A Crown for Cold Silver

by Alex Marshall

  “It’s like you’re already gone,” said Brother Wan, wiping his sleeve over his mouth to catch the saliva dripping from the permanent snarl of his exposed gums. Portolés’s heart ached at the thought of leaving Brother Wan again, when he had only just begun visiting her again, but then it rehardened. If he really could see into her soul, with all the secrets it carried, he might put his own life in danger if he stumbled over—

  “Get out,” she said. She would risk herself, her salvation, but she could not risk her innocent brother, and so she pointed to the door. “Now, Wan. You won’t see me again until it’s done.”

  “I’m not spying, Portolés, I’m just worried,” protested Wan, reaching one of his gaunt hands out to her. The edges of his fingers were ridged from where the webbing had been cut. “You never let anyone help. Let me try—”

  Portolés seized the collar of Wan’s robe and pulled him in, her devilish tongue slithering past the defenses of his wooden teeth, and she filled her thoughts with memories of their trysts. He returned the kiss, and then she broke away, gently shoved him out the door. “I’ve stained you enough, brother. Safe roads guide you to her breast.”

  “Safe havens keep you at your rest,” said Brother Wan, bowing to her and then scurrying away down the hall. Portolés could still call out, tell him to come back—after all, the queen had given her writ to conscript anyone she could trust to her mission. Brother Wan had never left Diadem, and since he was apparently indispensable to the upper echelons of Chain bureaucracy, it seemed unlikely he ever would if she didn’t take him with her now. By any means necessary…

  Together on the road, away from the ever-watchful eyes of the Dens, would it not be a worthy test for the both of them? And with the queen absolving all sins they might accrue, succumbing to temptation would never be safer. To fully know his flesh after all these years of teasing, fleeting contact, and for him to know hers… Yet the queen had said only those Portolés trusted absolutely should be taken into her company, and can any truly trust a lover who looks into your mind?

  In the end, Portolés told herself she left Brother Wan behind to save his soul from her malign influence. The monk looked back down the rough obsidian corridor and offered a sad wave before rounding the bend. Again, she was alone. Never had she been more so.

  CHAPTER

  20

  In her day Zosia had sailed every sea of the Star, and had always loved the Golden Cauldron best. Departing from Hwabun aboard Kang-ho’s ship the Crane’s Bill and sailing down along the Isles was a new experience for her, though; the sloops and galleys she had crewed had always set out west of Linkensterne at Darnielle Bay and immediately headed south to the Raniputri Dominions in order to avoid the Immaculate customs ships, who were essentially state-sanctioned pirates. Well, once or twice she had worked ships that crossed over from the Bitter Gulf and snuck through the narrow expanse of open water between Hwabun and the so-called Haunted Sea, where storms forever crashed above the Sunken Kingdom, but they had always raced far to the west before veering south into the Cauldron proper. That passage was not so scenic as this one, and a devil’s load more tense. Call her superstitious, but something about the wall of lightning-torn fog that marked the watery grave of an entire civilization unsettled Zosia a bit; not even the Lost Waters or the Sea of Devils gave her the same goose bumps.

  As they skirted the Isles and left both Hwabun and the Haunted Sea far behind, she finally let herself relax and enjoy being back at work on a boat—it was a long voyage down to Zygnema, where she would begin her search for the missing Princess Ji-hyeon. That fabled Dominion housed the Souwest Gate, and so it seemed the most sensible starting point; the next closest Gates were the one in Diadem, which she had no intention of visiting until she had an army at her back, and the one in the Noreast Arm, which Maroto had always said was overrun by crazed cultists, so it didn’t seem likely Fennec would take the girl there. If Zygnema was a dead end they had Jun-hwan and Kang-ho’s permission to sail the boat across to the Southern Gate in Usba, and if they hadn’t gone through there, well, that left Emeritus… but Zosia could not believe Fennec would risk using that Gate, not after what had happened the last time they had been there.

