The Sin in the Steel

by Ryan Van Loan

  “I tried to pull you away and we got tangled up and turned around,” I said finally. “I came here”—I tugged on one of the thick grass ropes—“to save you. Does that sound like the actions of one who wanted you dead?”

  “N-no,” she said. She hesitated. “I suppose not.”

  “As I was saying,” I began again, shooting her a hard look, “I wasn’t sure about you, but the way you stood up to big and corpse-y earlier was damned impressive.” She sat up a little straighter, adjusting her skirts, although I didn’t think she had much to fear from the undead seeing up her dress. “Not everyone would be able to face down a Dead Walker, especially on a ship infested with Shambles.”

  She cleared her throat. “Thanks, but I don’t know what came over me, if I’m being honest.”

  “Survival,” I answered for her. “Survival instinct and some steel in there that maybe you didn’t even realize you had.” She smiled, wincing because of her split lip. “How did you manage to lie straight to his face? I’ve heard the mages of the Dead Gods can read minds,” I lied.

  “I didn’t lie,” she protested. “And the Dead Gods’ magic doesn’t let them read minds. It transforms flesh and bone or turns the dead to life.”

  “I see,” I said, nodding along. “Well, I may not know much of the Dead Gods, but I know when someone’s lying. And you were, back then. You do know where the island is, don’t you?”

  “I…” She hesitated.

  “Gods, you’ve been there, haven’t you?” I bit my lip to keep from pressing further and instead let the silence drag out. Man or woman, they all like to believe they are stronger than they are. Like a dog that’s never fought in the pit before, that carries its head too high and finds out the hard way that its throat is exposed. I wasn’t sure how much steel the Archaeologist had in her. Some, to be sure, or she’d have never come to the Shattered Coast, let alone lie to the Ghost Captain … but if she had much more, she wouldn’t have asked for my protection back on the beach.

  She would have just kept running. That, along with the little bone I’d tossed her way, plus our general predicament, would be enough to loosen her tongue. I hoped. If she were a man, she’d have started talking as soon as I said I was impressed. But women weren’t as foolish as men. Unfortunately.

  “Aye, I lied,” she whispered. “I have been to the island, but only long enough to confirm that a ship had been wrecked there. I’m serious,” she added when I rolled my good eye. “Whatever happened, the waves must have been scores of paces higher than they are now.… The ship’s impaled on a cliff’s edge. It’d be difficult work to safely excavate it without a crew and some engineers.”

  “And there’s the artifact to consider,” I supplied.

  “That too … He was right: it belongs to Ciris.” She cleared her throat. “I wasn’t trying to steal from your Goddess, Sin Eater, I promise. I had every intention of finding one of your leaders, but I had to make absolutely sure first.”

  “By selling it to the Kanados Trading Company?” She blanched and sank back, holding up a hand protectively. I decided it was time to let her off the hook. She’d lied to the Ghost Captain when she felt threatened and I didn’t want her lying to me. “Easy, sister. I wasn’t lying earlier. I’m not a Sin Eater.” I laughed mirthlessly and tugged on one of the ropes. “If I were, do you really think this tawdry cage would hold me?”

  “No, I guess not.” She shook her head. “But he seemed so sure.”

  “Aye.” I frowned. “I’ve no answer for that, but he’s likely to only believe me when he’s gone too far and I’m dead.” I waved mention of my impending torture and demise away with a hand and settled back against the ropes. “But leave that. How’d you know for sure the artifact belonged to Ciris?”

  “It’s hard to explain if you haven’t been there,” she said, pulling gently on a lock of her auburn hair. “But there’s a certain sense of power there. It ebbs and flows. I wasn’t on the island long enough to know how powerful the artifact truly is, but I could sense a presence.” She paused and looked at me. “Almost as if it were in my mind. Or reaching for it, at any rate.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” And it didn’t. Sin Eaters like the Harbormaster could reach the minds of others of their kind at great distances and were near immortal. But none of them could contact regular people, or read their minds, that I knew of. Knew of. “Unless they’ve kept a portion of their powers hidden?”

