Page 38 of By the Flames of Her Fury

“What did she say?” Starke asked, forehead pinching.

“Nothing. Just that we need to talk to someone named Sommers.” I shook off her strange words and gestured to the corner, where the fog cleared enough to see a small table with a hunched man sitting in a chair.

“Oh, Fates,” Starke mumbled.

“You know him?”

“Everyone knows Sommers.” He sighed. “Just take everything he says with a grain of salt, alright? He’s a bit…”

“Crazy?” I guessed.

“Eccentric. He once thought ghosts of his late wife’s cats were haunting him. He hid in the garbage for a week to get away from them.”

“Well, were they?” I asked.

“Were they what?”

“Were the cats haunting him?”

Starke rolled his eyes, and I smirked. “If imagining cats is the worst of it, he seems harmless.” I shrugged and squeezed my way between the patrons.

“Did I mention he’s the one who killed his wife? With a dinner fork?”

I paused. “Then just make sure he doesn’t have a fork on him.”

I approached the hunchbacked figure, wading through the haze of alcohol until I could see his face. Wrinkles lined his tan skin, his features sagging with age and too much time in the sun. Patches of brown and gray hair spotted his balding head. The smallest dagger I’d ever seen was propped behind one ear, and he was using another to clean his teeth.

When our shadows fell across the table, he looked up. His eyes met Starke’s, and a smile slipped over his cracked lips. “Wondered when we’d be seeing you again, boy. Been what, almost a year?”

“Not here for business. Just looking for someone,” Starke responded stiffly.

“Aren’t we all?” Sommers tapped the tip of the dagger against his teeth. “Sure do miss seeing that pretty mother of yours ‘round here. Those little boys, too. Shame what happened to ‘em.”

Starke’s jaw clenched. “You owe me, Sommers. Help me with this, and we’ll be square.”

“Ah, so you are here for business.” Sommers leaned back in his chair and spread his arms out wide. “By all means, let’s see what ol’ Sommers can do for you.”

“We’re looking for someone,” Starke said. “We think he’s been around Shipwreck Cove recently. Goes by the name Mortep.”

“He’s tall and pale, with big, black hair,” I added. “He’s also blind and is probably traveling alone.”

Sommer’s eyes scanned me, a stormy blue that reminded me of the whirlpool. They went in and out of focus as he let out a breath reeking of alcohol. My confidence in getting an answer out of the man dropped with each passing second.

Until he said, “Yeah, I’ve seen ‘im.”

I jolted forward. “You have? Where?”

A drunken smile pulled his lips wider. He lazily twirled his dagger on the table, gaze landing on the open buttons at the top of my tunic. “How badly do you wanna know, darlin’?”

Starke moved forward, but I beat him to it. I whisked the dagger from Sommer’s grip and slammed the tip into the wooden tabletop between his fingers. “How badly do you wanna keep these fingers?” I hissed, raising an eyebrow.

He scrambled back into his seat. “Fates, woman! You’ve got better aim than half the pirates here.”

“What are you talking about?” I yanked the dagger out of the table. “I missed.”

His eyes widened. “Alright, alright. You wanna know about your man? He’s been here a few times.” He warily eyed the dagger still in my hand. “Comes through looking for followers.”

My fingers twitched around the handle, pulse racing with this revelation. Someone here had actually seen him. “What do you mean, followers?”