“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, tried to make it stick. “Yeah.”
“I am sorry I polished off that pie. I thought you were finished. I’ll buy you a whole bakery, next chance we get.”
“Heh.” Sullen shook his burdened brow, appreciating Diggelby’s attempt to cheer him up even if he couldn’t bring himself to smile. “Nah, I’m all right. Just ready to be back with our friends.”
“Then off we go,” said Diggelby, hopping lightly to his buckle-shoed feet and then looking a little sheepish about it as Sullen and Nemi readied themselves to go back into the rain with far less celerity.
“I’m waiting to take my cure until we see if we can reach the Gate before first light, because if not I’ll just sleep all day anyway,” said Nemi, making sure the oilskin cover was tight over Zeetatrice’s cage. “She doesn’t like being out of the vardo, and when she’s nervous she’s less dependable with her eggs. So I’m conserving the ones I have.”
“Hey, you don’t owe me an explanation,” said Sullen. “You tend you and I’ll tend … actually, I’ll just let you tend me, too. Seems safest.”
“Here, let me make sure the stitches haven’t ripped,” said Nemi, and was about to put the cage back down in the muck when he waved her off.
“Nah, it’s fine, everything is fine.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, because he didn’t feel too much worse than usual, but he also knew just pulling his wet tunic up off his belly was going to be nauseatingly bad and he could wait quite a while on that. Let him get safely back to Keun-ju and Ji-hyeon and then he could worry about his wound, and the fate of the Star, and all such other trivial matters.
“How do you think Purna’s getting on with your mom?” Diggelby asked, staring off into the rain. “I couldn’t have lived with myself if I subjected another poor devil to the same bondage I put Prince through, but I do find myself wishing I could have found some other way of joining them. To be a gadfly on the wall …”
“You think they’re having it out?” Sullen had spent all his time imagining his mother being crazy at Keun-ju; he hadn’t even stopped to think how she and Purna would clash.
“I think they’ve got to be tight as ticks by now,” said Diggelby. “Purna lives for that barbarian buffoonery. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Let’s just hope Hoartrap treats them better than others who trusted him,” said Nemi darkly, “and that Othean hasn’t fallen in the meanwhile.”
“Hope’s for dopes,” said Diggelby, hoisting his sequin-shedding pack and heading out into the drizzle. “That said, I’ve got a great feeling about this. Anyone care to lay a modest wager that we’ll soon see our old friends?”
CHAPTER
12
You know what, maybe it’s a little much,” said Maroto, cocking his head and watching the skull in the looking glass do the same. During the week or so of preparations they’d made before sailing from Darnielle Bay he’d helped convert the rear half of her captain’s quarters into this dressing room, and it had seemed a shame to not take advantage of it, but now he was having second thoughts. “I’m way too old to rock this shit anymore.”
“Some looks are timeless,” said Lupitera, her own greasepaint foundation even whiter than the lead paste she’d used on him. “And if you even think of washing that off after all the time I spent putting it on I will slap the taste out your mouth.”
“I should be so lucky,” muttered Maroto, reaching for the jug of papaya grog on the cluttered vanity. The tropical tang reminded him of Purna’s lip gloss, that nostalgic twinge in his breast the only thing that let him choke down the sugary swill. Well, that and he really needed to get his courage up for this predawn assault bullshit. “So, Carla—”
“Lupitera,” she corrected, holding up a blown glass pot of candy-floss-pink rouge. “Carla doesn’t come out until this goes on, and there’s no way in hell I’m doing that until it’s time to fight.”
“Funny how when we’re young we just assume we’ll grow out of our demons, someday,” said Maroto, frowning at his reflection. “But the older we get we’re just happy if we can build little rituals to control them.”
“Funny’s one word for it,” said Lupitera, reaching over the carcass of the fried chicken they’d just housed to pop open the gilt terrarium at the back of her vanity. Using the same tongs she employed to fish pickles out of the enormous barrel next to her tufted chair, she reached into the enclosure and removed a cobraroach. With long-practiced ease she closed her eyes and held the scaly bug in front of her surprisingly smooth old face, prompting it to spit its juices onto her eyelids. “Fancy a toot?”