  She shrugged. “They definitely have telepathic powers with one another. The journal I read was written by one of their own and they didn’t mention the ability to speak with nonbelievers.”

  “Could have been lying.”

  “I doubt it, since it was written in a cipher.”

  “Wait—this journal? That’s how you knew where to find the artifact?”

  The Archaeologist eyed me for a long moment, then sighed and nodded. “I was in the Cordoban Confederacy, on an expedition to explore some of their more ancient tombs.”

  “Grave robbing, you mean.”

  “Exploring. That’s what an Archaeologist does … or at least that’s what I do, and since it’s my name, I get to decide what it means. Exploring. I came across the journal in a dusty corner of one of their oldest libraries. Most of it was boring, mundane. The author must have been a relatively new initiate, with ambitions that outpaced their talents.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “Because the only reason they knew about this particular expedition was that it was meant to be kept secret even from other Sin Eaters. This boy—I’m pretty sure he was barely older than that—decided the way to power was to know every little secret and controversy he could lay his hands on.

  “He knew when the expedition left, and he knew its course, and when his Goddess’s sudden rage confused many of his fellow Sin Eaters, he knew it was because the expedition was lost.” She leaned forward. “The ship wasn’t carrying just any artifact, Buc. It was carrying a shard of Ciris herself.”

  “Gods,” I breathed. “That’s why the Ghost Captain’s out here—he’s searching for a weapon against Ciris. Her own weapon.”

  “Something like that,” she agreed. “Now you see why I didn’t simply try to take the artifact. It’s practically inviting a death sentence. But I figured something as powerful as the Kanados Trading Company could find a use for it and wouldn’t be as worried about the consequences.”

  “Guessed wrong, eh?”

  “They wouldn’t even hear me out,” she growled. “All I got was some prissy dressed-up bitch in blond curls who told me to be gone without ever looking down her nose to see me bowing before her.”

  “I think I know who you’re talking about,” I muttered. “She’s an arsehole.”

  “Epic.”

  We laughed then, but it’s hard to laugh when you’re suspended in a rickety cage above undead monsters. Silence descended and with it, the last rays of the sun; darkness well and truly consumed the ship. Even with lamps lit, the Shambles were hard to see on the deck below us, save for where an odd bone stood out, dull white in the darkness. I plucked at the ropes and let my mind wander.

  There was a way out of any trap, but sometimes finding the first step was the hardest. Full night and my lack of kan didn’t help any. And even if I escape, there’s still the Ghost Captain and his Shambles to deal with. “Say, you told me on the beach you knew how to kill the Dead Walker,” I reminded her.

  “And you said you’d get me away,” she replied with a wan smile.

  “And here I sit,” I said, spreading my arms wide. Properly fucked. “But seriously, do you know how? He’s not undead like the rest, is he?”

  “No.” She sat up. “Any mortal may die, it’s true. And he is mortal, though not like you or me. But so long as his minions are under his power, if his body dies, his mind will pass into one of them. Hardly ideal, I’m sure, but it’s not quite death, is it?”

  “So I kill all of the Shambles.”

  “Sure—if you
can kill several hundred before they kill you.” She sniffed. “This Ghost Captain is many things, but he’s no fool, and he’s been recruiting from the crews he’s killed.”

  She had a line for every one of mine, each one turning me away from the light and back to the wall. And I hate walls. “Nothing is impossible. I won’t believe it. Stop trying to make it seem so.”

  “It’s not impossible, Buc; there may be other ways,” she said, her tone balancing mine. “But the one who wrote the journal only mentioned one and I think, given what they were, they would probably know.” She leaned closer. “You can see it in the two warring religions. One magic cannot abide the other. Dead Walkers and all of the Dead Gods’ mages use the magic of blood and bone. You want to kill the Ghost Captain? Kill him outright? That would require Ciris’s magic. Mind magic.”

  “Sin Eaters,” I whispered.

  “Sin Eaters,” she agreed.

  “What else did your mystery author have to say?” I asked, sitting back.

