Quill

by A. C. Cobble

  “I imagine she will,” confirmed Oliver, “and you’re right. Derbycross is extensive. Ten thousand head of sheep on those hills, or close enough. Lady Isisandra Dalyrimple is a rather wealthy girl, and she’ll be pursued by half the eligible peers in Enhover. She is just a girl, though, eighteen winters.”

  The captain shrugged. “In Enhover, she would have been presented already. She’s not far past it, I admit, but she’s no longer just a girl.”

  “I need a drink,” remarked Commander Ostrander.

  Oliver waved offhandedly toward a hutch on the side of the room.

  “I’ll get it,” offered Sam.

  “Get a round for everyone,” suggested Oliver.

  “Naturally.” Sam poured four glasses and handed them to the men.

  Commander Ostrander accepted his wordlessly, and Captain Haines gave her an odd look. Oliver sipped his drink, letting the fiery gin burn down his throat.

  “I’m not ready for this,” said Ostrander, his eyes down.

  “You’re the only possibility,” responded Oliver. “Who else has enough credibility as a leader in the community to take over? Who else can manage both the Company’s assets in the colony and the Crown’s military might? You’re the only one, Ostrander.”

  “I’m a soldier, not a merchant.”

  “Trust your factors,” advised Oliver. “I wasn’t a merchant either when I joined the Company. No one is. You weren’t a soldier when you joined the royal marines yet that seems to have gone well. I’m confident you can do this. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have named you Interim Governor.”

  “It will be worth it,” advised Captain Haines. “The Crown and Company take care of their friends. Can’t say I’m not a bit jealous, Commander. Or, I suppose I should say, Governor.”

  Oliver frowned at the captain. Was the man angling to help improve Ostrander’s position or perhaps trying to subtly encourage a large bonus for himself?

  Governor Ostrander chuckled painfully. “It’s not the way I meant to find advancement in this world. I never got on with the governor, that’s not secret, but from the moment you fetched me asking for irons, Haines, my life has been completely upended.”

  Captain Haines, grinning, sat his drink down on a small table beside him. Oliver blinked, missing the conversation between the two men, watching as the captain turned the half-full glass on the table, the gin inside nearly invisible.

  “Sam,” Oliver said suddenly, turning to look at her. “Where did you get Captain Haines’ glass? It wasn’t the one we took from the governor’s desk, was it?”

  “I—”

  “The one Dalyrimple was drinking from?” demanded Oliver, speaking over her quickly.

  Sam stared at him in confusion.

  Turning to Captain Haines, Oliver remarked, “Sorry about that, chap. I meant it as a memento for Isisandra, but I decided that was a bit too morbid. I’d set it out for the staff to wash, but I don’t think they have yet. It’s a dirty glass, I’m afraid. We’ll ring someone to bring you another.”

  Captain Haines’ hand was frozen, resting on the rim of the glass. In a quiet voice, he asked, “The governor’s glass?”

  “The one he was drinking from moments before he died,” confirmed Oliver, his gaze locked on the captain. “That’s a bit dark to give to the girl, don’t you think?”

  “I have to go,” said Captain Haines, standing quickly. “I need to do a final check before the men turn in. Make sure we’re, ah, we’re ready to leave at dawn tomorrow.”

  “No, no,” said Oliver, rising as well. “Stay and have one more drink with us and the new governor. I insist.”

  “I, ah, m’lord…”

  “Sit, Captain Haines,” instructed Oliver.

  The captain ground his teeth, glancing between Oliver and the half-empty glass on the table.

  “Captain Haines,” asked the duke, “is your face a little red? Perhaps you got too much sun today supervising the loading.”

  “I-I have to go,” mumbled the captain and he began walking to the door.

  “Captain Haines, sit and have one more drink. That is an order,” barked Oliver.

  Sam stood, but Governor Ostrander remained seated, a look of confusion on his face.

  “I’m feeling ill,” stammered Haines as he stumbled toward the door.

  “Worried you drank poison, Captain?”

