by Traci Chee
“The red eyes of the dead,” Reed said.
Adeline glanced at him sharply. In Kelanna, they didn’t believe in an afterlife. Didn’t believe you were anything more than a story once you were gone.
But Captain Reed knew the truth.
And now, so would Adeline and Isabella and all of his crew.
The sun had been a gateway, a portal from the living world to the place of the dead. They’d managed to blunder through it at dusk, when the sun touched the water. But the sun had left them, sinking through the waves, and it wouldn’t return until the following day.
“The dead rose from the water,” Meeks continued, “more monsters than men, with two red lights where their eyes should have been. They looked like the people we knew, more or less. Sometimes their faces were clear as day. Sometimes they were hazy, like we were seein’ ’em through frosted glass.
“They wanted us to join ’em, see. They used the voices of people who’d died. We wanted to go to ’em. I would’ve given anything to . . . But when they touched us . . .”
Goro made a sound like he’d been punched. “But every time they touched us, their fingers went right through us, takin’ a little of our warmth, a little of our life.”
“Some of the crew started pitchin’ themselves over the rails,” Meeks said, “like they’d be united with loved ones they never thought they’d see again. But when they hit the water, the red lights swarmed ’em. The waves seemed to form faces and hands. I’ll never forget the shriekin’. Over and over they screamed as the shadows ripped into them, stealing away their life.”
“I saw my brother out there,” Jaunty said hollowly, rubbing his tattooed knuckles. “My brother. Hadn’t seen him for twenty years. Was sure I’d never see him again. But there he was, lookin’ almost as scruffy as I remembered. Can you imagine? I thought I could hold him again. I thought I could tell him I was sorry. For not bein’ a better brother. For not payin’ enough attention. For not knowin’ he was gonna climb onto the bowsprit one night and eat his gun. My brother.”
“But it wasn’t his brother.” Meeks shook his head. “’Cause when you die, you become a shadow of who you were. Empty. Starvin’. A monster.
“We couldn’t fight ’em. Couldn’t shoot ’em. Our bullets passed through ’em like they were made of smoke. We kept losin’ folks who jumped over the side, or who got touched one too many times and just curled up and died. It’s a miracle we lasted the night.”
“That was Doc’s doin’,” Horse said, putting his arm around the surgeon. “She thought to stop our ears with wax so we couldn’t hear ’em callin’ us.”
“And the light,” Theo added, fixated on the flaming coals, “the light kept ’em away.”
“We passed that fearful darkness together, while the shades of our friends and kin hovered just beyond the reach of the light. We couldn’t hear their words anymore, but we felt their chill in our hearts and our bones. And when the sun returned, descending out of the starless sky, Cap roused us. It woulda been easier to stay out there and let the fleshless take us, but Cap made us get up. He got us out of there, and the warmth returned to our bones. We unstoppered our ears. Never in my life have I been so grateful for the sounds of water and sails.
“But some of us never returned to normal, like the fleshless had stolen too much of them, and they just sort of faded away on the journey home. Sometimes we’d find their bodies still and cold in their bunks. Sometimes they’d simply be gone. Lost overboard during the night watches.
“We held the funerals. We said the words. But we knew. Death ain’t the end.” Meeks glanced around at the others, who avoided his gaze. “It’s worse.”
In the silence, Marmalade began to cry. “So she’s out there, then? That’s what happened to her?”
Reed gripped her shoulder. “That’s what happens to all of us.”
On the porch, Adeline and Isabella had clasped hands. “This a warning, Cannek?” the Lady asked.
He shook his head. “We ain’t gettin’ any glory for this one, folks. Might be all we get is grief and nothingness. I thought everyone oughta know the truth before they chose to throw in their lot.”
Isabella smiled ruefully. “We knew the second you showed up in our lagoon you’d ask us to do something that’d probably get us killed. We let you come ashore anyway.”
“And now?” Reed asked. “Even knowing . . .”
Adeline turned to Isabella, and as if to some unspoken question, some secret language they’d developed over the years between the two of them, she nodded. “If we all become monsters in the end, best we do something that makes us better humans while we’re still here,” she said.
“I’ll still do it,” Marmalade added in a quavering voice. “Just like Jules would’ve.”
Meeks raised his glass.
Everyone drank.
Later, long after the others had turned in for the night, Reed joined the two women on the porch and slid the silver revolver into Adeline’s hands.
She trailed her fingers across the engravings of cottonwood leaves, the mother-of-pearl inlay. “When I gave this to you, I never thought I’d see it again,” she said. Her hand closed over the grip, and it was as if a part of her had been missing all this time, and only now, with the gun in her hand, was she made whole again.
Isabella nodded. “That’s good work, that,” she said. “Some of my best.”
“You only do the best work,” the Lady chided her.
She preened, touching the crackling waves of her hair.
“Much obliged, Cannek.” Adeline tucked the revolver into her waistband. “Sounds like I’ll need this.”
