Darkdawn

by Kristoff, Jay

  She could feel his anger at her. His hate and his confusion.

  She couldn’t blame him for any of it.

  Ashlinn and Tric were another source of concern—the tension between them thick enough to slice up and serve with the alleged “stew” they ate each evemeal. Mia could feel the storm clouds building to a thunderhead that would black out the suns. And truth told, she had no idea what to do. She might’ve spoken to Tric about it once, you see. But he wasn’t the same.

  She hadn’t known what to feel when she’d first laid eyes on him. The joy and guilt, the bliss and sorrow. Yet after a few turns in his company, she could see he was drawn with the same outline, but not filled in with entirely the same colors. She could feel a darkness to him, now—the same darkness she felt inside her own skin. Beckoning. And aye, even with Mister Kindly in her shadow, perhaps frightening.

  Mia bowed her head, rivers of long black hair draping either side of her face. Silence between them thick as fog.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally murmured.

  The deadboy tilted his head, saltlocks moving like dreaming snakes.

  “FOR WHAT?”

  Mia sucked her lip, searching for the pale and feeble words that would somehow make this all right. But people were the puzzle she’d never managed to solve. She’d always been better at cutting things apart than putting them back together.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “I TOLD YOU,” he replied. “I AM.”

  “But … I thought I’d not see you again. I thought you were gone forever.”

  “NOT THE MOST FOOLISH OF ASSUMPTIONS. SHE STABBED ME THREE TIMES IN THE HEART AND PUSHED ME OFF THE SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN, AFTER ALL.”

  Mia looked over her shoulder at Ashlinn. Freckled cheek resting upon her hands, knees curled up, long lashes fluttering as she dreamed.

  Lover.

  Liar.

  Murderer.

  “I kept my promise to you,” she told him. “Your grandfather died screaming.”

  Tric inclined his head. “MY THANKS, PALE DAUGHTER.”

  “Don’t…”

  She shook her head, her voice failing as the lump rose in her throat.

  “… Please don’t call me that.”

  He turned his eyes to Ashlinn. Putting one black, night-stained hand to his chest and pawing there, as if remembering the feel of her blade.

  “WHAT HAPPENED TO OSRIK, BY THE BY?”

  “Adonai killed him,” Mia replied. “Drowned him in the blood pool.”

  “DID HE SCREAM, TOO?”

  Mia pictured Ashlinn’s brother as he disappeared beneath that flood of red the turn the Luminatii invaded the Mountain. Eyes wide with terror. Mouth filling with crimson.

  “He tried to,” she finally said.

  Tric nodded.

  “You must think me a heartless cunt,” she sighed.

  “YOU’D ONLY CONSIDER IT A COMPLIMENT.”

  Mia looked up at that, thinking him angry. But she found his lips curled in a thin, pale smile, the shadow of a dimple creasing his cheek. It reminded her so much of what he’d been for a moment. So much of what they’d had together. She looked into his bloodless face and ink-black eyes and saw the beautiful, broken boy he’d been beneath, and her heart was like lead in her chest.

  “DO YOU LOVE HER?” he asked.

  Mia looked to Ashlinn again. Remembering the feel of her, the smell of her, the taste of her. The face she showed the world, vicious and hard, the tenderness she showed only to Mia, alone in her arms. Melting in her mouth. Poetry on her tongue. Each a dark reflection of the other, both of them driven by vengeance to be and do and want things most wouldn’t dare dream.

  Wonderful things.

  Awful things.

  “It’s…”

  “… COMPLICATED?”

  She nodded slow. “But life always is, neh?”

  A mirthless chuckle slipped over his lips. “TRY DYING.”

  “I’d rather not, if I can help it.”

  “DEATH IS THE PROMISE WE ALL MUST KEEP. SOONER OR LATER.”

  “I’ll take later, if it please you.”

  He met her eyes then. Black to black.

  “IT WOULD.”

  The clanging of heavy bells cut their conversation off at the knees, and both Tric and Mia looked to the Maid’s decks above. She heard muffled shouts, running boots upon the timbers, notes of vague alarm. Ashlinn woke from her slumber with a jolt, sitting up and dragging her forearm across her face. “Wassat?”

