by R. J. Louis
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Previously
Prologue
1. A Tale Worth Telling
2. Dangerous
3. City of Miracles and Fools
4. Muddy Water
5. Blood and Burning Skin
6. A Brief Darkness
7. Light and Lock
8. Barrel-Rider and The Big Red
9. Mad as Hell
10. Home
11. A Canvas of Sand
12. Best Laid Plans
13 Bold, Brash, Bad Decisions
14. Fire Like A Knife
15. Grand Larceny
16. Storm-Father
17. As Above, So Below
18. Never Daydream in a Dragon's Lair
19. Ten Gold Bits
20. Fear and Flame
21. Power
22. Nowhere to Run
23. Captain Thunder, Dragon-Slayer
24. Never Enough Time
25. Consequences
26. Slightly Less-Grand Larceny
27. Riches Beyong Reckoning
28. Wilhelm Walks Alone
29. A Vision of Something
30. "Rowk."
Interlude: Wolves
31. Mercy
32. Thunder: A History
33. Faith
34. The Belly of the Beast
35. A Short Fall
36. Bloodsport
37. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
38. Calling Out
39. Death
40. Family
41. Control
42. A Game of Eights
43. Some Fingers, All Hands
44. Battle on The Kingfisher
45. Light and Lies
46. Beneath Heedless Stars
47. Reunion With Rishad
48. Rico Waking
49. Once More Into The Darkness
50. A New Hope
51. Family Matters
52. Home, and Away
Epilogue
A Mantle of Gold
R.J. Louis
Copyright © 2021 R.J. Louis
All rights reserved.
For you. If you’re reading this, I think you’re pretty neat.
Prologue
1. A Tale Worth Telling
2. Dangerous
3. City of Miracles and Fools
4. Muddy Water
5. Blood and Burning Skin
6. A Brief Darkness
7. Light and Lock
8. Barrel-Rider and the Big Red
9. Mad as Hell
10. Home
11. A Canvas of Sand
12. Best Laid Plans
13. Bold, Brash, Bad Decisions
14. Fire Like A Knife
15. Grand Larceny
16. Storm-Father
17. As Above, So Below
18. Never Daydream in a Dragon’s Lair
19. Ten Gold Bits
20. Fear and Flame
21. Power
22. Nowhere to Run
23. Captain Thunder, Dragon-Slayer
24. Never Enough Time
25. Consequences
26. Slightly Less-Grand Larceny
27. Riches Beyond Reckoning
28. Wilhelm Walks Alone
29. A Vision of Something
30. “Rowk”
Interlude: Wolves
31. Mercy
32. Thunder: A History
33. Faith
34. The Belly of the Beast
35. A Short Fall
36. Bloodsport
37. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
38. Calling Out
39. Death
40. Family
41. Control
42. A Game of Eights
43. Some Fingers, All Hands
44. Battle on The Kingfisher
45. Light and Lies
46. Beneath Heedless Stars
47. Reunion With Rishad
48. Rico Waking
49. Once More Into The Darkness
50. A New Hope
51. Family Matters
52. Home, and Away
Epilogue
Previously on The Kingfisher Histories
Hi there, I’m R.J. Louis, your author and best friend, and I’m here breaking the literary fourth wall to tell you about this book, and where it stands in the grand scheme of The Kingfisher Histories.
A Mantle of Gold follows on from the events set out in the first of my novels, A Canopy of Stars. If you haven’t yet read A Canopy of Stars, I highly recommend you begin there! Everything will make a fair bit more sense. But, if you really can’t be bothered, allow me to do my best to sum up the story so far. Consider this your spoiler warning.
On a shady delivery mission from their employer Haze, the errant vagabonds of The Kingfisher find, instead of their intended recipients, a cave full of bodies, deep in fey wilderness. Without payment, and with shadowy creatures on their tails, they retreat to Lincoln, a lakeside city on the shard of Evergreen. They are low on fuel and supplies, but without their payment, they have no way of acquiring either.
