The Sin in the Steel

by Ryan Van Loan

  “Now you stow it,” he growled. “I’ve listened to your lot’s horse piss for the last hour and I’ve had enough of it on my boots to last a lifetime. None of you would have a coin to rub together, save the Company employs you. None of you would dare deny their orders were their Harbormaster to come down here. And none of you would have given me half this shit if I’d spoken like this from the beginning.” Thank the Gods Buc can’t see me pulling steel the moment I don’t get my way or I’d never live it down.

  “You’re going to listen to me or I’ll put this blade twixt your ribs and twist and send you over the side for the pup sharks to chew on. And then,” he added, “I’ll pull what’s left of you out of the drink and bring the Harbormaster down to see what she thinks about you ignoring her orders.”

  Neither Eld nor the dockmaster said a word: him because he’d run out of breath, her because she was obviously scared. Surprisingly, it’d been the last that had done it; mention of the Harbormaster had sent terror flitting through her eyes.

  “Now, about that man o’ war,” he said when his breath returned.

  “They’en might sail,” she said after a moment longer. Eld shifted the knife in his grip and the old woman flinched. “Their physiker up and died on them a week back. The Imperial lot don’t like sailing without no sawbones, but they blame the pirates, so if you’ve at all to do with hurting them, they might’en be persuaded.”

  “No physiker?” Eld hesitated. Buc wouldn’t have cared, but he was supposed to be taking care of her and she needed help. “What else you have?”

  “There’s a frigate what just docked, will need a good hull scraping afore she’s out again, but if you’re willing to wait a few days…”

  “Next,” Eld said.

  “Ayuh, thought so. Uhh.” The old woman looked up as if reading a manifest only she could see. “There’s a brig that might do. Company lot, unlike the first two, and carrying twenty-four cannon and a mortar, which en’t insignificant.”

  “Why didn’t you mention them before then?”

  “Because you said you needed to send pirates to the deep and that’s what Imperials do,” the dockmaster spat, having regained some of her former vinegar. “Company lot just flash steel and keep moving.”

  “Do they have a physiker on board?”

  “Why?” Her eyes flitted to Buc’s still form. “You’ve need of a sawbones?”

  “Answer. The. Question.” Eld could hear his teeth grating. He hadn’t been this close to rage since the final time he’d met Seetel. The encounter hadn’t ended great then; he couldn’t afford for this one to end similarly badly. More important, Buc couldn’t either.

  “Aye, they’ve a physiker and a good one, I’m told.”

  “Then that’s the one,” Eld said. “How do I reach them?”

  “Can you even tell the difference between a man o’ war and a brig?” she asked.

  “Man o’ war is the big one,” he said, pointing at the massive ship on the far side of the harbor.

  She laughed. “Ye got me there. Matter of fact, their captain sent word earlier that if ’is crew missed the last rowboat tonight, they’d be looking for a new ship in the morn. Aims to sail now,” she added as if Eld were too thick to comprehend.

  “Now? Damn it, woman! I need to be on that ship.”

  “Calm your tits and tassels,” the dockmaster said. “Takes time to prepare a ship that’s laid up in port half a fortnight. And there’s a faster way I can send you.”

  “Say on.”

  “I should warn ye that—”

  “If it’s faster, then that’s what I want,” Eld said.

  “’K then.” Her eyes shifted to the blade he still held a few fingers from her chest. “If’n you put down the steel first.”

  Eld slipped the blade back into his pocket and scooped Buc back up. She murmured in his arms, but her eyes remained closed. The things you have me doing, Buc. Sighing to himself, he straightened. “After you, Madam.”

  * * *

  Eld held tightly on to Buc as the little open boat they were in flew across the water, slicing through the waves so quickly that it sometimes floated on air between them. A rhythmic whumping sound filled the air, loud even above the waves. He held her partially to make sure she didn’t fly out when this fiendish contraption inevitably failed, but also because of the young Sin Eater sitting hunched over in the rear. The dockmaster had tried to warn him—a fact she reminded him of when she saw his face after he realized what she intended. He then reminded her that now he wouldn’t need the Harbormaster to come to the docks in person if he didn’t get the ship he wanted. He’d just have the mage call her.

  As bluffs went it was one of his more outrageous, but it’d ended with them in the seat of this newfangled boat. Its gilded hull was designed to cut through waves and it was shot forward by gear-driven twin propellers only the Sin Eater knew how to operate. The method would cut close to an hour’s hard row down to a quarter of that time. He might have been able to appreciate the novelty of the craft, despite the fact that the dockmaster had told him it was the Company’s lira that paid for such technology while the rest of the world suffered with oars … and some suffered as slaves chained to them, save that the mage had been strangely silent from the start.

  One arm was looped around Buc. Eld’s other hand, hidden by her skirts, gripped his pistole. Every time I’m near one of these creatures, I nearly lose my head. He feigned a smile at the other man, little more than a lad, really, and clad in a silk suit that looked out of place crouched beside the tiller. The Sin Eater affected not to notice. And just what does that mean? Did the Harbormaster tell him to look for us?

