Kerrigan’s face changed. “I’m sorry for what happened, Simeon. Sorry what your end of the deal cost you.”
“You’re sorry now, maybe. Now that your city’s about to get overrun with those creatures. But it was worth it before, yeah? One ruined Skojit soul—along with the greedy bastards who followed me—in exchange for all that comfort and redemption and care beneath the ground. So fuck your remorse, Kerri. I don’t want it. And I ain’t leaving this island.”
“That’s your choice.” She licked her lips. “But I believe you have imprisoned several members of my crew. I came to collect them.”
Simeon smiled. “You always were a well-informed fox, Kerri. Always full o’ knowledge. Who’s feeding you information this time?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Guess not.” Simeon shrugged. “You can have your corsairs if you got the coin for ’em.”
She waved at the chest she’d brought. “Five hundred a head do it?”
“Fine.”
“I have two more chests. One full of rubies. The other emeralds.”
That was worth ten, maybe fifteen times what she offered for the captured corsairs. As a younger man, that kind of plunder would have quickened Cabbage’s heart. But not anymore. Turns out you can get tired of anything—even riches—when your life’s defined by brutal violence and wet feet.
“Kerri, when a man agrees to an offer, you generally don’t reveal that you were willing to pay more.”
“It’s not for them. It’s for the queen you caught. Two chests of gemstones is about the going rate for a queen’s ransom. Figured I’d save you the trouble of running lines into Papyria. Always a risky business, what with widows in the mix and all.”
Simeon narrowed his eyes. Rolled his shoulders. “Now I really am curious where all this knowledge came from.” He sniffed. “Thinking maybe I got a rat in my crew.”
“Yes or no, Simeon.”
Simeon studied the sky for a few moments. Smiled at something.
“It’s gonna be a hard pass. Don’t care how many gems you got on offer. That little queen’s proven herself to be quite the tinkerer of the alchemist’s toys. Only thing that’s getting her out of my basement is the long swim.”
“Or violence,” Kerrigan said.
Simeon smiled. “You got a band of fifty, sixty killers hiding in that dinghy?”
“No.”
“Then fuck off.” He pointed a finger at her. “Push me on it again, and I will slit the throats of your crew members while you watch. Kid included. You know I’ll do it.”
Kerrigan tapped the buckle of her belt in a steady rhythm while she considered her options.
“Just my crew, then.”
* * *
Simeon glared out at the sea until Kerrigan returned to her frigate, pulled anchor, and headed back south around the jagged coast. When they were gone, he waved a hand at the chest of newly acquired gold.
“Divide that up,” he said to Howell. “And double the guard on all our watches, starting now.”
“Yeah, boss.”
“Double?” Cabbage asked without really thinking. “What for?”
“For a supposedly smart bastard, you are impressively stupid sometimes, Cabbage. Think about it.”
Cabbage scratched the spot where his right earlobe used to be. “Dunno, boss. It’s late in the season for trouble with the Nagas. And the Ghost Moths don’t come here no more.”
Simeon sighed. “Howell. Educate the educated man.”
The first mate gave Cabbage a sneering, golden smile. “Ain’t no way that Kerrigan came up here with two chests of precious stones for the Malgrave queen, and is just gonna call it quits ’cause Simeon gave her the cold shoulder. Gems didn’t work, so she’s gonna make a pass with steel.”
“By herself? Thought you said she wasn’t much of a fighter?”
“Naw. Not personally,” Simeon said. “But that conniving bitch’s always got a demon in the shadows behind her who’s willing to do the black work on her behalf. I’m the prime fucking example.”
“Who’s she got that’ll take a run at us? Them corsairs are kinda lightweights, yeah?”
“Lightweight. Heavyweight. Don’t matter if they get their steel through your heart. We just need to be ready for ’em when they show up.”
Everyone headed back to the Proving Ground. Cabbage was planning to sidle off and burn his hangover away with some more of the potato liquor, but his sulking caught Simeon’s eye.
