Dark Harbour: The Tale of the Soul Searcher (14 page)

‘I just know people. I know the black souls of this town.’

He made no secret of the fact that he completely despised Floyd, the evil mosquito that quietly sucked the life-force out of Dark Harbour. Then again, there weren’t many nice things you could say about that man. Floyd didn’t ask people how they were or wish them a good day. He didn’t step out of the way to let someone by on the pavement. Nobody ever got a Christmas card from him either.

It was remarkable how quickly Vladimir could form a judgement on someone, and this had very much been the case with his assessment of Floyd. It was based on more than just Floyd’s superficial characteristics though.

Vladimir knew that the man was a time bomb of wickedness waiting to go off, and that in years gone by he most probably had already exploded his evil to devastating effect. In fact, he knew how the dust of one of those old explosions hung in his aura like stale, noxious fumes. But Vladimir was happy to wait for the evil to manifest in front of his own eyes, and when that would happen he hoped that he would be there to deliver his comeuppance. It was only a matter of time. Until then he would patiently stand by and observe.

‘No. You don’t need to keep an eye on him,’ Henry said. ‘Seems someone else is already doing that.’

‘So why is Floyd looking for sunken ships all of a sudden?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘Bought into the fairy tale too, did he?’

‘Another one of his childish games to try and spite me. He’s wasting his time in the sea though.’

‘Totally.’

‘Yes. Well, you don’t believe that anyone will ever find the Akasa Stone, do you?’

‘Wouldn’t they have done it by now, Henry? After all these years?’

Henry looked Vladimir over. Why was he so sure that the Akasa Stone didn’t exist? Vladimir was so often right about things. He hoped to see something in his face that would give him a clue. But that was so typical of Henry, always searching, even if he knew that it was a blind alley.

‘You think,’ started Henry, before clearing his throat, ‘you think that I’m just a stupid old man. For chasing after this treasure.’

Beneath Vladimir’s ice hard aura he could feel Henry’s profound frustration, amplified by the similar inner demon that burned inside himself. He knew Henry was consumed by this idea of finding something that was going to put everything right, that was going to give him all the answers.

‘You’re not stupid, Henry. Everyone has something they search for.’

‘So it seems.’

‘You don’t have to suffer on your own, Henry. Sometimes what we really need is just some help from our fellow humans. Sometimes they have what we really need.’

‘Then we just have to help each other out, right? You help me with what I’m looking for, and I’ll help you?’

‘Sure.’

Henry broke his gaze away from his wall and walked over to his desk. ‘Vladimir, there’s something of profound importance that I need you to see to this evening.

‘We have work tonight.’

‘I know. But some things are even more important.’

‘We can’t just abandon it. This is what we do. This is who we are.’

‘I know, I know. I promise I won’t keep asking like this.’

Vladimir suppressed a sigh. ‘You’re the Seraph.’

‘It’s just… something extremely promising has come up. Something that should prove that Floyd definitely is wasting his time scouring the seabed.’

Vladimir cocked his head and squinted his black button eyes. ‘Then you’d better tell me about it.’

Chapter 3.7

The waters were very still that evening as Floyd walked to the end of the quay where the
Alchemist
was tied up for the night. The waves sloshed gently against the hulls of the boats in the harbour and in the near distance, a bell from a ship ringed rhythmically to the swaying of the inky black waters. Apart from these sounds it was eerily quiet, and for most people if they had been there at that precise moment and seen what Floyd saw, they would have been frightened out of their wits.

Floyd shuddered as he looked across at the old trawler to see a pair of ghoulish red eyes glaring back at him. He paused momentarily to collect himself. It had been a while since he’d seen Devlan without the shades and it seemed he would never become desensitised to the terror that those eyes so naturally induced. They were hideous, demonic, like a portal to the fires of hell. Gradually he subdued his twinge of fear and carried on up to the boat.

‘Still here? Not got a home to go to?’ Floyd asked him.

‘This is my home these days,’ Devlan replied.

‘A boat?’

‘You should have seen my previous place.’

That had always been Devlan’s way, drifting from one nook of Dark Harbour to the other, taking up home wherever life floated him. It wasn’t exactly straightforward for him to fit in anywhere, not easy to get a normal home and live a normal life. But then there was one blatant reason why he couldn’t do this: Devlan wasn’t normal.

Floyd stepped on board and perched himself on the bulwark.

‘What do you want?’ Devlan asked him.

‘I went to see my old mate Henry at his office today.’

Devlan raised his arm to silence the loudmouth. ‘Why don’t you step into
my
office,’ he said as he got up and walked towards the cabin.

Floyd followed him inside and closed the door.

‘What did you tell him?’ Devlan asked as they sat down at the table.

Floyd did not hold his gaze, instead looking out the window over the harbour. ‘I got him worried. You should have seen his face.’

Devlan ran his gloved hands over his face before he leaned across the table. ‘Floyd, you need to keep quiet. Why don’t you learn to keep your mouth shut for once?’

Floyd sat rigidly for a moment, the words somehow dampening his self-satisfaction. He nodded silently.

‘You already know we’re being watched,’ Devlan continued, ‘and now we have even more information. We can’t have anyone else knowing where the
Tatterdemalion
is.’

Floyd’s small eyes seemed to be circling round in his skull, fixing on anything but Devlan. ‘Not that
we
know where the thing is. All we got so far is that stupid steering wheel,’ he mumbled like a sulking child.

Devlan glanced across the cabin to where the steering helm of the
Tatterdemalion
was propped up.

