Death and decay. Bones left in the sun to dry.
She swallowed it away, shoving her curse back into its cage. Her head throbbed painfully in defiance as she turned the key.
“Apologies,” Markam said as he held out a hand for Sonara and Jaxon to join them. Jaxon pulled out his chair and slunk into it. “The Devil does not take clients often. We had to iron out a small issue, but I assure you, she’s ready and willing to help you in your cause. Just as I promised you she would be.”
“Interesting,” the hooded woman said. “That’s the first time I’ve known you to hold true to your word, Markam.”
He shifted in his seat, but held his tongue.
“The Devil of the Deadlands,” the hooded Lady turned to Sonara. “A difficult woman to find an audience with. I apologize for the delay in rescuing you.”
“And who, exactly,” Sonara asked, though not unkindly, “are you?”
“This is Thali,” the Lady explained, inclining her head towards the girl in the Canis mask. “A cleric from the White Wastes, and my loyal advisor.”
That explained the mask, then. Clerics worshipped a great many things, depending on their beliefs. It often manifested in misunderstood ways.
“And you?” Sonara asked. “Who lies beneath the hood?”
It was then that the Lady finally reached up with those gloved hands and removed her hood.
She was beautiful, with hair the color of black desert roses. She had eyes that were so dark they were almost entirely black, with no pupils: the mark of a true Deadlander. But where her face was pristine, her lips red and full… her neck was marred by a deep scar.
It was the kind that was unmistakable, immediately drawing Sonara’s eyes; for Sonara herself had seen countless others like it on the necks of prisoners across Dohrsar, anchored to chains on walls.
It was the mark of a prisoner’s collar.
The mark of someone never meant to walk free.
“My name is Azariah of Stonegrave,” the Lady said. She lifted her chin, as if she wanted Sonara to see her deep scar in the rays of pale sunlight. As if she wanted Sonara to very clearly hear her next words. “More formally known as the Crown Princess of the Deadlands.”
Chapter 7
Karr
Karr Kingston, only a boy, trembled as he crouched in the shadows beneath the Starfall’s dash.
If he stared at his mother and father long enough, he could almost pretend they were deep within the safety of their dreams. Their eyes were closed, hands outstretched towards his hiding place.
They’ll wake up soon, he told himself. They’ll wake up, and we’ll walk out of here together.
It was the fresh blood, bright as rubies as it dripped from the intruder’s knife, that told Karr how wrong he was.
He woke up screaming again, sure that the knife was buried in his own chest. Certain that the criminal who’d murdered his parents years ago had come for him, too.
You’re safe, Karr told himself as he touched the old wound on his chest, his heartbeat steady beneath his fingertips. It still ached on occasion, mostly when he slept wrong. He sighed and sank deeper into his pillow, the ceiling of his bunk drawing his attention.
A smattering of charcoal sketches was plastered there.
Some were landscapes, sprawling metropoles and broad sweeping plains with herds of alien creatures dotting the horizon. Others were closer work, portraits from those he’d met in all his travels. He loved the angles of their faces, the way that everyone across the galaxy was uniquely original to him, but commonplace, perhaps, to the ones on their own planets. There were action drawings, old acquaintances leaping Growlers from jumps on distant planets. Sketches of sunsets that looked eerily similar to sunrises, or the cool glow of a waning moon.
One aspect of his drawings was always the same, a recurring presence.
He drew everything in blue.
Blue as deep as the sea.
Karr had always loved the sea, the calming scramble of waves as they lapped upon the shore and tumbled backwards, exhausted, to perform the dance all over again. He craved the smell of salt water, the feeling of warm sand beneath his bare feet.
His heartbeat calmed, slowing in time with his breaths as he stared at the smattering of sketches. A sea of cool, calm. Karr relaxed deeper into his mattress, then shivered and reached for the blanket.
Something rough scraped his fingertips.
“Open viewport,” Karr murmured, a yawn muffling the words. The small rectangular window by his bedside slid open, revealing the star-pocked sky and Dohrsar beyond, its rings glowing as if made of multi-faceted fire.
