"What be the meaning of this?" Rufus yelled, seeing Reeve sitting on the railing, and not in the brig where had commanded his soldiers to leave him. "Do you wish to join that madman at the gallows?"
"Adios," Reeve said, turning around.
Before Rufus could manage a noise of confusion he felt a pistol barrel at the back of his head.
"Now this, sir, would be a mutiny," he heard Tseng say.
"You bloody—"
"If that is what you wish, I could shoot you right now and we could forgo the noise."
Rufus complied and said nothing.
Reeve grinned.
"Now, if you would be so kind as to get in the boat," Tseng said.
"What boat?"
Reeve pointed, indicating a lifeboat that had been lowered. Rufus slowly walked over to the edge of the ship and looked down. In the lifeboat was a snarling, yet bound, Heidgger and Scarlet, unconscious and bleeding from a wound on her head, staining her blonde hair the color of mud after a battle.
"You know how much I hate to waste a bullet when I can spare it, Rufus," Tseng said. "However, you also know Reno does not hold my interest in efficiency and has been shooting stray birds out of boredom. I recommend complying and making Reno upset than the alternative."
"Damn you Tseng," Rufus heard Reno complain.
"This lacks the true taste of those known as the Turks. I hired you as cutthroats, not men who practiced mercy."
"We be giving you a chance to live, Rufus, I would not look this gift horse in the mouth."
"As I remember, if the Trojans had done so, they would have seen the Greek teeth. Answer my question and I will comply."
"Reno, would you kindly answer to the man’s bequest?"
"You got a huge store of rum! I’d say that be worth not killing you."
"What happened to Scarlet?"
"A harlot who refuses Elena’s money is not very smart. Rude, if you would do the honors," Tseng said, and put his pistol away.
Rufus felt a foot at his back and then Scarlet, though unconscious, meeting hard and uncomfortably with his face.
"You bloody, backstabbing, sons of whores!" Rufus yelled as Rude silently cut the ropes to the lifeboat, his outburst eliciting a laugh from Elena.
Reeve waved at them, still grinning.
The other prisoner, whom Rufus had sentenced to be hanged for the death of Hojo, which Rufus had watched quite contently, was also on deck, looking more smug, though in worse health, than the others. Compared to Reeve, it was quite a feat.
"In all accordance, I must give thanks to you for preserving what is mine, keeping me from following this wailing call of hers. And for the hat."
The new crew of the ship went to ignoring Rufus and his threats and curses.
"That box I rescued for you, if you wanted it so badly, why not take the treasure in it? Why leave it now that it is in your possession?"
"The first rule I taught you, Tseng: Gold can kill. This be worth infinitely more than gold, and it holds far more than mere death."
"Mere death?" Reno asked, between draining one bottle and starting on another, easily pushing Elena’s greedy hands away.
"I told you. I’d have to be dead before I were ever captured. I see how well fate has held me to that."
"You be starting to believe the tales about yourself. Dead men tell no tales."
"Indeed I have told no one. And I do not wish to tell it. If you wish to understand open the box and lock it afterwards."
Reno moved, never to be kept from answering his curiosity, only to find his own captain and respective father holding a pistol to him. He obediently stopped, for once out of fear than order from Vincent.
"Do not touch it. Do not touch the box. If you fail in this, or to lock it afterwards, you will be contemplating your insolence watching yourself seek out your own head and feeling the crows chew at your hands on a separate island."
Everyone was still. Reeve, who understood none of how the four were connected to the man who suspected himself dead, was no longer grinning. Elena held a bottle of rum to her lips, but was too afraid to drink and poured most of it on her shirt, showing off her nipples to an audience who was too afraid to notice them.
The man who had taught them to kill before they had reached ten years of age, who had rescued them from their own stupidity and never spoken a word against how bad their plotting had been, who had told them treasure was to be spent and touched and savored before that and anything broken passed off as cursed of antique, he had threatened to kill them. What threatened them worse than that, worse that their thoughts of the creature calling them down to their deaths to end the suffering from its hideous wailing, was he understood. In his eyes he remembered caring for them, still a child himself and raising them since they had been weaned and left in the mud and slums to die.
"I never told you not to look," Vincent said, lowering the pistol. "Even hell deserves its sights seen, merely remember to have a path to leave on. If you truly doubt my death, what did all of you think of this?" Vincent held up his left arm, the gold-gilt bones shining in the sunlight. "This be the treasure I take with me to the grave." His tone was less excited than he’d hoped to use to present the strange wound.
All the Turks were silent, none had ever believed in magic, let alone their father returning from the dead. Elena had finally moved the rum bottle to stop spilling on her during his speech. Other than that, they all still seemed afraid of the reality Vincent presented than the one the creature at the bottom of the sea did.
Someone tapped Vincent on the shoulder. He turned to see Reeve handing him the glove he’d abandoned to drive his golden bones through his murderer’s chest.
The casual smile Vincent wore as he reached for the glove fell away as his finger disturbed the leather and something heavy fell out and onto the deck.
"This damnedness be following me!" he exclaimed.
Rufus and the others had drifted on the waves, abandoned without oars in the ocean. Vincent was envying them now.
The Turks all leaned over to get a closer view, and Vincent put his hands out to keep them from grabbing at it. To them it was treasure, glinting silver and teasing them that it was not in any of their hands. To Vincent, its twin had woken the wailing creature, and now it was no longer in the hands of the blind woman he and a young thief had left it with.