by Traci Chee
It took him a few days and a few moments of doubt before he crossed the mountains, but when he finally saw the ocean it was worth it.
The sea was a magnificent tempestuous creature, bluer than the sky, with silver crests and wings of spray and mist. Its voices were white birds with black-tipped wings and the deep thrum of water on rock.
But in the little port town, he couldn’t get anyone to hire him. “Can’t hire a sailor who can’t sail,” they said, laughing.
But he had to be out there. The water was waiting for him.
He stowed away in the bowels of a passenger ship and sailed off in the stinking darkness of the bilge.
Days passed. Three nights of sneaking out, filching handfuls of food and a few gulps of fresh air before retreating into hiding again. He would have made it all the way to Liccaro if not for the tailors.
They weren’t actually tailors, of course, but he’d never learned who they really were.
They were on deck one night when he popped up from the main hatch for a glimpse of the sky. It was overcast, but the moon floated through the clouds, its light an oil slick in the darkness.
“Isn’t there anywhere else we can hide it?” the woman asked. Reed couldn’t make out her features, but she wore a sharp silver ring on one of her fingers.
The man shook his head. “What is ridden comes to pass.”
Clutching the lip of the hatch, Reed blinked in confusion. He was about to duck out of sight when the woman turned, her dark eyes fixed on him, as if she’d known he was there all along. She raised her hand, and something struck him in the neck.
He collapsed.
The man and woman stalked toward him.
He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even open his mouth to scream.
“We’re sorry,” the woman said, plucking a dart from his throat.
The rest of the memory was fragmented, as full of holes as a rusted bucket: the man carrying Reed belowdecks—the weave of an oversize sweater beneath his cheek—quarters packed with bolts of cloth and needles sharp as spines—in the ceiling, a knot of wood shaped like an eye.
Reed couldn’t be sure, but he thought the woman may have smoothed his hair from his forehead. Maybe he was reminded of his own mother, except for the odd tang of copper at the back of his throat.
Over the years he must have blocked out most of what happened, but he still remembered the worst of it: the man uncorking a bottle of ink—the woman lifting a scrap of parchment decorated with dots and curious designs the like of which Reed had never seen.
The man dipped a needle into the ink and began piercing the flesh of Reed’s chest over and over and over. Reed tried to scream. Tried to flinch or wince or cry. But the paralysis held him fast.
He didn’t know how long he lay there or what else they did to him, but he remembered the pain folding over itself again and again as the man deepened the tattoos, making sure they would never fade.
They mopped up the blood—or did they?
The man washed his hands, he thought.
The woman set the sheet of paper on fire and dropped it into a metal bowl.
Maybe she withdrew a bottle of amber liquid from her bag. Maybe she pinched his nose shut to get him to swallow, or maybe she injected him. All he remembered was falling back into darkness, which closed over his head like ink.
• • •
Shivering and wet, he awoke to salt water splashing into his face, up his nose, and down his throat. He gagged, recoiling.
He could move again.
His chest ached. His legs were numb. Raising his head, he looked around.
He was tied to a barrel—floating in a turquoise sea with sandbars peeping up from beneath the water. The passenger ship was nowhere in sight.
The morning sun blazed down on him. Every now and then a faint thread of blood leaked from the tattoos on his chest, drawing white water snakes that circled him, curiously, their tongues flicking in and out, testing for blood.
He fumbled with the ropes, but they’d swollen in the water. His shriveled fingers couldn’t undo them.
He attacked the fibers with his teeth, pricking his lips and gums on the rough cord.
Black-tipped sharks emerged beneath him. Pain surged through his calf as one of them sunk its teeth into him. Reed kicked out, but the shark had already circled away. Blood streamed from the bite.
Something flashed in the waves—another triangular fin, another tipped tail. The creatures were all around him now, darting in to nip at his body and darting out again. Panic gripped him.
Was this how he was going to die?
It couldn’t be. He’d waited sixteen years to see the ocean. It couldn’t betray him like this.
There was a gunshot. Water sprayed up around him. A white snake split in half, its pieces snapped up by sharks before they’d even begun to sink.
A shadow fell over him—a ship with white sails, a green hull, and a figurehead shaped like a tree.
There were more shots. Someone whooping, “Lookee what we got here!” Laughter. Bullets sank into the waves around him, scattering the open-water predators.
People lowered themselves over the rails. Reed’s bonds parted beneath their knives, and he slipped under the surface, flailing and coughing. He’d never learned to swim.
The sailors lifted him up by the armpits, remarking on his strange tattoos, and hoisted him onto the deck, where he collapsed, limbs throbbing, chest stinging.
“What’re you doing out here, boy?” someone asked.
In answer, Reed vomited up seawater.
“Easy,” the man said, hunkering down beside him. He had a severe face with dead gray eyes and a notch on the bridge of his nose. “You’re safe now. You’re on the Current of Faith.”
CHAPTER 20
Bloodletters
Whenever Archer closed his eyes now, he dreamed of Sefia. Every night, as soon as he drifted off, there she was. She was Argo, missing a face. She was Oriyah, with Hatchet’s gun to the back of her skull. She was in the ring, or in the crates, or on a funeral pyre. It was inevitable—retribution for the pain he’d caused—and it’d be Sefia who paid the price.
