When the candle burned out she retuned Hiraeth to the sealskin case and stowed it away. She stood for a while, swaying with the ship and listening to the hull groan. Inexplicably, Tam found herself at the door to her cabin. Her heart was drumming in the dark. When she reached out to lift the latch, a spark licked her hand. She swore quietly (at the latch, and at herself) before going back to bed.
Tam dreamed she heard footsteps outside her door. She saw the glimmer of candlelight, the shadow of feet. But then the light went out, and the feet padded softly away on a floor that sang like a nightingale.
“Mirrormere!” Doshi announced, freighting the word with more menace than an iced-over lake probably deserved.
“It’s huge,” said Tam.
“It’s the biggest freshwater lake in all of Grandual,” the captain boasted.
“How interesting,” said Cura, in a tone that implied she wasn’t interested in the least.
The Spindrift hovered half a mile from the southernmost edge of the lake. Her sails were closed, the engines whirling slowly. As Fable prepared to confront the Dragoneater, Doshi toured the deck with a pair of tin buckets, filling them with snow and carrying them below.
“When the snow melts, I fill up the engines,” he explained to Tam. “Water, as the Narmeeri are fond of saying, makes the world go round. Have you ever been to Satria?”
“I’d never even been out of Ardburg until recently,” she confessed.
Doshi pushed his goggles up past his raised eyebrows. “Really? That’s a shame. There’s a whole wide world out there. It’s messy, and ugly, and strange … But it’s beautiful, too. Especially from the sky. Except Conthas,” he added ruefully. “Conthas is a shithole no matter how you look at it.”
Tam chuckled, for lack of any better response.
The captain regarded her a moment. “So this is your big adventure, hey? Touring with a band, flying in a skyship, slaying monsters and whatnot?”
“I guess it is,” she said.
Doshi rubbed the red marks around his eyes. “Well, for what it’s worth, I hope it doesn’t end here.”
The captain went on collecting snow, leaving Tam to wonder whether Doshi’s words or the knifing cold was the reason she found herself shivering.
Her bandmates were pacing the deck, obviously anxious. Brune wore flimsy leather boots, loose wool trousers, and his warming scarf. Cura was dressed in ragged skirts, tearaway furs, and a pair of black leather moccasins tied at her ankles to keep the snow out. She’d finally consented to wearing her own red scarf, but had coiled it tightly around her left arm.
Tam decided to wear her scarf as well—out of solidarity, sure, but also because the wind coming off the lake was freezing. She headed downstairs, stepping carefully around the buckets of melting snow Doshi had left in the hall.
She was passing Rose’s room when a hurried movement drew her eye. Glancing in, she saw Fable’s frontwoman sitting on her bed. There was a familiar satchel on her lap, and a pair of glossy black leaves in her hand.
Tam stood rooted to the spot until Rose looked up, and even then she remained paralyzed, groping desperately for some excuse to leave, but finding none.
“This is the last of it,” Rose said eventually. “I was saving it for today. Hiding it from Cloud, because I know he would disapprove.”
“Why does he?” Tam asked.
Rose’s pauldrons clanked when she shrugged. “He says it makes me reckless. I say it makes me brave. He thinks I don’t need it … but I do.” She pressed the leaves to her tongue, closing her eyes as they dissolved.
Tam considered leaving now, but didn’t want Rose to think she’d gone to tell Freecloud her secret—not that she ever would. What Rose did was her own business, and if she thought she needed Lion’s Leaf to take on the Dragoneater, then who was Tam to say otherwise?
“What does it do?” she asked.
“Focus,” Rose said. Already Tam could hear the change in her voice—a sound like a song without melody. “After what happened at Castia I couldn’t fight without worrying about the people around me. I was so afraid of losing them … I could hardly think.” Rose’s eyes, usually a shade of very dark brown, had gone the fathomless black of deep water. “Fable was a different band, once. Did you know that?”
Tam’s nod drew the thinnest of smiles.
