Lady Smoke

by Laura Sebastian

  We stand together on the aft of the ship, watching her small fleet disappear into the distance. Though I keep hoping they will turn around and come with us after all, Artemisia only looks resigned.

  “It’s what she does best,” she says after a moment. “It’s why she’s survived this long—she knows when to run.”

  There’s a layer beneath the factual tone of her voice, a layer I might have missed even a few weeks ago when I didn’t know her as well as I do now. She never expected her mother to stay, but she wished it all the same.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her.

  She shrugs her shoulders, the move sharp and graceless, without any of her usual swagger. Her jaw is clenched so tightly I’m surprised she can get words out.

  “Only fools waste time with wishes and apologies,” she says, but the words don’t have their usual bite.

  We’re both fools, then, I think, though I don’t say it out loud. This isn’t something Art wants to talk about and she doesn’t need to. So I don’t press her to share her feelings; I don’t even try to touch her the way I think I would like someone to touch me if I were in her position. That isn’t what she needs. She needs someone to stand at her side and pretend not to notice when her tears begin to fall. So that is what I do.

  * * *

  —

  That night, my cabin feels too quiet. I’ve taken the captain’s quarters on the lead ship, and it’s sizable, as far as cabins go—it has room for a desk and a dining table and a cot—but after my grand room in Sta’Crivero, it feels cramped. The styling is simple and minimalistic, without the grand Sta’Criveran flourishes and embellishments, though those, at least, I don’t miss. Instead, I find comfort in the weathered wood and worn blanket, the roughly hewn desk and the hard chair with its uneven legs. It is a space that feels homey and comfortable, and I find that is what I crave now more than luxury.

  The quiet leaves space for too many thoughts, though, too many nightmares to play out behind my eyes even before I have a chance to fall asleep. I could be leading these people into a slaughter. Thousands of people could end up dead and it would be because of a choice I made. I might as well plunge a dagger between their ribs myself.

  Once, I thought that the blood on Søren’s hands was so thick that they would never be clean again, but now my own don’t feel much cleaner. I killed Ampelio and Coltania myself, but how many others lost their lives because of me? Elpis, Hoa, the Archduke, the Guardians in the Astrean prison, the servant girl Coltania enlisted whose name I don’t even know. All those dead guards outside the refugee camp, even.

  I know that these deaths were unavoidable, but guilt eats at me all the same. And here I am leading more people—thousands of people—into a battle I don’t know if we can win.

  It’s foolish and irresponsible and—and it’s the only way forward. It’s the only way home.

  A knock sounds at my door, light and questioning.

  Grateful for the interruption, I drag myself from my narrow cot and pull my dressing robe over my nightgown, tying the sash around my waist. When I open the door, I’m surprised to find Søren on the other side. I don’t know who I expected it to be. Blaise? He’s bunking with Artemisia, who’s promised to kill him if he starts to lose control. He wouldn’t risk leaving her side for even a moment.

  I search my feelings. Am I relieved it’s Søren? Was there a part of me that wished it was Blaise instead? I don’t know. All I’m sure of is that Søren’s presence feels like lightning striking in my belly, filling me with a dangerous warmth.

  I open the door farther and gesture for him to come in. The door closes behind him with a firm click.

  “Are you all right?” he asks me, his voice low. “With Hoa and Coltania and everything?”

  I bite my lip and turn back to him. Images of Hoa’s lifeless body and Coltania’s eyes locked on mine as she took her final breath fill my thoughts. Coltania is easier to think about, so I bury Hoa in my mind and focus on her.

  “Do you remember what you told me after I killed Ampelio?” I ask him, sitting down on the edge of my cot.

  Søren stays standing before me, frowning. Whatever he was expecting me to say, it wasn’t that. “I believe I tried to comfort you and I made an ass out of myself in the process,” he says slowly.

  I smile tightly. “You did,” I agree. “But later, when you mentioned it again, you were right. Killing is never easy, even when it isn’t your first time doing it. Even when you have no choice—when it’s a matter of self-defense. It leaves its mark on you.”

