by Steve Rzasa
Man is a misnomer. He can’t be more than sixteen. But he was listed among the crew of a lateen-rigged cloudship from Kent’s Roost, a Northamber port, and thus liable to render assistance to the Crown where he must.
I ease off on the lightning. He’s a slender lad, bony-chested, not three hairs on his chin or lip. Stripped to the waist of his tunic and barefoot, he looks more like he’s ready for a brisk ocean swim. He gasps for breath, eyes glassy and unfocused.
I let him recover. We’re in one of the back rooms at Kolovare’s, a plain space of wooden walls and stone floor containing shelves of boxes and jars. The smell of pickled fish and salted meats pervades so that I’ll need to wash my garments when we’re through. It’s cool enough here steam rises from the boy’s flesh. The only light comes from a pair of small windows inset in the wall, just below the ceiling, to my right.
My staying as far out of the light as possible is designed to increase his discomfort.
“You say you overheard Captain Bowen Cord talking with the owner of Kolovare’s. What did they say? And do not feed me a falsehood as you first did. You feel now the reward for untruthfulness.”
He nods, quickly, a bird bobbing his head. His voice is patchy and uneven as a poorly raked road. “They did. They were. That is, I heard them say a word. A name. Didn’t know it myself, but I figured it for somewhere foreign…”
I nod. “Tell me.”
“It sounded like Jassnah…or Yassna? Yassna gorra? Is that far off?”
“It is.” My pulse quickens. Jasna Góra, is it? The great library. The sanctuary of the Most High. The fortress of… well, potential complications, let me state it thus.
“Think, and think well, boy.” I lean in close, and hold my index finger and thumb of my metal hand close to his cheek. Tiny bolts jump between the fingers. “Why was Cord going there?”
“He…he wasn’t going. He was coming.” The boy’s speech quickens, his face pales, his breathing accelerates. “I…that is, he said he’d been there.”
“Before Zadar.”
The boy nods vigorously enough to shake the chair. I can smell his hope. The stench will not leave the room. Unfortunately, neither will he.
I stretch out my hand and unleash hell.
Lightning plays out across his body, bolts entwining his arms and his legs, encircling his waist. His screams are drowned out by the crack and thunder, the snap-hiss of the lightning as it jumps from place to place. The surge of power is enthralling. My heart races, and my senses scream for more.
More.
With both hands I become a channel for the magic flowing through me. Darkness presses in around my vision. In the darkness I sense shapes moving. Beings? Shadows?
The boy stops screaming. His body, charred black and red, sags against the chair.
I stop. My ears feel stuffed with cotton from the raging noise that assaulted them. No longer do I have to worry of smelling hope. Now, there is only death, the sickly-sweet aroma of burned human flesh. It is nauseating, but I suppress the urge to retch.
Do not mistake my reaction for fear or sorrow. It is involuntary, like blinking. It always makes me sick, killing with my lighting. Yet I also crave it. Summon, if you will, the anticipation and exhilaration of bringing to bed the most beautiful woman you have ever desired.
This is more.
The door bangs against the hallway wall when I storm out. Anguished yells come muffled through the door toward the front of Kolovare’s, on the opposite side of the corridor. Those yells falter into choking gasps, and die. There’s a pause. I wait. Impatiently.
My lieutenant emerges. He wipes blood from a dagger with S-curved blade onto his cloak. “Sire. We have determined Bowen Cord was recently arrived from Jasna Góra, and has an old acquaintance there. A priest.”
That’s even worse than him just having visited the soulmages. “So I confirmed from my interview. Very good. I trust your informant will not divulge anything to anyone else who may ask?”
The lieutenant stares blankly. He slips the dagger into a sheath on his belt and lets his cloak fall to over it. “No, sire.”
“Good. Very good. As soon as Inexorable is ready we make for Jasna Góra with Encampment and Cobra. Leave the other ships here for repairs with whatever laborers you can muster.”
“Yes, sire.”
I march down the hall, boots hammering echoes.
“Sire? What orders do you have regarding Kolovare’s?”
