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“Jone. What are you doing.”
Jone ignored the voice, pushing through the crowd, jostling people without apology, though she was still mindful not to hurt them.
“Seriously, Jone. What. In. The. Abyss. Stop.”
Clear of the crowd, she vaulted the railing, her boots landing firmly on the long dock that led to Drake’s ship. She braced herself and took off, running full speed down the straightaway, dodging boxes, crates, and stunned dockhands. To either side of her loomed infinite clouds and sky, extending as far above and below as a soul could see, but she paid neither the view nor the danger any mind. Like a steam locomotive, Jone only picked up momentum as she went. She had to go to that boat; there was something there she had to do.
“Not here, not now. Okay? We can’t do this. Just listen, just for once, just trust me!”
A sudden gust of hot, steam-flecked wind caught her, and she threw herself forward, diving over a dockworker’s taut safety tether and putting her back to a heavy supply crate, lest the blast of air send her tumbling to the Abyss. The instant the gust abated, she surged forward again and threw herself onto the steel rungs that lead upwards to the main deck of Sir Francis Drake’s massive airship.
“Please, Jone. I’m begging you. This is not a good idea!”
Hand over hand, she scaled the behemoth, flipped over the side, and landed on the long, ironwood deck of the vessel. A large number of sailors mixed with loaders and unloaders, some few moving equipment with the aid of labor golems. But across the way, past the crew, past the hired hands, past the triple masts and the folded, golden lace of the wings, she saw him.
Sir Francis Samuel Drake.
The Butcher of Arcadia.
Rage and recognition unfurled from that hollow place inside. Now Jone knew the lion’s share of her purpose.
She had come back from the dead to slay a Dragon.
Ignoring the protests of the voice railing in her head, Jone made her way across the deck. Her footsteps started out slow, then quickened with the haste she felt in her heart. No one tried to stop her, not that she would have let them stand in her way. She received a few strange looks, but no one seemed to expect an assassin to simply climb aboard in the middle of the Sisters’ broad daylight.
But The Drake was different. He saw her.
A tall, whip-thin man with blue-gray eyes like clouds, The Drake’s tanned, weathered skin showed his countless years exposed to the unforgiving elements. His hair was silver-gray with only traces of ebony remaining, a few resilient threads of his former self. He could have been anywhere from forty to seventy, but only a fool would have underestimated the man based off of his age, or his foppish, charcoal finery and expensive jewelry.
His hand fell to the pommel of his sword. His eyes met hers. He radiated quiet, undeniable danger.
His men weren’t clueless. A shout of alarm echoed from man to man as Jone tore her sword from her sheath, the sound of tempered steel on tooled leather cutting the air, demanding attention. The sound bred more of its own kind as sailors moved to defend their captain.
The Drake held up a hand, halting them in their tracks. Leaning against the quarter deck, he gazed into Jone’s face. “I’m sorry, my dear,” he said quietly. “Do I know you? Perhaps I’ve killed someone like you before.”
Jone’s sword whistled through the air as she charged him. “You’ve killed many like me before, Butcher of Arcadia!” She swung, the blade heavy with the momentum of her charge. At the last moment, she rolled her shoulders, converting the blow from a feint into a heavy diagonal slice.
Pirouetting aside with contemptuous ease, The Drake flowed out of the way, his straight-edged, dragon-handled dueling blade whistling from its sheath. Jone’s blade bit into ironwood while his blade bit into Jone, rending her breastplate at the shoulder and splitting it down her side. The hardened steel shattered from the blow, buckles and rivets severed, and it tumbled to the deck with a defeated clang. Blood flowed from underneath, pattering to the deck.
His men’s cheers died in their throats as Jone ignored the hit and finished her intended movement, tucking into a tight spin that ripped her blade free from where it had only lightly dipped into the ship’s ironwood frame. Too close to evade, Drake caught the heavy pommel where jaw met throat, smashing his head back and sending him stumbling away. Jone whirled her blade over and around, keeping it moving, building the flow of her assault, while soldiers and sailors screamed in alarm.
The Drake raised his blade to parry, inhumanly quick.
And missed.
