The bowed floorboards are distinctly hideous, Kirin Jindosh concludes as he groggily regains consciousness. He's been to quite a few unfortunate places—one often has to when one is positioned to remake the age and yet is horribly misunderstood by the hoi polloi, his fellows, and the police—but none quite so miserable as this swaying floorboard with its dents and dashes, like the telegraph of a madman. And yet, given his current circumstances, he'd rather be listening to the dronings of the common criminal than trying to deduce what line of unfortunate events brought him here.
Well, knowing was the first part of escaping.
There's a pain along the edges of his mind, curling around the right side of his face—he imagines it red, radiating, blurring into his cells like an oil smudge. He wants to retch from the pain, but he pushes the sensation down instead, surgically cuts it from his immediate awareness; he has learned how, he has had to learn how a long while ago. The way this pain dulls his thoughts frightens him, and as he lifts his right hand to massage the painful part of his head, he finds he cannot.
Someone has had the gall to shackle his wrist to one of the Void-forsaken pipes in this empty, windowless cabin. Just one wrist though. His other hand, denuded of its prosthetic, is still free.
Lovely. Charming. A delightful turn of events.
There were only a few reasons someone would want to do this to him: ransom, organ theft, sexual depravity, revenge... It wasn't as though he had a shortage of enemies, but some contenders were more likely than others. Probably not the duke, or the mechanical-parts supplier. Or a disgruntled former employee. He'd heard rumors of a Karnacan cult that stole blood from the dying to drink, but he'd dismissed it as utter nonsense. Then, all the pieces fall into place: the windowless cabin, the precautions to keep him from leaving or knowing when or where he was.
The empress must have him.
He swears to himself.
What a fine mess. He searches through the painful haze of his memory for anything that could tell him what preceded this: he'd been tinkering at his desk with some hardware for a clockwork soldier, thinking about what he'd do to dear old Anton next and steadfastly ignoring the pair of nobles who'd come to purchase one or two clockwork soldiers for themselves. Then, he was suffocating: there had been strong arms around his throat (like a common mugger, his mind adds sulkily) and then he must have blacked out. (Did he hit his head on the desk when he fell unconscious? Had he been dropped at some point along the long way from the Upper Aventa district to wherever he is now? He doesn't particularly relish the idea that he was handled with the same care a serving girl might give to a sack of potatoes.)
A clanging sounds out somewhere in the depths of the ship. An engine misfiring.
His head throbs in sympathy, and he closes his eyes to ground himself. He wants to retch from this auditory invasion into his mind, but he holds it back. If he's being held by the empress, there's only one reason for that. What was the saying? All birds return to the roost. (If he's amused by anything, it's that his mind doesn't bother to feign the pretense of Delilah being his empress. He holds no ill will towards Emily or the rest of the Kaldwin line; he just can see a good opportunity when he sees one, or when it sees him as it crawls out of the inky sea of the Void. Either way, he intends on making the most of it.)
He steadies himself. He's acutely aware that he's skipped out on one or two days worth of meals now. That frustrating bodily demand stretches painfully in his gut. Never mind. He'll see about that later, or perhaps his captor will. Or won't. Too many variables. He's never met the empress, and he's almost flattered she tracked him down in Karnaca—but then again, if the main constituents of a coup were all from the same city, he'd probably do the same. A less flattering conclusion. He'll have to ask how she got into his office undetected.
He turns his attention to his current accommodations. There's no dust or build-up on the frame of the folded cot. It's as spotless as anything on the ship could be, and a faint sweetness of boiled herbs and acridness of bloodfly viscera clings to the walls, reminiscent of Addermire Solution. Not in the sense of an opened bottle, but rather small-scale production. Hypatia? Had she been here first?
Oh, now his curiosity is piqued.
He tries keeping time by the rhythmic struggles of the secondary engine, but that does him no good without a starting point. It could be early evening, late night, or morning for all he can tell. Nevertheless, he waits only half an hour before the door opens and someone checks on him.
"Good, you're awake," the woman says, with the tone of someone who intends to be taken seriously. She surveys his form briefly. "And in better condition than I would have left you in."
"Charming accommodations," Jindosh retorts, hoarsely. "My compliments to the designer."
The woman kneels, so they are face to face. A deadly poise in her movements: sharp and practiced. "I know you think you're very clever, but I'm the captain of this ship. And I saw what you did to Anton. I have half a mind to drop you straight into the ocean for that one. Now, you can either shape up, or you can find out how the water feels this time of year."
She's not just a ship captain, Jindosh decides. She has the movement of a killer, even without her arm and eye.
"Understood," he manages.
"I'm glad," she replies with not a hint of mirth. "Emily has some questions for you, and if you're smart, you'll answer them."
Jindosh recognizes the empress's face only from coins. In the flesh, her face still has the softness of youth; she's tall and sinewy, with a tightly controlled poise to her movements. A hint of the back-alley—her father, perhaps. Dark hair from her mother, training from her father.
