Johannes Cabal the Detective by Jonathan L. Howard

along, pleased with his work. Cabal turned reluctantly to find Miss Barrow smiling not altogether pleasantly at him.
    “I think we’re the ship’s official lovebirds,” she murmured.
    Cabal, stony-faced, took his napkin, flicked it out, and placed it on his lap. “Imagine my delight,” he said, apparently to his place setting. Miss Barrow tapped his elbow and indicated the rest of the diners with a surreptitious gesture. Looking around, he saw that every single man there was tucking his napkin into his collar. Moving smoothly to avoid attracting attention, he picked up his and followed suit.
    “Don’t bother thanking me,” she whispered. Cabal growled slightly and ignored her. He was mentally kicking himself; he’d learned about this particular piece of etiquette during his stay in Krenz prior to the attempt at burglary that had ended in dog drool and disappointment. Now he’d allowed himself to get rattled and it had slipped his mind. Johannes Cabal hated being rattled. It was so … human.
    The first course was soup. Mirkarvian tastes predictably eschewed consommé in favour of something a little more masculine. Miss Barrow filled a spoon but found that she couldn’t bring it to her mouth without the spectre of a gag reflex. “What is this stuff?” she asked Cabal. “Oxtail?”
    “I’m not sure.” He sniffed cautiously. They seemed not to have stopped with the ox’s tail. “Possibly boiled bull’s blood.” He fished around in the dark depths with his spoon. “With croutons.”
    The next course was more acceptable—poached fish—and Cabal took the opportunity to study some of his fellow passengers. The “captain’s table” was actually a construct of all the dining tables in the room unbolted from the deck, rearranged into a squat oval, and bolted down again. Captain Schten held court from the middle of the forward long side—and very uncomfortable he looked in the rôle, too. With Leonie Barrow to his left, Cabal was almost opposite the captain. Cabal watched without sympathy as Schten tried to look interested in what a self-made, self-satisfied, self-aggrandising businessman was telling him about pork scratchings, the Bierkeller snack of the future.
    To Cabal’s right sat a man in his mid to late forties. His face seemed lived-in to the point of being secondhand, perhaps third. He was prodding his fish fitfully with the end of his knife and it was hard to tell who was unhappier with the situation. The man noticed Cabal looking at him. “Poached,” he said in a tone of defeated disgust. “Flippin’ Nora, it would be poached. I thought, Oh, your luck’s in here, Alexei m’boy. Fish.” He patted his stomach. “I’m a martyr to my guts. They ought to open an institute dedicated to the study of my guts. The Alexei Aloysius Cacon Memorial Institute.”
    “It’s traditional to be dead before having a memorial institution named after you,” Cabal observed.
    “And how long can it be, eh? Murdered by me own internals.” Cabal thought they would have to go to the back of a long queue. “Still, if they’re the death of me perhaps medical science can study them and find a cure for my ills, so that future generations can say, ‘His sacrifice was not in vain.’”
    Cabal watched him carefully for any flicker of irony and found none. “Ills?”
    “Plural.” Cacon prodded his fish again. “That would have gone nice with a bit of batter. Oh, yes. I’ve got a regular compendium of complaints, I have. Me doctor’s baffled, baffled. Well, I say ‘doctor.’ I go to him and he just sends me home with the milk of magnesia and tells me not to worry about it.” His lip curled and he sighed deeply, disgusted at the way of the world. “The quack.”
    Despite himself, Cabal was fascinated. He’d never met anybody so profoundly …  wrong before. “I was under the impression that poached fish was supposed to be good for the digestion.”
    “Oh, well,” said Cacon with the wearied yet