The Sin in the Steel

by Ryan Van Loan

  He took out two with a murderous swipe that matched his roar and then living met dead with only the railing between. Steel flashed and the living screamed while the dead died again.

  “Elevensies,” I spat, holding out my hand. Eld dropped another lead ball in my palm and I drew my slingshot back, loading and aiming in a single motion. I hesitated, waiting for the dark woman with the flame-dyed hair to finish opening up the face of the Shambles in front of her with a claw hammer. Another undead put a hand on the railing to launch itself at her and I released; its skull whipped back, a dark hole appearing just a touch to the left of where its nose used to be.

  A slingshot will kill more often than it won’t, at least mine will, but the rotting desiccation of the Shambles meant my lead shot penetrated and kept going—something that wasn’t likely, even with a head shot, on live flesh. I’d already killed two with a single shot that way. Thank the Gods for small miracles. The Shambles dropped lifeless to the deck and the pirate buried her hammer in the face of the next corpse. A wench after my own heart. “Twelve,” I said, holding out my hand again.

  “You know,” Eld said, striving to keep his voice conversational but it was too tight, too hard to be convincing. “You know, if we moved closer, I could actually do something.”

  “You are doing something,” I said, pulling back and releasing the ball in one motion as a fat pirate went down with a cutlass buried in his face. The Shambles who’d killed him didn’t have a chance to enjoy her victory before I sent her plummeting into the gap between the ships. Her green dress, surprisingly clean given her state of decay, sparkled before she disappeared. “Keeping me loaded.” He snorted. “Fine, protecting me like you wanted to. Thirteen,” I added.

  “Aye, but I could protect you up there,” he said.

  “No, you could die faster up there,” I corrected him. The line of living and dead was easy enough to discern—those who were alive wore clothing and those that were dead mostly wore twisted skin and bone. One was loud and the other was silent, save for the scything sounds their weapons made through the air. And one was giving ground steadily while the other was advancing. I didn’t have to wait to pick targets now and within moments I had seventeen down. “If it makes you feel better, I don’t know that we’ll last much longer here.”

  A ragged volley sounded from above and behind us—the few too ill to work the deck had been given muskets, but it was only now that there was enough space between their crewmates for them to start firing. Another bad sign. A black cloak swept along the railing in a swirling, twirling maelstrom of smoke and steel and the dead fell back, a few decapitated, but most missing hands or entire limbs. Gem followed in Chan Sha’s wake with his knotted rope, well soaked in seawater, wiping bodies from the railing and the far deck with every swipe, and where they passed, holes appeared in the army of corpses.

  The crew rallied, screaming hoarse war cries, and the railing cleared, save for a few Shambles still moving woodenly forward, heads straight while their limbs flailed. The cries died on the crews’ tongues and a breath later there was enough space for me to see why.

  A cloaked figure appeared in the middle of the undead, moving too naturally to be one of them. A garish red feather hung from the corner of its tricorne and its features, pale and drawn, but definitely human, and definitely too fresh to be dead, were revealed in a pale blue glow from the book it held, open, in its hands.

  The man glanced up, tilted his head so that his goatee jingled from the bells woven through it, then looked back down. The feather in his cap shook from side to side as his head moved. The Shambles all began hissing and when they moved forward again, there was a speed to their gait that hadn’t been there before. Or maybe they were fresher than the corpses that had come before. It made sense to spend your furthest gone first, feeding them to fresh troops while holding your reserve in hand. The figure glanced up one more time, then disappeared behind its glowing book.

  “It’s the fucking Ghost Captain!”

  “You don’t say,” Eld said with a grin. I shot him a glare but his smile had already faded. When I looked back, the railing was consumed by a horde of dead flesh and the pirates were a mere half dozen paces in front of us and giving way fast. My breath caught in my throat. A pistole appeared in Eld’s hand and he dropped a Shambles bent over a fallen pirate, twin axes raised. Eld shouted something, but his shot had taken my hearing with it and so I just followed his lead, drawing a pair of stilettos. We rushed in, everyone screaming nonsense around me while I saved my breath to swing.

