The Sin in the Steel

by Ryan Van Loan

  “Her boots have elevated heels, so she looks taller than she really is. The cloak is thin and touches her calves, aiding the illusion, and as wild as her hair is, the matchsticks make it seem more so. More actor than pirate, then.” He grinned. “There’s something about her, though; she’d turn any number of heads in Servenza.”

  “And yours as well?” I asked lightly.

  “Aye, why not?”

  “Her hair looks brittle, I think,” I said. “Too much salt and wind; it’d probably snap off the first time you pulled it.”

  “Gods, I don’t mean to sleep with her,” Eld said. He gave me a hard look. “You’re especially prickly this morning, Buc.”

  “I just want to make sure your head’s in the game,” I said. “The right head.”

  “I want what you want,” he said simply. He palmed a lemon from the barrel beside us and hefted it. “Though I hope you have a plan that involves exposing Chan Sha’s scheme and getting us off this Godsforsaken boat before she exposes us and sends us over the side.”

  “Our good captain?” I asked. Chan Sha looked up from where she stood surrounded by half her crew, saw us, and began threading her way around the others, moving directly for us. “Aye, it’s a cat-and-mouse game now.”

  “And you’re no mouse,” Eld said.

  I smiled. “No.” If you see enough cats chase mice, you’ll begin to notice a sharp divide between the experienced and the less so. The younger cats will leap about, trying to muscle their way to the kill, but that fails more often than not. A mouse that’s been pressed will double back on itself, slip through cracks, and escape. The wiser cat will keep pressure on the mouse, but make no move until finally the mouse has no choice but to make a move of its own. And when it does, the wiser cat is waiting.

  It’s hard to escape when you’re dancing to another’s tune and all they need do is wait for you to slip up. So I’d let Chan Sha play the mouse and dance back and forth as she tried to out us, and in the end, when she made a mistake, I’d be waiting to pounce.

  “I’m no mouse,” I repeated.

  “You two breakfasted well?” she asked when she reached us.

  “Very well,” Eld said.

  “I apologize I couldn’t tarry, but the day after a battle is almost as busy as the day of the battle itself.” She smiled that smile that never quite found her eyes. “Albeit with less danger, aye?”

  “Your company was missed,” Eld said, dipping his head.

  I didn’t bother rolling my eyes. If I did that every time he laid on the polish with a thick hand, I’d have gone cross-eyed long ago. I couldn’t keep the curl from my lips though, and Chan Sha saw it.

  “And you, Buc? How was your breakfast?”

  “Well enough,” I admitted. I was Servenzan, so fish for breakfast wasn’t unusual, but everything on board tasted of smoke or pickle or dry dust. “Certainly nicer without the fat one reminding me what an honor you’ve bestowed upon us.” Eld’s eyes popped, so I added, “Not that it isn’t an honor. Captain.” The last sounded pulled from my mouth, which wasn’t far from the truth, but if Chan Sha heard my reluctance, she didn’t acknowledge it.

  “I’ve never met a quartermaster who wasn’t difficult to get along with. Ours might top the lot, but we’re always in good supply, so there’s that. I thought it might be better to ease you all together, though, and it seems I was right.”

  “Our thanks,” Eld said quickly, before I could reply.

  Chan Sha took it with a nod and glanced at the cannon her crew was running back into its gunport. “You say you were only a day in Port au’ Sheen?”

  “Closer to two by the time they’d written everything out,” Eld said.

  “And how came you from the Empire?”

  “By ship,” I said.

  “I mean, what was her name?” Chan Sha said.

  “Oh.” I shrugged. “The biggest ship I’ve been on and that’s about all I can tell you. Before that it was gondolas and the odd barge.”

  “Fat and slow,” Eld said. “Or so it seemed to us, but we didn’t have much choice in timing or funds.”

  “Cheating will deal you those cards,” Chan Sha agreed. “So you’re what, three weeks out from the Empire?”

  “That’s about right,” I said. “Give or take a few days—my head’s been turned upside down from it.”

  “Last I heard from the Empire, Normain was massing troops inland,” Chan Sha said. “Was the talk of war when you left?”

