The Sin in the Steel

by Ryan Van Loan

  “Something you said, maybe?” Sin asked.

  “Ha, ha,” I whispered mentally.

  “You’re the soul of diplomacy, Buc.”

  “I’m many things, but not that.”

  “There’s a way out of this,” he said. “Take my power and carve your way through the dead. They’ll fall like saplings in a storm.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Not going to allow me to Possess you,” he finished. “Yes,” he added, speaking insultingly slowly, “I understand your prejudices there. I’m not asking you to do that. Later, perhaps, but first we need to get out of this alive and that won’t happen unless you let me help you.”

  “I’m not giving you control!”

  “Then we’ll die!” Sin’s façade of calm vanished. “Is that what all of this was for? Use me, woman. Let me show you what we’re capable of.”

  “Never!”

  “Don’t be a fool,” he hissed. “Think! I can save Eld, Buc. I promise you, I can. But first you have to kill the Ghost Captain and you’ll never manage to kill him on your own, let alone cut through a hundred Shambles just to reach him. Listen,” he pleaded.

  I started to shake my head and then Eld began screaming. It sounded as if his soul were being ripped from his flesh and it was even more horrifying given his sickly figure—no one that weak should be able to scream that loud. The Shambles had barely moved—more of Sin’s magical time dilation. But that made Eld’s scream last forever and the sound tore open my heart. For the first time I knew that there was breaking and then there was breaking.

  “I don’t give you permission to Possess me,” I said mentally. “But I’ll let you help. If you can save Eld.”

  “I can’t,” Sin said, “but we can.” Tingling, burning sensations rippled through my body and Sin whooped. “Time to dance, motherfuckers!”

  “Well,” I muttered, “Eld always said I was a corrupting influence.”

  Time unfroze and the dead howled around me. Two steps right, duck then jump, right elbow to forehead. Left instep to the knee. Catch the ax before it falls. I was moving before the thought finished. I ducked beneath the ax a large Shambles swung at my head. Wind whipped around me, scattering sand, and then I rose with a leap that brought my elbow into his forehead and the remnants of his tricorne exploded along with the front of his skull. My elbow tingled, but I felt no pain as I landed on the Shambles’s knee with my left foot, then pushed off so hard that he stumbled backward.

  Catching the haft of his ax, I ripped it from his hands. It felt light in mine even though the haft was thrice the length of most boarding axes. I swung it in a tight circle to get the feel and Sin nodded approvingly.

  The maelstrom of dead swirled around me and I gave myself over to the dance. My partner was the ax and where we twirled, the dead fell in droves, black ichor staining the sands. Sin and I were one, our thoughts blending and his strength numbing my limbs so that I felt nothing but tingling and a faint shiver through the haft when blade met bone.

  Two Shambles came at me from either side and I swept in a circle, low to high, cutting the legs from one and the head from the other, ending with my blade buried in the chest of the first. Ichor painted the air when I drew it out of him and my laughter filled my ears. I wove my way across the sandy dance floor and bodies marked my progress. I was surrounded by death and I’d never felt more alive.

  I’m not one to stand and fight. Not fairly, at least. That’s why I use a slingshot and carry a dozen knives when I can. Why I prefer ice picking a bastard before he can draw his sword. I’m small and I’m fast and I’ve an understanding of leverages, and if I can catch you by surprise, I’ll kill you. I’m good at surprises. But in a knockdown, drag-out brawl, I’m just a girl, and brawls tend to be more about weight and endurance than speed. But with Sin feeding me supernatural strength and speed my size was actually an advantage, giving me angles and room to maneuver that a man wouldn’t have had.

  “Buc!” Sin’s voice filled my mind.

  “No need to shout.”

  “I’ve been shouting for the past second,” he growled. “Which is a long time in your mind.”

  “Sorry?”

  “We need to get to the Ghost Captain; I can’t keep this up much longer.”

  “What do you mean?” I decapitated a woman in a tattered ball gown whose single skeletal arm held a cudgel that fell from her now dead-for-real fingers. “You said you could make me immortal.”

