“I wonder…” the oracle said at last, opening one eye in Best’s direction. “Decked for a hunt as you are, Daughter Best, I wonder what course you should take if I gave this honorable task to another hunter? If I told you to stay in your hut while Swiftspear went in your stead? What then?”
“I would give you my son’s token to add to your web, and do as I was told,” said Best, and though fear filled her heart it could not slow her arm. She cast the bloody necklace at the tree, and though the light trinket would have fallen short, a blackbird flashed down and scooped it up, delivering it to the pleased oracle. She held the red-smeared string of teeth up to the diabolical sun and, whispering a few more words, set it on the branch beside her.
“Very well, Daughter Best,” said the poison oracle, grinning as wide as a leopard seal. “I grant your wish—you have the council’s blessing to hunt your family, and see that their hot blood restores the righteous frost to the earth they defiled.”
“Thank you,” said Best, bowing her head beneath the weight of the honor. As the council chanted their approval and Father Turisa added his prayers to the chorus, she imagined Sullen’s eyes widening with surprise as she stepped from the snow with her grandmother’s sun-knife in her hand, her father spouting his nonsense from his grandson’s back, her brother who had led them into temptation standing at their side with a drawn blade and an evil grin. She said it again. “Thank you.”
CHAPTER
11
I shware by Ord Brack’s honor, I’ll break it tween my treeth,” Maroto growled around the pipe he still held clamped in his mouth. Hardly a threat to intimidate anyone but a dandy, but Maroto was long accustomed to making do with what he had, and if the devils of the sea had seen fit to grant him a briar bargaining chip he’d be damned if he didn’t use it. The Immaculate girl paused, her outstretched hand a few inches from the pipe, and then she straightened back up, crossing her arms and glaring down at the waterlogged barbarian. The only sound was the tide toying with his toes and, blinking his salt-burned eyes, he saw the other two figures were also Immaculate, a man and a woman whose deep tans hinted at seasons upon the sea.
“Is Immaculate the native tongue, then?” the girl asked, hunkering down for a better look at Maroto. Dyed-green hair hung in ropes from the side of her head that wasn’t shaved, patches of her skin popping with ink so rich it glowed in the sunlight. She wore the baggy, drab trousers of fisherfolk, and the silver-and-gold embroidered shirt of a merchant queen. The former were in good repair, but the latter was coming apart at the seams, and seemed to serve mostly as padding to protect her chest from a heavy leather bandolier loaded with a couple of barbed darts and a good many empty loops for more of the same. Loose gold chains hung around her tatted throat, and the cutlass lolling from her coin-studded belt had tight brass basketwork. Cute in the freckled face, too, but since she was looking to be just Maroto’s type he’d better give her a wide berth indeed. His type tended to be nothing but trouble. “Ahoy, there, merman, you understand me?”
“Unnerstand.” Oh, Maroto understood all right—these punks were pirates, or hammy actors playing the same who’d gone overboard in the wardrobe department. And if they assumed he was a native they must be as lost as he was. “I’m a freebrooter, too. I’m usefur.”
“Are you, now?” She turned to the woman and said, “Pass that over, Niki.”
The thick, mop-topped woman brought a green coconut with the top hacked off, and Maroto’s mouth flooded with saliva so quickly he nearly choked on it. The girl sloshed the coconut in Maroto’s direction, and dead tired as he’d felt a moment before, he hauled himself up on one elbow. Reaching for the coconut, he said, “Very usefur.”
“Well then, Very Useful, how ’bout we swap? Unless you’d rather sip an empty pipe than a full coconut?”
It wasn’t even a question; he passed her the cutty with a shaky hand, but as he did his eyes flicked out of habit to the underside of the pipe. He froze, unable to believe it, but sure enough, there it was: a Z carved into the briar, and beside it, blurred by clinging sand, another letter. An L. His hand shook all the harder, and he looked up at this Immaculate girl in wonder.
“Where’d you get this?”
“A friend made it for me,” said the girl, her nut-brown eyes steady. “An old lover, if you must know. What’s it to you, Useful?”