  It was actually liberating to be stuck on a boat, passing her days in honest labor and feeling her strength return with each climb up the crow’s nest. It might’ve been different if they’d been dodging the Bal Amon reefs, but not a whole lot could go wrong on the Golden Cauldron. Except a sea monster. Those could be anywhere, though they usually preferred colder waters. Or a mutiny, for that matter, but it didn’t do to dwell on worst-case scenarios—there’d be plenty of time to worry if such bad luck actually came to pass.

  Which it did.

  The pair of beasts that menaced the Crane’s Bill came the night of the new moon, so there was no telling what they looked like. Wide, sticky snailtrails crisscrossed the deck where the monsters had evidently boarded and prowled the ship before someone had sounded the alarm. They dropped back into the sea as Zosia and the rest burst abovedecks to repel them, their scales flashing blacker than the waves in the starlight as they glided away across the surface of the waves. Nobody cared to speculate if the wild laughter that accompanied their departure originated from the creatures or the three members of the night watch they had carried off with them.

  Well, these things happened at sea, so Zosia didn’t become properly annoyed until a storm blew them off course a week later, and then half the bloody crew mutinied. It happened in the dead of night, as these things usually did, while Zosia, Bang, and Keun-ju were on night watch. The chaos erupted belowdecks and boiled over in moments, interrupting Bang’s caterwauled sea shanty and forcing the trio to fight for their lives by the light of a half-moon. Even if Zosia had been sober it would’ve been a desperate fight, but she and Bang had been sharing her last bottle of canefire when the fighting broke out, and she nearly dropped her hammer a time or two before the killing was over. Choplicker must have been dozing in her hammock throughout, for a pair of mutineers barded Zosia into the prow and came desperately close to splitting her open, before Bang speared one through the back while Zobia clobbered the other overboard. It was hard to tell who looked more surprised, the sailor Bang had ambushed or Zosia herself, as she looked down the deck and saw Keun-ju holding his own against three.

  The Virtue Guard had some serious moves, and even more serious steel to complement them—what Zosia had assumed was a humble tiger sword in his unadorned sheath revealed itself to be a three-tiger instead, the complex characters embossed in its dark blade glowing in the moonlight. Exchanging an impressed glance, Zosia and Bang raced—or rather, staggered—to his aid, and together they turned the tide of the mutiny. Alas, it was too late for Captain En-rang, who had been murdered in his bed before the fighting even started, and both of his mates, who had gone overboard in the melee.

  Well, these things happened at sea. Enough crew remained to still see them safely to Zygnema, and Bang was promptly elected interim captain, so she had something to grin about all the way down the Cauldron. It made Zosia feel damn good, seeing the bossy kid earn herself the regard of an experienced crew so fast—reminded Zosia a bit of herself when she’d been that age. Given all the smoke the girl had blown back in Linkensterne and the Isles, Zosia had figured she’d been overselling herself, but coin where earned, Bang knew her way around a boat. And as far as skippers went, she was certainly a lot more pleasant than the recently departed Captain En-rang, tripling the canefire rations and sometimes leading the small crew on sing-alongs when the day’s work was done. Celebrations were had when they sighted the northern Raniputri coast, again when they successfully rounded the Horn of the Rhino, and then a final late night was enjoyed when they neared Zygnema, on the southern side of the Souwest Arm.

  Having bonded through all of this, Zosia, Bang, and even Keun-ju were all a touch closer than strangers as they approached the city-state where Fennec might have escaped with Princess Ji-hyeon and her traitorous
Martial Guard, Choi. Four of the stoutest sailors rowed a dinghy to the Zygnema piers, the Crane’s Bill waiting out in the bay. Choplicker lay under a rowbench, Zosia, Bang, and Keun-ju sat piled into the prow.

  Zosia felt unexpectedly glum to be leaving the ship; she’d be back aboard it soon enough, if she couldn’t find any clues here, but that she half hoped the Raniputri Dominions would be a dead end so she could spend more days and nights taking the vessel over to the next Gate at Usba probably said quite a bit about her mind-set. She should be champing at the bit to get back to tracking down her old Villains and plotting her vengeance after so long at sea, but instead she was sorry that her nights of drinking and flirting with Bang might be coming to an end—times like this, she had to admit she was a pretty rotten person. That she knew Leib would have wanted her to seek such happiness and diversion only made her feel sick.