In the dim light, Karr recognized the black rock from Cade tangled up beside him in the sheets. He must have fallen asleep holding it last night, waiting for it to do something special. Anything to convince him why Cade was so certain of its ability to save them.
But if a man like Friedrich Geisinger was behind the job… hell, Karr supposed a person could make anything happen, if they had enough riches to support their cause.
With another yawn, he swung himself out of bed and went barefoot out the door of his cabin.
Karr could navigate the Starfall with his eyes closed. Many times, as a boy, he and Cade had raced through the corridors. A challenge, on weeks-long journeys, to keep themselves from going stir-crazy. And where Cade was always taller than Karr, with longer strides, Karr was small enough to fit into the hard-to-spot places.
The shortcuts.
The Starfall was shaped like a diamond, sharp around the edges, and comprised of the typical sectors on interstellar starships.
A left turn led him past a few open cabins where the crews’ snores rumbled like sleeping dragons. He tiptoed past the sick bay, where Karr himself had puked up an entire bottle’s worth of whiskey only a few nights ago.
At the end of the hall, he took the freight elevator up, tapping his toe to the music.
A few more paces, a twist down the next empty hall, and he found himself standing at the captain’s quarters, the black rock clutched in his hand.
It was more revolving door to Karr than do not disturb unless you want to be incinerated as it was to the rest of the crew… But when Karr lifted his hand to knock, muffled voices made him pause.
He knew he shouldn’t listen in. But how many times had that stopped him before?
Instead of knocking, he looked to the com beside Cade’s door.
It was a simple trick to reverse the audio, something he’d learned ages ago from the old mech that Cade ended up firing for screwing around on the job.
Karr popped open the com box, glancing over his shoulder to make sure he was still alone. Not even their obnoxious sweeper droid in sight. Karr made quick work of swapping the wires, then slipped the face of the box back in place. A simple override code, a long press of the com button, and…
A voice came through the static.
“This conversation is over.”
Karr smiled. Bullseye. That was Cade’s voice, commanding and clipped as always.
A short bark of a laugh sounded back.
Rohtt, Karr realized, the new Crossman who seemed to stare straight through every face he’d ever looked at. He hadn’t been on the crew long, just enough time to scrape the surface of acquaintance, but Karr didn’t like him.
He’d never met a Crossman who didn’t drink, for starters. The Crossmen and women were some of the best medics in space travel, the kind that had pieced soldiers back together on the front lines of brutal, bloody wars. They’d been lucky enough to come across a few Crossmen in their days, the medics usually deserters on the run from their pasts. They all drank—some of Karr’s most vivid memories were of himself and the crew, scattered across the lounge in the sector above, listening to a drunk Crossman tell his tales. To a Crossman or woman, drinking was like a badge of honor: the more they could hold down, the more they deserved your respect.
But Rohtt wouldn’t touch a drop.
He’d joined the crew just before th
ey left Beta Earth. Since then, he’d been a near-constant shadow to Cade, always watching.
“You listen to me, Kingston…” Rohtt’s voice hissed through the combox.
“No.” Cade’s voice again. “This is my ship. I give the orders here. Patch me through to him.”
“He is otherwise detained at the moment.”
Bodies shifted inside. There was the telltale squeak of Cade’s swivel chair, followed by footsteps. “I can’t eat. I can’t sleep.”
“All normal side effects of anxiety, Kingston,” Rohtt said. “Take a mood suppressor.”
“You’re mocking me.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
Silence. Then muffled sounds, a heavy sigh and the whine of Cade’s chair again as he likely sat back down.
“You know what lies inside of…” Rohtt’s voice trailed off as the connection fizzled. Karr cursed beneath his breath and scrambled to adjust the wires. “…the consequences if we fail.”
Cade was silent for a moment. “I’m well aware. At least… give me a sleeping draught. I want my mind clear when we land.”
There was the squeak of boots, as someone shifted towards the door.
