“Rosalia?”
Her eyes snapped open. Xavier watched her from the open doorway, one hand against the stone frame. “Yes?
“Are you all right?”
“No.”
He stepped inside. “Would you like to talk about it?”
“No. Not really. I mean... yes. I would. I was thinking about how I’ve let everyone down.”
Xavier sat beside her, his weight shifting the mattress beneath them. “That isn’t true, Rosa.” His warm palm settled over her knuckles. “You haven’t let anyone down yet, because the boat is still there. And who are you?”
“A fraud.”
“No. You are the best thief in all of Enimura.”
“Only because everyone else is dead.”
“You were before then as well. Otherwise, Hadrian wouldn’t have tasked you with finding the mirror. Are you telling me the best thief this city has ever seen can’t create a scheme to smuggle her friends off a ship?”
“You have too much faith in me.”
“I have faith in a woman who broke through three layers of magical enchantments and the best clockwork mechanisms I’ve created in decades. You performed a miraculous feat by putting your mind to it.”
“Xavier, it wasn’t skill that night. It was luck. I didn’t know the first thing I was doing.”
He touched her chin and raised her face to make eye contact with him, strong fingers curving over the lower edge of her jaw. “The blood of your mother runs through your veins. She was a djinn, and that means something. She had the power to bend reality and to make things happen in her favor. But the best part about her wasn’t her magic—it was her strength and willingness to use those powers to do amazing things in the service of Queen Morwen. Especially when she stole this mirror from the royal family and gave it to me to protect.”
“But I’m not her. I could never be her.” She blinked a few times until the stinging faded, too stubborn to cry anymore tears. “I don’t understand my gift. I don’t even know if I have one at all.”
Xavier dried her cheek with his thumb. “Then discover it and learn to understand it. You have one chance, and then the last people you love in this world are going to be gone. Everyone who hasn’t been taken by death will be aboard a ship bound for hard slave labor.”
18
THE IMPOSSIBLE
ROSALIA CROUCHED in the shadows of the docks. She twisted one of the knobs on her goggles to activate the enhanced heat vision feature and stared at the myriad of warm colors.
In the belly of the ship, a vague and indefinable crimson glow told her there were many people down below near the cargo hold. That was where her friends and fellow thieves would be held until they were taken away to the island penal colony to work long and difficult lives harvesting sugar cane.
For the past fifteen minutes, two patrolmen had made the rounds on the deck, one occasionally wandering down the gangplank onto the pier where he’d bullshit with another man. They both held lanterns. Rosalia saw two more stationary alchemical lamps casting overlapping pools of light on the main deck near the starboard rail. The quarterdeck and forecastle each had another lamp of their own.
A week ago, she’d have said it was impossible.
Now it was merely necessary.
I can do this.
She moved closer and knelt behind an empty crate. Soon after, the man on the pier turned his back to her and faced the open sea.
Then he unfastened his britches.
Rosalia grimaced and scurried past him, praying he didn’t perceive more than a dark shadow against the wooden path. Seconds later, deck planks were beneath her soft leather boots and the boisterous laughter of crewmen spilled from the open hatch. She lurked in the shadows of the main deck, keeping to portside, and listened until the noise subsided. Boots creaked against wood, and one of the patrolling sailors stepped onto the quarterdeck with his back to her. The other disappeared into the hatch leading to the gun deck, his soles thumping against a set of stairs so steep they resembled a ladder.
She waited a few beats then followed with light-footed grace. He disappeared down a narrow corridor and vanished from sight, taking his lantern with him. Good.
According to Xavier’s map, she’d find the brig in the lowest level of the ship near the cargo hold. She made her way along, scurrying into the shadows and wedging her body into a small nook between the wall and two barrels of fresh produce when another sailor passed by. He nabbed an apple off the top, oblivious to the thief tucked between them, and continued down the passage.
The moment he was gone, she descended to the next level via another hatch and slipped by two armed men until she encountered an alert pair of sailors guarding the brig.