I stop at the threshold to the front of the establishment. It is empty, and quiet. A handful of my soldiers guard the door. “Specify.”
“Vesna Juric will likely return. This will be a place that has seen violence on behalf of the Kingdom of Northamber.”
“A symbol of resilience in the face of danger?”
“Yes, sire.”
I nod. A valid point. “Bomb it. With incendiaries. I will oversee it personally.”
~
We’re on the deck of Inexorable. The repairs have taken a dragon’s age to finish, but with some fine application of the lash by Captain Hamish, we are casting off an hour ahead of the estimate. We hover three hundred feet over Kolovare’s, rising slowly with the two ships of my fleet that are able to move. More ships will join us. I have seen to it.
“You may commence, Captain,” I say.
Captain Hamish nods. He turns aside and hollers, “Commence with bombing!”
“Aye, sir, commencing bombing!” More shouts echo the first, muffled through the deck beneath our feet. Gears turn, clinking and clanking metal. Wood scrapes on wood as hatches open on the gun deck. The stubby ends of ramps poke from those ports—one, two, three, four. Without looking I know there are four more on the port side, doing the same. Their motions reverberate through my feet.
Then comes the best part. Iron rolls roughly on wooden ramps. In unison, four black bombs, fuses sparking and sputtering, tumble from the ramps below us. Four more do so from behind. After five seconds, another set of eight. Five more seconds, then another eight.
It looks like snow. Only black. Makes me think of ashes. Like the ashes of our farm when it was burnt to the ground by the soldiers. My siblings, dead. My parents, slain.
Yet my heart is scalded by lightning, and does not respond to the memory. Not once does it give succor to the sobbing child in my mind’s eye.
Pity.
Explosions ripple across the roof of Kolovare’s. The booms of the blast reach us a blink later. Flames and smoke belch from the building. More explosions follow as the next wave of bombs hit, then more still. Walls collapse. Roofs cave in.
On it goes, bombs dropping in eights, until we have loosed forty. I raise my metal hand as the last eight go over.
“Cease bombing!” Captain Hamish shouts.
Answering cries sing a chorus. The ramps retract. The hatches thunk closed.
Silence. Up here.
Down below you can hear the flames crackling, the explosions continuing, the shouts and clanging of temple bells. Tiny shapes rush to and fro, ants scurrying to save their hills. Kolovare’s is a blazing ruin and nothing will stop its demise. Nearby buildings are catching.
So. These vermin will know Northamber’s power, and they will remember.
“We are fortunate Zadar is unaligned, and has no noble to protect it.” My lieutenant shifts his stance.
“They will be ours,” I whisper. “As will all. Whether they bow to themselves or a king, they will yield to our fist. To our lightning.”
“Yes, sire.”
I turn to Hamish. “Captain. Set your course for Jasna Góra and the great library.”
His eyes widen, but there’s a sharp nod, and an “Aye, sire.”
Soon we’re underway north. Soon we’ll face the priests there. I wrestle with a strange feeling. I do not recognize it, and it causes me great vexation. Until I finally define it.
Fear.
I head below decks. The crew shies from me as rats from a torch. I pay them no need.
Before me is
Jix’s cage. It is empty.
I smile. Some, but not all, of that fear fades. Jix will return, as he always does.
For now, he can stalk my enemies.
THE TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER
~
Bowen
WE RUSH HEADLONG FROM ZADAR for four days without pause or rest. The threat of death from Strathern and his minions is behind us.
But the Bloodheart cannot be ignored. It flashes relentlessly, and I stay welded to the ship’s wheels, responding to every gesture from Luc. He watches the Bloodheart without ceasing and in turn guides me on the proper course.
Niall and I take shifts at the wheels, and Ariya stays on constant watch for pursuers. Vesna helps where she can, proving adept at watching the winds for poor weather and shifts in the currents. My heart aches for what she must be feeling, having left her beloved Kolovare’s behind. None of us has rested.
Finally, Niall’s and Ariya’s bickering—coupled with our need to resupply the fresh water casks—forces us to make landfall.
