Bane and Shadow

by Jon Skovron

  The silversmith stared blankly, as if in a trance. Then he slowly tipped forward onto the table. Another blade protruded from the base of his skull.

  Willmont turned to the two men on the left that he didn’t know. They leaned into each other, their eyes staring and mouths slack.

  “Kiptich,” whispered Willmont. “What’s going on?”

  Kiptich shook his head, his gaunt face looking frightened in the lantern light. “Let’s get the hells out of here before we’re next.”

  The two stumbled to their feet. Kiptich stepped away from the table and out of the light.

  “Wait, let’s take the lantern!” Willmont picked it up and shone it toward Kiptich. He saw his friend again for a moment. Then a dark shape moved quickly past, blocking his view. When he saw Kiptich again, his friend was clutching his ribs, blood seeping between his fingers. He gave Willmont a terrified look as he gasped for air that didn’t seem to come. Then he dropped to the dirt.

  Willmont stood alone. The tremors in his hand made the lantern light flicker. Even though his mind screamed at him to move, to run for the hatch, his feet stayed where they were, locked in place with fear.

  Then he felt a sharp pain in his wrist. He yelped and dropped the lantern.

  He clutched at his now-bleeding wrist and squinted into the darkness. Above his own harsh gasps for breath, he heard a noise and jerked his head around. At the edge of the light, he saw a shadowy form dressed in gray.

  Then Willmont felt a white-hot stab of pain in his throat. He tried to cry out, but there was only a gurgle. Something warm and wet spilled down his chest as he watched the shadowy form melt back into the darkness.

  The last thing to enter Willmont’s mind before he died was that the falcon would never be finished. Mr. Blagely would be so disappointed.

  3

  Jilly stood at the rail and watched the disabled Guardian recede into the distance. The Kraken Hunter was a fast little brig, but Jilly still had a hard time understanding how the ship had beaten one three times her size with four times the number of guns.

  “Mr. Finn?”

  The old wrink stood nearby, his hands firm on the wheel, his one eye squinting in the late afternoon sun. “Aye, Jilly?” he asked in the comforting cadence of someone from Paradise Circle.

  “How’d you do it?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Take the Guardian with a lesser ship and fewer people?”

  He smiled. “I did very little. Only steered her around in a circle a few times.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “How do you think we done it?”

  “Captain Vaderton said a crew is part of the ship. So if the vessel herself wasn’t the reason, it must have been the people on her.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true. And the captain most important of all. A battle can be lost or won on the strength of the captain alone.”

  Jilly turned to the forecastle, where the woman who called herself Dire Bane stood and gazed out at the horizon. Her arms were at her back, her left hand holding the strange clamp at the end of her right wrist. Her loose blond hair whipped in the wind like a flag.

  Jilly ran her fingers through her own short brown hair. For the last two years, she’d had to keep it short so she could pass as a boy. Maybe she’d grow it long again, now that she was on Dire Bane’s ship, where such things seemed acceptable.

  “I never heard of a molly captain before,” she said to Missing Finn. “I didn’t think it was allowed.”

  The old wrink grinned. “I think you’ll find a great many things on this ship that are not, strictly speaking, allowed.”

  “How can she be Dire Bane? I mean, I thought Dire Bane was a tom. And that he’d been killed.”

  “Dire Bane is a name she took on.”

  “Like a title?” asked Jilly.

  “More like a promise,” said Finn. “And I think you’ll find that Captain Bane is someone who takes her promises very seriously.”

  She certainly looked serious to Jilly. Almost frightening in her cool fierceness.

  The woman who stood next to Captain Bane was just as intimidating, although in a different way. She wore a flowing white gown with a hood that was now thrown back to reveal her long black hair. She was nearly a head taller than Captain Bane, and had an imperious manner about her, like a lacy who was used to getting her own way.

  “Who is the fine lady next to the captain?” Jilly asked Finn. “I saw her doing things that looked like magic. How can she do that?”

  “She used to be a biomancer, before they kicked her out of their order.”

