6
“Do you know who I am?” Reginald Hampton III screamed as the Ferryman’s crew tore off his clothes and held him down on the ferry’s deck.
“You’re a liar, a cheat, and a fornicator,” the Ferryman replied. “You have more money than you could spend in three lifetimes, but you send men to threaten and beat people who are slow to pay their debts to you—and yet you try to avoid paying for services you want.”
This thing standing over him looked somewhat human, but it wasn’t.
It wasn’t. “Let me up. I’ll pay the damn coin.
” Did they have any idea how much his suit had cost?
As soon as he was on the other side of the river, he’d call his attorneys and raise such a stink that the Ferryman would have to cross the river in a rowboat, since that would be the only vessel he could afford.
Sue the bastard. Yeah, that’s what he’d do. Call the newspapers and let them know how businessmen trying to make an honest deal were treated on Wyrd.
Not that he’d been trying to make an honest deal.
He had a younger brother, Alistair, whose sexual excesses and unchecked spending were starting to interfere with his personal pleasures as well as getting in the way of potential business deals.
He’d wanted information about how to curb Alistair’s behavior without any of the splatter blowing back on him.
And what did those bitches say? They said he would be the solution to the problem, but they wouldn’t tell him how.
He’d had to pay five gold coins for them to tell him that.
He’d be damned if he’d pay another gold coin for a ride back across the river on the ferry!
He wouldn’t have been on the ferry if the crew of his yacht had done their damn jobs and had the vessel ready, but his captain had told him that a minor but important repair had to be done before the yacht could go out again.
The Ferryman stared at Reginald, then shook his head.
“The bargain between passengers and the Arcana is a coin. By refusing to pay for the ride across the river, you broke the bargain, so the price has gone up. You owe me more.” He went down on one knee.
“You owe me a year.” He smiled and pulled out a knife.
“During that year, you’ll have no need of my ferry—or any other vessel—to navigate the Fate River and the waters beyond.
But as your time approaches, you’ll be drawn back here, closer to land, to give you a fighting chance to reach the shore. ”
The Ferryman held up a silver coin, then made a slice along one side of Reginald’s abdomen, carefully making a pocket under the skin.
Ignoring Reginald’s screams, the Ferryman slid the coin into the slice.
He made another slice on the other side of the man’s abdomen and inserted five silvery scales to balance the silver coin.
One of the beings on the ferry handed the Ferryman a needle and black thread. Skin would tear before that thread broke.
As the Ferryman sewed up the two slices, Reginald began to gasp, began to change.
The Ferryman’s crew lifted Reginald and tossed him over the side.
Gasping for air. Losing limbs. Changing.
As he hit the water, he thrashed, unaccustomed to having a tail and fins instead of arms and legs. Water flowed through his gills.
He was a fish? That bastard turned him into a fish?
He thrashed his way to the surface. The ferry was still there. The Ferryman looked over the rail and said, “If you can elude all the predators, you’ll turn back into a man one year from today. If you can’t…”
The Ferryman moved away from the rail. A minute later, the engine started, and the ferry headed back to Wyrd.
He tried to follow it. He would insist that they change him back into a man.
He was Reginald Hampton III! He was important.
If he disappeared for a year, what would happen to his investments, to the companies where he was a majority shareholder, to the wealth he’d grown after wresting most of the family’s fortune out of the hands of his incompetent parents?
Alistair would be trying to get his greedy hands on all of it.
Struggling to control an unfamiliar body, and no longer sure which direction he was swimming in, Reginald leaped above the surface of the water—and saw a sailing ship bearing down on him.
Where had that come from?
He twisted his body out of the way, but not enough. Not enough. The prow was going to hit…
His body passed right through the ship, as if it was some kind of hallucination. Or a ghost.
Just before he hit the water, he thought he heard someone on that ship yelling for help.