The Grand Mariner, Part 3

Something fluttered into view: a thin, cigar-shaped body, a too-human eye blinking at the front, and torn, gold-tipped wings that beat the stale air with unsettling precision.

It spun lazily, lens creaking, iris flexing as it locked onto them. Then a faint glint - a shutter-blink, cold and polite, recording them for some predatory memory.

Caitlin froze. Maltz’s ears went flat.

"What," Maltz said slowly, "the absolute hells is that?"

The thing bobbed once, wings stuttering in approval, and drifted off down a side passage. Inviting them to follow. Or daring them.

Cathbad’s voice crackled in, edged with something dangerously close to unease.

"Visual identification complete. That, Captain, is what the Sindalian courts once called a Witness. An instrument of record. Proof, validation, history."

"Also known," Cathbad added helpfully, "as something you should only see if you are about to be remembered for your crimes or your death."

Caitlin swung her rifle after it, tracking it out of sight.

"Great," she said drily. "We're famous."

Caitlin scowled after the disappearing Witness. "Right. Better to kick the wasp nest than wait for it." She moved out, rifle loose in her hands. Maltz grimaced, muttering something about famous last words as he trotted after her.

The corridor widened, the light souring to a theatrical gold. Statues slumped along the walls, their faces worn smooth by time and bad maintenance. Ahead, the Witness slipped through a broken archway and out of sight.

Caitlin slowed, scanning. Maltz stiffened beside her. "Up there," he hissed.

She followed his line of sight, and there, on the far side of a broken atrium, beyond the crumbling balconies and sagging banners, they waited.

Six figures, poised like mannequins stitched from nightmares and finery, their sleek mesh armour gleaming beneath flowing, impractical robes. Weapon grips glinted at their hips. Their eyes gleamed faintly, the way gamblers look at a game they know is already rigged.

At their head, wrapped in synth-silk and self-satisfaction, Lady Seseine extended one hand delicately, like a hostess preparing to welcome a particularly disappointing party guest.

They began to descend, gracefully, deliberately, down a staircase that had once hosted emperors and traitors alike, now cracked, dust-choked, and ready for its final scene.

Soft music rose from nowhere, a sickly, wheezing echo of courtly fanfares.

Cathbad’s voice whispered in their comms, dry as sand. "Ah," he said. "The opposition has arrived."

Maltz checked his rifle, cursing in at least three languages.

Caitlin squinted at the spectacle. "Oh joy. The circus is in town."

The figures reached the bottom of the grand staircase like actors hitting their marks. One of them tapped a finger, or possibly a syringe, against the handrail in a slow, rhythmic beat. A lazy heartbeat. A countdown.

Another, one of the Twins, did a slow, graceful cartwheel across the broken marble, elegant and utterly uncalled for, landing in a bow so deep it nearly counted as an insult.

At the centre of the group, Lady Seseine paused, adjusting the heavy fur draped around her shoulders, as if the scraps of dead glamour could still impress anyone who mattered. Pearls winked at her ears, and a twisted gold brooch clung to her immaculate white hair. She smiled - a polite, razor-thin thing that never once touched her dilated eyes - and inclined her head by precisely three degrees.

Her gaze lingered on Caitlin, appraising her like a jeweller eyeing a flawed gem.

"How exquisite," she murmured. "Rough around the edges, but exquisite nonetheless."

Above them, the Witness drones fanned out, each shining a faint spotlight just so, angling for drama like bored paparazzi at a funeral. One zoomed in tight enough to catch Maltz's hand twitch. Another circled Caitlin slowly, framing her like a prize exhibit.

Seseine extended a thin hand, palm upward, a parody of welcome staged perfectly for the cameras.

"Do forgive the theatrics," she purred. "We are collectors of exceptional moments. And you, darling hearts, have stumbled straight into history."

"But where are my manners?" Seseine said, almost lazily. "A proper gallery deserves a proper introduction."

She gestured first to her right. "Jotimam," she said, as the towering cybernetic enforcer flexed his arms with a sound like knives being drawn underwater. "Our humble surgeon of necessity."

