Aethersmith (Book 2)

by J. S. Morin

  “And my part would be…?” Brannis let the statement hang half asked as a question, awaiting the final detail to be supplied by Faolen’s twin.

  “I am an old man, and a poor one. I cannot buy his release from the refuge where he is cared for. I cannot take him by force. My magic might allow me to sneak him out unnoticed, but I do not wish to chance it. My best resource is my voice, and what words I can think to arm it with. I fear I may not talk my way around this problem. If I can, all for the better. If not, I could use the sort of help you might provide.”

  “You need me for my muscle, is that it?” Brannis scoffed. While Wendell could well imagine Brannis storming Pious Grove Sanctuary, he had expected to find Kyrus Hinterdale, noted scrivener and weakling, and possibly dangerously unstable witch. Seeing the brawny lad before him had come as a surprise.

  “So to speak, yes. We can work out details on the voyage there. I had not the time to ponder options that included you. I only just discovered what I have stumbled upon. With a bit of time to think, I am sure we can manage a solid plan,” Wendell said.

  “So where is it that the boy is being kept?” Brannis asked, wondering where he might be heading, should he consent to accompany Wendell.

  “Takalia.”

  * * * * * * * *

  The cards flicked through the air, once, twice, thrice around the table, until each player had their allotment. Stalyart’s practiced wrist had sent them unerringly into tiny piles, around obstacles of coin and drink. Soria was immediately suspicious of anyone who showed such skill in handling cards. It was the sort of thing you saw from dockside grifters and back-tavern hustlers. If she had thought upon agreeing to play that they were merely seeking to feel one another out, and pass the time, she knew better now.

  “Barkin’ wonderful,” Tanner groused, folding even before the communal cards were shown at the middle of the table.

  Two of Stalyart’s crew, whose names Soria did not care to learn, threw their cards down as well. The skinny one said nothing; the one smoking the pipe somehow managed to say even less.

  Stalyart threw in a small bet, enough to move things along, but not seem a bully. “Four hundred eckles,” he said, throwing in what seemed to be a proper amount. Soria was not interested in the accuracy of tiny sums like that.

  Zellisan scratched at his stubble as he studied the cards in his hand. “I call,” he said at length, tossing in a like amount.

  “Raise,” Soria said immediately. She selected a stack of coins, and shoved it toward the pot without counting it out. It might have been two thousand eckles. It might have been twenty-five hundred. She was sure it was enough of a raise to get the pirate captain’s attention.

  The rest of the pirates abandoned their cards. Rakashi did nothing; he had not deigned to join the game. He disliked the pirates as much as any of them, but was less shy about expressing it. He would not share either table or games with them, given the option.

  Stalyart looked at her, studying her face. Most Crackle players avoided making eye contact with an opponent who was considering their play, fearful of giving themselves away, whether bluffing, trapping, or merely not wishing their opponent to know whether they were trying any deception at all. Soria met the pirate captain’s gaze, though, locking stares with him. The man was older than her and, by grace of years, had likely seen more hardened men in his day than she'd had the opportunity to meet. The dark brown orbs reached out to her bright green eyes, and tried to force them to yield up her secrets. Her face was impervious to his scrutiny.

  “I fold as well,” he admitted after long consideration.

  Zellisan followed suit, and Soria blinked away her aether-vision so she could see her winnings.

  A shout from outside the cabin interrupted the game as the cards were being dealt for the next hand. Someone knocked hastily on the door, opening it before any response was received.

  “A ship!” one of the crew yelled to those inside.

  “What sort of ship?” Stalyart asked curiously, his dour, stern face resuming its animation as he was distracted from the card game.

  “The best kind, sir,” the man said, then grinned, showing a mouth half full of yellowed teeth.

  “Excellent. Signal our prize ship to hang back, then begin pursuit. I will be there in just a moment,” Captain Stalyart ordered. He took his tankard, and drained the contents in one giant swallow. The costly Takalish spirits went down smoothly, for all their potency.

  “Hey, sit your ass back in that chair, Stalyart,” Soria commanded. “We are heading to Denku Appa. No detours. No distractions. No delays.”