What brings you to my lovely abode, he almost replies, not quite knowing when to give in, but then he thinks the better of it. "Empress Emily," he says, gritting his teeth. "What a delight to see you." How was the travel from Dunwall? Oh, you were fleeing a coup? How inconvenient. I hear the weather down here is much more pleasant, anyway. First time in Karnaca?
"I can imagine," she says sweetly. A woman aware of her power. "Dr. Hypatia said that you and her visited the home of Aramis Stilton, and there something bad happened. What was it?"
"I wouldn't call it a visit," Jindosh amends.
"What would you call it?" Emily asks with polite, measured interest at the same moment that the woman next to her swears.
"He's going to be doing this all night," she tells Emily. "Men like him have no real understanding of consequences. They've never had to face them."
It's night, then. He must have been unconscious for a truly worrying amount of time. Here's to hoping her little stunt didn't give him brain damage on top of everything.
"Traitor or not, he is still my subject," Emily replies evenly.
Good to know that torture wasn't on the table tonight. It was probably best to cooperate. "We held a séance," he offers in the same careful tone reserved for Duke Luca.
"For dead people?" the captain asks disdainfully.
Jindosh is careful to parcel out his words. He's not sure how far he wants to implicate anyone else. If the empress thinks it was just him and Hypatia, well, it might be useful to keep the rest of his knowledge hidden. A few cards up his sleeve. "For Delilah."
"To talk with her?" Emily asks, her brow furrowed.
Jindosh breathes in deeply. This is going very poorly for him right now. "To resurrect her."
The captain bites her lip. "Witchcraft. I fucking knew it. There's no way it was just him." She rounds on Jindosh. "Whose idea was it? I know damn well it wasn't yours."
That stings a little. Jindosh cannot help but glance around the room for anything that could help his situation. Finding nothing, he reluctantly says, "An associate of mine."
"Names, Jindosh," the captain says. "Don't play these games with me."
"Breanna Ashworth," Jindosh replies, and the flicker of recognition in the captain's dark eyes is almost worth losing this bit of information. Another witch, then? A defector from the Brigmore Witches coven? Now, he's really going to have to hope Emily retakes the throne, because Breanna is going to craft something vile from his skin when she finds out he's given her up so quickly.
Emily repeats the name, puzzling over it.
"She's a witch," the captian says. "A powerful one."
"You knew each other," Jindosh surmises.
A sharp silence comes over the room. Emily glances at the captain with confusion and, perhaps, under it, hurt. How Jindosh lives for these moments; he might be imprisoned in the depths of a failing ship with little hope of escape, but he's got the upper hand again.
"I knew he'd be trouble," the captain says. "You should have just put a blade in him and be done with it." She sounds as though she wouldn't mind doing it herself. Anger laces her scars and worn features—souvenirs from a hard life on the streets—but is that fear as well? He's fascinated by her now. A former killer and former witch? Which preceded which? None of Breanna's girls had been trained in combat, but this woman clearly had been.
"Did you defect from the coven?" Jindosh continues, lapsing into a pleasant pattern. "You'd have lost your powers if you'd—"
"Stop it!" The captain's face is hard, but there's a trembling in her hand as she clenches it. "I'm not yours to speculate about. None of us are. Not all of us have had soft lives, Jindosh. My past is my own. My choices are my own. I mean to see Empress Emily back on the throne. You can assist us, or you can continue trying to weasel your way off this ship and into the Void."
Emily places a cautionary hand against the woman's good arm, as she moves to collect herself.
"It's a long story, and I'd rather not discuss it in front of him," the captain tells Emily.
"I understand," Emily replies gently. She thinks a moment. "Aramis Stilton. I'd like to see him."
"That won't be easy," the captain says to her, as if Jindosh's presence is all but forgotten now. Somehow, that is more deeply unpleasant than her threats. "Ask him about the lock. The Jindosh Lock."
Jindosh perks up. He really can't help but brag about his achievements. "One of my unique contributions to the landscape of Karnaca. It's a riddle that no one has been able to solve. None save for yours truly."
"We're not listening to a sales pitch," the captain interjects. She turns to Emily. "No one has seen Aramis Stilton in years, but these bastards built a lock to keep people away from his house—"
"I built the lock," Jindosh interrupts, but his remark goes unnoticed.
"—and no one knows if he's even still living," the captain continues seamlessly. "He's a good man, but I shudder to think of what fate he might have met." Deep pain crosses her face at this thought; she cares for him.
This is so unusual a realization for Jindosh that he cannot help but stare.
"If you can bypass the lock," the captain continues, regaining her composure, "you won't have to reckon with the gangs in the area."
I'm certain they'd love to hear from their deposed empress, Jindosh almost adds maliciously, but the pain in his head quietens him.
"A riddle," Emily muses for a moment, before fixing her gaze on him. "What's the answer to it?"
"I think it's worth a moment to puzzle out on your own, if you're able to," Jindosh replies. "It's a masterfully crafted—"
"The answer, Jindosh," the captain snaps. "We're looking for the answer to it."
Jindosh reconsiders his chances of escape. The cold metal of the handcuff registers dimly in his mind. He closes his eyes briefly to compose himself. "You'll want to write this down," he concedes with as much feigned pleasantry as he can manage.