The Sin in the Steel

by Ryan Van Loan

  Power.

  5

  “A wretched girl,” Salina muttered as the door swung shut with a dull boom. “I almost wish the stakes were lower; she could do with a lesson in failure.…”

  “You think she won’t fail?”

  Salina stiffened, then turned slowly so the captain couldn’t see her agitation. The girl had crawled under her skin far enough to make her forget she wasn’t alone. The older woman stared back at her and arched an eyebrow.

  “I did my research,” Salina said finally. She tapped the sheets of parchment on the table before her. “She’s annoying, but she has a talent for sifting through the flotsam and coming up with gold. This Buc and Eld have solved half a dozen mysteries in the past two years where all others have failed.”

  “Aye, but this isn’t some mere mystery,” the captain muttered.

  “It’s not,” Salina agreed. “But seeing as none of the other methods have produced results, the Board decided it was time to try something new.” She left unsaid that the Board still had another card up its sleeve.

  “And the Empress?”

  “Wouldn’t have gifted me the use of you and your soldiers if she didn’t approve,” Salina said. She’s also the reason I can’t tell you about that hidden card. “I was more worried they wouldn’t take the case and we’d have to shoot them,” she admitted. “Our agents said she was hardheaded to a fault, that threats wouldn’t sway her.”

  They also said the girl’s one weakness was books. Salina studied the shelves around her and smiled. Books were a necessary evil, dull and plodding, but worth their weight in gold for the knowledge they imparted. I’d gladly pay vast sums to distill their messages without reading them. A chill ran down her spine and she shuddered. That was too close to what Sin Eaters did, communicating directly with one another’s minds and their Goddess, Ciris.

  The Board had suspicions about the Goddess … but Ciris’s mages were the reason the Company had risen so high, so quickly. A necessary evil. Like books. “If she only knew that I played her like a street performer on Market Day…”

  “Did you? I wonder if the Board will agree when they find out you’ve watered down their share ratio.” The captain frowned and fingered the pistole on the table. “The girl gave you enough rope to hang the pair of them any number of ways. Maybe there were two performers playing today.”

  She held back the retort on her lips as another chill raced through her body. The Board would understand. They had to! They were the ones who agreed to this. But. But they hadn’t agreed to give up a seat. Well, they still might not have. It depended on how well that girl knew the legal requirements for such documents. Still, it was a thin nail to hang her coat on.

  “The Board cares about results, Captain. If they fail, then my offer might as well never have existed, and if they don’t … well, the Board is going to be too busy counting their gold to worry that a slip of a girl pulled a chair up to their table.”

  “Perhaps,” the other woman said. “At least until she opens her mouth.”

  She chuckled. “Well, success has a way of inflating youth’s excesses. I’ll grant you, she could use a dose of moderation.”

  “Couldn’t we all,” the captain said dryly.

  Salina drew herself up and crossed her arms, but the officer looked unperturbed. Gods, that girl had her nerves wound tighter than a violin’s strings. No, not just the girl. This whole situation was a powder keg waiting for an ember to touch it off. The Company had seen too many good years recently to lag now, not when the Dead Gods’ priests were leaning on the Empress to halt their use of Sin Eaters. And Ciris … yes, the Board had its suspicions, but that was for another day. First to put out the ember before it caught flame.

  This Buc and Eld had to succeed. It was as simple as that. Salina heard her breath whistle through her nostrils and realized she’d let the silence go on too long. Her heart pounded in her chest, but the captain couldn’t hear that. Had she heard her breathing? Salina glanced at the other woman’s amused expression. Damn it, she had. She coaxed a smile out of her mouth.

  “I almost pity her partner,” she said, changing the subject. “He had some sense to him, but he’s tethered himself to her and he’ll share her troubles.”

  “Aye, but the Gods send it’s not too much. He had a nice pair of shoulders,” the captain said. Salina eyed her askance and the older woman laughed. “I saw you looking, Salina. If I can appreciate the view, you can too.”

