by Traci Chee
Instead, they sailed. They took turns on watch. They ate and gambled and told stories. Aljan taught them to write. He was a patient, gentle teacher, certainly more patient than Sefia had been with him, weaving between the bloodletters and Meeks, Theo, and Marmalade, who came over from the Current, offering a word of advice here or a kind adjustment there. During her lessons, Frey began drawing trees in one of Keon’s books—a gift for her lumberjack brothers back in Deliene—filling it with enormous Oxscinian hardwoods, banyans dripping aerial roots, other Forest Kingdom trees she must have seen in her short time in Epigloss, each neatly labeled with Aljan’s help.
Theo, in particular, was impressed with Frey’s catalogue. The Current’s starboard chanty leader and an aspiring biologist, he kept pushing up his spectacles and gesticulating wildly over her detailed drawings of leaves and seed pods, making the red lory on his shoulder spread her wings and chirp in alarm.
At the back of the class, Sefia continued studying the Book in her pursuit of excision.
It was all the good parts of being back with the bloodletters, and none of the fear, the violence, the bloodlust. It was exactly what Archer wanted.
But it was too good to last.
Because when they finally arrived at Haven, they found it on fire.
All around the island were the sinking wrecks of ships, the cries of the wounded in the water. Nearby, half a dozen ships bearing the blue, gold, and white flags of the Alliance were battling what remained of the outlaws.
Reed had said Haven boasted seventy-seven ships.
Only thirteen were left.
The thunder of cannon fire echoed off the rock pillars that guarded the island, peppered with the sharp reports of rifles and revolvers.
Archer’s hands gripped the rail, his fingers hot with the urge to fight. To rip. To kill. “I thought Haven was unfindable,” he said.
Except, somehow, the Alliance had found Haven. Somehow, the Red War had found him. He couldn’t escape it.
Scarza slung his rifle over his shoulder. “Do you think one of the outlaws betrayed them?”
Archer watched the Current run up their battle flag, followed by the Crux and the two outlaw ships that had come from Epigloss. “I don’t know,” he said, “but they’ll have to answer to Captain Reed.”
“Archer,” Scarza said, “what do you want to do?”
Archer’s pulse roared in his veins. He wanted to fight. He wanted to lead. He wanted to hit the Guard so hard they’d think twice about coming at him again.
And that was exactly why he shouldn’t.
He took the boy by the shoulders. “I can’t stay,” he said. “Will you lead them? Will you be their chief?”
Scarza’s gray eyes were solemn when he nodded. They embraced. “I’ll take care of them for you.”
“Better than I ever did,” Archer murmured into his shoulder.
“What will you do?”
“I may not be able to lead, but I can still fight. I’m going to get Sefia to take me somewhere I’ll do some good.”
On Scarza’s orders, the bloodletters began preparing the Brother for confrontation. Aljan raised a battle flag of their own—a boy with bowed head and crossed forearms.
The bloodletters cheered.
A part of Archer ached to fight with them. But he couldn’t.
“Once they get us close enough to an Alliance ship, I can teleport us,” Sefia said, checking her cuff of sleeping darts.
“Okay,” Archer whispered.
They turned the Brother into the fray, letting off broadsides. Cannonballs went smashing into the hulls of their enemy.
The Alliance returned in kind.
While Archer waited miserably by the foremast, Sefia joined the riflemen at the prow, deflecting bullets and spheres of iron into the waves. Curls of smoke blew past them as they sped through the water.
The Current of Faith surged ahead of them, firing their chase guns.
One of the outlaw ships, with a scrappy little dog for a figurehead, had been boarded by the Alliance. Archer could see blue uniforms swarming the decks.
The Brother pulled up on the ship’s other side, and the bloodletters leapt across the rails, swords flashing as they cut down Alliance soldiers, six-guns cracking like fireworks.
Sefia ran to Archer’s side. “Ready?”
No.
On the outlaw ship, Griegi cursed as a bullet skimmed the side of his head.
Archer nodded. His arms went around Sefia’s waist.
The last thing he saw before he felt the deck go out from under him was Scarza and the bloodletters pressing the Alliance soldiers back onto their own ship.
When they touched down again, they were hundreds of yards from the Brother. Sefia had taken them to the farthest ship out.
It was just the two of them against a vessel full of Alliance soldiers.
Archer grinned at her. His weapons were heavy as death in his hands.
“You’re welcome,” she said, flinging out her hand as the soldiers attacked. Bullets were thrown back. There were spurts of blood and startled cries among the enemy.
He and Sefia ducked behind the mainmast as the soldiers charged. Beside him, Sefia was a blur of movement, shoving enemies aside, redirecting shots into the Alliance ranks. Archer’s rounds found their own targets, one after another, bullets striking bone.
“In there!” Sefia cried, pushing him toward the door of the great cabin.
They tumbled inside just as the soldiers rushed them, and Archer glanced back to get his first good look at his enemy.
Boys.
Some younger than him. Some a little older. But all of them boys. All of them with the blistered ring of scar tissue around their necks.
Candidates.
His stomach turned as he pressed himself against the door, trying to close it.
