The Storyteller

by Traci Chee

  Captain Reed bared his teeth and raised the Executioner.

  One bullet, and the Scourge of the East would be dead.

  He just had to get in range.

  “Let’s do it, Cap,” Meeks said.

  Reed nodded.

  Meeks gave the order. The Current and the other outlaws sped toward the enemy. The Royal Navy ships joined them.

  Reed began to count.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  He had to get to eight.

  Eight, and he wouldn’t miss.

  Six.

  Seven.

  But before he could pull the trigger, the chase gunners at the bow of the Amalthea unveiled a set of weapons the likes of which Reed had never seen. There were three of them, each the length of his arm, with six barrels strapped together and a belt of bullets feeding into the cylinders. Beside each gun stood a soldier, grasping the handle of a crank.

  Captain Reed figured it out a second before it happened. A second before the chase gunners began to turn their cranks.

  “Take cover!” he cried, throwing himself to the deck.

  The bullets came at them fast as hail, pitting the hull, peppering the rails as the crew crouched behind them—fast, faster, faster than Reed could aim or breathe or blink.

  He heard the screams of his sailors as they fell, saw the bursts of blood as the hot beads of metal hit them. Jaunty went down, still clutching the helm. One of Theo’s legs was shot out, and he collapsed, spectacles cracked, as his red lory huddled in the curve of his neck, nuzzling his chin. Horse was plugged with bullets as he flung his massive body in front of Doc, shielding her from the onslaught even as she screamed and struggled to move him out of harm’s way. Reed’s hat was knocked from his head as splinters spiked his ear and the side of his neck.

  What kind of gun is that?

  He had the answer in the faces of his crew—bloody, ashen, petrified, dead. Old Goro had been too slow, and now Marmalade was curled behind his inert body, using it for cover, her pale face freckled with his blood.

  No human could outshoot a gun like that, not him, not even Adeline. It was unnatural, impersonal, and against it, they could not win.

  Not today. Not ever.

  CHAPTER 28

  The Third Adventure of Haldon Lac

  Embarrassingly, Midshipman Haldon Lac had a bad case of the hiccups. On this, the most important battle of his entire life! If he hadn’t been so preoccupied with the fight, he’d feel affronted by the indignity of it.

  Oxscini had surrendered, but much of the Royal Navy had refused to give up. Disobeying orders, they continued to battle the blue beasts of the Alliance, their ships churning the seas, their cannons filling the air with smoke. They were rebels against their own kingdom now—rebel redcoats.

  Could Lac even consider himself a redcoat anymore?

  Shot soared over his head and slammed into the sea, drenching him with spray, which successfully shocked him out of his . . . shock.

  He grabbed Hobs’s hand. “What’s Ed”—Lac hiccuped— “doing? We have to get him down from there!”

  On top of everything, their best friend in the whole world was standing on the Thunderhead’s bowsprit, an easy target. The swift reports of gunfire echoed across the water.

  “He looks like he’s posing for a portrait!” Hobs cried as they dashed across the ship.

  Ed did look handsome up there, Lac had to admit, and quite heroic, with the black waves of his hair rippling in the breeze, his long, lean form poised above the waves as if he were about to dive.

  But looking good didn’t make him any less likely to be killed.

  The blue warships of the Alliance were sailing ever closer, turning their guns on the Thunderhead.

  But not all of them, Lac realized. The closest ship, with a red rabbit for a figurehead, was lowering its Alliance flags and raising a new one—a white poppy on a black field studded with stars.

  The Delienean flag.

  They were chanting too, their voices rising in the smokeriddled air: The king lives! Delieneans, to the king!

  In fact, all along the enemy line, ships were sending up the Delienean flag. They were turning their great guns on the other blue ships. They were firing.

  Lac’s head spun. The Delieneans were defecting from the Alliance. They were joining the rebel redcoats in the defense of Tsumasai Bay.

  But why?

  A cannonball struck the Thunderhead, throwing Lac and Hobs to the decks as broken bits of wood and shrapnel flew through the air. The lieutenants were shouting. The gun crews were firing. Parts of the deck caught fire, the blaze sweeping across the timbers as sailors tried to beat out the flames.

