by Simon Archer
At least it was filling, and something about the way the old orc worked his magic in the galley made certain that no illness ever spread through the crew. Well, nothing that came from our food, at least.
“Bill tends t’ hang his hat at one o’ three places in Tarrant, Cap’n,” Shrike said while I ate and drank my fill. “Hell’s Belly, Land o’ Plenty, or the Busted Noggin. All o’ them got rooms to let, plenty o’ food and drink, an’ more wenches than ye can shake yer prick at. Aside from drinkin’, eatin’, an’ whorin’, though, he loves his cards.”
“Blackheart’s Bollocks, then, or somewhere else?” I asked after a slug of grog.
Shrike laughed. “Ye know Tarrant, then. I should’ve figured. Bill got hisself banned from Blackheart’s ‘bout two years back, right before his tour o’ the isles. Since then, it’s been Touch o’ Gold. I doubt the bastard’s changed his tune much ‘less he’s run out o’ gold and lies dead in a gutter someplace.”
“Or fish food,” I muttered. “Hopefully he ain’t gone an’ died without us catchin’ up with him first.”
“Hear, hear,” Shrike said with a grin before growing serious. “If he’s there, I’m bettin’ he’s got his witch with him, too. She’ll keep his arse out o’ the gutter an’ maybe keep him ahead of us, too. The crazy woman has the second sight but never would tell anybody but Bill anythin’ that made any sense.”
“Think he planned to leave his crew behind for the Admiralty?” I asked.
Shrike hadn’t made a move to return the helm, and I hadn’t asked for it. It was almost his watch, anyway, and he was brown-nosing a bit, but I didn’t mind. If it got too annoying, I’d throw him overboard with a rope. If he kept it up after that, there wouldn’t be a rope.
“Aye, I think he wanted to bury his shit, see us all hanged, an’ go laughing into retirement.” Shrike sighed. “Ten years on that damned ship… Worked my way up from cabin boy t’ first mate. Woulda knifed anybody Bill told me to knife, too, an’ he ditches me along with the rest o’ the bastards.” He sniffed and swiped a sleeve across his eyes. “Don’t ye worry, none, Cap’n. Ye saved me from the noose, an’ I’m with ye now. The only thing I owe Bloody Bill Markland is the point o’ me knife.”
I nodded. Revenge was a favorite reason for murder among pirates. It was a particularly orcish virtue, too, and that was what drove me now. I’d have my vengeance on the whole damned Admiralty. Hells, I’d bring down the Empire given a chance. The man had given me a good enough first impression that I’d taken him as my first mate when Kargad was promoted, this particular revelation only increased my respect for him.
“Tell me more ‘bout that witch,” I said, leaning on the railing near the ship’s wheel so I could both face Shrike more directly and keep an eye on Mary where she sang to the winds. The soft strains of her voice stirred my heart, and I couldn’t help but smile faintly.
“Bill’s witch? Sisterhood bitch with one eye an’ her head half-shaved. She was all over in blue tattoos, too, like the Danaan clanfolk.” He glanced from me to the fore. “Like I said, she told us her blind eye let her see the future, but she’d never give up anythin’ o’ use to the crew.”
Danaan was a barbaric culture, not too far off from orcs, despite being humans. They were fierce and plain-spoken, but not much for witchery, usually.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
Shrike’s brow furrowed in thought. “Cerridwen, methinks. Fierce one, too, and fond enough o’ the Captain t’ bunk with him.”
I nodded slowly. Cerridwen was a Danaan name, and not an uncommon one, either. Once Mary’s shift was up, I’d ask her if she’d heard of this other witch. Foresight was a rare gift in the Sisterhood, but if anyone could get us around it so we could give Bill a surprise, it’d be my own witch.
18
Sebastian Arde
“I have never known so quick a defeat, nor have I ever had to flee such an engagement with my proverbial tail tucked between my legs,” I complained to Rhianne Corvis, the ranking Sisterhood witch in my ship’s coven.
