I Want To Tell You So Many Lies

She hummed in response, eyeing the map that was pressed into the desk by paperweights in the shape of dragons. Their metal faces stared up at her, agony drawn into metal; a moment caught in time. Jude crossed her legs.

“Well, I’ll have my crew sent out to your ship, then,” he said, pulling a piece of parchment from a drawer. “Whatever do you call that vessel of yours, anyways?” He inked his quill, tapping it lightly in the small glass jar.

“The Knave.”

“If you’re trying to scare away a job before you’ve secured it, you’re certainly on the right track.”

Jude quirked up a single corner of her mouth, hoping it seemed at least a little intimidating, and stood slowly, refusing to break eye contact. He held out his hand for her to shake, and she gripped him by the wrist, shaking once. Jude lifted her chin, eyeing the man in front of her before turning on her heel and walking out.

The summer heat hit her with such a force the moment she opened the outermost door that she nearly fell over on the spot. The hot cobblestones of the street burned into the soles of her boots, warming her feet. Vendor’s hawked their wares to her as she passed, calling for ropes and jewels with wicked enchantments. Witches called for fortunes and spells. A few, even, for hexes.

Someone tapped two fingers to her wrist, tugged lightly on the white fabric of her shirt. “Care for a reading?” Jude turned to the figure cloaked in shadow and held up a single hand and shook her head slightly. “On the house, then,” the voice said, holding out a deck of large, thick cards.

Jude tapped a card near the end of the spread between the diviner’s fingers, wondering about the evenness of the fan. The card was plucked and flipped, showing a crude illustration of eight chalices and a figure in a hood turned away. A moon shone above the mountains behind the traveller on the card, facing the river between it all. “Ah,” they said. “The eight of cups.” Jude looked between them and the card with the smudged ink. “You have quite the journey ahead of you.”

“That so?” Jude crossed her arms.

A gust of wind blew the card from their hands and into Jude’s chest. She plucked it from her shirt and held it upside down and handed it back. “You are inbetween a great decision,” they breathed, looking up at the card now in their hands. With a small flick of their wrist, one card had become two, one appearing unstuck from the back of another. “The ten of swords.”

Jude raised a brow, wondering if the new card would cost her. Her hair slipped from the knot on her head and dipped onto her shoulders.

“There will be few kindnesses in the world of surprises you are about to unleash. Tread with caution.” They dropped their hood, then, the darkness they’d shrouded themself in suddenly seeming a little less so. “Or don’t,” they said with a wink.

They flipped another card from the top of the deck. “Death?” Jude asked, raising a brow.

They hummed, smiling softly. “All is not lost; where one journey ends another begins.” Their smile widened, then, as they slipped the cards back into the deck, seemingly satisfied. Lifting the dark cloak over the white hair they’d nearly knotted onto the back of their head, Jude felt for her hair pin that had held her hair up in its knot until a moment ago. She turned on her heel, scanning the street for where it might’ve fallen.

Jude turned back to the diviner, finding the space empty and the person gone.

The docks that morning were littered with wayfarer travellers haggling for passage on the straggling merchant ships that remained docked. Jude climbed the ramp to The Knave and rounded the singular mast, rolling up her sleeves as she reached for the small key ring attached to the chain around her neck. Her hair blew in front of her face as she slipped the key free from where it’d been tucked beneath her shirt, she unlocked the door and slipped inside, leaving the door wide open.

Sunlight poured in from the doorway, illuminating a small corner of the room. Someone sat at the desk in her quarters, a knife shoved into the hard wood. Candle flames flickered from their candlesticks, the small, warm lights casting shadows onto the face of the figure at her desk. Jude’s hand found the handle of the blade she had tucked into her belt beneath the folds of her shirt.

“Find what you were looking for?” Jude asked, pulling the blade from its sheath as silently as she could manage.

Someone she hadn’t seen knocked the blade from her hand and pressed something cold and sharp to her throat. The cold tang of the metal blade pressed to her neck shoved itself up her nose, nearly making her gag. Another pair of hands grabbed for her open wrist, even as she twisted her arms away.