  Taking a deep breath of salty harbor air, she tried to get her head right. She had to find the princess, and here in Zygnema the key might be right under her nose… She blinked as the morning light caught the pommel of Keun-ju’s sword. This close up, the hiltwork looked even nicer. If Zosia remembered her Immaculate Zodiac, three-tiger swords could only be forged on three days out of every thirteen-year cycle, on the third day of the third month of Tiger, Samjok-o, and Pulgasiri years. Regardless of the finer points of Immaculate weaponsmithing, this glorified servant wore princely steel, and wielded it with far more skill than most of the idle rich who could afford such a thing. Either Kang-ho and his husband took remarkable care of their servants, or somebody else did. Interesting.

  “Lookie here,” said one of the rowers, nodding over the side of the boat.

  “You weren’t kidding,” Zosia said as their shallow vessel glided over an enormously thick chain stretched just beneath the gentle waves. “That would butcher any boat much bigger than this. I thought peace reigned throughout the Star.”

  “Throughout the Empire, maybe,” said Bang, scratching under the kerchief she wore around her head. “But definitely not throughout the Souwest Arm. Zygnema’s been at open war with two of her neighboring Dominions for the last year, so if you want in to trade you have to be willing to wait.”

  “Took two days, last time we were down,” supplied one of the tarshirts at the oars. “Customs met us at the docks, we had to bribe ’em there. Then we had to follow ’em to their office, bribe some other ones. Then we had to bribe ’em to get the dinghy out o’ the harbor impound, where they’d moved it while we were in the customs house. Then we had to take the officials out to inspect the holds and all, and, you guessed it, more bribes. Then we had to take ’em back to shore, another set o’ bribes, and after all that? Still got to sit a day and a half before they lowered the chain for us to come in. All to snag a few little fishies. As if we didn’t have enough trouble since Linkensterne got Immaculated!”

  “Fish, huh?” Zosia glanced back at the Crane’s Bill. That name must look good in a marina manifest next to the demarcation “fishing boat,” but anyone who saw her knew she was built for two things: to be fast in a fight, and to be fast in a flight, if the fight didn’t go well.

  “Square mackerel,” said Bang, tapping the side of her nose.

  “So it’s a sin to eat fish in the Raniputri Dominions, but not to sell them to foreigners?” said Keun-ju with the snotty superiority of one who had never left his homeland. “Hypocrites.”

  The two nearest rowers chuckled, which the Virtue Guard clearly mistook for validation. Zosia decided to set him straight rather than letting him be a punch line.

  “Square mackerel is a rare breed of fish, Keun-ju, the kind you only see in the water when a customs boat is gaining on a ship that doesn’t wish to be caught. Must be a dangerous catch these days, with Linkensterne regulated by Immaculate oversight.”

  “How’s that?” Keun-ju looked at Zosia like she was the thick one, and the rowers laughed again.

  “Whatever Kang-ho’s importing from here in Zygnema—and knowing him it could be anything—it’s not the sort of thing he’s keen to have assessed by an officer of the law, either here or at home,” said Zosia, and when Keun-ju still didn’t get it Bang snorted and slapped him on the back.

  “Mistress Clell’s being overly polite,” she said. “Smuggling, man, smuggling.”

  “Absurd!” said Keun-ju with that unmistakable air of misplaced certainty in his world. “King Jun-hwan would never allow his husband to engage in such behavior.”

  “Don’t be so naïve,” said Bang, throwing an arm conspiratorially around his shoulders. “We’re all bloody-handed buccaneers now, aren’t we? I saw the way you cut down those scurvy seadogs, and a lonely raider always has need for a fit lad or three—what do you say about joining Bad Bang’s crew?”

  More laughter from Zosia and the rowers as Keun-ju tried to squirm away from Bang in the cramped prow. If she could con her way into being discharged from the Immaculate army, the girl could definitely be a real captain someday, and a good one at that. She was warm to most everyone, but that warmth belied a need to break the gaze of any who dared to try and stare her down… exactly the sort of thing that could turn a young and talented hard-ass into a young and talented corpse. Well, if Zosia had survived her turbulent twenties, maybe Bang could, too.

