“You looked like you needed it. And you would have done the same for me.”
“Don’t count on it,” said Zosia. “I don’t have that much imagination.”
“Speaking of beggaring imagination, were you as wide-eyed as I was when you found out who this Colonel Hjortt really was?” The dark shelter flashed as Singh fiddled with her coalstick to relight the pipe they’d both forgotten about. “Call me naïve, but I never would have believed old Cavalera would put a Chainite curse on his own people.”
“He didn’t know what the Chain were planning,” said Zosia, almost amused to hear herself defending the good name of her onetime nemesis. “I went to see him last night, because I thought… well, you know who I thought he was. But… but the Colonel Hjortt who murdered Leib and the rest of Kypck is Cavalera’s son. Or was, anyway—he never made it out of the fire I set that first day. All this time I figured the boy was out there somewhere, waiting for me to come back and finish the job, but I was too damned thorough for my own good.”
“You found all that out last night? No wonder you’re having a shit day of it.”
“Yeah, I’ve had better… It was so weird, Singh, talking to Hjortt née Cavalera last night. Or Domingo, I guess we’d better call him, since that name hasn’t changed. But seeing him laid out on that cot, beat all to hells and confronted with his worst enemy, me, and knowing he couldn’t lift a finger to hurt me, even after what I did to his son—”
“What you did to his son?” Singh sounded angry enough to march into the crippled old man’s tent to set him straight on the account.
“Yeah, Singh, what I did, because you know what? I cut off his kid’s thumbs before burning him alive. And the boy deserved it, but you think that matters to a parent? If it came out Leib somehow gave Hjortt deadly provocation to do what he did, I wouldn’t have been any less sore over it. It might have stung even worse, because I knew there was some justification to it.” Zosia shook her head. “So anyway, there I was, alone in a tent with the biggest thorn we ever had lodged in our collective ass at my mercy, and do you know what I did?”
“It’s no crime to gloat over a fallen foe,” said Singh, though Zosia knew the chevaleresse’s code would prevent her from ever behaving so basely herself.
“You know, I think he might have preferred it if I’d lorded it over him,” said Zosia thoughtfully. “Left him with his pride, at least, but instead I just… I felt so fucking bad for him, because we both knew it was all his fault that most of his regiment were dead. Shit, not even just dead, but sacrificed, right, and sacrificed to further the ends of the Burnished Chain. And so I… it sounds stupid, but I tried to cheer him up. Told him the day wasn’t lost so long as he drew breath, that is was never too late to pay back the fuckers who wronged him. Told him, sure, you tore open a hole in this world leading straight to hell, to say nothing of summoning back the Sunken Kingdom, but hey, at least you’ve got your health. Everyone you cared about is dead thanks to your bright ideas, but don’t let it get you down.”
“Sounds like you were maybe talking to yourself a little, too,” said Singh, offering her the pipe now that she had it burning again, but Zosia gently declined.
“That’s all I ever fucking do, talk to myself,” Zosia spit. “And end up even more lost than I was before.”
“You’re not lost, Zosia, you just needed a break, some time to figure things out,” said Singh. “And now that you’ve had one, let’s get you moved somewhere more comfortable so you can plan your next move.”
“You don’t think bedding down in the Crimson henhouse is poetic justice for a fox of my color?” Zosia flicked her silver hair in the glow of Singh’s pipe.
“I thought the command tent might be more your style,” said Singh, having slipped into Rhinote, the obscurest Raniputri dialect that they both had some handle on. “When one feels lost, it’s best to return home, don’t you think?”
“Even if I wanted to, you think Ji-hyeon would fold that easy?” Zosia touched the poultice on her shoulder and winced. “Kid’s harder than she looks, and popular.”
“Not for long,” whispered Singh. “The word’s been all over camp since this morning: the Empress of the Immaculate Isles has issued a bounty on our general’s head, and the prize is nothing less than governorship of Linkensterne. If we don’t move on this fast, someone else will.”