  “Dunno. After several hastily written entries that made references to others being jealous of his power and worry that one of them was on to him, he said he was going to lie low for a while.” She showed her teeth. “That was the final entry.”

  “Aye,” I grunted. “I’m sure he’s lying low still. Buried in the ground.” I shook my head. “I’ve no intention of waiting for the Ghost Captain to torture me, and I’m sure you don’t want to see how far he’ll let you carry on before he decides to torture you as well—”

  “He won’t torture me,” she said, interrupting. Her voice quivered. “He’ll just turn me into one of the undead. Didn’t you hear his threat about bringing up the captain I sailed with before? He can sift through the memories of the dead.”

  “He can?”

  She nodded. “Blood magic, remember? The dead are still of the flesh, and whatever magic the first worshippers found in the Dead Gods, it still works today. Another thing I learned from the journal. The memories will decay over time, sure, but we’re only a few hours’ sail from the island. My memory will be plenty fresh.”

  “But he doesn’t know that?” I asked. She shook her head. “Then we’ve still some time.”

  “Time to do what?”

  “Blow this motherfucking crypt,” I growled.

  38

  “That wasn’t part of the deal,” the Archaeologist protested.

  “There was no deal that accounted for all of this,” I said, waving an arm around us. “The deal onshore was, I get you away, in exchange for knowledge on how to kill the Ghost Captain.”

  “Which you didn’t do,” she said.

  “Aye, and you didn’t either.”

  “Bullshit! I just told you how to kill him,” she hissed.

  “For which I’m very grateful,” I said, smiling. “But there was no deal, then. And I don’t work on gratitude.” She opened her mouth angrily and I cut her off. “Listen—I didn’t have to come here to save you. I could have stayed on the island and you’d be a corpse come morning.”

  “Aye, that’s true, but I don’t think you came for me,” she said, glaring at me. I crossed my arms and stared back at her. The silence lengthened between us until finally she threw up her arms. “Fine, then. If I don’t tell you, I’m dead anyway, so what does it matter?”

  “That’s the spirit,” I agreed. “But, Archaeologist?” She looked up. “Like I said, I’m not like the Ghost Captain. I can hear a lie. And if I even suspect you’re hedging a little bit, I’ll lay down here and go to sleep out of spite alone.” She nodded slowly and I could see she believed me. Which was good, because I’d been lying about sleeping, but not the rest. I would have throttled her instead. “Then go on.”

  “You’ll need a compass,” she said. “And to know how to use it.”

  “I know how to use a compass,” I snorted. Which was true in the sense that I’d read how to use a compass. But the book hadn’t made it seem that difficult and I could still see the words if I closed my eyes hard enough, so the knowledge was there, just waiting.

  “Well, yon island is the starting point. Go to the southwest corner and then take a bearing when the sun’s just rising overhead and…”

  I listened intently, committing every word to memory, and when she finished, I was sure of two things: I could find the island in my sleep and the Archaeologist was either the world’s best liar or I’d scared her straight. I’d seen her lie to the Ghost Captain, so I knew what she looked like when she wasn’t telling the truth, and I wasn’t worried about it.

  “Okay,” I said when she finished. I pushed myself to my feet, wobbling on the thick ropes, and caught myself. “Okay,” I repeated. “Let’s take stock of our surroundings.” I turned slowly, studying the ropes and the points where they intersected with the wooden planks that formed the frame of the cage at each of the corners. The Archaeologist stood up beside me, smoothing her dress. “I could wish my eye wasn’t swollen shut; I’d be finished in half the time,” I muttered.

  “You’ve a clot of blood beside it,” she said, pointing to the corner of my eye. “That’s what’s keeping it shut more than anything.”

  “Aye, well, I left my last knife in the eye of one of the undead, so nothing to be done about it.”

  “If it’s something sharp you need,” the other woman said, “would this help?” She dug into her bodice and pulled out the nib of a fountain pen, the steel tip’s edge gleaming in the moonlight. “Although it might hurt.”

