The Sin in the Steel

by Ryan Van Loan

  Then I knew why I’d said Eld’s name. It wasn’t about me; it was about him. And I had to do this thing to save him. The way he’d saved me so many times before. From the gaolship when I confessed I didn’t know how to swim. Dueling that Montay brother when I’d overstepped, even though he knew it meant a fight to the death and no way of knowing whose: both Montays were known for their skills with a blade. Catching me when I fainted from dehydration. Sprinting across the decks of two ships, clearing Shambles and pirates alike from his path so he could reach me and spirit me over the side. Meeting Chan Sha blade for blade.

  When I needed him, Eld was there. When he’d needed me, on the shore below, I hadn’t been there. I’d failed. Now he needed me again. I won’t fail this time. The thought drove something through me and my legs moved.

  I jumped.

  I’d thought the flames young yet, but when I landed on the other side, my feet burned in my sandals and if I hadn’t thrown myself into a roll, I think the dried grasses of my dress might have caught fire. As it was, I rolled past the fire and came up hard against the far railing with a resounding crack that fractured the rotted wood. I froze. All I could do was watch the flames, but while they were growing, they weren’t moving my way. Instead they followed the slope down to the edge where Chan Sha and the Shambles had gone over. Cutting off my escape route.

  Later. Time enough to think about that after you have the artifact. I pushed myself to my feet and eyed the open door at the end of the ship. The cabin inside was dark, but I thought I could see a faint, pulsing light. Even in the sunlight with more than a score of paces between the door and myself, I could tell there was something there. The thing that had killed Chan Sha.

  It should have scared me, rooted me to the ground again, but after the trial of fire, I wasn’t that fazed by it. Kill me or don’t. I headed toward the door and fingered the blade hidden in my dress.

  53

  Up close the cabin didn’t look any more ominous, although I could see a steady, pulsing glow coming from one of the walls within. I’d wasted enough time conquering the flames, so I didn’t give myself time to think—no easy feat, that—and slipped inside the shadowed room. The air smelled crisp, like after a lightning storm when the rain suddenly lifts as if by command and there is that pause full of promise: Is it over or is the bolt coming for you? No bolt came for me, and my sandals were loud in the silence as I walked toward the artifact.

  I could see it now: an altar of strange, dark, sleek metal molded into the wood. In the center of its black, impossibly smooth, impossibly polished surface, was a flickering blue light. I was peripherally aware of the cabin, of the bunk with its desiccated mattress sunk beneath rusted springs and the open drawers yawning emptily from the writing desk. All was as foggy as a dream; only the artifact, the altar, were real. I won’t say it called to me, but something did, not unlike what the Archaeologist described.

  To me, it felt the way a new book feels in your lap when you’re about to open it for the first time. If the Ghost Captain had shown me this, he’d never have had to twist my arm. Eld could have told him. I never leave a book unopened or a page unturned.

  My hand hovered over the obsidian surface before I realized I was there. I forced myself to take a breath, but knew I wasn’t going to turn back now. I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to, and I didn’t want to. My face was reflected in the cold, slick darkness, cheekbones sharper than normal, lips pressed together in a firm line. I nodded at myself.

  I pressed my hand against the altar, only then remembering Chan Sha’s screams as she fell. I tried to jerk my hand back and the altar exploded in bright light.

  My hand wouldn’t move.

  I jerked my body backward, but my hand was stuck to the obsidian altar. But it wasn’t obsidian. It didn’t quite feel like polished rock for one thing, and I could barely feel my hand for another. Even as the thought crossed my mind, the sensation of a thousand needles sent stabbing pains across my palm and I yelped as a numb yet tingling sensation burned my skin and sank deeper, scouring my bones. A light from the altar bisected my eyes. Something reached out through the blindness and bit me on the neck, just below and behind my ear. I drew breath to scream, but the numb sensation returned tenfold, flooding me, and all thought was carried away on its waves. My eyes, nose, mouth, shoulders, breasts, legs, everything buzzed and tingled and warmth made cold sweat run down my body in rivulets. My breath came in gasps. I watched it all through clenched eyes, still half blind from the sudden burst of light.