  “My pardon, lady,” Stalyart apologized. “I would only have assumed that you would wish to stop any ship we saw. This is not a tradeway, very much not. We are not traveling very fast, so we would not have caught up to anyone sailing in the same direction as we. Anyone out here ought to be coming back from Denku Appa.”

  “What are you saying?” Soria demanded. “That you think Kyrus might be on that ship?”

  “It may be that some smuggler wished to be very much far from the places other ships go. It would not be the first ship to travel thus. But more likely, I think the ship returns from the island we are heading to. It may be a coincidence, but I would think you would want to investigate it, to be certain,” Stalyart said.

  “And if it is not … you stand to take a second ship as plunder,” Tanner offered.

  “Oh, no. That is not the case, my friend.” Stalyart smiled. “We plan to take it for plunder either way. Everyone wins, you see.”

  Soria glared suspiciously, but could not find a hole in his logic before having to relent.

  * * * * * * * *

  “Pirates!” came the call from on deck, loud enough for all to hear. The crew scrambled about the ship, changing their course, and trying to find as much wind as the gods and spirits could provide. Few pious men took to a life at sea, but devotion always peaked during storms and pirate attacks.

  Belowdecks, Wendell rushed to find Kyrus Hinterdale. Old and fragile though he seemed, sailors shouldered past him with all the concern shown a street peddler during a riot. The scent of panic hung heavier in the air than even the odors of sea air, sweat, and pitch could overcome.

  “Kyrus, we have to do something. You have to do something,” Wendell clarified upon barging into the cramped little space they had housed Brannis in. This was just the sort of thing that he hated about being so weak in the aether: being at the mercy of those with more strength of arms.

  “Working on it,” Brannis replied, rummaging in the trunk he had brought aboard with his possessions. He heaped piece after piece of Liead’s armor onto the bed until he had found all of it. Wendell looked on in puzzlement.

  “This armor looks just like the stuff Brannis wears … remarkably so. Where did you get this?” Wendell asked.

  “Just shut up and help me get into it. I can manage it on my own, but it goes quicker with help,” Brannis snapped. He stripped out of his tunic and breeches, and began pulling on the aether-forged armor.

  Wendell seemed dazed as he handed pieces of the suit to Brannis, and helped with the more awkward pieces. Every time Brannis donned a part of the armor, it shrank and sized itself to fit him perfectly.

  “This is remarkable,” Wendell said. “You … You have copied it marvelously. How did you manage it?”

  “Depends which version of my story you would like to try believing. Either I am a master craftsman and aethersmith, able to duplicate priceless artifacts of magic just a few months after learning to keep a light spell from getting stuck on the end of my finger; or I am an overly gifted fool with a poor enough sense of direction to get lost and miss the entire world I was aiming for with my attempt to escape Denku Appa using a transference spell,” Brannis said as he secured the demon-faced helmet to his head. “Have your pick, or worry about it later.” He reached again into the trunk, and buckled on his sword belt. It felt reassuring to have Avalanche at his hip, pirate attack or no.

&nb
sp; Wendell looked long and hard at him. The pieces were fitting too well—not just of the armor, but of the puzzle before him—and he was seeing a picture he had not been able to reconcile until he saw them all put together.

  “Brannis?” Wendell ventured. “Is it truly you?”

  Brannis nodded. “We can talk more when we have driven off these pirates.”

  “Wait,” Wendell said as Brannis was about to head to the deck. “They might hit us with more cannon fire if you look too dangerous. That armor can stop grapeshot, I would imagine, but the rest of the crew will not be so lucky. If they board us without feeling threatened, you can better ambush them.”

  Wendell’s gaze swept about the tiny room, finding nothing remotely useful aside from the bed linens. He gave a shrug, and tore them from the bed.

  * * * * * * * *

  “You will board,” Stalyart told Soria as they closed in on the outmatched merchant ship. Men were lining the rails of the Merciful, like dogs straining against their chains, waiting to be loosed on their helpless prey. “If Kyrus is aboard, you will need to keep him from turning my ship into cinders. I will take you to where you need to go, but the pledge of safety must run both ways.”