  “No, I said we were close to immortal. There’s a cost, Buc. This isn’t magic.”

  “Bullshit, it’s not.”

  “It’s beyond your ken,” he snapped. “Magic isn’t limitless—there are boundaries. Hard ones. The tingling you feel is happening because impossibly tiny bits of myself are overriding what your body can do on its own—but the spell only lasts for so long. And then you’re going to need a fuck ton of rest.”

  “So you’re giving me extra strength and speed now, but later I’m going to be weaker than weak?”

  “In a manner of speaking. But the point is, we can’t kill every Shambles before going for the Ghost Captain. We have to go now.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “We have to go now,” he repeated.

  “Then do it on my mark.”

  Sin started to protest but I cut him off, slid between the legs of a tall Shambles, thankful that he was all bone and sinew below the waist or I would have had a mouthful of his balls, and came out the other side in a crouch. Dodge left, then right, drive that big one with the black bandanna back, and run like mad.

  “Black bandanna or blue?” Sin asked.

  I squinted. “Blue,” I corrected.

  “When?”

  “Now!” I screamed in the face of the Shambles before me and she hissed back through broken teeth. I elbowed her out of the way, sprinted left, then cut hard right, spinning around another Shambles, using their body as a slingshot, and slamming the head of my ax into the chest of the big Shambles with the blue bandanna. Bones cracked and his boots lost purchase on the loose sand. Another shove and he cleared a path through the Shambles behind him and I was off. Sand spurted beneath my sandals as I leapt over the last pair of Shambles and rolled into the awning, coming up in front of the Ghost Captain.

  “Buc, don’t be a fool…” he began.

  The rest was cut off by the blade of my ax, which I sank deep into the side of his neck. Bright blood squirted out in time with his fading heartbeat. His words gurgled in his throat and his surprised eyes stared at me even as life left them. The sag of his body pulled the ax out of my hands as he crumpled to the crimson-stained sand. I stared at him until a rasping chuckle pulled my attention away.

  “Fool,” the nearest Shambles hissed. Its short green coat was covered in dark stains—probably its lifeblood—but the eyes that stared through a mask of knife cuts that marred its face were bright with intelligence.

  “Stop calling me that,” I said.

  “I told you, kill me and I’ll take another,” it said. “Aye, you’ve done well so far, but you’re tiring, Sin Eater. You can’t keep this up much longer and I’ve another hundred Shambles in the brush and beaches of this island. Will you kill us all?”

  I shook my head. “No.” I turned back to the Ghost Captain’s corpse and pulled the ax from his neck. Blood dripped down the haft as I raised it over my head and the Shambles rasped another laugh. I feinted toward him, then swung around and brought the ax head down onto the glowing blue book that had fallen from the Dead Walker’s pocket when he died.

  “No!” The Shambles’s howl echoed the sound of the book and blade breaking together. A soundless, sightless explosion pushed against my chest, almost a mental scream that clawed at me as it rushed past, and then pieces rained across the sands. The army of undead stopped where they stood. Some, carried by their momentum, fell over and lay unmoving on the sand. “Nooo!”

  “Like that?” I asked Sin.

  “Exactly like that,” he said.
r />   “You don’t know what you’ve done,” the Ghost Captain’s voice came from the Shambles’s mouth. “You fool!”

  “I told you—” He jumped me, or tried to. I felt my arms burn as I caught him and twisted, sending him to the ground; our legs intertwined and I fell with him. We rolled over until the Ghost Captain’s body brought us up short. With me on top. And the knife I’d hidden in my dress in my hand.

  “I. Told. You. To. Stop. Calling. Me. A. Fool.” I sawed at the Shambles’s throat with each word. The pig-iron blade had gone dull and it took several strokes to cut past the petrified flesh and gristle into the windpipe and spine. The Dead Walker’s head whipped back and forth with the sawing of my blade.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing, Buc!” he screeched. “This is our only hope to end a war that has lasted a millennium.” Ichor stained my hands and flecked my dress and arms, and cold blood sprayed my face as I sawed away at his neck. He tried to fight me off, but then my blade caught vertebrae and he gave up. “It only paused when they left heaven for our world and nearly wiped us out. Do you want that again?”