  Lac got to his knees. Something sharp pained his shoulder, but he ignored it. “Ed!” he shouted. “Get—hic—down from there!”

  “Sir!” Hobs dragged him under cover as an explosion of scrap shot struck the ship. “You’re bleeding!”

  Sparks flew past them as Haldon Lac batted his hands away, still hiccuping. “I’m not your ranking officer anymore, Hobs!” He didn’t know if he even had a rank anymore. Did traitors to the crown get ranks? He shoved down his nausea.

  He was a traitor. Traitors didn’t deserve ranks.

  On their hands and knees, Lac and Hobs continued to crawl toward the bowsprit. “Ed!”

  Hearing his name, Ed glanced over his shoulder. Their gazes met. And for a split second, the boy Lac had met in Jahara looked like a stranger. He seemed taller somehow, more stately in his bearing, wiser and braver and . . . ready.

  Ready for what?

  Haldon Lac didn’t have time to wonder, however, because as he leapt to his feet again, an enemy broadside shook the hull. The masts toppled. The ship cracked and groaned. There was a deafening explosion as a rapidly expanding blossom of heat caught him in the back, pitching him and Hobs and Ed into the air.

  They all hit the sea as the Thunderhead went up in a conflagration of flame and splintered beams.

  It was cold in the water! Lac’s shoulder hurt. And he was still hiccuping. But he kicked and fought, searching the turgid waters for his friends.

  “Hobs! Ed!”

  Broken powder kegs and dirty swabs drifted past him. Gasping sailors scrabbled for floating bits of debris. But he couldn’t find Hobs or Ed.

  Finally, Hobs burst from the waves beside him, spitting seawater. “Sir!”

  “Don’t call me that, Hobs! Are you all right? Where’s Ed?”

  “There, sir!”

  Their friend was facedown on the surface, his white shirt appearing almost gauzy in the dark sea. No! Lac swam for him, his well-toned arms and legs carrying him easily through the waves. He turned the boy in his arms, hoping for the flicker of his eyelids, for breath.

  Ed coughed.

  Haldon Lac let out a sound that was part gasp of relief, part hiccup. “I’ve got you. I’m not letting go.”

  Ed patted his arm.

  Lac hiccuped again.

  “Try holding your breath, sir,” Hobs volunteered as he swam up to them.

  “You can’t hold your—hic—breath while you’re swimming! And stop calling me sir!” Lac gagged as salt water splashed into his mouth.

  The bay was in chaos. Rebel redcoats were rushing the enemy line. Warships flying the Delienean flag were firing on the blue beasts that had, moments ago, been their allies. Haldon Lac didn’t understand what was going on, but he knew enough to clutch Ed tighter when an enormous blue vessel drew up beside him.

  But the soldiers staring down at them from the rails didn’t fire.

  “It’s okay,” Ed murmured. “Don’t worry.”

  Rope ladders struck the water around them, and the strangers scrambled down the side of their ship.

  The first woman to reach them hesitated, an extra length of rope d
angling from her hand. Then she bowed her head and said, “Your Majesty.”

  For a moment, Lac was confused. His family had no royal blood . . . that he knew of. But maybe . . . ?

  The woman looped the rope under Ed’s arms as he grasped for the rungs of the ladder. Other people helped him find handholds as he began climbing out of the water.

  “We thought you were dead,” she said.

  “So did I,” Ed replied.

  The soldiers helped Hobs and Lac, still bewildered, onto the rope ladders. Shot soared through the air around them as they climbed over the rail. The gun crews were still at it. The powder monkeys were rushing across the decks as the officers shouted orders and rifles popped in the fighting tops overhead.

  But amid the frenzy of battle, the captain was kneeling, head bowed, before Ed’s dripping form.

  Haldon Lac’s eyes widened as he finally understood.

  Ed was a king.

  And his name wasn’t Ed—it was Eduoar Corabelli II, the one true king of Deliene.

  “Come on, Captain,” Ed—the king—said. “We’ve got a battle to fight.”