  “No deal. You fight your own boarding actions. I will send Zell to look for Kyrus; he would know him by sight. I am not letting you put me off your ship until we have Kyrus with us. Tanner and Rakashi stay with us too. Neither would know Kyrus’s face, and they are not here to bloody their hands for you,” Soria answered back. Actually, she guessed that Tanner would be able to pick out the twin of the grand marshal by his face, but he had not known Brannis as well as Zellisan, nor seen him as recently. Tanner was just a middling officer, without regular interaction with the high command. He saw the army’s commanders in parades and atop podiums, just like the commoners.

  So Zellisan waited at the railing with no armor save for his helm and buckler. He was not a young man, and disliked the idea of leaping the gap between ships once the grapples had pulled them together, no matter how close they got. Even in mild seas, the boats could sway together, crushing anyone who was in the water between them—or so he imagined at least. Zellisan was not much of a swimmer to begin with. The ache in his injured knee made the prospect of plummeting into the Katamic seem more likely than normal for a man north of forty-five and stout of frame.

  “You turn sides this time, I’ll gut ya myself,” Zell heard from near his right shoulder. He turned to see the mountainous man he had dueled with on the Frostwatch Symphony the day before. The threat seemed to carry more teeth in it when spoken from so close, with no armor to stop a hidden blade from sliding through his skin.

  “Bah, mind yer own backside. I’ll mind mine,” Zell grumbled in reply. He watched as the merchant ship came closer—or rather as the Merciful gained on them. He reached up under his helm, and grabbed the corner of a handkerchief that he had stuffed beneath it. Tugging it free, the helm settled properly onto his head.

  The world grew another dimension. His aether-vision overlaid the world of light, disorienting him at first, as he adapted to the magic of the crown concealed within his helmet. He saw Sources aplenty, from the strongest to the weakest among the crews of the two ships. The only one that stood out as distinct from the rest was Soria’s, shining brightly among the rabble. A few, like Rakashi and Captain Stalyart seemed more than typical as well, but nothing on the ship they pursued seemed extraordinary.

  Well, there is nothing but to see this out, he thought glumly, but it does not look like they have anyone aboard with the kind of Source that Kyrus Hinterdale must have.

  It appeared that despite being an unarmed vessel, the merchant ship, bearing the name Fontinue, was going to try to repel their boarding. Crewmen had armed themselves with belaying pins and a scattering of blades, but there was one cloaked figure who stood out among them. His blade was a warrior’s weapon, bared steel glinting in the sunlight, the ship’s glimmer of hope. The man’s bulk beneath his coverings suggested that he wore plate beneath, else he was the size of the hulking brute who stood at Zell’s side.

  Must have had some knight aboard as passenger. Must have insisted on making a stand of it. Blasted fool is going to get good men killed when Stalyart might have spared them if they had given up.

  * * * * * * * *

  Brannis stood waiting, his makeshift disguise giving no cause for alarm as the Merciful drew to grappling range. It was not the Fair Trader, as he had feared, but the chatter of the crew suggested that it was known to be one of his ships. Denrik Zayne had been doing quite well for himself while Kyrus was stranded on Denku Appa.

  It seemed he had wasted Wendell’s time in obscuring the glow his weapon and armor gave off in the aether. It was good to know he was up to such a task, since circumstances might call for it again if they were to encounter gifted twinborn. He had wondered if Zayne would have been so eager to engage the ship, had he seen Brannis there, looking just as he had during the Battle of Raynesdark.

  The crew of the Fontinue stood back from the railings as the pirates’ grappling hooks took hold, and lashed the ships together. Brannis had been pleased at how well trained they were, and how smartly they snapped to obey his commands. It seemed that some men, either by selection or training, were malleable in the hands of a man who took command as second nature. The sight of him towering over them in his golden armor, and carrying a massive broadsword could only have helped his cause.

  As the first of the pirates swung themselves over the railings, Brannis gave the signal to attack. “Get them!” he shouted, having had little time to prepare more elegant signals or tactics. Twenty fighting men, most of whom would not have been described as such by any commander on land, faced four times that number of hardened killers.