“Of course you did. There were five of us. Friends I’d made back in Fivecourt. Good friends. Good fighters, too, but … not great. When the Heartwyld Horde invaded Endland, I convinced them to go after it. We’d be heroes, I told them—except all I cared about was making a name for myself, being somebody other than Golden Gabe’s daughter. But they believed in me. They followed me across the Heartwyld, to Castia. And they died.”
Someone—Brune or Roderick—plodded heavily across the deck above them.
“After Wren was born, Freecloud and I started over. We got a new band going and began touring again, but things weren’t the same. I was too cautious, afraid of doing anything that might put the others at risk. I started turning down gigs that sounded too dangerous, which would have doomed us to obscurity, and I could feel them getting restless, wanting more.”
“Not Freecloud,” Tam said. A guess.
“Not Freecloud,” Rose admitted. “He’s only here because I am. He’d rather be a father than a fighter.” She stared absently at the empty satchel in her lap. “He deserves better than me. They all do.”
The joints of her armour scraped as she stood.
“I won’t be a slave to fear,” Rose said. “I can’t afford to be. Not today. Can you understand that?”
Can you keep it secret, she means.
“I can.”
The effects of the drug turned Rose’s smile into a snarl. “Good,” she said, and left.
Tam lingered for a while afterward. Had it been mere months, she pondered, since she’d been a girl infatuated with Fable’s frontwoman? With the whole band, really. She’d considered them heroes, the infallible gods of her own personal pantheon. While on tour, however, and during the hard, harrowing weeks since, she’d come to realize that those heroes were human after all—as fallible as anyone she’d ever met. More so, even.
Freecloud had been made a slave by his devotion to Rose, who in turn was enslaved by her single-minded pursuit of glory for glory’s sake. Cura was marred in myriad ways by a horrific past she’d condemned herself to remembering every time she looked in the mirror. Brune had spent most of his life trying to be something he wasn’t, and had risked his sanity to stake his place in the band.
And yet here they all were: at the cold edge of the world—each of them vying to be worthy of one another, to protect one another, to prove themselves a part of something to which they already, irrevocably belonged.
And me? Tam mused. I’m just the idiot that followed them here.
She moved on to her room, found her scarf on the floor near the foot of her bed, and hurried back toward the stairs.
As she stepped into the hall something creaked behind her. Turning, she saw that the captain’s door, which Doshi locked fastidiously every time he left his room, was ajar. Though Tam could see nothing but darkness within, she’d have sworn there was someone watching her, and was mustering the courage to call out when the door closed.
It’s the wind, she told herself. The wind who opened it, the wind who closed it, and the wind who just locked it, she thought, hearing the quiet click of a bolt sliding home. Regardless, it’s none of your business, Tam.
By the time she returned to the deck, Fable was preparing to go overboard. Tam strung and shouldered her bow, then moved to peer over the rail. The slope was a good twenty feet below, and she guessed the snow here was fairly deep. A survivable jump, then, but she was nonetheless grateful when the captain tossed a rope ladder over the side.
Hawkshaw pointed at a cleft in the cliffside across the lake. “The Simurg makes its lair inside,” he said to Rose. “It emerged from there the last time, as the Raincrows were rounding the l
ake.”
And seventeen seconds later they were dead, Tam thought.
“How thick is that ice?” asked Freecloud.
“Very,” Hawkshaw said. “Mirrormere is frozen year-round.”
“Let’s get moving,” said Rose. Tam saw the druin’s ears perk at the leaden growl Lion’s Leaf had given her voice.
Brune went over first, throwing his twinglaive down before him. Cura was next, and then Freecloud. When Tam made to follow him over the rail, Rose pinned her with a glare.
“Where are you going?”
“Um … with you?”
Rose shook her head. “Not this time. You can see fine from here.”
“But—”
“But what? You’re the bard, remember. Or did you plan on killing the Dragoneater with a single arrow?”