  “Why’d they do that?”

  “As I understand it, because she’s a molly.”

  Jilly thought about that awhile as she stared at the two women. Then she asked, “Why’s it so bad to be a molly?”

  Missing Finn looked at her sharply. “It ain’t bad at all. Some of my best wags are mollies.”

  “Then why are there so many things we’re not allowed to do? We’re not supposed to be sailors or soldiers or captains or I guess biomancers, even. But it’s not like we can’t do those things, is it?”

  “You have only to look around this ship to know the answer to that.”

  “Then why are we not supposed to be those things?” she asked.

  “Just lacy nonsense, you ask me,” said Finn. “You know as well as I, we don’t worry about such balls and pricks in Paradise Circle.”

  They stood without talking for a little while, the ship beneath them cutting across the endless sea. After a few minutes, Missing Finn began to hum softly to himself. Jilly couldn’t remember the name of the tune, but it was something she’d heard as a child in Paradise Circle. Back when she’d been called Little Bee. How did it go…?

  Sail away, my wag. Sail away.

  Before the night turns to day.

  Or they’ll drag you down

  To rotten old Keystown

  So away, my wag. Sail away.

  A sudden homesickness welled up in her. But that was strange, because it almost felt like her childhood home was on this ship. There was Filler, whom she’d tortured endlessly with questions and gossip and whatever else popped into her head when she’d been bored and her mother wasn’t at home, which had been often. He’d put on some more muscle. He looked a little older and hairier, and something had happened to his leg. But he was still the same tall, quiet presence that had given her so much comfort. He now sat peering down at a large sheet of paper with drawings and calculations of some kind spread across a barrel top. Next to him was a man who looked so much like Red, she’d almost thought it was, until she got a good look at his eyes. Filler had introduced him as Alash, Red’s lacy cousin from Hollow Falls.

  Nettles sat nearby, polishing her chain. She looked even more beautiful than Jilly remembered, with her thick curly hair, full lips, and smoldering eyes. Jilly had been so mad at her for taking nearly all of Red’s time that last month before Jilly had gone to live with her aunt in Hammer Point.

  And back in the stern was the infamous Sadie the Goat, one of the boldest and craziest wags the Circle had ever produced. She was a legend. Jilly had to admit, though, that she didn’t look much like a legend as she lounged on the deck, snoring, her thin white hair fluttering in the breeze, a fishing line held loosely in her hand. But Sadie had been Red’s mentor. Red, who had taught Jilly to pick a lock, to read, and at the very end, after an extended bout of pleading, how to throw a knife. If not for those three skills, Jilly didn’t know if she would have survived the last few years.

  “Mr. Finn? What happened to Red?”

  “The biomancers have him.” He saw the look of horror on her face and quickly added, “But don’t worry. They won’t harm him. Brigga Lin and Captain Bane are certain of it. Apparently they need him for something special.”

  “And we’re going to rescue him, right?”

  “That’s the idea. Although it won’t be a simple thing, I’m afraid. Those biomancers are as fearsome as peo
ple say. Maybe even more so. We have to be smart and patient and do it right.”

  “But we are going to do it?”

  “Captain Bane swore it.”

  Jilly turned again to Captain Bane. She looked so strong and confident. Jilly wondered if she’d ever be near as impressive.

  “How’s about a turn at the wheel?” said Finn.

  “Me?” asked Jilly. “But—”

  “Don’t be so grave. This ain’t the navy, you know. And we’ve got a nice stretch in front of us. Nothing to it but to keep her straight.”

  “But I don’t know how.”

  “That’s why I’m going to teach you,” said Finn. “Come now. Every hand needs to make themselves useful. Time you did, too.”

