The Sin in the Steel

by Ryan Van Loan

  “Enough.”

  I paused mid-word.

  “You’re going on like a chattering jay that’s finally caught sight of land,” the Widowmaker said. “Begin again. Slower.”

  “You have any kan?” I asked.

  “What? You want to go on twice as fast?” her mate asked.

  “Not to drink. To smoke. It slows me down,” I said.

  “Gem,” the Widowmaker said, keeping her eyes on mine.

  The mate grumbled, but he dug into his vest pocket, drew out two thinly rolled cigarillos, then passed one to me and stuck the other in the corner of his mouth. “Never smoke alone,” he muttered. “Tain’t proper.” He struck a match and lit his before offering it to me. I saw Eld’s eyes flash, but the lack of propriety made me feel at home.

  “Ah.” I didn’t have to lie about the sigh. The smoke filled my lungs, cooled the scores of messages burning brands in my brain, and let the story coalesce in my mind. “I’m not one for ventures,” I said, letting the smoke spill out of my mouth, almost spelling my words for me.

  “Neither of us are,” Eld added. “But”—he shrugged—“we’d put some money by and were running a streak, so it seemed wise to do something with it.”

  “Aye,” I spoke around the kan cigarillo in my mouth. “Otherwise we’d spend it all when the streak ran cold. So we were reading the papers and all the talk has been of the Shattered Coast. Or least it was then.”

  “And then our streak turned into a heater,” Eld said.

  “Gambling?” the Widowmaker asked.

  “Dice,” I said. I made one of my smaller stilettos appear in my fist and let it dance across my fingers. It was harder than it should have been—the cold hadn’t leeched itself completely from my bones—but it was credible enough and I made it disappear back into my riding habit without dropping it. “I’ve, uh … nimble fingers.”

  “Too right you have,” Gem said, spouting smoke with every word. “Gods.”

  “So we knew it was then or never,” Eld said.

  “And it didn’t seem like we could lose, so we put our money on a stake on the Gilded Flower Plantation,” I said.

  “Grand enough name,” the Widowmaker said. Her dark green eyes were inscrutable, but her pale lips kept twitching. I hadn’t had enough time around her to gauge the meaning, but …

  “So we thought,” Eld said, filling the silence. “The broker, Fago, claimed he was in on half a dozen different plantations and this one was the best. Pure sugar, no kan.”

  “Just as well—your friend would smoke it all,” she said, eyeing the nub left in my fingers.

  “Name’s Buc,” I said. “And I might at that.” I drew deeply and let the remaining ash fall to the deck. Her eyes flashed but she said nothing. “So we bought our stakes with Fago and waited.”

  “And waited,” Eld said.

  “Finally our luck began to run south and we thought a change of climate might be in order.”

  “You mean you were caught cheating,” she supplied.

  “I mean, we took a ship across to see our plantation.”

  “And did it live up to its name?”

  “Shit, no,” I said, blowing the last bit of smoke from my lungs. My mind was clear now, calm. Which, given her attention to detail, was exactly what I needed. “It didn’t exist. We put into Port au’ Sheen and were promptly laughed off the island.”

  “Fago didn’t exist and neither did our plantation,” Eld said.

  “So gamblers and cheaters gambled and were in turn cheated,” the Widowmaker said.

  “I didn’t know pirates put such a price on fair play,” I said.

  The Widowmaker’s pistole filled my vision before I could blink. “In these waters you’d best be careful what words touch your lips, Buc.”

  “You fly a black flag and you sank our ship,” I said. “Give me another word for it and I’ll sing it back to you, but the only one I know is ‘pirate.’”

  “You’ve a file for a tongue,” she said. “Sometimes files grind too far, too thin, until they break. Mind yours doesn’t,” she said, lowering the pistole.

  I kept my features smooth, but I could feel heat in my cheeks; luckily, my skin wouldn’t show it much. Bitch. She’d drawn me out and she was right. My tongue was a file—but a girl who tossed dice wouldn’t last long with a mouth like that. I’d been distracted by the pistole. It’d appeared like magic, and with eyes as fast as mine that just wasn’t possible. The streets had honed my vision such that any and every small movement was seen and categorized instantly. But I hadn’t seen her move. Worse, her eyes hadn’t changed at all; there’d been no warning. She was good, one of the best I’d sparred with. I couldn’t afford to let her have any more of Sambuciña Alhurra, just Buc with the light fingers.

