Ashlyn, Bershad, and Jolan had gathered with the leaders of the Jaguar Army crews in a tent outside the city to meet with Kerrigan and distribute supplies. Simeon hadn’t been officially invited, but he’d shown up anyway.
“Back off, Simeon,” said Kerrigan. She had a bandage around her head and was sipping from a mug of hot tea. “I’m not some pirate lackey who just fucked up a reeving for you. And take your weight off the table before you break it.”
Simeon held her with a long glare, but eventually stepped back. The damage was done, though. The table now stood so lopsided, no drink would be safe on the surface.
“Thank you,” Kerrigan said, then turned back to Ashlyn. “As I was saying, there was some trouble on the way back from Dunfar.”
Trouble. Trouble didn’t begin to describe the situation they were currently in. The whole war effort depended on Kerrigan’s open smuggling lines with Dunfar. Without them, they had no way to keep the army and the people of the Dainwood fed.
“What was on the ship that you did bring back?” she asked.
“Well, I was on it, for one thing. Glad to see you’re all falling down with relief on that front.” She glared around the room. “Nor am I detecting much sympathy for the hundred men I lost on the carracks that sank.”
“Feeling shitty about people dying doesn’t bring them back to life,” Simeon said.
“Maybe not, but they were my crew. Under my charge. And they died trying to keep your belly from going empty, you cold bastard.”
“Enough,” Ashlyn cut in. “I agree that the loss of a hundred men should be met with a little more sensitivity than Simeon seems to possess. But right now, I’m more concerned with the thousands of men those ships were supposed to feed. What do we have?”
Kerrigan licked her lips. “One hundred Pargossian crates of flour. One hundred Pargossian crates of rice. One hundred and forty-three Dunfarian swine.”
Kerrigan sipped her tea. There was a pause while everyone waited for her to continue the list after she’d swallowed, but she just stared back at Ashlyn.
“That’s it?” Ashlyn asked.
Kerrigan hesitated. “I dropped most of my cargo when we were spotted by the skyship. Made for a bank of fog that was nearby. That’s why my ship made it and the others perished. They held onto their pigs like softhearted theatre singers.”
“That isn’t enough,” Ashlyn said. “That’ll only last us…”
She trailed off, thinking.
“I already ran the calculation, Queen,” said Kerrigan. “Assuming our casualty rate has been consistent since my last supply run, we have enough to feed the army for a little less than a moon’s turn.”
“Our casualty rate grew by ten percent,” said Ashlyn.
“Call it an even month, then.”
“I don’t think that’s right,” Jolan said. “It seems high, considering the rice will only cover—”
“You’re shorting the swine,” Kerrigan interrupted. “They’re Dunfarian pigs. Twice the size of those runts you raise in the jungle.”
“Oh.” Jolan chewed on his lip for a moment. “Yeah, then. One month.”
“There’s a bigger problem,” said Kerrigan. “That was the last clean route to Dunfar. The skyships will be patrolling it now.” She paused. “I can’t bring any more food into the Dainwood, Ashlyn.”
That news created a long silence. Willem scratched his nose. Opened and closed his mouth a few times before finally speaking.
“The only way to end this war in a month is to stand against the grayskins and the skyships in the open,” he said. “Ashlyn, we all remember Fallon’s Roost, but you and Jolan have been working in that castle for months. Are you any closer to a solution?”
Everyone turned to Ashlyn, expectant and hopeful.
“That’s a complicated question to answer. We have much better understanding of how Osyrus Ward’s technology functions than we did at the beginning of summer.”
“If a grayskin dropped into this tent right now, could you kill it?” Oromir asked from his place in the corner of the room.
Lying wouldn’t do any good.
“No.”
“And if you tried, would you wind up killing all of us instead?”
“Simeon and I would be fine,” Bershad cut in.
“Is this a joke to you?” Oromir asked him.
“I thought that was pretty funny, yeah.”
“Good for you. Do you also think it’ll be funny when the men start deserting their crews and taking shelter in the gloom because they haven’t been fed in weeks?”