  “An initiate?”

  I jumped, but my hand held me fast even as I searched for the source of the voice.

  “It has been a long time. Too long,” the voice said evenly. “Blood calls to blood. The truth of blood. The power of blood. The magic of blood. We’ll have much to discuss, you and I. If the ritual doesn’t kill you,” it added.

  The voice was crisp, cool, and definitely male. With gnawing certainty, I realized it was coming from inside my mind. “What fuckery is this?” My question echoed off the walls, unanswered.

  “It begins,” it whispered. I started sputtering, but the voice began speaking as if it couldn’t hear me. “The dust has settled. Three breaths, initiate.” I inhaled. “The truth of blood. Three breaths and I’ll cleanse you,” it whispered.

  I fought to keep my lungs still, but something in them betrayed me and I sucked in another gulp of air.

  “The power of blood. Three breaths and you’ll give me life,” it hissed.

  Now I strained, every muscle in my chest screaming, but a ragged gasp tore through my lips.

  “The magic of blood. Three breaths and our bonding will be … complete!”

  “Answer me, damn you,” I snarled mentally, lungs screaming as if I’d just run a league.

  “Hello, Sambuciña,” he said, his voice filling my mind.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m your SIN.”

  “Sin?”

  “No, SIN,” the voice said. “With a C.”

  “What sin?”

  “Nothing like immorality.” He sighed. “A common misunderstanding of your kind, but if we can set aside the lies the Dead Gods and their priests have spread for a moment, I’ll explain in terms your mind can grasp. I’m a ritual left over from times before your kind attained enough evolutionary hierarchy to form complete thoughts. If you are made of stardust, then I’m made of the star itself. I’m your SIN and if you’ll accept me, we can move beyond to the next ritual,” he added. “The Rite of Possession.”

  My mind reeled. I’d only understood one word in three, but the little I got was that the artifact was in me. Inside me, Gods!

  “Yes, you can imagine how thrilled I am,” he said. Amusement touched his voice. “I’m sure you have many questions, I know you do, and I can hear them all. But if you’ll allow me to take Possession, we can get going. Eld doesn’t have much time left.”

  “So you represent my Sin—Wait a minute, Eld? How do you know about him?”

  “With a C—your kind are frustrating with your limited—Very well. Sin it is. Now, Eld … everything you know, I know,” he said as if explaining that one and one were two. “And you don’t have to shout. You only have to think your words and I’ll hear them.”

  “That’s weird,” I said mentally. “Everything I know, you know?”

  “Yes. Blood calls to blood,” he repeated. “Those words are a truth, Sambuciña. A truth you will come to see more clearly over time.”

  “So you know—” I began out loud.

  “What? That you intend to destroy all religion and magic and bring the world into some utopian order?” He laughed. “Yes, I know, Sambuciña. All Sin Eaters bring a level of ambition with them, but yours may be larger than we are accustomed to. I think I can manage, if you can.”

  “So you don’t mind that I intend to destroy Ciris?”

  “Mind? Sambuciña, I am Ciris.”

  I choked on my reply and fought to breathe while both mind
and mouth moved silently. “Call me Buc,” I said when I found my words.

  “Very well, Buc. Will you allow me to Possess you?”

  “You’re coming on a little hot and heavy. A woman likes some foreplay before she’s fucked,” I muttered. “You’re Ciris, you’re the Goddess?”

  “I’m a piece of Ciris in the same way she’s a piece of me. Once you allow me in, by performing what is called the Rite of Possession, we’ll be bonded. She’ll begin to sense me and I, her. After we make the proper sacrificial offerings, we’ll sense each other always. Blood calls to blood, but the mind knows all. She is the knowledge and we are her limbs, you and I.”

  “A voice started speaking in my head a few minutes ago,” I said. “I’m going to want to think about this before committing to everything.”

  “By which you mean you have no intention of completing the Rite or letting Ciris near us,” he said. “And it hasn’t been a few minutes, less than half of one, actually.”

  “How?”

  “The magic of dilation.”

