Two Pieces of Tarnished Silver by Unknown

Chapter One: On a Stillswept Sea
    Korm Calladan grimaced as his teeth pulled a strip of flesh from a hastily cooked human arm. After three weeks and twelve of his mates put to the spit, he couldn’t quite bring himself to devour his meals on deck, before the eyes of his fellow crewmen. He knew he would have died long ago if not for the grim meals—and he refused to die—but his survival brought him no satisfaction. Worse, the passing of days had brought no wind to the still Obari seas, and soon, quite soon, there would be no one left to devour.
    According to the navigator, the Queen’s Lament had been less than a week from Quantium when the winds died, and the long voyage from distant Vudra had left them but a few days of provisions when the sails went slack and the ship fell still. Korm had argued against putting in at that city of wizards, favoring instead the markets of Katapesh or even the slaver enclave of Okeno, but the ship’s captain had no fear of sorcerers and mystics, and carried forth toward Nex’s capital port, mocking Korm’s superstition. Then the ocean died, and the captain along with it. After the navigator, he had been the first to provide his meat for the survival of the mutinous crew.
    Even now, Korm could hear the crew cackling and howling on deck, filled with a moment’s energy from their latest harvest. Sitting with his back against the cabin door and his eyes on the sunlit stairs, Korm swallowed a hunk of what this morning had been the third mate. He tried not to think of the look in the young sailor’s eyes when the lad drew a tarnished silver coin from the capped tankard they used to determine whose turn had come. In the space of a moment, the crew fell upon him with knives and sharpened hooks. Two weeks ago, Korm would have left the work to the others. Earlier today, he pushed them aside in an effort to claim the choicest cuts for himself and his companion, Aebos, on the other side of the door.
    “Korm would rather talk than fight, but he’d rather fight than die.”
    With the navigator and the captain, they’d sliced the meat into cutlets so they could pretend they feasted upon some animal. It was brutal work that forever changed the butcher. By the third draw of tarnished silver, men threw their slain mates right into the fire, hacking crisped limbs away, leaving fingers and toes intact, making no pretense of their foul work. To date, Korm and Aebos had remained on the right side of the dinner knives, but he knew their luck would only last so long. Korm dropped the mate’s arm into his lap and brought his bloody fingers to his mouth, plucking a hair from between his front teeth.
    A shadow darkened the stairs to the deck. Then another. And another.
    The thin wooden stairs creaked under the weight of six emaciated sailors, led by Hurmat, a lanky, thin-bearded Vudran in a blood-spattered blue vest. He held a red-greased knife in his left hand, and the capped tankard in his right.
    “We miss you on deck, Calladan,” he said with a wicked smile. “There’s still some of Armad left, if you hurry. We wouldn’t want you to go hungry. Why do you always disappear during meals?”
    Korm flicked away the thin black strand of hair and let his left hand fall to the thin saber at his side.
    “It’s not that I dislike the company,” he said. “I had to bring a portion down to Aebos.”
    The men behind Hurmat shifted nervously, their eyes darting to the cabin door. Korm noticed that all of them held short blades, belaying hooks, or curved daggers. That and the presence of the tankard suggested that they hadn’t just come to talk. Even with the little strength provided by their latest meal, Korm doubted he would be able to take all of them in a fight. Unshaken, Hurmat stepped forward and leaned down to look Korm straight in the eyes.
    “Yes. Aebos. We’d like to talk to you about him.” The sailor’s hot breath carried the stench of urine in its second or third cycle. The potable water had