From behind him, a gust of air slammed the door shut. The lock clicked. “Get back!” Sefia cried.
He stumbled away as bullets punctured the wood around him, and Sefia slid a wardrobe in front of the door. Hands trembling, he fed bullets into the cylinder of his revolver. One dropped, striking the floor with a ping!
“What’s wrong?” Sefia asked.
He scooped up the bullet and managed to get it into the last empty chamber. “They’re candidates,” he whispered. “All of them. The Guard must have brought them out here to annihilate the outlaws at Haven—”
“I’ll teleport us out of here,” she said immediately, sweeping her arms wide.
He caught her hand. “No.”
“Why not?”
He touched the scar at his throat. Because they were like him. They were his brothers, in a twisted way—they were all victims of the impressors, of the Guard—even if they were brothers on opposite sides of the war.
He flicked the cylinder closed. “I can’t save them,” he said, “but right now, I can stop them. Some of them, anyway.”
Grimly, Sefia nodded. She flexed her fingers. “Ready?”
He shoved a table onto its side and crouched behind it. Lifting his fingers to his neck, he gave the worry stone a swipe with his thumb.
Behind her own barricade by the windows, Sefia lifted her hands. He could almost feel the air shift beneath her fingers.
The wardrobe slid away from the door.
In rushed the candidates. Archer popped out from under cover and let off a round. The bullet struck one of them square between the eyes.
Except they weren’t a stranger’s eyes.
They were Kaito’s eyes.
Archer ducked as gunfire drove him under cover again. He stared at the carpet beneath his boots.
Carpet. Not loose stone.
He wasn’t back there anymore. He wasn’t chief of the bloodletters. He wasn’t killing his best friend.
He forced himsel
f up again, firing quick shots that found eye sockets and scarred necks. The boys collapsed on the threshold as their brothers ducked behind the door frame.
Brothers.
He shut his eyes. No, no, no. He could do this. He had to do this. They were his responsibility.
He heard Sefia calling as if from a distance. “Archer! Get under cover!” He felt the force of her magic on his back, thrusting him down again.
His cheek struck wet rock. Kaito was leaning over him, grinning, with blood between his teeth and the black sky beyond.
Then—the crack of thunder—no, gunfire. Archer was back in the great cabin. He was fighting candidates. He leapt up, found his next target, a dark boy with striking blue eyes.
He pulled the trigger.
But it was Kaito now—black hair plastered to his forehead, face lined with regret.
The bullet went wide, puncturing the wall behind the candidate.
They tossed a grenade into the cabin. Archer watched the smoking fuse, the glowing ember, but it was as if he wasn’t seeing it at all.
He was seeing the rain on the rocks. He was seeing lightning flash in the puddled water. He was seeing Kaito.
Archer felt for the worry stone as a gust of air shot past him and Sefia flung the grenade out the door, where it exploded.
Thunder.
Lightning.
Kaito.
CHAPTER 16
The Myth of the Black Beauty
Over his shoulder, Reed watched the bloodletters board the One Bad Eye, the ship he’d once stranded in the Ephygian Bay and later found and brought to Haven, and begin battling back the Alliance alongside Captain Bee’s crew.
Those bloodletters could fight. They weren’t as good with the great guns as the Current or the Crux, which was trading broadsides with two Alliance warships, but get them face-to-face with the enemy and the enemy was as good as dead.
The secret entrance to Haven loomed ahead of him. Black smoke billowed from between the stone columns. Fear gripped his chest. Were Adeline and Isabella all right? Were there any other survivors?
Thirteen ships. Thirteen out of seventy-seven.
That couldn’t be all.
Then, as if from the walls of Haven itself, a black ship with black sails appeared—a shadow—a wraith, trailing mist and smoke from her yardarms.
Reed let out a whistle.
She’d made it. Captain Tan and the Black Beauty.
“The Alliance better turn tail now.” Meeks laughed. “Tan ain’t gonna be happy if she was in the lagoon when they attacked.”
Reed grinned down at him.
But their smiles faded as they watched the Beauty approach one of the outlaw ships from Epigloss and open fire.
Flames spewed from the mouths of her cannons.
The outlaw hull buckled. Bodies and timber went up in the explosion. A mast fell. Even at this distance, Reed could hear the screaming.
“That was one of ours,” Meeks whispered. “What’s Tan thinkin’?”
Captain Reed let out a growl.
No one but the outlaws knew where Haven was. No one but an outlaw could have led the Alliance here.
He’d trusted Tan. He’d even loved her, in a way. Loved what she stood for. Loved the myth of her: her wildness, her chaos, her fierceness and independence, uncatchable as the wind. A woman who promised herself to nothing but the sea.
“All hands!” he roared. “Full sail!”
“Cap?” Meeks asked.
“Tan’s our traitor. She must have forgotten what it means to be an outlaw.” He pointed at the black ship. “Let’s remind her what our justice looks like.”
With a cry, the crew leapt into the rigging, loosing the sails, which gathered the wind. They shot across the water, leaving the Brother, the Crux, the Bad Eye, and the outlaw refugees from Epigloss.
They were an arrow.
