Darkdawn

by Kristoff, Jay

  The Maid crashed down into another abyss, shaking the ship to her bones. The timbers creaked and the oceans roared and the thunder boomed, and Mia considered telling Jonnen a lie to shush him. But though she had no practice in being one, that didn’t feel like something a big sister should do.

  “We might,” she admitted. “I hope not.”

  “I … I cannot swim very well.”

  “I can.” She squeezed his hand again. “And I’ll not let you drown.”

  He stared at her, black eyes reflected with tiny pinpricks of arkemical lantern light. She could see their mother in him. Their father, too. But more than both, she could see him—the squalling little babe she’d held in her arms that nevernight in Crow’s Nest. She could still hear her mother’s voice, weary and breathless from the birth, her eyes shining as she looked at her son and daughter with an ardent, impossible love.

  “Sing to him, Mia. He will know his sister.”

  And so, feeling every inch a fool, dipping her head so her sodden hair would hide the blood rising in her scarred and branded cheeks, Mia raised her voice and sang. The song her mother taught her. Just as she’d done back then.

  “In bleakest times, in darkest climes,

  When wind blows cold in skies above,

  When suns won’t shine, and truedark chimes,

  Still I’ll return to thee, my love.

  Ever return to thee, true love.”

  Mia ran her hand across her eyes, shook her head.

  “You’re right,” she chuckled. “I do sound like a harpy screeching for supper…”

  She felt a slight pressure. A brief squeeze on her hand in his. And looking up into his eyes, she saw the boy wasn’t crying anymore.

  “I’ve a notion,” she murmured, sniffling. “You want to sleep in my room? That way, if anything should happen, I’ll be right there…”

  Jonnen pressed his lips together. Clearly wanting to acquiesce and clearly too proud to do so. Mia tried another tack.

  “I’m scared, too. I’d sleep easier if you were there.”

  “… Well,” he finally said. “If you are frightened…”

  “Come on,” she said, grabbing his blanket and pulling him up.

  The ship rolled and shook as they made their way back to the corridor, over to Mia’s cabin. She knocked on the door, poked her head in. Ashlinn was swaying in the hammock, eyes on the ceiling, concern on her face. But when she saw Mia, she smiled, threw back the blanket, and held out her arms.

  “Come here, beautiful.”

  “Put some clothes on,” Mia hissed. “Jonnen’s going to sleep in here with us.”

  “Really?” Ash frowned, looking about her. “Shit, all right, give me a breath.”

  Mia shuffled her brother into the cabin as Ashlinn rolled out of the hammock, turned away from the door. The boy stood with his hands clasped before him, sneaking curious and furtive glances at the inkwerk on Ashlinn’s back as the girl bent down and retrieved her slip, pulled it over her bare skin. Mia dragged off her sodden britches and shirt, down to the relatively dry slip beneath. Crawling into the hammock with Ash, she piled the blankets atop them and beckoned Jonnen.

  “Come on, it’s all right.”

  The boy was uncertain, but with his lingering fear of the storm snapping on his heels, he made his way across the boards and swung himself up into Mia’s arms. She wrapped a second blanket about his shoulders, winced as he wriggled and writhed, all pointy elbows and knees. But finally, he found some kind of comfort, Eclipse curling down at Mia’s feet and sighing in the gloom.

  “… TOGETHER…”

  Mia wrapped one arm about her brother, her other about the girl beside her. Ashlinn settled in against her, their bodies fitting perfectly, breathing a sigh into Mia’s hair. Mia kissed her girl’s brow, and after a leaden pause, risked a kiss to the top of Jonnen’s head. The boy didn’t react, save perhaps to breathe a touch easier, a scrap of tension easing out of his little frame.

  She supposed it was a start.

  Mia sighed from the bottom of her lungs. The two people she cared about perhaps most in the world, here in her arms. Her center. Her familia. The thing she’d fought and bled all this time for. Risking anything and everything.

  And if she could kill for it, sacrifice everything in her life for it …

  Could I perhaps live for it, too?

  Mia looked up at the ceiling.

  Imagining a lake so still, it was like a mirror to the sky.

  Staring at the gloom above her head and picturing a pale globe shining there.

  Listening to the tempest sing.

  And wondering.

  CHAPTER 17

  DEPARTURES

  They almost didn’t make it to Galante.