“Taking shelter in the gloom isn’t the worst that’ll happen,” Bershad said, voice turning serious. “There’s a thin line between warden and bandit when you’re starving. Pretty soon, we’re not gonna be an army. We’re gonna be a group of desperate men. And we’re all carrying sharp objects.”
“Then why are you making jokes?”
“Because we aren’t out of options yet. Felgor and Cabbage are due back from Floodhaven soon. I’m gonna meet them in Dampmire.”
Willem grunted. “No offense, Silas, but how are the two Balarian spies going to get us out of this big of a fix?”
“Because I sent them to Floodhaven for that specific purpose,” Ashlyn said. “We weren’t learning enough about Osyrus Ward’s technology from scavenging parts, so Felgor went in to steal as much information about them as he could directly.”
“He might have done that,” Willem muttered. “Or he’ll have spent the last moon drinking a hole in his belly and fucking his cock raw.”
“Might not seem like it, but we can rely on Felgor,” said Bershad. “He’s hasn’t let me down yet.”
“That’s true of everyone until they let you down,” said Kerrigan.
“You gonna turn sour on me, too?” Bershad asked. “Thought that was Oromir’s vocation.”
“Hey, if you get to be all sarcastic during tense conversations, so do I.”
“Fair enough.”
Jolan cleared his throat. “Um. I think we’re forgetting something. The shipment from Dunfar was also supposed to feed the people of Deepdale for the whole summer. The army might have a moon turn’s worth of food, but what are they going to eat?”
Everyone looked to Ashlyn again. She cleared her throat.
“One way or another, we need to push this war forward. That means leaving Deepdale, and not returning until the war is over. The people here are young or old or crippled or sick.” She paused. “They get the food. All of it.”
“And we’re gonna eat hopes and dreams and promises?” asked Oromir.
“We’ll scavenge and forage as best we can,” said Bershad.
“Foraging in the Dainwood this time of year is almost as dangerous as fighting a grayskin,” Willem warned. “You’re gonna start losing men.”
“Not if the whole army marches with us to Dampmire,” said Bershad. “We’ll tell them it’s so we can coordinate a fast response to whatever Felgor brings us.”
“Why are we actually doing it?”
“Because they’ll be less likely to desert, or otherwise cause trouble, if they know I’m nearby to run them down,” said Simeon.
Bershad shrugged. “Pretty much.”
Kerrigan sighed. “Also, leaving Floodhaven full of food and devoid of wardens to keep order might cause some problems, too. It might cause pure chaos.”
“They’re gonna have to figure that out for themselves,” said Bershad.
“Well, we’re turning into a beacon of moral superiority here, aren’t we?” said Kerrigan.
“Moral superiority doesn’t win wars,” said Ashlyn. “We go to Dampmire. All of us.”
Kerrigan shook her head. “Let’s just hope Felgor doesn’t fuck this up.”
5
CABBAGE
Floodhaven, Wicked Raven Coffeehouse
“Stop playing with your ears,” Felgor said, taking a sip of coffee.
Cabbage hadn’t even realized he’d been touching them. He pressed hi
s hands flat on the coffeehouse table. “Sorry. They just feel wrong, somehow. I’m afraid people’ll notice.”
“Only way they’ll notice is if you keep screwing with them like a kid who’s just discovered his cock.” Felgor burped. “Relax.”
“Relax?” Cabbage repeated. “Are you joking?”
He gestured around the café, which was full of Balarian naval officers in formal uniforms. Most of them were sipping coffee like him and Felgor. Others were drinking imported tea or juniper liquor. All of them had swords on their hips.
He and Felgor were wearing uniforms, too. But they were stolen.
“Yeah, no reason to be worried.” Felgor pulled out an empty chair from the table and put his freshly polished boots on it. “You got yourself a pair of Malgrave-made prosthetics covering those earholes and barred cheeks. Nobody’s gonna see through her work. Did I ever tell you that I saw her explode the bone wall in Ghost Moth with nothing but—”
“You told me,” Cabbage interrupted. If he had to hear Felgor tell the story about Ashlyn Malgrave blowing up the bone wall, or—worse yet—him and the Flawless Bershad crawling up a shitpipe in the palace of Burz-al-dun, he was going to tear his fake ears off and cram them down the Balarian thief’s throat. “And I got it. No ear touching.”