“I just thought—”
“Listen.” Rose moved close, near enough that Tam could smell the burnt-coffee tang of the Lion’s Leaf on her breath. “I want to kill this thing and go home. I want it like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. But this might go bad.” Her blunted gaze flitted toward the Simurg’s lair. “It might go very bad. And if it does, I’ll need you to write me a song.”
Tam felt her heart clench like a fist. “A song?”
“Something that will make my daughter proud,” Rose said.
The bard nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
Rose shared a hard grin with Roderick, a glance with Doshi, and a glower with Hawkshaw before throwing a leg over the rail.
“The song,” Tam finally managed to say around the lump in her throat. “What should I call it?”
Rose paused. The wind whipped her hair like a blaze around the sharp edges of her face. “I’ve always thought The Ballad of Bloody Rose had a nice ring to it,” she said, and was gone.
Chapter Thirty-two
Lurking Below
Tam stood at the rail of the Spindrift and watched the others make their way down the slope and onto the ice. Roderick came to stand beside her, bundled against the cold in a bulky fur cloak and his ridiculous fox-tail hat.
“Worried?” the booker asked.
“Of course I am.”
“Well, don’t be,” Roderick told her. “I’m not a gambling man, but—”
“Just this morning you bet Freecloud you could fit inside the icebox,” she pointed out.
“Okay, sure, but—”
“And yesterday you bet Cura you could spit from one side of the ship to the other.”
“Impressive, right?”
“And last night you bet Brune you could eat a handful of glass …”
“Never bet against a satyr when food is on the line!”
“Glass isn’t food!”
“All right, fine, I get it—I may have a teensy gambling problem. My point is this: I won every one of those wagers. And I’m telling you that Bloody Rose is a sure bet, every time.”
“Even against the Simurg?”
“Against the whole damn world,” he said. “Watch and see.”
She hoped the booker was right. Out of the blue, Tam remembered the captain’s creaking door, and the unseen presence she’d encountered below. She was about to tell Roderick when Doshi and Hawkshaw came to join them at the rail.
“Listen,” said the captain, “if this goes sideways, I want you two downstairs on the double—and hang on to something. That thing let us go last time, but I can’t imagine he’ll take kindly to us dropping mercs on his doorstep a second time.”
Roderick stroked his beard. “You think the Dragoneater’s a he?”
The captain shrugged. “Probably?”
“I’ll bet you ten courtmarks it’s a she,” said the satyr.
Tam slapped his arm. “Roderick!”
“What? Okay, yeah—I for sure have a gambling problem.”
The four of them stood in silence for a while, alternatively watching the entrance to the monster’s lair and the band of mercenaries making their way across the frozen lake, until finally Doshi grunted and began chewing a nail.
“What?” Tam asked.
“Hmm? Oh, it’s nothing.” Long moments passed. “It’s just …”
“Seriously, what?”
“Well, I’d bet my sails the Simurg knows they’re here by now.” He scratched under one of his goggles. “So, where is he?”
“She,” murmured Roderick into his scarf.
“Maybe it’s not here?” Tam suggested. Part of her hoped it was true. A fairly large part, actually.
Doshi frowned. “I should think—”
“There.” Hawkshaw’s voice sawed through the captain’s like a blade through bone. The Warden was pointing directly at the band. “It’s there.”
“Where?” Tam squinted into the blustering wind. Squalls whirled across Mirrormere’s frozen expanse, leaving drifts wherever they blew apart. Where the ice was clear it gleamed like polished silver, though just now a cloud was obscuring the sun, its shadow passing swiftly overhead.
No. Tam’s breath caught in her throat. Not overhead.
Under.
“It’s under the ice.”
Roderick glanced at her. “It’s what now?”
“It’s in the lake!” Tam shouted. “The Simurg is underneath them!”
“Oh dear,” said Doshi. “This is bad.”
“We’ve got to warn them!” Tam wheeled on the captain. “Now! Hurry!”
Doshi started toward the stern.
“No,” growled Hawkshaw. “We go no closer than this.”
“Why not?” Tam asked, but the Warden ignored her. “Captain, please,” she said to Doshi. “This is your ship, right? You decide.”
