The Cartographer Complete Series

by A. C. Cobble

  “You said exceptions could be made to the age limit for the club?” asked Oliver, turning to Raffles.

  Raffles grinned back at him. “With the right nomination, yes, I think they could be.”

  When the fresh glasses arrived, Raffles raised his. “To a long and prosperous friendship.”

  “To prosperity,” agreed Oliver, raising his glass.

  The Priestess III

  “Welcome to the Fourth Sheet Inn,” called a cheery voice from behind the bar.

  Sam blinked at the woman. Bright lights from mirrored lanterns illuminated the space far more than was proper for a pub after midnight.

  “Get you a drink?” asked the smiling woman.

  “Ale,” replied Sam. “A big one.”

  Nodding, the woman hurried off to pour the drink.

  Sam turned to survey the room and snorted. In the far corner, she spotted a curtained alcove with a sign hanging above it offering palmistry.

  When the barkeep returned, Sam asked, “Is the palm reader in?”

  “She is,” confirmed the woman. “When the curtain is closed, she’s with a client, but it doesn’t take more than a quarter turn of the clock most times. You fancy learning your future?”

  Not looking back at the barkeep, Sam said, “No. I don’t think there’s anything there I want to know.”

  The curtain was pulled back, and the barkeep’s voice buzzed on unheard. A middle-aged woman stepped out of the alcove, nodding thanks and then hurrying away.

  Sam strode toward the curtain. She peeked inside. The woman sitting in the alcove jumped in surprise.

  “I thought you could read the future,” drawled Sam.

  “I read possibilities,” retorted the woman. “After so long, the possibility of seeing you here was slim.”

  Sam stepped inside and tugged the curtain closed.

  “Why are you here?” questioned the woman.

  “I came to get my palm read. Isn’t that what you do?”

  The woman tilted her head, waiting.

  “Shall we go to your room?” asked Sam.

  The woman’s eyebrows rose. “My room, is it?”

  “I want to talk, Kalbeth” claimed Sam. “I know it’s been a long time, but this is important. I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you wouldn’t have,” said Kalbeth slowly. She waved Sam back out of the alcove and followed her into the common room.

  With a nod at the barkeep, she led Sam up the stairs of the inn, climbing until they reached the top floor. Underneath low eaves, she took Sam down a hall to a locked door. Slipping an iron key from a pouch on her belt, she unlocked the door and then knelt, flicking the key underneath the door. When she opened it, she unhooked a thin wire that had been fixed to the bottom of the door and turned a small, copper disc that had been set in the center of the doorframe on the floor. From over the woman’s shoulder, Sam saw she’d pushed a complex geometric pattern out of alignment by turning the disc. The woman stood and held out a hand, inviting Sam to enter.

  “Paranoid?” asked Sam.

  “If you can find me, then others like you can find me as well,” said the woman, stepping into the room. “Did you come to kill me?”

  Blinking at her, Sam stammered, “O-Of course not. Why would you think that?”

  “It is your job, is it not, to kill those like me?”

  “My job is eradicating sorcery in Enhover,” snapped Sam. “What you do—”

  “What I do is sorcery, just like what you do,” challenged Kalbeth. “The only difference is that the Church condones it for you, condones it because you’ll kill all of the others. What do you think they’ll do when you’ve eradicated sorcery, Sam? You think they’ll let you retire comfortably by the sea?”

  “No,” said Sam, thinking of her mentor. “I don’t think retirement is in the cards the spirits will deal me. If you really could read palms, you’d know that.”

  “There’s a difference between reading palms and telling the future,” murmured Kalbeth. She began removing bangles and colored, glass-studded tin rings and bracelets, piling them all on a small table at the side of her room. Her boots were next, and then she discard a pattern-covered shawl.

  “It’s surprisingly roomy in here,” said Sam, glancing back toward a dark doorway where she assumed the woman’s bed was.

  “I’m short, so I don’t mind the eaves,” claimed Kalbeth. “The room has a sitting area, a bedchamber, and a balcony. If I need anything else, I get it downstairs.”

  “You do enjoy being outside,” said Sam, thinking of the balcony, her voice heavy with sorrow.