  Haines paused, his hand outstretched to the exit.

  “The same poison you slipped into Governor Dalyrimple’s drink?”

  Not turning from the door, the captain claimed, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just have a bit of—”

  “Stand there, Captain,” growled Oliver. “I forbid you to leave this room. You are either innocent, and I will look a fool, or you will die from the same poison you gave Dalyrimple.”

  Ostrander suddenly jerked upward out of his chair cursing, staring at the captain in surprise.

  Haines did not turn to look. Instead, he ran forward, grabbing the knob of the door.

  Oliver charged the man, and as Haines flung the door open, the duke slammed into the back of the captain, knocking him over, both men scrambling on the floor outside of the room.

  Oliver landed heavily on top of the captain but was nearly thrown as Haines struggled beneath him. Panicking, Haines threw back an elbow, catching the duke on the jaw.

  Oliver, grappling on the man’s back, reeled from the blow, and the nimble captain wiggled out from underneath of him, kicking back and catching Oliver on the side of the head. Haines staggered to his feet, but the duke leapt to his as well, shaking off the sting from the captain’s kicks, and lunged after the man, grasping at his coat.

  Spinning, Haines swung a fist at Oliver’s face.

  The royal slipped the blow and with all of his weight behind it, swung a devastating uppercut, catching the captain square on the chin, rocking his head back and sending the man crashing to the floor in a heap. The captain lay there, motionless.

  Sam and Governor Ostrander came running beside Oliver, the former commander shouting for his soldiers.

  “Go get those manacles,” instructed the duke, rubbing his jaw where the captain’s elbow had caught him.

  Sam pointed at the unconscious captain. “Now that is how you punch a man.”

  “I have no idea why Captain Haines would want my father dead,” declared Isisandra. “I’ve seen the captain several times, as you know. His ship berths in Archtan Atoll a few times a year, I believe. Do you think perhaps he meant to somehow woo me with my father out of the way?”

  Oliver fidgeted with the quill in his hand and looked at the blank piece of paper in front of him. He’d torn it from his notebook, thinking to take notes and share them with a professional investigator when they arrived in Westundon, but he’d found nothing to write. Captain Haines, for no apparent reason, had poisoned Governor Dalyrimple.

  Oliver had intended to use the long voyage back to Enhover to question the man, but in the morning when they were meant to embark, the captain was found dead in the small room they’d imprisoned him in. The only mark on his body was a purpled jaw where the duke had knocked him unconscious the previous night.

  The physician, the same small, suspicious fellow who’d attended Governor Dalyrimple, was yet again unable to provide a specific cause of death. People’s hearts just randomly stopped beating, according to the man. Glad he wasn’t the little doctor’s patient, Oliver had been left fuming. Dalyrimple had been poisoned, of that he had no doubt. The captain’s erratic behavior the moment he’d thought he’d drunk from the same glass confirmed it. That didn’t explain why, though. The captain was a wealthy man in his own right and in good standing with the Company. He had no debts from the tables or the races that anyone was aware of and no mistresses who could have threatened blackmail. Other than the professional relationship any Company airship captain would have with a Company governor, there was no overlap between the victim and the poisoner that Oliver could determine.

  He sighed,
still twirling the quill and didn’t look up from his page. Isisandra seemed just as inclined to silence as he was.

  The room the captain had died in was small, no windows, only one door. It had been guarded throughout the night by two royal marines, men loyal to the interim Governor Ostrander, who was no close friend of Captain Haines or the former governor. He’d been unconscious when they laid him inside, and no food had been provided to the imprisoned captain through the night, but when the door was opened in the morning, he was dead. Oliver had considered whether someone had gotten to the two royal marines, a bribe of some sort, but searches of their bedchambers and persons uncovered no evidence. Oliver had been there when the door was opened, and the two guards had expressed genuine shock to see Haines dead. He believed the men, that they had nothing to do with it. Which left… no explanation he could fathom.