  It’s not an easy thing, severing the brain stem of a meat carcass that feels no pain, when all you have to work with is a palm or two of steel. Even when you have a blade in each fist. I can ice pick a man through the heart faster than you can blink and step back, leaving him dead on his feet before his body knows it. Women take a blink on account of their breasts, two blinks if they are especially well endowed. But ice picking wouldn’t hurt the dead.

  I danced around their swings; the fresher ones were fast, but more awkward for some reason. The Shambles before me had been a lad of my years, judging from the hair and skin left on its cheek. He hissed as he stepped around the lifeless body of a cabin boy younger than either of us. Blood pumped from his neck, staining the deck beneath him. As old as my sister. Anger raged through my veins as I launched myself at the undead. We were almost of a height, so he was probably younger than me when he died, but I didn’t take it easy on him because of that. Not after he’d murdered that poor child. Blade to right knee. Fulcrum point then—

  His cutlass nearly caught my curls and I cursed myself for not shaving every hair from my head when I last held a razor. I ducked, plunged both blades into his knee, and heaved. One nice thing about the dead, especially the truly desiccated, is they weigh considerably less than the living. The formerly living lad’s knee broke and he fell, losing one of his cutlasses in the process. I trapped the arm holding the other cutlass, flesh shrunken tight against the bone under my boot, and brought both blades down where the last of the skin on his cheek met his nose. The Shambles writhed and I twisted the blades, rage flowing through the steel in my hands, before ice picking his face with a dozen thrusts. What can I say? Old habits die hard.

  I stood up, hands covered in black gore, and found myself alone. The pirates had managed to push the dead back again, though not as far as the railing. The dead, both living and formerly unliving, littered the space between their lines. The Shambles were slowed by the debris, tripping and falling, some breaking legs and resorting to pulling themselves forward by their hands. Eld offered me a handkerchief, his chest heaving as he caught his breath, his slightly curved blade dripping black from hilt to tip. I tried to thank him, but Chan Sha cut me off.

  “Night crew, fall back to the cabins. We’ll make our stand there. Day crew, buy them some time!” She drew a pistole from what looked like her cleavage and shattered the head of a particularly decayed-looking Shambles. “Gem, you know what to do.”

  “Captain?” The mate’s voice carried in the silence.

  “Do it,” she commanded.

  “You lot,” Gem said, his shoulders sagging, “follow me. With a will, this has only just begun.”

  “He means we’ve lost,” I said. Eld arched an eyebrow. “More of these dead bastards keep pouring out of their holds,” I said, pointing at the ghost ship. “There’s another hundred on their decks at least. Fall back to the cabins? How are you going to escape from there?” I shook my head. It’s time we were gone, Eld.”

  “Gone where?” He pointed over his shoulder. “There’s naught but sea out there, Buc. And our whole purpose was to kill whomever is responsible for sinking these ships … now they stand a mere hundred paces away.”

  For the second time that morning, fear took hold. There’s a time to cut your losses, to show the enemy your backside and return with a sharp knife when they least expect it. Everything in me screamed this was one of those times, but—but the dead cabin boy leaking his l
ife from the hole in his neck filed my vision. Sister. Eld was right: the sea might not offer us much better than a deck half filled with the undead, and the bastard who could end this all and let us return to Servenza was only a ship away.

  Return and take over the Kanados Trading Company. Change the world. The sharp smell of burned powder took me back to the night I watched my sister die, and the flames danced before my eyes the way they’d danced then, as they licked at my flesh and hers.

  “Buc!” Eld’s voice, more than his hands on my shoulders, shaking me, brought me back to reality.

  “You’re right,” I said.

  “What?”

  “All right, all right.” I patted him on the arm, slipping out of his grip as I did so. Tell a man he’s right and you’ll be months retraining him. “Stay here while I go murder the Ghost Captain.”