This chippie couldn’t be thirty years old, and she called herself an old lover of Zosia’s? Not too long ago the thought of a pretty young pirate making out with Zosia would have filled Maroto with very different feelings, and truth be told, he might have conjured just such images to while away a lonely night… or morning or afternoon, far as that went. Now, though, his craw tightened, and so did his fist, the pipe digging into his hand. So Zosia had lied to him—she hadn’t just been holed away in her mountain home with some loverboy; she’d also taken this Immaculate into her bed and, more importantly, her confidence. For all he knew Zosia had actually let everyone in on her big secret save Maroto, letting him carry on thinking she’d died because she trusted him less than some random fucking pirate…
“Careful there, Useful, you break my pipe I break your face.”
“Her name,” growled Maroto, because as bad as Zosia had hurt him he still wanted to believe her, to believe in her. Maybe he was jumping to conclusions, maybe this girl had hooked up with some random pipemaker who also just happened to etch a Z into their briar. “Your lover who made this, what was her name?”
“Oh, I reckon we both know that or you wouldn’t be acting so queer,” said the pirate, breaking Maroto’s heart all over again with a wink. “But I don’t like to say it aloud, on account of an oath I made to keep her secrets. She betrayed me in the end, but I believe a woman’s worth is in how well she keeps her promises, even to those who don’t deserve it.”
“That’s something else we’ve got in common, then,” said Maroto, suddenly unable to get rid of the pipe fast enough. She plucked it from his trembling fingers and tossed him the green orb. There wasn’t much in the coconut to begin with, and some of it splashed out when he clumsily caught it. But oh, what a prize, dear as any he’d ever won in all his days, the milky water washing the briny tang of Zosia’s latest betrayal from his mouth like tears wiped away by a lover’s hand.
“Boss, you think that’s wise?” said the man, and Maroto looked up to see the green-haired girl offering him the hilt of a knife.
“This hunk owes us his life, think he’ll be grateful enough to return my steel once he’s cleaned that nut. That right, Useful?”
“Absolutely,” said Maroto, taking the pearl-handled blade and jamming it into the open top of the coconut, shaving off a few rough splinters of white meat. “And what do I call my saviors, then?”
“I’m Captain Bang,” said the girl, “and this slab of steak is my bosun.”
“Dong-won,” said the man, an Immaculate tarshirt of prodigious strength. Cocking an elbow at his equally broad comrade, he said, “That’s Niki-hyun.”
“Your name’s Bang?” Maroto sat up straighter in the sand, remembering that the pipe had an L carved beside the Z, not a B…
“Bang Lin’s the full handle,” said the girl, following his gaze to her pipe. She brushed it off and tucked it into one of the loops on her bandolier. “But Captain Bang works just fine for a fellow freebooter like yourself. And what about you, merman—folk call you anything other than Useful?”
“Lots of things, but never more than the once,” said Maroto, and because he couldn’t bear to be the laughingstock of some old song Zosia might have sung to this girl, he decided to stay incognito. “You had it right the first time—the name’s Useful, Very to my friends.”
“Then Useful it is, because I make a point not to get too friendly with my crew,” said Bang, extending a hand with the modern Immaculate character for Eat tattooed in sapphire ink on her middle finger and Steel in scarlet on her index. “Let’s get you into the shade to eat the rest of that, boyo, ’fore we all get s
unstroked.”
“Press-ganged, huh?” Maroto popped another piece of coconut meat into his mouth, then dropped the small knife into the open nut and set them in the black sand. “Ain’t the first time, and knowing my luck it won’t be the last, but I’m damned happy about it for a change.”
“Oh yeah?” Bang’s crooked smile flashed silver and gold as Maroto took her hand.
“Truth,” he said, bracing himself for what would likely be a dodgy climb to his feet. “Your ship far from here? And where is here, anyway?”
Niki-hyun and Dong-won exchanged a nervous look, and a forlorn expression crossed Bang’s pleasant face, the constellation of indigo dots inked above her left eye contracting slightly. To banish whatever it was that troubled her, she set her feet and hoisted Maroto up. She got him most of the way up before he listed dangerously to the side, but then Niki-hyun and Dong-won came around on either side to steady him. They turned him away from the wide blue ocean and, as he tried to find his balance on the crumbly black beach, Bang finally answered him.