“Don’t you think I’m letting you go without a replacement.” Isabella glanced at the black grip of the Executioner with distaste. “You need a gun, not a monstrosity.” She limped off into the house and came back with a cloth-wrapped bundle.
Gingerly, he folded back the fabric, revealing the most beautiful revolver he’d ever laid eyes on. It was longer in the barrel than the Lady of Mercy, but while the silver gun was a moonbeam on the dunes, this weapon was the great dark ocean itself—crafted of deep blue steel with silver crests and an ebony grip as black as the depths of the sea.
“This is too fine.” Reed tried to hand it back.
“Nonsense.” Isabella swatted him in the shoulder. “I made it with you in mind, Cannek. It was always meant to be yours.”
He spun the cylinder, studying the light through the chambers. The revolver fit as perfectly in his hand as the Lady of Mercy fit Adeline. Isabella had been right, as she always was when it came to firearms—there was no weapon more perfect for him.
“Any idea what you’ll call it?” Adeline asked.
With a turn of his wrist, Reed flicked the cylinder closed. “How about the Singer?”
A
SAVIOR
OR
“Cry of the Watchman”
JULES’S FAVORITE SONG
My love, where did you go
Since last you spoke my name?
To skies above or seas below,
In darkness, both the same?
My love, where do you sleep
Without me by your side?
A bed of tears, or gloam you reap
From willows that have died?
My love, where is the light
You promised me would rake
The barren reaches of the night
When dreamers start awake?
My love, I’ll help you find
The way, though it be long.
My love, oh love, give me a sign
If you can hear my song.
CHAPTER 26
Lies of Omission
Sefia didn’t belong in Archer’s future. Of this, she was certain.
He would end up back in Jocoxa with Annabel.
She’d end up on the Curren
t of Faith with Captain Reed and his crew of outlaws.
Maybe it wasn’t what she’d always imagined for them. But like Meeks had said—or would say, one day—she had to let that go. She had to let him go.
It was written, after all. She’d seen it with her own eyes. And what was written always came to pass.
As they rode into Ken, down the outer curve of the kingdom, she tried to resign herself to it. Archer would be in Jocoxa. He’d be happy. He’d get to live.
But why couldn’t he do that with her? Why couldn’t she be the one he brought home, the one he opened his life to, the one he woke up to each morning with the sounds of waves outside their window?
They found the quarry exactly as the Book had predicted: a flooded pit, twenty-one impressors, six boys locked in cages, and one autumn storm charging in from the Northern Ocean. But on the morning of the attack, they discovered something the Book had not shown them.
Beyond the inlet, a single black-and-yellow ship rocked in the restless water, sails trimmed for the coming storm. Along the gun decks, the cold cylinders of cannons protruded like thorns.
While Archer sent scouts to see what else had changed in the quarry below, Sefia lay on the cliff, shredding stalks of grass. Why didn’t the Book warn me about this? What else has it kept from me?
“Whose ship is that?” Archer whispered beside her.
“One of Serakeen’s,” she answered. On their travels, she and Nin had encountered the pirate’s fleet only once, but she could not forget those hornets’ colors, the boom of the chase guns, the whispering of the other children and the gleam of the lamplight on the opium vials in their parents’ hands.
Nin had patted Sefia’s shoulder in a rare moment of affection. “Better dead than plunder for pirates.”
“This wasn’t in the Book?” Archer’s voice brought her back to the present.
“No.” She ripped up another blade of grass. She’d combed through those pages. She knew the impressors’ fighting styles, their weaknesses and favorite weapons. She’d been so thorough she knew how much they’d racked up in gambling debts. But not once had she seen a word about Serakeen’s pirates. “The Book withheld it from me.”
He glanced at her sharply, surprised. “I didn’t know it could do that.”
“Neither did I.”
If it could omit a detail as important as this, what else could it do?
More importantly, why?
Blinking, she summoned her sense of the Illuminated world. Gold eddied across her vision, sweeping over the quarry and streaking toward the center of the bay. She scanned the ship, the crew, the great guns.
“It’s called the Artax,” she reported, blinking again. “Serakeen must have finally sent a ship to stop us.”
“Serakeen?” Kaito repeated as he crawled up beside them. Sefia could feel his muscles tense, as if preparing to catapult him from the cliff.
“Don’t get too excited,” Archer said wryly. “It’s one of his ships, not the man himself.”
Kaito gave him a wicked grin. “I’ll take whatever I can get.”
A corner of Archer’s mouth twitched, but the worried creases in his brow remained.
“We’re not prepared for this.” The tremor in Sefia’s voice betrayed her uncertainty. “We should delay the attack.”
“Wait? No way.” Kaito looked to Archer. “C’mon, brother, we can’t hesitate. Not now.”
She tried to catch Archer’s eye, but he was staring off into the distance, at the dark bank of clouds on the horizon, head cocked, as if listening for thunder.
Before he could respond, however, their scouts returned, slinking through the grass like predators.
“Pretty much everything’s like the sorcerer said it’d be,” Versil reported. “Two-man watch in the wood shack on the upper tier. Boys in cages below that, with another three guards nearby. The rest of them are on watch by the ramp or holed up near the water.”