  “Pain is temporary,” I assured her, holding out my hand. She arched an eyebrow and I made a noise in my throat. “I trust you, Archaeologist, but I don’t trust anyone’s hand but my own around my eyes.” She shook her head and gave me the nib, then indicated with her own hands where the clot was. I found it and pressed gently. Pain radiated in waves as I touched the blood-filled swelling. I took a deep breath, steadied myself against the ropes, then stabbed the nib hard into my flesh and drew it down and out in a single motion that felt like drawing a line with fire. A sharp, burning sensation sprang to life in my face, flooding my cheek with warmth, which I realized was the blood running down. When it stopped, I tried to open and close my eye and found that most of my vision had been restored. “How do I look?” I asked her.

  “Like murder walking,” she said.

  “Bloody perfect,” I said, spraying flecks of blood that had run onto my lips. “Now, what else have you got hidden in your cleavage?”

  It turned out the Archaeologist didn’t have much more beyond a small inkwell and a compass. I took both. Turning out my own pockets, I found only my slingshot, and with no shot it was barely worth the name. I’d run out of knives between all of our misadventures, which was a damned shame given how ill made the grass ropes of the cage were. We tried the pen nib, but it was neither sharp enough nor large enough to do more than irritate a few of the fibers.

  I could see the other woman’s face losing hope by degrees in the flickering lamplight. It was times like these I truly missed Eld. He never doubted me. And look where it got him. I trod across the thought, and the one that followed on its heels: What happened to my confidence? It was hard to find a thing you’d never lost before, but there it was, like a small burr in the back of my mind, slowly rubbing away, leaving something raw in its place.

  “This isn’t much of a prison,” I said. I walked in a slow circle as the Archaeologist busied herself pulling up the small water bucket, which was tied to a rope attached to the bottom of the cage. The rope was just long enough that the bucket could be swung to the massive water barrel secured to the mainmast below. The barrel was easily a dozen paces away and we had to swing the bucket just right so it would land in the barrel. Half of it spilled out on the way back up.

  It was a huge barrel. Apparently the Ghost Captain wanted to make sure he’d be able to sail for weeks without stopping, even though he was the only being on board who needed to drink or cook. That was a good thing, because it’d taken the Archaeologist a score of attempts before she figured o
ut the right momentum required to reach the damned thing at all. I expected her to take a drink, but instead she washed her face. I didn’t have the heart to tell her we’d be getting a lot dirtier before all was said and done.

  “Not much but grass and bark, really,” I mused aloud, tugging hard on the ropes. The Shambles or Ghost Captain or whomever built it had bound it tight to the wooden frame and it barely shook. The pain from my eye had proved an unexpected boon: it kept part of my brain occupied so I could actually think. Not so nice as kan, but “beggars can’t be choosers” and all that. I glanced at the water she was dumping over her face and down her chin and laughed. I can’t believe this is how we’re going to escape. “I read something once about grasses and ropes and knots, something I never fully understood, but now I think I might,” I said. Her head jerked up. “Are you ready to get out of here?”

  * * *

  “You seriously want me to piss on the ropes?” the Archaeologist asked.

  “Well, I’m going to give it a go too,” I said. “I wish Eld was here, given our lack of anatomical advantage, but luckily gravity will help.” She laughed. “Seriously, I want you to piss on the ropes.”

  “Are you going to tell me why?”

  “Number two sixteen,” I said, quoting the book I’d read. “It was a pamphlet on knots and their common uses. There was a small section on different types of rope and it mentioned in passing that grass ropes should never be used in wet climes because of rotting, but also because of shrinkage.”

  “Shrinkage is rarely good,” the Archaeologist said with a smirk.

  “Aye, well, I guess that’s their anatomical disadvantage?” I asked her. She giggled, which was an improvement over sulking. “Well, anyway, these are fresh grass ropes, so they haven’t ever been exposed to moisture. Get them wet and the knots around the frame are going to become incredibly tight.” I waved away her protest. “Doesn’t matter. We couldn’t untie them anyway. But they are tied all along the frame of the cage, so when they tighten, they are going to pull everything tight around the frame.” I touched one of the boards. “It should make getting out of here that much easier.”