  Mia was standing now, narrowed eyes on the boards above their heads.

  “Doesn’t sound good, whatever it is.”

  A second burst of bells. A rolling string of faint and shockingly imaginative curses. Mia stepped lightly over to the porthole and opened the wooden shutter, letting in a blinding shear of truelight. Jonnen lifted his head from his hammock, squinted around the cabin with bleary eyes. Mister Kindly cursed from his spot atop the door.

  Mia blinked hard in the painful glare, joined by Ashlinn at the porthole once their eyes adjusted. Over the rolling waves beyond the glass, Mia could see sails on the distant horizon, stitched with golden thread.

  “That’s an Itreyan warship…,” Ashlinn muttered.

  Mia glanced upward. “Our hosts don’t seem too excited about seeing it.”

  “… ON THE CONTRARY, THEY SOUND VERY EXCITED TO ME…”

  “… o, bravo, been practicing our banter, have we…?”

  “… SOME OF US HAVE NO NEED OF PRACTICE, MOGGY. WE ARE SERVED BY WIT INSTEAD…”

  Ashlinn dunked her face in their barrel of washwater to clear away the sleep, tied her hair back in a loose braid.

  “I’ll head topside for a chat.”

  “You’d best go with her, Brother Tric,” Mia said. “I’ll stay here with Jonnen.”

  The deadboy stood slowly. Looking at Ashlinn with bottomless eyes as he sheathed his gravebone blades beneath his robes and drew his hood up over his face.

  “AFTER YOU, SISTER.”

  Ash dragged on the boots she’d been wearing since infiltrating the Godsgrave Arena, strapped her shortsword to her leg. Hauling her sorority habit over her head and pulling on her coif, she headed for the door.

  “Be careful, neh?” Mia warned.

  Ash smiled lopsided, leaned over, and kissed Mia’s lips.

  “You know what they say. What doesn’t kill me had better fucking run.”

  The Vaanian girl slipped out the cabin door in a flurry of white robes.

  Mia avoided Tric’s eyes as he followed.

  * * *

  “Well,” Cloud Corleone sighed. “As my dear old tutor Dona Elyse said the year I turned sixteen, ‘Fuck me very gently, then fuck me very hard.’”

  Kael Three Eyes leaned out from the Crow’s Nest. “They’re signaling, Cap’n!”

  “Aye, I can see that!” he called, waving his spyglass. “Thank you!”

  “Arse-grubbing shit queens are gaining on us, too,” BigJon grunted from the railing beside him.

  The captain waved his spyglass in BigJon’s face. “This thing works, you know.”

  “Captain?” came a voice.

  Cloud glanced over his shoulder, saw Her Not-So-Holiness on the deck behind him, and her six-foot attack dog looming behind her. The truelight air felt a little colder, and an involuntary shiver tickled his skin.

  “Best get back down below, Sister,” he said. “Safer there.”

  “Meaning it’s not safe up here?”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  The sister reached out and snatched Cloud’s spyglass from his hand, pressed it to her eye and turned to the horizon.

  “That’s not regular Itreyan navy,” she said. “It’s a Luminatii ship.”

  “Well spotted, Sister.”

  “And it looks like they’re armed with arkemical cannons.”

  “Again, aye, my spyglass works, thank you.”

  The sister lowered the glass, met his eye. “What do they want?”

  Cloud
pointed to the red flare the ship had sent sizzling into the sky.

  “They want us to stop.”

  “WHY?” the big bodyguard asked.

  The good captain blinked. “… Look, how are you doing that with your voice?”

  The sister handed back his glass. “Do the Luminatii usually stop random ships in the middle of the ocean for no apparent reason?”

  “Well.” Cloud scuffed the deck with his bootheel. “Not usually, no.”

  The sister and her bodyguard exchanged uneasy glances.

  BigJon whispered from the side of his mouth, “Antolini tipped them off, maybe?”

  “He wouldn’t do that to me, would he?” Cloud muttered.

  “You plowed his wife, Cap’n.”

  “Only because she asked me nicely.”

  “That kidfiddler Flavius promised to kill you if he saw you again,” the littleman mused, sucking on the stem of his drakebone pipe. “Maybe he got creative?”

  “So I owe him a little coin. That’s no reason to sing about me to the Luminatii.”

