The Sin in the Steel

by Ryan Van Loan

  “Must be nice,” Eld muttered, “having the world’s largest navy off your back.”

  “I’m a pirate,” she said.

  “And a priest of the Goddess,” I added.

  “That, too. Which is why I stayed in these seas when all others fled.”

  “Ciris told you to?”

  “My Goddess wants the artifact,” she said. “She knew it was lost somewhere in the Shattered Coast, but the region covers hundreds of leagues of open seas. She sent me to find it.” Chan Sha’s eyes clouded. “Imagine, missing a piece of yourself. An arm, a leg, part of your mind. What would you do to have that returned to you?”

  “Does the Kanados Trading Company know you’re a Sin Eater?”

  “No.” She shrugged at the twist of my mouth. “My Goddess wasn’t sure who caused the disappearances. Not at first. And then … we didn’t know if the trading company was behind it all or not.”

  “You mean, in bed with the others?”

  “The Dead Gods, aye,” she said.

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that,” I said. “Unless they are playing the deepest game ever imagined. We know the Ghost Captain is a Dead Walker, a priest of the Dead Gods. We know he’s behind the disappearances. We know the Kanados Trading Company wants him gone,” I said, ticking off the points one by one.

  “So we kill him and our deal is finished. Our deal,” I repeated. We needed to use Chan Sha, but it still made sense to make sure she was weak enough to need us just as much. If I’d had more than a moment alone with Eld, I would have clued him in. Then maybe he wouldn’t have spent half the hike sulking.

  “You’re not thinking clearly,” Chan Sha said. “If I work for the Company same as you and they want Ciris to succeed—if you prevent that, do you really think they’ll just look past it?”

  “You’re the one not thinking,” I said.

  “Aye,” Eld growled. Poke the man and he blinked. Poke me, and if he wasn’t the one doing the poking, he turned into a bear. I’ve never tired of wondering how men can be such fools, but in his case I was grateful. “If the Company knew about your Goddess, then perhaps you’d be right…” he began.

  “But you just told us they don’t know,” I finished. “How long has Ciris been using them? You think they’ll look past that?” I suddenly remembered the mage with Salazar. He’d been an official priest of Ciris and he’d acted strangely before murdering Salazar, almost as if he were listening to someone who was there, but not. What if he was told to kill Salazar, to set this all in motion? As soon as the thought entered my mind, I knew it was true. Or close to the truth. “What does your Goddess want?” I spun around, letting my slingshot hover within a breath of her face. “It’s more than just an artifact.”

  “I don’t know.” The slingshot squeaked as I drew it taut. “I don’t,” Chan Sha repeated. “She doesn’t explain herself to her priests.”

  “Never?”

  “Rarely.”

  “If you were a Goddess, would you?” Eld asked over her shoulder. “You barely do now.”

  “Fair point.” I squinted. “You want the artifact out of the Ghost Captain’s hands?”

  “I do,” she said.

  “And you want him dead?”

  “I do.”

  “And you understand why I broke your knee?”

  “Because you’re a fucking idiot,” she snapped.

  “No, because you’re too damned powerful. If whatever inside you that makes you crazy strong is preoccupied with trying to knit all those fragile bones and tendons back together, it levels the playing field somewhat.” Because I need you off balance, so you’re not thinking clearly. And because you let your man torture Eld. I leaned in. “Am I lying?”

  She glared at me and then leveraged her crutch to take a halting step beside me. “No. Damn you. You’re not lying.”

  “All right.” I relaxed the slingshot. “Then we keep to the parley.”

  47

  I knew where the wreckage lay, in theory at least, so I led the way to the top of the hill, with Chan Sha hobbling along beside Eld behind me. There were a few trails worn through the underbrush by animals of one kind or another, but they were faint amongst the twisted grasses and thornbushes that littered the hillside. The odd palm tree rose up here and there, but otherwise there wasn’t much beyond hard rock and undergrowth, which made for slow going.