At least four cells made up the ship’s small jail, and they were all overcrowded with manacled prisoners.
“Shut up over there before I give you filthy thieves something to really bitch about.”
“Come in here and say it to my face,” a man snarled.
“You need someone to work you over again? Fine. Let’s go, tough guy.”
Rosalia raised the wrist bow and tucked the tip of her index and middle fingers toward the concealed button beside her palm. The dart landed in the guard’s meaty posterior, and he jumped a mile high. He clapped a hand to his bottom and spun off balance into the crates behind him before crashing into the floor. She fired again, striking the second guard in the thigh. He jerked and stumbled against the bulkhead. His head bounced off it with a satisfying thud when he fell, pulled under by the tranquilizer in less than three seconds flat.
Perfect.
A few prisoners near the bars jumped up. “What in the hell was that?” a gruff voice demanded.
“Don’t sound good, whatever it was. Can you see anything?”
“Not a damned thing,” a familiar, much younger voice replied.
Rosalia stepped up to the bars and gazed into Jabari’s dirty face. Gods, she wanted to hug him and whisk him away from the danger. The assholes had shoved him behind bars with a dozen other men and one of them wasn’t moving. “Shh. It’s me. Don’t make any noise.”
“Rosalia?” Jabari squinted at her in the dark through his left eye. The other had swollen shut, dark purple to match his other bruises. “I must be dreaming. The guards at the jail said you were dead. Said a dragon had roasted you on the way to your execution.”
“Faked,” she whispered back. “I came to rescue all of you.”
“There’s no rescuing us. There’s guards all over, and they come down here too often. Haven’t eaten since before we were all held overnight in the jail, and don’t suspect we will anytime soon. We’re bound for the penal colony on Heridia. They mean to break us before we arrive. Have us desperate to work the rest of our lives for crumbs.”
“I know.”
“Then get out now while you’ve got the chance. Save yourself.”
“No. I will rescue you. Do any of you know how to sail a ship? Does anyone understand how to get this thing moving?”
An older man moved up to the bars and grasped them with weathered, brown hands. It took her a few moments to recognize the smuggler’s creased and wrinkled face. He and his men had always smuggled in casks of elven wine to Hadrian, bringing it over from Ilyria for the bar without paying the heavy tariffs and taxes the king had affixed to anything foreign.
Alberto Saladin’s mouth spread into a crooked grin. “I can. Got some of my crew here with me. It’ll be an easy job.” He gestured to Sergio and Horatio, two brothers tasked with the heavy lifting during smuggling runs, and his first mate Durum. “The four of us do an occasional bit of work on ships like this during the days—you know, our honest work—but I understand how these newfangled ships operate. This one’s got one of those engines in her belly not too far from where we are now. It will have to be fed and primed before we can sail.”
Rosalia glanced over the other two cells in the brig and knelt before the lock with her pickset. “Then we better get moving. Who’s able
to fight?”
“If it means freedom, we’re all able to fuckin’ fight,” Alberto said.
“My knees may be broken,” a man said from where he lay on the floor of the filthy cell, “but you give me a shank and I’ll crawl to gut one of these pigs.”
Most of them were battered and injured, the only two women among them in equally poor shape. Injured fighters were better than no fighters, and if the careful plan she’d designed with Xavier worked, there wouldn’t be a need for any bloodshed at all.
The door swung open, an easy lock. “If you have chains, then you have weapons. They can be used to bludgeon and choke the unaware if you’re silent. Both guards I took down were armed with a long sword. Who’s capable with a blade?”
“I am,” Sergio said. “But you know that.”
After he spoke up, a slim woman stepped forward to the bars. She was taller than Rosalia, and her scarred arms had the definition of a fighter. Her nose had recently been broken, and both eyes were shadowed by purple. The symmetry of her face was off, one jaw bruised and swollen. “I’m good with a saber.”