Karr’s thoughts were running so fast that he hardly had time to move when the door slid open. He backed into the shadows beside Cade’s doorway, in a small alcove with a window that looked out at the stars. During sleeping hours, the corridors were lit only by the emergency exit lights. He pressed himself flat against the window as the two men marched past, blocking out the light of Dohrsar.
First came Rohtt, with a red medbox tucked under his arm. Cade followed after in his nightclothes. Behind them, Cade’s door began to slide shut.
Before he could stop himself, Karr slipped through the opening and into his brother’s quarters. The lights were dim, only the bunk lamp on.
Where Karr’s room was plastered with his belongings, photographs and sketches and stolen knickknacks—all signs that he’d made a life aboard the Starfall—Cade’s room was entirely absent of a personal touch. It was nothing more than a bunk, a built-in silver desk that protruded from the wall, and the old swivel chair that was once their father’s, soldered to the floor.
He’d thrown his dark captain’s coat over the built-in desk, leaving it rumpled, as if he’d taken it off in a hurry. A rare thing, for Cade not to leave his coat hung in the small closet beside the rest of his clothes, pressed and clean.
“What are you doing in here, Karr?” he asked himself.
Cade said the plan had wrinkles. He wanted to know what they were, and how best to iron them out.
Now that Karr was considering the job at hand, a question popped into his brain. It was one that had been lingering there since Cade had mentioned Friedrich Geisinger, but he hadn’t quite been able to put the question into words until now.
A man with his power, with his standing, should be able to soar onto any planet in any nearby galaxy and simply pay for what he wished. So what was so special about this Antheon that would make him hire a shipload of black-market criminals to acquire it for him?
Karr sat down in Cade’s chair, the question hot in his mind. Perhaps he’d sit here until Cade came back. He sighed, then reached down to remove the black rock from his pocket and ponder over it some more. But as he lifted it, his arm accidentally ruffled the edge of Cade’s coat.
The screen beneath it lit up.
Karr cursed at the sudden brightness and reached down to slide the screen back into sleep mode.
But something caught his eye.
A blueprint, glowing brightly on the screen.
Karr glanced over his shoulder at the door. Still shut, no sound of footsteps bounding down the metal corridor. He turned back to the screen, sweeping Cade’s coat aside to get the full view of it.
The blueprint looked like an alien beetle. It was the closest way to compare the headless mechanical creature with four hinged legs, sharp sword-like tips at the end of each. There were all sorts of numbers and equations, mathematical symbols and measurements written in the margins of the page, scribbled in a strange, tiny hand at each hinge. And Cade’s handwriting, scribbled on the far side of the screen, as if he’d pulled up the blueprint and began to write notes of his own.
Heat-resistant. Water-resistant. Exterior shell? Impenetrable.
“What the hell is this about?” Karr whispered.
He leaned in closer, tapping the screen to enlarge the image. More notes, and something written in a language he did not understand. But he assumed it was one of the ancients, from old Earth. Karr zoomed again, eyes widening as he found a signature at the bottom right-hand corner.
As if the blueprint itself were a sketch. A work of art.
Friedrich Geisinger
His brows knitted together as he stared at the man’s blueprint. Their new employer, no less. Was this the wrinkle Cade had mentioned?
Karr looked up as the sound of footsteps arrived from down the hall, still distant… but drawing closer. He quickly tapped the screen back to dark, then swiveled Cade’s chair around and stood just as the door slid open.
Cade stood in the doorway, eyes narrowed. “Karr?”
“You really should keep your door locked,” Karr said nonchalantly. “There’s no telling who could stumble in here under cover of night.”
“You should be sleeping.” Cade crossed his arms as he looked around the room, eyes narrowing further still, as if he were searching for a ghost.
“I could say the same to you,” Karr answered. “I saw you walk off with the medhead.”
“I’m not entirely fond of him either,” Cade said, wincing at the slang term for Rohtt. “But he’s here on Geisinger’s command. An emissary, if you will, to ensure we complete the job.”
