The Sin in the Steel

by Ryan Van Loan

  There was more, but Chan Sha’s cry cut my attention short. She was staring away from the village toward the beach. Thick palm trees obscured my view, but crimson sails fluttered in the wind, standing tall above the trees, and told all the tale I needed.

  She was right.

  The Ghost Captain followed us.

  How? I cut my brain off before it could leap down that path. “How” was a question for later; the question before me was simple: Now what? Chan Sha glanced at us when we caught up to her on the downward slope, her expression inscrutable beneath her sun-darkened skin.

  “Well.” The word burned in my throat. “We already had one shot at the bastard and I hate missing. I suppose we can try a second.”

  “That’s the spirit,” she spat. “C’mon, we don’t want to be late to the party.”

  “Hold fast,” I snapped. Chan Sha’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re running on emotion, woman. Emotion is like to get you killed, aye, and us in the bargain too. We need a plan.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Plan is, find the undead arsehole who killed my crew and take his head off with this blade.”

  “Stabby. I like it.” I sniffed. “But I doubt he’s out there alone waiting on your pleasure. I don’t suppose you have any kan?” My mind was racing and it was taking everything in me to hold it at bay.

  Chan Sha surprised me by digging a small rolled-up clump of kan from her pocket and tossing it to me. “No matches to be had.”

  “I’ll take it.” I packed it into my mouth and began chewing. I’d heard of addicts doing the same, but I’d never tried it. First time for everything. Now that we were closer, I could hear shouts and the faint ring of metal on metal. It sounded like the islanders were putting up a fight, but I doubted the natives were prepared for an army of the undead. Chan Sha’s crew hadn’t been, and they’d had guns and ammunition aplenty. My mind began to slow, ever so slightly, as the kan took effect. “What we need to do is—Wait.”

  “Wait?” she snarled.

  “No.” I pointed toward the movement in the jungle I’d just seen. “Wait, I just saw something. Our luck it will be more of those fucking trotters.” We were halfway down the dune and I could see almost through the jungle to the next beach over. I’d seen a flash of something in the trees. Chan Sha opened her mouth when I saw it again, moving our direction. “There.” I stabbed my finger. She shook her head, then froze. “You see it?”

  “Not an it. A her,” Chan Sha said, squinting. “Limping. And she’s from civilization.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She’s wearing a Godsdamned dress, can’t you see?”

  “I can’t,” Eld put in.

  “Oh,” Chan Sha said, and her voice dropped. She took a deep breath. “Might be mistaken, but after years at sea staring for a scrap of sail, my vision is pretty good.”

  I tried not to stare at her. It was better than pretty good. All I had seen was a figure, definitely not a pig, but no way to discern gender or dress. Not that I’d tell Chan Sha that. Several Shambles burst through the jungle behind the woman, smashing through thick vines, not bothering to hack them away with their swords, but simply walking forward until the vines broke or their bones did. One fell down, but half a dozen kept going. Almost parallel to them, but coming from the village side, were a dozen of the native inhabitants. I wouldn’t have seen them, save one had scurried up a palm tree and was now coming back down. They were pointing excitedly toward where the woman—she was close enough now for me to make out the gilt on her tawny-brown dress—had stopped, bent over, to catch her breath.

  “I don’t know who she is, but it seems like everyone on this island but us wants a piece of her,” I said, relaying what I’d seen.

  “Fuck her. It’s the Ghost Captain I want,” Chan Sha said.

  “Aye, and he wants her,” I said. With the kan helping to control my thoughts, things began to slip into place. “So we capture her and he’ll come to us. ‘Never let the enemy dictate the ground you fight on,’” I quoted. “If you’d learned that, maybe yesterday wouldn’t have happened.”

  “You little bitch!” Chan Sha leveled a pistole at me.

  Eld dropped into a crouch, raising the butt of his empty pistole with a growl, but I held up a hand to stop him.

  “You know you didn’t reload that, right?” I asked.

  “I—” She glanced at the pistole in her hand as if surprised, then back at me.