‘Any closer to finding the rest of it?’ Floyd asked, the impatience clearly detectable in his voice.

‘I think so. We found a couple of other things that look like they were from the ship. The point is, we’re close. Very close.’

‘When you do find the wreck, just so you know exactly what you’re looking for…’ Floyd delved into his trench coat pocket. ‘I came by this after visiting Henry today.’ He unfolded a piece of paper, what looked like a page torn from a book.

Devlan took the page and ran his gloved fingers over it, delicately stroking it. ‘The Akasa Stone. How I understood it to look. Which makes me ask the question, if people know what it looks like, wouldn’t that indicate that it wasn’t lost at the bottom of the sea all this time?’

‘Oh not you as well! The pirates! The pirates on board. They didn’t all drown. Some of the survivors saw it.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘You’re one to talk. A couple of months ago you didn’t know shit about the
Tatterdemalion
. And after you would lead me to believe that you know everything there is to know in this town!’

Floyd was soon starting up again, getting into his game of one-upmanship. It was a game that Devlan never let him win.

‘Floyd, answer me this one: Do you know why people have been searching for this stone for decades? Do you know exactly what it is about the stone that makes people want to find it? Well?’

‘They want glory.’

‘That it?’

Floyd shrugged. ‘Henry wants to achieve something, after being a loser his whole life.’

‘That’s all you think he wants?’

‘Well, what?’

‘This isn’t just any old gemstone. Not something that someone’s going to stick in a museum or sell on eBay. That stone it… it has powers.’

Devlan snapped his mouth closed. Floyd was quiet as well, not knowing how to respond. He’d noticed the passion with which Devlan had been talking about the Akasa Stone. Was he being drawn to getting his hands on the thing too?

He broke his train of thought and stood up, refocused. ‘Henry knows we’re looking for the
Tatterdemalion
now. We should presume that he’ll be watching us too. Once we find the wreck we can easily throw them off track. We’ll have to keep sending the boat out to random areas as a decoy. As far as I’m concerned, the only people who have to know about the location of the wreck are you and me.’

He spoke with remarkable focus, but that was because he was a natural when it came to concocting devious schemes. It was how his serpentine brain was wired.

‘Harp too, of course. And the divers. They’ll know.’

‘Can we trust them?’

‘Harp we can. The divers? I’ll make sure of it,’ replied Devlan with a rare grin on his face, a grin which produced the second twinge of fear in Floyd that evening.

‘Good. Okay, I got to go. I’ll speak to you soon.’

As he stood back out on the quay, all he could hear was the tolling of that ship’s bell, as though it was sounding as a reminder of all those misfortunate souls who’d drowned in the sinking of the
Tatterdemalion
. It resonated with his being, for Floyd was not just the one who had tolled the bell for others so many time before, Floyd
was
the bell. It was all part of his battle, his teaching, his purpose.

Floyd had been taught to destroy, and as an agent of destruction he’d had to separate himself from the great continent of humanity. It was strange how his old life was coming back to him so much recently. And it was strange how, in his re-membering, he saw how he was a
member
of something else entirely, something beyond the hopeless searchers like Henry Maristow who struggled so much at life.

He walked onwards feeling thrilled and feeling more like himself than he’d done in a long time. He loved destroying people, and ensuring Henry Maristow’s soul suffered that fate would be the most satisfying achievement of his entire life.

Chapter 3.8

Within the majesty of
Clarence Hotel
, within the office of a forlorn spirit who believed that he finally might be stumbling upon his salvation, Henry explained to Vladimir the important assignment that he had for him that night.

Since he’d been talking, there was a faster beat to his words than there was earlier. His eyes had filled with a glimmer of light, inspired by the small thread of hope that his agents had been following for over ten months. It was a thread that had finally led to something very promising.

‘So, this heist is soon to be taking place,’ Henry said. ‘When we put all the pieces of the plan together, it all pointed to this certain someone in the underground. Someone, it turns out, who we know quite well.’

‘Who?’

‘David Tyler. Remember him?’

‘How could I forget?’

‘I guess he had no clue how word spreads around in a town like this. Maybe he should have picked a bigger place to hide out. But anyway, he’s the one I need you to find. Bring him here, and then we’ll get to work on him.’

‘What do we need to get out of him exactly? He knows where the Akasa Stone is?’

Henry began nodding before he could get his words out. ‘Yes. I don’t know how. I mean this is Tyler we’re talking about. The one who tried to sell a chalice back to the church he’d stolen it from.’

‘I heard he knocked his front teeth out as well. Did you hear that?’

‘Tripped over a bar stool?’

‘Wasn’t us.’

Henry leaned back in his chair. His gaze had gone back to his Akasa Stone wall. ‘Maybe his arrival in this town wasn’t so much of an accident,’ he pondered. ‘Maybe he knew something back from whatever country it was that he came from.’

‘Yeah, what country
was
that?’

‘Don’t ask me. I thought you knew.’

‘No, none of us could ever place his accent.’

Whilst Vladimir would certainly help his friend and master, he was also careful with his words so that he wouldn’t dampen Henry’s reinvigorated spirit. It may have been a false hope, but, even so, it was doing some good for him. He just had to ensure that he was there in the fallout of disappointment when it turned out that Tyler was nothing more than another red herring.

‘We’ll be able to find him,’ Vladimir said.

‘Good. Be careful.’

‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

‘I wish that were the case, but you know what happened to Quade.’

‘I do. And, like I say, you have nothing to worry about.’