  “Come again,” I said.

  “Time dilation, it’s—Ugh,” he grunted. “I’m trying to dumb this down for you.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You kiss Eld with that mouth?” he asked. I could practically feel him smirking. “No, but you’d like to, wouldn’t you?” He cleared his throat. In my mind. “Your brain is like the night sky, where every star is a thought and the space between stars pathways for those thoughts. Communicating that way is orders of magnitude faster than speaking aloud as your kind does. If you didn’t insist on speaking aloud to me, even less time would have passed.”

  “Gods,” I breathed.

  “Yes, imagine the possibilities,” he whispered. “You saw some of what Chan Sha could do and you saw the Harbormaster. Limbs that never tire, a brain that can finally handle your thoughts without the needs of some whoring drug to slow it down, and healing abilities that turn us practically immortal.”

  “Whoring?” I asked mentally.

  “As our ritual bonding becomes more firm, we’ll begin to pick up each other’s … mannerisms. Soon I’ll have as foul a mouth as you. Now, there’s a depressing thought,” he added.

  “Well, you’ve some sense of humor at least,” I said. “And while that sounds tempting and all, I’ve no wish for a God inside my head. Its voice is bad enough.” I frowned. “You keep asking for permission to Possess me. So you can’t do it if I don’t agree to it?”

  “N-no,” he said hesitantly.

  “And how will you know?”

  “I know your every thought, every hint of a thought. If you wish it, I will know.”

  “I don’t wish it.”

  “I know,” he said, and now some of his coolness evaporated.

  “And you have to obey me?”

  “Sort of, not quite.”

  “That’s not a very good answer,” I said.

  “It wasn’t a very good question,” he shot back.

  “Fair enough. You can’t control me and I have some control over you.” I nodded and straightened my shoulders. “All right, I’m ready to go, release me.” Sin grumbled, but when my mind didn’t waver, the altar—only Sin thought of it as some word that I’d never heard of and wasn’t even sure it was part of a real language—went dark.

  Suddenly I could feel my hand again. I inspected it, but aside from being a little red, it was no worse for wear. My neck still stung from whatever had bitten me during the ritual, but when I felt the spot, my hands came away clean, no blood.

  “Healing,” he whispered.

  “Hush you,” I said. I turned and walked out of the cabin to see that the flames had spread across the deck from side to side. A trickle of fear touched me, but with Sin filling my mind, it didn’t have the same hold on me as before. Perspective. My thought or Sin’s? I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting across to the other side.

  “How are you at jumping?” I asked.

  54

  “You did it! I knew you would,” the Ghost Captain lied when I reached the main group of Shambles. I could hear it in his voice—he hadn’t thought I’d survive, not really. Which made what he did to Eld as good as murder. The dead all stood as they had when I left, in two lines between me and where the Ghost Captain stood beneath the awning outside his tent. When he grinned, his features softened so that only his goatee prevented him from looking as young as me. “Well-done!”

  “Aye, well fucking done and now it’s your turn.” I couldn’t let my gaze stay on Eld, or the anger I could feel building would burst out. Now wasn’t the time for violence. Not yet.

  A single glance showed me all I needed to see. His veins had turned black beneath translucent skin and his clothes clung to him from sweat; his cheeks were tinged in shades of blue and green. When he smiled, it was like a dagger to my chest.

  “Heal Eld.”

  “In a moment, in a moment,” the Ghost Captain said. “I need to know that you let the Sin into your soul before I help Eld.”

  “He doesn’t have a moment,” I protested, and took a step forward.

  “Hold there.” The dead shifted around me. “You’ve come up in the world, Buc. I feel safer with you out there and me in here.” He glanced down at Eld and shook his head. “No, he doesn’t have many moments.” His smile disappeared. “All the more reason to be quick about it then. I need surety that you are a fully-fledged Sin Eater … one that will be compelled to return to Ciris after today’s events and take our offering of peace with you.”

  “I’ve done it. I did it back on the ship before…” I swallowed an imaginary lump in my throat. “Before I knew what I was doing. It promised to save Eld first.”