  The storm raged for a solid week, and though no lightning kissed the explosives in the Maid’s belly, the ocean still did her best to drag them all to sailors’ graves. Six of the crew were lost to the deep, swept off the decks or torn from the rigging. The sails on the main and mizzenmast were split like rotten hessian, the foremast almost snapped off at the root. Through it all, Cloud Corleone had stood at the wheel, as if by sheer will he’d keep his ship together. And yet Mia suspected it wasn’t the captain, but another figure up on deck who proved the difference between them all living and dying.

  A deadboy.

  He didn’t move from the bow for seven turns. Lips moving in silent prayer to the Mother, asking she beseech her twins for respite, for mercy, for quiet. Mia didn’t know for certain if the Mother listened, or if her daughters paid heed, but as the Maid limped into Galante harbor, torn and bleeding but somehow still afloat, Mia made her way up to the bow and leaned on the wood beside him.

  He stood with those black hands on the railings, a curtain of damp saltlocks framing his face. The wind still gnashed and snapped at their heels, the water below a sea of jagged whitecaps, rain drizzling in a thin gray veil.

  He was still darkly beautiful, his skin smooth and pale, his eyes black as pitch. But Mia could swear there was a little more color to him now. A faint flush of life to his flesh. A hint in the way he moved. Ashlinn had whispered to Mia of it alone in their cabin—how the closer they drew to truedark, the more … alive Tric appeared. It seemed a dark shade of sorcery, like nothing she’d ever heard or read about, but Mia supposed it made a kind of sense. If it was the power of the Night that returned Tric to life, he might seem more alive the closer to night it drew.

  She wondered what he was exactly. The magik of him, and the mystery. And how much like the old Tric he might be by the time the suns finally failed.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” he asked, glancing at her sidelong.

  “Just looking,” she replied.

  He nodded, turning to the white jewel of Galante harbor before them. The Cityport of Churches was a curious mix of Liisian and Itreyan architecture, tall minarets and graceful domes, flat rooftop gardens and high terra-cotta roofs, hundreds of thousands milling in her streets. Cathedral bells tolled across the waves, ringing in the hour, all in time. Mia had served in the Red Church chapel here for eight months under Bishop Tenhands, and she knew the city like a boozehound knew the bottle.

  “This was the place we met,” she said. “Well … met again. I’d just killed the son of a senator, if I recall correctly.”

  “I REMEMBER. YOU HAD A RED DRESS ON. AND A CROSSBOW BOLT IN YOUR ARSE.”

  She smirked, tossing windblown locks from her face. “Not my finest hour.”

  “YOU LOOKED MORE THAN FINE TO ME.”

  The smile dropped away. Uncomfortable silence hung between them like a shroud. A lonely gull swung through the sky overhead, singing a mournful song.

  “Did…” Mia shook her head, looking to change the subject. “What you said out there during the tempest, about the Ladies of Ocean and Storms … was that true? About them … knowing?”

  “DO YOU HAVE A FLINTBOX?”

  Mia blinked at the strange question. “Aye.”

  “GIVE IT TO ME.�
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  Mia reached into her britches, pulled out the small slab of burnished metal. It was a simple device: flint, wick, arkemical fuel. Two silver priests at a market stall.

  “Just don’t drop it anywhere belowdecks, aye?”

  Tric took the box in his ink-black hands, struggled a moment with the flint. Those fingers of his had once been clever as cats, deft and supple and quick. Her belly sank at another reminder that, beautiful as he was, as close to truedark as they might be drawing, out here in the sunslight, this boy still wasn’t who he used to be. But after a moment, he struck the flame, lifted the flintbox toward her.

  The wind was howling, the rain was spitting; the thin tongue of fire should probably have sputtered out entirely. Instead, as Tric held it between them, Mia saw the flame flicker and grow, burning hotter. And though she had the wind howling at her back, the fire stretched out toward her, reached into the gale. Like it …

  … like it wanted to burn her.

  “THE LADY OF EARTH SLUMBERS AS SHE HAS DONE FOR AN AGE,” Tric said. “BUT SO LONG AS YOU SEEK THE CROWN OF THE MOON, STORM AND OCEAN AND FIRE WILL BE YOUR ENEMIES. THEY ARE THEIR FATHER’S DAUGHTERS, MIA. RAISED TO HATE THEIR MOTHER AND THEIR BROTHER BOTH. AND THUS, YOU.”

  Watching the finger of flame reaching for her, flickering and flailing, Mia felt a sliver of cold fear sink into her belly.