A tilt of her hand to the twitching man with the pistols. "Tyram, ever eager. He finds entropy inspirational."

The Twins glided forward in eerie unison, bows as synchronized as their faint, shark-bright smiles. "Our dancers," Seseine said lightly. "Grace incarnate."

And finally, a nod toward the four-legged figure hovering near a cracked pillar. It was sniffing the air, licking the pillar with a forked, augment-glittering tongue. "Svv. Our tracker. Faithful to the scent of opportunity."

She smiled thinly. "And I, of course, am Lady Seseine, curator of all you see, and much you do not."

Caitlin tilted her head, studying the nightmare parade with an experienced eye. They moved like nobles, dressed like nobles, smiled like nobles - but none of it smelled right. She caught the flash of syringes, the glint of polished deflection mesh under silk, the smug choreography.

Predators, not patricians.

And beneath it all, the stench of something trying too hard to stay alive. Sweet mercy, the stench.

"Ah sure, and here I was thinkin' you were just the world's worst Renaissance fair actors."

Maltz made a strangled noise behind her.

Lady Seseine’s smile grew a millimetre thinner.

"And you," Caitlin added, casually resting her finger on the trigger, "can keep your masterpiece. We’re just here to nick the silverware and lower the tone."

A heavy silence fell, the kind that usually ends in funerals or regrettable speeches.

Overhead, the Witnesses drifted closer, wings of gold-leaf catching the light, lenses gleaming and recording every glorious second.

Maltz shifted uneasily, his hand tightening on his rifle. Through the neural comms he whispered urgently, "Maybe don’t annoy the murder peacocks?"

Caitlin kept her stance relaxed, casual. "Oh, I’m sorry," she said aloud, pitching her voice just right to carry, "did I miss the part where we pretend this isn’t a shakedown dressed up like a very silly costume ball?"

One of the Twins giggled, a sharp, synthesised sound that set every instinct in Maltz’s spine alight.

Lady Seseine’s smile didn’t move. She lifted her hand, elegant and slow, like a conductor calling in the next movement.

Behind her, Jotimam flexed his six cybernetic arms in sequence, a soft ripple of mechanical menace. Tyram spun both pistols in a blur, grinning wide enough to show dental work that probably wasn’t voluntary.

Seseine spoke, her voice honeyed and sharp enough to peel skin. "We do so admire your spirit. Truly. It will look magnificent in the archives."

Another Witness bobbed closer, lens blinking like a slow, eager eye.

"But tradition demands I offer you an alternative to melodrama," Seseine continued. "Surrender your salvage, and your delightful ship, into our custody."

A pause, a tilt of her head. "Or stay. Dance with us. Be remembered... always."

Around them, the Witnesses blinked and spun, hungry for footage.

Caitlin smiled then. And because she was Caitlin O’Neill, daughter of a storm-wracked world and many years of bad decisions, she said, "Right so. Bollocks to that."

The hall froze.

Lady Seseine didn’t move. She didn’t need to.

One of the Twins drifted sideways across the broken marble, casual as a breeze, just far enough to start circling. Tyram spun one pistol lazily, the barrel pointing toward Maltz with a flickering, unstable aim.

Maltz caught it, flinching instinctively, tail lashing once. He tightened his grip on his rifle but didn’t fire.

Caitlin saw the way Jotimam flexed his lower arms, casual now, but one twitch away from drawing six knives at once. Witness drones fluttered closer, framing the moment. Framing their deaths.

Caitlin shifted, slow and smooth, letting her rifle’s muzzle drift a fraction sideways.

Maltz’s hand was white-knuckled on his rifle. His voice drifted through her neural comm: "Caitlin. Please!"

The Twin moving left grinned, too wide, too sharp, and slipped a hand behind their back. Maybe for a weapon. Maybe not. Maybe they just wanted her to blink.

Caitlin didn’t blink. She pulled the trigger.

Link to Part 4 (finale): https://soren-boye-petersen.itch.io/the-grand-mariner-part-4-finale