  I realized I’d misjudged her. Her eyes were almost dilated despite the sunlight, and there was a wildness in them that hadn’t been there before. The Chan Sha of yesterday had been dangerous the way a pit viper was dangerous. Ignore her warnings or enter her lair or read as prey and she would attack, but otherwise she was content to watch and wait. That had been stripped away by the loss of her ship. Now she was like a three-fanged sea serpent during breeding season, actively looking to spread the pain.

  “You want the Ghost Captain dead, aye?” I tried to force some sympathy into my voice, but the bitch had tried to kill us. After torturing Eld. If I could have done it safely, I would have thrown a candle into her ship’s powder magazine myself. “Well, so do we. Need him dead, if you remember our tale. But we’re not going to kill him by running straight for him. I already tried that.” I shivered at the phantom sensation of the undead’s fingers grasping at my skin.

  “We need to catch him off guard, when he’s least expecting it. And if he’s sent his minions after that woman, then I’m guessing she’s important to him. Important enough that he’ll come looking if the Shambles don’t bring her to him.”

  “An ambush,” Eld supplied.

  “Just so,” I agreed.

  “Ambush?” Chan Sha whispered.

  “Aye, but you’d best load that pistole first,” I said. “If you have any dry powder.”

  I stepped past her, to forestall any more arguments, and bit back a curse. From my vantage point I could see the woman, but she wasn’t looking in my direction and if I tried to draw her attention, I’d likely draw the attention of the ones chasing her as well. She was staring at a point to my left and when I followed her gaze, I saw why.

  A small stream cut through where the dunes met the jungle. From my perspective, I could see it was only a few paces across and shallow, but from hers? Where there was a break in the dunes, the water spilled over a number of rocks, looking wild. She thinks it’s strong enough to keep the Shambles away or carry her downstream.

  I was running before I realized it, ripping the pistole from Eld’s hand and leaving the shouts of him and Chan Sha racing after me. I’d told Chan Sha we needed a plan and so we did, but I had taken it all in with the first glance. My body was weakened from being tossed about the sea like a glass bottle, but my brain was unfazed. We needed leverage over the Ghost Captain, and given the state of Chan Sha’s rowboat, we were effectively marooned here.

  That meant we needed to give him a reason to stay and I was betting an awful lot that this woman, whomever she was, would be enough. But only if I got to her before the gaggle of old, dead, and ugly did. I tried to will my legs faster, caught my feet in my skirt, and went tumbling down the last dune, ass over boots. When I came to a stop, I saw the woman scrambling across the stream, her sodden reddish-brown dress clinging to her, tripping her up with every step. She spotted me and froze, tears in her eyes, pale cheeks a deep red. We stared at each other.

  “Who are you?” she said, panting.

  “B-Buc,” I said with a gasp, spitting out the wad of kan before I swallowed it trying to breathe. “Who the bloody Gods are you?”

  “The Archaeologist?”

  “The what?” Drawing a breath, I waved my question away. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter. Why’s the Ghost Captain want you?”

  “You mean the Dead Walker?” she asked, nearly as out of breath as I was.

  “Aye, why are his Shambles chasing you?”

  “Because he wants the knowledge I have,” she said, tapping her red hair. “Up here.”
r />   “You know how to kill him?” I asked, unable to keep the excitement from my voice.

  “Do you have a ship? A boat?”

  “Aye, but set that aside for a moment—” I began.

  “Will you take me with you?”

  “I was coming to get you—” I tried again.

  “Oh, thank the Gods,” she cried.

  “Don’t thank them, thank me,” I muttered dryly. “You know how to kill the Ghost Captain? Kill him dead.”

  “He’s almost dead already,” she said.

  “But—”

  “I know how to kill him,” she agreed. “And I’ll tell you if you take me with you.”

  “Done,” I spat. The Shambles came stumbling from the jungle and splashed into the middle of the stream. The woman saw something in my eyes, turned around, and screamed. “Get back!” I yelled, but she stood motionless.

  “C’mon.” I could feel her trembling in my grip, so I spun her and gave her a shove to start her moving. “Go! Run!” By then the Shambles were nearly on me. And all I had was an empty pistole, my slingshot, and a shard of a blade. Damn it, Buc.

