The Sin in the Steel

by Ryan Van Loan

  “We did, if you wanted the sugar within the fortnight,” I said. I hid a yawn behind my wineglass.

  “I appreciate that,” she said in a tone that indicated she didn’t at all, “but maybe you don’t appreciate how perilously close to war this could bring us.”

  “Surely you can cover that up?” I asked. And that will distract you from trying to cover us up along with it.

  “Perhaps.” Her lips thinned. “That would have been easier, had you not released the crew before sending word you’d made port.”

  Eld cleared his throat and both of us glanced at him. That part hadn’t been in the plan. He blushed a darker shade, but didn’t say anything.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me how the two of you managed to force the surrender of an entire crew and then sailed almost singlehandedly through one of the deadliest hurricanes the Shattered Coast has seen in a decade? No?”

  “Come now,” I said with a false smile, “surely you understand: a lady can’t be expected to share all her secrets.”

  “And surely you understand, you’re no lady.”

  “Easy,” Eld growled.

  “Now he speaks,” Salina said.

  “You said we’ve satisfied our end of the deal,” I said, setting down my wineglass and leaning across the table. “Our stakeholder’s writ was lost when Chan Sha’s ship went down. We want another one.”

  “I’ve brought that.” She snapped her fingers and held a hand out that was half obscured by the length of her sleeve. One of the men who had entered the tavern with her stepped forward, placed a piece of rolled parchment in her hand, then stepped back to the wall. “You’ll need it to be stamped,” she said as she handed it over.

  “Nice of you to mention that,” I muttered, thinking of Chan Sha mocking us for being fools to not notice the lack of notarization. She’s not mocking anyone now. “I don’t suppose?”

  “That I brought a notary?” Salina asked. “As a matter of fact, I have. But before I send for him…” She glanced over her shoulder, but her guards hadn’t moved. She leaned forward and her voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “There was mention that this Ghost Captain had a partner named the Archaeologist. What do you know of her? Did you meet? What did she tell you?”

  “How much did you know and not tell us when this all began?” Eld asked. Salina’s thin lips curved in a smile, but she said nothing. “Gods damn it, woman. We almost died.”

  “There was a woman named the Archaeologist,” I said. Eld stiffened, but Salina’s eyes were already on me, so she missed his slip. I shrugged. “Listen, a woman tells me she knows where an item of immense power is located, I don’t send her away empty-handed.” I bit my lip to keep from laughing at the blushing red that crept across Salina’s face.

  “Unfortunately, I never got to find out if she was full of shit or not. Chan Sha murdered her to keep the Ghost Captain from her,” I lied. “He seemed quite put out by it.”

  “I’m sure,” she murmured. “And you let Chan Sha near her? Convenient.”

  “If you’d told us that she was working for you but that you didn’t trust her, maybe we wouldn’t have,” I said. “Trust is a weapon that cuts both ways.”

  “Speaking of that,” Eld added, “I hope you brought the pistole with you.”

  “Sorry?”

  “You know, the one that started this whole thing,” I said.

  “Oh, of course,” Salina said. She didn’t bother hiding the falseness in her words. She snapped her fingers and the same guard stepped forward, reached behind his back, and held out a thick-barreled pistole. “I nearly forgot how we got here in the first place,” she added with an equally false laugh.

  “I’m sure,” Eld said.

  Sin? My eyes burned with magic from the spell, and the pistole leapt in my vision so that it was as if I held it up right in front of my face. The maker’s mark was wrong. “We’re all friends here, so I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, Salina,” I said, “but do I need to take the real pistole off your corpse?”

  Her guard and Eld stiffened at the same time, but Salina just shook her head and opened her hand. The guard removed the pistole and replaced it with another. She slid it across the table and stood up, all humor gone from her eyes. “You really are the most perfect arsehole.”

  “Aye.” I grinned at her. “So I remember you saying when first we met.”

  “And nothing has changed.”

  “Oh, a lot has changed, Salina,” I said. She stiffened at my use of her name. “We’ll see you at the next Board meeting.”