  “It’s the only place I can find quiet,” remarked the woman. “Even a clean place like this has seen death. It’s hard to find anywhere not haunted by the spirits. Outside, at least, the wind will carry their voices away.”

  “Why don’t you go to the country or to the sea?” questioned Sam. “That is not the life I am destined to live, but you could find solace.”

  Smiling wanly, Kalbeth shook her head. “Solace… No, that is not the life I am destined to live, either, is it? You did not find me to grant me peace and quiet, Sam. Why are you here? Do you want me to read your palm, tell you what these new spirits in your shadow are saying? There are more of them than when I last saw you. You’ve been busy. I can see the possibilities in your future, but the only clue to your past is the stain of the souls you’ve sent to the other side. What have you been doing, Sam?”

  “I don’t need you to read those souls. I know exactly why they’re haunting me,” claimed Sam. She drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I came for a tattoo.”

  Kalbeth cringed. “I don’t do—”

  “It’s important,” insisted Sam. “There’s real sorcery out there, Kalbeth. I… I’ve seen horrible things. Death, Kalbeth, like you cannot imagine. Terrible rituals, human souls sacrificed and spent. Dozens of them at a time.”

  The woman grunted, looking away.

  “I am not lying,” said Sam. “I had to use what you inked onto my skin.”

  “Show me,” instructed Kalbeth, taking a step toward Sam.

  “I…”

  “You mean to get a tattoo without taking your shirt off?” chided the woman.

  “That’s not why I came here,” declared Sam. “It’s not what I want.”

  “You want a tattoo,” agreed Kalbeth. “You told me. Is that all you want?”

  Sam shifted, meeting the other woman’s eyes. Her former lover, when they had been girls, and sometimes since. It was a lifetime before, it felt like.

  “That is not all that I want,” stated Kalbeth.

  “I need…”

  “After,” insisted the woman. Then, she stepped the rest of the way to Sam and grabbed her head, tilting it and kissing her.

  “It had been a long time since you’ve been with a woman?” questioned Kalbeth.

  Sam spluttered, “It’s not easy to, ah, to find someone who isn’t a man.”

  “I know,” agreed Kalbeth, poking at Sam’s wrist, pinching the skin and following the tattoo up her arm. “We live in their world. Any port in a storm, though, ey? You have to swim the current somehow.”

  Sam looked away, choosing not to mention it had only been weeks since she’d been with Isisandra. Kalbeth didn’t need to know. It would only make her jealous, and if it didn’t, then the explanation of the break-up was going to be rather complicated. Instead, she asked, “Have you?”

  “Been with another woman since you?” Kalbeth laughed. “Of course I have, when I can find one that’s interested in me and not coin or some leverage against my mother.” Muttering under her breath, she added, “I’ve been down that path too many times.”

  “That’s good,” offered Sam. “I mean, that you’ve…”

  “That I wasn’t ruined by you?” questioned Kalbeth. “You think too highly of yourself, Sam. You always have. No, you didn’t ruin me. You didn’t send me crying into the arms of a man or any other nonsense, but I won’t
say it didn’t hurt.”

  “It couldn’t have been,” murmured Sam.

  “It couldn’t have been as long as you worked for the Church,” corrected Kalbeth. “If you’d left, we could have been together.”

  “I— I could not leave.”

  “You are not a priestess, Sam,” said the woman. She sat back on her heels, gesturing to the long vein of dark tattoo that bridged Samantha’s wrists, traveling over her arms, her collarbone, and meeting in the center of her chest. “Not the kind of priestess the modern Church wants.”

  “I agree with you there,” acknowledged Sam.

  Kalbeth studied her, brushing back her jet-black hair. “You understand, then? You are a tool to them, and when they are done with you, you will be discarded.”

  “I understand, but I will not quit,” said Sam. She saw the disappointment in the other woman’s face. “It is not about the Church, Kalbeth. It is about what I have seen. I cannot turn from that darkness. Murders, sacrifices, the kind of dark ritual that you and your mother would tell me is only a flight of fancy told to scare children. It is not. I have seen it, and I know. My mentor, Thotham, you remember him?”

  “Of course,” replied Kalbeth.