  “Duke Wellesley, can we have this discussion another time?” pleaded Isisandra. “I’m rather put out at the moment.”

  “Of course,” he said and quickly collected his blank sheet of paper and his quill. He stashed them in his satchel and buckled the flap closed. “We’ll continue another time when you’re ready.”

  “I appreciate that, m’lord,” she murmured.

  Oliver rose and left the former captain’s cabin, stepping onto the deck of the airship Cloud Serpent. Across the way, he saw Sam leaning against a gunwale, watching the door. She nodded when he saw her, and he made his way to stand beside the strange priestess.

  “You were watching for me?” he asked.

  “I wanted to see how long you’d be inside,” she answered.

  “Why?”

  She turned and looked up at the gloomy sky overhead. Thick, steel-gray clouds stretched from one edge of the horizon to the other.

  “What?” he asked. “You thought I’d… I’d do something with her?”

  Sam shrugged.

  “I don’t understand. Are you jealous?” he asked. “I thought you didn’t…”

  “I don’t,” interjected Sam. “There’s, ah, there’s a number of ways that… Maybe we should find somewhere more private to discuss this.”

  He frowned. “Hold on. Do you want to—”

  “No,” snapped Sam, rolling her eyes. “Do you really think that every time a woman asks to speak to you alone that they want to have sex with you?”

  He ran a hand over his hair. “Well, to be honest, most of the time they do.”

  She stared at him, clearly at a loss for words.

  “Why don’t we find a place on the forecastle we can sit down,” suggested Oliver. “We’re in the open there and can see if any of the sailors are approaching.”

  She nodded and led him to the front of the airship.

  One thousand yards above the sea, the air was crisp. It rushed past them in a steady, refreshing stream. Sam’s black hair flipped around her face until she sat down, finding shelter from the constant wind behind the railing of the ship.

  Oliver settled down beside her, leaning against the wooden post of the railing until he thought about what was on the other side of it, and he shifted, moving toward the center of the ship and settling against a spare coil of rope.

  He asked Sam, “What is it, then, why were you watching me?”

  Sighing, Sam slipped a thin-bladed poignard from her boot and began to unconsciously toy with it as she spoke. “There are certain rituals which require fluids from a person’s body. They’re incredibly strong, and in the right hands, they could grant a sorcerer immense power over someone. Think of it like… like glue. These fluids are like glue and can be used to bind a spirit to a person.”

  Oliver frowned at the girl.

  “Sorcerers cannot merely wave their hands and kill someone,” continued Sam. “Despite the stories the old grandmothers tell, it doesn’t work like that. The spirits from the underworld have no power here unless they find a bridge, something to close the gap between their world and ours.”

  “And bodily fluids do this?” questioned Oliver.

  “Blood, saliva… semen,” said Sam, peering between the railings of the ship, down at the sea below. “They are a junction of sorts between life and death. In our body, they are part of us, part of life. Out of our body, they represent loss, something no longer alive, dead. That’s the bridge.”

  “I can’t help but think you’re accusing Isisandra of being a sorceress,” mentioned Oliver.

  Sam looked up slowly to meet his eyes.

  “She’s a girl, only eighteen winters,” reminded Oliver. “She spent her childhood in Derbycross, her teenage years in Archtan Atoll. Where would she even learn such things? When would she learn such things? I was always told it takes years of study to… to become what you say she is.”

  “I’m not accusing her of anything,” responded Sam. “I have no reason to suspect her, except… she’s the one at the center of this. Both of her parents were involved, and both were murdered.”

  “And you think that makes it more likely she’s the killer?” snapped Oliver, shaking his head. “In her tender years, she somehow learned to become a powerful sorceress and then killed her own parents? Somehow enacting her mother’s death from thousands of leagues away, and then what, convincing Captain Haines to do the deed for her and poison her father? I suppose if she did all of that, she would have killed Haines, too, somehow eluding detection by the royal marines stationed outside the man’s door? And don’t forget, there were men stationed outside of her rooms as well and a maid sitting inside watching her. I ordered them there concerned that she’d… that she’d hurt herself. Do you think they were all in on it?”