  Søren holds my gaze. “You did what you had to,” he says.

  “I know,” I tell him, looking down at my hands. I debate my next words, whether it’s wiser to say them out loud or keep them locked inside. I can’t find the answer to that, yet in the end I force myself to give them voice. “But in that moment, when I forced the dagger into her stomach, I wasn’t thinking about defending myself. I wasn’t thinking about what would happen to me if I failed. I was thinking about Hoa, about what Coltania had done to her—how she’d taken another person away from me. When I killed her, I wasn’t only fueled by self-defense. I was fueled by rage. I was fueled by vengeance.”

  It’s an ugly confession, made here in a quiet cabin in the middle of the ocean, but Søren doesn’t flinch away from it. He holds my gaze, steady and sure like he can see straight through to the deepest parts of me, the parts I’m ashamed of. The parts I try to hide from everyone else, even Blaise. Søren sees the ugliest parts of me, the cowardice and the conniving and the manipulating. He sees it all and he understands it. He looks at me like I’m his favorite book, one he’s read every page of too many times. One whose secrets he’s uncovered but he keeps coming back for more anyway.

  I’m still not sure if I’m Thora in his eyes, or Theo, or some bleeding watercolor of both together, but in this moment, we are the only two people in the world and we are not Thora and the Prinz. We are Theo and Søren and it feels like he knows me as well as I know myself.

  I stand and close the few steps of distance between us until we are only inches apart. He doesn’t step back, but he doesn’t move closer either, though his breath hitches. He makes no move to touch me, his hands hanging limp at his sides. He won’t, I realize, because I asked him to keep his feelings to himself.

  It’s easier that way, smarter to leave things as they are. He is my advisor and my friend, and that is all he can ever be. But standing this close to him, it’s difficult to remember why that is. It’s difficult to remember Blaise, only a few cabins away, telling me he loved me. It’s difficult to remember the Kaiser, sitting on my mother’s throne with my once closest friend at his side. It’s difficult to remember the thousands of people who have agreed to follow me into battle, people who see Søren as their enemy.

  “Søren,” I say, his name little more than a breath.

  His eyes find mine—they’re the same shade of blue as the Kaiser’s, but even that reminder is dim now, a ghost in the back of my mind.

  Tentatively, I reach up to touch his cheek. He’s in need of a shave and his stubble is rough against the palm of my hand.

  Søren looks like he wants to say something, but whatever it is falls away when I roll onto the tips of my toes and brush my lips against his. With that touch, all Søren’s restraint falls away and in an instant he is kissing me back. One hand reaches up to cradle my face while the other settles at my waist, anchoring me to him. It is a gentle kiss, like the ones we shared back in Astrea, sneaking through palace tunnels and taking midnight sails when we were still strangers to each other, but we aren’t strangers anymore. I know him and he knows me and the darkest parts of our souls match.

  The kiss deepens. Søren tastes like the fresh bread and spiced wine we had at dinner. The kiss turns hungry, devouring, consuming until I’m not sure which breaths are his and which are mine. Our edges blur together, hands
and skin and lips and teeth. When his mouth leaves mine, I want to pull him back, but all too quickly he’s kissing my jaw instead, my cheek, the shell of my ear, sending a shiver through me that feels like fire.

  “Theodosia.” He whispers my name like a hymn. It doesn’t sound too big anymore; it fits me as perfectly as his hand fits the curve of my waist, as perfectly as his mouth melds to mine when he kisses me again.

  * * *

  —

  I don’t have to ask Søren to stay the night with me. The invitation hangs in the air without words, and he accepts it, shucking off his boots and crawling into my bed. We curl up together under my threadbare blanket, my head on his chest, his arms around me.

  “If they find me here in the morning, there will be talk,” he says through a yawn.

  “I know,” I say. I listen to the beating of his heart, steady and sure and in time with mine.