“Nah, it’d clash with my skullface,” he said, though he knew full well he could take a hit anywhere and get the stimulating effects of the venom without the iridescent lavender swelling it triggered in thinner tissues. Used to be a time when turning down an insect hurt bad as blue balls, even after he’d been clean for ages, but ever since making the infested acquaintance of the Vex Assembly he’d come to find the creepy-crawlies utterly repulsive.
If only he’d had that moment of clarity before the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue and stayed sober for the big fight, maybe he could have protected Purna from her fatal wound … Presumably fatal, as Bang had insisted every time he brought up his fallen friend, but then she still held out hope for the rest of her old crew and Maroto was absolutely certain the lot of them had bought it when their ship had sunk off the coast of Jex Toth.
And if even Captain Positivity thought this imminent sneak attack was an unwinnable engagement, why the devils was Maroto still going through with it?
“You look a thousand leagues away,” said Lupitera, fluttering her spit-dyed eyelids as she dropped the cobraroach back into its enclosure. “Can’t blame you for wishing you were, all things considered.”
“At my age I’ve learned better than to waste time on wishes,” said Maroto, daydreaming even as he said it that he’d absconded the night before with Bang, Niki-hyun, Dong-won, and all the mutineers they had enticed into crewing the Empress Thief, and the two other formerly Imperial ships that had defected along with them. No sense getting too down, though—assuming he lived out the war he’d most definitely see his captain again. Bang had forgotten the pipe Zosia had made her in Maroto’s bunk after their final tryst, and while she might be able to do without her briar or without her cabin boy she couldn’t get by missing both.
“Well, at my age I’ve learned that wishes sometimes come true,” said Lupitera, waving an enormous candelabrum in front of her face to light a blunt and nearly setting her enormous daffodil-yellow wig on fire. After getting the cigar-wrapped saam going she passed it over and blew out an enormous purple plume. “Like I always dreamed I’d see you again, so I could call you out for being the no-account show-jumping piece of trash you are.”
“And tell me what a success the show was after I left, don’t forget that part,” said Maroto, though there was fat chance of that happening. She’d only reminded him twice a day the whole damn trip up here to Othean.
“I’m never going to forget that part,” she said as he took an enormous hit from the crackling blunt, the honey she’d sealed it with sticking to his white-daubed lips. “I must be demented, letting you understudy my performance as savior of the Star after all your punkassitude.”
“If you’d seen the things I had on Jex Toth you wouldn’t be so sure we were saving anybody,” said Maroto, passing back the blunt. His smoke-tickled lungs felt warm and good, but his hands were still shaking. “And look, I oughta come clean. I told you all about how we got captured by the Vex Assembly and the Tothans, right, and how they only let us go so we’d spread the word of their coming, get everybody good and scared … but I didn’t tell you everything.”
Lupitera raised her bloodshot eyes as she took an enormous hit, the eggplant stain of the bug spit spreading up past her impeccably threaded eyebrows.
“Yeah, so …” Maroto gulped. Why did coming clean always feel so dirty? He�
�d betrayed the whole damn human race; the least he could do was own that shit. Especially since he was fixing to throw his life away to make up for the sin. “So I didn’t just help birth those sea monsters of theirs while we were stuck out there … I … I kinda collaborated with the Vex Assembly?”
“What?” Lupitera’s eyes narrowed and she took an even bigger drag.
“Those evil old priests? The ancient leaders of Jex Toth, they call themselves the Vex—”
“No, dumbass, what d’ya mean you kinda collaborated with them?” Lupitera darted the blunt out and tapped hot ash on Maroto’s exposed knee. He jumped, belatedly pulling his dressing gown back over his leg. “What all did you collaborate on, hmmm? A new quiche recipe? A game of mash? Because I know not even Maroto Moonfruit would be shitty enough to collaborate with monsters on their plan to take down the Star! Right?”