  “One of you, anyway,” she said, straightening her skirts and not meeting my eyes. “If you’re smart, you’ll send Eld. At least he’s not a complete fool,” she said, turning toward the door.

  “Don’t forget the notary,” I called after her. She paused in the doorway and cursed, before disappearing with her men.

  “I’m surprised a noblewoman knows that word,” Eld said after she left. I smiled but said nothing.

  A few moments later a beefy man walked in, sauntering as he cut around the tables between the door and us. His cloak hung to his heels, not quite hiding the pronounced paunch visible below his jerkin, and not masking the width of his shoulders, paunch or no. His hair was cropped short and a faint scar traced a path down from his left eye. There was something in his gait that tugged at my memory, but I couldn’t pull the thread out.

  He reached us and his thick lips twisted in a sneer even as he set a small black leather bag on the table and began pulling inkwells, stamps, waxes, and seals out until his half of the table was covered in accoutrements. He paused then, as if waiting for us to ask the obvious question, and his sneer deepened when we didn’t before he sat down and motioned for the writ in my hands.

  “You’ll be wanting that notarized then?” he asked.

  And you’ll be playing the part of Captain Obvious?

  I smiled at Sin’s comment but said nothing, just passed the writ across the table. There was something about the man that suggested familiarity, but I was damned if I knew what. He swept his cloak back and laid the writ out, reading it as he set a stand over a candle and set wax in the pan at the top. His eyes grew wider as he read and by the time he reached the end and had uncorked a dark inkwell and prepared a pair of stamps, he was muttering under his breath.

  “Looks like someone’s come up in the world, eh?” He sneer-grinned at us. “Not a talkative lot, eh? Which will it be then? Stakeholder or no—it’s just one name. So you’ll be an island alone.”

  “It’s for Eld.”

  The notary grunted. “Aye, well better a larger island than a small one. Name?”

  I glanced at Eld. “You know, I’m not sure you’ve ever said your full name.”

  “Haven’t I?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Eldritch Nelson Rawlings,” he said. I whistled and he smiled. “And now you know why you haven’t heard it before.”

  “Rawlings? En’t there a house of Rawlings? In the Foreign Quarto?”

  “There might be,” Eld said with a shrug. It was a passable lie for him, but I stored it away for future use. His Lordship Eldritch Nelson Rawlings, formerly of the Servenzan army. Or was it the Imperial army? Eld flushed under my gaze, so he knew that I knew. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

  The notary grunted and turned back to the writ. I leaned forward and watched as he bent to his work. First came Eld’s full name in a spiraled script I would have thought beyond the notary’s fat thumbs. Then a blob of melted wax became the Servenzan seal on one side while ink was used to stamp the mark of the Kanados Trading Company on the other. He sifted a thimbleful of sand across the parchment and blew carefully before sitting back with a sigh. Sweat sprinkled across his brow as if the effort had cost him much. He glanced up and frowned when he saw my interest.

  “There’s your island,” he said, shoving more than sliding the writ back across the table.

  “You’re not very pleasant,” Eld said.<
br />
  “Not paid to be pleasant,” the notary said. He pushed his chair back and stood up and began collecting his things. “I don’t know what blackmail the pair of you have over the Company,” he said sourly, glaring across the table, the light playing off his scar, “but I hope you burn for it.”

  I knew who he was now, and everything drained from me.

  “You who?” Eld asked me.

  “Aye, who?” the notary asked.

  I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud. I was a lifetime away, back in a burning warehouse where a big, beefy lad, nearly full grown, held a blade to Sister’s chest. “Save her then, but you’ll have to burn.” His words reverberated through my body. “You worked for La Signora, before.” Before I killed her. I hadn’t been able to find him—no one remembered just another thug in a street gang—but I’d made that old bitch pay before she died.

  “Blood of the Gods, how do you know that?” he asked.

  “Buc?” Eld’s voice was tight. He knew some of my past, not everything, but enough.

  “Remember a warehouse you burnt down?” I asked. “When Blood in the Water wanted the Krakens to eliminate the Blackened Blades?”