She stomped on someone’s foot and threw her elbow back into whoever stood behind her. The knife that was at her throat clattered to the floor. Jude kicked at someone’s knee near blindly, searching for one of the knives on the ground as she did.

A pair of rough hands yanked her by the waist as she made to grab for the handle, her fingers fumbling. It slid towards her across the rough floor, clanging as it made contact with her captor’s boot. She was jerked nearly to her feet and against someone else as she twisted and brought the butt of the blade to what she hoped was their head — hard.

They crashed against the wall and brought a map that had been pinned there down on top of them. Jude whirled back around to her other attempted captor; they would not have her today.

A hand slipped in front of her mouth as an arm wrapped around her neck, the other moving to meet it, the sudden pressure on her throat causing her to drop the knife again. Jude’s elbow flew back into their gut before ramming the both of them backwards into the doorway where she was abruptly aware of a very sharp nail that had been sticking out for months.

They grunted beneath her as they released her without warning, sending Jude tumbling to the floor where her knife was waiting. She swept it up into her grasp and lunged forward on her toes to put distance between them.

Her near-captors were standing again by the time she’d come to face them. A single blade drove itself into the wood of the wall behind her, stilling the three of them. The figure at Jude’s desk rose, the only sound being the gentle twang of the knife still rocking its way into the wall.

“Yes,” they said, their voice familiar. “I think I have found what I’m looking for.”

Jude flexed her fingers as she sat against the mast, breathing in the heavy afternoon air. “I don’t recall pissing off anyone to a degree that warrented assassination.”

The familiar voice laughed lightly. The Bomb, she’d called herself, and Jude wondered just what skills she might possess that would bring her any aid in the job she was hired for. Besides knives throwing. She’d proven to be very good at that.

“So, if you’re the crew that was sent to me, why did you just try to kill me?” Jude made a show of twirling the knife over her fingers.

The three members of her “crew” exchanged a glance before someone — The Roach, she’d heard him called — spoke up.

“Heard you lost your last crew by being a pain in the ass, wondered if it was because they were constantly looking after you,” he said, no hint of amusement in his eyes. The Bomb sat with her legs crossed not too far from him, leaning back on her arms to soak up the summer heat, the white splotches on her dark skin shining.

“And?” Jude tossed the blade in the air. Then caught it.

“And, you’re not terrible. We’ll work on it.”

“‘Not terrible’? I kicked your ass.” The Roach rubbed his head, clearly not too happy to recall the recent memory.

He shrugged softly, glancing towards the Bomb before settling his gaze on the docks. “Why The Knave? Of all the things to name a ship, why that?”

“Intimidation is a better tactic for a privateer than one would initially think.” No part of it was untruthful, either. Jude had made fair game by the title of her ship alone, and she’d been at least a little infamous for double-crossing someone who’d tried to get the better of her once or twice. Besides, what was the point in splitting profit when she could take more for herself this way, anyways?

“So,” the last of her supposed crew members drawled, “your last crew left you, because of what, exactly?” He was taller than Jude remembered, even though she hadn’t gotten a good look at him the first time — when he’d wrapped his arm around her throat.

Jude smiled something she hoped was wicked. “Apparently,” she said, sticking her knife into the mast, “I don’t work well with others.” She stood, then, tracing her thumb over the small J that had been carved into the mast a couple years ago when she’d first made The Knave her home. “Also something about my being a menace and a hazard to society.”

He rolled his eyes, pretending that he wasn’t watching her trace a shape on the mast in a way that looked too familiar to be a tell. “Thought it’d be bigger.” Jude raised a brow in response as she leaned back against the mast like she hadn’t just been sitting against it. “Like a barque, not a sloop. Especially for a name like The Knave.”

It was true that The Knave had always sounded like a name for a warship, or at least something bigger. It was also true that folks had lost battles to her because of that.