Cabbage looked around the room again.
“Where is Brutus, anyway?”
“Late.”
“Forty-three minutes late, by my watch.”
“In all fairness, I nicked his timepiece on our last meet.”
“What?” Cabbage hissed. “Why?”
Felgor shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Cabbage moved to touch his ears again, but detoured his limbs to a stern arm-crossing. By Aeternita, his partner in this madness was a liability.
“Don’t even see why I’m here,” he muttered to himself.
“You’re here,” said Felgor, “because despite the quaint diversity of our little army, you’re the only other asshole with a natural Clockwork accent.”
“Cormo’s accent is just as good as mine.”
“Eh. It’s close I’ll admit. But Cormo is too fat to be an officer. He’s also got brown eyes and a button nose. That’d never work.”
Cabbage crossed his arms a little tighter. “Whatever.”
“Drink some of your coffee.”
“No,” Cabbage said, eyeing the warm drink. “Stuff makes me have to … you know.”
“Aye. I do. And from the amount of stress you appear to be under, a proper bowel movement seems like it could do you some good.”
“I’m fine.”
“Eh, probably best. Looks like our friend has finally arrived, so you don’t have time for a shit break.” Felgor motioned to the entrance of the coffeehouse, which Corporal Brutus was walking through. His hair was wet from the afternoon rains and he was carrying a supple leather traveling bag. He had an expression on his face that was half excitement, half abject terror.
“Brutus!” Felgor yelled, kicking out the chair he’d been resting his legs on and waving to the corporal. “Saved you a seat!”
Brutus looked around sheepishly before walking over, shoulders hunched as if that would hide his identity from the other patrons of the coffeehouse.
“Could you have yelled my name any louder?” he hissed at Felgor, taking the seat.
“I’m a vice-commander,” Felgor said. “I can say people’s names as loudly as I please.”
Brutus glanced at the golden clocks adorning Felgor’s shoulders, as if to re-convince himself that Felgor was in fact a high-ranking officer on the skyship called A Moment’s Value, which transported minerals from the kilns of Balaria to Ward’s big tower. Very light duty.
A woman with a skintight black gown approached their table. She had the dark hair of an Almiran, and the cold look that was carried by the few natives who’d managed to thrive despite their city being occupied by foreigners.
“May I offer refreshment?” she asked Brutus.
“Juniper liquor,” he said.
“Would you like a lemon or lime added? I can also cut it with freshly imported bubbled—”
“Just fill a cup to the fucking brim with booze,” Brutus snapped.
The woman raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn’t react. She left to fill their orders.
“Come now, Brutus, where are your manners?” Felgor asked when she was out of earshot. “If you behave that way, the Almirans will begin to think that we men of the Clock are barbaric and cruel.”
“I don’t care what that muddy-haired savage thinks of me,” Brutus said. His brow was clammy with sweat.
“Hmm,” Felgor said, watching the woman weave between a set of tables to see about some other customers. “Savage is not the word I would use for her. Definitely not.”
Brutus sat in nervous silence until the woman returned with his order, which he drank from immediately, holding the cup with both hands and taking three large gulps.
“You’re sure that you can manage my transfer?” Brutus asked, putting his half-empty cup down.
Felgor turned back to the table. Sighed.
“Brutus, enough with the suspicion and second-guessing. I pull mid-ranking officers out of combat all the time. Nobody gives a shit.”
Brutus blew out a sigh. “Good. I simply can’t take another combat mission over that wretched jungle. Last week, two skyships got taken down by dragons. And we had to go back and bomb one of them to make sure the rebels didn’t get ahold of the wreckage. Can you imagine that? One ship gets destroyed by dragons, and we fly back to the same fucking spot.”
“Yeah, it’s real shitty. There’s none of that nonsense on the kiln routes,” Felgor said. “But I don’t pull men onto my detail for free.”