  His fingers trace patterns on my back through the thin material of my nightgown. “In the garden, you told me not to mention my feelings for you because you believed them not to be true,” he says slowly.

  “Søren—” I start, but he interrupts.

  “Just let me say this, please,” he says before pausing. “In Astrea, who you were—Thora—I wanted her. I wanted to protect her from my father, the way I never could protect my mother. I wanted to run away with her and save both of us. You were right about that. But what I felt then, it’s a shadow of what I feel for you, Theo.”

  I open my mouth to tell him to stop again, but the words die in my throat. Dangerous as they are, I want to hear them so much it almost breaks me.

  “I don’t want to protect you. I don’t need to protect you. You have others for that and you’ve done it yourself enough times by now. I don’t want to run away with you; I want to stand at your side and fight—fight for something I never even thought that I wanted, but I do. I’m stronger with you, and braver, and I never want to go back to living like I was before. I love you, and it isn’t anything to do with who you pretended to be. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I tell him softly.

  When his breathing turns slow and even, I can’t help but think about Blaise saying those same three words to me only days ago. When Blaise said them, they were a balm for a wound he hadn’t delivered yet. Søren says them like he’s breaking the chains that bind us together and hoping I will stay anyway.

  THE SHIP WE’RE ON TRAILS behind the rest of the fleet. Though we made it from Astrea to Sta’Crivero in a week, it takes us twice that to wind around to the southeast coast of Astrea, where the Fire Mine is, and we make no effort to hurry. The two weeks pass in a flurry of training and strategizing, trying to turn our two thousand refugees into two thousand soldiers. The weapons and armor that were looted from one of the Sta’Criveran ships we stole are barely enough, but it will have to do, because the coast appeared on the horizon this morning, the silhouette of Astrea’s cliffs jagged against the rising sun. There isn’t much more time to wait and train and plan.

  Though I know I’d do more harm than good if I tried to physically lead an army, it’s difficult not to feel like a cosseted infant in a cushioned cradle. Søren must feel it worse than I do, though he’s never complained to me in the nights he’s spent in my room, the two of us huddling beneath the covers together, blocking out the rest of the world. Him fighting would be too risky and potentially confusing—Kalovaxian as he is, it would be too easy for a friendly sword to find its way to his heart. Still, I feel his disappointment permeating the air around him.

  He tries to make up for it by throwing himself into strategizing. Because he’s seen the mines from the point of view of a Kalovaxian commander, his input is invaluable. Even my Shadows, who spent years in the mines themselves, are surprised by the detail in the illustration Søren sketches out on the parchment we’ve laid out on my desk. We surround it, Søren, Blaise, Heron, Artemisia, and I, our shoulders touching.

  “I’ve circled everywhere guards will be,” Søren says.

  I glance from his somber face to the map. There are more circles than clear space.

  “It’s a lot,” he allows when none of us speaks.

  “A lot is an understatement,” Artemisia says, pursing her lips.

  “The mine won’t be as easy to take as the camp was,” Søren admits. “But we’ll still outnumber them and they won’t be expecting it, which gives us an advantage.”

  “Enough to counteract their advantage of fighting on land they know, plentiful with their own resources, with more experience, strength, and gems to aid them?” Blaise asks.

  Søren hesitates. “Maybe,” he says.

  Maybe isn’t good enough, but it’s the best we can hope for. I rub my temples and stare down at the map, pointing to the shore. “So we’ll approach from this direction?”

  Søren nods. “But it would be more effective if we also send a couple of the faster ships around here to come from this direction,” he says, pointing to the shore on the far side of the Fire Mine. “That way, we’ll be attacking on two fronts and it’s one less channel they’ll have to send a warning to my father.”

  I nod. “Do we have enough men for it?” I ask. “Or will splitting our resources make it easier for them to pick us off one side at a time?”

  Søren stares at the map, brow furrowed in concentration. “We should have enough,” he says after a moment.