  He kept his eyes on the mage, but his mind was on Buc. He’d grown too used to her always knowing the right thing despite her inexperience. It was hard not to, when he’d been following her lead over the past few years. Not just the genius she displayed—that had always been there, rough and uncut, but bright right from the start. No, it was watching the lost, orphaned girl he found on the streets grow into a woman with the attitude of a queen secure on her throne. He glanced down at her dark features, softened by her illness, framed by a mishmash of curls, and looking strangely subdued with the fire of her intelligent eyes hidden behind closed lids.

  The truth was, he was barely two years older and she’d grown up quickly. She’d have been introduced to the Court last year if she’d been born in one of the finer Quartos. He couldn’t fight the smile that touched his lips at the thought of her in a ball gown, surrounded by the stuck-up aristocracy. Buc had a way of pricking the wind from anyone’s bubble and she took especial delight in doing so to anyone born with a gilded spoon in their mouth. That was one of the things he loved about her.

  Love.

  He felt something sharp twist in his chest and it took him several heartbeats to regain his breath. There it was. Again. It’d started a few months ago, a slip in the affection he felt for her from the moment they met—her dressing him down for splashing mud across her already mud-covered dress. It wasn’t a slip so much as a change, a feeling that there was something more there than just the friendship they’d grown into.

  The feeling hadn’t been there the year before, nor certainly when they’d met. Am I a lecher? He’d denied it, fought it, but it was there. Buc would rake him over the coals if she knew. She’d tell me it was just infatuation, from spending too much time away from the ladies. It had been a while, but he didn’t feel the pull of other women like he used to.

  Their friendship hadn’t been there right away. At first it’d been no more than partnership, but that changed as their tally of solved cases increased and she began to let her guard down. He’d seen soon enough that her mind was wise beyond its years. He chuckled quietly, the noise making the Sin Eater twitch in his seat. Well, incredible anyway, if not always wise.

  Just infatuation. That’s what it was. Buc didn’t have anyone but him and he couldn’t betray her trust and ruin everything because of a small infatuation.
Something he’d laugh at in years to come. He tried to laugh again, louder, but it sounded false to his ears. If it was only a fleeting feeling, he thought, it would have left as soon as it had come, not stuck around, growing harder, more solid, more … real.

  None of that matters.

  “Ho!” the Sin Eater said, the first he’d spoken.

  Eld followed the Sin Eater’s arm toward the ship anchored at the edge of the harbor, rapidly growing larger as they approached. They were nearly there. “Hold on,” he whispered. To Buc? To himself? He was no longer sure. Damn it. “Hold on,” he repeated, swallowing the lump in his throat.

  15

  I woke up in a strange bed that swung with my weight in a way that felt soothing rather than upsetting. Cool darkness greeted my eyes and a faint breeze tickled my eyelashes. I blinked and my eyes protested, along with every other part of my body. A figure came to its feet at the sound of my moan and then they held a small clay bowl beneath my chin. I nodded and they tilted it and water with the hint of wine filled my mouth. I drained the bowl and the figure scooped some more from a bucket. I sucked that one and the next down almost without breathing. The figure returned the bowl to the bucket and I groaned.

  “That’s enough for now, lass.” The voice sounded like two rocks sliding against each other. “You’ve had buckets of wine water and your body took it like a sponge, but you’ve got to be nearly full up.”

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “No one,” the man—I could see enough now to make out his features—said. “A physiker,” he added.

  “A good one?”

  He laughed silently and then moved to stand beside me. “There’s a saying at sea, lass. ‘Any port in a storm.’”

  “We say beggars can’t be choosers,” I said.

  He laughed his silent laugh. “That too. I’m a fair hand with tinctures and potions, but I’m no university sawbones. Luckily, you were easy. You just needed water. Lots of water, I thought you were going to wake a fish by the end of the first day.”

  “First day? How long have I been asleep?”

  “You were feverish for two days and calm yesterday,” he said. “Your friend went up for a breath of fresh air; I’ll go tell him you’re awake and let him explain.” The man’s hand was rough on my shoulder, but he squeezed gently. “Make sure you eat as much food as your stomach will hold at the mess tonight. Otherwise your body won’t hold that water and you’ll be in as bad a shape as you were when they brought you to me.”

  “Mess? Where am I?” I asked.

  “The Sea Dragon.”

  “Dragons aren’t real.”

  “Sea ones are. But not this far south,” the man said.

  “A ship then?” The door shut on my question and I cursed the physiker roundly until I remembered he’d given me the water. “Still a bastard,” I muttered. Speaking had left a dull ache in the back of my head, so I let myself sink into the bed and it began swinging with my movement. Not a bed then. Hammock? I’d read of such things in books, but I’d never been on a ship that had one. Even that Cannon Ship had frame beds. The door creaked open, interrupting my thoughts, and boots scraped on the floor.

  “Eld?”

  “Aye, that’s what the mirror tells me,” he said, appearing beside me. I groaned at his attempt at humor and he smiled. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like an olive put through the press and squeezed out the other side,” I said.

  He reached to touch my arm, hesitated, and sank down onto the bench beside my hammock instead. “I should have taken better care of you, Buc. I—”

  “You cut your hair!”

