by Jon Skovron
It was, however, an ideal place to house the many refugees from the Shade District. The open space, free of clutter and furniture, allowed families and friends to gather together for comfort. It also provided an area for the Vinchen to treat the injured. As she had once boasted to Red, the Vinchen could heal as well as kill.
“We did good work here today,” she told Stephan. “I only wish I knew what the kraken was after.”
“Perhaps they know the answer to that.” Stephan pointed to the entrance of the temple. Brigga Lin, Red, Alash, and Vaderton had come in and were looking around the huge, crowded space.
Hope was not prepared for the sudden spike in her pulse when she saw Red. Without thinking, she threw up her arms and waved eagerly.
Red’s sharp eyes spotted her first, of course. He nudged the others, and they hurried over.
“You’re alright?” Red asked as soon as he was in earshot.
“Of course,” said Hope. “You?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
Red jerked to a halt a few feet from her, his arms tense. It seemed like he’d wanted to embrace her, but had stopped himself at the last moment. Now they just stared at each other in silence. Hope hated this space that was between them, but she didn’t know how to close it.
“Things are more complicated than we’d thought,” Brigga Lin said.
Hope forced her eyes away from Red to look at her. “In what way?”
“The kraken had been sent by Ammon Set to prevent anyone from leaving Vance Post while he attempts to seize power from the imperial family and declares himself emperor. That’s why the kraken was going after the ships.”
“How dare he!” said Stephan, his eyes wide with fury. “We’ll eviscerate the traitor!”
“I think that’s the exact reaction he wanted to avoid, old pot,” Red told the Vinchen.
“Red believes we should go to their rescue.” Brigga Lin’s voice and expression were carefully neutral. Hope didn’t know what to make of that.
“I have to agree with him,” said Vaderton. “While I have no love for the navy anymore, this is the emperor we’re talking about. The symbol of our entire people. I can’t imagine someone like Ammon Set, who is capable of causing …” He glanced around at the many wounded and frightened people. “This, to represent the entire empire. It’s unconscionable.”
“You have suggested that we return to the code and the vows of Selk the Brave,” Stephan said. “Isn’t our most basic vow to save the empire from those who would destroy it? Can you think of a worse fate for our people than someone like Ammon Set wresting power? The Vinchen must rally and face this threat.”
“Hope …” Red’s eyes were wide as he looked at her. The wall behind them had come down, and they shone wetly in the lamplight of the temple. “Piss on duty and vows and the empire itself, for all I care right now. Leston is my friend, and they’re going to kill him.”
Hope stared from one to the next, feeling utterly bewildered. “Why are you all talking like it’s up to me? I don’t command any of you. I’m not in charge of anything. I don’t even have a ship to get us there. Why do you all look to me? You don’t need me.”
“Ah, but we do, my dearest friend.” Brigga Lin reached out her long, slim hand and laid it with unexpected affection on Hope’s cheek. “You are our hope, after all. And what bold action could ever be successful—or even begun—without that?”
Hope’s chest felt tight. It was difficult to look at them. It was difficult to even speak. “There is no reason—”
“There doesn’t have to be one,” said Brigga Lin. “We need you with us. It’s that simple.”
She stared at them a moment longer as she struggled to breathe. To regain some composure.
“Of course I will come,” she said finally. “I don’t know how I feel about empires or emperors. But you are my friends. If you need me, how can I possibly turn away?”
“Teacher!”
Hope jerked her head back toward the entrance as Jilly and Uter came bursting through, nearly tripping over a family by the door.
“Teacher!” Jilly called again.
“Teacher, teacher!” Uter mimicked gleefully.
“Be careful of the people around you!” Hope scolded automatically.
Jilly slowed down, then grabbed Uter, forcing him to slow down as well. They walked the rest of the way over to Hope at an even pace, although their eyes continued to blaze with excitement.
“You have to come and see this!” Jilly said.
“You have to see the—” Uter began, but Jilly yanked his arm hard.