Zosia could barely believe what she was hearing. Not that Singh would sell Ji-hyeon up the Isles to install her old friend in the girl’s place, that made perfect sense, but that Ji-hyeon had managed to enrage Empress Ryuki so badly that she’d pledge such a prize. A villain after her own heart, all right. Zosia considered the angles. “You think Fennec or Hoartrap would go for it?”
“If you were the one stepping up to fill the girl’s helm and claim Linkensterne for your own? I think Kang-ho himself would pat you on the back and help broker the exchange, if you promised him a window to do business in the Link again. Maybe the Sunken Kingdom’s risen from the sea or maybe Hoartrap’s just off his nut, but one thing’s for sure, and that’s that an opportunity like this doesn’t come along twice.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t,” Zosia said quietly and, dark though it was under the canopy, she held the plan up to her inner light, turning it this way and that, examining every facet and flaw. Inadvertently or not, Singh had raised an important question this eve, and that was what exactly did Zosia want that was actually attainable? Was there something, anything, that could bring her contentment, or at least chase away her cancerous sorrow, if only for a while? Could governorship of Linkensterne be just what she needed? She’d given up on ruling the Empire, because it was too damn hard and frankly too damn scary to be responsible for so many people, but running a corrupt city couldn’t be nearly that tough. And after tasting the yoke of Immaculate oversight for even a short spell, all and sundry would welcome a woman of her standing as the savior of Linkensterne… In no time at all, she could have her own personal paradise, a city she already knew and liked well enough honed into whatever shape she cared for. An end to this bitter, thankless quest for vengeance, a mission that could consume the rest of her remaining years and bring her no closer to discovering if someone had actually sent Efrain Hjortt and the Fifteenth Cavalry to Kypck or if the whole thing had been a devildamned goof on the part of a pea-brained young colonel. To welcome old friends into the governor’s mansion and not have to worry if they would all be dead on the morrow after signing on for some half-baked campaign to save the world when all the world wanted was to drop into the nearest hell just as quickly as it could, thank you very much.
“I…” Zosia paused.
“Yes?” Singh’s breath was spicy in the closeness of the lean-to.
“I think you’d better pack another pipe, because we may be talking a bit longer yet,” said Zosia, for the first time in a very long time liking the course that was mapping itself out across the inside of her skull. It was a nice feeling, to know what needed doing, and while that alone wasn’t much, to the woman who had nothing the promise of something shone and sparkled like all the beacons of the night sky. A shame even that was concealed by the early winter storm, but Zosia knew a thing or three about weathering storms… and also the conjuring of them, as far as that went. After their little exchange at the Gate that afternoon, Ji-hyeon Bong had a great big surprise coming her way.
CHAPTER
14
Maroto poked and prodded at his knee. He hadn’t noticed when he’d first come through the Gate, because the raggedy bandage still retained enough of its material to cover the nasty wound he’d doubtless reopened during the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue, and the knee certainly felt weak and sore enough to be a gaping, bloody mess… but when he finally worked up the nerve to peel back the filth-plastered cloth and examine it, he saw it wasn’t even pink and scabby, like it had been the morning before the big fight. It was completely healed, a band of white scar tissue as thick as his thumb crossing the front of the knee. Moving about on i
t still felt strange and clumsy, but the more he got used to it the more he figured that was just the result of babying it ever since he’d first gashed it open fighting the horned wolf. Nothing short of deviltry could heal a wound that fast, so either Hoartrap had done him a favor on the sly or jumping through a Gate had unexpected side effects. Of the two possibilities, only one seemed believable.
So yeah, this day had been one big old surprise after another, but as the sun melted into the jungle on the western edge of the cove, he was met with the biggest one yet: these seemingly intelligent pirates shipwrecked on a legendarily weird shore showed every intention of keeping their fire lit even as the luxurious purple twilight settled around them. He’d spent the day drifting in and out of dreams, the toxic cocktail of a sudden Gate-trip halfway across the Star and the aftereffects of his buggy bender still playing hell with his brain, but now he was feeling alert and lousy. Feeling himself again, in other words, and that meant it was time to sort out these amateurs.