  Eld’s shouts chased me as I leapt onto the barrels, thence to the stump of the broken mast, and onto the mast itself. I ran down its length, slipped over to one of the horizontal spars, and in moments I’d crossed the deck and reached one of the smaller masts still standing. I grabbed one of the yards and slashed the other end of the rope with my stiletto.

  For a breath, nothing happened, then my arm was jerked almost out of its socket as the halyard ripped me upward, swinging me out just enough that my momentum kept me from colliding with the iron tackle I’d just loosed from up above. I’d wanted to try that ever since I saw a pirate do it. He’d been given a lashing for ruining perfectly good rope, but Gods, it had looked like a fun way to climb. And it was. The wind bit at my face and tears began to leak from my eyes, but then it was over and I was left dangling a span above another crossbar with a sore arm that was fast losing feeling.

  I dropped onto the crossbar and ran across it. The sounds of battle reached my ears but didn’t feel as immediate, as personal, as they had on the deck. I almost imagined I could wait up here until everything played out beneath me … wait and pick up the pieces. But I couldn’t. Half the pirates had fled belowdecks and the other half wouldn’t last much longer. And Eld was down there, fighting for his life. Besides, even if the dead lose, they win. There’s always more dead after a fight. This was lost the moment their sail crested the horizon. I took another rope, this one long, and tied it to the crossbar in a tight coil while the rest of its length led up to the top of the sail, then cut the tie and let most of it drop off into space, took a deep breath, and leapt.

  My battle cry rang out so violently that it almost sounded like I was screaming, but that had to be the wind in my ears. I don’t scream. I plummeted toward the Widowmaker’s deck, then began to angle out, slowly at first but picking up speed. There was a good span or two of open air between the ships, but where the dead attacked it looked as if they had bled into each other. If ships could bleed bodies. The undead that were still not dead-dead used their fallen as a bridge and were bending back the edges of the pirates’ line, forcing the living into a circle. I saw all of this in the span of a few blinks and then I was over the other ship. My gaze was pulled, almost against my will, toward the figure holding the glowing book. Surrounded by the darkness of the dead, the Ghost Captain stood out like the Point Star. They were packed so tightly that he couldn’t have fallen over even if he’d wanted to. The sight of all that writhing, rotting meat sent gooseflesh down my arms. Gods. Dropping on him for the kill was never an option.

  But I’d known that when I’d made the leap.

  I felt my momentum slow and then begin to reverse. It’s now or never … I was a good thirty paces over the deck and none of the dead had noticed me. The Ghost Captain was enthralled with his reading, so none knew that I was there. None saw me flip the stiletto in my hand so that it was point first. Throwing knives isn’t a good idea. Even well-balanced blades can tip unexpectedly and beyond that, the power needed to deliver a killing blow often means you’re better off letting your target get another step closer and stabbing them instead. Or ice picking them. But this knife was the best balanced of my blades and I’d won more than one bet with it, nailing a card to a wall at thirty paces. This was only a little more than that and even if I didn’t kill the Ghost Captain, I had a growing suspicion that his book was connected to the dead. Who knows, maybe breaking up his afternoon reading would be enough to do the trick. Slight breeze on left cheek. Cross-body throw. Adjust. Do it.

  The rope was drawing me back. My arm lashed out, wrist snapping like chained lightning, and the stiletto whipped through the air. It was a good throw. I knew it before it fully left my fingertips. I would have screamed my victory to the skies, but two things prevented that. First, a Shambles missing a leg slipped off its crutch and knocked into the Ghost Captain. Second, the rope in my hands quivered as the sound of it snapping reached my ears.

  My blade buried itself to the hilt in the Shambles’s neck, spraying the Ghost Captain with ichor. And then I was falling, tumbling, twisting, and when I opened my eyes the dead were watching me. Waiting for me.

  With outstretched skeletal fingers.

  Fuck.