“You promised you wouldn’t spoil it!” she hissed at him.
“I won’t spoil it!” He clamped his mouth shut, but it looked like the effort to do so was almost painful.
Jilly squeezed Hope’s hand. “Please, teacher. Will you just come and see?”
Hope looked at the others.
“Are you kidding?” said Red. “Anything that’s got Jilly this excited has to be worth it.”
“It is, Red! I promise!” said Jilly. Then she gave Brigga Lin big pleading eyes. “Master, please!”
Brigga Lin winced. “What a horrible expression. Stop it at once.”
“Will you all come?” asked Jilly.
“Hope?” asked Brigga Lin.
“I suppose we will,” said Hope, feeling like she had no control over the situation and had no idea why anyone was asking her.
“This way!” Jilly said, and hurried back toward the entrance.
“This way! This way!” said Uter, scampering after her.
Jilly led them zigzagging through the streets of the Commercial District in a southwesterly direction until they finally came to the docks. Jilly normally tried so hard to act mature and older than she really was. Hope wondered what could have inspired such childish delight.
But when they reached the docks, she saw exactly what had them so excited.
“Is that …,” she whispered.
“Ahoy, Captain!” called a very familiar voice.
Missing Finn, that old, one-eyed sailor from Paradise Circle, stood at the gunwale of the Kraken Hunter. Except, no, it looked like Finn had changed the name back to the Lady’s Gambit.
“I hope you don’t mind me bringing back the original name, Captain,” said Finn. “I always felt Kraken Hunter was something the ship took on just like you took on the name Dire Bane. Now that you’re back to being you, so to speak, I reckoned it was time to get her back to her old self as well. Except I kept the cannons, of course.”
“How …” Hope’s hand trembled slightly as she reached out to touch the rough wooden siding.
“The Black Rose helped me get her seaworthy again,” Finn told her. “She’s got a soft spot for this old tub, too. Don’t ever let her tell you otherwise.”
Hope turned to Jilly, who was smiling so fiercely, it looked like her face might split. “You were right, Jilly. This was worth it.”
“It’s your ship, Hope!” said Uter. “You remember, right? The one where you cut off the head of that oarfish! The one you sailed to that island of owl monsters! The one—”
“Yes, Uter, I remember.” She patted his head and he smiled up at her. “And I’m impressed you remember all those stories. Now …” She turned back to look up at Finn. “Permission to come aboard, Captain?”
“She’s yours by right,” objected Finn.
Hope shook her head. “No, Finn. She’s yours by right now. You were the one who didn’t give up on her.”
“Ah, well …” He smiled fondly as he touched the wooden rail with his wrinkled, brown hand. “She’s all I got now, I suppose.” Then he looked back at them, and his face was suddenly serious. “If you all don’t mind coming aboard, we’ve got a grave matter to discuss.”
Hope glanced at the others. “Yes, I think we do.”
Finn had a couple of his crew slide out the gangplank. As Hope walked back onto the ship where she had spent so much of her life, she felt all its old memories come
back to her, and with it the people she’d known and lost. The original crew, with Carmichael, Ticks, Sankack, Mayfield, and even Ranking. Then later Filler and Sadie. All of those people had a place on this ship once. In a sense, they were all still a part of it.
A new crew was bustling about the deck. Ten or so solid wags from the Circle. Just the right amount of hands. More than was needed on a calm day, but in a real luffer, barely enough to get through. Carmichael would have been pleased.
And in the middle of it all was Missing Fin. His white hair was a little thinner, and his skin a little more weathered. And there was a quiet sadness behind his one eye that spoke of grief that might fade, but would never truly go away. He still had the same old salt-stained black eye patch and white linen shirt.
Hope walked right up to him and gave him a rough embrace.
“Captain, I—”
“It’s just Hope now,” she told him, squeezing him harder. “And shut up.”
“Aye, fair enough,” he said, and squeezed her back.
Once Hope finally let him go, he gave her a serious look. “The Black Rose brought this ship we love back to life, and now she needs it. And she needs you.”