  Bleak Hope stood on the forecastle and stared north at the empty stretch of sea in the last red light of day. She wished she could look across the miles to see Stonepeak. It had taken them nearly a year to refit the Lady’s Gambit into the battle-worthy Kraken Hunter, and perfect their strategy. They’d begun with small imperial sloops—one-masted ships with few cannons. Then they had moved on to larger two-masted schooners and brigs. They’d learned from one of those captains about Brice Vaderton, a man recently given command of an imperial frigate as a reward for his service to the biomancers. The Guardian had been the first fully armed frigate that they’d taken, and they’d spent more than a week planning and trailing the ship before they’d made their move. She knew these were all steps toward Red’s rescue, but she felt a constant, low tickle of frustration that she wasn’t closer.

  The months after the attack on Stonepeak had been some of the hardest in her life. Loss had been her constant companion. She would sit in her quarters, reading or studying a map, and she would imagine she heard him call her name. It sounded so real, she would even turn, in spite of herself, knowing she would not see those glinting, mischievous red eyes.

  Sometimes in those early months, she would also forget she had lost her hand. She would instinctively reach for a cup, only to knock it aside with her clamp. Back then, she was able to picture her missing hand vividly. Every line and freckle. The scar from when she’d burned herself while cooking for the brothers. The roughness of the knuckles from years of striking wooden boards. The creases in her palm that her mother told her meant she would have a long life and one great love. Back then, she had been able to see that hand as if it were right there in front of her. Sometimes, it had even felt like it was there. It would ache or itch, or tingle in an odd way.

  But slowly, month by month, she adapted to her new hand, crafted by Alash, Filler, and Brigga Lin. Finally there came a day when she realized that she couldn’t remember her old hand clearly anymore. The details had slipped away, like morning mist lifting off the surface of the sea. Now, when she tried to picture her old hand, she saw nothing more than a ghostly outline.

  She dreaded the day when she would only be able to picture that much of Red.

  “What do you think he’s doing right now?” she asked Brigga Lin, who stood silently at her side.

  “There’s no way of knowing.” Brigga Lin had little inclination toward sentimentality.

  “Probably getting into trouble,” said Hope. “He has a knack for that.”

  “When we do finally free him, he may not be the man you remember,” said Brigga Lin.

  “So you’ve said.”

  “The biomancers have techniques that can change the inside of a person as well as the outside.”

  “If they’ve done something like that to him, we’ll just have to find a way to undo it.” Hope massaged her forearm above the clamp. “One problem at a time.”

  Brigga Lin nodded, watching Hope continue to massage her arm. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

  “It’s getting more intense,” said Hope. “I still say it’s too early to tell if it’s good or bad.”

  “The Song of Sorrows is a centuries-old weapon forged by biomancery arts that are unfamiliar even to me. Every time you attach it to your clamp, there is a direct, unfiltered link between that blade and your nervous system. We have no idea what kind of effect it’s having on your body.”

  “Which is why you shouldn’t jump to conclusions that it’s bad.”

  “I’m not jumping to conclusions. I’m being cautious. Let me at least temporarily disconnect the wires that are fused to your tendons.”

  “Absolutely not. That’s what gives me the level of control I need.”

  They were silent for a while, the wind pulling at their hair, and at Brigga Lin’s dress.

  “What does it feel like?” Brigga Lin asked. “Is it painful?”

  Hope thought about it for a moment, her hand working its way past her elbow to massage her upper arm. Finally, she said, “When I was a girl, my teacher, Hurlo the Cunning, told me that there was no logical explanation for the Song of Sorrows to make the sound that it does. He said that his teacher, Shilgo the Wise, told him that the blade remembers every life that it takes, and that the sound we hear is it mourning for the loss of those lives.” She traced a line with her finger from her arm to her shoulder, and across her chest to her heart. “That is what it’s like. As if I, too, am feeling its grief with every life I take.”

  “It sounds awful,” said Brigga Lin.

  “It’s instructive.” Hope gave Brigga Lin a pointed look and said, “And nothing for you to worry about. Now, let’s go talk to Alash. He said there was some trouble with the new revolving cannon mechanism.”

  Brigga Lin’s thin black eyebrow rose. “I thought it worked beautifully.”

  “Apparently, we were lucky our whole ship didn’t explode.”

