As Iron Falls (The Wings of War Book 4)

by Bryce O'Connor

  His argument lingered and died, the words fading when he realized what Argoan was getting at. It struck him like he’d been dunked into a vat of cold water, a fact he had been aware of, but hadn't yet truly come to terms with.

  “I wouldn’t be the only one anymore,” he said in a low mumble. “By the Sun…”

  For the first time, that simple reality resonated with him. He had been so focused, so enthralled with the idea of escaping their pursuers, that he hadn't really paused to consider the implications of the journey Garht Argoan was proposing to them. He’d been aware that man and atherian alike were enslaved in the lands of Perce and the Seven Cities, but it hadn't yet settled in his mind what that meant, what that really meant. Despite their situation, despite the state he feared he might find them in, there would be other lizard-kind in the realms beyond the South.

  I wouldn’t be the only one, he thought again, privately this time, momentarily struck speechless.

  Syrah must have realized where his mind had gone, because she squeezed his fingers beneath the table. “We might be able to hide in plain sight,” she told him gently, voicing the whirl of realizations he himself was making. “At least in the cities. You do a good job of concealing your wings already. We could pretend…”

  She trailed off, apparently not liking where her own idea was going.

  Raz was pretty sure he had followed her, though, and the thought churned his stomach. “A slave,” he grunted distastefully. “If we pretend I’m property of yours, we would have a lot less trouble crossing through Perce and the Seven Cities. Maybe even gaining passage west.”

  Syrah’s face was red, and she refused to nod in assent. Raz felt a swell of affection for the woman at that, knowing she was holding herself back from saying something like “it’s the smart thing to do.”

  It is the smart thing to do, he thought.

  But the darker, colder voice spoke up in the back of his head, reminding him that he was so, so tired of running.

  “We can discuss the details at a later point,” Raz said brusquely, wanting very much to move away from the topic. “As Syrah said: we haven’t agreed to go.”

  Argoan’s face darkened, but it wasn’t anger. There might have been some impatience there, Raz saw, but in truth the man looked less irritated and more… worried.

  “I understand your hesitancy,” the captain said. “I do. But hear this: I extend you this opportunity as an offering of peace, an effort to do my small part in repayment for the violence my kind has wrought upon your people, and for the kindness and respect you have shown them despite this.” His eyes moved to Syrah. “I cannot, however, endanger the livelihood of myself and my men by sitting on our thumbs, waiting for you to decide what you should or shouldn’t do.” He started to stand, the bench scraping loudly against the wooden floor as he pushed it back and out of the way. “The Sylgid lifts anchor at dawn. I expect to have your answer before then. Evalyn,” he looked to Eva, “we still have business to attend to. Might I suggest we leave these two to their deliberations, and see to our own interests for a while?”

  Eva nodded and got up at once, looking around at Fara and Jeck as she stepped over the bench. “Stay here. Keep an eye on things.”

  “Aye,” Argoan agreed as the man and woman nodded, “a good idea. Lysa—” his first mate, the woman with the scarred nose, stood to attention by the wall “—pick twenty of the crew and stay put. I wouldn’t be surprised if Captain Wylsh comes looking for a fight again. The rest of you, with me.”

  As one, a majority of the Sylgid’s company got to their feet from their chairs and benches, the only ones remaining in their seats doing so after Lysa gave each of their tables a nod. Argoan and Eva made to head toward the back stairs, but the captain paused as he passed Raz and Syrah.

  “You may not trust me,” he said flatly, frowning down at them as his men hovered around him, waiting. “That’s fine. But the way I see it, you are on a road where nothing but darkness lies behind, and the only possibility of light may be found ahead. Give us a chance. Perhaps we will surprise you.”

  And with that, he moved off with Eva between the tables, vanishing down the steps to the common room below.

  For a long time Raz and Syrah sat there at the table, neither saying anything, each battling their own reservations and hesitations. Raz’s thumb rubbed absently over the scar that ringed Syrah’s wrist, allowing his mind to catch up to the points Garht Argoan had made.

  “Can we trust him?” Syrah asked under her breath after several minutes, clearly attempting to avoid being overheard by the first mate, who was still watching them calculatingly from her spot against the wall.

  “No,” Raz said with a small shake of his head. “I don’t think we can. But it comes down to the same problem each time: do we have a choice?”

  Syrah nodded slightly. “I don’t think we do, Raz. I really don’t.”

  He didn’t reply, giving her hand a comforting squeeze before looking up at Lysa. He almost hoped to see the woman tense as his eyes fell upon her, hoped she would blink nervously or glance around, just to give him some solid indication that it was a trap, a hint by which he could act. The first mate, however, met his gaze without so much as a flinch of fear or skittishness. She didn’t watch him with the greed and selfish desire he had come to expect from cutthroats and sellswords. Her eyes, sharp and intelligent, said nothing of danger, gave no clue as to what Raz and Syrah should do. Rather, they were calm, almost impassive, taking in Raz expectantly, as though the only thing she anticipated from him was an answer.