  Immediately, the captain rose. He snapped his fingers at a pair of soldiers, who came forward with thick wool blankets, which they offered first to Ed, who took one with a nod, and then to Lac and Hobs.

  Grabbing a blanket, Hobs immediately swung it around his shoulders. But Lac let his dangle limply from his hand as he stared at Ed. The hiccups, it seemed, had been shocked right out of him. “You—” he began, ducking as the cannons fired again.

  Ed nodded. “Me.”

  “Since when—”

  The boy smiled sheepishly. “Since always.”

  “But you—” Lac whirled on Hobs. “Are you one too?”

  “Royalty? Don’t think so.” Hobs shrugged. “But stranger things have happened.”

  Haldon Lac moaned. All these months he’d been with the Lonely King? All those unwashed months? He’d smelled so bad! In front of a king! For a moment, he wanted to faint.

  But there was no time to faint, he reminded himself. There was still a battle to fight.

  “Your Majesty.” Despite the rocking of the ship, he managed a respectably deep bow. “We are at your service.”

  Beside him, Hobs bowed too.

  It all made sense now: the grace, the courtly manners, the complete ignorance of common chores. Ed was a king. Even if they’d been the same age, Lac never would’ve stood a chance. Not as a partner.

  But as a friend?

  “Just Ed to you.” Ed put his hands on both their shoulders, making them stand again. “To both of you.”

  Lac beamed. He was friends with a king!

  Then the king was whisked to the quarterdeck with the officers, leaving Lac and Hobs in the care of the Delienean soldiers. The ship that had picked them up was called the Red Hare, and soon it was flying a second flag beneath the Delienean black-and-white—a gold crown.

  In the midst of the battle, the Delieneans rallied to their king. Explosions rent the air. Ships splintered. The whitecaps turned red with blood as bodies were thrown into the sea. Lac and Hobs joined the riflemen at the prow of the Red Hare, firing at enemy gun crews as they tried to load their cannons. For a time, it seemed that the combined might of the rebel redcoats and the Delienean defectors would turn the tide of battle against the Alliance.

  If they won, Lac might be allowed back into the Royal Navy. He might be Midshipman Haldon Lac again.

  But the enemy still had more ships. They still had superior weaponry. They still had the upper hand. Slowly, they began to drive the resisters together, circling them like sharks.

  “This doesn’t look good, sir,” Hobs said.

  “Don’t call me sir.” Lac squinted through the rail. A red ship with white markings on its prow was sailing at them from the west, flying the flag of a boy with bowed head and crossed arms. It didn’t belong to any navy Lac recognized. Had it come from the capital? Was it a civilian vessel? No, it couldn’t be, not with those great guns on its decks.

  An outlaw. Where had an outlaw come from?

  Haldon Lac popped up from under cover and fired at the nearest Alliance ship. “Ed—I mean, Your Majes—I mean, Ed!” he called, pointing.

  On the quarterdeck, the king nodded. He spoke to the captain, who put a spyglass to his eye.

  The strange outlaw ship was coming closer. On its decks were boys, alternately waving frantically at the Red Hare and pointing south.

  Even to Lac, their meaning was clear: Follow us.

  They wanted the resisters to retreat to the south. Had the southern entrance of Tsumasai Bay been cleared? By outlaws? That would be their only way of escape now.

  The red outlaw ship sailed straight up behind one of the blue beasts of the Alliance and let loose a broadside that raked the giant warship fore and aft, shattering glass and timbers. The enemy line faltered.

  The Red Hare seized its chance. It broke away from the rest of the resisters, sailing past the Alliance. The outlaw ship turned, heading south out of Tsumasai Bay. The rebel redcoats and the Delienean defectors followed.

  The enemy ships began the pursuit.

  Haldon Lac spared one last glance for Oxscini’s disappearing shoreline—the stone forts, the forested hills, the wooden houses on stilts at the edge of the water. He’d betrayed his orders. He’d betrayed his queen. He was leaving his beloved kingdom behind. He didn’t know if he’d ever see it again . . . or if he deserved to.

  CHAPTER 29

  The Promise Keeper

  Since the assassination of Queen Heccata, Tanin had made herself indispensable to the cause.