“With all due respect, Captain Bang,” he said from his sandy seat at the edge of the jungle, “having that fire going while the sun was up was mad enough, but I won’t sit by in silence and watch you feed a lure to every hungry monster with eyes in its head.”
“No?” Bang sounded disappointed but didn’t look up from the bright blue crab she was roasting on a stick. “A pity that you’ll be going off on your own so soon, Useful, when we’ve finally gotten accustomed to your smell.”
That got a laugh from Dong-won and Niki-hyun, but they all knew it was as cheap as they came.
“Look, I’m not trying to undercut your command,” Maroto said, as patiently as he could manage with the darkness thickening around them. “But—”
“What do I say about buts?” Bang said, turning her crab over, and before Maroto could crack the riddle Niki-hyun and Dong-won spoke in unison:
“Sew buttons on them, Cap’n.”
“Precisely,” said Bang. “Cute as yours is, Useful, I’d be happy to assist if you can’t reach it yourself.”
“You don’t know what’s out there,” Maroto told the fools, leaning in closer to the fire and lowering his voice to the appropriately dramatic level for his necessary embellishments. “I do. I’ve seen ’em. Hungry ape-monsters the size of horses, and vipers longer than an Immaculate customs ship. Worse things, too, I don’t doubt, and a fire like this on the treeline can be spotted for miles, drawing them out of their lairs with the promise of easy meat.”
Dong-won and Niki-hyun didn’t look thrilled, but Bang dismissed him with that annoying moan kids use when telling ghost stories. “Oooohooohoooo, Useful’s seen such horrors as turned his hair white overnight! Good thing I’ve got my prayer beads to ward off any devils, and where faith fails we’ve got something better: cold steel.”
Maroto was about to reply when what she’d said gave him pause, and he reached up, wrapped his finger around a few hairs in the middle of his unkempt flattop, and plucked them free. Grey as the greasepaint his old comrade Carla used to wear when doing her drag routine. He tried not to grin as the pieces fit together; his nephew must’ve gone through a Gate, too, but far more exciting than that random bit of intelligence was the fact that his formerly dull, dark hair must look as fleet as his nephew’s. Between this development and his knee mending itself, things were looking up—who knew Gate-hopping could be good for both your health and your style?
“Maybe I’d feel better if I could hold on to that dagger again,” he told Bang when a pop of her crab shell brought him back to his immediate concerns. “Because it’s not a question of if a horde of hideous monsters attack us, it’s when. First rule of being a castaway is not attracting the local predators, and that’s on a normal isle—what in all the heathen gods of your ancestors and mine do you think we’ll draw in here, on the Sunken fucking Kingdom?”
“Here.” Bang still wasn’t looking up from her crab, but drew the knife from her belt and threw it into the sand between his bare feet. “Happy?”
“No,” he said, trying not to groan as he leaned forward to retrieve the paltry weapon. “So maybe you’d care to explain why on a balmy night like this, with dinner about done, you’re insisting on—”
“Useful, I’m going to give you one last chance to stop that gob of yours.” Bang was finally looking up, and the flames reflected in her eyes looked a mite cooler than the furious flush of her cheeks. “Last night Dong-won spied from that far headland the fire Niki and I burned down here, and if we hadn’t kept it going through the night I might never have seen my bosun again. I lost four and twenty more of my crew when the Queen Thief went down, and I’ll gladly fight off every devil on Jex Toth if that’s what it takes to keep a guiding star lit for any of my people who might’ve made it to shore. You want to hide in the dark, get on with it, so long as you’re quiet about it. Aye?”
Maroto met her gaze, silently cursing the foolhardiness of the young… then asked himself what he’d do if he thought Purna or Choi might be lost out there in the black jungle, or limping across the jagged tide pools at the rim of the cove. His eyes didn’t drop, then, but he nodded once. “Aye aye, Captain.”