Jone’s two-handed greatsword slammed down across his chest, splitting apart his silken doublet and biting deep into flesh, the force of Jone’s intended deathblow pinning him against the raised quarter deck like a doomed butterfly. She felt a great rush of exhilaration as his eyes slipped heavily closed.
Any sense of completion, of justice, evaporated before she could grasp it as those cloud-colored eyes fluttered open again. Dumbfounded, Jone could only brace herself and pour on the pressure as The Drake raised his dueling blade; the older man winced in pain as he set its edge against Jone’s greatsword, prying it free of his flesh and the ship’s ironwood bulkhead alike.
He was barely even bleeding.
“That,” he said, slightly out of breath, “was impressive!”
The Drake slapped her blade aside, the edge of his own weapon lunging for her throat. Jone bent backward, trained reactions taking over, watching the razor edge pass just over her face. As The Drake retracted his blade, she caught it on the wide hilt of her sword, knocked his arm aside and stepped in close, then slammed the pommel into his sternum.
She rebounded off of him, his eyes alight and alive with the magic he was channeling. “You’re making me feel out of practice, girl!” The Drake seized her arm and slung her bodily into the hard wooden bulkhead.
Jone reeled as her head clipped the ironwood, her vision going blurry, and she barely managed to keep a grip on her greatsword.
“Horizontal, upper back!” The voice’s honey was stretched tight and thin by fear, fraying at the edges.
Jone reacted without looking, putting the length of her own blade down across her back, a shield between her flesh and The Drake’s strike. Sharp steel still slid lightly across her skin as he whipped the blow across, but she barely felt it, her heart pumping pure adrenaline.
Jone spun, blade at the ready, sidestepping to avoid her opponent pushing her back against the bulkhead. The Drake kept pace with her, watching her curiously.
“What did you think was going to happen, girl?” He tilted his head, the tip of his straight blade flowing in easy circles, ever at the ready. “I am Her Majesty’s conduit for the adoration and servitude of tens of millions of subjects.” He smiled a haunted smile. “Would that it were so easy, but this old war dog cannot simply lay down and die.”
Faster than Jone could react, he leapt at her, his blade simply slamming down upon hers, sending chips of steel sparking and flying. Jone leaned back, bracing herself, muscles straining, but The Drake seemed as strong as he chose to be. Her eyes blazed angrily as she snarled her defiance; this wasn’t right, it wasn’t just.
This wasn’t how things were supposed to go.
Towering over her small frame, he leaned in, so very close, his men’s raucous cheers drowning out the rest of the world. “Did you really think I'd forget you, Jone?” His voice was low and quiet, devoid of anger. “War leader, hero, revolutionary? My masterpiece, and one of my few regrets? No...I remember you. And if you remembered me, perhaps we would not be here like this.” The Drake gripped his sword in one hand, as if demonstrating how easily he could overpower his adversary, his eyes growing stormy and unreadable.
Then he spun to the side, letting her tension push her forward, and his off hand rammed a dagger through her ribs.
Jone staggered, barely holding onto her greatsword. Her heart burned, twitching and shuddering in her chest. Her legs were suddenly liquid, and she
didn’t know how they were still holding her up. Her world spun frantically at random, twisting this way and that.
“You cheated,” Jone said, a cough cutting her words short. Her blood splattered the deck again.
The Drake shrugged lightly. “I’m afraid winners usually do, Milady. It’s simply how the world works.”
Her legs failed her, and Jone’s knees struck the polished ironwood deck. The world went away, scorched and scoured clean once more by the white lightning of memory.
She was still on her knees, but now in the dark, dirt, and mud instead of on the sun-scoured ironwood deck of a warship. Her arms were held behind her, by men and women she’d thought she could trust. The truth was coated in anger, a bitter pill to swallow. The Drake stood above her, his rich ebony hair matted to his skull by the warm drizzle of steam as it misted in billows from the sky. He laid his heavy dueling blade across his forearm, taking aim, and paused.
“My deepest apologies, Milady,” he said, his cloudy blue-gray eyes flickering, but ultimately unreadable. “In the end, it’s not personal, simply orders from on high.”