“Oh?”
“She’s cut a deal with the empress.”
“She followed through with that?” asked Red, looking delighted.
“Aye,” said Finn.
“What kind of deal?” asked Hope.
“We get the empress and her son out of their current mess,” said Finn, “and they give us a seat at the table.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” said Hope.
“Oh, this …” Red ran his hands through his hair, looking thrilled. “This is big. I can’t believe Pysetcha agreed to it! They must be desperate.” He shook his head. “Merivale must have had a hand in it, too. Maybe even Nea.”
“Red, what are you talking about?” asked Hope.
He put his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t you see? Nettie’s bargained to get representation at the palace. Common people having a voice in the government! This could change everything!”
Hope stared at him. It almost didn’t make sense. Normal people making decisions about how the government should be run?
“That’s assuming we win, of course,” said Brigga Lin calmly.
Hope turned to her, a tight grin on her face. “If this is truly what’s at stake, I have nothing but pity for anyone who stands in our way.”
24
There was a throne room on the first floor of the palace. Technically speaking, it was the official seat of power, but it had not been used in years. Emperor Martarkis had been too weak to make it all the way down there. It was not just his physical weakness that Ammon Set had loathed about him. The man had been weak of spirit as well, something Set knew better than anyone.
Ammon Set had received his biomancer name the same year that Martarkis had been made emperor. Even at that young age, it had been obvious that the emperor was impulsive and self-indulgent. It was bad enough that he drank and ate to excess. But his lecherousness was so rampant that he never gave any effort to searching for a wife who would bear him a legitimate heir. Then when he finally settled down enough to consider marriage, he became absurdly picky about his mate. By the time Martarkis had chosen the young maiden Pysetcha from Belgranada, he was so old, the act of sexual intercourse had become impossible.
It had been that damned Progul Bon who put the idea in Martarkis’s head to order the biomancers to make him young again. Bon convinced the emperor that it was so he could enjoy his beautiful young wife, but Ammon Set knew it was to ensure there would be an heir to the throne. That was a very serious concern, to be sure. But so was extending the rule of a weak man made even weaker by stretching his life out that long and thin. It was the first of many arguments that Ammon Set and Progul Bon had over the next two decades. And, unfortunately, it was not the last that Bon won, much to the detriment of the empire.
“Ridding ourselves of Progul Bon was one good thing to come from all this,” Ammon Set said aloud.
He stood with Chiffet Mek in the emperor’s apartments. They ignored the plush, sumptuous furniture that Martarkis had insisted on in his later years. Partly because it felt like sitting on a fat woman, and partly because it stank of old age, sickness, and decay. Once Ammon Set was coronated, he would have it all burned.
The two biomancers looked out of the large bay window at the southern wall, which afforded an excellent view of Tramasta’s fleet sailing in from Fashlament.
“I consider Progul Bon’s loss unfortunate,” said Chiffet Mek in his flat, scraping voice. “He was better at keeping you in check than anyone else.”
“You think I have crossed a line,” said Ammon Set. “But I am trying to save this empire.”
“Has it occurred to you that it is your actions that will fulfill the Dark Mage’s prophecy? A divided empire is no match for Aukbontar.”
“We were already divided,” said Ammon Set. “So disjointed, one could barely call us an empire at all. Once we eliminate the prince and his little resistance, I will make us strong and united.”
“Leston has proven a more formidable opponent than you thought.”
Ammon Set grunted. “It’s that damned Hempist woman. I can’t believe she’s been scheming under our noses for years. I can’t believe Progul Bon never told us!”
“Can’t you?” asked Chiffet Mek. “Perhaps she was his safeguard against you all along.”
“That would be just like him,” Ammon Set said sourly. “And maybe if he were still alive, the two of them would have been a serious threat. But she’s on her own now, and what can one regular woman do against the raw power at my disposal?”
“You still mean to open the pens, then?” asked Mek.
“It’s already been done,” said Set.