“I know. But I brought it. Every last coin.”
“Coin’s great,” Felgor said. “Real great. But it was only half of our agreement.”
“Right,” Brutus said. “The information. What do you want this stuff for, anyway? It wasn’t easy to get. I had to bribe one of Ward’s engineer cronies.”
“That is not your concern, Corporal,” said Cabbage, cutting in at the agreed-upon time. It wasn’t proper for a vice-commander to answer those questions. His second was meant to do the pushy work on his behalf. Felgor had made that very clear before they’d started, and even forced Cabbage to practice for hours. “Your only concern is giving us what we asked for. If you don’t have it, this conversation is over.”
Brutus swallowed. He was so desperate to get out of this war that he drank up Cabbage’s deception as desperately as he’d drunk that juniper liquor.
“I have it.”
“Fantastic.” Felgor opened his palms. “Let’s see it.”
Brutus took one more gulp of his drink, then he leaned down and opened his satchel just enough for them to see a thick sheaf of carefully folded papers.
Felgor took the papers and leafed through them quickly. Smiled.
“Very good, Brutus. This is very good.”
“It’s only good if the information is accurate,” Cabbage added. “Should we find any fabrications, you will be arrested for treason and turned over to Osyrus Ward for experimentation.”
Men who disobeyed orders or took bad injuries in the field were apt to disappear into the upper workshops of the castle. Nobody knew for sure if Ward was transforming normal men into the hulking, deformed monstrosities that were the acolytes, but nobody wanted to find out the hard way, either.
“No, that won’t be a problem,” Brutus said quickly. “The engineer took them directly from Ward’s vault.”
The threat of becoming one of Osyrus Ward’s playthings was so intimidating that Brutus didn’t seem to realize Felgor was threatening punishment from the same man he was stealing from, but that was fear for you. Turned men into idiots.
“Of course I trust you, Brutus,” said Felgor. “And now that we’ve concluded our business, you need not worry anymore. I will get to work on your transfer right away
. You should receive confirmation soon.”
“But how soon?” Brutus asked. “We’re due for another combat deployment in three days.”
“Oh, long before that,” Felgor said, standing up.
Cabbage followed suit—pulling his uniform tight. It was important to keep up his persona as the second-in-command with a pole up his ass.
Felgor dropped some coins on the table, which was more than enough to pay for their drinks.
“Stay a while,” he continued. “Have a few rounds on me, Corporal. Soon, it’ll be nothing but clear skies and boring grain transports in your future. I promise.”
* * *
“That guy’s fucked,” Felgor said as soon as they were out of the coffeehouse.
“Properly fucked,” Cabbage agreed.
Felgor guided them east, down the main avenue and deeper into the city.
“Shouldn’t we be making our way to the main gate? Between these documents and the maps you stole last week, we’re good to return to the Dainwood.”
“Not quite yet, Cabbage.”
“What’s left?”
“We need to spend Brutus’s coin. Once we’re back in the jungle, that money won’t buy anything besides rotten rice and cooked insects. But in this city, that same coin can buy all manner of delights, especially for two Balarian officers.”
Cabbage realized they were heading to Foggy Side, where Felgor’s favorite brothel was located.
“No, Felgor. We can’t go back to the Eagle’s Roost.”
“Sure we can. It’s just around the next corner.”
They moved down the street, passing soldiers and engineers, mostly. It was rare to see an Almiran face in the capital, these days. Most of them had fled to wilds of the Gorgon River or the Dainwood, if they could get that far.
The reason for the exodus was just ahead of them. One of Osyrus Ward’s acolytes was posted in the middle of the intersection.
Cabbage felt his cock shrivel. The hulking creatures were terrifying. This one was three heads taller than a normal man. He had spiraling horns made from dragon bone protruding from his forehead. While he wasn’t visibly armed, everyone knew that at the first sign of a threat, razor-sharp spikes made from dragon bone would pop out from between his knuckles and along his back and arms. Those spikes could cut through bone like butter. Cabbage had seen it happen.
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