Another man squeezed his way to the front, looking lean and hard, dark hair around his shoulders and narrow, pointed face. “So am I.” Recognition flit across her mind until she remembered him from the scene in Vermeil. He’d been the mysterious swordsman protecting the carriage. “Soraya and I worked for Marcolo Aleppo. She guarded his second-in-command. I’m Luca.”
“I thought you were familiar. You both look injured though.”
“They softened us a little,” Soraya said, “but it only makes me thirstier for blood.”
Aleppo didn’t hire cheap labor or incapable fighters. That they had survived the attack meant fate was in her favor.
“That’s all I need to know.” Rosalia freed them from the chains, delighted by how easily the locks yielded to her skill with Xavier’s pickset. She’d barely touched the pins. “You two come with me. Sergio and Horacio, you take the swords and protect our rear. If we can get into the armory, that’ll be weapons for everyone.”
“What about the rest of us?”
Rosalia tossed her spare picks to Jabari and passed him a stiletto. She kept Xavier’s charmed tools for herself. “Remember what I taught you about locks and release the others. I brought something to incapacitate the sailors in the sleeping quarters. Otherwise, we don’t have a chance of making it out of this. Everybody must be mobile if a fight begins.”
Jabari hurried to work. “Got it.”
With a small group behind her, Rosalia led the way from the brig and into the naval ship’s unfamiliar passageways. The spy eyes came in handy again when she pulled them down over her face. She looked up a level, saw many immobile silhouettes of men on the deck above them, no doubt sleeping after a long day of work on the main deck. There were only two shapes ahead of them, and one in the distance near the ship’s storeroom.
One of the guards stretched and yawned. “Gonna go step into the mess for a second. I’m damned hungry.”
“And just leave me here all alone?”
The other snorted. “What do you expect to happen at the second hour of night?”
They fussed at each other for a moment, and then one ambled off after promising to return with a pint for his friend. Drinking on the job. She shook her head and moistened her lips. Anticipation tingled down to the tips of her fingers.
The ease in which she’d infiltrated the ship made her wonder if Xavier was right about her gift. Everything had fallen into place, the plan flawless down to the last detail. All her life, she’d wondered if the twins of Fate and Fortune lit her path to success.
Maybe she’d made her own luck, after all.
Banking on that, she raised her wrist and fired. Her third dart sank into the lone sailor’s well-formed posterior, and then he slumped to the floor senselessly. He didn’t even squeak.
“That’s good shit, whatever you’ve got,” Soraya murmured. She liberated the unfortunate guard of his sabers and passed one to Luca. He grinned and dipped into a bow with an exaggerated flourish.
While they dragged the guard out of sight, Rosalia crouched in front of the armory door. “It helps when you have access to rare and difficult-to-find reagents.” And a filthy rich dragon at your disposal.
Three complicated padlocks and a bar stood between them and the weaponry. The charmed picks wiggled pins and tumblers out of her way, and then the heavy door swung outward, revealing a bounty of longbows, pistols, cutlasses, and gear meant for defending against boarding parties.
Satisfied, she straightened and glanced at the group. “Arm yourselves and everyone else in the cells. We don’t have much time before he’s back.”
“What do you want us to do after that?”
“We take prisoners for now. Kill no one unless it’s absolutely necessary. There’s plenty of rope in the storeroom for that. You’ll encounter one man along the way to the engines, but I want you to bind him. Now pass the message along.”
Luca nodded. “We will.”
If her knowledge of naval life was correct after many years of listening to Adriano’s tales, most of the crew would be ashore enjoying the rest of their leave and spending time with their families. They wouldn’t report in for duty to set sail until a few hours before dawn.
Xavier was right. The ship’s at half the usual staffing, a mere skeleton crew until morning. We can do this. We have the advantage.
She slid her spy eyes on again. Counting the number of shapes in the berth allayed her worries. Less than two dozen. That’d be several men out of the fight and drugged so heavily they couldn’t lift their heads from their pillows. Or the floor, depending on where they fell.
