Alliance of the Sunken (Spies of Dragon and Chalk Book 3)

by Samuel Gately

  “You never thought it might be both? And that might be okay, or at least the best we can do?” He looked at her, then turned back to the horizon. “You don’t think there’s any way to have happiness and still do what we do?”

  She sighed. “Not in this world. Maybe when it ends.” She walked up behind Aaron and put her arms around him, feeling his breath leave him. “Maybe when we’re too old for this game we’ll find each other again. We can live in some shack up in New Wyelin and complain about the weather. Cal can visit and hook up with all the old ladies around us.” She kissed the back of Aaron’s neck. “Can that be good enough for now?”

  “No,” Aaron said, but he turned and took her in his arms. Cold comfort was better than nothing. Eventually they made their way over to the grasses and made love under the open sky by the light of the full moon, the sounds of the wind and the harbor in their ears. A bored and indifferent dragon slept nearby.

  Later in the night, Aaron stood with his feet in the water. The fires around Surdoore’s harbor had been put out. The city looked quiet from a distance. He thought about what Miriam had said about loyalty. She was right, of course, and he wasn’t about to walk from the organization that had shaped his life. But he couldn’t help but wonder if he was being fed the simple narrative, what he wanted and needed to hear to keep moving in a direction someone else desired.

  Regardless, there was no question about what came next. He would hunt down and kill Odell. He’d promised Marsail and whether it was something his friend would have cared about didn’t matter. What mattered was Odell dead at Aaron’s feet. He’d tell Miriam and leave it to her to get Conners’ approval. Tell her to remind him that Odell had killed an SDC dragon. And then Aaron would hunt. The Sunken had no friends above the waters. Few if any of his people had survived last night. There was no place to hide. Aaron would find him. Just as soon as he and Cal took care of one more thing on the Plate.

  …

  Threshers ate at the dragon all night. They’d tasted nothing like it before. An abundance of meat, yet there were so many mouths to feed. Hundreds joined in the frenzy. Marsail’s armor of scales was no match for the countless sharp teeth and strong jaws of the horde. Eventually limbs were worked free from the main mass and the single cluster of threshers became several. Some gnawing on the torso attacked the neck, ripping the head from the body.

  The head, freed from the netted body, weighed down by thick bone and a sword piercing one eye, kept trying to sink. The threshers continued biting at it, tearing flesh off in chunks until much of the bare skull was visible. Eventually they abandoned it for more fruitful endeavors. The frenzy had resulted in no shortage of injured threshers. The sharks had no compunctions about descending on their own weaker and more vulnerable. There was food to be had.

  Unattended, the dragon skull sank slowly, down far below the Plate, a sword with a black blade sticking out of its eye. Down into the depths, to wait for the tides to turn and bury it in green.

  The Final Tides

  Chapter 41. Unlit Fires

  There were Sunken guards waiting for Aaron and Cal at Locke’s gate. They swam in the murky waters behind a new latticework which fit tightly over the entry to the underside of the Plate. The guards opened it for the pair to pass through. The click of a heavy locking mechanism followed them as they swam below the Plate for the last time. Both were shirtless, knives tucked in belts, Cal slightly behind Aaron.

  They’d received no invitation but were clearly expected. The Sunken were stationed on either side of the underwater passage opened for the two spies, watching them with cold eyes lit by the lanterns in their hands. There was no question that the Ungale now held the underside of the Plate. Aaron and Cal swam past nearly a hundred of them to surface in the chamber where Aaron first met Locke.

  Locke’s display of raw power was not finished. Wetcloaks stood rigid and formal on either side of their approach, forming a tight tunnel which led into the center of the chamber. There the cloaks made a seamless square, empty. Presumably Aaron and Cal were to wait.

  They did, for several long minutes, dripping water onto the silty ground, before they tired of the eyes of the wetcloaks and lack of walls to put their backs to. Aaron looked around the chamber and saw that Locke’s card table was still up in the corner beyond the square. He gave Cal a nod and they moved towards it.

