"UM...SIR, I'M AFRAID that mask isn't allowed on The W.A.S MERCURY."
Blakely narrowed his eyes at the pale sailor. The boy's cheeks already had a yellow flush from the putrid stench of rotting fish, and his uniform was dirty from the grime of the boiler room. Finally above deck, the poor child was seeing the sun for the first time in weeks, up until an eagle-like beak had eclipsed the sun's rays. It cast a sharp, aquiline shadow on his cheek, and when he had glanced up, there Blakely was, donned in his trench coat and scowl.
"Why not?" Blakely asked indignantly. He did so with the stubborn whine of a child who had just been told no, except that child was six-feet tall and wearing a plague doctor mask in broad daylight. Maybe he never got the memo? Was it strange to wear plague doctor masks in the 19th century? "Masks are harmless," Blakely purred in response, then knocked his mask for effect. At the clank of metal, he winced, rubbed his bruised knuckles, cursed it very, very loudly, muttered a few more expletives even the sailor boy had never heard, and smiled his shark-grin. "See?"
The boy was dubious. "Okay, sir...?" he grimaced, but it was more of a question. "But, it's erm. . . a bit sharp." Dear Lord please don't put me through this, the boy silently prayed. The last thing he needed was a difficult, argumentative passenger.
Blakely stared at the boy for a few seconds in silence. Then he huffed, puffed, removed his mask and shoved it at the sailor. There was a stifled gag before the boy, after dancing around its sharp tip, placed the mask in the barrel left of him.
"Scratch it and I'll scratch your face o—"
"—Woah there," Abis interrupted. He smiled that polite lawyer smile—you know the smile an attorney would do for an insufferable client they had, but were getting paid to clean up after? Abis's smile was exactly that, and you could have mistaken it for the sun with the way it blindsided everyone within a three-metre radius.
In fact, Blakely's grumbling faded to white noise as Abis's bright smile, a light source in and of itself, momentarily stunned the sailor boy. "Excuse him. Born that way, he was," Abis said, chancing a pitiful side-look at Blakely who was still grumbling.
The sailor boy smiled, and Abis handed him his only luggage—a brown burlap bag and 10 metres of hemp rope.
Usually, Blakely would carry out his missions alone, but the current one seemed to dwarf any of his previous assignments in importance. For that, HQ required him to complete it with the aid of Abis, a Mercury. Yet, besides their swift running, time-travelling, and tendency to disappear and reappear whenever it suited them, Blakely rendered a mercury's help completely useless. Especially this one's. He was a useless, incompetent dimwit who smelled like cheap cologne—and it was making Blakely break out into a rash. Beside him, Abis came to a halt and pat his shoulder. His hand seemed to linger awkwardly for a while, but just when blakely was getting annoyed, Abis directed his attention elsewhere.
"Don't you feel the tiniest bit stupid walking around looking like that, Sir Blasius?" Abis asked as he surveyed the deck.
Blakely scrunched up his nose at Abis's remark and nearly snapped Abis's hand in two. "You know, you emphasising my code name doesn't help either, Mr Bingley."
Abis was such a freak for Jane Austen. When Blakely had heard about his partner's code name, he was surprised Abis could even read. He must have been deaf instead, because all Abis did was smile daftly as if he hadn't at all heard anything.
Blakely raised his brow. "You know what, this trip's about twelve hours, yeah? I think I'll take a nap. You know my naps—long, boring, solitary." He gave Abis a single, tentative pat as he retreated to the cabins. "You, erm, have fun up here with your new friend."
* * *
Abis did have fun with his new friend. When Blakely resurfaced from the shadows two and a half hours later, Abis had annoyingly enraptured not only the sailor boy, but three other crew members and a priestess. In fact, that priestess was very obviously petting his arm like some sort of ermine coat, and Blakely felt the vomit rising in his throat.
"Ah," was Abis's response upon seeing him, "he is awake."