Rosalia had never led a gang of thieves before, but she’d accompanied Hadrian on complicated heists requiring more than one body in the past. She’d loathed those, wondering how he withstood the pressure of being responsible for so many people.
After signaling for the others to linger down below, she went up the hatch first and crouched before making her way into position beside a barrel on the berthing deck. Awareness was low, not a guard in sight.
The sailors all slept on cots and hammocks, most oblivious. Four men played a quiet game of cards in the corner.
“Can’t believe they’re putting us back out there when we’ve only been at port for a bloody week,” one of them grumbled from his hammock. He tapped the ashes from a clove cigarette onto a dish below him. “Of all the ships to volunteer for this shit...”
“Rather be at home shagging the missus myself, but what can you do? It’s money in our purses at least.”
Rosalia tugged the plug from the knock-out grenade, wincing at the little pop and a subtle hiss it made. She rolled it underhand across the floor then dropped through the hatch again. Xavier had sworn he treated her mask’s lining with a special antidote guaranteed to neutralize the potion’s effects, but she preferred not to test it.
“The hell’s that?”
“Something smells... sorta... funny.”
A chorus of concerned voices reached her ears, followed by a few muted thumps as bodies toppled to the deck. Damn. If Xavier’s calculations could be trusted, they’d have to wait a full minute before the deck was safe.
A series of noisy thumps thundered above their heads, punctuated by a loud thump, then silence. More sailors arrived from other parts of the ship, no doubt alarmed by the noise, and one by one, they succumbed, too, until the mist cleared.
Luca appeared behind her, brows squeezed together. “What was that?”
“Knock-out potion in a rapid diffusing sphere. Kinda had a friend alter the design of a Shade Out bomb for me.”
“Excellent. I like how you work.”
“I saved that for their dormitory since the darts are limited. I only have two left now, but that took out nearly two dozen of them at once.”
The odds remained in their favor thus far. Within minutes of putting her plan into action, she’d managed to incapacitate most of
the ship without a single loss of life.
Good. Thieves weren’t the same as murderers, although one gang—the Night Vipers—had been partial to accepting assassination contracts on behalf of the gentry and nobility on occasion. If it meant keeping their own hands clean, rich and wealthy clientele happily paid for their poorer adversaries and competition to be eliminated. Those contracts were rare and monitored closely.
What would they do without the Vipers? she wondered. Their operation had been a terrifying but integral part of Enimura tradition going back since the founding of the three guilds. At one point, Hadrian mentioned Grandmaster Ombre bringing all of the gang leaders together to discuss talk of instituting a fourth guild for assassination, the first of its kind across the eleven kingdoms.
Rosalia climbed up the hatch to the upper level. The fog dispersed, and the faint hint of night-blooming jasmine faded. “All right,” she whispered down to the others. One by one, the able-bodied thieves came after her.
There was no turning back now.
BY THE TIME the escaped thieves secured the living area and Rosalia made it to the top deck, the battle was winding down with minimal bloodshed and only a single casualty. There had only been a few men spread throughout the berth and gun deck, and fewer patrolling topside.
One of the older thieves had been slashed, cut down brutally during the uprising against the small number of trained naval crew on the main deck. Luca and Soraya had the rest well in hand, the former as deadly barefoot and in rags as he’d been the night Rosalia watched him take down a half dozen city watchman to protect his employer.
Alberto controlled the wheel while Durum and Horatio secured the quarterdeck. They had already disabled the handful of sailors there. The naval ship pulled from the harbor, and in the distance, dozens of armed sailors rushed down the docks, pursued by city watchmen aiming bows and nocking arrows. No sooner did her magnified lenses focus on the figure leading them, did a sense of dread spread through the pit of her stomach and turn her confidence to ice.
All That Glitters: a Fantasy Romance (Daughter of Fortune Book 1) Page 15