The damned orc had beaten my men to their quarry, obviously, and the siren Ligeia and her pet had joined him. They’d caught me by surprise, damaged my ship, and sent the hex my witches had been preparing into total disarray. The cleansing storm would have to wait. Some of the rarer ingredients had been lost, and one of the witches had been sent into a coma by the feedback when the spell recoiled during the Dragon Turtle’s attack. The other two managed by their quick reaction to repel the beast, and I’d ordered the retreat.
We had been unprepared. It wouldn’t happen again.
Like all witches, Rhianne had a rather unusual feature in addition to being painfully beautiful and desirable. Her eyes were both completely black. It was unnerving at first look but once I’d gotten used to her, well...
Currently, we sat in my cabin, poring over a detailed map of the archipelago. The Indomitable was limping on course to rendezvous with my commander, Admiral Justin Layne, the Emperor’s Right Fist, at the construction site of his vessel at the island of Avion.
“Sara won’t soon recover,” Rhianne informed me. “Best we seek a replacement at Avion than go on short-handed. Especially with Mary on the side of the enemy.”
“Yes, of course,” I grumbled. It would cost me another favor to replace the comatose witch. Where had the young Mary Night gotten the raw power she wielded?
My cabin was, as befitted my station, well-appointed with paneled walls, a spacious desk and sitting area, several shelves of books, and a large, glass window that overlooked the sea falling behind the stern of my ship. I had a large, comfortable bed, well-suited to three witches and me, should I ever manage to acquire and keep the final member of The Indomitable’s coven after dealing with that rebellious changeling girl. She’d been powerful, yes, but her willfulness did no credit to the Sisterhood.
Of course, she’d survived Lord Broward too and now kept company with the orc, damn him. Was fate aligned against our mission, somehow? I’d lost four ships to a surprise attack outside Jetsam’s harbor and barely managed to salvage my flagship and escape.
My witches had failed, but the Admiral wouldn’t let me execute another for fear it would anger the Sisterhood, and for now, we needed them.
I rose and paced to my window, looking out over the choppy sea and The Indomitable’s wake. It wasn’t my place to question orders, and I was more than happy to turn my ire on the privateers and their lawless ways, but what had possessed the Emperor to order genocide against the orcs and their cousins? No word of any crime had reached the archipelago, and there were even no whispers on the wind of troubles with the clans.
Rhianne sat silent during my pacing. Finally, I turned to her and asked, “How did this happen?”
“How did what happen, Commodore?” she answered with a question of her own.
“Our defeat. Mary’s power. Choose the particular issue you wish to discuss,” I replied. “The damned siren and her Dragon Turtle. I don’t even know where to begin.”
“I shall start simply, then,” the witch said. “Mary Night isn’t human, but I think you already knew that.”
I nodded. Of course, she had started with one of the more uncomfortable topics.
“Her changeling nature allows her to manipulate the flow of magic with little regard to the limits of her body,” Rhianne said flatly. “She could have created the hurricane by herself and without the foci we required.”
She disapproved of my handling of that situation as well, but it was my right, and no other witch had ever denied me. “That is how she was able to break the spell and cause the… what do you call it?”
“Backlash,” the black-eyed witch threw in. “Everything else was due to that. Dealing with the siren and her beast would have been easy enough with a full coven, the same with the orc and his ships.”
I scowled and focused my attention back to the window. “How much hinged on Mary Night?” I asked.
Rhianne snorted. “Far too much. Not j
ust losing her, but the governor’s failure to kill her.”
My eyes closed. I didn’t fully understand the orders I’d been given. Why did the Emperor want to devastate the free towns, anyway? But then, his actions lately had been rather inexplicable, even to the point of there being rumblings of overtures of peace to the elves of Milnest. Very little made sense to me.
Rumor held that Blackburn retained the services of a foreseer, so perhaps there was that. I didn’t put much stock into seeing the future in cards or tea leaves or a seagull’s offal, preferring instead the more tangible benefits of a skilled weatherworker or hexer.
Mary Night had been both, but she had denied me my privilege, and I had never been denied before, not by any witch. It had been a small effort to drum up charges of treason and conspiracy before handing her over to Barlow’s tender mercies. The Sisterhood was fond of having the Admiralty as a patron, and they would look the other way a time or two, so long as we didn’t abuse the alliance.