  The sun greeted us full in the face when we finally reached the top of the hill. I leaned against a tree, blinking in the sun and letting my eyes take in the sprawling scene before us. Across the way, where the bay met the shore, was the cliff the Archaeologist had told me of. Squinting, I suddenly saw the wrecked ship wrapped around the crest of the cliff, more weathered and battered than I’d imagined. The bleached planks were of a similar color to the cliffs as if both had bled into each other, and had I not known where to look, I might have missed it. Below the cliffs, driftwood lay scattered around the sand as if scores of trees had been split into kindling.

  “Look!” Eld grunted.

  I followed his finger out into the bay and had to grasp the tree to keep upright. There, in the center of the bay, on the opposite side of the pinnacle of rock that jutted up like a large broken fist, the Ghost Captain’s ship rode high in the water. “He beat us here! How?”

  “Not hard to imagine,” Chan Sha spat, leaning heavily against her crutch. “Bastard has oars, aye? And plenty of hands to row them?” She gestured toward the ship. “We didn’t account for that. He could have used them to steer readily enough while he had some of the Shambles over the side to repair whatever you did to the rudder. Slowed him down, sure, but not enough.” She shook her braids. “Damn it, not enough.”

  “Still, it looks like they’ve just arrived,” Eld said as a boat began moving away from the ship and toward the shoreline, where a dozen more boats were already beached.

  “Ever the optimist, Eld,” I muttered.

  “By Her name!” Chan Sha’s breath left her in a sibilant hiss. “So many. We never stood a chance.”

  I abruptly realized that all the dark marks I’d taken for flotsam were Shambles, many standing motionless. A hundred dark marks, blighting the sand. Some were erecting a tent on the shore. I squinted. More moved in the higher grasses and a few had ventured into the thick undergrowth farther up the hills and cliffs. Maybe several hundred. Half their number would have been too many.

  “That’s a lot of bodies,” Eld said.

  “A few crew loads,” Chan Sha said.

  “And more on the ship.”

  “Likely,” she agreed with him.

  “You’re both focusing on the wrong details,” I said. Eld arched an eyebrow while Chan Sha’s expression made me want to punch her. I pressed my palms firmly against my hips to resist the urge. “They are undead and most aren’t moving, so no one is commanding them right now.”

  “How do you know that?” Chan Sha asked.

  “Because the Ghost Captain controls them through some strange book,” I said. I pointed down the hill at the tent that had been erected in the middle of the masses. “None have reached the shipwreck, so I’m guessing either he’s waiting in yonder tent or he never left the ship. Either way, so long as he’s unaware of us, so are the Shambles.”

  “You’re sure?” Eld asked in a careful tone that spoke volumes.

  “Of course,” I lied. Sure? Only another Dead Walker would know for sure, but I’d seen the man on his ship, studying that strange glowing book, and I’d seen him use it.

  “You seem to know a lot,” Chan Sha said. “But do you know that the Shambles do more than kill? They infect.” A shadow crossed her face. “A bite from one is a death sentence, and since Walkers command the dead, a bite will make you his slave for eternity. Or until your bones fall apart and you turn into a pile of ichor.

  “I’m protected by my Goddess’s magic, but you two are not.” She glanced between us. “One bite and you are his.” She shuddered. “There are hundreds upon hundreds down there,
with teeth waiting to taste your flesh. Now do you understand why we can’t just go charging in?”

  “You’ve convinced me,” I said. Chan Sha’s eyes brightened. “But there’s no way we can reach the artifact without going through the Shambles. So we have to become Shambles.”

  They began arguing, until I cut them off with an icy glare. “I learned things on that ship. Shambles can smell the living. Don’t ask me how; magic makes no sense—that’s why it’s magic. But somehow they can.” Swiftly, I told them how we’d used pieces of clothing from other Shambles to slip past.

  “We’ll have to do one better now,” I added. “We’ll have to be disguised well enough that the Ghost Captain won’t notice us either.”

  “I’m not sure how we make our bones show through and still live,” Chan Sha muttered.

  “And I’m not sure how you captained a crew for so many years with that piss-poor attitude,” I shot back. Her eyes glowed murder and I held up a hand. “Too soon, I know. But you don’t make it easy, woman.” I shook my head. “I’m not suggesting we get up close and personal with him, at least not until you’re ready to slit his throat. We just need to pass the sniff test at a distance.”

  “They can really smell us?” Eld asked.