“Did you see any pirates?” Kaito asked eagerly.
“The captain and seventeen of her crew. They’re mean-looking bonesuckers. Came up in boats. We overheard them saying the rest would join them when the storm cleared.”
A cold smile curved Archer’s lips.
“I don’t like this,” Sefia said, touching his arm. “There’s something else the Book’s keeping from me. Something’s going to go wrong. I can feel it. Give me time to figure it out.”
Archer squinted at the darkening sky. “You’ve got until the storm breaks. The weather will give us enough time to escape before the rest of the pirates come ashore.”
Sefia drew back angrily. “You can’t do this without me.”
“We won’t,” he shot back. “It’s been written. But we’ll start without you, if we have to.” His gold eyes flashed, and for a second he looked like a stranger to her.
“C’mon, sorcerer,” Versil said. “You can’t lead wolves to their prey and expect them not to hunt.”
“Not when they’re hungry,” Kaito added.
• • •
While the bloodletters prepared for battle, Sefia fled to her tent. Slamming the Book on her table, she demanded information about the Artax, the pirates, the fight. She tore through the pages, scouring the paragraphs for details she’d missed, but the Book stubbornly refused to help her.
It showed her darkness—wall after wall of rain—Archer’s teeth seamed with blood—a gunshot.
Over and over she saw the gunshot. She saw the trigger finger beaded with rain. She saw the tongue of fire and the tail of smoke. She saw the bullet spiraling through the air.
It was like the Book suddenly had a will of its own.
Or had it always had a will of its own?
Had it been manipulating her this whole time, showing her only what she needed to see in order to continue down whatever path the Book had chosen for her?
Or for Archer?
It was like trying to see the future through a fractured spyglass. She didn’t have enough to go on. She needed more time.
But by afternoon, the storm had come. The skies turned black. The winds ripped at the cliffs. The rain fell hard, soaking Sefia and the bloodletters as they assembled on the cliff.
Out on the water, the Artax plummeted in the waves as lightning flashed on the sea behind her.
In the quarry, a sentry paced back and forth across the highest tier. Once every hour, he traded positions with his partner in the shack, leaving the upper level unguarded.
That was when the bloodletters struck.
They descended from the cliffs above, finding slippery handholds in the weather-beaten slate. Down the rocks they came like spiders, alighting on the highest tier, where they dispersed into squads.
Sefia reached for Archer’s hand. The water slid over their fingers.
“It’s not too late,” she said.
The seconds flicked by in a tracery of lightning. Sparks flared deep in his eyes, and she knew he needed this battle, needed the violence, needed to hurt and kill.
He’s the boy, she thought. He’s the one they want.
The Book had told her differently, but she didn’t know if she could believe the Book anymore.
“One more,” he said, “and Deliene is done.” With a wave of his hand, he directed Frey and Aljan toward the wooden shack.
As they burst in on the sentries, the storm masking the shouts, the gunfire, Sefia hooked her fingers into Archer’s collar. Rain coursed down his face, over his lips. “You can still leave this behind,” she whispered. “You can be happy. You can live.” Fiercely, almost viciously, she kissed him. Whatever happened next, she wanted to make sure he remembered her—her lips, her tongue, her body in his arms—and what they’d meant to each other, once.
They parted.
Archer staggered back, surprise and longing written all over his face. He touched his li
ps.
Then Frey and Aljan emerged from the shack. From the edge of the tier, Kaito said, “Let’s go, brother.” With one final glance at Sefia, Archer motioned his bloodletters toward the bottom of the quarry.
Alone, Sefia and Griegi approached the north wall, where the cages were positioned on the tier below. Hands slipping, feet scuffling along the rocks, they clambered down the slope.
The row of cages had been built against the cliff wall, with scrap wood laid over the top, though the rotten boards didn’t stop the rain from trickling inside. As Griegi dispatched the guards, she made quick work of the locks, and soon the rescued boys were scrambling up the storm-washed stones to freedom.
On the upper level of the quarry, Sefia paused to survey the action below. Through the rain, she could see bodies on the bottom level of the pit. Flashes of gunfire. Skirmishes in the gravel.
As she watched, three figures dashed from behind the buildings. Too big to be boys, they had to be impressors or pirates. Lightning cracked overhead, dousing the quarry with brilliant white light. The runners picked up speed. They didn’t look back.
Cowards, Sefia thought.
Another figure broke from the fighting and raced after them.
Fear bolted through her. That wasn’t part of the plan. That was never part of the plan. Was this what the Book had been hiding?
Sefia blinked, and her vision went gold. In the Illuminated world, she learned who it was.
Kaito.
Of course. She scanned him, retracing his steps, reading his story:
He’d been leading his squad against the impressors, sprinting along the quarry wall, past the ramp, where they’d gathered at the corner of a long stone building.
The heat and excitement of battle rippled through his limbs. He cast a glance at his squad and raised his right arm. Flashes of lightning licked at his exposed tattoos. What is written comes to pass.