  “Ah, here we are,” said Bang as they bobbed up to the end of the mile-long dock, one of dozens reaching out into the harbor of Zygnema like the arms of a devilfish stretching for deeper water. “Quick quick quick, those are customs agents coming up the quay, and I want our friends here rowing back to the Crane’s Bill before the longfingers arrive to shake us down. I already worked out a signal with the bosun for when we’re ready to be picked up.”

  Zosia was up first, and tied the dinghy’s rope around a bollard to keep them in place. Keun-ju nimbly followed, and Bang passed them their bags. Choplicker deigned to let one of the sailors hoist him over the side and deposit him on the deck. The monster licked the man’s hand and barked good-naturedly at his new friend. Zosia wondered what atrocities this friendly sailor had committed in his past to earn the approval of Choplicker… or maybe the man had just been sneaking him scraps of saltfish. It could go either way with the devil.

  The customs agents were hurrying down the dock but still had some planks to cover. As Bang passed the last pack to Keun-ju, however, the soldier’s eyes widened in their direction. “Devils have a laugh, is that who I think it is?”

  “Who?” Zosia cupped her hand over her eyes to block out the Raniputri sun as she squinted at the agents. From here the figures could be anyone, and Zosia didn’t think their pink saris were anything other than regulation issue… Oars splashed behind her, and she dropped her hand.

  What a devildamn amateur move. It took some willpower, but she kept herself from spinning around in a tizzy and making a bigger fool of herself. Keun-ju was still peering at the customs agents, but Zosia turned back to the dinghy, which was, of course, already twice as far from the dock as she could have possibly jumped, even in her prime. The end of the cut rope hung limply from the bollard where she had tied them. Bang saluted from the prow of the dinghy, and at her word the rowers locked their oars, letting the tide slowly carry them out.

  “You’re smarter than this, Bang,” Zosia called. “Stick with me, help me find the missing brat, and you’ll be rewarded with a bigger boat than that wreck, and a full crew to boot. You have my word.”

  “The word of a woman who won’t tell me her true name isn’t worth much, I’m afraid,” Bang replied cheerily. “Pretty silly, considering I figured you out before we even left Linkensterne. Everyone knows about Crafty Kang-ho’s exploits, and his old commander! You’re nothing like I imagined, I’ll confess.”

  “So you know I can get you anything you want,” said Zosia.

  “You already have,” said Bang, gesturing to the Crane’s Bill. “I’m a humble woman. Not all of us want to be queens.”

  “Lieutenant Bang, you swore oaths to serve—” Keun-ju began, but Bang
shouted over him.

  “Did I forget to tell you guys the whole reason I ended up on wall duty was I got kicked out of the Immaculate navy? They accused me of breaking oaths, sowing dissent, and some worse crimes, but couldn’t prove any of it. Probably should have mentioned that before you trusted me with your boat.”

  “The seas aren’t wide enough to hide you once word of this betrayal comes to Hwabun,” Zosia called, knowing it was fruitless but needing to shake the branch anyway. “How angry do you think Jun-hwan and Kang-ho will be when they find out you stole their ship and convinced their crew to mutiny?”

  “About as mad as you’ll be when you find out I stole your pipe,” said Bang, taking Zosia’s cutty out of her pocket and popping it in the corner of her mouth.

  Zosia almost dove in the water then and there, but checked herself. “You really shouldn’t have done that, Bang. Stealing the boat’s one thing, I can respect that. You’re young and stupid, so I’ll cut you some slack. But you take that briar and I’ll hunt you to the ends of the Star. You know who I am, that means you know what I’ve done, what I can do!”

  “Tell you what, Cobalt Queen,” said Bang, taking the pipe out of her mouth and pointing it at Zosia. “You catch me, I’ll give you a kiss wherever you want, and your pipe back besides!”

  “When I catch you, Bang, I’m going to mess you all up!” Zosia shouted to be heard, the dinghy drifting farther away. “Pirates always look better with an eye patch, so I’ll give you a matching set! Hooks and peglegs, too!”

  “And here I thought you wanted to give me a different sort of pegging!”