“Cabbage. With me.”
“Where we going now?”
“Down to the queen, you earless fuck.”
“Oh. The helmet.”
“Finally figured something out your own self. I’m impressed.”
“Think maybe I can skip it, boss?”
“You got somewheres else to be, Cabbage?”
“Naw, boss. It’s just … I got a nasty hangover, it burns to all hell when I piss, and … well … she just scares me is all. Them cold blue eyes and that damn scowl. And I don’t like that black thing snaking around her arm, neither. It’s fucking unnatural.”
“Gods, but you are a coward. You’re also the only one who can read the alchemist drawings. So, I need you there to make sure she ain’t tried something funny with that helmet.”
In another life that Cabbage was very careful to avoid thinking about, he’d been a watchmaker’s apprentice in Burz-al-dun. He hadn’t done more than a handful of years before circumstances conspired against him and turned him outlaw, but he’d made it far enough to read a Balarian schematic.
“I can read a clock schematic. But that doesn’t mean I understand all the shit down there. Compared to a clock design, the alchemist pages may as well be instructions for building an entire fucking planet from scratch.”
“Just follow me, and try to grow a pair o’ walnuts on the way, yeah?”
44
ASHLYN
Ghost Moth Island, the Proving Ground
When Ashlyn was done stitching up the final incision she’d made in her own arm, she bandaged the wound with a strip of cloth from her shirt. Winced at the pain as she tightened it.
Felgor swallowed. “I can’t believe you just spent a week carving your own arm up.”
“It was necessary. And don’t forget that I finished the helmet, too.”
“Didn’t it hurt?”
“Yes.”
Ashlyn flexed her wrist, experimenting with the feel and placement of the lodestone, which pulsed with a gentle but steady magnetic charge every time she flexed her forearm muscles. Before she’d gotten very far, the lock on the outer door of the workshop clicked and snapped as the seal unlocked.
Simeon came through with the earless pirate in tow, who looked and smelled like he’d spent the night swimming in a vat of potato liquor.
“All finished?” Simeon asked.
“As ordered.”
She motioned to the helmet, which she’d placed just beyond the bars of her cage. The piece of armor had three major parts—a skullcap carved from a juvenile Ghost Moth’s knee joint, and two faceplates made from a dragon scale that had been sheared in half. Like the rest of Osyrus Ward’s work, it was simple and functional. But Ashlyn had to admit there was an elegance to the design.
“What happened there?” Simeon motioned to her bandaged arm.
“Minor accident.” Ashlyn shrugged. “But better than losing a thumb. Then I wouldn’t be any good to you, and you would cut Felgor in half.”
Simeon made a noncommittal grunt. Studied the helmet.
“Try it on,” Ashlyn prompted.
“Such eagerness,” Simeon chided. “Not becoming of a queen. Cabbage. Check it out.”
The earless pirate swallowed with some effort, then grabbed the helmet and gave it a once-over, checking the inside and outside with the random attention of somebody who had zero understanding of what he was looking at.
The three pieces were bound together by a complicated lattice of metal wires and gears that tightened o
r released based on the lodestone’s shifting orientation. Ashlyn had set the faceplates to remain open until the helmet was attached to the rest of the armor. Once they were connected, the loop would close and the faceplates would connect, creating an impenetrable set of armor.
“Can I see the schematic?” he asked Ashlyn.
She slid the papers through the bars without a word.
Cabbage riffled through the papers, moving far too fast to be absorbing the information.
“Seems good, boss.”
Simeon didn’t move. So Cabbage trotted the fifteen paces back to him before handing the helmet over.
Ashlyn twitched her wrist just enough to probe the lodestones she’d implanted in the helmet. She could feel it react to the one in her body, but it was too weak to manipulate until he put it on and connected it to the armor’s lodestone field.
Simeon took the helmet. Tapped a dragon-scale finger against the skullcap three times.
“You know where I just came from?” he asked her.
