The sailors called him Thomas the Bloody, because it made them laugh. Thomas Thickett was a small, slender man: stooped, balding, and constantly ill. He had a penchant for nosebleeds — they came without warning, and always with a gruesome vigor — and so he received his name. He was born thirty-seven years ago in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts but fled to the islands after escaping one of the Farms in Boston. He kept a gun beneath his bed, and he slept poorly.

He had come into possession of a small, ramshackle warehouse, situated far from the docks, in a game of cards three years ago. He stored unmarked cargo for indefinite periods without asking any questions, and he provided sails and timber to the quartermasters who came to him when it was time to refit their vessels. As long as he did these things he was assured a livelihood here.

Even so, he knew that the time to leave was almost upon him.

Rumors and whispers grew like mold in this dank little town, and he was beginning to hear words that scared him. Words like cattle hunters. Prospectors. Carrion angels. Cannibal priests.

He was alone in the warehouse. It was densely packed with mildewed crates, rolled canvas, bags of grain. A single lantern, balanced precariously on a wooden barrel full of God only knew what, cast a shallow little nimbus of orange light, and threw strange, wide-shouldered shadows against the wall. A cool wind blew in from the bay, carrying the sharp tang of ozone, the promise of rain and thunder.

He wished it would start soon. In the quiet he could hear the hoarse whispers, a dozen or more voices attempting speech in the strange tongue of the dead. The voices crawled over the walls like cockroaches.

He heard a pair of boots trod over the wooden floor outside his office and he sat quietly as the door was pulled open. Captain Beverly shouldered into the small room, his first mate close behind him. The captain’s eyes danced quickly around the contents of the room before settling on him at last.

“Thomas the Bloody,” he said. “Bless my bones.”

Thomas nodded at him. “It’s been some time, Captain. It’s a fine thing to see you again.”

“You’ve met my first mate, Mr. Thierry?”

“I have, sir. Yes. I have the cargo right here, sir.”

Captain Beverly and Mr. Thierry exchanged a glance. “Right to business then, is it? All right, Tom, all right. Show it to me then.”

Thomas the Bloody guided the two men out to the main floor of his warehouse. There was a large door here which would swing open to admit carriages drawn by mules or oxen, but it was secured fast, shutting out the din of the town. He carried the lantern in one hand to light their path. The whispering voices were louder in here; he felt steeped in ghosts.

The voices came from the crate, about waist high, which sat in the middle of the room like a diminished little temple.