Cade wore a thick robe each night, to ward off the chilly recycled air on the Starfall. His old fighting scars peeked out from the opening.
They reminded Karr of the times he’d stood in the midst of a raucous crowd, surrounded by sweat and skin and fists full of money on the line. If he closed his eyes, he could still feel the struggle not to cry out as he watched Cade in the fighting ring, covered in blood.
It took him months to win his first fight. And months after that, to actually make money for them to pocket after giving their cut to Jeb.
But the blood and the bruises, the pain and the small payments didn’t matter. Cade had always done the best he could to keep the Starfall afloat. To keep the crew happy. Most of all, to keep Karr alive.
“What’s going on?” Cade asked now, drawing Karr back to the present. He sat down on the edge of his bunk, looking more exhausted than Karr had seen him look in ages. “Something you wanted to discuss?”
A thousand lies he could have made up.
Instead, Karr went for the truth.
“Why us?” he asked. “Geisinger, I mean. Why would a man like him hire a bunch of black-market criminals to dig up this rock? If he’s as rich as the galaxy thinks him to be… if he owns the planet, why not just take a ship himself, hire his own crew, and dig it up?”
Cade shrugged. “We don’t ask questions. We get in, get what we’re asked to recover, and get out. You know that.” “But it’s strange,” Karr said.
“Aren’t all our jobs?”
He tossed the small chunk of Antheon to Cade, who held it towards the dim bunk light. “There’s a place near the center of the continent, on Dohrsar… old mines, on the outskirts of a Dohrsaran temple. Geisinger has been keeping an eye on things, upping his research. He’s been in communication with one of their leaders. He previously picked up on a hot spot for this Antheon. It’s worth trillions, in the right hands, in the right form.”
Karr shifted his position. The chair squeaked beneath him, a sound that brought forth a memory. His father, seated in this very room, this very chair, arms held out as he grinned and said, Come on, K. Come and help me decide where we’ll fly next.
“But why hide it?” Karr asked. “He owns the damned thing now.”
Cade glanced over his shoulder, then lowered his voice, as if he feared the entire crew was standing behind the door, listening. “We’re scrubs, Karr. People who fly below the radar. The outcasts of the galaxy.”
To hear him say it aloud… Cade had never acknowledged what Karr had always thought.
He was always seated on a mountaintop, no matter their situation. But tonight, he looked like a man defeated, the circles deep beneath his eyes. “But not after this. I’ve spoken to Geisinger myself. I’ve heard the terms. I’m keeping you out of it, so that if we’re caught…” He shrugged. “I’m protecting you.”
“What exactly from?”
“There are laws. Planets are purchased, but they’re still managed by the ITC. Emissaries from all across the galaxy check in. And their recorders are always watching.”
The recorders were orb-like camera drones that were sent across the stars, to all planets under the arm of the ITC, taking snapshots and video intel.
“They check for ethics when there can’t be boots on the ground,” Cade said. “Things must be done correctly, you know.”
“So Geisinger’s going to do something illegal and let us be his fall guys.”
Cade shifted. “Geisinger has… taken the liberty of disabling the ITC recorders for the time being. He’ll be watching on his own that he’s previously sent planetside. That footage will seamlessly interrupt the ITC feed. It will hold no record of us having been to Dohrsar. The crew’s identity will be kept safe. I’ve signed that in a contract.”
Karr stared at him. This plan had been in the works for quite some time and Cade hadn’t told him a lick of it.
“And what makes you think he’ll honor any contract, if he’s found some way to screw with the ITC’s recording system?” Karr spread his hands before him.
Cade frowned. “You have to trust that I’m doing what’s best for us. Stop asking questions. I’ve thought of the details, Karr, gone through all the steps you’re going through right now. I’ve ironed them all out. And besides. They…” He swallowed, and his voice took on a different tone. A longing tone, a weapon he used rarely, but accurately when he chose to. “They made me promise to take care of you. I’m doing that by doing this.”
Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo Page 9