  When they reached the wetcloaks hemming them in, Aaron picked one and said simply, “Move.” He didn’t budge, so Aaron gave him a hard poke with two fingers. “You. Move.”

  “You’re to wait here for the Lord Ungale,” the wetcloak replied, breaking his discipline to glare at Aaron.

  Aaron looked to Cal, who stepped up to the wetcloak. “Go fuck yourself, traitor,” Cal said, then grabbed him by the cloak and twisted him away from the line, throwing him to the ground. None of the others reacted, and Cal and Aaron stepped through the gap and walked over to the card table. They rummaged around and found the deck and an old bottle of the Sunken liquor. Aaron dealt.

  Their decision to find a more comfortable venue to wait on Locke proved prescient, as he didn’t return for nearly two hours. The wetcloaks maintained their rigid stances the entire time as Cal and Aaron played the Sunken’s version of Bastard Brag, favoring the low cards.

  Eventually Sunken began rising from the water’s edge and filling the chamber. Most found spaces on the ground to rest, ignoring both wetcloaks and their visitors from above the Plate. The last to enter was Locke himself. Seeing the pair, he gave a short grunt and approached the table.

  Aaron set down his hand. “The Lord Ungale.” He gestured around the chamber, packed with the Sunken’s followers. “Hail the new king, same as the old king.” Aaron kept his seat.

  “The Spies of Dragon and Chalk. I feel I should pay you for your time in my service.” Locke rubbed at the beardlike coral on his chin. “Though I have already given you the honor of being the last of your kind to pass through the gates. They will be sealed shut permanently behind you after you leave, which will be very shortly.”

  “We’ll miss it down here,” Cal said.

  Locke gave him a long look, then a sort of half bow. “You slayed Gale. Tell me how he died.”

  “Badly.”

  “And his darkine?”

  Cal shifted to face Locke. “If I’d known you wanted it, I’d have brought it for barter. Or at least the pieces. I accidently broke it into a couple thousand of them.”

  “I would have done the same. It would have joined the pile of rubble that was those of his ancestors. Good enough it is in pieces. Though Odell escaped.” Locke’s gaze shifted back to Aaron.

  “We’ll find him. He won’t last two days.”

  “He should not have lasted one. I served him to you on a platter.”

  “That’s not even close to true. You gave us too little too late. And it cost us dearly.”

  “Your costs are laughable compared to the price the Ungale paid under those two.”

  Aaron’s jaw clenched. He rubbed at his pixie eye. “I’m not laughing.”

  Locke looked around as though the conversation were boring him. “I don’t care. As I said, you won’t be down here long. Speak your business. This will be the last time I ascend this shallow. Consider it the honor that it is I speak with you. I wished to see the other Spy of Dragon and Chalk and learn how Gale died. I have done both. Now I have other things to prepare for.”

  “We need access to Odell’s chamber,” Aaron said. “He’s had contact with our enemies.”

  “No.”

  “We won’t be long.”

  “No.”

  “We killed Gale and all of his Sunken. We killed Odell’s Sunken. He is fleeing our hunters. We are the enemies of your enemies. We work towards the same end. Give us access to Odell’s chamber.”

  “We work towards the same end? Your arrogance is common. I had expected more. What ends do I work towards, Aaron Lorne of the Syndicate of Delhonne Corvale, Spy of Dragon and Chalk? The deaths of Gale
and Odell were ordered up only to satisfy my need for vengeance. My ends were fulfilled the moment they left the underside of the Plate at the same time.”

  “Enabling you to set yourself up as the new dictator below it?”

  “And that is the end I work towards? To sit in the shadow of a rotten city and feed on scraps of decay? You assume you hold the prize and the story is yours? No, the answer is not atop the Plate, and it is not just below it. It is far, far deeper. The true majesty is below. The Plate is but a sliver of the world down here. A world I have longed to explore. Others share my wonder and my optimism. And not only the ones you call the Sunken.” He gestured towards the wetcloaks. “I have seen the smallest part of what lies beneath us, and I can assure you I am sickened and weakened to leave it behind even for this brief interlude. We have a world open to us, ripe for the taking. Powers both ancient and new. Places to make the discovery of dragons look trivial in comparison. The future of the Sunken is deeper, not atop a dead thing, bleached by the sun. Not alongside the parasite updwellers, spoiled by the abundance of rotting flesh. We have been your derivative far too long. We will become more down there. We will change what it means to be Sunken.