“Um …” said Maroto. “Can I have another hit on that?”
“Oh you’re gonna get hit all right, as soon as I get these nails off!” Lupitera took another heroic drag, holding it in as she flicked the blunt at him and said, “I can’t believe you, Maroto, I really can’t.”
“I can’t, either,” he said, not flinching as the burning missile bounced off his chest and landed in his lap. Picking it up before it could burn through the satin, he felt about as low as shit on a centipede’s shoe. Lower, maybe. Nothing for it but to close his eyes and take the biggest hit he could, try to pass off the tears that were coming as the product of a cough.
“Say one thing for you, you’re consistent,” Lupitera said when Maroto was done hacking on the smoke and wiping his cheeks. She was buffing her pinwheel-painted talons instead of removing them, which was a good omen. Then she stopped and looked up, past Maroto, past the rows of gaudy gauze and chintzy chemise, past the ornate captain’s chamber that had so recently housed a cardinal of the Burnished Chain, past everything … and then started buffing again, a slow smile creeping up her ghostly cheeks. “So you helped them plan their attack, is that it? Went over their tactics together?”
“I know what you’re thinking, but nah, nothing that useful,” he said glumly. “The Vex Assembly are definitely crazy but they ain’t stupid. When I said I collaborated I meant I let them in my head, told them everything I know about the Isles, the Empire, and the rest of the Star. I even drew them maps and shit, but they definitely didn’t let me in on their plans.”
“Maybe not, but they would have based their plans on your intelligence … or lack thereof.”
“I know.” Maroto shook his head. “All I can think about is how I should’ve somehow found a way to misdirect them, given them bad information. But I didn’t. I was too scared and too stupid and—”
“Too stupid is you all over,” said Lupitera, pouring herself another brimming teacup of grog and stirring in royal jelly. “That explains why they’re throwing everything they’ve got at the Autumn Palace.”
“Because it’s where the empress and her court reside, and I told them with Star politics it’s best to cut the head off the scorpion straightaway,” said Maroto. “Like I said, I sold out the Star without a second thought.”
“One, scorpions don’t have heads,” said Lupitera, ranging around on the vanity for something. “And two, have you ever even been to Othean?”
“Just the once, when Kang-ho talked me into helping him steal the royal family’s pet unicorn. That did not end well.” Maroto smiled a little at the memory, disastrous though it was. Maybe his old buddy was in Othean right now, and together they’d earn noble deaths protecting the very realm they had once sought to fleece …
“And your little adventure, it was in the autumn?”
“Hells if I know,” said Maroto. “That was twenty … twenty-seven years ago? Maybe?”
“It was the autumn, and that’s exactly my point,” said Lupitera, finally unearthing a sheaf of papers from beneath a pile of folios. Settling back down onto her seat with a peacock quill and pot of octopus ink she rapidly began scratching out a letter in High Immaculate.
“What’s exactly your point?” Either this saam was way more potent than what they’d been smoking on the way up here or waking so early for the imminent attack had gotten him halfway to bombed before he’d even started puffing. He should make some kaldi …
“My point is you did give the Tothans disinformation, whether you meant to or not,” said Lupitera. “You told them Empress Ryuki would be in the Autumn Palace, because that’s where she was when you and Kang-ho tried to nab her horny horse, didn’t you? Maybe you even drew them a map of where the palace is on the Isle?”
“Yeah?”
“But the empress isn’t there!” Lupitera glanced up from her letter, meeting Maroto’s red eyes in the looking glass. “It might just look like one giant city from outside, but there are four different palaces in Othean. They’re miles and miles away from each other, and each has its own walls, its own defenses. And the royal court cycles through them according to the seasons—what season is it now?”
“Um … not autumn?” said Maroto, all the weird weather and lack of a calendar making it hard to reckon if winter was still lingering on or if they’d rounded the wheel into spring yet.