  “I suppose he was handsome enough,” she admitted. But she wasn’t thinking of the man. The Board only cared for results, but if the results weren’t favorable, they wouldn’t remember it was their idea to pin their hopes on a waifish girl with dark-amber skin, kan-whitened teeth, and bright green eyes that seemed to mock without trying. They would only remember who it was who said she’d handle everything. The Company might or might not fall without its sugar, but either way, Salina would. They won’t fail.

  “Dark days are coming if they do,” the captain whispered.

  Salina hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud, but thinking of those green eyes, she felt a little better. There was something there that spoke of a certainty she hadn’t felt until just now. “They won’t fail,” she repeated.

  6

  The wind licked my face with salty wisps as the galley pulled away from port. My stomach lurched slightly with the waves, but I tried to ignore it. I’d grown up on the three islands comprising Servenza, seat of the Empire, and it was said half the Empire was ocean; what was a little more water now? My stomach tried to argue, but lost to the book in front of me. Well—half lost. The complex, gear-work diagrams on the pages were nothing like the Cannon Ship itself. It was equipped with hollow tubes from stem to stern that took on seawater at one end, piped it through the ship to power the oars, then exploded out the stern, using the ocean itself as propulsion. It sounded simple enough, but from the diagrams, it was anything but. The massive gear-work mechanism had to be wound and set loose at just the right time.

  Do it too soon, before the tubes were completely filled with water, and the ship would go nowhere, potentially damaging the sophisticated gear-work mechanisms that ran through the hull; do it too late and the pressure within the tubes could cause them to rupture, turning all that gear work into expensive shrapnel that would send the ship and every soul aboard to the bottom. It required a precise understanding of the water pressure and speed to kick things off so that the water coming in was sufficient to power the gear work operating the oars, ensuring they rowed in unison, but once a cadence was established, the method was self-perpetuating.

  That last bit was courtesy of magic: Ciris’s magic. I wondered about that—most magic I’d read about or seen required the mage to be present, but gear work was an art that blended mechanical skill and magic in ways none could fathom. Cannon Ships were said to be twice as fast as galleys powered by slaves and if they only carried a few guns compared to larger brigs or frigates, they more than made up for that in speed. Or so it was said. It was also said they were named for the roar the water made when they were running at full speed. Right now they were quiet and with only the wind to power us—the ship’s sails were unfurled—we were making slow time leaving the harbor.

  “Steal that from the Company’s library?”

  “She said I could take what I wanted,” I said as Eld joined me at the rail. He looked better in his new blue jacket with red cuffs. Of course, any clothing looks better minus blood and knife holes. Still, the clothes the Company had sent ahead of us, along with the food we’d found in our quarters, had helped. Eld’s skin was its usual clammy, pale color instead of the horrid white it’d been when we’d first set foot on deck. “That’s not stealing. I had the rest sent back to our place; no need to sink the ship with them.”

  “Ha. She didn’t know what she’d agreed to.” I handed him the book and he glanced at it and leaned against the rail, sighing as the wood took his weight. “It’s not fair, you know.” I arched an eyebrow and h
e smiled. “Two years of reading and you’ve already read more than any but the profesori at university.”

  “I’d have read more than them if you hadn’t waited until I was fourteen to find me,” I said. “And then you had to teach me.”

  “I’m not sure it was teaching so much as pointing you at the alphabet and getting out of the way.”

  I smiled at that and both of us fell silent as the shore crept away. It was the calm before the storm. I could feel it and so could he. I still wasn’t sure how we’d ended up on a ship heading for a coast hundreds of leagues away. Intellectually, I knew the steps that had led us here, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. There was something about those Imperial Guards being so damned conveniently close. And that mage. Something came over him before he killed Salazar. And he just watched as Eld killed him. It felt as if there were another staircase beside the one we trod, invisible, but intertwining with our own somehow.