He wasn’t the boy from the crate anymore. He was worse—he lived and breathed violence like a shark in water. It was all around him, and those closest to him would drown.
When he dreamed, he saw himself killing dozens and dozens of people, felt the thunder drumming in his chest, and when he woke, he wasn’t always sure if they were memories or something else.
Fights yet to be fought. Battles yet to be won.
“There’s a word for that, brother,” Kaito said, sharpening his curved sword. “Bloodlust.”
Archer began counting down the days until they reached the next crew of impressors.
Five days.
Four days.
Three.
With two days left, they turned northwest into the Szythian Mountains, riding into the high plains while the jagged ridges rose around them and groves of naked aspen rattled like bones along the slopes. When the winds blew, Archer imagined he could smell the smoke from the impressors’ camp on the air.
That afternoon, they passed a split-rail fence and a small herd of cattle grazing among the sage. Beyond lay a log cabin and a barn, with a few figures wandering between them, hauling bales of hay.
It must be a peaceful life, Archer thought as he watched a group of men on horseback ride toward the cabin, dust drifting up behind them.
His gaze went to Sefia, where she sat on one of the carts beside Aljan, teaching him to read. Maybe there’d been a brief time, on the Current, when Archer imagined he could go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. They could’ve spent their days working alongside Reed’s crew, and their nights, clasped, breathless, in the crow’s nest while the watch passed over the decks below. But he wasn’t that boy either.
/> Not anymore.
Half of the riders dismounted in the yard. Chickens dodged out from under their boots as they threw back their dusters, revealing six-guns glinting at their waists.
Archer straightened in the saddle.
Something called inside him, like distant thunder, warning of a storm.
He was already turning toward the riders when the gunshot shattered the air. There was a cry from inside the barn.
A fight. His blood surged.
Without a second’s pause, Archer urged his horse over the fence. Behind him, Kaito let out a whoop.
Then they were riding hard through the sagebrush, roaring with anticipation.
Two women staggered out of the barn. The men on horseback closed in.
Archer drew his revolver. Around him, he could sense Frey and the boys pouring over the plain like a deadly tide. Only a few more breaths before they reached the yard. He pulled the trigger.
One of the men collapsed. Blood arced from his skull.
Before the first drop hit the ground, Archer was in the yard, shooting, fighting, pulling riders from their shrieking horses.
Frey shot out the kneecap of one man. Versil thrust another to the ground. Scarza ducked a bullet, which skimmed his silver hair, and raked his knife across a robber’s side. The man collapsed. Blood ran through his hands like water through the cracks of a crumbling dam.
Archer was thrown from his horse. He hit the ground and came up on his feet again, cutting, jabbing, nicking arteries and severing hamstrings, feeling his revolver kick back in his hand as each of his bullets reached their targets.
In the chaos he found Kaito—streaks of blood on his brow, blade flashing in his hands—and they came together like wind and rain, furious, driving, demolishing anyone who stood in their path. This was what they were meant for. This was where they were home.
While they cut and carved, shot and battered, two little girls ran into the fray.
One of the robbers turned, his revolver gleaming in the weak autumn sun.
Archer shot. So did Kaito. Three bullets sped through the air. One hit the man in the back, making him grunt with pain.
Kaito was on top of him in an instant, his face seamed with savage joy. In one quick motion, he slit the man’s throat. Blood splashed Kaito’s chest and neck and lips. The robber fell, choking, gasping, still.
A cold wind, smelling of earth and sage, blew across the plain.
All the robbers were dead.
Blood drenched the ground, turning the hard-packed dirt of the yard to mud.
Someone screamed. They screamed and screamed.
One of the girls was crumpled on the ground. She was small, so small. She couldn’t have been more than ten. The other girl kept shaking her, making her dark brown hair fall into her face, across her unblinking eyes.
A wound gaped on the side of her head.
Archer felt like his insides had been carved out. He ran for them, but the ranchers made it there first, knocking him aside. They were crying, gathering the girls into their arms—a single body of grief.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. Is she—” But he didn’t need to ask.
His revolver fell from his hand. Mud spattered its wooden grip.
His bullet or Kaito’s? Kaito’s or the robber’s? All three had fired their guns.
“Archer?” Sefia’s voice seemed to echo around him. “Archer, look at me. What happened?”
He shook his head, tried to push her away. He’d been right about him and violence, hadn’t he? My bullet or Kaito’s? Kaito’s or the robber’s? “She’s dead,” he croaked.
“You killed her!” One of the ranchers launched herself at him, striking him over and over with her fists. “You killed her!”
He didn’t try to defend himself. Cuts opened up on his brow, his cheek. A blow to the stomach made him double over, wheezing. The ground tilted beneath him. He saw spots of blood on his boots. The rancher didn’t stop wailing even when the others pulled her off him.
• • •
Red streaked the sky as they left the ranch, leaving the grieving family, the bloody yard. The air, no longer smelling of cattle and sage, was thick with ash.