  “I don’t trust any Gods, old or new, to do what’s right,” I said, gasping. “Number twenty-three!” The Ghost Captain stared back, uncomprehending. “Marten had it right, all those years ago. Magic, no matter the flavor, corrupts!”

  “Kill me,” he rasped as my blade cut deeper. I couldn’t see my hands or his lips for the ichor flooding out from the wound I’d hacked into his throat. “I don’t care, but take the artifact to Ciris. It’s the only way.” He gasped. “W-w-way to restore her sanity and prevent the War.”

  “He’s lying,” Sin whispered.

  What?

  Images flashed in my mind, courtesy of Sin. The Ghost Captain’s arrival. Even sooner than we’d guessed. A small piece of something that glinted in the fading light, that he quickly slipped into the altar, but not before I saw the strange designs carved into its surface. When he pulled it out the designs were gone, its surface smooth. He had left something behind. Something small and insignificant … save that it would have killed Ciris when the artifact was returned to her. Killed her the same way a plague kills its host. Invisibly, and from the inside.

  “The Dead Walker made a mistake, sending Chan Sha first. Her Sin recognized the corruption and took it, leaving me whole. She scoured herself clean with fire so the Dead Gods’ weapon would never touch Ciris.”

  “You’re lying,” I spat at the Dead Walker, and told him what Sin had shown me. “And now you’re going to die knowing you failed.”

  “You don’t trust me, but you trust another God?” the corpse asked. “Even if it’s not lying, why wouldn’t you try to take it back to Ciris? Kill her and all of this ends.” He blinked. “Don’t you care about the world?”

  The question brought me up short. Actually made me pause. Then I remembered what Eld had said when the Ghost Captain chose him instead of me. Eld understood, and now the Ghost Captain would too.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.” He opened his mouth and I ripped the blade hard across his throat. His head fell off and rolled away from his body, nothing but bones. “Not the way you do,” I finished.

  Silence felt oddly out of place after all the shouting and screaming and killing. I eyed the Ghost Captain’s body. Both of them. And the dying. I could hear the waves lapping at the shoreline as they had done for a millennium and would do so for another millennium if I had anything to say about it. The wind was beginning to whip across the waves and onto the beach, and up on the cliff, flames danced high above the railing, consuming what was left of the long-wrecked ship. I was of a mind to let it burn; with luck, it would spread and cleanse the whole island of corruption. Sin nodded within me as I settled back on my haunches and drew a shuddering breath.

  “You planned this all along,” Sin said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “What I said. You planned this as soon as you spoke with that trumped-up historian. The Archaeologist. The Ghost Captain gave you the missing piece to your puzzle. You always meant to let Chan Sha be the sacrifice and use her to kill the Ghost Captain.”

  “Well, I didn’t know she’d die before I killed him,” I said. “Or that the artifact was actually an insidious mind fucker.”

  “Hey, I take that as an insult.”

  “Don’t,” I said, “it’s a compliment. I knew I would have to gamble, aye, and I never meant to let either one of them leave the island alive, but had I known the odds?”

  “You still would have gone through with it,” he said.

  “You do know me,” I said, laughing. “Aye, I would have, but I wouldn’t have been so brash about it.”

  “Do you know any other way?”

  “Careful,” I warned.

  “Buc?” Eld’s voice pulled me out of my head. It was barely more than a whisper, but in the silence it could have been a shout. I leapt off the skeleton and half fell in my haste to reach him. He looked wasted beneath his sodden clothes and his face was darker, almost the color of my own, but where my skin looked alive and vibrant, his looked decayed. His mouth tried to form a smile when he saw me, but couldn’t quite make it. He coughed and blood flecked his lips. “He’s dead?”

  “Aye, they all are,” I said.