Doshi wilted under Hawkshaw’s threatening glare. “Sorry, kid. I may be the captain, but I’m not the boss.”
Roderick cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey! Rose!” he shouted, but they were too far off to hear. The satyr began stomping in circles, rambling off a stream of expletives that would make a stone blush.
For a desperate moment, Tam considered hurling her bow overboard and jumping out after it, but then another idea (though not necessarily a better one) occurred to her. She took three measured steps backward before charging and shoving Hawkshaw as hard as she could.
The Warden went headlong over the rail.
He didn’t make a noise as he fell, but Doshi cried out and rushed to Tam’s side. They both looked overboard at Hawkshaw, who had landed upside down and was trying to wriggle free of the snow.
“He’s going to kill you for that,” the captain warned.
“I don’t care,” said Tam. “We’re running out of time. I need you to—”
Doshi yelped as he went tumbling over the side. Roderick, who’d pushed him, pumped his fist and yelled, “Ha!” then looked to Tam. “Now what?”
Tam stared back, dumbfounded. “I was going to order Doshi to fly us down there!”
The booker scowled. “But I just pushed him overboard!”
“Why would you push the pilot overboard?”
“I thought we were pushing people overboard!” Roderick shouted defensively.
Tam pointed at the helm. “Get up there,” she ordered, then pointed at the lake. “And get us down there.”
The satyr opened his mouth to protest, but Tam bolted toward the stairs that led below. She took them at a flailing slide, bracing herself against the wall at the bottom and eyeballing the door at the far end of the hall. She’d heard it lock earlier, but if that door was anything like the rest of this boat it was very likely flimsy and probably half-broken already.
She ran as fast as she could down the hallway, lowering her shoulder and hurling herself at the door.
Which opened just before she hit it. Tam crashed into someone and drove them to the floor beneath her.
“Get off me!” said a woman’s voice. Imperious, angry, oddly familiar.
“I—” Tam began forming an apology, but trailed off as her eyes relayed to her brain what it was she was looking at.
A druin. Tam gaped in disbelief.
The bard sprang to her feet as if the woman beneath her was a bed of hot coals. “What are you doing here?” she asked the Widow of Ruangoth.
“I could wonder the same of you,” said the druin. The Widow. The bloody druin Widow. She rose and retreated to stand beside the larger of the room’s two beds, arms folded, clutching her elbows. She was barefoot, Tam noticed, wearing nothing but a black silk shift that might as well have been painted on for how tightly it clung to her body. Her ears draped almost to her shoulder. “Well?” she prompted.
“Grenades,” Tam managed, her mind still racing. “Alchemical grenades. The captain said he kept them down here.”
“Why not come get them himself?” she asked.
“He’s, uh, busy,” Tam lied.
The druin eyed her skeptically, but then nodded at the rumpled cot behind the bard on which Doshi presumably slept. “Under there,” she said.
Tam dragged a chest out from beneath the bed and threw open the lid. Inside, wrapped against breaking in sleeves of padded wool, were dozens of glazed earthenware spheres about the size of a large apple, each splashed with a painted red X. She quickly began loading the crook of one arm.
The skyship lurched; she heard Roderick whoop distantly as it did. Good, thought Tam, he’s figured out the controls. Except then the ship pitched violently sideways and Tam nearly lost her balance. The Widow hissed like a snake yanked from its burrow.
“Who is flying the ship?” she asked.
Tam stood, careful to keep her feet apart. “Roderick.”
“The monster?” There was venom in her voice, an ugliness that made the bard’s skin crawl.
“The satyr,” Tam said. He’s not a monster, she considered adding, except she didn’t have time to explain the difference. The Widow’s prejudice was hardly an unusual sentiment—which was why Rod went to the trouble of disguising himself in public—it just struck Tam as odd coming from someone with pointed teeth, moon-shaped pupils, and bunny ears.
“Why do you need those?” asked the Widow as Tam kicked the chest closed and booted it back under the bed.
Bloody Rose Page 25