  “House Gale was not prepared to release its dreams of return, and it held us tightly on its hook for generations. To truly explore the depths, we needed it gone. We needed Lord Gale gone. And Odell’s betrayal gave us our opening. He slew Gale’s son after he took the princess to facilitate the lie that it was an exchange. But the clock started ticking. For three years, his efforts to capture the dragons proved unsuccessful. He reached far and wide to learn more. Dark alliances were formed.”

  Aaron leaned forward in his chair. “Which is what we need to know more about.”

  “I don’t care what you need. All I care about is that your enemies kept Odell’s focus upwards. His attempts to entrap a dragon had failed. He needed to win one another way. He needed the Camron Air dragons. And once the last full moon passed, we knew he was tied to last night. The only time he could take the harbor. The last moment before an already impatient Gale would call him to account for the whereabouts of his son.”

  “So you set your pet wetcloaks to put the footprints in the Palace and alert the Queen that the Sunken were coming.”

  Locke nodded. “And with one month to prepare, I took a greater interest in laying eyes on Odell’s correspondence. It pointed me towards the Spies of Dragon and Chalk, a pair feared by his allies. Enemies of my enemy’s new friends, if those waters don’t run too murky for you. Once Jon Harpish was on the Plate, it was no stretch to involve you. And with you in place to prevent Gale and Odell from surviving a venture onto the Plate, the only challenge was making sure they ascended at the same time, with enough of their soldiers to make it possible for the Ungale to seize the underside and seal the gates behind them. Bringing the wetcloaks, long my eyes and ears in Surdoore, under the Plate helped with that task. Gale swallowed his hook like a good boy, and then the table was set. I sent Bayou to tell you where to be, and you did half the job I told you to. Had you done more, I might have considered giving you access to Odell’s chambers.” Locke turned to the side and looked out at the waters, signaling the exit route for the two spies.

  “Now, in case I haven’t made it clear, I have more important things to care for, and your rights of passage under the Plate have expired. An escort will take you back to the gate, which will be sealed permanently behind you. I leave orders that you are to be killed if sighted under the Plate again. And I burned Odell’s chambers hours before. I didn’t even read his papers. What knowledge could have been gained is lost. There is nothing here for you. I rule under the waters.”

  “Have it, asshole,” Cal said, standing. “I’m sick of being wet.”

  “Are you?” Locke asked. “You tire of the waters, spy?” He raised his hand, looking at Cal.

  Cal felt water rise up in the back of his throat, filling his mouth. The sensation was so unexpected that it took him a moment to realize he couldn’t breathe. He tried to spit the water out, but it was packed tightly and would not move. He stumbled back, pulling at his neck, knocking over his chair.

  “Let him go,” Aaron had a knife to Locke’s throat, moving so swiftly neither the cloaks nor Sunken had reacted yet.

  Locke lowered his hand, never acknowledging Aaron’s knife. “There are powers below you would do well to fear and respect.”

  Whatever force had gripped him broke, and Cal spat salty water onto the ground. “Go fuck yourself,” he said when he was confident he could breathe again. Aaron and Cal exchanged a short look and then headed for the water’s edge.

  “Does the girl live?” Locke asked as the pair waded off the shelf, ignoring the wetcloaks to either side.

  “What the fuck do you care?” Aaron answered, and then both he and Cal dove into the dark waters and began their long swim back through the gate.

  Locke watched the water settle behind them, then turned and walked back to the card table. He overturned each of the spies’ hands, studying the cards. “In our game, the low card wins,” he said to no one, then turned back to the water, his newly held dominion to explore.

  …

  Sleepy Jon Harpish had his elbows on the railing of one of the many Palace balconies, leaned forward to take in the view of Surdoore. His hat was pulled down low over his eyes. He didn’t need to turn when Jenner approached. He’d learned the man’s gait, quiet for a Queen’s Guard, like he was hoping to go unnoticed.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Jon said.

