What are your plans for Dunwall, once your business in Karnaca is over?" she asked quietly.
"Right now they are one and the same."
She'd figured as much. The newspapers and PSA broadcasts denounced him as the Crown Killer, the Empresses' hunting dog, and while neither was completely correct, each had a grain of truth. Hypatia didn't think he'd come to the southern Isle to soak in its exotic climate.
"Do you think Delilah really is a daughter of Emperor Kaldwin?"
"It doesn't matter," Corvo answered flatly. "Even if he fathered a second child out of wedlock, I do not trust her or her intentions, and I will not have her on the throne."
"After he'd freed little Emily from her captors, he taught her to fight. Taught her to kill, for the world is unkind to Empresses and little children."
Hypatia swallowed, her heart leaping back up to pound in her throat. Fine shivers cascaded down her arms as a cold, salt-damp breeze fanned the back of her neck, but she did not turn to see if the apparition had reappeared along with the voice. It was hard enough to ignore the sensation of movement at her back, the sound of footfalls softly pacing the deck.
"She tries to temper her actions with the memory of her mother's wisdom, but her blood burns with anger for those who would steal from her. When she escaped Dunwall Tower, she stabbed the traitor Ramsey in the throat and spat upon the corpse. He does not lecture. She is his sovereign, and his duty is ultimately to serve."
Hypatia dabbed salve on another scratch, obstinately keeping her eyes from wandering to somewhere that might hold a reflection. Corvo's left hand absently flexed against the bedsheets. Hypatia gestured to it with a slippery finger.
"So, is there some gangrene souvenir hidden beneath that, too?" she asked him meaningfully, indicating the leather band he'd wrapped around his palm. Corvo let out a humorless chuckle.
"A very old gangrene souvenir," he admitted, keeping it out of reach.
"Oh that hurts, Corvo," said the Outsider mildly.
Hypatia struggled to work the lump out of her throat, refusing to think on the odd comment because to acknowledge it would be to open a vista of thought she couldn't face right now. To her consternation, however, she realized her patient had run out of grievances for her to treat, and she couldn't very well remain kneeling in front of his bunk without good reason. She got to her feet, trying to act as though nothing was amiss as she repacked the alcohol and tins of salve, then washed her hands in the thin trickle of water that could be coerced from the sink.
"In the future, I implore you to come see me when these injuries occur," she said. "I'm available at all hours, and you won't even to have endure those ghastly wait times!"
She took a deep breath and turned around, trying not to focus on anything but Corvo – but the room was empty except for the two of them. Again. Hypatia's brows knitted together in frustration. Was she avoiding eye contact with a ghost, some phantom conjured up by her imagination? Somehow she didn't believe that, and in keeping with the classic irony of human psychology, she thought she would have preferred something instead of nothing.
"I'll keep it in mind, doc," said Corvo.
He stood up and began digging through one of the footlockers, presumably in search of a clean shirt, and Hypatia took a tentative step in the direction of the desk. A travel journal lay open on the blotter, its pages filled with cursive. Around it lay the scattered bones of whales; fragmented teeth and huge, heavy vertebra. Splintered ribs with their ends embedded in crude metal fixtures. Hypatia felt a chill skate down the length of her spine. She'd never encountered such objects personally, but she recognized them for what they were. Branded as heretical by the Abbey. Kept near and dear by those who believed in the power they contained.
Hypatia stretched out a hand. The Overseers were right, after all; presented with the forbidden, humanity was unable to resist a closer look. There was a romance in darkness. It drew curiosity, stoked the desire to taste the unknown. Life on the Isles was a perilous thing. They were a tiny island floating in the midst of vast, capricious seas. Who wouldn't look for an extra bit of luck, an extra scrap of protection against an uncertain existence?
There was a knife on the desk. A blade lain aside after being used to carve the bone with arcane symbols in a language long forgotten, if indeed it had ever been spoken by the tongue of man. Hypatia's fingers brushed their brittle surface and a familiar hum rose inside her mind. She thought of the mournful calls of whales echoing through dark oceans, their songs reflected in that place outside of time... a place both familiar and frightening.
Leather creaked, and Hypatia sucked a breath between clenched teeth as the Outsider casually leaned against the desk beside her. A unique odor hung about him like a miasma. It spoke of rot and things that'd drowned, but also of something fragrantly wet and infinitely harder to define, like the ambergris of slaughtered whales. Hypatia's hand began to shake as the bonecharms flared with spectral blue light emanating from deep pockets of marrow.
Not reacting to her presence.
Reacting to his.
"They lack elegance, his designs," he said conversationally. "There are no rituals, no blackened herbs or ashen moonlight... but they are crafted with singular purpose. Simple, unadorned conviction. I much prefer them to anything coming out of Karnaca these days."
Hypatia stifled a scream as Corvo suddenly took her by the elbow.
"Leave them be," he said gently. "They're not healthy."