“My ship’s the Queen Thief, but most of her hasn’t washed up yet,” said the captain as they approached the bright jade jungle that rushed down from the high slopes of the coast to press in tight against the sandy cove. “As for where we are, that’s one hell of a strange question to ask, considering how far we are from anyplace else. Where do you think you are, Useful? How’d you come to wash up on this shore?”
“I’m not the sort to ask questions unless I don’t know the answers,” said Maroto, reeling a bit in the sand as the two Immaculates swayed in place with him. “I was dumped on this blasted coast by the blackest sorcery, and into yonder ocean by a pack of stupid monsters up there on the headland. So if you know just where the fuck we are, Captain Bang, I’d appreciate it if—”
“The Sunken Kingdom,” said Bang, trying very hard to sound cavalier about it. “You’ve heard of it, maybe? Jex Toth? Place of legend what dwells in the heart of the Haunted Sea?”
“Uhhhhhhhh…” Maroto couldn’t help but picture Hoartrap laughing and laughing, slapping his milky knee from the safety of his tent beneath the Lark’s Tongue. “Nah.”
“That’s what I said,” grumbled Dong-won, steering their charge toward a small cooking fire and pile of driftwood at the edge of the jungle.
“We sailed straight into it, so it has to be Jex Toth,” said Niki-hyun from Maroto’s other side. “But for a kingdom that’s supposed to be underwater this place is plenty dry, and from the height of the trees it has been for a long-ass time. That don’t exactly put me at ease, though.”
Bang dismissed their concerns with a grin over her shoulder and a shrug.
“Worse places to be shipwrecked, my seawolves,” she said, picking up the pace to their meager camp, but Maroto couldn’t even enjoy the sight of a tight posterior wiggling beneath salt water–stiffened fabric now that he knew that beyond it lay a realm he had never even believed in, a cursed land the likes of which made Emeritus seem as mundane as Flintland. He wasn’t just exiled on a desert island; he was banished to a place that hadn’t been on a fucking map in five hundred years.
Well, if Zosia and her errand boy Hoartrap thought that was all it took to get rid of Maroto they had another thing coming. His fists, specifically.
CHAPTER
12
Back on the plateau that morning Sullen had been sure of but one thing in all the Star, and that was that he wanted to kiss Ji-hyeon. Now, as his beloved’s boyfriend led Sullen all over the camp in search of an obliging blacksmith, even that certainty no longer seemed so, um, certain. It wasn’t that he regretted kissing her, because come on now, she was gorgeous and clearly inclined. It wasn’t even that he’d tripped over Grandfather and spoiled the mood.
It was that Ji-hyeon was already deeply involved with Keun-ju here, and whatever his feelings about this Immaculate boy, Sullen’s mother had raised him better than to play the homewrecker.
As if reading his thoughts, Keun-ju stopped so suddenly Sullen nearly bumped into the smaller man. He turned to Sullen, his expressive brown eyes the only clue to his mood with the rest of his face hidden beneath a beaded veil of black lace. Those eyes didn’t seem happy, and Sullen wondered if Keun-ju suspected what he and Ji-hyeon had been up to… or if one of the whispers Sullen had watched Ji-hyeon deliver to her Virtue Guard’s ear before the two men had set out was a confession of their dalliance on the plateau. Sullen’s heart quickened under the sad weight of the boy’s eyes, the mallet of guilt banging on the drum of his conscience.
“I apologize,” said Keun-ju, far less bold now that he was alone with Sullen than he’d been in their previous interactions. “I thought it was over here…”
“Oh,” said Sullen, realizing that quick as Keun-ju had been to take the lead he didn’t actually know where they were going. The Virtue Guard had led them directly to the first smith, so after she’d been unable to help Sullen and they had set out for the next one he hadn’t even thought to take charge.
“I’ve only been here a few days, of course…” said Keun-ju, his eyes finishing the statement with so what have you been up to with my beloved while I was gone? Or so it seemed, but then the Virtue Guard added with a hint of sass, “Considering how long you have been in camp, I am surprised you do not recall where the blacksmiths have erected their works.”