Merivale decided that running down forty-six flights of stairs would take too long. So instead, she took the lift. Or rather, the lift shaft. She found a thick pair of leather gloves in Tramasta’s wardrobe, perhaps used for hunting with a falcon. She also found an old sword that was thin enough to slip between the lift doors and sturdy enough to pry them open.
Once the doors were open, she saw the thick metal cables that trailed down into the dark shaft. They seemed to be composed of thin metal strands all woven together to form one thick rope. The gloves would hold, probably. And her riding boots went nearly to her knees, so those would protect her ankles well enough, although she feared they wouldn’t survive the descent intact.
Of course, there was also the nagging fear that she wouldn’t survive the descent. But she certainly couldn’t take the time to clamber down one flight at a time when monsters could be spilling out into the courtyard at any moment to gobble up her unsuspecting compatriots.
So she took a deep breath and jumped to the cable. She gripped it hard with her gloved hands until she was able to wrap her leather-sheathed ankles around it. Then she slowly began to loosen her grip so that she slid down.
As she picked up speed, she could feel the leather on her palms and ankles heating up. The air blew up at her face, lashing her ponytail hard enough to free a good portion of her hair. She didn’t dare let go of the cable even to brush hair out of her eyes, though. She could smell the leather gloves beginning to singe. She had no way of knowing how fast she was traveling in the dark, so she didn’t know how much farther she had to go. It occurred to her that perhaps the leather wouldn’t hold after all. And at this speed, the friction would shred her bare hands in seconds …
Then she came to a jarring stop as her feet slammed into something metal. The pain shot up her legs and into her hips. Her breath came out in a whoosh, and it took several moments for her to recover and take stock of her surroundings.
She had landed on top of the lift. She discarded the gloves, which were uncomfortably hot, the leather seared black in places. She knelt down and pulled up the emergency hatch, then climbed down into the lift.
The lift door was open and she
could see down the hallway. It appeared to be empty. No monsters in sight. She’d made it in time.
Or else she was far too late.
Preferring to remain optimistic, she hurried out into the hallway and headed for the front door that led to the courtyard. There wasn’t much lighting, so when she glanced down a side passage, she thought she saw one of the servants who, like Shelby, hadn’t been given permission to flee yet.
She stopped for a moment and waved to the silhouette as it walked slowly toward her. “This way! Hurry! We have to get outside immediately!”
The person didn’t reply but continued their slow movement in her direction. She couldn’t be certain if it was a man or a woman, but the bald silhouette suggested a man. The way he moved was … strange. There was a limping quality to it. And now that she was looking more closely, she realized he was … dripping.
A few more steps and he passed close enough to a gaslight that it revealed more details. The “person” had no skin. Muscles and sinews gleamed wetly with blood and thick yellow pus as they flexed and contracted. Beneath the taut facial muscles, it appeared the skull had been somehow re-formed so that it had a pointed muzzle instead of a normal nose and mouth. Without the flesh of lips, it was easy to see the long, pointed teeth housed in the muzzle. The hands and feet had been similarly altered so that they had short, curved claws.
“Piss’ell,” muttered Merivale. She generally avoided cursing, since she considered it to be unladylike, but there were exceptions to every rule.
She had, of course, reloaded her single-shot pistol. She drew it from the holster beneath her bosom and fired. Snubnoses were not particularly accurate at anything other than close range, but she aimed for the center of the body, and since she was an excellent shot, it struck the creature in the chest.
The creature reeled, and stumbled, but didn’t fall. Instead, it stupidly clawed at the bullet in its own chest, causing far more harm to itself than Merivale’s tiny gun could have done. The more pain it felt, the more incensed it became, making gargling noises as it dug deeper into its own chest. After a moment, it tore out the bullet, along with a large portion of its own chest cavity. It swayed for a moment, clutching the bullet, muscles, veins, possibly part of a lung, and what appeared to be a chunk of its heart. Then it flopped to the ground with a wet squelch.