  “He was killed in a battle with a ten-yard tall monstrosity that had wings and claws the size of my arm. We faced hundreds of shades. Hundreds! Grimalkin, wolfmalkin… Those kinds of things cannot be allowed to exist, Kalbeth. I cannot quit after seeing that. There is no one else trained for dealing with this, just me.”

  “You could not quit before seeing those things,” argued the woman.

  Sam remained silent. There was no answer to give.

  Kalbeth stood, her naked body gleaming in the lantern light. Like a dancer, she stepped lightly over to a cupboard and opened it. “Wine?”

  “Yes,” replied Sam.

  Kalbeth poured them both cups and returned to sit in front of Sam, their knees touching as the woman settled down, her legs crossing beneath her, her thighs spread wide.

  Sam swallowed and looked away.

  Smiling over the rim of her wine cup, Kalbeth murmured, “You were not offended earlier.”

  Sam drank her wine.

  “I can repair the damage to your current tattoos in three, maybe four turns of the clock,” advised the black-haired woman. “You have some light scar tissue where the heat burned your skin. It is fixable if I work slowly. You’ll regain the full function of the script.”

  “That is good,” responded Sam.

  “You understand what the cost will be?”

  “There are souls within my shadow,” replied Sam. “Can you use them instead?”

  Kalbeth shrugged, her expression grim. “I can try, but there must be something to stitch them to. When you activate the pattern, and the souls are spent, a piece of you will be as well. The cost is unavoidable, Sam. You, what is core to you, will be tattered and torn, and part of it will be on the cold, other side. Do you understand?”

  “I do,” whispered Sam. “Part of me already is.”

  “You should know the taint on you will be obvious for a time,” continued Kalbeth. “Weeks, at least. Anyone attuned will not be able to miss the darkness swirling around you. Until your skin and the shroud heals, it will not go away. There is nothing I can do to lessen the shadow. Sam, I think the price is too high. I do not think you should do this.”

  “I do not have a choice,” responded Sam. “Without it, I’m not sure I have the skill to prevail. Kalbeth, without this, I will die.”

  “With it, part of you will still die,” argued the woman.

  Sam placed a hand on the other woman’s bare leg. “I have to do this.”

  Kalbeth stared into her eyes. Sam guessed she was looking for hesitation, trying to find a chink in Sam’s resolve, some way she could talk her out of it. Sam knew the cost, for herself and for Kalbeth. The work Sam was requesting would not come cheap. It had to be, though. It had to be.

  “If you insist,” said Kalbeth after a long moment. “There is something else I can do as well, something I began working on shortly after you… after you left the last time. I can shield you from a shade’s notice. It is not fool-proof. If you touch them, they will become aware of you, but for a time it may give you some protection. It is a ward against the other side, in a sense.”

  “That sounds useful,” agreed Sam.

  “Do not rely on it,” warned Kalbeth.

  “Any little bit helps,” said Sam. “You will do it, then?”

  Brows furrowed in thought, Kalbeth was silent a moment. Finally, she said, “I will do this, but it will take time. Four days, I think.”

  “Will it?” questioned Sam dubiously.

  Smirking, Kalbeth allowed, “Perhaps three if we took no breaks. I don’t work for free.”

  “I can pay you,” replied Sam.

  “That’s not what I meant,” said the woman. “I won’t take—”

  “I know,” said Sam. “It’s just… I have access to more sterling than I need, now. I’d like you to have some of it.”

  “I am fine,” said the girl. “What I cannot earn reading palms, my mother is happy to—”

  “I have no one else to give it to,” interrupted Sam. “It is not because… because I feel I must pay you. It’s because I have the silver and I want to share it with you. You can do whatever you see fit with it. Give it to the orphanage if you do not want to keep it, but please, will you take it?”

  “Why don’t you give it to the orphanage yourself?” asked the woman. Without waiting for a response, because she knew the answer, she continued, “Where did you get access to so much sterling that you want to give it away?”

  “I have a patron now,” said Sam with a grin. Seeing the other woman’s expression, she quickly amended, “It is not like that. Really.”

  “Tell me, then, what is it like?”

  “After the wine,” assured Sam. “After the wine and after we take a break.”