  “They can really smell us.” He cursed. “I’m sure you smell fair, Eld. That’s the problem.” He muttered under his breath. I turned back to the bay below us and squatted on my heels. “So the plan is we deaden three of the undead. Put on their rags or what have you, then work our way to the cliff and set up a trap for the Ghost Captain when he comes for the artifact.”

  “Simple as that?”

  “Simple as that,” I said, turning to Chan Sha. “Remember, he thinks me dead and the pair of you marooned—he’s not expecting us. So we kill him and then you figure out how you want to scale those cliffs and get your Godsdamned artifact.”

  “It’s too easy,” she protested. “I thought I convinced you of that!”

  “You did; that’s why we’re not charging in.” I grinned. “And you might not think it’s so easy when you’re trying to climb over rock with a busted knee,” I said.

  “That you gave me.”

  “And I’m about to give you everything you said you wanted as well,” I said. I studied the woman before me, tall, unbent, but dancing to the strings of another. And I thought you my equal? For a brief moment I’d even considered that she might have the edge on me, but in the end, she served her Goddess, whether she agreed with her or not. I felt my lips curl at the thought. “Unless you keep arguing until he begins moving?”

  “Just get me down the hill.”

  I almost obliged her. One boot in the arse and she would have cartwheeled end over end into the very center of the camp. But that might have killed her. Worse, it would have alerted the Ghost Captain. The Archaeologist had given me the clues I needed to put this all together, but we needed to get closer and I couldn’t afford for him to know we were here … yet.

  “Let’s do it, then,” Eld said, as if sensing my mood. I met his eyes and looked away. He knew me too well. “We’ll not get a better chance.”

  If the climb up the hill was difficult and tedious, the climb down was pure torture. Have you ever tried to move silently? Not quietly, but completely silently? And then you take a step and your weight makes a stone roll or a stick snap or your very bones betray you, cracking loud enough to wake the dead. Now imagine that, but knowing that any noise at all actually could wake the dead.

  It seemed as if our boots echoed off the rocks where vines didn’t trip us and threaten to spill us down the slope. Chan Sha had the worst of it; perhaps I’d made a mistake by breaking her knee after all. Even with Eld holding her by the collar of her jacket she slipped with every step, and every jolt and jounce made her whimper. Each time, I reached for the knife hidden in my dress, ready to open her throat if she betrayed us to the Shambles.

  A bird squawked loudly, annoyed by our passage, and its cry was taken up by a dozen others. Still, the dead stood motionless. With each sound my nerves grew tighter and soon I stopped sliding the knife back into my dress and simply held it concealed in the palm of my hand.

  Nearer the bottom, we came face-to-face with our first corpse. It moved through the brush a pace off the path, seemingly oblivious to the path itself. Its shoulders and head sagged onto its desiccated chest, breasts more bone than flesh and dark holes in place of eyes. The three of us froze, staring at the Shambles, but it kept moving in a direction that would pass us by a dozen paces. Scouting?

  “What are you waiting for?” Chan Sha hissed.

  I shot her a look and pulled my slingshot level. I wasn’t sure what would happen when I killed it—would the Ghost Captain sense that? With hundreds down there and dozens active, would he notice if three went missing? There were too many unknowns, each a knife held against our necks. One misstep and we’d slit our own throats with our ignorance. But I didn’t have any better ideas, so I let the stone go and braced myself as it took the Shambles between the eyes, spraying dark rotten blood into the bushes behind it.

  A heartbeat later, I fetched up beside it and stripped the loose, flowing shirt off its bones. The fabric had been dark once and had faded to an ash grey, but it fit well enough around my shoulders, though the woman must have been buxom in life. I reached for the Shambles’s trousers, but they broke off in clumps when I tried to work them free, so I settled for wrapping the remnants of a sash around my forehead. The stench bit deep into the back of my throat, making me wretch, but there was nothing for it.

  We picked off two others that had scouted out farther than the rest of their undead brethren—sometimes ambition is a bitch—and soon Chan Sha had a tattered robe draped across her shoulders and Eld had exchanged his tricorne for one more battered and bloody and added a greatcoat that hung loosely, even over his frame. None of us really looked like a Shambles, but packed in amongst the rest, we shouldn’t draw the Ghost Captain’s attention. I was betting the rotten clothing would be enough to keep the Shambles at bay too. The weight of it all was beginning to settle in around me like a cloak three sizes too small.