  Sam ground her teeth and then replied, “Do you think something other than sorcery was responsible for the captain’s death?”

  “I don’t know, but Isisandra being the culprit doesn’t add up to me,” retorted Oliver. “For one, she was in Archtan Atoll when her mother was killed, and I can’t imagine she somehow had contacts with assassins in Harwick to do the deed. Then, we were in the room and saw Captain Haines poison her father. If she somehow paid the man, there would have been a record of it. She’s just a girl, and any wealth would have come from her father’s accounts. No, both her father and her mother were killed by someone else’s hand, and that’s one of the few things we can prove.”

  “What about Captain Haines?” pressed Sam. “Who killed him?”

  “If she had the sorcerous ability to kill Captain Haines in that locked room, then why bother hiring him to kill her father?” argued Oliver. “She’d have no reason to hire an assassin if she has that kind of skill.”

  Sam grunted. “That’s true enough.”

  “It just doesn’t make sense to me that Isisandra would want her parents dead,” continued Oliver. “It’s true she’ll inherit the estate, but I sat with the girl and discussed both deaths with her. I was as close as we are now, and either she’s the best actress in a generation, or she felt true shock and sorrow. I don’t believe she would murder them both for their wealth, and if that was the true motivation, why do it in such strange circumstances? Surely she could find a less, ah, unusual way of committing the crimes. One that would not guarantee an inquiry.”

  “It doesn’t make sense to me either,” agreed Sam. “It’s just… we have no leads. No good ones at least. We have to be suspicious of everyone. I don’t know that Isisandra is guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time — and having parents who became involved in things they should not. There’s no evidence connecting her to any of this, but…”

  “Well,” replied Oliver, “she did not have sex with me or attempt to collect any of my fluids. Does that put your mind at ease?”

  “Someone formed that circle,” barked Sam. “Someone killed a dozen people, flayed them, and hung them there. No, my mind is far from at ease. And maybe you’re right. Maybe the girl had nothing to do with the deaths of her parents, but that doesn’t mean she has nothing to do with sorcery. If they were both active practitioners, they could have
trained her as well. A family tradition, so to speak.”

  “The girl in that cabin does not have the strength to kill a man, flay them, and hang them like what we saw,” argued Oliver. “I agree this is happening all around her, but she didn’t do it. She couldn’t have. The pirates began harassing the colony two years ago. The girl would have been barely sixteen winters. A girl of just sixteen winters organizing men such as those and forming them into some sort of… death cult? I cannot believe it.”

  “It does sound rather far-fetched,” admitted Sam. “But her mother and father—”

  “They are involved,” interjected Oliver. “Or, I should say, they were. I’m convinced the countess was the original sorceress who formed that circle. Both your information from the jungle witch and what we overheard on Farawk support that conclusion. You yourself said the governor wasn’t a powerful sorcerer, or he would have been able to use the power of the circle against us, but he had some knowledge of what was going on since he had been able to find the place. Perhaps he had been supportive of his wife, and they had planned to use her occult skills for some gain. But the daughter? I just cannot see how she would be behind all of this.”

  “You’re right. You’re right,” murmured Sam.

  Oliver watched her a moment and then offered, “We’ll watch her closely. Here on the airship, when we get back to Enhover, we’ll stay close to her. If she has any involvement with dark magic, we’ll find out.”

  Sam let out a slow breath. “Fair enough.”

  “Captain, ah, m’lord,” called the first mate from the steps of the forecastle.

  Oliver should be calling her captain, he supposed. With Haines dead, she had been filling the role, and she’d done it well enough he would recommend a promotion for the woman as soon as they docked in Westundon. At least some good might come of the whole debacle.

  “Yes?” asked Oliver, standing.

  “The storm is growing, m’lord,” warned the woman. “Should we take her down and hug the seas? We’re still three turns of the clock off the coast. We might beat the front, we might not.”