  “You owe him a little fortune. And you plowed his wife, too.”

  Cloud Corleone raised an eyebrow. “Do you not have things to do?”

  The littleman looked around the hive of activity that were the main and foredecks, the masts above. He shrugged and showed his silvered grin.

  “Not particularly.”

  “Still gaining, Cap’n!” Kael called above.

  Cloud held his spyglass aloft. “Four Daughters, this thing fucking works!”

  “Captain,” the sister began. “I’m afraid I have to insist—”

  “I’m sorry, Sister,” the privateer sighed. “But we’re not stopping.”

  “… We aren’t?”

  “That’s a Luminatii warship, Cap’n,” BigJon pointed out. “Not sure the Maid has it in her to outrun it.”

  “O, ye of little faith,” Cloud said. “Give the order.”

  “Aye, aye,” the littleman sighed.

  BigJon turned from the rails, roared at the crew. “Right, you jizz-gargling fuckbuckets! We’re doing a runner! Hoist every inch of sail we’ve got! If you own a shitrag or a spunk-stained kerchief, I want it lashed to a mast somewhere, go, go!”

  “Captain…,” the sister began.

  “Rest easy, Sister,” Cloud smiled. “I know my oceans, and I know my ship. We’re sitting in the swift stream, and the nevernight winds are about to start kissing our sails the way I kissed Don Antolini’s wife.”

  The captain lifted his spyglass with a small smile.

  “These god-botherers won’t lay a damned finger on us.”

  * * *

  The first cannon shot skimmed across the water a hundred feet shy of their prow. The second one twenty feet short of their stern, close enough to scorch the paint. And the third flew past close enough that Cloud could have shaved with it.

  The Luminatii warship was running parallel to the Maid, her gold-threaded sails gleaming. Cloud could see her name written in bold, flowing script down her prow.

  Faithful.

  Her cannons were ready to unleash another blast of arkemical fire—the three earlier bursts had been warning shots, and Cloud didn’t fancy his chances of a fourth. Besides, considering what the Maid had hidden in her belly, one good kiss from old Faithful here would be all they needed.

  “All stop,” the captain spat. “Hoist the white flag.”

  “Stop, you useless shitwizards!” BigJon roared from the quarterdeck. “All stop!”

  “O, aye,” Sister Ashlinn muttered from the railing beside him. “You know the oceans and your ship all right, Captain…”

  “You know,” Cloud replied, turning to look at her, “my first impressions of you were quite favorable, good Sister, but I have to say, the more I get to know you, the less fond of you I grow.”

  Her bodyguard folded his arms and scoffed.

  “WE SHOULD HAVE A DRINK SOMETIME…”

  The ocean was too deep for the Maid to drop anchor, so once the sails were stowed and their head turned to the wind, there was little for the crew to do except stand about and wait for the Faithful to make berth alongside. Cloud watched the massive warship cruise closer, his belly sinking lower all the while. Her flanks were bristling with arkemical cannons from the workshops of the Iron Collegium, and her decks packed with Itreyan marines.

  The men were dressed in chain mail and leather armor, each embossed with the sigil of the three suns on his chest. They carried shortswords and light wooden shields, ideal for close-quarter fighting on the decks of enemy ships. And they outnumbered the Maid’s crew two to one.

  Up on the aft deck, Cloud could see a half-dozen Luminatii in gravebone armor, their cloaks blood-red, feathered plumes of the same hue on their helms, fluttering in the sea breeze. Their leader was a tall centurion with a pointed beard, piercing gray eyes, and the expression of a fellow in desperate need of a professional wristjob.*

  “Damned god-botherers,” the captain grumbled.

  “Aye,” BigJon said, stepping up beside him. “Lady Trelene drown them all.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Cloud muttered, more to himself than his first mate. “It’s well hidden. They’d have to rip the hull apart to find it.”

  “Unless they know exactly where to look for it.”

  Cloud looked at his first mate with widening eyes. “They wouldn’t have…?”

  The littleman lit his drakebone pipe with a flintbox and puffed thoughtfully. “I told you not to plow Antolini’s wife, Cap’n.”

  “And I told you she asked nicely.” Cloud lowered his voice. “Very nicely, in fact.”