  Eld frowned. “The opposite; there’s been no movements that I’ve heard of since that dustup two years back. Trade has been fair to all, if heavier in the Empire’s favor. There’re skirmishes from the Burning Lands, of course, and talk of the Free Cities banding together, but there’s always that kind of talk.”

  “Well, our news is old and secondhand at best, often as not.”

  “Aye, I’d’ve thought there’d be more ships around these parts,” I said. “From the papers, the sugar trade sounds like a congested behemoth of boats moving between the Shattered Coast and the mainland. Is it always like this?” I asked. I could have been asking about the weather, so easy did I make it.

  “Not always, no,” Chan Sha said. “But we’re nearing high summer in these climes and that means hurricanes more often than not. You’ve got to steer a careful course then, Buc.” She scratched her nose with a dark-lacquered nail and glanced down to me. “And there are some that prefer not to risk it.”

  So she knew I wasn’t asking about the weather. I saw Eld’s mouth twitch, trying to slow me down, but if she wanted to be this open, then I would take all the space she gave me. The time for hesitation was about to pass us by if it hadn’t already. If we took too long to find proof, we might as well have never found any. “Hurricanes, eh?”

  “Aye, not like they were a few centuries ago, when the Shattered Coast was a thing of legend and every ship that entered these waters was sunk by hurricanes the size of Cordoban and larger. But”—she sighed—“even a small hurricane dwarfs a ship, and in high summer there are no small hurricanes.”

  “I read a book once,” I said slowly, as if the thought was just coming to me. One forty-three. “Volker’s Where the Gods Fear to Step, I think it was. He claimed to have discovered religious documents detailing a conspiracy whereby fanatics triggered the Seasons of Flame and Ash. He believed that they intentionally caused the volcanoes to erupt and that these blasts let out enough heat and smoke that the world cooled. It wreaked havoc on the weather and the crops in the years that came after, in the Seasons of Famine.” I shrugged. “It also ended the hurricanes.”

  “Religious fanatics, you say?”

  “Adherents of the New Goddess, aye.”

  “Sin Eaters?”

  “That’s what Volker believed. Ciris awoke less than a hundred years before the Season, and the Dead Gods had had millennia to do whatever they pleased instead of lurking in their temples with Shambles and Veneficus to guard their secrets.”

  “‘The Gods are like the sea,’” Eld quoted. “‘Fathomless.’”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time mages played a tune for themselves and didn’t give a fig that it set the world on fire,” I said. “What better way to undermine the Dead Gods than to create hardship and heartache across the continents?”

  “Fathomless,” Eld repeated. He hesitated, then added, “I don’t doubt their followers are just as easily misunderstood.”

  “Aye,” Chan Sha said, seizing the bait. “They’re like pirates in that regard. Little reckoned and often blamed.”

  I let her words hang on their own for a few moments, as if considering them. I hadn’t been sure if Eld would stick to the points I’d outlined this morning, but so far he was playing along. If Chan Sha was in league with the Dead Gods, she was likely a believer and I’ve yet to meet a person who, when confronted with a different worldview, won’t stop to take the time and correct it. Even when it needs no correcting. Maybe especially then.

  “You say there are too f
ew ships along these lanes,” Chan Sha continued when I didn’t challenge her. “And you’re right: they are less than usual. Who gets blamed for that?” She tapped her chest. “Pirates.”

  “To be fair, you did sink the ship we were on,” I said.

  Chan Sha laughed. “Aye, true enough, but we never meant to blow her out of the water. Force her to give over, board her, and take what we needed—aye, that’s the pirate’s way. But sinking a ship never filled a lass’s pockets nor her belly. No ships means no pirates.”

  “Then why sink so many?” I asked.