  “Buc’s always dancing past the edge of humor and falling into arseholery,” Eld said. “That’s how she got us nearly hung in Port au’ Sheen and lost our money in the bargain.” I shot Eld a hard look, but he shrugged. “No use hiding it, Buc; she’ll find out eventually.”

  The deck trembled and behind the Widowmaker and Gem, I saw the hands crowded around the damaged cannon all jump away from it before moving cautiously back.

  “Find out what?” the Widowmaker asked, ignoring the commotion. “Who’d you kill? This Fago?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” I said, hoping Eld would tell me what it was like.

  “It wasn’t,” Eld agreed. “We’d no money for a return passage to Servenza, so Buc convinced me to borrow a schooner.”

  “Borrow?”

  “You’re not a pirate,” I said. “We’re not thieves.” Gods. The kan wasn’t strong enough to keep my mind at the pace it needed to be. “We borrowed it.”

  “Right out into the bay,” Eld added.

  “Until yonder brig rounded the crescent, cleared the cliffs, and leveled her guns at us,” I said.

  “Ah, so that’s why you wear links around your wrists,” she said.

  “Aye, the captain wasn’t a bad sort, but the Harbormaster intended to make examples of us for absconding with one of her ships,” I said. Gem growled. I glanced at him. “You’ve met the Harbormaster?”

  “We ken the bitch,” Gem said. He made as if to spit on the deck, saw the Widowmaker’s expression, and swallowed instead. “You’re lucky she didn’t string you up there.”

  “Good as,” I said. “She wrote our names down in the book and sent the missive back to Servenza.”

  “We followed after on the brig, Servenza-bound, where she intended our corpses to decorate the Grand Canal as an example of what happens to pirates,” Eld said.

  “You lot aren’t pirates,” Gem said.

  “No shit, but the Sea Dragon had its orders and those orders named us pirates. Word of two gamblers against a Company Harbormaster?” I shook my head. “We were dead until you lot opened up on her.”

  “Tell me.” The Widowmaker frowned. “Did they have a mortar?”

  “Big tub of a cannon?” I asked. She nodded. “Aye, they were readying it, but the crew kept bitching about pay and booty and the first mate said he had a plan.” I swiftly outlined what I’d recommended to the late captain, with Eld supplying some shine over the rougher edges.

  “Damned close to what you proposed, Chan Sha,” Gem said at the end.

  “Aye.” She chewed on her lip. “Could have gone badly if he’d tried chain instead of grape.”

  “Chan Sha?” Eld asked. Something poked at the back of my memory. Chan Sha. Widowmaker. Why did it make me think of spices? “We thought you were the Widowmaker,” he added.

  “A rough translation,” Gem said. “Chan Sha means—”

  “Widowmaker,” I finished. How did I know that? The others were looking at me with confused expressions that mirrored my own. Then I remembered book number two eighty-nine. Zhe’s Cordoban Diplomacy. A bit of a misnomer, because the Cordoban Confederacy’s ideas of diplomacy usually started and ended with the blade. But I’d learned a lot about the distant Southea
st, beyond the Southern Expanse, and their rulers, or Shahs. “Shah” meant “ruler.” Or maker. So “Chan” means “widow”? That didn’t mesh with what I knew of the language, which was little enough. And Chan Sha didn’t seem as prickly as Zhe described Cordobans. Maybe the bastard had an ax to grind. Never trust an author. That was something I learned early on in my reading.

  “I don’t care what they call me,” the Widowmaker—Chan Sha—said, pulling me back to the moment. She shook her head. “What I’d like to know is—”

  Voices shouted at the same time the deck trembled harder than it had before and a man screamed, “She’s free!”