  “Aye, it was getting too long,” he said, absently reaching for where his sun-bleached hair ended at his shoulder instead of being gathered half down his back as I was used to.

  Now that I was looking, I could see lines on his face that hadn’t been there before and dark shadows under his eyes that gave him a ghostly appearance—like what everyone says Shambles look like. His cheeks were pinched and his lips thinner than before, although they were, as usual, offset by his nose. That poor thing had been broken and never set properly and it was the only distinguishing feature Eld had that wasn’t perfect. All in all, he looked almost as bad as I felt.

  “Sometimes I rely too much on you,” he said. He stared at a point just below me. “There was a time when I made every decision, had to make every decision, and while that has its attractions, it’s not the good decisions that haunt you, is it?”

  “I suppose not.” I pushed myself up as much as I could without falling out of the hammock.

  “I put too much on you, Buc. I should have remembered that you’ve never been outside of Servenza and her islands, save for that brief case on the mainland.”

  “That was what, our second case?”

  “Aye, we were chasing down leads that pointed to that bratty noble’s son, when I took that knock from behind and woke to discover you’d solved the whole damned thing and it’d been the maid all along.”

  I flushed. “Well, those were early days. I should have trusted you more, kept you up to speed with what I’d worked out in my mind.” Luckily, Eld had never asked too many questions about who had hit him.

  “I never worried about that, Buc. After that, you led and I followed and I never questioned it. But I should have remembered…” He squeezed his hands together and looked up. “I should have remembered you’re a girl of seventeen years. I’m so sorry. I—”

  “You should be sorry,” I snapped. He flinched and then nodded, resembling the way a convict who knows they’re guilty accepts the lash. I swung my legs out so I could sit without falling out of the damned netting and pulled the strap of my slip up where it had slid down my arm. “Sorry to waste time feeling sorry for yourself because I was stupid.”

  “You weren’t stupid; you nearly died!”

  “Good, I’m glad to see there’s still some fire there,” I said. I brushed curls out of my face and they fell over my left shoulder. I could feel the stubble growing back in where I’d shaved the sides of my head and immediately wished for a razor, but that was just one of my obsessions speaking. It thought me weak, just like Eld, and I wanted nothing so much as to disabuse both of them. “I nearly died because I didn’t take care of myself. Me. My body, my mind, my choices. Aye, you tried to get me to drink wine water and I did, but not enough. That was my fault. You think me a little girl?”

  “I never said…” he began.

  “Yes, you did.” He flinched again at my tone. “You said I was a girl of seventeen years. I don’t really care if someone names me girl or woman so long as they mean to scribe the lack of a penis between my legs and not a comment on my age or maturity. But that’s how you meant it, Eld. Aye, you’ve years on me, but what of it? I grew up starving on the streets. There’s no time to be a child, no parents to fawn over you or hold you back so they can keep control of you.

  “You grow up or you die. And as far as years go, the more cases we have, the more I’ve come to realize that age has nothing to do with maturity or intelligence. Plenty of fools have scores of years, yet have learned nothing. Experience only counts if you use it the right way. So don’t demean me by suggesting I’m a fragile child who needs protecting. I don’t. You’ve been”—I paused to breathe before I fainted—“you’ve been a good partner, but if you think that entitles you to this selfish, possessive bullshit, you’ve got another think coming.”

  “I’m—”

  “If the next word is ‘sorry,’ I’m going to kick you,” I said.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” he said after a pause. A small, tight smile played across his features, easing some of the lines on his face. “I spoke poorly. You’d think I’d have been better prepared after three days, but you’d be wrong.”

  “You don’t look like you’ve slept much.”

  “Who needs sleep?” He waved a hand and smiled again. “I do care about you, Buc,” he said, “and I feel responsible for you, but, but�
�—he interrupted me—“you’re right: you’re more capable than many people I’ve met. That doesn’t mean I don’t get to worry about you and it doesn’t mean I don’t get to beat myself up when something bad happens to you. That’s what friends do.”

  “Friends?” Something stirred in my memory. Something about being in his arms as he ran toward Port au’ Sheen. It slid through my mind no matter how hard I tried to grasp it. “Is that what we are?”

  “I hope so,” he whispered. “I hope so,” he said in a louder voice. “Friends, partners, us against them.”

  “Them?”

  “The world?”

  “Aye.” I smiled. “I like that. So are we done with this self-effacing shit?”

  “We’re done,” Eld said.

  “Good, then tell me how we ended up on a bloody dragon.”

  “It’s not a real dragon,” Eld said. I arched an eyebrow and he held up his hands. “Just pointing out the flaw in your statement.”

  “So, you do want me to kick you.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “You pushing me out the door of the witch’s tower,” I said. Again, something about being in his arms as he ran swam up from the depths of the mist, lurking in my brain. What happened? “After that it’s a blur.”

  “Well, after running my legs off carrying you down to the docks, I managed to find you water. Luckily, the mage hadn’t shown up yet, so I took a page out of your book.”

  “Who’d you stab?” I asked.

  “No one.” He shook his head and ran a hand through his shorter locks. “I told them Salina ordered us to take the first man o’ war that was sailing and head south.”