Unfortunately, at the same time, Mudge, the first mate, is taken in by an officer of the Lincoln law, Perspicacious Shrew. Shrew is investigating mysterious explosions going off in the faerie forest, decimating the tenuous alliance between the Singers, the human population of Evergreen, and the Faeries, and Zach Mudge is in the wrong place at the wrong time. While he is being questioned, the rest of the crew hatch a plan to steal some Widowgas, the fuel sky-ships use to travel between the shards, only to have their hand forced when a fey attack on the city throws the docks into chaos. Taking advantage of this, they manage to steal enough fuel to get back to the sky, while Mudge uses the attack to slip from his cell, only to be caught later by Perspicacious, who, firm in his belief that Mudge is a good man in a bad situation, lets him go rather than punish him.
Back in the sky, Captain Thunder and her crew head for the oracle, Shreek, the best place to get answers to their questions, namely: What in the hells is going on here? And where in the hells is their delivery supposed to go?
As they embark on this journey, Shrew leads a diplomatic envoy into the forest to attempt to treat with the malicious and maleficent faerie folk. He is betrayed by his escort, Wolfpack naval Legionnaires on loan from the Table of Fifteen, the governing entity of the entire system of Shards.
Having paid the oracle’s price, an eye, she reveals both answers and questions, and tells Mudge that his new friend is now in a very dire situation. Mudge, always a little too heroic for piracy, convinces the crew that a rescue mission would in fact see them in better stead, and they fly off to try to save Shrew. Unfortunately, while they arrive in time to rescue Shrew from an attacking Faerie, they are not able to protect him from the Wolfpack Legionnaires, who kill him, and take the crew hostage. Returning them to their own vessel, the fearsome Wrathhowl. On board the Wrathhowl, they finally find Ray, the person they were supposed to deliver their cargo to, imprisoned, next to a humble man named Izaak.
Izaak has a power, like many in this world, and his power is one of sight, of seeing the edges of things and resolving the full picture. Ray, for his part, is being possessed by a shadowy figure who wants Izaak’s power, one who calls herself The Archangel. She tells Captain Thunder and her crew that a dark threat is coming from beyond, and that she needs to take Izaak’s sight in order to defend them all. Never mind of course that this would kill Izaak.
Through many daring and exciting actions (if you don’t believe me, read the boo
k), the crew escape, rescuing Izaak and managing to make their way off planet, saved at the very end of it all by Rico, a strange boy with stranger powers, who can somehow connect his mind with The Kingfisher.
The Kingfisher makes a hasty retreat from Evergreen, desperate to learn more about Rico’s strange powers, Izaak’s sight, and Archangel’s goals. But also just desperate for things to go back to normal.
Now, obviously there’s more to it than that. But hopefully this sets you up well enough that everything that occurs now in A Mantle of Gold makes sense.
Happy Reading!
R.J.
PROLOGUE
Finric’s wrists chafe. His heart pounds in his chest. His place in the world has taken an unfortunate turn in the last several hours. It shocks him still, that it has only been so long. His ship had left for Mirror early in the morning, laden with deliveries. Expensive silk from the Web-mines of Dusk, and vials of alchemical reagents from Nox’s deadlier children. Finric knows well enough that one man’s poison can be another’s medicine. But he is no hero. Simply put, the gold is good.
Or, it would have been, if a small ship hadn’t come upon them just out of the atmosphere. His own guards fought well, but their opponents, with the wild eyes, fought like a well-oiled machine. They were completely outmatched. A coordinated attack of such clinical efficiency that even Finric’s divinity—a powerful blast of solar heat from some fragment of Pandora shining in his veins—had little effect on the outcome.