Broward, though, had failed to both kill the witch and the orc, and they both had fled. If the man hadn’t died during their escape, I would have been working to ruin him.
My silence ran long as I mulled these thoughts over, to the point that it was only Rhianne’s touch on my shoulder that roused me from my brooding. Our eyes met. “We shall prevail, Sebastian.”
“Yes,” I asserted. Of course, I would have to face Admiral Layne over my own failure, and that was hardly something to look forward to. It wouldn’t be much longer. The lookout had cried out that he’d spotted Avion and The Pale Horse on the horizon shortly before I’d retired to my cabin.
I raised my right hand and studied it, trying to still the tremors in it. Rhianne studied me with concern.
“Do you wish me to stay?” she asked softly. Her voice held affection and an implied offer of the companionship of her body, captain’s privilege, as it was called.
I shook my head. “Rest and make ready. Once we’ve rendezvoused with the Admiral, I need you to pick a third to fill out your coven.”
“Of course.” She smiled, curtseyed, and slipped out silently.
That left me alone with my thoughts for now. The Admiral did not brook failure lightly, and I had never failed him before now.
The ship was slowing. We were close. I took a seat at my desk once more and tried to still my mind. What would I do if the Admiral decided I was no longer worth the trouble?
Time passed a bit more in a brooding silence until one of my men knocked on the door. “Commodore!” he called. “Your presence is requested by Admiral Layne.”
“I am on my way,” I replied. With a sigh, I adjusted my uniform, donned my tricorn hat, and made my way out on the deck. The Pale Horse loomed over my own great vessel. The immense city-ship was an incredible feat of construction and engineering, formed from a light-colored and extremely strong wood captured from the lands of Milnest. Admiral Layne’s flagship was almost a fleet unto itself, with a draft so deep that it was confined to open waters with something on the order of more than thirty masts, all spread out at angles calculated to best catch the most wind. She had several banks of oars, too, and could keep up with normal-sized vessels at sea.
Right now, though, she rode high in the water surrounded by construction barges, with great ladders and scaffolds erected around her as the craftsmen and witches put their finishing touches on the massive vessel. When she finally set out, The Pale Horse would be both a wonder and a terror of the seas.
A pair of human guards met me at the gangplank and escorted me up into the cavernous bowels of the immense ship. The Admiralty had spared no expense in building her, right down to an interior lit by witchlights and enchanted so that air constantly circulated, preventing the foul stink that filled the lower decks of most sailing vessels.
I was led to the office that Justin Layne kept deep in the bowels of The Pale Horse, his ill-kept secret place. It was well lit by the warm glow of witchlights, and bookshelves and glass-fronted cabinets covered the walls. A mahogany desk sat in the perfect center of the floor, a pair of overstuffed chairs with red velvet upholstery before it.
Behind the desk sat Admiral Layne and behind him, on the far wall, was a large map of the known world. The Empire to the east, Milnest to the west, and in between, the archipelago.
The Admiral rose as I entered. He was a tall, thin man, bald, with bushy grey eyebrows over his piercing, ice-blue eyes. His face was gaunt nearly to the point of being skeletal, and thin, pale lips pulled back from his perfect teeth in a smile that would have been welcoming had it not been fearsome.
It was as I had expected. As I walked forward, the door closed behind me. Then my mentor and I shook hands over the cluttered top of his desk.
“Welcome, my friend,” Justin said in a voice so deep it never ceased to surprise me. “Please, have a seat and tell me of your troubles.”
I waited for my master to settle back into his chair, then planted myself in one of the ones before the desk. The velvet reminded me of blood. It was dark and shone with a wetness that wasn’t there when I clutched the armrests.
“The orc captain has joined with the siren and my former witch,” I began.
“Lord Broward is dead, he failed his duty, etcetera, etcetera,” the Admiral filled in. “The Indomitable seems a bit worse for wear, but that’s all right. Our new allies will repair her, and she’ll be ship-shape come morning.”
“New allies, sir?” I blinked in confusion.