“Nah, I do,” said Sullen, and though he hadn’t meant to be rude about it that apparently hadn’t come through, because Keun-ju’s nostrils flared, puffing out his veil.
“Might you care to lead on, then, Master Sullen?”
“Sure, yeah,” said Sullen, orienting himself and then pointing back up through the tents. “A big shaman-blooded bloke up that way has an anvil, I’m sure of that at least. Sorry, I thought you must’ve had a reason for taking us down here.”
“Oh, I am just sure to have a reason for everything,” said Keun-ju, but low enough that Sullen wasn’t sure if he was supposed to answer or not, so he just shrugged and led the way between the uneven rows. It was getting on in the afternoon, but the snow hadn’t let up and few soldiers were outside their tents. Keun-ju carried on with his muttering about reasons, saying, “—just like three blacksmiths must have very good reasons for being spread all over camp instead of building one big forge to share.”
“She did have a reason for that,” said Sullen, relieved to have an answer for once. “Ji-hyeon tried having them all work the same fires, like you said, but it led to some fights, so she had them set up their own works away from one another. Think there was some other purpose for it, too, but that’s the one I recall.”
“Well, that makes perfect sense,” said Keun-ju. “If you keep several tools to do the same job you don’t want them bumping into one another.”
Which had some venom in it, and Sullen kind of wanted to stop right then and there and try to talk this thing out with Keun-ju, but glancing back at the wiry, bright-eyed man he found that he… that he was actually kind of scared of such a confrontation. He was in the wrong here, or at least sideways from right. Ji-hyeon was her own woman, and no man owned her, obviously, obviously… but if she was holding the whole truth back from Keun-ju, was it Sullen’s place to betray her wishes? Better to hold his tongue long enough to have a private word with Ji-hyeon and tell her straight that he wouldn’t carry on with her until she’d sorted matters with Keun-ju.
Then again, Sullen had been the one to put the moves on her back at the plateau, and maybe if he brought it up to her she’d drop him flat. Then where would he be? Happier for having the truth out, he decided, but that was sometime yet to come, and for the present he was relying on a righteously pissed-off little Immaculate man to do him a solid and help work out an arrangement with a blacksmith, and make sure the weaponmaker knew this job had the general’s blessing. All Sullen could do was make the best of it, for all three of their sakes—whatever came to pass, Keun-ju had done him no wrong other than a sharp word, and who knew, if he’d been in the boy’s position Sullen
might’ve had some sharp words, too. Among other keen objects.
“Ji-hyeon says you’re into swords,” Sullen said, gesturing to Keun-ju’s scabbard as they walked. “She reckons you know more about ’em than even the smiths, which is why she said I could borrow you.”
“She said you could borrow me, did she?” said Keun-ju, and Sullen was beginning to see that he and his mistress had a lot in common, because half the time he couldn’t tell if the Virtue Guard was seriously offended or just messing with him. Prolonged exposure to Ji-hyeon had attuned him to reading her actual feelings, but ancestors willing he’d never spend enough time around this touchy boy to learn his mannerisms that well.
“Turn of speech, is all,” Sullen said as placidly as he was able. “My words, not hers. Sorry.”
“No need to apologize, I know your Immaculate needs some work,” said Keun-ju, which was just plain impolite. Sullen would like to see this runt so much as say hello in Flintlander, any dialect. “And yes, I have educated myself in the riddles of steel.”
Riddles of steel? Sullen rolled his eyes. “Cool.”
“Yes,” said the prim Virtue Guard. “It is.”
“Say, here’s a question,” said Sullen, finally hitting on a subject that would probably get the blowhard talking—himself. “What is a Virtue Guard, anyway? I, um, guess a boy from the ice boonies like me doesn’t understand what virtue means in a case like this.”
That got a quick and dirty laugh out of Keun-ju, and while Sullen wasn’t sure why, it didn’t sound very nice. “No, I suppose virtue would be an alien concept to you.”
A Blade of Black Steel Page 13