  “Why’d you agree to take this on?” Eld asked, breaking the silence. “Why trade for a share in the company?”

  “Like we had a choice?” I snorted. “You fancied a musket ball to the brain instead? Why’d you rescue me in the first place?” Whenever anyone pokes me, friend or no, my inclination is to poke back. Hard. “Why have we been solving other people’s problems ever since? That was your idea from the start.”

  “At the start,” Eld amended. I grunted. “Solving things,” he said, drawing in a breath. “Helping others, it’s a way to…” He sighed. “Have you ever made a mistake? Even one that wasn’t truly your fault, but if you had been smarter, quicker, better, if you had been all of that, maybe you could have prevented it? And if you could have prevented it, maybe it was your fault after all?”

  My big sister’s smiling face filled my mind’s eye. That big, stupid smiling face, with a mouth that was just a little too wide, a nose a shade too bold, and eyes of different colors that drew the wrong kind of attention. She would have been gorgeous if nature had been a touch more discerning with beauty’s knife. If not for her, I wouldn’t have made it past the age of five … but without me she wouldn’t have stood over that moldy sack of rice. She could have gone a few more days without food even if I couldn’t. Failure.

  “Who am I kidding?” Eld asked. “You don’t make mistakes, do you, Buc?” He laughed. “You might be the only person I’ve met who doesn’t. I think that’s why I let you keep me. Solving cases, well, I keep telling myself that if I do the right thing enough times, it might make up for that mistake. I never believed it, but I had to try.” He touched my arm. “But with you, Buc, I think I might start to believe.”

  “I did fail,” I said slowly, barely hearing my voice over the dull pounding in my skull. “Once.”

  The sounds of the clubs had been terrible, but somehow the knife had been the worst. There’s a sound sometimes, when a knife hits the chest just right, a hissing sound as if it struck the soul and all the life is leaking out. I know now it was the sound of my sister’s lung collapsing, but at the time it sounded like a whisper. Failure. A whisper louder than the flames, if not as hot. She might have lived with half a lung … but the flames saw to the rest.

  “Once was enough, Eld.” I squeezed the railing beneath my fingers until the wood bit at them. “The world should be a better place than it is.” Eld nodded. “And that’s why I agreed to take on the case. It’s why I bargained for a share in the Kanados Trading Company.” He frowned. “The world isn’t shaped by good deeds alone. There’s too much weakness for that. Power is the antidote. And with enough power, aye, and some good deeds, maybe we can shape the world after all.”

  “You truly believe that?” he asked.

  I stood up from the railing and so did he. The wind caught my curls and lifted them, exposing where I’d shaved the sides of my head and he smiled as he always did when he saw that. Something in his smile killed the seed of doubt that had been planted by that failure and while I’d never allowed the seed to take root, I’d never been able to completely destroy it either. Now, with one smile, it was gone. I don’t understand emotions in others; I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that I don’t understand them in myself, either.

  “Aye, I do.” I felt my mouth twitch. “And like you said, I don’t make mistakes.”

  Eld laughed at that and I joined him, but we were both cut short by the Cannon Ship roaring to life with enough force that I would have fallen if Eld hadn’t caught me. That had been the way of it for the last two years—one of us has stumbled, faltered here and there, but the other’s been there when they were needed. We hadn’t made any mistakes. Even the catastrophe with Salazar had turned in our favor at the end. This was our first real chance at taking a step toward gaining the kind of power needed to change the world, so we couldn’t afford to make any now. Still, with Eld’s arm on my shoulder, holding me steady against the harsh tilt of the ship, it was hard to see how we could. He felt solid, unshakable.

  I wish I could say the same for my stomach.

  7

  Eld stared out at the dark water that slid past the ship in a slick sheen, broken only by the odd wave that shone white beneath the scrap of moon that peeked out from the clouds above. Standing on the deck, railing cutting into the palms of his hands, he felt alone in a swirling blackness that was sharp with the taste of salt and not much else. The sound of the water cannons, siphoning seawater on either side of the hull and propelling them forward at an impossible speed, drowned out everything.