  A fine trap I’d laid for myself.

  32

  I sank into a crouch, swinging my arms back and forth, empty pistole held by the barrel in one hand, flat shard of steel in the other. The lead Shambles wore a sun-bleached calico dress, its bone-white fingers bright against the dark handles of the twin cleavers it wielded. I dodged the first swipe, breaking its wrist with the butt of the gun, and a notched cleaver fell to the sand between us. The Shambles moaned, blackened tongue poking between broken yellowed teeth, and I growled back. The rest of its compatriots caught up and I found myself facing a semicircle of death. Throw the pistole. One pace to cleaver. Take out knee of one to the left. Sprint through gap. Take the rest from behind. It wasn’t much of a plan, but in my mind’s eye it was the only one I saw with a chance of ending without me torn and bloody, one step from joining the Shambles’ ranks.

  I took a deep breath—which was driven from my lungs by an elbow that sent me sprawling into the lead Shambles. The creature’s moan turned to a whine as it stumbled back, skeletal legs tangling in the shreds of its dress. It, I, and the … Archaeologist … fell to the sand. The woman was screaming, her eyes wild.

  Gods damn it. My shove must have twisted her wits, because she’d run right back into the midst of the fight. I jumped to my feet, catching her arm and hauling her up though she was head and shoulders taller than me. Adrenaline will do that. So will half a dozen undead with blades all within an arm’s reach of you.

  “Run, you fool!” I shouted, ducking a rusty cutlass that nearly took me square in the forehead. The wind from the blade sent gooseflesh down my back.

  My words must have reached her because the Archaeologist took off.

  Right into the arms of one of the Shambles.

  Two more stepped twixt me and the woman while the remaining three followed the one in the calico dress, lumbering back the way they’d come, with the Archaeologist flailing ineffectually between them. My howl of impotent rage was lost in her frantic screams. The two came at me, ax and sword in hand. When I dropped back a pace, my boot kicked something hard and I glanced down to see the notched cleaver dropped by the one in the calico dress. I scooped it up just in time to parry the sword of the one on my right. Shock waves reverberated along my arm and sent me down to one knee. My breath screamed in my lungs from the past few moments, and blood beat a nervous rhythm in my brain, disrupting my train of thought. The undead will do that to you. Being a breath away from joining their ranks doesn’t help either.

  I saw the ax coming like a hammer blow, blotting out the sun. Time stilled. The Shambles swinging the ax was tall, its pale bones thick and joined together by fresh tendon and sinew with scraps of muscle rotting between. Stronger by far than most others I’d faced. I could block their strike before it split my skull like Eld and I had split those nuts on the beach, but the force of the blow would still rip the cleaver from my hands. I didn’t think the pistole in my hand would stop the other from running me through, but it was all I had. Fall left after blocking, throw the pistole. Only blind luck would save me now.

  Time reasserted itself, the ax whistling toward my head as I desperately brought the cleaver up between us. Then a scimitar was there and the ax caromed off with a screech of steel on steel. The Shambles’s desiccated skull disappeared in a flash of gunpowder and a plume of smoke and the rest of it fell into a limp pile of bone in front of me. A heartbeat later the other fell beside it, skull spinning off into the stream. A gentle hand on my shoulder pulled me to my feet.

  “Gods damn it, Buc. Next time don’t run off without me,” Eld said, the lightness in his voice betrayed by the bright worry in his eyes. “Clue me in first.”

  “Aye, and me,” Chan Sha said from behind me.

  I’d forgotten I had Eld. We’d been partners for two years and I’d called him friend, but for my part it’d been in name only. Only recently, facing everything we had over the past week, it’d become something more. “Friend” didn’t seem to do it justice, but it was the only word I had to use. I had a friend. And a Chan Sha. I feigned a smile and fought to keep the tremor from my voice as the nervous liquid fire that comes after a near-death experience flooded through my veins. “I knew you’d catch on,” I said. “I didn’t think it’d take you this long, but still … late’s better than never, aye?”