  “You think these Luminatii boys are going to be as sweet?” BigJon scoffed, watching them prepare to board. “Because they’re settling in to fuck us, sure and true.”

  Cloud winced as the grapples were thrown, sinking into the Maid’s railing and splintering the wood. Faithful’s crew slung heavy hay-stuffed bags along her flanks to cushion the impact as the Maid was hauled closer by mekwerk winches, and the two ships finally came together with a heavy thump. Lines were lashed tight, and a gangplank extended from conqueror to conquered.

  Centurion Wristjob glowered down from the Faithful’s aftercastle.

  “I am Centurion Ovidius Varinius Falco, second century, third cohort of the Luminatii Legion,” he called. “By order of Imperator Scaeva, I am authorized to board your vessel in search of contraband. Your cooperation is—”

  “Aye, aye, come on over, mates.” Cloud flashed his four-bastard smile, doffing his tricorn with a low bow. “Nothing to hide here! Just wipe your feet first, neh?”

  The privateer muttered over his shoulder.

  “You’d best head below to your cabin, Sister. Things will…”

  Cloud looked to BigJon, blinking hard at the empty space where the girl and her bodyguard had stood a few moments before.

  “… Where the ’byss did they go?”

  CHAPTER 11

  INCENDIARY

  Luminatii crawled over the Maid like fleas in a Liisian grandmother’s chest hair.

  The search was cordoned and meticulous, and Centurion Falco had obviously dealt with smugglers before—he found all three of Cloud’s dummy stash spots easily. Thankfully, and despite BigJon’s conspiracy theories, the boarders hadn’t come close to finding the real ones, and Cloud’s hidden cargo remained safe as houses. But accompanying Falco in his search and answering his questions as politely as he could, the privateer quickly came to a rather disturbing realization.

  The god-botherers weren’t actually interested in contraband at all—what they were looking for was people. And, acutely aware the nun he was carrying was likely no more a nun than he was a priest, the privateer was worried his sinking belly might actually start leaking out through his boots.

  “And these are your only passengers?” Falco asked.

  “Aye,” Cloud replied, raising a fist to knock on the cabin door. “We’re not usually in the business of transporting livestock.”


  “They came aboard where and when?”

  “Godsgrave. A few turns back. Booked passage all the way to Ashkah.”

  The centurion gave a curt nod, and Cloud knocked loudly.

  “Sister?” he sang. “Are you decent? There’s a few fellow servants of the Blessed Light here who’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “Enter,” came the reply.

  Cloud opened the door and found the Vaanian girl already standing politely to one side, back against the bulkhead, hands before her like a penitent.

  “Forgiveness, Sister—” Cloud began.

  “Step aside, plebian,” Falco said, forcing his way into the cabin.

  The centurion dragged off his plumed helmet, smoothed down his sweaty mop of hair, and gave the sister a respectful bow. His steel-gray eyes flitted to the bodyguard in the corner, the muscles in his jaw tensing. The big fellow made no sound.

  “Forgive me, good Sister,” he said to the nun. “I am Centurion Ovidius Varinius Falco, commander of the warship Faithful. By order of our imperator, Julius Scaeva, I must conduct a search of this ship, and thus, your cabin.”

  The girl kept her eyes to the floor in a convincing show of modesty, nodding once. “No apologies are necessary, Centurion. Please, conduct your search.”

  The centurion nodded to his four marines. They stepped into the room, eyes to the floor out of deference, each obviously about as comfortable in the nun’s cabin as a real nun would’ve been in a dockside fightpit. Careful not to impinge too much on the good sister’s personal space, they began searching the chests, the barrels, knocking on the floors and walls in search of hollows. For his part, Falco kept his eyes on the big fellow in the corner of the room, but the figure remained motionless.

  Cloud stood and watched, butterflies beating about in his belly. He could hear marines going through the other cabins farther down the ship, and none too gently by the sound. He wrapped his arms around himself, jaw clenched tight.

  Colder than a real nun’s nethers in here …

  “Forgive me, Sister,” Falco said suddenly. “I confess no end of strangeness in finding you in such … colorful company.”

  “I can find no fault in that, brave Centurion,” the sister said, eyes still downturned.