“Precisely,” said Lupitera, going back to her letter. “You thought you were betraying the Star but all you were doing was giving the enemy intelligence that’s a quarter century out of date, and filtered through your fat head to boot. Not only did you mislead them, but you can tell us exactly how and we can plan accordingly. You wrote their playbook, so you can read their moves.”
“Yeah … yeah!” Maroto realized he’d let the blunt go out in his fingers and set it down on the vanity. His hand wasn’t shaking anymore. Then he pursed his lips—was he really such a fuckup he hadn’t even been able to help an army of monsters successfully ambush the Star? “I mean, there’s no way of knowing how much of my intelligence they actually listened to …”
“They listened to enough,” said Lupitera. “If you hadn’t told them to go after the Autumn Palace first they probably would’ve hit the Summer Palace instead. It’s at the northern tip of Othean, see, and the north shore’s where the invasion is coming from. The Immaculates couldn’t account for the Tothans marching so far southwest to begin their siege, and assumed it was some trick to divert forces from the Winter Palace, where the empress and her court are all holed up. But it’s all thanks to you! I’m writing the Immaculate command right now to let them know we’re going to amend our attack accordingly.”
“Oh,” said Maroto, bumming another sip on the grog jug. “But maybe leave out how you came by that information exactly, huh?”
“Me, steal your applause?” Lupitera signed the letter with a flourish. “Always.”
“So we hold off on attacking for now, smart,” said Maroto, hoping his words hadn’t slurred as he smacked his sticky lips. Admiring his reflection in the glass as Lupitera blew on her letter, two things sprung to his bleary mind. First was that the blunt hadn’t been sealed with honey but Lupitera’s psychotropic royal jelly. Second was that his old friend had done a fleet job, between cleaning up his flattop and applying his skull makeup. Before they joined the war for real he’d have to get her to reapply it.
“Oh no, darling, you’re still leading this morning’s charge,” said Lupitera, her voice sounding as slow and drippy as the wax running down the arms of the candelabrum. She leaned in with white-blobbed fingers to fix the tear smears on his cheeks, her turquoise mouth stretching wide to swallow him whole. “The Immaculates are counting on us to send some reinforcements to the Autumn Palace, after all, and since you know this particular area so well I can’t think of a better volunteer to lead our suicide regiment.”
It took a while for all the heavy syllables to bounce down his ears, but when they did Maroto slowly nodded his assent. It said something about his recent quality of life that the only thing that really bummed him out about this plan was the fact that he was definitely going to have to bang some bugs to di
spel the brain fog brought on by the royal jelly. As if sensing his need, Lupitera went straight for the buzzing jar of icebees chilling in the champagne bucket.
“Let’s do this!” Maroto slapped his hands together once the stings were working their familiar magic. Now he couldn’t wait to get wet, in the shallows off Othean when they landed or in rivers of monster blood, whichever flowed first. “Me leading Azgarothians on a suicide mission to save the Isles. So much for playing the Villain!”
“I never bought you in that role anyway,” said Lupitera, taking a bump of candied larva off the back of her hand. “And there won’t be Azgarothians in your squad.”
“No?” Fast as Maroto’s brain was racing now he couldn’t figure out who else there might be, moored out here just off the Othean coast. “Who am I taking?”
“All those Chainites you brought into our clutches,” said Lupitera, grinning even wider as a nosebleed jumped her upper lip, making her look less like a wereclown and more like a glampire. “They’re in such a rush to meet their maker, I thought you could be so good as to make the introductions.”
After a moment’s silence they both erupted into wild cackling. It wasn’t a very nice sort of laughter, but then neither of them was a very nice sort of person, really. They had shown up here at the end of the world to fight for the underdogs, though, and that was more than you could say for your average lowlife bug addict performance artist.
CHAPTER
13
He licked her face. Zosia started up onto her elbows, blinking in the harsh light of the interrogation lamp. The obsidian floor was warped beneath them into a series of ridges and valleys, twisted gurneys and chairs and tools jutting out from the frozen waves of volcanic glass. The thing that looked like an old dog wagged its tail to beat the band in the melted mess of the Office of Answers.
A War in Crimson Embers Page 37