  First, she’d suggested Arcadimon Detano’s punishment: a drug that, once taken, would make the body entirely dependent on it for survival. As long as Detano remained loyal to the Guard, the Apprentice Administrator would deliver a dose to Corabel each morning, and he would live another day. If he stepped out of line, however, if he tried to contact his little king, the drug would be withdrawn, and he would die before noon the next day.

  Then she became the Master Assassin’s shadow. She followed him everywhere in his search for Detano’s missing king—combing the hillside for clues, locating witnesses, questioning bystanders.

  When she wasn’t searching, she was training. She endured sparring sessions that left her hands covered in cuts and her body covered in bruises. She submitted herself to hours of mental torment. At the First’s insistence, she killed all manner of creatures—stray dogs, infant rodents that hadn’t yet opened their eyes, war orphans from the camps ringing the capital—in all manner of ways. And if her face showed a single glimmer of emotion—dismay, pity, even rage—she was beaten.

  Mareah had never talked about her training. Now Tanin knew why.

  It was torture. But it was effective. Assassins weren’t human, after all. They were living weapons.

  Tanin answered to “Assassin” or “Second.” She waited, unnoticed, in the shadows while her Master conferred with Stonegold or the Soldiers. She held her tongue. She bided her time.

  Stonegold may have forgotten the humiliation he’d put her through. But Tanin had sworn he’d die by her hand, and she kept her promises.

  By the time the First was killed, she’d perfected the art of inconspicuousness as well as the art of patience.

  While Stonegold sat on one of the overstuffed sofas, nursing his aching head, she examined the First’s corpse.

  Strychnine. As a former Administrator, she would have recognized the signs anywhere. She found the nick on his shin where the poison had entered his system. The cut matched the blade on Mareah’s silver ring.

  “This could have been you, Director,” she whispered. “They probably thought that killing you would end the war.”

  “Then they’ll try again.” He pointed a thick finger in her direction. “And next time, you’ll
stop them.”

  Tanin bowed. Her face was impassive now, but if she’d been the same woman she was nearly four months ago, she would have been smiling.

  Stonegold called off the search for the missing king. He needed a guard dog, and Tanin—who had become the Master Assassin by default—would do.

  Now, clad in black with the old First’s weapons sheathed at her side, she accompanied Stonegold everywhere. She slept on a pallet on the floor of his cabin. She waited outside the door while he emptied his bowels. She listened in on conversations with the other Guardians, who hardly seemed to notice her in the shadows, and waited, silently, for her opportunity.

  During the attack on Tsumasai Bay, she followed Stonegold everywhere. She was on deck with him when they broke through the Royal Navy defenses. She was at his side when he sailed to the castle at Kelebrandt, when he entered the throne room with its stone floors and floor-to-ceiling windows. One side of the hall overlooked the capital’s harbor and the amassed navies beyond. The other had views of the courtyard, gardens, walls, and the city sprawled over the forested hills.

  She witnessed the young Oxscinian queen’s surrender and, minutes later, the rebellion on the bay, when a slew of redcoats refused to yield and dozens of Delieneans defected from the Alliance.

  Detano’s little king must have resurfaced at last.

  But Stonegold appeared unfazed. Tanin supposed it was easy to remain collected when your forces so greatly outnumbered the opposition. He ordered the Oxscinian queen to send her reserve ships to intercede between the rebels and the Alliance, and the candidates escorted her out of the throne room so she could obey.

  Tanin was left alone with Stonegold.

  He stood at the windows, watching the reserve Royal Navy ships leave the harbor. It wouldn’t be long before the Alliance subdued the resisters. She was certain he wanted to see the moment the waters of Tsumasai Bay calmed at last, and he had four of the Five Islands in the palm of his hand.

  Tanin stood by the room’s main entrance, a set of double doors that led to an empty antechamber and the guarded corridor beyond. Unlike Stonegold, whose gaze was fixed on the battle, she could see both the action on the bay and the view of the castle grounds. Which meant she was watching when Sefia and Archer appeared on the outermost ramparts.