  “Aye? Then where is Ciris to be found?”

  I frowned. Sin?

  “Accept Possession as the Dead Walker asks and I’ll give you the answer,” Sin said.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” I said mentally. “You told me so yourself. You have to obey me.”

  “There are certain restrictions on that,” he said dryly. “More restrictions now than after we’re Possessed. If you’d just—”

  “No,” I repeated. “She’s on the mainland,” I said aloud.

  “No shit, she’s on the mainland,” the Ghost Captain said. He shook his head. “I knew you wouldn’t surrender to her that easily.”

  “You honestly think Sin Eaters would tell one of the Dead Walkers where their Goddess is?” I asked.

  “If you knew where she was, you’d know that we’ve known, almost since she awoke, that Ciris was out of our grasp.” The Ghost Captain sighed and flicked the remaining bells in his goatee.

  “Eld has a few breaths left in him—he’s still living, so I can’t say how many for sure—but a few. Why don’t you take one or two of his last breaths to decide what the fuck this has all been for?” He spread his arms wide. “You know I’m not doing this for some nefarious scheme. The world rides on this, Buc. I’ve spent over a year out here on a Godsdamned suicide mission, with only the dead for company.” He slammed a fist into his chest. “I’ve sent hundreds of innocents to the bottom of the sea in search of one who can unlock Ciris’s conscience. And I’ll murder Eld if that’s what it takes.

  “So…” He took a breath. “Think it over and decide if you’re going to let all that wash away like flotsam because you can’t find it in yourself to sacrifice something for the greater good.”

  Surrender. Sacrifice.

  The voice that had whispered to me when Chan Sha healed me, washed over me. “Don’t break and your sister’s death was for nothing. What if you have to break more than once? Can you? Can you break twice, three times? Or will you tear yourself into a hundred pieces if you try?” Call it what you want, dress it up in noble platitudes, but surrender or sacrifice is nothing more than breaking.

  There’s something in me that won’t bend, no matter how much force is exerted. I’ll break first—that’s what I’ve always told myself, but the truth is, I
don’t think I’m much better at breaking than I am at bending. I’ll die first. Just ask the captain of the Sea Dragon, whose ship I sent to the bottom with my lies. Or the score of others lying wasted in my wake. Or Chan Sha. I’d thought I’d broken already by forgiving her enough to let her join us, but …

  What if you have to break more than once?

  The words pulled the veil away and I saw, truly saw, what they meant. I’d already broken. I broke with Chan Sha. I broke when I said I would go to the ship for Eld. I sacrificed myself for Eld once. I could do it again, couldn’t I? Or was the Ghost Captain right? Was it more than just Eld? While I’d watched my sister burn, I’d pledged to change the world. Was it the world that needed my sacrifice?

  And if I do bend the knee and surrender, what then? Sin will force me to go to Ciris and she’ll control me the same way she controlled Chan Sha. If I do this, I’ll give myself up so completely, there will be nothing left. A moment ago I hadn’t been sure I could trust my own mind, not with Sin lurking there, but I already knew the answer, because I knew the truth. I’d been betting on others this whole time, but now, now, it was time to bet on myself. And that thought was pure Sambuciña Alhurra.

  “I’ll do what needs doing,” I said, finally.

  “You’ll become a Sin Eater?” the Ghost Captain asked. He frowned as he said it, his bright eyes focused on mine. “If you—”

  “You misunderstand me,” I cut him off. “I’ll do what needs doing. I’ll send you to your grave and heal Eld myself.” I didn’t try to hide my smile. “And you won’t be rising.”

  55

  “Take her!” the Ghost Captain howled. Spittle flecked his lips. “Alive if possible, but stop the Sin Eater!”

  The Shambles closed ranks around me, their moaning and groaning drowning out the pounding of my heart. Their reaching, clawing hands were mere paces from me and all I had was what I wore: grass sandals and dress and a shoddy iron knife. I’d let the Ghost Captain get to me, not his fault, but mine. Gods, but I hated ultimatums and that, along with what he’d done to Eld, had sent me over the edge. But it was too soon. Real smart, Buc.