  Jenner replied with a noncommittal grunt, but took a spot at the railing next to Jon.

  “I was thinking no one might appreciate this view quite as much as you,” Jon said, gesturing below him.

  On another, lower balcony, Queen Cassandra Olmont of Camron stood with her two daughters. Kylee had been bathed, had her hair done, and had basically been so pampered by the elated Palace staff and her mother that Jon already had trouble telling her from her sister. Just a slight gauntness to her cheeks and haunting in her eyes gave her away. And the fact that they were glued to the early evening moon, a bright sliver in the sky above the city. The Queen was likewise glued to her daughter, to the point of reaching out a hand and touching her every few moments, as if verifying she was really here. Jon had a feeling it would be a long time before that child was out of her mother’s sight, if ever.

  Jon watched Jenner take in the scene below. “So what’s next for you?”

  Jenner seemed surprised by the question. “I hadn’t given it much thought,” he said quietly.

  Jon waited out a long pause.

  “I guess,” Jenner continued, “my accounts are squared. I don’t know that what comes next is important. Getting here took everything I had. I’m exhausted. I think I’ll just go back to my room for a while. The Queen gave me the evening off.” He turned to go.

  “Hold a second. Your accounts are far from square. You’re in the plus column by a fair measure. That little girl owes you her life. And the Queen owes you for her return. Don’t shrug that off as another day. Any more than you shrugged off her kidnapping, which wasn’t your fault, as another day. I guess my point is, do you want a new job?”

  “Huh?”

  “A job. Grab your pension from the Queen, throw it in a bank, and come back to Delhonne with me. With a quick stop in Danette to see my son along the way. I already spoke to some of your peers and got an idea of your salary. I’ll double it. Or, if you don’t want to leave the Plate, I’ll put you under Shay, liaison to the Palace or something like that. That would be the better business move, but I’ve got a feeling some travel might be good for you. Maybe get away from these people who will inevitably hold tight to the belief that you’re weak even after you carried so much weight in the princess’s rescue. Probably more than anyone else on the Plate.”

  “Aside from her.” Jenner nodded towards the Queen.

  “Aside from her,” Jon agreed. He couldn’t help his mind drifting back t
o Lorimer, hanging on Gale’s hook. Another who had given everything he had, in his own way, for the return of the princess. One who wasn’t sharing in the happy ending. Jon said, “Come with me to Delhonne. I’ve got a good crew up there and we do good work. What do you say?”

  “I’ll think about it.” Jenner was still staring at the scene below him.

  “Good enough for now. Let me know if you have any questions. And talk to Shay or Finn if you want to learn more about what it might entail. Or Cal or Aaron, if you can find them. Don’t take too long though.” He looked down at the other balcony. “As soon as I can tear the Queen’s eyes off her daughter for long enough to present her with my bill and settle accounts, I’m hitting the road. I miss my family.” He gave Jenner a nod, tipping his hat, and walked off into the Palace.

  Jenner remained on the balcony, watching the royal family a long time. When he finally turned to go, he left a length of rope he’d liberated from the supply master on the ground near the railing. He wouldn’t need it anymore. He turned away, his working eye brighter than it had been in a long time, the prospect of a new life before him.

  …

  After surfacing, Aaron led the way out of the rundown house and into the streets. He walked straight to the harbor, past fishing boats unloading the day’s haul, out onto a long pier. Cal followed behind him.

  Aaron lit a cigarette, staring out at the harbor as the sun set. Cal gave him some space, hanging back. He rubbed at his throat, the lingering effects of Locke’s intrusive magic not quite clear of him. After a few moments, a fisherman approached from one of the boats.

  “Hey,” he said, “this is a private pier.”

  Cal turned to give him a long look, then raised a fist. Moments later there was the sound of flapping wings as Tyrne descended onto the pier near Cal, his sharp talons biting into the wood as he landed. The fisherman gave an oath and scurried away to find other business.