  Should. There was a reason Dragonsbane didn’t want to join this fight with us—it’s a risk, and a big one at that.

  “They won’t have any ships watching the southwest coast,” Søren adds. “But they will have some ships patrolling farther north. We have enough ships to take them out, but we’ll likely lose a few of our own in the process.”

  “Ships we can’t afford to lose,” I say, frowning. An idea takes hold of me and I look up at Heron. “How far can your invisibility spread?” I ask.

  He considers the question. “I can’t say I’ve ever tried cloaking more than a couple of others.”

  “Could you cloak the entire fleet?” I ask, though even as I voice the request, it seems like a hopeless question.

  Heron’s brow creases. “No,” he says slowly. “But maybe I could fade us enough that we would be difficult to see, especially if I play with the water’s reflection. Not for long, though. Not long enough to get us past them.”

  Artemisia tilts her head to one side, dark eyes becoming thoughtful. “If Heron can fade the fleet, I can manipulate the tides, push us past the Kalovaxian patrol faster. We might not be able to slip by unnoticed before he loses the invisibility, but at the very least, we could surprise them enough to minimize our losses.” She pauses, her eyes flicking to Blaise. “Or,” she says, her voice wary, “we could rip their ships apart without giving them a chance to fire a single cannon.”

  Blaise meets Artemisia’s gaze, eyes widening when he understands what she isn’t saying. After a moment, he nods. “I can do that,” he says, testing out the words. “Wood is of the earth.”

  My time on the Smoke with Blaise comes back, how the wood that made up the ship started thrumming as erratically as his heartbeat, how I worried it might splinter apart. Artemisia is right—if we can use that against the Kalovaxian ships, we could deal a great blow before even setting foot on the shore. But at a steep cost.

  “It’s too dangerous,” I say. “We don’t know what it’ll do to you, never mind our own ships.”

  Blaise shakes his head. “My gift is the strongest we have, Theo,” he says.

  I remember Mina’s words and imagine a pot boiling over. “It could kill you. If we can get close to them using Art’s and Heron’s gifts, we can sink their ships in the non-magical way—with cannons—and not take that risk.”

  Artemisia makes a noise in the back of her throat. “We could,” she says slowly. “It would even be easy, but it would come at a cost still. No m
atter how much of an advantage we gain by sneaking up on them, we’ll still take losses—warriors, a ship even. Losses we can’t afford.”

  “We can’t afford this either,” I say.

  For a moment, no one speaks. “Yes, we can,” Blaise says before reluctantly turning his gaze to Søren. “Since Art will be otherwise occupied, the duty falls to you, Prinkiti. If I seem to be losing control of it and becoming a danger to our ships, you’ll kill me before I can. Are we understood?”

  Søren glances at me and then back to Blaise. “We’re understood,” he says.

  “No,” I say, louder this time. “It’s too dangerous. You could die, Blaise.”

  Blaise’s jaw tenses and he shrugs. “I can give us an advantage we desperately need.”

  I look around at the others, hoping that someone else will speak out against this mad plan, but there is only silence, only friends who won’t look me in the eye. An order dances on the tip of my tongue and I know I could use my crown—metaphorical as it might be—as a weapon again. I could order him to stay out of this, to stay safe, but I swallow down the urge. Some choices are not mine to make.

  “We’ll send a rowboat to pass along the plan to the other ships,” I say instead. “What happens when we get to shore?”

  “You were a Kalovaxian commander,” Heron says, looking at Søren. “When we attack the mine, how will they respond?”

  Søren looks a bit flustered at that. “I was never posted at the mines, but as I understand it, they’re trained differently than most warriors, though getting assigned there was always seen as something of an insult. They won’t be the best of men, so there is some comfort there.”

  “There would be,” Artemisia says, “if our army weren’t made up of refugees with two weeks of training.”

  Søren doesn’t have an argument for that. Instead he looks at me. “We could wait,” he says. “If we wait for Erik and the Vecturians, we’ll have more warriors and the odds will swing more in our favor.”