At the head of the group, Archer rode alone. He hadn’t allowed anyone to touch him, hadn’t wanted to be touched, and now his fingers were stiff on the reins, glazed in other people’s blood.
His bullet or Kaito’s? Kaito’s or the robber’s? He kept picturing it over and over in his head—three pops of gunfire, the man crimping as one of the rounds struck him, Kaito finishing him off, and then the screaming. The screaming. No matter how many times he reimagined it, he still didn’t know.
His bullet or Kaito’s? Kaito’s or the robber’s?
“The ranchers said the Delieneans have a name for us,” Kaito said, trotting up beside him. When Archer didn’t reply, he continued: “Bloodletters. Can you believe that? They’ve been talking about us up and down the kingdom, the things we’ve done, the people we’ve saved.”
“Now they’ll talk about the people we didn’t.”
Kaito tried to hit him lightly on the shoulder, but he smacked the boy’s hand away, hard. Kaito sat back, dismayed. “Come on, brother, don’t be like that. If it weren’t for us, they’d all be dead.”
“She was just a kid,” Archer snapped.
“So what? We’ve all killed kids before.”
“She was innocent!”
“So were we!”
Archer didn’t want to hear Kaito’s casual disregard, like one dead girl was nothing, was to be expected, because deep down, he was afraid. Afraid of forgetting the wound, the limp neck, the screaming. Afraid of them just becoming another set of nightmares, to be fought off in the dark.
And because deep down, all he wanted was to hurt someone else, someone who deserved to hurt, so he could forget all the other hurts he’d caused.
He grabbed Kaito by the collar, nearly pulling him off his horse. “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded. “It could’ve been your bullet that hit her.”
Kaito shoved him back, spitting. “It could’ve been his. Or yours. It doesn’t matter. People die, brother. That’s what we do. Why do you think they call us ‘bloodletters’?”
“We’re not murderers.”
Kaito laughed in his face. “We kill people and we get people killed. You better come to terms with that now if you’re going to lead us.”
“And turn out like you? I don’t want to be a butcher, Kaito. I’m better than that.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Archer knew he didn’t mean them. Kaito was the best of them. A better warrior, a better brother, than Archer would ever be.
He needed Kaito, the bloodletters, the battles, the mission. They were who he was.
A killer. A captain. A commander.
Clack. Clack. The Gormani boy drew his sword a handspan out of its scabbard and let it fall back again. Clack. The sounds ricocheted around them like gunshots, making Archer flinch.
“Kaito, I’m sor—”
Before he could finish, the Gormani boy cut him off. “I’m going to find us a place to camp. If that’s all right with you, chief.” Clicking his tongue, he kneed his horse into the darkness, which quickly swallowed them up.
The Suicide King
It’s the same with stories as it is with people. They get better as they get older. But not every story is remembered, and not all people grow old.
Like many in his family, Leymor Corabelli always had a touch of melancholia—a side effect of a cursed bloodline, or so they said. In a mere five years, a heart attack had claimed his father; a hunting accident, his uncle; pneumonia, his aunt; fever, his six-year-old cousin; and by the time he took the throne, his mother was losing her wits to dementia.
Perhaps it was his melancholia that attracted Miria Imani to him. She was
a noblewoman from Gorman and its islands of snow and stone. Her people had always been fond of sorrowful things—the transience of spring, the forlorn isle battered by waves—and Miria was a true lady of the north, strong and enduring as the Reach.
Despite her family’s protests, she took the Corabelli name and soon brought a beautiful, dark-eyed son into the world. She and Leymor called him Eduoar, and for eight years they were content, if solemn, with the curse always hovering over their heads like the executioner’s ax.
Then, one day in early spring, Miria was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas. In the following months, she grew thin as a rail. Her skin became waxy and yellow.
She fought. She was a fighter, like all of her kin, and she didn’t slip quietly into death.
But death took her all the same.
After she died, Leymor didn’t leave his chambers for a month. His son, Eduoar, saw him only once, early on, and what he remembered was the shape of his father’s body under the coverlet, like a corpse in the snow.
When the king finally returned to court, he had retreated so far into his grief that it was as if he were still asleep, and all the people of his kingdom, all the servants in his castle, even his own son, were but a passing dream.
Eduoar was twelve when he found his father dead in the royal chambers. The shades had been drawn, and a single flake of sunlight sparkled on the carpet. The room had been so cold. Walking in had been like wading into a pool of ice.
But Eduoar had to do it.
“Why?” Arcadimon asked once.
“I just had to,” Eduoar replied.
Because he’d already known.
Because he’d had to know for certain.
Clutching a vial of poison, Leymor was curled up in a corner against the back wall, as if he hadn’t wanted to be found. His flesh was cold to the touch.
Stiff.
For years after, Eduoar was afraid of dark corners.
For years after, he felt like he’d never be warm again.
For years, whenever he looked in the mirror, he saw his father’s eyes. His father’s sadness. His father’s weakness. But whenever he stood on the ledge of his lonely tower, looking down at the flagstones below, he could never quite bring himself to jump. Could never pull the trigger. Or put the stones in his pockets and walk slowly into the sea.