He opens his eyes, memory shying away from the brutal executions of his crew. For whatever reason, he has been taken alive. The rest of his voyagers discarded like so much waste-water. He stands in a cold room, his shivers only partly due to the chill temperature. Finric knows the difference between history and myth, and he knows he is standing in a myth. He has heard of The Watchtower before, who hasn’t. A dead Ark. Forgotten, lying fallow on the shadow-sides of the shards. Of course, nothing that is dead in myth stays that way for long, and all sorts of stories speak of The Watchtower being inhabited. Being haunted.
A ghost appears, a ghost of a woman. Tall and slender like a knife, with eyes wide and unseeing. One orb of inky darkness, the other milk-white. Each one unbroken. They see much, and far.
“Good. You are strong.” The voice is a whisper like cut glass. “Don’t think of it as dying.” Her lips curl into a smile rimed with frost. “Think of it as enlisting early to beat the rush.”
Before he can respond, she presses a delicate fingertip to his chest, her nail sharp against his fine cloth shirt. Then she pushes deeper, her finger penetrating his chest as he gasps. The last thing he sees is a light being pulled from his body, gripped in a black-feathered fist.
* * *
Vinifess Wress stands on board his ship, his eyes set upon the horizon. Lake Lincoln shimmers in the cool light of the evening. The tattoo of The Watchtower burns against his skin, and a voice echoes in his head.
Bring me power. Power enough to fight.
He closes his eyes, and when they open again, he sees the world through a thin layer of shadow, one eye interposes darkness, the other light. Suddenly, the world looks different, he can see shining, shimmering lights at the heart of each person as he looks across the docks of Lincoln town, he turns his eyes on his newest passenger, Mercuria, but her divinity is weak.
There is strength here, including one being bearing a pulsing, pounding light against which he would not wish to be tested. But he is not a slave. He can go where he wishes. He, and the others of his ilk, can travel the Shards, and search for the power their guardian angel seeks.
“It’s time to set sail.” His eyes clear, and the world returns to normal hue. “The Kingfisher can’t have got far.”
The skin of his tattoo prickles, and he clenches his fist. He won’t touch The Kingfisher, that freedom is beyond him. But he can still charter passengers... and where paying customers wish to go... well, he ought to deliver them safely.
The Happy Spider hides in the back of his mind. Far from the thoughts of Archangel, far from the tether she wraps around his subconscious. The Happy Spider has served powerful masters before... There’s no easier way to access places beyond your reach than on the coat-tails of someone above you. While Vinifess Wress may content himself with a duty to save the Shard he conquered, The Spider inside him is more content to watch... and wait. Power is power, after all, and even angels make mistakes.
1 - A Tale Worth Telling
We escaped Evergreen with little more than the clothes on our back. The Kingfisher, burnt and battered, hauled itself up into the inky indigo of the evening sky. There was much talk among the crew about the two miracles that saved our lives.
The mysterious explosion on board the Wrathhowl garnered the most discussion. Whether engine malfunction, faerie attack, internal dispute... It was a topic the voyagers could talk at length about. Most hoped it was an external problem, because if it involved the engine... Well, to some of the crew, the engine was as mysterious and all-powerful as a god, and Officer Molly Baulch little more than its assigned prophet. The crew, especially then, in the void of space as we made for the nearby shard of Flare, did not want to entertain a vengeful mechanical God blowing them out into nothingness.
I couldn’t help but feel troubled by the loss of life on board the Wrathhowl that such an event would have caused. Though I might have been one of the few people on board to care. I knew many of the legionnaires on board the ‘Howl were simply following orders. Perhaps blindly, perhaps to dangerous effect. Still. Life is not so easy for us in Shatter that I would celebrate its loss as some of the coarser crew did. Erin, I think, felt the same, though the Captain always kept her feelings close to her chest.
The second miracle, of which the chief discussion was little more than hushed whisper and sideways glances, returned to the deck shortly after we broke atmosphere.
Rico.
Such an interesting subject, and clearly uncomfortable with his new role on board as erstwhile saviour.