  But the Fontinue had its secret weapon. Brannis met the advance head on. He hated killing men. Goblins and ogres were different enough that he could turn off that portion of his mind that could empathize with them, at least long enough to cut them to pieces in the heat of a battle. For all their monstrous actions, Zayne’s pirates were still flesh and blood not so dissimilar to his own.

  He thought back to the wall at Raynesdark, when wave upon wave of goblins and their wolf mounts swarmed him. The torrents of blood and gore had washed his blade as Avalanche smashed through them like they were merely glass pitchers filled with the stuff. Not wanting a reprieve of that scene, he pulled his blows. He swung lazily at his opponents, sweeping them before him with irresistible force. Invaders were knocked to the deck with broken bones or forced over the railings and into the warm waters of the southern Katamic Sea. Some were slain, surely, but none so gruesomely as he knew his sword was capable of.

  The fighting spread as Brannis’s presence was not ubiquitous. Wherever he fought, the defenders prevailed. Elsewhere the pirates were advancing and gathering their strength. Men of the Fontinue died—perhaps valiantly—but they were dead all the same. The well-scrubbed wood of the deck pooled with blood. Brannis saw that his gentle tactics were going to get his new comrades wiped out. He saw one man about to be run through, and bisected his attacker with a quick swipe of Avalanche. He winced at the gruesome mess it caused, but knew it had to be but the first of many.

  * * * * * * * *

  From the quarterdeck of the Merciful, Soria watched the battle along with Captain Stalyart. Her eyes fixed on Zellisan, following him as he waited his turn to make the crossing. She saw him standing there, his unease at going into battle unarmored clear from his demeanor. She felt a pang of guilt. If I trusted that the three of them could ensure Stalyart’s cooperation, I could have gone myself. She knew better than to trust any pirate—especially one she had so baldly threatened—to keep to any bargain without a figurative blade to his throat. She was the only one who she could be certain could keep one there.

  On the poor, defenseless merchant ship, the crew was being overwhelmed. They had one warrior among them, who seemed to have anchored a portion of the defense, but he would not be enough, it
seemed.

  Zell had made the crossing, she saw, when she sought him out once more. He held his blade bared, but had not made any effort to engage the crew. He looked around, searching for any sign of Kyrus Hinterdale.

  Suddenly the battle took a turn. The bulky, clumsy warrior became an agent of death itself. His cumbersome blade, which had seemed so slow as he waved it before him, cut through the air with the speed of a whip. Blood flew, and bodies were torn asunder. The oncoming pirates took notice, and tried to keep well back from the knight, whose golden armor had begun to peek from beneath his coverings as his movements came quicker and more sweeping.

  “What sort of fiend have we cornered?” Stalyart wondered aloud, watching the slaughter of his men even as they took over much of the deck by force of numbers. Those odds were steadily declining, however, in the face of their devastating opponent.

  Soria did not answer. Her heartbeat quickened in her chest, watching the movements of the knight in the golden armor as he tried almost singlehandedly to fight off the whole of the boarding party. She had seen a slaughter like it once before, watching the fighting on the wall at Raynesdark. She had been much farther away then, but the scene was eerily similar. It did not yet register with her that Avalanche ought to have been safely sheathed at Brannis’s side back in Kadris—she had heard the tale of it being lost along with Brannis’s suit of armor in his “incident” but she had been distracted by too many other things to give it much thought. It did not even occur to her at that moment that she was looking for a shy, bookish scrivener who had developed a talent for sorcery.

  She could only think one word, and it came to the fore as she noticed that Zellisan was caught in the path of destruction.

  “Brannis!” Soria shouted as loudly as she could.

  * * * * * * * *

  Brannis blocked off the part of his heart that cursed him as a monster as he ended life after life. Innocents or pirates, men must die this day and I can see to it that the choice is just. Blood sprayed and entrails sloshed about the deck in a wet, sloppy mess. He wished he was Kyrus, that he could just lift up the pirate crew and hurl them a thousand paces out into the Katamic.