A captain is meant to keep a journal, I suppose. So here goes. Captain Rupert Black of the good ship Defiance, holding a privateering commission from His Majesty the King, rounding the north of Saint-Dominique on our way to Cap-Haitien, where we hope to find Zipakna.
Zipakna. A woman, or perhaps a demon. She is somehow connected with these heathen skulls we have collected two of. Mister Fawn, who helped us find Van Meerten's estate, died after we left him, poisoned, the only suspect a tall Indian woman that the local savages would identify only as Zipakna.
Young Ana provided some helpful details. This Zipakna is named after a legendary horror of some sort, a consort to demons or what have you. Word is that our murderous young hussy is these days a consort to a dago captain, one Luis de Chacon, who's taken over command of the Havana squadron.
Fawn left us a note, fortunately, telling us that this woman seeks the skulls and is on her way to Cap-Haitien where she is preparing some heathen ritual.
I hear the lookout raising Morne du Haut du Cap. We are arriving. God bless us all. And may He keep the King safe.
"What was that?"
"Dras, are you hearing things again?"
Dras looked over at Quinn.
"Perhaps you forget that the last time I heard something, it turned out to be kind of important."
Quinn paused in his whittling.
"What'd you hear?"
Dras shivered. The afternoon sun blazed down fierce and hot, and the breeze off the green mountains of Saint-Dominique came thick and sweltering across the deck, but she felt a deep chill inside her. That low, hollow voice had come from nowhere, hissing in her ear wth foul promise.
"Something about a sign. A yellow sign."
The ship cleared the point of a tall ridge striking out from the coast, and looking in to shore the crew of the Defiance could see a good-sized town spreading along the base of the ridge, rising up from the rocky beach through scrub trees and dusty fields to where the rock face of the ridge shot upwards three hundred feet. A couple of tubby merchant ships sat at anchor in the bay, one swarming with longboats and crewmen as she unloaded her cargo. The Defiant slid towards their anchorages like a lean wolf easing towards hesitant prey.
The Defiants lined the rails to study the Spanish town as their sloop drifted into the harbour. One of the old hands from the Ascot Marine pointed up at a red-tiled villa nestled at the base of the cliff.
"That's the dago governer's mansion, there."
He spat over the side.
Quinn sidled over to the helm where Black stood, chatting about the best anchorage with the helmsman.
"Isn't this a Spanish port? Won't they arrest us?"
Black shook his head with considerably more confidence than he felt.
"We're just a neutral vessel, a privately operated sloop looking for cargo. There's no way they could have heard about the Rosario yet, so we're safe enough."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely. There's no chance of us running into any trouble here."
*****
"Have you seen the Yellow Sign?"
Dras recoiled from a shrouded figure pushing past her. The hissing question had been repeated a couple of times since they came aboard, and she was not the only one who'd heard it.
Something strange was afoot in the strange, tension-filled town of Cap-Haitien.
The Cap was divided into three layers, each rising a little higher than the one below. The population was carefully divided, as well, between the Europeans up top, the African slaves down below, and the half-breed mulattos in between. Unused to the obvious racial demarcations, Dras was uneasy enough already, but that combined with the weird, whispering voices from the crowded streets around them put her deeply on edge.
"What does that mean? Why do they keep saying that?"
"I don't know, lad, but you're not the only one hearing it. Right, then."
Black drew his friends into an alleyway. Around them surged the chatter and mutter and constant flow of the Cap-Haitian market. Bright headscarves punctuated the crowds of slaves and sailors, clashing with gaudy prints and flashes of gold.
"We know this Zipakna person is on her way here to collect one of the skulls. We need to find it before she does. Perhaps we should split up, ask around, come up with some notion where it might be."
Quinn nodded.
"Splitting up? Sure, good idea."
*****
Dras was not happy being left to herself. She drifted through the mulatto quarter, watching the townsfolk rush around her. Shanties leaned against one another, rough plank roofs weathered by rain and smoke, and the muddy streets had covered her nicely-polished boots in a thick coat of slime.
She'd grown up in a town not too unlike this one, but Port Royal didn't have the strict segregation that Cap had, and the resulting tension made her uneasy. At the same time, she felt a certain relaxation at being among her own folk, hearing the familiar creole she'd grown up with, the whistling cries of the fish sellers and the chuckling gossip of the wives in the market. For the most part the town seemed normal enough, but every so often those whispering voices hissed at her.
"Have you seen the Yellow Sign?"
Her neck crawled with an unnameable dread at that sinister question, but every time she whirled to confront the speaker, there was no one behind her. No mouth stretched towards her ear.
She knew the mark of the mambo: two hands outstretched, the left painted red. Servir a two mans: serve with two hands; one hand for the mortals, one hand for the gods. Dras pushed aside the curtain and ducked her head as she passed into the tiny shop. Dried chicken heads and rows of spice jars lined the walls on ramshackle shelves.
The old woman was almost completely hidden behind a stack of carved bowls. She appeared to be made out of the same dark, weather-beaten wood as the bowls.
"Child. Papa Agwe told me you would come, on the path of Xibalba. Carrying the heavy chains of Six Thousand Men and Lel-Za-Bol. Come in, child."
Cautiously Dras worked her way through the piles of junk.
"What are these skulls? What do they do?"
The mambo's voice croaked in the darkness.
"Cozumel. The Temple of the Sun. She will seek to open the door to Xibalba. Only the blood of a sacrifice can seal the portal, can send the skulls back to the hell they came from."
"A sacrifice, huh?"
An unsteady hand reached up towards Dras.
"Show me the razor. The Baron's shaving blade."
Startled, Dras fished in her pocket and produced the blood-spattered razor.
"More blood will wash this blade. More blood. More blood."
Dras frowned as the old woman's voice trailed off. Then rattled. Coughed.
Something shifted, far down beneath Dras, beneath the surface of the earth itself. Stones or heavy teeth ground together. Thick fluid surged through cracks and deep subterranean chasms. The old woman's eyes fluttered, then opened wide. Her voice when she spoke changed. It was no longer her voice, but the rotting foulness of the elemental darkness deep beneath the waking world.
"Your blood. Your blood."
She drew in a rattling, bubbling breath. Dras found herself unable to move, staring at the old woman as her limbs twitched and spasmed grotesquely.
"Your blood. We smell your blood, woman. You will give us your blood."
Dras began whispering constant, unending prayers. She managed to get enough control over herself to slide backwards a step, then another step.
"The SIGN."
The old woman's body flailed and her head jerked back in a wailing scream.
"HAVE YOU SEEN THE YELLOW SIGN?"
Dras ran for it, plunging back into the alley and through the marketplace crowds, panting and sobbing as she pushed past people.
*****
"That was completely unprovoked."
"You were pretty rude, Quinn."
"He didn't have to punch me."
"You hit him first."
"Well, he should have stayed down."
"Have you seen the Yellow Sign?"
Ana yelped at the sudden question and twisted around. She and Quinn faced a stooped figure in a tattered yellow robe, indifferent to the thronging crowds rushing past. The two companions shared a glance and then Ana stepped forward.
"No, we haven't. But we'd, uh, maybe like to. Maybe."
The figure gestured.
"Come with me."
"Oh, no."