  Smiling back at her, Kalbeth said, “I know when the ink dries, you will leave me again. I know it, Sam, but until then, I have missed you.”

  “I missed you, too,” replied Sam, wondering if she meant it. She leaned forward and kissed her old friend.

  The Captain I

  “This waiting is a bit shit, if you ask me, Captain,” grumbled First Mate Pettybone. He tossed back a jigger of grog. “There’s only so much time we can stall the crew with these training maneuvers. Sooner or later, the boys are gonna want to move. If we don’t, we’ll lose ‘em.”

  “I did not ask you,” remarked Captain Catherine Ainsley. The first mate harrumphed, and she turned to eye him. “We’re not working for the Company or some minor merchant, First Mate. We’re working for Duke Oliver Wellesley himself, a son of the king. It’s going to be different.”

  “Different?” questioned the first mate. “What does that mean? This crew didn’t hire on because they wanted to spend time in port with their wives. If that was the case, they woulda been coopers or butchers or some other honest trade. Naw, they signed on an airship because they want to see the world.”

  “It’s not my concern whether the crew spends their time in port with their wives or with anyone else,” responded Ainsley. “What they do in their free time is up to them. What is up to me is what they do when we’re getting paid good sterling silver by the duke. While we’re on his coin, we’re on his time, and we’ll do whatever he asks of us.”

  “If he wants to change the rules, he oughta change the pay, too,” complained Pettybone.

  “He isn’t paying you more than the Company?” questioned Ainsley. “Frozen hell, man, did you even ask?”

  “A-Ask?” stammered Pettybone. “You mean just ask the son of the king for more pay?”

  Ainsley blinked back at her first mate. “I did.”

  “You asked Duke Oliver Wellesley for more pay!” cried Pettybone. “What… You can’t…”

  Sighing, the captain sat back in her chair. “When we return to Westundon, I’ll inqui
re on your behalf, and I suppose the crew’s as well. He’s the son of the king, but he doesn’t act like he knows it. This is a good posting, First Mate, the best, despite what happened up around Derbycross. We’ve got to adjust, but when we do, there’s nowhere I’d rather be than in the duke’s employ.”

  “That’s not what you said two weeks back,” argued the first mate.

  “Two weeks back, we were heading to assault a spirit-forsaken sorcerer’s lair,” barked the captain. “Two weeks back, I thought we were going to die screaming in pain. Now, we’re preparing to sail to the Westlands. Now, we’re looking to embark on one of the richest commercial endeavors this world has known. If the duke was willing to increase my pay before the Westlands, just think what he’ll do for us when we return, Pettybone. Just think of it.”

  Pettybone grunted. “In my experience, it doesn’t pay to mess with royalty.”

  “You don’t have any experience with royalty,” argued Ainsley.

  “I heard stories,” claimed the first mate.

  She snorted. “Go out on the deck, Pettybone. Make sure the new hands are tying tight knots, mending the sails soundly, and keeping my spirit-forsaken decks clean. When it’s time, the duke’s going to learn he bought himself the finest airship and aircrew the empire has. And when he realizes that, Pettybone, mark my words, we’re going to get rich.”

  Mollified or not, the first mate stomped out the door, and she smiled when she heard him issuing commands and yelling at the lazy Mister Samuels. She had no doubt that with a little more time around the newer crew members, Pettybone would whip them into shape. They would be a fine group, even if they weren’t truly the best the empire had to offer. They’d be close enough, she hoped.

  With the first mate gone and relative quiet restored to the captain’s cabin, she returned to the books in front of her. Books the duke had sent — Duvante’s histories, a biography of several prominent company directors, a treatise on trading patterns with the United Territories before and after the war, and more. The duke trusted her as his captain, and he was educating her to be his agent, an opportunity that sent a shiver down her spine. An agent of the son of the king. An opportunity that never should have existed for one of her low birth, but now it did. She didn’t care if the duke asked her to wait on the airship at dock for the next three months. She didn’t care if he asked her to track down another sorcerer. She didn’t care if he asked her to sail him into the heart of the spirit-forsaken Darklands. For the chance at a different life, a true legacy, she’d do whatever he asked.