The priestess frowned. Didn't she have some preaching to do somewhere? "Mr Bingley, Sir," she said softly as if she was out of breath, "who is this boy?"
Why was Abis being called 'Sir' but Blakely a boy when he and Blakely were the same age? "That," Abis said, "is my aide, Dr. Blasius." Abis did a weird grin thing but it looked more like he was drugged. "Blakely, this is Gwendolyn. She is the priestess aboard this ship."
Gwendolyn's smile was nothing short of innocent. "Enchantée."
"Hrmngh" Blakely grumbled in greeting, right before he turned to step out of the bar. For one, he never drank, because that only spelt chaos, and for another, they really shouldn't be drinking when they had an important mission, currently undertaking!
Abis met him outside a few minutes later. "What's up?" he said, noting that something was particularly off about his usual broodiness.
"Nothing of importance," Blakely replied, but his eyes had gone blank. He tapped a staccato against the railings. Abis knew Blakely only ever did this when he was in deep thought.
Abis rest his chin in his palm. "You sure about that?"
"Nothing's wrong," Blakely mumbled, but the staccato intensified. "Why is that any of your concern?" Then he jerked and looked at Abis with his face scrunched up. "You're awfully concerned today, aren't you. Is it the flu?"
Abis ignored that. "Let me take a guess—the instructions from headquarters are a little perplexing."
His jaw ticked. Blakely regarded Abis through the corner of his eye. "Were mercuries also telepathic?"
Abis raised his brow and his smile was nothing short of smug knowing. He replied simply, "No need."
Blakely squinted his eyes. "Whatever you say, Sherlock. Yes, it is because of the directives I received a few days ago. They were very cryptic." Blakely frowned. "I don't suppose you could enlighten me?"
Abis tsked and waved his finger as if he was speaking to a small child."To know your future is to doom it."
Blakely scowled. "You're just full of shit, aren't you."
Abis grinned, but the gravity of his statement lingered. Though mercuries travelled from the future to deliver messages, if they revealed too much information they may not have a future to return to. Timelines were a tricky thing, and skilled as they were, even mercuries walked a fine line. The future revealed itself to them in vague bits and pieces, and the more bold or perverse their actions were, the more they jeopardized their own timeline.
Outside the sea breeze was cool and light. Small wisps of wind caught strands of Blakely's hair, and it carried the salty sea air through the tresses, past Abis' dumb, daft face, and past the impressive, sleek black hull of the W.A.S Mercury. Under the night sky it was like liquid onyx, and moonlight gleamed on its surface as Blakely pondered its beauty. It may have been the 19th Century, but Dorchester wasn't short of impressive fleets, perhaps comparable to that of the English Navy.
It was a shame the entire Island was cut off from the rest of the world, nearly impregnable besides the select few who even knew of its existence. Why The Order would want to destroy an island of this much promise, perhaps Blakely would never know. He didn't even know how they planned to do it. Sink it? Mass extinction? Not plausi—
Blakely stopped short as if realising something, then he blinked twice. He pulled a crumpled papyrus note from his breech pocket. For hours he had reread it when he first received the message from Headquarters. All they had done was call him into their office and shove a note into his hand. He could still remember his captain's anxious gaze. There was something obviously disturbing about the note, but Blakely hadn't known what.
Now, he studied it again. For minutes, he read it over and over, ignoring Abis' perplexed stare. It entailed the ingredients for a recipe not even his branch had been a hundred per cent sure of. And how could they? His branch was as stuck in the 19th century as the very country they were sailing to. But now perhaps Blakely knew. "The message you delivered from The Order spoke of where in Dorchester?"
Abis raised a brow before realising he had been asked a question. "Platella's Alcove. The capital." He turned his head as his eyes flashed a dull blue. Sometimes Abis was like this — he seemed less human whenever his eyes turned their metallic blue, like a machine retrieving information from a distant server.