There’s a gurgling stream tucked amidst the Kavkaz Mountains, high in the Riven Plains of Rus. Vesna spots it, and Ariya confirms the lack of habitation with one quick dive to survey the area. I have no qualms about secreting Sleet in the ravine, even though it fits as tight as a corset. The islets crowding the sky overhead are barren of vegetation, and offer no place to hide.
Tereth, the young dragon ranger who so handily saved our collective posteriors at Zadar, curls beneath the pines on the other side of the stream. He has not shied from our side these past four days, and even a “man-worm” as he’d no doubt reference me can see the exhaustion in the way he droops his head against folded claws. He drapes his wings over his body and closes his eyes.
“This is madness.” Niall tugs on the last of the lines lashing us to trees. His muscles bulge with the strain and he swears mightily. “Bowen, I told you we should have sold off that foul relic and been done with it.”
“Niall, take ease. We’re—”
“But no. Not Bowen Cord!” He sneers at me, sharp teeth showing. “You’ll not be satisfied with merely handing over the bauble for silver or, heavens forbid, gold. You want to be the righteous one. The man who does what is true and pure of heart.”
“What would you have me do?” I snap, knowing full well the answer.
Niall growls. He scoops up a rock from at his feet, an ugly black and brown lump, and hurls it. It sails in a long arc before it splashes dead center in the stream, so far off to the south it’s a mere sputter of water. “That! Throw the cursed thing away! Be rid of it, once and for all.”
“Then what?” I’m right before him, toe to toe, glaring up into his face. I poke him in the chest. “We go back to Zadar and tell Strathern, ‘Terribly sorry, but we rid ourselves of the relic you wanted’? I’m sure he’ll be pleased to find his way here and pick it out of the mud. Face it, Niall. There is no turning aside. There are larger forces than our pecuniary interests at work. Why else would Northamber’s king send his best man and five warships to corner us?”
“Yes. Why else?” Niall pushes me away, into a stagger. He’s never hit me before. But we’re perilously close to that edge. I know the feeling. Niall turns instead to Vesna, who stands beneath Sleet’s bowsprit. Her arms are clasped about each other, as if to hold herself in one piece. “You’ve not told us, dear Vesna Juric, how Strathern happened to be there awaiting us.”
Vesna shifts her stance. “I…there’s nothing to say.”
I confess. This is the conversation I’ve avoided since we left Zadar. There are answers which are too painful for a man to hear, especially from the woman he loves.
Loves? Once again I see my beloved before me, the warmth of the fire setting her face aglow. My heart is tearing itself to bits. My crew. My ship. My love.
Loves?
“Bowen?” She’s staring at me, pleading. My expression must have changed—my face feels solid as stone. “You must believe me. I had nothing to do—”
“Vesna. Tell me the truth.”
“Bowen…”
“Tell. Me. The. Truth.” Every word is a hammered nail.
The softness flees from her face. In its place is the toughness, the cool calculation, the real Vesna I know so well. “He came to me not long after you left. Offered me a sizeable pouch of silver, and a jeweled dagger, to inform on you.”
The dagger. The one she drew during our fight aboard the Northamber flagship. My hands clench to fists.
“A bag of silver,” Niall says. “I could’ve guess that was your price, whore.”
I slug my fist across his jaw.
He topples to the ground. From high above comes Ariya’s shout, like a screeching eagle. I pay it no mind, for I’ve already drawn my wheellock pistol.
Niall scrambles to his feet, hand going for his katana, and his fingers freeze there on the hilt because the muzzle of the pistol is pressed to his forehead.
“Apologize to the lady,” I say.
“Dammit, Bowen.” His response is a low, deadly grumble.
Gridley dashes between us, barking. He snaps at me. What vexes you two?
“Bowen, please don’t!” Vesna grabs my arm, the one not holding a gun to my friend’s head.
I shake her off, hard enough to draw a gasp. “Pipe down. Where is the silver, Vesna?”
“Bowen…You know I would never...”
“No more games! Where is the silver? Give it to me now!”