He rammed the blade through her heart, all the way through her torso and out the other side. He twisted it sharply, then yanked it brutally free.
Jone screamed in pain. The arms released her and she collapsed, squirming in the mud. Oaths fell from her lips, or perhaps curses, but she couldn’t hear them as her senses faded. “Jone? No! Jone!” A voice echoed in her thoughts, spiraling down with her to the Abyss.
Back in the present, Jone shook her head, growling in defiance, blood trickling from her wounds, running from her mouth. The Drake blinked as she stood, legs quaking.
She tore the dagger from her heart and threw it over the side of the airship. Her heart still burned, but stopped trembling, and her legs grew steady.
Panting, she locked eyes with her murderer. “Once was enough, Sir Drake.” Jone staggered, trying to pull herself into a fighting stance. “Never again.” The deck of the vessel was a study in shocked silence.
The Drake eyed her, his own shock hinted at in the tight lines of his weathered, handsome face. “Indeed.” His cloudy eyes scanned over her, finally coming to rest on the golden eye necklace that dangled from her neck, the amulet having tumbled free from her tunic during the fight. “A very interesting turn of events.”
“Look out! Jone!”
Her battered body could never have reacted in time; like his ferocious, sky-soaring namesake, The Drake was far too fast. She somehow managed to get her blade up to intercept anyway, but he slapped it aside; the force of the blow snapped it in twain and knocked it from her weakened grip. His shoulder struck her chest, and Jone staggered backward, her balance destroyed. Drake’s blade swept overhead in a flourish, then down.
The blade fell. The voice screamed, a shrill, alien cry of agony trapped inside Jone’s skull.
Her arm, severed just below the shoulder, thumped limply onto the deck.
As she staggered in shock, not yet even registering the pain, The Drake sighed. “Not how I wanted to do things, Milady, but it is what it is.”
The young swordswoman just stood there, numb, her mind unable to catch up to what had just happened, as The Drake lined up a blow intended for Jone’s neck.
“No! I won’t let you die like this. Not...again!”
The flame glove pulsed once, still wrapped around Jone’s severed arm, that singular gleam of the mephit in the stone the only warning it gave. The ship’s deck thumped, rumbling under the force as a ring of flame burst from the heavy glove in a shockwave. It expanded in an instant, rolling over and past a stunned Jone, leaving her unharmed, ironwood charred and smoking in its wake. Drake leapt back, but not far enough; the wall of flame grew in intensity as it raced outward, looming over him—
And dissipated as he breathed in. The Captain of the Golden Hand drew the mass of flame harmlessly into his lungs, turning his head away and exhaling it again as steam, smoke, and frost. He shook his head sadly, sweat beading thickly on his forehead. “Well played, but you forget my specialty—”
Explosions shook the Hand. Cries of support and admiration for The Drake turned suddenly to shouts of pain and surprise. Atop the quarter deck, the top of the huge steam engine ruptured with a roar, its iron armor yielding under a concentrated burst of cannon fire from close range. It vented a powerful jet of compressed steam into the sky, reaping another series of screams and slamming the Hand lengthwise into the docks.
“To arms, men! We’re under attack!” The Captain cursed and danced about on the deck as it bucked and quaked under him, bellowing orders and scrutinizing the steamy sky. His men rushed to arm themselves, but were forced to dive for cover instead as a sleek Elizabethian war cutter darted into view from beneath the Hand, a familiar dark-skinned figure at the helm.
The cutter’s foredeck-mounted cannon belched steam into the air as its ammunition belt fed shot after shot into the weapon, raking the ship with automatic cannon fire. “Run, boys, run!” the woman at the helm shouted amid manic laughter, spraying down the deck before turning the weapon on The Drake himself. But the canny Captain was already gone, diving for cover behind one of the thick mastheads.
“Jone, you coming? I don’t have all day!” Esmeralda bellowed over the din.
“Jone! JONELISE!” Jone shook her head, shook off her stupor, and took in the situation. Inside her, something pushed at her to go after Drake, to find him, to kill him. She spotted him, peeking around the mast, a single gilded pistol in his hand.