“My favorite words in all the world!” Just like that, the fury and desperation that Maroto had kept company with himself a time or three fled her face, and after several finger-singeing attempts Bang snapped off one of her crab claws and tossed it to Maroto. Easy as she’d planted the knife between his bare feet before, the morsel went wide enough he had to scramble for it, then pick it out of the sand and brush it off when it bounced off his clumsy fingers. He sincerely hoped she’d done that on purpose to make a point, because the alternative was she didn’t throw as well as she thought she could and the knife had missed his ankle by providence alone. “Now since you’re feeling so talkative, Useful, how about a song to while away the hours?”
“Not much of a singer,” said Maroto, punctuating this sad truth by cracking the claw between his teeth.
“Ah, so that’s something we’ve learned about our new friend already,” said Bang, blowing on the far more substantial shell of her meal. “Useful’s not a singer, good to know come music night. Now, how about sharing a little bit more with your fellow castaways? Like who you are, and where you hail from, and what blackest sorcery brought you into our company… that sort of idle chatter what makes strangers close as lovers.”
“Hmph,” said Maroto, slurping the crabmeat out of the shell. It was only half-cooked and tough as a boot tongue, but it tasted sweeter than Usban baklava to his starving tongue. “That’s… that’s not the sort of thing you want to hear. For your own protection, I mean, the less you know about me the better.”
“That’s what I love about meeting new people.” Bang nodded knowingly at her fellows. “You don’t just get to learn about them and their foreign ways, but they also get to learn about you, and thus the Star is made a smaller, warmer place. For example, you’ve just learned that I actually do want to hear all about you, and damn the oh-so-sinister consequences. Considering we were the ones to drag you out of the Haunted Sea, Useful, I’d say we know more about protecting you than you do about protecting us—that’s another neat thing about making new friends, you learn stuff about yourself, too.”
“Yeah, okay,” said Maroto, because he was too bushed to put up much of a fight, or even point out that he’d gotten himself out of the water all by himself and they’d just assisted him up the strand to their over-illuminated camp. “Yesterday morning I woke up halfway across the Star, on the eastern slope of the Kutumbans a little ways west of Thao. Being precise, I was camped with ten thousand other folk at the base of a mountain called the Lark’s Tongue, this ugly peak that sticks up on the edge of the Witchfinder Plains. Shall I be more specific still, Captain?”
“Only if it helps the story,” said Bang, resting her unsampled crab back on the coals. “Who were these ten thousand friends of Useful you were bunking with?”
“No one you know,” said Maroto, though that was actual
ly a bit of a fib, gauging from the pipe she’d spent an hour cleaning, and which now sat drying a safe distance from the edge of the fire. “A mercenary company I was scouting for, nobody famous.”
“A freebooter at sea and a scout on land,” said Niki-hyun, some of the first words she’d had all day long. “No wonder they call him Useful.”
“Come to mention it, Useful does look a bit like another rogue I knew,” said Dong-won. “’Cept his name was Bullshitter and he didn’t do none of what he talked.”
“Bullshitter, right—you’ve met my cousin, then,” said Maroto without missing a beat. “Other than good looks, better humor, and champion cocksmanship, we don’t have much in common, though.”
That got a grin out of Bang, at least, and a smaller smile from Niki-hyun, but Dong-won must have missed the joke. Come to notice it, though, the sea-ox had been scowling at Maroto ever since he’d advised they quench the fire. Boo bloody hoo. Maroto had spent his night dangling from a eucalyptus in the snake-haunted high country and you didn’t see him taking it out on sensible strangers.
“Like I was saying, though, yesterday morning I was in the thick of it with these mercenaries, when the nastiest regiment in the Crimson Empire came sweeping down from the foothills on top of us.”
“Which regiment?” said Dong-won.
“The, um, shit, I’m bad with their numbers,” said Maroto, but the knowing look Dong-won gave his captain and comrade jogged his memory back to the smushed old walrus he’d met right after they brought the pack of horned wolves screaming down into their mountain camp. He recited it perfectly: “The Fifteenth, out of Azgaroth, led by Colonel Hjortt.”
Neither Bang nor Dong-won looked impressed, but Niki-hyun whistled and said, “They are supposed to be the worst. Or were, anyway, back when Kang-ho was reaving it up down south.”
A Blade of Black Steel Page 16