  “ALL THE PIECES ARE BEGINNING TO MOVE. AND THE CLOSER YOU COME TO THE CROWN, THE HARDER THEY WILL STRIVE TO STOP YOU.” Tric shook his head, pursed his lips. “I’D HOPED WE MIGHT MAKE IT FARTHER UNDETECTED. BUT ALL THREE OF AA’S EYES ARE STILL IN THE SKY. THEY DON’T NAME HIM EVERSEEING FOR NOTHING.”

  “You’re saying if we head out onto the ocean again…”

  “THE LADIES WILL TRY TO STOP US AGAIN.”

  “But Ashkah and the Quiet Mountain are through the Sea of Sorrows from here,” she frowned. “We can’t walk there from Liis. We need to travel by ship.”

  Tric looked to the harbor before them, the sea at their back.

  “WE COULD TRAVEL BY LAND FOR A TIME,” he offered. “HEAD EAST, ALONG THE COAST. HAVE CORLEONE AND THE MAID SAIL AROUND THE NORTHCAPE WITHOUT US OR THE LADIES’ WRATH, MEET US IN AMAI. THAT WILL LEAVE ONLY A SHORT JOURNEY BY WAVE, ACROSS THE SEA OF SORROWS TO ASHKAH. WE’LL STILL RISK THE TWINS’ IRE, BUT A JOURNEY OF A WEEK IS BETTER THAN THREE.”

  Mia shook her head. She hadn’t even made up her mind if she truly believed all this gods and goddesses nonsense. Hadn’t decided if she’d even seek the Crown yet. But it seemed the divinities had decided without her, and she was becoming suddenly and painfully aware of what having a trio of goddesses stacked against her could mean.

  “THE CLOSER WE COME TO TRUEDARK,” Tric said, as if reading her thoughts, “THE DEEPER YOUR STRENGTH WILL GROW. YOU KNOW THIS.”

  Mia nodded, remembering the power she’d wielded during the truedark massacre. Stepping across shadows in the city of Godsgrave like a little girl skipping puddles. Liquid darkness tearing down the statue of Aa outside the Basilica Grande at her whim. Mother only knew what she might accomplish now that she was older, now that the splinter that had been inside Furian resided in her.

  And she could feel it. Those suns sinking toward the horizon. Slow but inevitable. The dark inside her deepening. Quickening.

  Shadows at her back, waiting to unfurl in the dying light.

  “BUT YOU ARE VULNERABLE NOW,” Tric continued. “AND NOW IS WHEN THEY’LL SEEK TO STRIKE. WE MUST MOVE WITH CAUTION. OVERLAND IS OUR SAFEST ROAD.”

  Mia sighed but nodded. “All right, then. I’ll speak to Corleone about meeting us in Amai. If you’re sure they’ll be safe without us aboard?”

  “WHEN DEALING WITH THE DIVINITIES, NOTHING IS CERTAIN,” Tric said. “BUT YOU ARE THEIR FOCUS, MIA. YOU ARE THE THREAT IN AA’S EYES.”

  “We’ll need to buy ourselves some horses, I suppose.” Mia scowled, spit on the deck. “I fucking hate horses.”

  Tric smiled, his dimple creasing his pale cheek. “I REMEMBER.”

  She looked at him then. Her voice just a whisper on the wind.

  “What else do you remember?”

  He tilted his head, and the look in his eyes made her chest ache.

  “EVERYTHING,” he replied.

  “What news, Crow?”

  Mia turned, saw Sidonius and Bladesinger standing behind her. Wavewaker and Bryn were at the starboard, the big man pointing to the city and giving the Vaanian girl a quick tour of the landmarks. Behind them, Mia could see Butcher bent over the railing, dry-retching into the sea. Bladesinger eyed Tric with open suspicion, and Mia wondered what the former priestess-in-training would be thinking of a Hearthless walking among them. But Sidonius’s eyes were fixed on Mia.

  “We have to travel overland,” she told them. “In news I needed like a second arsehole, along with Aa’s ministry, the Luminatii and Itreyan Legion, and the Red Church, apparently the Ladies of Storms and Oceans are also displeased with me.”

  “You … think?” Butcher managed to gasp. “I’ve puked up both … lungs and one of my fucking jewels since we g-got on this damned shit b-bucket.”

  “Mind your tongue, piss-weasel,” came a voice. “Or I’ll hack off your other nut.”

  BigJon scowled up at the former gladiatii, fists on hips. The first mate and his captain had joined the group on the bow as the Maid slipped farther toward the Cityport of Churches. BigJon was soaked through to this skin and looking salty to boot, his drakebone pipe hanging from one side of his mouth. For his part, Corleone appeared exhausted from a week of constant battle at the wheel, his clothes clinging to him like the fur on a waterlogged rat. But the fire hadn’t dimmed from the man’s eyes.