  I bit down on my doubts and led the way through the undergrowth. A few paces farther and the rocks gave way to sand and the undead began popping up like some sort of putrefied fruit that sprang up from the ground like grapes. Only instead of wine, their harvest was death. Each step took us closer to the tent and farther into the army of undead. The cloyingly sweet stench of decay tickled my nostrils and turned my stomach.

  A Shambles walked in front of me. It was almost of my height, its eyes level with mine—save one socket was empty and the other had a bulging, sightless eyeball that had popped out and hung just over the socket. As we passed, its neck cricked slightly and I felt a shiver run through me, but it kept walking and I saw the back of the head was caved in. Eld gagged, but the undead gave no sign of caring. Another stood head and shoulders above me, its massive neck still covered in wrinkled flesh. One arm was flayed to the bone and hanging limply while the other was half raised, as if in defiance of its end. Dark ink crisscrossed its skin and I paused to study it out of habit more than curiosity—the marks looked like some language I’d never seen before.

  I leaned forward, but the squiggles wouldn’t give up their meaning and I shook my head. Did he see me? Smell me? His eyes were dull, rotting, and sightless in their sockets, but a breath before, I would have sworn they were bright with intelligence. I clenched the knife in my hand, holding my breath, but the dead eyes remained dark.

  “Keep moving,” Chan Sha whispered.

  I really wanted to stab the bitch, but moved on instead. The oppressive sense emanating from the dead burrowed its way inside me. Resist it. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Eld struggling with the same emotions. “Almost there,” I whispered.

  “I think one of the Shambles just looked at me,” he croaked through clenched teeth. He nodded toward a woman in a tattered shirt that hung to the knees of flayed pants that revea
led more bone than flesh. She seemed to be walking with more purpose than she had been a few steps before. If the Ghost Captain hadn’t really been controlling the ones farther out, he was definitely controlling these.

  “You’re being paranoid,” I lied. We were probably close enough now, but I’d take every step I could get. It wouldn’t do to bring Chan Sha this far only to have her killed by the undead before the Ghost Captain realized what she was. I glanced over my shoulder to confirm the big dead one wasn’t following us. Its body wasn’t, but the head had turned around so far that it made me wince, and its bright eyes stared at me. No, past me.

  I turned back around and saw the Ghost Captain striding through the undead, holding his book in one hand and the waxy grey hand of the Archaeologist in the other. She stumbled along at his side, her red-brown dress bleached in several places from salt and sea and sun. Her face was a ruined mess of black and blue and grey, and half her hair was torn out on the side where she’d hit the edge of the rowboat. Sharp white skull shone through in patches, and her glassy eyes stared sightlessly ahead.

  All three of us froze, but when the undead around us began to shuffle forward, we were forced to follow or else stand out by our lack of movement. We were being carried straight into the path of the Ghost Captain. Shit. I managed to put myself just behind another Shambles who was of a height with me, and but with the lurching, hunchback step I affected, I was effectively hidden. I glanced back and saw that Chan Sha wasn’t so lucky. Her gait looked as unnatural as that of those around her, but the crutch stood out as wrong and there was a small, open space between her and the nearest Shambles. Double shit. Eld actually blended in the best of us: with his greatcoat covering him from head to toe and that decrepit hat on his head, even I missed him at first glance. But Chan Sha was going to fuck us if she didn’t find a way to hide. She seemed to realize it at the same time I did and I saw her features flicker with fear. Damn it, not now, woman!

  Chan Sha hesitated, then she switched the crutch over to her good side, pressed it against the length of her body, and straightened her good leg while bending her bad one back so it didn’t touch the ground. I could see sweat pop out across her brow, but she didn’t cry out, and when she moved, she stayed almost parallel to the Ghost Captain, so her crutch was completely hidden. Her gait was painful to watch, but it actually aided in her disguise and after a few tense steps I realized she blended in better than she had before. I let out the breath I’d been holding.