  “We did eliminate them,” he muttered. Then his eyes leapt to mine and he shook his head. “You’re the lass from the warehouse?”

  “Aye. And you’re the bastard who murdered my sister,” I growled.

  “What of it?” He drew himself up but was plainly shaken. “What are you going to do about it? If I killed a bitch who—”

  The rest was lost in the explosion of a pistole.

  When the smoke cleared, the man was lying on his back, arms outstretched, a dark hole just below the scar under his eye, and the back of his head gone. For a moment there was nothing but the high-pitched ringing from the gunshot. Eld waved his hand, dispelling the remaining wisps of smoke, then set the still-smoking pistole on the table and reached out to touch my arm. I jumped at the contact, my eyes still on the bastard growing cold on the floor. I looked at Eld, who shrugged.

  “Accident,” he said. “That hair trigger keeps getting me in trouble.”

  “Eld,” I whispered. He pulled me into a rough hug and held me as I cried. I hadn’t shed tears in years and now, in a fortnight, I’d turned into a blubbering child. But with the tears went some of my pain and with both Eld and Sin telling me it was okay, I was powerless to argue.

  Sometime later I pulled back and Eld didn’t try to hold on. Then again, he wouldn’t—he knew I was tainted. We hadn’t talked about it, not really, just skirted the periphery of what I’d become, but it was there. And it would come out eventually. I hated magic. Eld hated magic. And now I was consumed by it.

  “We’ll have to leave some extra coin for the tavern keeper’s trouble,” Eld said. I nodded and Eld let his smile go. He looked better when it wasn’t forced. “Why’d you have him sign my name, Buc?”

  “Because he was right,” I said slowly. “An island won’t do much.” I dug into my fresh silk dress—silk!—and pulled out a heavily wrinkled piece of parchment. “But islands, plural, are another story. The Empire started from a handful of islands.” I unrolled the parchment, revealing the original writ Salina had given us, the one Chan Sha had returned in exchange for our help. Some help.

  “You and I, Eld, Board members together.” I began setting the notary’s tools back up. “Who would have thought?”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Eld said, and this time his smile was genuine.

  So was mine, Gods damn me for it. So was mine.

  The world is a fucked-up mess, a place where girls starve in the streets and are left to burn when they reach for something more. A place where companies and nations play with the lives of people like pieces on a game board, while over it all, the Gods lurk and smile as their endless War continues. Even if one side wins, we all lose. Now Eld and I had taken the first step toward changing that. Oh, it was a small step in the grand scheme of things; we still had to figure out a way to take over the Kanados Trading Company, win over nations, and kill Gods in the bargain. But it was a step I’d thought I was ready for. Before.

  Before, when I thought I really was just an island on my own, needing no one. Now I know the truth. And if I know, that means Sin knows too, and if I make a slip, his Goddess will know as well. The truth is I need Eld. Me, Sambuciña Alhurra, the girl who has never needed anyone before. Leave Sister out of this. I’ve. Never. Needed. Anyone. But Gods, I need Eld. And Need? Need is a noose we slip round our necks and wait for the world to pull it tight.

  Fuck me.

  Epilogue

  Her eyes opened on a wine-dark world that rose and fell with a soothing regularity that felt utterly incongruous with the bone-deep pain that filled her completely from head to toe. She blinked and the sea came into sharper focus. Half of it. Her left eye was useless no matter how hard she willed it not to be. The driftwood beneath her was uncomfortable—she couldn’t quite get her arms around it, but at the same time, it was not large enough to properly support her weight. Instead she clung precariously to it like an insect and prayed her grip wouldn’t slip. There were fathoms upon fathoms of sea waiting to welcome her if she let go. Pray. She snarled at the thought and tried not to let it turn into a whimpering scream.

  Where are you?

  Chan Sha felt her body begin to tremble and she fought it off with everything left to her. Which was depressingly little. It’s gone. Her Goddess, her Sin, her magic, all gone … wiped clean by the artifact, leaving her a hollow husk. Leaving her to be filled only with pain. She closed her eyes, although she really only needed to close one, and memory coursed through her. I’m sorry, her Sin had whispered in his gravelly voice. Then he’d fled, and where he ran, fire ran with him, scouring the magic from her veins.