  The faulty cannon caught the sun as it rolled across the deck and the crew scattered before it, but one figure lay back near the carriage, unmoving. Gem shouted an oath, but as fast as he was, Chan Sha was faster, gone in a whirl of dark leather and bright pistoles. She danced around the crew, conjured up a spar from seemingly nowhere, and braced it before the cannon. The hulking iron crashed into the wood beam with a crunch, rolled a quarter of the way up it, teetered, and then rolled back down. It steadied, moving only a little as the ship settled between swells.

  “Jump on her, you lugs!” Gem yelled as he ran down the steps, a dozen yards behind Chan Sha. “Secure her or she’ll break us all.”

  Eld touched my arm and leaned by my ear. “How did that go?”

  “Too soon to say. Nice of you to jump on the stolen ship idea. I was going to go with Chan Sha’s suggestion.” I glanced at him. “You know, good old-fashioned murder?”

  “Oh, well, the ship was close to what really happened and…” He dug at his collar.

  “And you can’t lie for shit,” I said.

  “Not everyone can be a master manipulator like you, Buc,” he said.

  “I’ll take smoke up my arse any day of the week,” I said, “but two of us on one ship is one too many.”

  “The Widowmaker? I mean Chan Sha?” He followed my gaze. “Aye, she’s quick.”

  “Quick.” I traced the distance between us and the cannon and it was easily sixty paces. Yet she’d crossed it, found a wood beam, and stopped the cannon before her first mate made it half the distance. Something wasn’t right; the figures weren’t adding up correctly. “Aye,” I said. “Too quick.”

  21

  “You’ve no liking for pickled eel?”

  I eyed the wrinkled, limp pale worm-thing before me and could not find the likeness between that and some of the spicier Servenzan eel dishes I knew. “No, I think the fish filled me to the brim,” I said.

  “No eel,” the woman said, and sniffed, passing it to Eld, on my left, who looked as hesitant as I had, but his manners won out and he stabbed one and dropped it onto his plate with a wet plop that released a hideous odor, like shit boiled in a vat of acid. She nodded approvingly, rolled her eyes at me, and set the plate down in front of Gem and Chan Sha.

  The quartermaster was a woman who looked like she’d have eaten Gem under the table and beaten Eld at arm wrestling in her younger years, but now that grey ran rampant through her darker hair, the muscle was gone and the flesh hung from her bones, a reminder of what she’d lost. The woman was forever moving in front of me with dish after dish, obscuring my vision with her lumpy arms and nearly putting one of her folds in my soup at the start of the meal. I’d have ripped her a new arsehole then and there, but Chan Sha had been watching too intently for it to be anything but a test.

  So I had to bugger off and let the old hag prod me through three courses, avoiding her oversized calico dress and the flesh within it all the while. But I put my foot down on the eel. “You know, it’s a very great honor,” she said, watching Eld poke tentatively at the shriveled thing on his plate. “Dining with the captain.”

  “Aye,” I spoke around the bone I’d been nibbling on to keep my mouth shut. “So you said. Thrice before.”

  “And the captain had the eel as well.”

  For fuck’s sake.

  “And you know…” she began.

  “It looks like a limp dick,” I said. The quartermaster’s eyes popped. “Like some poor bastard got all hot and bothered but didn’t get the girl to spread her legs, so he ended up with blue balls, and then some maniac masquerading as a chef chopped his cock off and threw it in a pickling jar for good measure.”

  The woman sputtered, her mouth twitched angrily, and her chins began to burn in quick succession. Here we go. I’d tried to hold my tongue, but even I’m not immune to incessant, nagging badgery. I could see the smile in Chan Sha’s eyes even if it didn’t show in her lips. Bitch.

  Gem slammed the table, nearly sending the eels flying into the quartermaster’s lap. She tried to move, but she was wedged against the wall of the narrow space that served as both galley and dining room.

  “That.” He took a breath and laughter shook his wide shoulders. “That were the funniest.” He slammed the table again, clutched at the mug in front of him, and caught it just before it fell off the edge of the table. “That were the funniest fecking thing I’ve heard in a while.” He nudged the plate with his mug and exploded into more laughter when the eels jiggled. “They do look like shriveled-up cocks!” He wiped his eyes, tears glowing in the lamplight. “They do.”