  “And who says we have?” she shot back. She shook her head and the match locks danced in her dark braids. “Little reckoned, as I said. You say the mages are fanatics who played havoc with things better left untouched, but they did us all a favor, says I. Without cooling the air, they wouldn’t have tamed the hurricanes and then there would have been no profits, no island paradise, no freedom, and no pirates.” She laughed. “And no Chan Sha.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that before,” I said slowly. Which was true, I hadn’t. Because who gave a fuck what happened a few centuries ago? I cared enough to know how it informed today, but thinking about what might have been otherwise wasn’t in my nature. “Still, I must admit, going from plantation owner to a convict with a death sentence and now your…”

  “Honored guest,” she supplied.

  “If you say so,” I said. “Going from that to this feels like neither profit nor paradise.”

  Chan Sha studied me. “We’ve a saying on the seas. ‘A change of breeze is but a wave away.’ I could have left you floating in the sea like driftwood, but I didn’t. Still, I can do more and I will.” She pointed toward the door that led to her quarters. “I’ll have baths prepared within the hour. Lay out your things and we’ll have them cleaned and returned to you. It might not fill your sails, but I’ve found sloughing the dirt off helps give a new perspective.”

  “That sounds excellent!” Eld said, grinning.

  “It does,” I said, surprised to find myself agreeing with Eld. I could feel the salt caked on my skin, thick enough I’d’ve thought it would turn me into Eld’s twin. If he were a couple years younger. And my clothes were stiff with dried dirt, sweat, and even more salt.

  “Good, give my sailors the turn of the bell and find Gem. He’ll handle things with our beloved quartermaster and you can join me for a light repast after.” She looked into my eyes. “Perhaps you’ll start to see that we’re not so different, Buc, you and I. Pirates. Gamblers. Women.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, but I spoke it to the wind because she was already moving, calling for Gem.

  “I followed your lead,” Eld said.

  “You usually do,” I muttered. I touched his elbow. “I should have developed a better approach—I practically threw my words down her throat. You provided the counterbalance necessary to lessen that weight.”

  “Thanks, Buc.” He sounded mildly surprised, but it was hard to read his face with the reddish-blond scruff that had grown over it. “A draw, do you think?”

  “She didn’t give us much,” I said. “If anything, she spoke in favor of Ciris, but if Chan Sha is behind the disappearances and sinkings, I don’t know why she’d try to hide it.” I fingered the stiff sleeve of my dress that showed below my coat cuff. It’d been white once, but was barely lighter than my skin now. “Still, hot baths and fresh clothes. I’d say point to us.”

  “Aye, things are finally looking up,” Eld said.

  23

  “I have to admit, I’d forgotten how much just being clean changes things.”

  “I think you were dirtier than when I first met you,” Eld said from the other side of the sheet that hung between us. Water splashed and he started humming again. “I’ll just be glad to get this damnable itchy scruff shaved off.”

  I laughed and sank back into the water. The bath was really just two barrel halves put together and Eld likely had to scrunch his knees up, but even with the water growing tepid and turning dark from the dirt that had been caked on me, it felt good to be clean again. When that hag of a quartermaster came back with our clothes, it would be even nicer. Eld’s razor made a rhythmic sound and I closed my eyes for a while, letting the remaining tension leech from my muscles.

  “You know, I think Chan Sha is going to take us on as crew,” I said. “Granted, that means we’ll have to work the decks and we’ve little enough experience there, but it’s the best alternative for now. At the very least, I don’t think she intends to send us over the rail. It’d be a lot of wasted effort at this point. Don’t you think?” I used a brush to scrub at a spot on the back of my arm. “Eld? You shaving your lips or something?”

  It’s too quiet. The sounds of his shaving had stopped at some point and I’d been too relaxed to realize.

  The curtain parted, revealing Gem holding a cocked pistole pointed at Eld’s face, which was red from anger or embarrassment, I wasn’t sure which. Beside Gem, the leering quartermaster had something hanging from her fleshy hand. She cackled as oilskin parchment unrolled itself in the lamplight. I didn’t have to squint to see what it was: The last time I’d seen such parchment had been upon leaving Servenza. It was the letter of writ, giving us a stake in the Kanados Trading Company. I’d given it to Eld to hide when I got seasick. I glanced past her toward the deck and it all made sense. I wanted to scream. It should have all made sense hours ago.