  Chan Sha snorted, stepping up beside us and staring at where the rest of the Shambles had run off to. “You’re welcome, Buc,” she said. “Now, what was all that about? I assume you let them steal the woman away?”

  “Gods, no,” I replied, refusing to take the bait she’d thrown out. “Fool woman got turned around and ran right back into them. You must have seen?” The pair exchanged looks over my head. “What?”

  “It looked like you might have shoved her into them,” Eld said, finally.

  I snorted. “Why would I run pell-mell into the middle of a pile of undead just to make sure they captured the prize they sought?”

  “Because they caught up to you faster than you’d anticipated and you needed a way to save your own skin?” Chan Sha asked.

  “Bullshit,” I growled. I didn’t do that, did I? “I wasn’t worried about my skin until she ran into me. And even then, I wouldn’t sacrifice the one person who knows how to kill the Ghost Captain. Least not till after he was dead.”

  “She knows how to kill the Ghost Captain?” Eld asked.

  “Who is she?” Chan Sha asked over him. “What was her name?”

  “We didn’t have time to exchange pleasantries,” I lied. “And that’s what she claimed. He sent Shambles after her to prevent that knowledge from spreading,” I added, answering Eld. “Now you understand why I wouldn’t have let her die?”

  “No, you just let her be captured so she can die later,” Chan Sha said.

  “Fuck off,” I growled.

  “Ladies,” Eld interjected. He held his hands up defensively when we both turned on him. “Not sure we want to fight in front of the company is all,” he said. His smile looked strained as he nodded past us. We followed his gaze and saw that we were surrounded by a dozen islanders with spears and war clubs and a few arrows nocked on reed-thin bows. “Wouldn’t be polite, would it?”

  “No,” I muttered, mind spinning with calculations and not liking the sums. “It wouldn’t.”

  33

  For a moment we all stared at one another. I elbowed Eld. “Do you speak any Shattered Coast dialects?”

  “No.”

  “What do you think the odds are they speak Imperial?” I whispered. Eld didn’t say anything, so I stepped forward. At first glance, the woman opposite me looked to be only a few years older than me, but when she brushed her dark red hair back, I could see faint lines on her cheeks. So older, but holding on to her looks well enough that she’d be the envy of many in Servenza. But we weren’t in Servenza and what I’d really been hoping for was som
e gnarled old person who might know a few words of the Empire’s tongue. Still, she was a woman, so that was something. “Do you speak Imperial?”

  The woman eyed me, then whistled like a bird, opening her mouth and undulating her tongue to change the pitch. Another answered in kind behind her and she shook her head. I arched an eyebrow and she offered back a series of grunts and calls that sounded like mating pigs. I shook my head and she laughed, breaking into another series of whistles that was echoed by some of those behind her.

  “I don’t speak bird. Or rutting pig, either,” I added. The woman’s smile faded and her compatriots moved forward, tightening the circle around us.

  “Hold it,” Chan Sha said, pitching her voice for our ears alone. “I’m familiar with some of the islander dialects. Not quite sure I follow this one, but…” She thrust the scimitar through her belt and held both hands up, stepping past me. She whistled, slowly, and less surely than the woman, but her undulating tones didn’t sound too dissimilar from the islander’s. To my surprise, the woman answered back and Chan Sha nodded, whistling with more confidence. The pair began exchanging grunts and whistles with increasing frequency.

  “Do you think they’ll let me get a boot off one of the dead?” Eld asked as Chan Sha and the woman exchanged a few more calls. The rest had settled in around us, three on each side, while the others spread out a few score of paces, occupying the nearby sand dune. “I’m tired of walking with a limp.”

  “Unless you speak bird, I imagine they’ll take that as an attempt to escape.” Eld nodded glumly. “Sorry, Eld, but I’ve no fucking clue what they are saying.” I growled in the back of my throat. Gods, I hate ignorance. “I wonder if the gestures are part of it?”

  “Search me,” he grunted. “Still, they seem to be fighting the undead so they can’t be about to kill us, aye? Likely want to share some news, perhaps help us defeat the Ghost Captain, and then we’ll be on our way.”

  “Gods, I’d give a pretty copper to know where your eternal optimism springs from,” I said.