  “Did I hear tell you’re leaving us?” he asked Mia.

  The girl nodded. “For a time. Being aboard is putting you and your men arisk.”

  “Bollocks, that was barely a breeze.” Cloud stamped his foot on the deck. “Solid as the earth beneath your feet, my Maid.”

  “We should get the bloody foremast looked at, at least,” BigJon said. “Got a split in it deeper than my aunt Pentalina’s bosom. Bilge pumps are running like a three-legged scabdog, and we’ve got badger-spunk for brains if we don’t re-caulk—”

  “You know,” Cloud sighed at his first mate, “for a fellow with a dick like a donkey, you do a remarkable impression of an old woman.”*

  BigJon chuckled, pipe stem clutched between silver teeth.

  “Who told you I was hung like a donkey?”

  “Your mother talks in her sleep.”

  “We’ll travel overland,” Mia smiled. “That’ll give you a breath for repairs, and you can still meet us at Amai with plenty of time.” She glanced at Tric. “Safer for all of us.”

  “AYE.”

  Corleone raised his eyebrow. “Have you ever been to Amai?”

  “No,” Mia answered.

  “NO,” the deadboy replied.

  The captain and his first mate exchanged an uneasy glance.

  “I…” Butcher groaned from the railing, “… g-grew up there…”

  “Enjoyable childhood, was it?” BigJon asked.

  “Not really.” The gladiatii wiped his lips, stood with a groan on unsteady legs.

  “I’ve heard tell of it,” Bladesinger said. “Rough city.”

  “Rough?” BigJon scoffed. “It’s the blackest pit of bastards, thieves, and murderers this side of the Great Salt. Whole place is a pirate enclave. And not the Charming Bastard kind, either. The Rape and Kill Your Entire Family kind.”

  Corleone nodded. “High seat of His Majesty, Einar ‘the Tanner’ Valdyr, Blackwolf of Vaan, Scourge of the Four Seas, King of Scoundrels.”

  Sidonius blinked. “Pirates have kings?”

  Cloud frowned. “Of course we have kings. How did you think it worked?”

  “I dunno. I thought you’d be an autonomous collective or something.”

  “Autonomous fucking collective?” BigJon looked Sid up and down. “What kind of backward-arse shit-b
rained government is that? Sounds a recipe for chaos to me.”

  “Aye,” Corleone nodded. “We work by a system, matey. Just because we’re pirates doesn’t mean we’re lawless brigands.”

  Sid looked astonished. “… That’s exactly what it fucking means!”*

  “All right, all right,” Mia sighed. “Is there any way to get from Liis to Ashkah other than crossing the Sea of Sorrows?”

  “No,” Corleone said.

  “Is there a major port in Liis that’s closer to Last Hope than Amai?”

  “No,” said BigJon.

  “Right, well, let’s stop fuckarsing about and start walking, shall we?” Mia said. “We’ll deal with his majesty Einar Whatsit, Scourge of Wherever, when we get there.”

  Mia’s notion obviously didn’t sit well with Corleone, but with no real alternative to offer, the privateer finally shrugged assent.

  “We’ll need supplies,” Sidonius said. “Horses and harness. Weapons. Armor.”

  “We can afford the nags,” Mia said. “But we’ll have precious little coin left after.”

  “We have the kit from that Luminatii tosser and his lads killed in your cabin,” Cloud offered. “Four marines plus a centurion. Steel, shields, leather, and chain.”

  “That could work,” Sidonius said. “Posing as soldiers moving overland, we’re less likely to be troubled by slavers and the like. We’ll have to ditch the uniforms once we arrive, of course. But I was an officer in the legion, so I speak the language if we come across any other army folk on the way to Amai.”

  “Looks like you’re leading us, then, Centurion,” Mia said, saluting.

  The group agreed, and without much more ado, set about gathering their meager possessions. By the time the Maid made berth in Galante, they were assembled on deck. Sidonius and the Falcons hadn’t changed into their soldier’s kit yet, each still dressed in the common thread they’d bought with their freedom. Ashlinn stood with Jonnen, carrying the small sack of “essentials” she’d purchased in Whitekeep over her shoulder. Eclipse stood in the boy’s shadow, making it dark enough for two. Tric had finally climbed down from the bow, waiting by the gangplank.

  “Daughters watch over you and yours, Mia,” Corleone said, extending his hand.