But I digress.
The tale has begun, the journey continued. I am anxious to get through it now. It is what I have always wished for, and never had.
A tale worth telling.
Though I curse whatever cruel twist of fate put me in it, rather than letting me observe from a safe distance.
* * *
With the violet glow of the Dark Star to my back, I gaze out over the port side of The Kingfisher. Something in the distance catches my eyes, in the quiet moments. Something that stinks of blood and bile, though how I know that... I can’t say.
“First time?” The voice is a bass thrum as the Captain sets her own sights to the distant stars. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” She speaks softly, evidently conscious of flooding the deck with exhaust from her mechanically enhanced form.
“And terrible.” My voice doesn’t break.
“What do you see out there?” She asks. The crew work around us, cleaning the deck of the debris from the battle over Lincoln. I turn, looking at Captain Thunder as her ice-blue eyes shine with an inner light. It seems the question is just idle curiosity. I shake my head, and the stars glimmer, winking innocently at me, teasing me for my frightful vision.
“Nothing.” I reply, though it feels a stammer.
“Aye, there’s a fair bit of that out there,” Thunder admits with a callous smile. “It’s what’s in between all the nothing that interests me.”
“What do you see?”
“Freedom.”
“Out there?”
“Yep. Though Mister Mudge is our expert on freedom and he’d surely disagree with me. Isn’t that right Mate?”
“Captain. Aren’t we a little sober for philosophy?” First Mate Zacharias Mudge says as he steps into Thunder’s shadow. “All I see out there is a hundred and a half ways to die screaming.”
The Captain turns. “Zach, about—”
“Let’s not do this. I’ll be seeing the ship into Flare, Captain.” Mudge turns away with a smart salut
e, his face a sickly dark green colour from his beating. A poultice of turmeric and herbs coat him in an uncomfortably oily sheen as he steps up to the fo’c’sle and takes the wheel, tattoos swirling on his skin.
“Duty calls. As you were, Izaak,” Captain Thunder says, her lips tightening. She turns, cloak swishing in the still air of the deck.
I nod distantly, losing myself again in the expanse.
“Best be careful, Singer.” Artemis Mirrorwing stands too close. His voice is melodic. “Stare too long into the void, and all that...” He chuckles.
“He’d have to stare a lot longer than this to end up half as strange as you, Art,” comes a slow drawl. The words are pervaded by a cool breeze, unheard of in the space between Shards. Jonas, Warmaster steps close, his hands on the hilt of the sword he’d claimed only hours ago from Admiral Blitz. As he twists it in its sheath, a whisper of wind graces the ship, and the crew look around in frightened consternation.
“Jonas! Stop that, would you. You’re going to give us all an aneurysm,” Patch snaps from where he stands by Lily, pale but alive, her sleeping form almost peaceful, if you discount the blood.
Jonas takes his hand from the sword with a flourish, clenching and unclenching his fist. He looks around as if searching for someone small and killable, and finding Rico missing, ends up staring out at the sky beside Artemis and I.
“Peaceful,” he says finally.
Artemis laughs so hard he spits. “I never thought I’d hear that from you,” he scoffs, trying to catch his breath. It’s a small thing, but it relaxes me, seeing some humanity in the symmetrical Scythe.
“What. It is peaceful,” Jonas growls, hackles rising. “Doesn’t matter whether you’re a Wolfpack or a Gods-forsaken blind old Scythe lady with a Messiah complex, I’m sure even the Watchtower enjoys the view.”
This silences Artemis quicker than I might have thought, though my own thoughts stray immediately to Archangel, and the dire warning she presented. The silence seems to echo around us, even the crew falling still, and I realise with a moment’s quiet surprise that Rico, with Wilhelm’s leathery hand on his shoulder, has just emerged from below. Wilhelm guides him, his one eye sharp as ever, toward us as the crew turn in solemn stillness.