  “Not. All.” He shuddered and I wrapped my arm around his head, supporting him. “Th-thanks. I thought if you killed him, the poison would recede, but…” He coughed again and more blood came up. “I guess I’ll be the last Shambles on the island.” The blueness of his eyes bit into me, still sharp even surrounded by his dying body. “Will you make it quick?”

  “Eld.”

  “Will you make it quick?” he repeated.

  Sin. HELP. PLEASE. HELP.

  “Kiss him,” Sin said after a long pause.

  I hesitated, then bent over him. Eld’s eyes clouded with confusion before snapping wide when my lips touched his. Warmth met cold and we both gasped in surprise.

  “Divining,” Sin said. “There’s a parasite. I’ve a spell for this form of healing. Just give me a fraction.”

  There’s nothing so romantic as a dead voice sifting through information.

  “Get fucked,” Sin said, but there was a smile in his words. “Now, kiss him again. With your tongue, this time.”

  “Sin!”

  “Do it, if you want him to live. The spell’s in your saliva.”

  “Buc?” Eld asked.

  “Hush,” I said, and this time when my mouth met his, I let my lips linger, let my warmth heat his cold flesh. When I touched the tip of my tongue to his, he didn’t fight me; he welcomed it. All the while, we stared into each other’s eyes and I felt a shiver run through me that made Sin’s numbness and tingling feel like mere pinpricks in comparison. When we broke apart, I felt all the strength leak from my bones; I half fell against Eld so the pair of us lay intertwined on the beach.

  “I should have made completing the transition the price of Eld’s healing,” Sin whispered. “I could have Possessed you.”

  “Never would have worked,” I said.

  He didn’t call me out on the lie.

  The three of us lay there for a long time, listening to the waves crashing onshore. I felt drained, as if all the life within me had evaporated with our kiss. Now I understood what Sin had meant by cost. It was like waking after Chan Sha healed me, but worse. In time I felt Eld’s skin begin to warm beneath mine and the bit of his arm I could see began to return to normal, the veins disappearing beneath his usual paleness. He murmured something that sounded like it might have had the word “love” in it, but I was too afraid to ask him to speak louder. Too afraid to ruin the moment, if indeed I hadn’t ruined everything already by kissing him. Things wouldn’t be the same between us, couldn’t be. Men aren’t content to let things like this lie; that much I knew. Gods, won’t that be a fun conversation?

  “What will we do with the artifact?” Eld asked.

  “I won’t let this—What?” I bit off what I was
going to say.

  “The artifact. What does it look like?”

  “Oh.” Thank Gods he doesn’t mean to start the conversation now. “It’s not much to look at, really,” I said. Sin growled in my mind. “If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d never know it was there,” I added. Eld had apparently been too far gone to understand what had happened onshore. The question was, would I tell him the truth?

  “Do we keep it or give it away?” he asked.

  I didn’t say anything. “Do you want magic around us?” I asked, finally.

  “You know I hate magic,” he said. “Even if it’s saved us a few times now. Hey, are you okay?” I nodded against his chest. “It’s just that you froze up against me for a moment.”

  “I’m fine, just weak.” The admission didn’t even hurt. It was infinitesimal compared to what we’d just endured.

  “Magic is dangerous, Buc. When you’ve seen what I have…” He trailed off and then his breath whistled through his teeth. “What will we do with it?”

  I kept my face pressed against his chest, hoping he couldn’t feel my tears through his shirt. “I guess we’ll have to give it away,” I whispered. Even as I said it, I felt Sin’s words in my mind, confirming my fears. There was no giving it away, no going back.

  The magic was in me.

  56

  “You stretched the bounds of our deal,” Salina said. Her wine sat untouched on the rough-hewn bar table. She plucked at the thread o’ gold in her grey dress—a color that made her look sickly—and shook the pile of gilded curls back over her shoulder. I opened my mouth and she forestalled me with a wave of her hand. “The Company is satisfied that you met the terms. And you have Servenza’s thanks. The Empire’s, too, though none know it.”

  “As good citizens, you’ve no idea how much that means to us,” I said dryly.

  “Yes?” She leaned forward. “But did you really have to steal a Normain Cannon Ship?”