They were a bullet.
They were a cannonball.
And they had one target. With Jaunty at the helm, they could not miss.
But the Black Beauty was the quickest ship in the southeast, the only ship that could outstrip the Current in a flat-out race.
And the Current was laden with treasure from the Trove of the King. Heavy and sluggish, she floundered in the water as the Beauty began to outpace her.
But the Black Beauty did not have Captain Cannek Reed. He and Jaunty worked in concert, catching the wind, finding a current.
The wind screamed. The waves carried them. They skimmed the surface like a bird, barely touching each crest before taking off again, lunging forward with each wave.
They were speed incarnate.
They were the water and the wind in motion.
They were the Current of Faith.
And they were gaining.
The distance closed.
Reed could see carvings of horses with gold eyes adorning the stern, the gleam of the windows.
The Current’s chase guns thundered. Behind the gunwale, the cook and steward crouched, reloading their rifles. On the Beauty’s quarterdeck, Captain Tan’s officers ducked and cursed. Squinting down her sights, Aly clipped a lieutenant’s shoulder. Whooping, Cooky and Aly smacked hands and pumped fists in a special handshake.
The lieutenant turned and snarled, baring gold teeth. That must have been Escalia, Tan’s most trusted officer.
But where was Tan?
As he searched the Beauty’s decks for her silver-streaked hair, her white blouse and leather vest, she appeared on the deck of the Current in a rush of wind.
Her gray eyes. Her sickle scar. Her arms lowering, as if they’d carried her here.
Just like Sefia’s did when she teleported.
On the main deck, Reed’s sailors shouted. There was the chittering of dozens of hammers being pulled back.
Reed held out his hand to stop them. “Tan?” His voice seemed thin in the wind. “You—”
She looked him up and down, haughty as ever. “Hello, Cannek.” The drawl had dropped from her damaged voice, and though she spoke in a whisper, her words had the clipped precision of a chisel. “I wish you hadn’t seen this. You arrived quicker than we thought.”
“We— You’re—”
She lifted an eyebrow, perfectly arched.
“Tanin.” The word twisted as it left his lips. “Director of the Guard.”
Her brow creased. “Former Director.”
“All this time?” he asked. All the things he’d heard about the captain of the Black Beauty? All the legends? All the rough-and-tumble stories of tavern brawls and underhanded deals and races against the rain?
Were any of them true?
“All this time.”
“Why?”
“The Amulet.” She shrugged delicately. “I needed to be a treasure hunter, because I wanted a treasure. Because I wanted answers from the people who’d betrayed me . . . the only two people I’d loved, and they were dead. The rest was . . .” For a moment, she looked not like the proud, cold Guardian but like the outlaw he used to know, who kicked up her feet on tables and threw sucker punches. “Well, the rest was just for fun.”
He felt sucker-punched himself. “You did all this for the Resurrection Amulet?”
“Do you have it?” She raked him with a glance, like she knew the Amulet was around his neck, resting over his heart. “The Current’s heavier than she should be. You must have found the Trove.”
“Why send me and Dimarion on this treasure hunt in the first place? Why didn’t you just get it yourself, if Fieldspar was one of you?”
At the mention of Fieldspar’s name, Tanin went still as a statue. “How did you know?” Her gray eyes narrowed. “Sefia. Is she here? Does she have the Book?”
Without waiting for an answer, she flung out her hand.
The magic hit him like a
battering ram. All across the ship, his crew toppled, thrown to the decks. In a split second, she scanned the ship.
“Where is she?”
The Singer was in Reed’s hand, blue as the sea. “Gone.”
The bullet went spiraling from the chamber just as Tanin raised her arms like a black-and-white bird lifting her wings. She was disappearing from sight when the bullet struck her between the ribs.
He heard a faint curse, and then she was gone, leaving a trail of blood and the bullet, striking the mast behind her.
CHAPTER 17
The Real Villains
Archer tried to fight. Sefia knew he tried. But from the second she let the door open, allowing the candidates to flood into the room, he began to sweat. He began to shake. After the first three boys, he’d emptied his chambers and hit nothing.
Again and again, she shoved the candidates back. Breaking bones. Wrenching limbs from their sockets. Deflecting bullets meant for Archer.
But after the first grenade took out the door, there were too many for her to wrestle back out of the cabin. She had to get Archer out of there, but the candidates had pinned her behind the bullet-pitted sofa she’d been using as a barricade. When she knocked one boy down, another took his place, pressing forward inch by inch. They were relentless.
They were like him.
Fighters.
Killers.
They were like the bloodletters a dozen times over— organized, deadly.
Standing, she shoved the wardrobe at the open doorway, crushing a body against the wall. The candidates quickly assembled behind it, using it for cover as they bombarded her with gunfire.
She piled on a liquor cabinet—the bottles smashing, spilling pungent liquid onto the floor—a leather settee, anything to halt the candidates’ advance, to give her enough time to get to Archer.
The doorway was almost blocked again. Lifting her arms, she heaved the table Archer had been using for cover over the last gap and held it fast with her magic.
He was curled tightly on the floor, hands over his head.