"Home to medicine and alchemy, visit Platella's Alcove for all your skiing and hiking escapades, pursuits of knowledge and sightseeing on the Paldox River. Stop by our famous Cornwall Station and The Apothecarist's Village. Leave no stone unturned in your pursuit of happiness! Just be careful not to break any rules...Our Watch welcomes you with open arms!"
Abis clicked his tongue, his eyes dulling back to their cool green. "That's some scary advertising. This is information from The Calamity Order's servers. Don't ask what a server is."
Blakely didn't have to. He knew they were from the servers he wasn't a twat. There was no way Abis could have come up with that himself.
He looked down and his tapping came to a stop. He kept on mumbling 'medicine' under his breath. "The ingredients on this note must be more ancient inventions, but I can figure out what a few must be." He muttered something about Latin root words and suffixes, but Abis was busy digging for a cigarette in his pocket. He tuned back in when Blakley glanced at him. "...But the intention is clear, and it's not something good."
Abis nodded and placed the cigarette between his lips, despite having not smoked a single cigarette in his entire life, ever. "Well, doest enlighten me. What is The Order up to now?"
Blakely was silent for a moment, then: "It is a disease of some sort. A plague. I can only assume it is to spread it."
Abis nodded, not as surprised as he should've been at the pure malice The Order planned to unleash. He had an inkling of what it might've been, but this only confirmed it.
Blakely tilted his head and pondered for a moment before saying, "As soon as the ship has docked, I will find the nearest pharmacy—erm, what's the equivalent of those here, again?"
Abis shrugged.
"Wow. How I wished I had someone who could instantly look up anything they wanted by getting off their lazy ass and rolling their eyes back a little."
Abis grinned cheekily, was possessed momentarily, and a few seconds later he said. "Apothecary."
Blakely nodded. "Right," he mumbled, "So once we dock I'll visit the nearest one of those, and gather a few ingredients. We'll see from there."
Abis nodded again. "As long as you promise not to put that ridiculous mask back on," he said as he brought a lighter to the cigarette, before promptly choking. "Oh God, why DID I DO THAT. Ack."
Blakely blinked. "You're so fucking stupid."
Abis grinned from ear to ear. "Well, you know what they say about..." he trailed, noticing that he had lost Blakely's attention. His companion was locking eyes with something—or someone behind him. When Abis swivelled around, Blakely was glowering darkly at the sailor boy who had eyes as wide as saucers. The skinny boy gulped with difficulty past his quaking Adam's apple and again, wrung his hands. It was becoming a nervous tell.
"A-a-a plague?" the boy echoed, still stuck on the previous part of their dialogue.
"Don't hurt him," Abis breathed, caught off guard. Yet, before he knew it Blakley and the boy had both disappeared to the far end of the ship before Abis could stop him.
Alone, Blakely grasped the boy's neck by the bow of the ship, his feet dangling over the glaring sea. In all the boy's years of swimming, the sea had never looked as malicious as it did then. All he had done was step foot outside, yet the wind blew him information he perhaps should have never heard. Now the sea was a sinister black, and it barely reflected any light as if it would swallow him whole. It looked as if even his skill for swimming would be no more useful to him than an anchor.
Pure, unadulterated fear pooled in his eyes. "I-I never heard a thing, I promise!" he wheezed. His face was red from strangulation and his eyes watered as he forced them shut.
Blakely had the gall to grin. "Is that so?" he asked, loosening his grip. "Well, we've got no issue here."
"Yes...?" the boy asked, then his confusion cleared. "Yes! Th-then you will free me?" he asked, relief flooding his eyes.
Blakely grinned, and was about to release him, when he accidentally tripped over the railings.
"Oh shit!" he exclaimed, accidentally hurling the boy a good hundred feet from the ship, where the boy accidentally rocketed into the sea. Hopefully dead from shock.
"Oops," Blakely accidentally said, before turning around, and accidentally marching past Abis's shocked face, to go have a good night's sleep below deck.