“Oh, yes, indeed. Emperor Blackburn empowered me to negotiate an alliance of sorts with the merfolk.” Layne steepled his thin, bony fingers and regarded me intensely. “Even now, an army swims below us, and in return for resources they simply cannot produce beneath the waves, they will aid our conquest of the archipelago as a stepping stone to the utter destruction of the Milnian elves.”
I swallowed hard. The merfolk were dangerous allies at best, capricious and prone to violence. “Yes, sir. What about the...?”
“The grand hex?” He fluttered a hand dismissively. “The idea was good, but having to be at the center of it? No.” A faint smirk pulled at the corners of his lips. “Worry not, old friend. I anticipated this plot to fail.”
“Really?” I was taken aback. “I’ve never failed you before.”
The Admiral narrowed his eyes and went still, gazing at me for a long, silent moment. “Sebastian, the moment you decided to alienate Mary Night by trying to claim your ‘privilege,’ you failed me. The changeling witch is essential to bringing the free towns to heel, and you let her get away.”
His tone hadn’t changed, but the room seemed to grow colder. I tugged at my collar as, for a brief moment, I swore that I saw Layne’s calm smile as a rictus grin.
“I will recover her, then.”
“Will you?” he asked, his gaze still flat. “You are caught up in your own plots, Sebastian. Your desires and mine are diverging, are they not?”
“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” I said, confused. “I want to carry out the Emperor’s orders and bring this… this lawless purgatory… to heel.”
“That,” Layne snapped, “is exactly my problem with you, Sebastian.”
I flinched back. “Sir?”
The Admiral leaned forward, and his eyes caught mine. Suddenly, I knew how the bird felt when it freezes in the gaze of the snake. My blood ran cold.
“My friend, the Emperor does not reign in the archipelago.” His thin lips pulled back, and he grinned. “I do.”
Suddenly, it all made sense. Layne was part of the old guard of the Empire. Like all of us, he had sworn allegiance to Blackburn after the usurpation, but it never sat well with my master. Oh, Justin never spoke of it, but I knew that he had slowly been consolidating his personal power until he practically controlled the Admiralty himself. So long as he provided the Emperor with tribute and captured Milnian vessels, he could do as he wished out here in the hinterlands.
“So this pogrom is yours, Admiral?” I asked.
His expr
ession didn’t change. “Out here, the Empire’s reach is limited, Sebastian. All of this,” he waved his hand, “is calculated to create fear of me, the Admiralty, and the Empire. The free towns are an affront to order, and you and I both know it. This freedom is an affront to everything that men like you and I stand for. It’s all pirates and privateers, and a haven for the green-skinned barbarians. For all they try to be men, they are nothing better than beasts given voice.”
Layne leaned forward. “I do not want them eliminated, Sebastian. I want them subjugated, enslaved, and broken… but if they will not bow, then their blood will flow.”
Before Blackburn took over the Empire, we had fought wars with the non-human races. Humanity had fought back the orcs and the elves with the help of the industrious dwarves. Our space in the world had been bought with a never-ending flow of blood and lives that only now was beginning to slow. Did the Admiral want those days back?
Did I?
A few greenskins served on The Indomitable. They were tractable if properly broken and willing to do things no human ever would. Layne was right, though. This disorder would spread if it were not contained. The doctrine of the free towns was dangerous, both to the Empire and to us.
What did he mean to do about the Empire? Was I willing to follow this upright, hard man in his crusade in the archipelago even if it cost me my place in Blackburn’s service?
Yes, I decided after a moment’s consideration. Yes, I was.
“Tell me what you need me to do, Admiral,” I said and bowed my head. “My ship is yours.”
“Good,” he said and chuckled mirthlessly. “You will find Mary Night and return her to me. If you must kill Bardak Skullsplitter to get her, you will do that too. Sink his vessel, destroy his memory if you must, but the witch must live.” Layne reached out a gaunt hand and tapped a dirty scrap of parchment that sat atop the other papers on his desk. “It has been foreseen, Sebastian. Seek them in Tarrant, but wait and pursue them when they leave.”