  Brigga Lin sighed with exasperation. “I still don’t know about all his mechanical contrivances. You wouldn’t get that level of unpredictability from my arts.”

  “Your phosphorescent moss replica was flawless,” agreed Hope.

  “As was the water mirage that cloaked us.”

  “Please don’t rub it in. You know how sensitive Alash is.”

  Hope walked back to the main deck, where Alash and Filler were examining the designs for the mechanism they had created. It looked to Hope a lot like the rotating cylinders in the revolver pistols she’d seen imperial soldiers use, only much larger, and with three chambers instead of six. Loading a regular cannon took at least two people per cannon, three if you wanted it done swiftly. But Hope’s skeleton crew was needed elsewhere during a battle. Alash’s mechanism allowed them to preload three shots for each cannon before the battle. Then, when they were engaged, only Alash was needed to pull the cords that fired each round. All in all, Hope thought it was a very clever design. But not if it might blow up the ship.

  “Well, my wags?” She put her hand on Alash’s shoulder and rested her clamp on Filler’s. “Do you have good news for me?”

  “Yes and no, Captain,” said Alash.

  “We know what happened and why,” said Filler. “Just not how to stop it from happening or being worse next time.”

  “You see,” said Alash, his brow furrowed as he pointed out various parts of the diagram. “The first shot goes off without a hitch. But after that, the remains of the percussion cap have a tendency to cling to the firing pin. When that happens, the second shot may potentially ignite an external spark, in addition to the internal spark in the muzzle bore. If that external spark lands on the third, unfired chamber, the entire cannon might explode. And if that happens, then, in addition to grievously injuring the cannoneer, it could also set off a chain reaction that detonates every cannon on the lower deck, most likely taking the upper deck and a good portion of the hull with it.” He smiled up at her in satisfaction, as if he were not talking about a catastrophic incident. Hope had noticed that when Alash was focused on a highly technical problem, he tended to think so abstractly that the reality escaped him.

  “That sounds bad,” she said.

  His face fell. “Well, yes, it is, of course.”

  “There were a great many ‘ifs’ and ‘potentially
s’ in that explanation,” said Brigga Lin disdainfully. “How likely do you think it is something like this could actually happen?”

  “Oh, uh, not particularly likely, Ms. Lin.” Alash looked down at his designs, nervously smoothing out the corners. Brigga Lin was an imposing presence, and nearly everyone responded to that. But Alash seemed barely able to make eye contact with her.

  “Yet you said it nearly happened today,” pressed Hope.

  “The percussion cap remains did spark on the second shot,” said Alash. “That’s how I discovered the flaw. The sparks just happened to not land in the third chamber this time. The important thing to remember is if we continue to use these cannons, even an unlikely scenario is bound to happen eventually.”

  “What if you covered the back of the two chambers not currently in the bore?” suggested Brigga Lin.

  “I’m not sure that’s possible,” said Alash.

  “No, it might work.” Filler tapped the drawing with one of his thick, calloused fingers. “If we made stationary plates on the base that didn’t travel with the chambers.”

  “I suppose…” Alash examined the diagram doubtfully.

  “Perhaps you don’t like the suggestion because it came from me?” asked Brigga Lin.

  “What?” Alash looked alarmed. “Of course not.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Do you still not trust me because I was a biomancer?”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Alash, wringing his hands.

  “Oh, I’m just a silly woman, is that it?” snapped Brigga Lin.

  “No, I don’t think of you like that at all!” Alash looked almost panicked.

  “You don’t think of me as a woman?”

  “No, please! You’ve got it all wrong!”

  “I don’t care if you take my suggestion or not,” said Brigga Lin. “I hope your stupid cannons do blow you up!” She spun on her heel, her white gown swirling, and stalked off.

  Alash stared after her, looking pale. “I, uh, think I might lie down for a bit.” He hurried off in the opposite direction.

  Hope rubbed her temple. It was becoming increasingly clear that there was something more than a rivalry of methodology going on between them. So far, she’d just ignored it, but it looked like she wouldn’t have that luxury much longer.