  But then, just as Raz started to look away from her, the woman spoke.

  “Ask us why we follow him.”

  Raz and Syrah both blinked, turning to the first mate again.

  “Sorry?” Syrah, eyeing the woman warily.

  In response, Lysa finally stepped away from the wall, slipping onto the bench to seat herself across from the pair of them. She had green-blue eyes and a hard, weathered face that might have been pretty once, but was now ravaged by the Sun and the scar that had ruined her nose. Her hair was bleached and dreaded down her back, though shaved to the scalp along one side. Her gaze was intent, moving from Raz to Syrah and back again, scrutinizing them carefully.

  “Ask us why we crew the Sylgid,” she said, waving a hand at the twenty men and women seated all around them, not a few of whom were now watching the conversation with interest. “Why we choose to follow Garht.”

  Raz stared her down. “You think your opinion would make a difference? One shouldn’t ask a hound what it thinks of its master.”

  He had wanted to get a reaction out of the woman, wanted to shake her in the hopes of making her slip.

  All he succeeded in getting was a crooked smile.

  “You compare us to dogs,” Lysa said in amusement. “It’s true enough, in a way. We are loyal, and would be happy to tear your throat out should you give us cause to.”

  “How enticing,” Raz said sarcastically. “Please, continue. You are doing a wondrous job of convincing us to trust you.”

  The woman’s face grew hard. “At sea, there are many kinds of captains, Dragon. There are men like Wylsh, crafty bastards who control their ships through fear and cleverness. There are men worse than him, also, men who treat their crews as cattle, who throw the insubordinate overboard with an iron weight chained to their ankles. Most aren’t so cruel. Most value their men in their own ways, understanding that they are nothing without the hands that help them wrestle the ship. They take great care in selecting those they allow within the ranks of their company, building that bond of trust any good employer fosters with their subordinates.”

  “And Argoan is such a captain?” Raz said with a raised eyebrow, indicating he wasn’t impressed.

  “No,” Lyssa said shortly. “He is not.”

  Then she looked past him.

  “Kelen,” she said, and Raz and Syrah both turned to see a young Southerner, maybe sixteen or seventeen years of age, sit up straight. “Tell
our guests how you came to be with us.

  “Was a stow ‘way,” the boy said, blowing a loose strand of curly hair out of his eyes. “Cap found me elbow deep in a barrel a’ salted mackerel he was supposed to sell to a merchant from Cyro. Thought he was gonna slit my throat an’ use me for shark bait.”

  Behind them, Raz heard Lysa shift, looking in a different direction.

  “Jan, what about you?”

  “Parents was fixin’ ta’ sell me ta’ a head trader from the Seven Cities,” a borderer in her twenties said from the right. “Captain bought me up instead.”

  “Eko?” Lysa asked next.

  A dark-skinned Percian who looked much too old to be a sailor spoke up in a raspy voice from the left. “The First Hand of Karesh Nan wanted my head. Argoan gave me refuge. Had this been discovered, it would have cost him much.”

  And it kept going. For several more minutes Lysa would indicate one of the crew, asking them to share their story. Most were prompt, answering at once, but others were hesitant, as though memories of their old lives were not something they wished to relive. By the time the first mate looked around at Raz and Syrah again, they had come to know the history of more than half of the men and women seated around them. Runaways. Criminals. Former slaves. It was not all that strange a mix to find among a ship’s crew, Raz thought, but their recountings seemed heartfelt. Either they were telling the truth, or Garht Argoan had gone out of his way to employ some very good actors.

  “There is a reason Garht trusts us enough to leave you in our care,” Lysa said to the pair of them after the final story had ended, extending both arms to indicate her sailors. “He does not ‘believe’ we will not selfishly attempt to claim your bounties for ourselves. He knows it. Without a shred of doubt, he knows it. I do not pretend to grasp your history with the mountain clans—” her eyes flicked to Syrah here, studying the patch over her right eye “—but if nothing else you should understand that there is a reason Garht left the Amreht. It is the same reason, I believe, that your Carver trusts him.” She indicated the place Eva had been sitting with an inclination of her head. “Garht is a good man.”

  “Can smugglers and thieves be ‘good men’?” Syrah asked sardonically.

  Lysa gave her a half-smile, then looked at Raz. “Can mercenaries and murderers?”

  The question seemed to do the trick, because Syrah fell silent.

  “Garht said we would have to be patient with you,” Lysa continued, crossing her arms over her leather breastplate. “It is difficult for us, sitting here and watching you debate this. We—” she indicated the men and women around them again “—would wish for nothing more than the ability to make you understand the man we know. The man we follow.”

  She paused long enough to allow for several nods of assent from the crew before pressing on. “It is difficult for us to witness you deliberate over the hand he has extended toward you, much at his own risk. I don’t need you to see what we see in him. I don’t need you to feel as we feel.” She was gazing at them hard now, like she was trying to will them into understanding. “All I need from you is to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Garht Argoan is everything you need him to be. Then—” she wound her fingers together on the table in front of her, much as her captain had not five minutes before “—I need you to consider if that possibility is worth the risk, or if you’d rather stay and wait for whatever enemies are hounding you to finally catch up.”

