Eye of the Fishermen

At the edge of the shore he signed off on a package marked only with a purple eye—no address or name was necessary. He waited for the courier to disappear from view, then turned and tossed it into the sea. He didn't bother to watch as it sank below the waves, ink slowly beginning to smudge and run. It would get where it needed to go. It always did.
As he began to make the long walk back to the warmth of his hearth he marveled at how mundane such a thing had become; just a few years ago he would have had endless questions: Why an eye? Why was it purple? How did they find the package? Who are the Fishermen?
He knew the stories as well as any other: smugglers and pirates, willing to carry any cargo for the right price. They’d earned the favor of many of the underworld’s elite—his being here was proof of that. But this—this symbol, this “delivery”—was far outside any stories he’d heard before.
But the Black Dragon preferred quick minds with silent lips. He’d been with them long enough to know better than to ask. Now, he no longer cared. This had been a thoroughly simple affair—a careless noble, an unguarded pocket, a quick-fingered thief, a swift escape, and a simple delivery. All that remained was to collect his pay. How confident they must be, he pondered, to pay for a job when all evidence of such was lost to the sea.
He knew these thoughts to be troublesome, however, so he banished them from his mind and walked on.
-----
Would they really ever know, he mused. Here he was once more, a package with a purple eye in hand and waves lapping at his ankles. It was clear to him now that this “delivery” was nothing more than a roundabout disposal, merely presented in such a way as to scare him into completion. He doubted the Fishermen even played a part at all.
What would happen—what could possibly happen—if he were to simply put the package in his pocket?
Nobody was watching—he would know if someone was—so he felt no fear as tore the top of the package open. There sat a brilliant gem, a shining star nestled within sea-spray-stained butcher paper. It was light in his hand, but he felt the weight of the wealth it would bring him as if the gold was stacked in his hand a thousand coins high. It would be such a waste to allow as flawless a gem as this to be lost to the silt and salt, he reasoned, to be danced upon by crabs and ignored by fickle fish.
With a smile he folded the paper so that the eye could no longer be seen, tossing it into the water. Now, all that remained was to collect his pay. Best to play the part to the end.
-----
The blade at his throat was a rude awakening. Could they not have done him the courtesy of killing him in his sleep? Of course not. The Black Dragon does not forgive.
“How did you know?”
The hooded figure gave no reply, but moved a hand to their belt, pulling forth a small hand-mirror. They held it aloft, angling it so the moonlight could illuminate his face. As he gazed at himself in the mirror he breathed a sigh of resignation. How had he not noticed? There, emblazoned upon his forehead, was a purple eye.
But as that final breath left him one last thought burned in the back of his mind:
Who are the Fishermen?

----- ----- ^{This article was inspired by the prompt, "At the edge of the shore he signed off on a package marked only with a purple eye - no other address or names were necessary." from Issue Seven of Worldbuilding Monthly.}