Jude nodded, noticing the Roach and the Bomb waiting for her answer. “Yeah, but it’s fast.” She snatched the small blade from the mast, then crossed to the opposite side of the ship, pointing with her blade. “Crew’s quarters are here, breakfast is at dawn.”

“Where the hell,” the Roach said around a mouthful of his lunch, “are we even supposed to find these bastards?” They’d graced the coastline of every nearby port within the last two days of travel without a single sighting.

Having been hired to hunt sirens, one would think that they’d be a little easier to find.

“They’re going to be harder to get a hold of once they figure out we’re hunting them, too.”

Jude pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling the headache that had been building in her head for the last two days come to bloom. She felt her thoughts go sideways as the rest of the small dining hall shifted on the water. Docked at port as they may have been, Jude thought she’d always prefer to eat in the dark dingy dining hall than sitting at some dining table or in some fancy restaurant. It seemed like a waste of time and money, anyways.

Jude and the Bomb strolled the docks later that evening, talking softly about whatever came to mind. Once, a short conversation about the Bomb’s interest in alchemy, which had eventually caused her to take up small magicks.

And though witches weren’t entirely uncommon, it wasn’t that they weren’t feared, either. Some had been known to be that of balance, or even protectors. Others might hex someone for crossing them wrong.

Witches, in reality, weren’t unlike a flame. Helpful in the dark, a guiding light, and something that could burn down your whole village in a single breath, all at the same time.

The Roach and the Ghost — who was apparently the last member of her crew — had taken to loading the last of the supplies for the next few months onto the ship. Jude would have argued more about doing it herself, if it weren’t for the Ghost suggesting that if they wanted her dead, they would’ve killed her already.

The Bomb had talked her into wandering through the vendors of the night-market, the small street corner that ran its sales late into the night for those working odd jobs with odd hours. They’d turned down the corner that led back to the docks when the Bomb had pointed out the man sitting alone on the docks, watching the moon’s reflection ripple over the water.

The next thing they noticed was the stir of the water around him, how it rippled outward despite his stillness. The Bomb might have whispered something to her that might have been watch him as she disappeared down the street.

But Jude was watching the water, the way the moonlight scattered around him, the way the tides parted in wake of his being; like the whole world came alight from him alone.

So she unsheathed her knife, and took a step forward.

The wood of the dock creaked beneath her feet, and with any attempt at stealth immediately failing her, Jude held the knife behind her leg as she walked towards him. “Uh,” she said, feeling dumb for opening her mouth in the first place. “Hi.”

“Hello,” he said, his voice a melodic lilt that made the world spin in the opposite direction. Jude felt like she was floating. “Come and sit by me,” he said, still looking straight ahead. “Come and join me for a while.”

Jude sat down, then, her boots dangling above the water. The hard wood of the dock dug into the underside of her knees, but she couldn’t seem to find a reason to care.

Her thoughts splintered when he spoke, her mind feeling tingly, her every affliction blowing away on the next strong breeze. “Won’t you come with me? We can find much better things to entertain ourselves with.”

Jude couldn’t remember wanting anything else more than this in that moment. The wind blew the warm, salty air of the sea into her face, and everything was right with the world.

Except it was absolutely not. Jude felt her mind go slant, felt her thoughts come back to her. Slowly still, like an animal caught in tar. Her heart was pounding in a way she couldn’t remember, it’s own beating like an echo to a memory that wasn’t hers.

The man next to her gripped her by the chin, forcing her to face him. His blonde hair blew in front of his beautiful face. The world seemed to light anew when he looked at her, with an intensity like striking a match; a sudden bloom in light and heat, here for a moment and gone with the next breath. Even if it had the capacity to set the forest on fire, it was just as easily extinguished.

Jude tightened her grip on the knife that lingered loosely in her hand as he brought his mouth closer to hers.

And plunged the knife into his heart.

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Masterlist

look i kinda hate this and there’s not much ab it i do like, but it exists now and that’s something

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