“Are we going to play the rhetorical question game now?”
“Watch the sass, Queen. You got some leverage what with the value of them fingers, but you don’t have an unlimited amount. And I am notorious for violent impulses.”
Ashlyn pressed her lips together. “Where did you just come from, Simeon?”
“A parley with Kerrigan. She paid the ransom on your Naga Rock traveling companions. Made an extremely generous offer for your royal hide, too.”
“Which you denied.”
“Obviously. But what’s bothering me is how she knew about you at all. I’ve had the occasional runaway from my outfit over the years, but nobody’s missing at present who was down by the Bloody Sludge.”
Ashlyn shrugged.
“And something else’s been nagging at me,” he said. “There was a dragon circling the frigate that Kerrigan rode up here.”
That got Ashlyn’s attention. “What kind of dragon?”
“One o’ them big gray bastards.”
“A Nomad.” Her pulse quickened. The Nomad. “So?”
“Oh, it’s just unusual. We get Nagas up this way with frequency. An occasional Milk Wing. But never one of the wandering smokies.”
Simeon paced around the cage, but he didn’t get closer to her.
“Careful, Simeon,” said Cabbage. “There’s a few pressure plates over—”
“I know where the fucking plates are!” Simeon snapped, silencing Cabbage.
So, the floor was booby-trapped. Good to know.
“Now, I normally wouldn’t pay an errant lizard much mind—especially since the dragon fucked off south with Kerrigan’s frigate,” Simeon continued. “But I seem to remember that same dragon swooping through the mire above the Bloody Sludge, too. Plus, there’s a fog setting in on the evening tide. No way to know where that lizard is exactly until dawn burns it off.”
“I wouldn’t worry. Nomads aren’t typically aggressive to human settlements.”
“Ain’t the dragon in particular I’m worried about. We got more ballistas on the tiers than an Almiran’s got rings in his stupid hair. But I’m a mite curious about what’s got such a fixture on that lizard’s attention. Thought you could shed some light.”
“Could be any number of things,” Ashlyn said. “The sails of the frigate. The topography of the coast. Or it could be a simple fluke of—”
Simeon snatched a knife from Cabbage’s belt and threw it at Felgor. It missed his face by a hand’s width and thumped deep into a wooden desk behind his cage, quivering.
“Tell another lie, and the next one goes through his forehead. And don’t think I won’t resort to more savage methods of coercion to ensure you remain a productive worker. You might need your hands, but you don’t need your toes, your feet, or any part of your legs for that matter. And I will take them from you one at a time.”
Ashlyn tensed her body. Tested her pull on the helmet again. The magnetic field strained and shuddered, but it was too weak. She needed him to put it on, and to do that she needed him to be alarmed. Scared, even.
So, she decided to tell him the truth.
“The dragon is following the Flawless Bershad.”
Simeon narrowed his eyes. “If that’s true, then he’s got an awfully mobile corpse. We porcupined that asshole by the Bloody Sludge.”
“You filled him with bolts, but you didn’t kill him. He’ll be coming for me and Felgor. And you.”
Simeon wiped a hand through his dirty hair. “Cabbage, what do you think about that notion?”
The earless pirate once again struggled to swallow. “Uh. Well. She and Silas Bershad were to be married way back. Things went to shit with the exile, but there’s lots of Almiran plays about them. They were lovers.”
“Lovers, is it?” Simeon smiled. “Might be he is mounting a rescue, then. The lonely heart getting all forlorn and shit. Hm. The Flawless Bershad, coming my way with heroics on his mind.”
He rolled the helmet over in his hands a few times. Looked down at it. Seemed like he was finally about to put it on. Ashlyn straightened her back and loosened her shoulders. Got ready.
“This here’s good work. And because of it, I’ll most likely peel the skin off your lover’s bones before he gets to you, but I best tighten security up all the same. Wouldn’t want my new tinker queen to go missing.”