“I don’t have it!” She matches my shout loudness for loudness. Her eyes well with tears. She slaps me so hard it’s a good thing my finger is off the trigger, for my gun hand jerks.
Niall swears. But stays still as a statue.
“As far as I know that cursed bag of silver is still on the bar at Kolovare’s, at my home that I gave up!” Vesna yells. “I told Strathern nothing of where you went, only that you would return. And then I risked my life to send you a warning note. He intercepted it, the fiend, and that’s why you saw me dangling off the edge of his ship instead of enjoying rum in his quarters!”
My mind races. The ice freezes all else out, consuming my body.
“Heaven’s edge, Bowen,” Niall whispers.
I’m still staring him down. But his defiance has morphed into fear. Because both my hands glow blue, each as bright as a torch. Frost creeps down the stock and barrel of the pistol.
“I have to believe you,” I say to Vesna. “Because that is the only choice that will keep me from tearing us all apart. Because I care for you so much any other possibility would doom us all.”
“You forgive me, then?”
I glower at her.
She storms away, skirt swirling about her in vivid mimicry of her anger and despair.
“I’m … sorry?” Niall cocks his head.
Dolt.
“Can you remove that thing from my face before I have to gut you?”
I look down. He’s got his sword out of his scabbard. Never heard it make a sound. One thrust and my innards would be out on the ground.
A whoosh of air blows over us. Ariya lands at an angle to us. She shakes her head. “Are you two quite through? Because if you kill each other—or I must knock you senseless—I will have to pilot the ship on my own. And that will make me upset.”
I withdraw my gun, and offer Niall a hand. The glow has faded to a dull stain at the palm. Niall frowns, then accepts. We stand face to face again. “I am sorry,” he says.
“For what it’s worth, you may be right about selling the relic.”
Niall sighs. “A bit late in the day.”
“It is that.”
The three of us stand there, silent. We look across the river at Tereth, snoozing away, oblivious to all that transpires.
“A cursed dragon.” Niall grins. “I must say it’s worth all this wreck just to see those blighters get their sails torched.”
“An action I would not have to take if you had been more cautious, were-fox.” Tereth’s voice rumbles across the stream. He
opens one eye. “I was tasked with your safety, and that of the relic. Most especially I guard the keeper. I’ll not watch my work be undone by your bickering.”
So much for oblivious. Niall rolls his eyes.
“Do not mock the dragon,” Ariya says. “We would be wise to heed his advice.”
“Yes,” Tereth says. “Because there are few large fish around here with which I can sate my hunger.”
Well. “I think I shall talk with Vesna.”
“Step easy, Captain. She is hurt.” Ariya spreads her wings.
“She betrayed me. Us.”
“She did. And she paid a steep price. Should you not extend her your arms instead of your fist?”
I frown. “How in blazes do you know what she feels?”
Ariya smirks at us and shakes her head. “I may have wings, Captain, but I am still a woman.”
She swoops off at speed, leaving us coughing dust. Niall’s got a big grin on his face.
Right.
“Captain?” Luc walks toward us with all the care of a child picking daisies in a field. And in addition to his bag, he does have a cluster of flowers—dandelions, rather—in his hand. He spins them around and around. I can smell their milk from here. “Are you well?”
I glance at Niall. He nods. “Yes, quite well,” I tell Luc.
He frowns at us both. “You don’t have to lie to me. Even though I’m a child.”
“Very well.” I rub at my forehead, trying to push the headache out. “Niall and I were fighting. And I fought with Vesna. We’re arguing about the Bloodheart.”
“Oh.” Luc considers the bag. “It brings death with it.”
“So it seems.”
“How many died when we were at Zadar?”
“I don’t know, lad.” The headache worsens. “Why must you pester me with such questions? It matters not if they’re dead. Only that we live.”
Luc frowns. “They all matter. Every soul. My father told me so.”
I bite back the words I would unleash up that idiot man. “What do you want elsewise? I thought I told you to remain near the ship.”
“Oh. I’m going to tell Tereth that it’s flashing a lot more now. The Bloodheart is.”