  “G-Gods.” Eld’s windpipe bulged with eel. He cleared his throat, avoiding looking down at the half of an eel lying on his plate. His cheeks looked a little blue, or maybe green. He cleared his throat again. Gem offered Eld his mug and Eld pointed the bottom toward the ceiling and didn’t break for air until foam had settled over his top lip like a strange mustache. He slammed the cup down and it echoed hollowly.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. He cleared his throat for the third time. “Thank you,” he repeated, louder. Gem waved a hand, still giggling. “You run a tight ship,” Eld said, looking across the table at Chan Sha. “I didn’t expect that type of discipline among pirates.”

  “Discipline brings freedom,” she said simply. “We all live and die together and that freedom demands a high price. We’ve few laws, but break them and you’ll find short shrift from me.”

  “Or me or any of us,” Gem added. “Break a law and you could doom us all and then marooning would be the worst of your troubles.”

  “Leave them on an island?” I asked.

  “Aye,” Gem said, “drop ’em off on a flyspeck of sand with naught but a pistole and one shot.”

  “Better make it count then,” I muttered.

  Gem started laughing again. “I like this one!”

  “Something I said?” I asked.

  “The pistole isn’t for hunting or protection,” Eld said. He leaned toward me. “It’s to blow your brains out when you can’t take it anymore.” I arched an eyebrow and he shrugged. “The helmswoman on the Sea Dragon, Ulia, liked to talk.”

  “To you, anyway,” I said.

  “Marooning takes considerable time and effort,” Chan Sha said. She rested her forearms on the table. “Oftentimes the plank is easier. Run a board out and let them walk off and the sharks will take care of the rest.”

  “Easier,” Gem said, “but a damned hard way to go. No need for that level of savagery.”

  “You bite your mouth,” the quartermaster hissed.

  I’d hoped I’d shocked the old hag into swallowing her tongue, but there’s a saying in the streets: “Shit in one hand, hope in the other, and see which fills up first.” The streets are buried in shit themselves, so they know they answer, but they’re honest. Sometimes.

  “I’m just saying that a pistole does the trick just as easily. Dead is dead.”

  But sometimes there’s an example to be made. I eyed Chan Sha, but her features were smooth, revealing nothing.

  “Save the powder says I,” the quartermaster said with a throaty chuckle. She swigged down the flagon before her and wiped foam from her upper lip, still laughing at her joke.

  “I … see,” Eld said, missing a beat.

  “Well, abide by our rules and you’ve naught to fear of marooning
or planks or sharks,” Chan Sha told Eld.

  “So you’ll take us on?”

  Chan Sha exchanged looks with her officers and shook her braids. “I didn’t say that. You’re guests and you’ll be treated as such. Once we have the measure of you”—she paused—“the full measure—then we’ll decide whether you’ll be joining our crew. Savvy?” she asked.

  “Savvy,” Eld and I repeated.

  Later, as we followed the old hag to our temporary quarters—two hammocks swung over crates at the bow of the ship—I played her words back in my mind and bit off a curse. Naught to fear of marooning or planks or sharks.

  “But you said nothing of pistoles.”

  22

  “Lime?” I asked. Eld eyed the barrel, which was three-quarters filled with limes and lemons and some strange fruit that looked more pink than yellow, and shook his head. “You don’t want your gums to bleed and your teeth to fall out. I mean, you’re old, but not that old. People will start to talk.”

  “The day you get your first grey hair, I will weep with joy,” he muttered. I snorted and he smiled. “I think I got enough sustenance from that damned eel last night.”

  “Aye, who would have pictured you as one with a taste for shriveled cock?” Eld’s face turned green again, more from the thought of the eel than my words, I’m sure. “What d’you think of our pirate captain?”

  He swallowed the lump in his throat and followed my gaze to where Chan Sha strode the deck, personally supervising fitting the broken cannon from yesterday back into its newly made carriage. Today her cloak was steel grey, which matched the sky perfectly and seemed to mirror the crew’s mood. Yesterday they’d all been riding a nervous high from the battle, but today everyone was melancholy. You’d have thought they’d be used to sending a few score of souls down to the deep by now, but no. A conscience is a terrible thing, I think.