Simeon moved to the machinery on the far side of the room. He lifted a circular metal plate and placed his right glove—the one that Ashlyn hadn’t fixed—inside the big socket behind it.
“You had bad luck, Queen. If Bershad was left-handed, he’d have broken this glove when he came at me. And then I’d have been forced to cough up everything you needed to get to the pit that you’re so curious about. As it stands, you got what you wanted anyway. For a time. Enjoy the horror show underneath, Queen. I’ll come collect you when your lover is dead.”
He twisted his glove.
The floor underneath Ashlyn opened, and she dropped into the darkness.
45
JOLAN
Almira, Wreckage of the Time’s Daughter
Oromir didn’t speak to Jolan. He didn’t even look at him. Just put seashells in Cumberland’s and Iko’s mouths and saw to their burials in cold silence. Willem helped him dig. Sten wept from the half-finished sledge.
When it was done, Oromir started gathering supplies with the same cold efficiency that Shoshone had employed when she left the night before.
“Oro?” Jolan asked, following him around like an idiot.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Sorry. But where are you going?”
“To hunt down and kill that gray-eyed fuck.”
Jolan started gathering his own supplies. Picking up random bits of food. “I’ll go with you.”
Oromir snatched a piece of salted pork from Jolan’s hand. Stuffed it in his own pack.
“You’ll just slow me down.”
He turned around. Kept packing. Jolan stood with his shoulders hunched and tried not to cry.
“I’m sorry, Oromir. I tried to save him. I tried everything I knew.”
“It never would have happened if you hadn’t made us spare your friend’s life.”
“He isn’t my friend. Don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Leave me behind. You said … the things that we said to each other last night. That we’d live in a cabin in the woods together. Remember?”
“That isn’t happening. That was just … shit you say after you fuck. It didn’t mean anything.”
“It meant something to me.”
“I don’t care.”
Oromir headed for the woods. Willem was standing next to the sledge.
“You coming?” Oromir asked.
Willem shook his head. “Sten needs help.”
“Fine.”
Oromir moved past him.
“Chasing a scrap of vengeance through those woods won’t do any good,” Willem called. “It’s not what Cumberlan
d would want.”
Oromir stopped, but he didn’t turn around. “He didn’t want to die, either. But it happened.”
Jolan was crying so hard that he couldn’t even see Oromir disappear into the woods. He kept on sobbing—head hung between his knees—while Willem finished making the sledge for Sten. When it was done, Willem came over and put a hand on Jolan’s shoulder.
“It’s time to go.”
“Where?”
“I know the alchemist station that Shoshone talked about. Frula’s place. We’ll go there.”
“What does it matter anymore?”
He took out a roll of paper meant for a pigeon’s leg. He must have taken it off Iko’s corpse.
“Gotta get this to Papyria. Otherwise Cumberland and Iko died for nothing. I can’t let that pass.” He motioned to the sledge. “Will you help me with Sten? I can’t lug him to the Dainwood on my own.”
“Yeah,” Jolan said. “I’ll help.”
46
BERSHAD
Ghost Moth Island, Western Coast
Bershad knew from Kerrigan’s face that Ashlyn and Felgor weren’t with her.
He helped everyone else out of the shallop and onto the frigate.
“Flawless!” Goll shouted, throwing him into an embrace. “I knew you would survive.”
“Careful around the bolts in my back, yeah?”
“Ah. Yes. Sorry.”
Vash and Wendell came up next. Vash gave him a nod. “I’m not sure where Ashlyn and Felgor are,” he said. “But I think they’re alive.”
“You two okay?” Bershad asked.
“It was horrible,” Wendell said. “They put us in chattel cages and made us eat pig slop. And at night we could hear the creatures moving around beyond the forest. And Simeon’s crew are drunk and mean and—”
“We’re fine.” Vash looked around the ship. “Glad to be safe, finally.”
Kerrigan came aboard last.
“Sorry,” she said to Bershad. “I did what I could.”
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