Captain Bane's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Captain Bane's three crew members never showed at the meeting point. He waited by the docks for two hours, watching the empty pier. His transparent fingers drummed against the post. Maybe they'd changed their minds. Maybe the living didn't trust ghosts after all. He walked back toward the harbor square, his boots making no sound on the cobblestones. The statue of Captain Blackstone loomed ahead, but Bane turned away from it. He couldn't look at those carved names right now. His path took him past a broken ship hull half-sunk in the shallows near the pier. Barnacles crusted its splintered beams. Rusted metal plates clung to rotting wood. Bane stopped and stared at the wreckage. Some captain had tried and failed here. The water lapped against the hull's exposed ribs. He'd thought his plan was solid—three crew members, good information, a clear target. Now he had nothing but empty promises and wasted time. His hand passed through a fence post as he gripped it. The backstabbing cur still had his ship, and Bane still sailed nowhere. Silver flowers grew through the iron fence nearby, their skeletal branches twisting around the rusted posts. The blooms caught what little light filtered through the clouds. Bane had seen phantom jasmine before—it grew where the dead walked. Beautiful and wrong, just like everything in this cursed place. He turned from the flowers and the ruined hull. The living feared him, or they didn't believe he could succeed, or they simply didn't care. Whatever the reason, he was alone again. His pride had told him crew members would come. His pride had been wrong. Captain Bane headed back toward the empty docks, his confidence as broken as that barnacle-covered hull.