  His thoughts swirled around the question Buc had posed to him when they’d slipped out of Servenza’s harbor at dawn, almost a day ago now.

  “Why’d you rescue me in the first place?” She’d shot the words at him as if from the slingshot she kept in her purse. “Why have we been solving other people’s problems ever since? That was your idea from the start.”

  “I didn’t rescue you,” he whispered to the passing waves. Buc had gone belowdecks after dinner; something about the speed of the ship didn’t seem to agree with her, and her typically flintlike tongue had sharpened to an edge that had the crew walking well wide of her. “You rescued me.

  “I just never told you.”

  He closed his eyes, the tears burning down his cheeks echoing the fire in his shoulder, where he’d caught the knife meant for Buc. Salina had summoned a physiker to look at the wound before they left, at Buc’s insistence. The woman had known her trade, but no poultice would knit his shoulder back together in a matter of hours. That would have required magic, and no one wondered that he didn’t want to trust a mage so soon after killing one. Nothing left for him but to grit his teeth and bear it. If there was one thing his previous life had taught him, it was how to take pain, and if he took it so Buc didn’t have to, so much the better. It was the least he could do after she’d all but given him his life back. The army had taken most of it and the price he paid in leaving had stripped the rest away.

  “You’re to take the company into the gap, Eldritch.”

  “Sirrah?” Eld’s voice amplified the question. He’d been trained at the Academy, like every other noble’s second and third daughter or son, and though he’d only been in a few skirmishes and one pitched battle that barely merited the name, only a fool would fail to see that the opening in the line of the Burning Lands militia was likely a trap.

  True, the main thrust of the assaults and counterassaults had been to the north and east, but he’d read the scouting reports, same as Commander Seetel had: the Burnt were crawling all over the barren dunes beyond the foothills in front of them; if they had missed the small gap between the hills, it was because they’d intended to miss it.

  “I know you’re green, Leftenant,” Seetel growled, his voice cracking as it did whenever he grew angry, “but I didn’t think you yellow.”

  “I’m as brave as the next,” Eld said. The explanation was on his lips—the gap looks too inviting; it was too easy for the scouts to find an undefended gap on the enemy’s flank—but Seetel’s tone kept him silent. The man was prick
ly about his command and liable to send Eld off, like he had the last junior officer who had pushed him too far.

  Lamell had been a good leftenant, despite being barely fifteen and the youngest of them, pressed into service far too early due to the war going badly. Even her father’s standing in the Servenzan nobility hadn’t kept her from being reassigned to a regiment of untrained replacements. She’d done her duty in the next assault, aye, and died for it. Eld didn’t even have that much protection—he wasn’t Servenzan. And I don’t want to die.

  “If we’re to exploit their weakness, shouldn’t it be with the entire regiment?” He hated himself for asking, for inviting more soldiers to join him in what was likely to be a trap, but numbers had a way of covering mistakes. It was one of the few lessons Seetel had taught him.

  “The regiment will be with you, but farther into the foothills, to your right, to keep any reinforcements cut off,” Seetel said, his voice returning to its typical gruff, taciturn growl.

  Did I really once think him an ideal officer? The man carried himself well and his uniform was spotless, cuirass buffed to a high sheen, but there was no heart behind it and very little brains above. Seetel droned on, but all Eld could see was the crimson circle on the map, drawn around the gap in the hills. It looked like a circle of blood.

  “I should have said something,” Eld said, the wind snatching his words as soon as they left his lips and taking his secret with them. “It was my command, my duty, and I failed.” Buc had spoken of failure as they left Servenza, but she didn’t know of his. No one living did. It’d made the memories easier to forget, but the past day’s events had undone all the progress he’d made at walling that part of his life away. The last time he’d been so close to death, he’d been in the gap, fighting for his life on the shifting sands. “And I paid the price. They all paid the price.”