There was no threat in his voice, no rebuke for the privacy she'd invaded, and when he gently pulled her aside, Hypatia did not resist. He bade her goodnight, thanked her for tending his wounds, and walked her across the hall to her own cabin. Shaken, Hypatia did not reemerge for some time. Many of her patients claimed to have seen the Outsider; usually those with no hope of recovery, who lingered cruelly on the deathbed, but Hypatia had never shared their experience – and considered herself blessed for the fact. She tried to relate the experience to her journal, but the proper words wouldn't come, so she arranged and rearranged her instruments until that, too, became an exercise in futility. She dozed and woke fitfully several times, and by the time the next evening's bloody light began to seep around the ill-fitting hatch in the wall, Hypatia wondered if she'd even slept at all.
She rose groggy and frustrated, and went into the galley to make a cup of strong tea. She was standing there waiting for the water to boil when Meagan came through the main hold, muttering unintelligible curses and shoving her arm into her jacket as she went. The captain swore when she was frustrated. She also swore when she was happy, so there was no way for Hypatia to know if it was a typical evening, or if something else had broken down. She listened to Meagan clomp up the stairwell, followed by a door opening and banging shut somewhere above. There were no dangerous pops or creaks from amidships, and the stench of burning whale oil wasn't permeating the cabins… so it was probably the former.
Hypatia yawned and added a second cup to the one waiting on the counter.
Five minutes later she emerged on deck with two steaming mugs. Nights were cold even in the southern latitudes, and the damp chill momentarily took Hypatia's breath away. She scanned the deck for Meagan and spotted her wrestling with an oilcloth. Hypatia made her way over.
"Good evening!" she said, projecting a cheer she didn't really feel.
"What's good about it?" Meagan grunted.
After another moment of struggling, she tugged the oilcloth aside and dragged it several feet away to lie in a heap. Hypatia stared down at six or seven whale oil canisters clustered into a rough circle, their contents glowing softly in the dim twilight. With the precious fuel being rationed across the Empire, it was all but impossible to buy more than three at a time. Hypatia concluded they must have been delivered sometime during the previous night, sold for a crate of guns and narcotics under the relative cover of darkness. She wordlessly held the mug out to Meagan.
"Rough day?" the captain remarked, giving her a once-over.
Hypatia nodded distractedly. The oncoming night had a queasy feeling of unreality to it, and she wrapped both hands around her mug to soak in its warmth. Meagan sipped hers without further comment, not even to say thank you, and as the silence began to stretch, Hypatia briefly wondered if she should fill it with some kind of small talk. There was a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, and she turned her head to see a gargantuan tail fluke arcing above the surface of the water some thirty feet off the starboard hull. It rose fifteen feet in a graceful arc, slippery grey mottled with patches of silver, then sunk beneath the choppy surface with nary a ripple to show for it. Another, much smaller fluke broke several feet to the left of that, followed by another.
Hypatia's mouth formed a small o of surprise. Like everyone on the Isles, even those not directly wedded to whaling industry, she knew the great beasts had been growing scare in recent years, forcing the trawlers to hunt further and further abroad in order to make their quota. To see so many, so close to port…
"Whales!" said Hypatia eloquently.
"Bout time you noticed. They've been following the ship like starving puppies."
It was a deceptively simple statement, but Hypatia's stomach cramped. An outboard motor coughed and turned over somewhere off the side of the ship, and she was not surprised to see the Dreadful Wale's lone skiff emerge from the shadows. As it arrowed off in the direction of Karnaca's lights, the pod of whales rolled to follow, trailing the froth churned up in the skiff's wake.
Hypatia felt a chill that had nothing to do with the breeze coming in off the water. It was common knowledge, the Outsider's kinship with the leviathans of the deep, and although the skiff only contained one occupant – his hood drawn up over a terrible, deathlike visage – Hypatia was sure there was another. If only in spirit. Unbidden, she recalled the stories out of Gristol fifteen years ago, stories of a masked shadow with incredible, impossible powers. The Rat King of Dunwall, who made some bargain with the powers of the night to restore the Imperial throne.
Meagan slurped the rest of her tea. "Alright. Shuffle aside or help me pack these downstairs. Your pick."
Hypatia pointed across the water. "Where's he going?"
"Same place he goes almost every night: to the shitholes and back alleys," Meagan groused. She set her mug on a nearby crate, directing a squinting look in the direction of the skiff. "If you're asking what shithole in particular… he mentioned something about Jindosh's manor."
It was a guarded answer, but it was enough. Hypatia thought of the rumors she'd heard coming out of that place, of a twisting, clockwork maze that reconfigured according to the whim of a sadistic madman. Many people had gone inside. Far as she knew, only the privileged wealthy had come back out. Had the Grand Inventor been accomplice to the plot that'd brought Dunwall to its knees, turned its young Empress out into corroded streets – and unleashed the cold and calculating wrath of its Royal Protector? Hypatia thought again of what the Outsider had said the previous night, about the world being an unkind place, and had to suppress a shudder.
She almost felt sorry for those that'd drawn Corvo's vengeful eye.
Almost.