  29

  Sharp, jagged fingers clawed at my dress, others latched on to my wrists and calves, and still others pummeled me where they couldn’t grab hold. I kept screaming obscenities as I lashed out around me, but even though the dead lacked flesh and muscle and in some cases even sinew, they were stronger than I’d believed possible. I flailed uselessly as the one trying to rip my shoulder off hissed in my ear. One of its teeth bounced against my chin as its jaws snapped together, searching for my throat. I jerked away and my head rebounded hard off the deck. The taste of smoke filled my mouth and the world shrank to a few fingers in front of my face.

  This is how it ends.

  The thought echoed clearly through me as I felt more bony hands grasping my legs. They began pulling in different directions and my screams turned from variations of “fuck” and “fucking” to plain old screaming. The Shambles let go of my shoulder, but another grasped my wrist, bending over me so I could see the hole through the bottom of its chin, bits of flesh still clinging to a few teeth while something that felt like breath passed across its nub of a tongue. Its jaws snapped again. Closer. Again. Closer. Its teeth ground together as it fought to pull itself closer to me, impeded by the swarming host of undead around us. I could almost feel its teeth meet through my throat, severing my jugular between them.

  Instead its jaw slammed shut again on air. Not there. But closer. Closer. I tried to head-butt it, but the Shambles pulled back and I missed. The Shambles hissed as it managed to elbow a few others away. It lowered itself toward me, the skull leering as its jaws spread even farther apart. A fetid, rotten stench filled my nostrils, so raw that there was almost something sweet to it. This was it.

  I screamed until my throat tore and blood filled my mouth as I willed my muscles to move, but the press of bone was too much and I managed little more than a shudder. The undead thing hissed in my face, jagged mouth parting in an evil smile. Cracking, crushing, horrible sounds drowned out the sibilant hissing as a barrel bounced into my vision and out again, leaving twisted and broken bones in its wake.

  Most of the hands on my arms disappeared and the few that remained no longer clutched at me, all power gone from them.

  That’s not right; I was supposed to die.

  I reached out mechanically, caught up a humerus, and set to smashing the three or four Shambles still pulling on my legs. Turns out, bone on bone is pretty effective against the undead. I regained my feet and the world swooned in front of me. I turned in a circle, waiting to go down, and not sure why that was a bad idea. Something thought it was, but the blood rushing to my head didn’t carry any answers with it. I caught myself against a headless torso in time to see a figure leap the rail a dozen paces away, pistoles blazing in each hand. Shambles fell as the figure sprinted toward me, blue jacket trailing behind. The pistole barrels glinted as they rotated, over-under, then the guns bucked again and two more Shambles fell at my feet. Eld reached me a heartbeat
later. I opened my mouth as he swept me up in one arm and drew his cutlass with the other.

  I kept trying to tell him something. Something that I’d forgotten until now. The last time I was in his arms. I remembered and it was very important to tell him, but he wasn’t listening. We were surrounded by a crowd, but there was an open road before us and some juggernaut bouncing along in front of us. Wherever it went, bodies flew, and there was something about it that tickled me. I saw the bone in my fist and it all came together. Funny bone. I giggled. I tried to tell Eld about my funny bone, but the words came out all jumbled and I had the feeling he wasn’t listening because he didn’t stop.

  If anything, he ran faster.

  I saw a man holding a blazing book, staring at us as if unable to believe his eyes, and then we were past him and the thing in front of us ran right through a large, hulking Shambles and launched itself over the railing. I wanted to tell Eld the story of the broken man who couldn’t be put back together again, but the thought set off another wave of laughter.

  Then Eld jumped onto the railing and I found myself thrown out over something large and dark.

  And wet.

  I came up spluttering, bone still clutched in my hand, but for some reason it was no longer funny. A man with pale blond hair and even paler skin surfaced beside me. “Grab the barrel, Buc!” He reached for me as a wave started to separate us, but something brown floated between us and I managed to catch it with one hand. I felt one of my nails tear and pain seared through my hand, but I held on. I wasn’t sure why, but hanging on seemed the right thing to do. The important thing to do. Then I swallowed a wave and it swallowed everything else.

  “Hold on! Hold on!” Meaningless sounds. Something squeezed my shoulder and a slap of cold water brought sense back to me. “Hold on.”