  It’s not his fault. That thought came to her later, after she was able to stop the shuddering sobs that racked her torn body. And it wasn’t. Her Sin had a reason for what he did. Something to do with the artifact. The artifact that Buc and Eld had forced her to take. The Goddess had said nothing of her taking it. The last time Chan Sha had felt Her presence, Her orders had been clear: find the Archaeologist and keep her from the Dead Walker. Kill him or, failing that, keep his presence secret. Buc and Eld had offered a way to do all of that and then the bitch-girl had kneecapped her and shifted the balance of power between them. And that, more than anything else, had forced her to accept the hideous girl’s offer. Or did you want the power that would come with the artifact? She bit down hard on the thought.

  “Not my fault,” she whispered hoarsely. Flames crept up in her throat from want of water. She opened her good eye and glanced around her and tried not to cry at the irony. A world of water and not a drop to drink. “Not my fault,” she repeated. “Them. The pair. D-dead.” She’d make them pay if she could, but without her Sin, she had no way to heal herself.

  It was a small miracle she was still alive at all. Her eye was the most permanent damage done, but she had numerous wounds and injuries. Salt water had cleansed them and many were already beginning to heal, but a few were still little better than open sores. If any of them bled, the sharks would be on her in minutes.

  Would have been better to let the dead finish me off. Instead a wave had swept them, and whatever connection they’d had to the Ghost Captain, away, and her with them. The dead had floated, keeping her alive, but there had been a moment, several really, where she could have slid off of their bones and let the depths take her. And why didn’t I? All I’ve done is postpone my opportunity to give the sharks something to dine on. Even if she didn’t bleed, one of them would get curious eventually. As worn as she was, she wouldn’t warrant more than a few mouthfuls. Not a proper dinner then, but something.

  If.

  Gods. If. If she could find an island, she could recover. If she could recover, she could build herself back to fighting strength. If she did that, she could wait for a passing ship. If she found passage, she could find her Goddess and restore her po
wer. And if she did that—they’d all pay. Eld first and the girl last. If. It was the only magic left to her, yet there was so much power in that word. All the power of a dream. She knew it as surely as she knew the shadow she’d just seen pass below her wasn’t a shadow. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen such a shadow, but it was the first time she’d seen one linger. I’m going to die.

  Chan Sha took a breath, tasted the bittersweet, salty life on her tongue, and then cast about for one more view of the world before the end came. She knew what color that end would be. Red.

  To the right, a never-ending wall of blue, the light cast of the cloudless sky and the darker blues of the sea, broken here and there by the white-tipped crest of a roller. Then to the left, twisting to see what her blind eye couldn’t. More sky, more sea in the same shade of blue, broken again by waves and by—Chan Sha’s breath caught in her throat.

  The profile of a ship, its bow pointing right for her. If it came on as it was, it could reach her in an hour. Perhaps less. She glanced down at the shadow looming lazily below her.

  If …

  It was the only magic left to her.

  The Selected and Annotated Library of Sambuciña Alhurra

  Numbered and listed in order read, with notes by the reader. At the time of the events detailed in this volume, by her own count, Buc had read three hundred and sixty-seven books and an uncounted number of pamphlets.

  3

  Felicis Ballwik

  Proverbs

  Ballwik’s simple advice is dispatched in humble lines that make fine practice for an early reader, if one doesn’t mind the tone of an aged auntie dispensing wisdom from the rocker.

  Buc’s notes: Slow going at first, but I think I shocked Eld by finishing it in three days. I hope reading holds more mysteries than “a copper saved is a copper earned.” That’s not how economics works.

  11

  Geniver Gillibrand

  A Twist of the Tongue

  Gillibrand may have poached her better lines from writers and poets and philosophers from throughout history, but she’s not above a few originals of her own and even the weakest among them rival Ballwik’s best.