  “The captain is a riddle, girl,” the quartermaster said. “Mayhap she just wanted you nice and clean for the sharks. We don’t like spies, do we, Gem?”

  “We don’t,” he agreed. The burly first mate didn’t quite meet my eyes, but the pistole was steady in his fist. “The two of you are going to get up nice and slow; nothing stupid, or the smart portion of Mister Eld is going to end up sliding down yonder wall. Then we’ll go talk to the captain.”

  “You searched our things at breakfast but couldn’t find anything,” I said to the quartermaster. “So if we had anything, it had to be on us.” I splashed the water with the brush in my hand. “Ergo the baths.”

  “Captain did say we’d take the full measure of you,” she said. “I knew there was something off on you the moment you refused the eel. Anyone who would insult the captain at her own table.” She shook her head and her cheeks moved with the motion. “Well, you weren’t worthy of the honor you—”

  The brush flew from my hand and took her full in the face, turning the rest of her words into a squawk. I’m good with my hands—it’s why I prefer knives over swords. Swords are more about wrist and leg work, and while I’m nimble enough, my fingers are more so. That’s also why I’m better with pistoles and slingshots.

  I’d intended to put the brush off the side of her head and send her reeling into Gem so Eld could finish him off. A risky move, given the pistole aimed at his head, but anytime someone has you cornered with nothing but your own skin, risks are allowed. So long as I’m the one taking them.

  My hands were wrinkled and pruny from the water and the brush was slick with soap, spoiling my aim. Instead of knocking the woman out and into Gem, I only smashed her nose. The brush sank into her flesh and bounced back with almost as much vigor as when I’d thrown it, and I dropped into the water to avoid catching the handle across my head. When I came back up, the quartermaster was clenching her nose with both hands, blood seeping between her fingers, and our writ lay on the floor.

  “You widdle bitch,” she moaned. “I’ll see you—”

  “I understand the toss,” Gem said conversationally, “but even if she can be a lot to handle, she’s our quartermaster.” He spoke to a point just over my head. “You’re just lucky I didn’t blow your friend’s brains out in the bargain. My hands sweat when I’m about to kill someone,” he added.

  Gods. He thought I was being a petulant little girl and didn’t realize what I’d been attempting. Lucky. A sigh slipped from my lungs. Eld’s knuckles gripped the sides of his barrel so hard that his skin almost looked translucent and e
very muscle was tensed, like steel coils waiting to loose. He’d known what I had been going for. A moment later his muscles relaxed and he went from looking imposing and on the edge of violence to what he was: a man caught in the bathhouse without so much as a scrap to cover himself with.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t hurt her worse or the captain would have the pair of you shot here and now,” Gem continued. “She protects her own. Now, Eld, you’re going to get up first and let her—Gods, woman, it was only a brush,” he growled at the quartermaster, who was still mumbling garbled threats between her hands. “She’s going to tie you up. I’ll keep the pistole on you so Buc here doesn’t get any more ideas. I won’t watch,” he added.

  “Watch what?” I asked.

  “You getting out of the water,” he said. “We’ve towels to wrap around you while we take you belowdecks.”

  “And what happens there?” Eld asked.

  “Bad things,” the quartermaster said. She lowered her hands, revealing a crooked nose with a bruise that looked like a dark smudge mid-beak. “Deliciously bad things.”

  “So you won’t watch my naked body get out of the water, because that would be improper, while taking me to be tortured and murdered?” I asked.

  “We’re pirates, not savages,” he said by way of explanation.

  “Oh, we should suggest the captain maroons them on one of the islands the savages live on,” the quartermaster cooed. She glared at me. “I hear they’ve a taste for human flesh.”

  My fingers ached for another brush to throw.

  24

  “There’s got to be a better place to hide that oilskin than sewn into your sword belt,” I said.

  “We’re back to that again?” Eld asked beside me in the darkness.

  “Learning from your mistakes is rule number one,” I said.

  “You say that a lot, you know?”

  “Then why are you surprised I’m trying to figure it out?”

  “No, not that.” Eld sighed. “You’ve a lot of rule number ones. Must be close to forty-seven of them at this point.”