Chapter Text
The messenger balked under her gaze as he delivered the news. This was the second time this month, fourth overall. Josephine took a deep breath and nodded her thanks at the messenger, who almost tripped over his feet to get out of the room as fast as possible. Shaking, Josephine sat back down at her desk, burying her head in her hands. Who was doing this? It wasn’t just the money; people were dying. Her people were dying.
Josephine turned and gazed out of her window. The Antivan sun was shining and glittering off the turquoise sea, the fishing boats bobbing in the harbour. Everything looked so calm and beautiful. So vastly different to what she was dealing with. She turned back to her desk and began rifling through her papers for the fourth time.
It had started a few months ago. On the 14th of Bloomingtide, to be exact. She remembered receiving the news just like this, standing in her office, interrupted from writing a trading report. The rain had been pouring down that day, bouncing off the window pane. The messenger had come in, clutching the parchment in his hands, staring at his feet. His voice had shaken when he told her. Told her that her carraca had been sunk, as well as its convoy. That there were only one, maybe two survivors.
Now that number of survivors was up to around twenty. The number of dead over ten times that many. Probably more. And she had no idea who, or why, or how to make it stop. Josephine stopped looking through her reports and sighed, head in hands again. She would need to stop trying to trade, at least until this was over. It was no accident that it was her ships being attacked, this was clear.
She stood again, and rang for her servant. The news had rattled her, and more than anything she needed a good cup of tea and something laden with sugar. The world of commerce was fraught with peril anyway, particularly in Antiva where everything was overseen by the Crows standing silently in the shadows. She had borne the brunt of that with her family’s downfall years previously. But she had worked hard to fix that, with the Inquisitor’s help, of course. It had never been like this though, their losses had been to their standing in society, their profits. Never blood. Never this much blood.
Her servant left the room as quickly as she had arrived, and returned with a tray of tea and cakes. Josephine feigned a smile and thanked her, pouring herself a cup and leaning back in her chair. She needed to remain calm, and find any clues. She’d had trouble with pirates, but they had never caused so much trouble. She knew the captains well, and this was not their style. They fought to capture a ship, to keep the cargo. Not to sink it.
A few hours passed. The shock had worn off a little, and she was doing better. The cake had helped. She needed to make contact with her rival captains, that was easy enough. At least, compared to the past few years it was. Trade rivalries were nothing in comparison to the political negotiations of the Inquisition. The only problem… Josephine drank the last dregs of her second pot of tea and rubbed her eyes. The only problem was she was certain it was nothing to do with them. She needed to speak to her surviving crew, perhaps they had some clues.
Josephine had considered sending a messenger to speak to the survivors, but this was something she needed to do herself. She could only trust herself to get the right information, and in purely Orlesian thinking, it would do a lot for her reputation as an employer to be seen visiting the wounded. She also couldn’t shake the feeling that she owed it to them. The thought of it all made her feel sick.
Before leaving on her fact-finding mission, she scoured her previous reports again. There were two mentions of the ship’s sails. Both stated that the sails had been black as coal, with one report describing the flag in very little detail. All it said was that there was something large and red on the flag. She couldn’t find anything else to help her, and nothing in her trading reports mentioned any companies that flew a similar flag. She needed to make sure and press the poor survivors for more information. It would surely be worth it in the long run, if it amounted to anything. Rubbing her tired eyes, Josephine grabbed a large naval directory from the bookshelf on the wall behind her and started reading.