  There was a long pause as Lysa finished, Raz and Syrah watching her silently. After a while, Raz looked around, taking in the faces of the men and women of the crew, meeting every eye he could. Again, he almost hoped to see deceit in their stares, hoped for some hint that they were being tricked. It would have been easier, would have made getting up from the table and leaving that much simpler.

  All he saw, though, was the fierce devotion of a crew he rather suspected might have jumped from the tavern roof if Argoan had asked them to.

  Eventually Raz looked around at Syrah, meeting her eye, sure the question was plain on his face. The Priestess took one shaking breath, as though preparing for a plunge into the frigid depths of the sea beyond the cove.

  Then she nodded.

  CHAPTER 18

  They set sail as the first tendrils of dawn crept over the eastern horizon. Raz and Syrah bent over the port rail of the Sylgid, waving in final farewell to Eva and her cohort, who stood at the end of the jetty to see them off. They’d all broken an early fast an hour before, saying their goodbyes and hugging the woman as they thanked her for all she’d done for them. Now, watching Eva pull away while ship’s hands pushed them far enough off the pier to start rowing for the cavern entrance, Raz could only hope it wouldn’t be for the last time.

  “Who am I going to get to patch me up?” he shouted after her.

  In response, Eva cupped both hands over her mouth. “How about trying not to turn yourself into a bloody mess in the first place!” she called back. “Syrah, keep an eye on him, will you?”

  “I’ll do my best!” Syrah yelled, grinning. “I make no promises, though!”

  The surgeon laughed, then waved one last time as the nose of the ship passed through the opening of Highmast Cove and out into the early light of the summer morning. Raz watched Eva turn away from them and motion to Jeck, Fara, and Samet behind her. Together, they moved back to the now-laden cart waiting for them at the end of the pier.

  When they had faded into the concealing shadows of the cave, Raz finally allowed himself to look east, the sight that greeted him making his heart soar.

  Beyond the raised bow of the frigate, the Dramion extended like a mirror across the world. In the farthest distances the Sun had just begun to rise in truth, a single point of yellow-white brightness stretching out in an orange band along the horizon. The sky, still mostly dark as the Moon and Her Stars gave way to the day, was as clear as newly blown glass, not so much as hinting at clouds for as far as the eye could see. Raz watched the blue of the morning slowly claim the heavens mile by mile, losing himself to the sound of the crew shouting to one another in the masts and the snap of the sails as they were dropped to accept the ocean breeze.

  And before him, like a beautiful spirit of winter basking in the light of the new day, Syrah stood quiet, her gaze, like his, on the rising Sun.

  Despite the awesomeness of the dawn before him, Raz couldn’t help but watch the Priestess a moment more. He would never grow bored, he realized then, of taking in the loose strands of her braided white hair as they traced around her ears. He would never tire, he suspected, of gazing upon the icy smoothness of her skin, like forest snow woven into something soft and warm and real. Her hood was pulled back so that the warm wind could whisper about her face. Her neck lay bare, and Raz couldn’t help but gaze at it, studying the graceful curve from the base of her jaw until it disappeared beneath the shoulder of her robes.

  As though feeling his eyes on her, Syrah looked back, and for the space of a heartbeat Raz was lost in the depths of her rose-colored eye, happily drowning in its gentle warmth. The woman said nothing, but she smiled upon seeing him watching her, and that simple act filled Raz with such fire he felt it shiver up his spine and down his arms and legs.

  He took a step forward, then, keeping one hand on the rail but wrapping the other about her, pulling the woman against him. At once she reached up to grasp the forearm hugging her, allowing her body to press back against his chest as he dipped his head down to rest along the crown of her head. How long they stayed like that, neither of them would ever know. For that time, there was nothing more in the world than each other, the cool spray of the sea around them, and the warmth of the slowly rising Sun over the ocean to the east.

  Together, they sailed off into the brightness of the new day, leaving the dark shores of the North far, far behind.

  CHAPTER 19

  “Never seen a man move like that… The lizard, sure, but he was a different beast altogether, if you’ll pardon the wit. But a man… No. Ne
ver before, and hopefully never again.”

  —Dhristie Idris, captain of the Hollow Arrow

  When the door of the Highest Mast opened and the two strangers stepped into the orange glow of the common room, Captain Callum Wylsh saw his chance to reassert himself. He’d lost face to the Monster of Karth—a lot of face—and had spent the last three days fighting to regain it. The side of his head, wrapped in a swath of dirty bandages, still throbbed, and he knew the crew had given him a name behind his back. “Half-Ear,” they called him when they thought he wasn’t listening. He’d already locked two in the Drake’s brig for doing so, and had given the cook a new scar when he’d overheard the fat lump snickering about how they’d all have been better off if “the lizard had left just enough of the captain to make soup out of.” All of that had helped somewhat to bring his sailors back under his thumb, but when all was said and done, Wylsh didn’t think he’d made much progress.