“Run, Jone, RUN!” The voice bellowed. “You can’t lose to him again! Go!”
“Blackblade, that you?” The Drake called from his hiding spot. “I hope you’re turning yourself in, Thresh!”
An extended series of cannon shot thudded into the mast’s base ineffectually, the burst of fire rattling on and on until it began to slow, Esmeralda’s cannon shuddering as its steam reserves ran low and the weapon began to overheat. Behind the busted base of the mast, Jone saw the Captain’s cunning, draconic grin.
Jone turned and ran.
Bursting into a full sprint, she bent and scooped up her own arm, still wrapped securely in the smoking flame glove, and beelined for Esmeralda’s commandeered cutter. The deck shook and her severed stump pumped fresh crimson pools onto the thirsty wood, but somehow she held her balance as she raced toward the promise of escape.
“Don’t leave, Blackblade!” the Captain of the Hand called, the tone of his voice a naked taunt. “If you do, I’ll just have to kill more of your colleagues looking for you! Who’s next, Bartholomew Roberts? Bellamy? Sadie Farrell? Who will you toss over the side to save your skin next?”
Cursing, Esmeralda abandoned the smoking cannon in favor of her ship’s wheel, skillfully spinning the cutter about. “Jone! Jump!” She ducked behind the wheel for cover as pistol shots rang out.
Jone leapt for the cutter, clutching her own severed arm, her feet dangling for an instant over an endless drop into the ever-hungry Abyss. A pistol round slammed into her shoulder blade, digging in, and Jone hit the deck, rolling and tumbling into a sprawl at the base of the wheel.
“Hold on, Jone, I got you,” Esmeralda growled, spinning the wheel. The cutter shot off into the sky, arching around and staying out of the firing angle of the Golden Hand’s intact gun batteries. Pushing herself upward and leaning over the edge of the vessel, Jone saw Sir Francis Drake once more, standing defiantly in the open, watching them leave.
When he saw Jone watching, he smiled. “Jonelise!” He bellowed into the wind. “You forgot something!”
The Drake drew in a deep breath. The clouds shifted. The very sky darkened.
“No no no no no….we can’t stop him, not this time…”
Whatever he was doing, it boded a terrible ill. Jone stood, snatching a pistol from Esmeralda’s bandolier and aiming it one handed at Drake, but she was weak and her aim wobbled about, unsteady.
The Drake exhaled.
The sky filled with the fi
reball he breathed out, a blazing sphere of death arching after them, running them down no matter how fast Esmeralda flew.
Jone pulled the trigger and missed.
“No, dammit!” Esmeralda snarled, coaxing every bit of speed she could from the cutter.
Jone stood transfixed as the flames bore down on them and remembered.
She’d stood here before, as screams of fear and wails of agony echoed all around her, the fading voices of friends and family and soldiers.
She dropped the pistol as the inferno struck. There was nothing to be done.
She’d failed, again.
The fire touched her skin, licking hungrily, ready to consume—
—and did nothing.
In a rush of vacuum, The Drake’s breath disappeared, drawn into her. The void inside abruptly filled, threatening to overflow, threatening to burst.
Back on the deck of his ship, Sir Francis Drake stood, peering upward, stunned.
Esmeralda let out a whoop of victory as the cutter arced back toward Lisboa, darting between ships, diving through gaps in the docks at a breakneck pace.
Jone caught a final glimpse of The Drake as they passed, his hand raised in salute. “See you in Arcadia, Jonelise!” he called out.
She barely registered the words. Her body felt like it was going to rupture as if her skin would split open like an overcooked Gallian bratwurst. Her arm and back felt like they were aflame, especially the severed stump. Her vision swam, and she lost sense of who, where, and even when she was.
Jonelise collapsed to the cutter’s bloody, burnt deck like a puppet with severed strings, and everything went black.
7
Lawless
Samantha Segare Bellamy stepped out of Liboa’s white-marbled Palace of Law, a sack full of gold coins slung casually over one pale, elegant shoulder. She nudged her glasses closer to her steel-gray eyes, trying to decide what would be the best way to attempt a meet-up with Esmeralda.
Call of Arcadia Page 10
