All the while, Lila held her tongue, and her silence only seemed to rattle the crew. They shouted at each other, and at her. More men appeared. More calls for casero. Lila wished she’d had more than a handful of days to study Arnesian. Did casero mean trial? Death? Murder?
And then a man strode across the deck, wearing a black sash and an elegant hat, a gleaming sword and a dangerous smile, and the shouting stopped, and Lila understood.
Casero meant captain.
* * *
The captain of the Night Spire was striking. And strikingly young. His skin was sea tanned but smooth; his hair, a rich brown threaded with brass, was pinned back with an elegant clasp. His eyes, a blue so dark they were almost black, went from the body on the plank, to the crowd of gathered men, to Lila. A sapphire glittered in his left brow.
“Kers la?” he asked.
The five who’d dragged Lila on board broke into noise. She didn’t even try to follow along and pick out words as they railed on around her. Instead she kept her eyes on the captain, and though he was obviously listening to their claims, he kept his eyes on her. When they’d burned themselves out, the captain began to interrogate her—or at least ramble at her. He didn’t seem particularly angry, simply put out. He pinched the bridge of his nose and spoke very fast, obviously unaware of the fact she didn’t know more than a few words of Arnesian. Lila waited for him to realize, and eventually he must have recognized the emptiness in her stare for lack of comprehension, because he trailed off.
“Shast,” he muttered under his breath, and then started up again, slowly, trying out several other languages, each either more guttural or more fluid than Arnesian, hoping to catch the light of understanding in her eyes, but Lila could only shake her head. She knew a few words of French, but that probably wouldn’t help her in this world. There was no France here.
“Anesh,” said the captain at last, an Arnesian word that as far as Lila could tell was a general sound of assent. “Ta …” He pointed at her. “… vasar …” He drew a line across his throat. “… mas …” He pointed at himself. “… eran gast.” With that, he pointed at the body of the man she’d gutted.
Gast. She knew that word already. Thief.
“Ta vasar mas eran gast.”
You killed my best thief.
Lila smiled despite herself, adding the new words to her meager arsenal.
“Vasar es,” said one of the men, pointing at Lila. Kill her. Or perhaps, Kill him, since Lila was pretty sure they hadn’t figured out yet that she was a girl. And she had no intention of informing them. She might have been a long way from home, but some things didn’t change, and she’d rather be a man, even if that meant a dead one. And the crew seemed to be gunning for that end, as a murmur of approval went through the group, punctuated by vasar.
The captain ran a hand over his hair, obviously considering it. He raised a brow at Lila as if to say, Well? What would you have me do?
Lila had an idea. It was a very stupid idea. But a stupid idea was better than no idea, at least in theory. So she dragged the words into shape and delivered them with her sharpest smile. “Nas,” she said, slowly. “An to eran gast.”
No. I am your best thief.
She held the captain’s gaze when she said it, her chin high and proud. The others grumbled and growled, but to her they didn’t matter, didn’t exist. The world narrowed to Lila and the captain of the ship.
His smile was almost imperceptible. The barest quirk of his lips.
Others were less amused by her show. Two of them advanced on her, and in the time it took Lila to retreat a matching step, she had another knife in hand. Which was a feat, considering the leather strap that bound her wrists. The captain whistled, and she couldn’t tell if it was an order for his men, or a sound of approval. It didn’t matter. A fist slammed into her back and she staggered forward into the captain, who caught her wrists and pressed a groove between her bones. Pain shot up her arm, and the knife clattered to the deck. She glared up into the captain’s face. It was only inches from her own, and when his eyes bore into hers, she felt them searching.
“Eran gast?” he said. “Anesh …” And then, to her surprise, the captain let her go. He tapped his coat. “Casero Alucard Emery,” he said, drawing out the syllables. Then he pointed at her with a questioning look.
“Bard,” she said.
He nodded, once, thinking, and then turned to his waiting crew. He began addressing them, the words too smooth and fast for Lila to decipher. He gestured to the body on the plank, and then to her. The crew did not seem pleased, but the captain was the captain for a reason, and they listened. And when he was finished, they stood, still and sullen. Captain Emery turned and made his way back across the deck to a set of stairs that plunged down into the ship’s hull.
When his boot touched the first step, he stopped and looked back with a new smile, this one sharp.
“Nas vasar!” he ordered. No killing.
And then he gave Lila a look that said, Good luck, and vanished belowdecks.
* * *
The men wrapped the body in canvas and set it back on the dock.
Superstition, she guessed, about bringing the dead aboard. A gold coin was placed on the man’s forehead, perhaps as payment for disposal. From what Lila could tell, Red London wasn’t a particularly religious place. If these men worshipped anything, they worshipped magic, which she supposed would be heresy back in Grey London. But then again, Christians worshipped an old man in the sky, and if Lila had to say which one seemed more real at the moment, she’d have to side with magic.
Luckily, she’d never been devout. Never believed in higher powers, never attended church, never prayed before bed. In fact, the only person Lila had ever prayed to was herself.
She considered nicking the gold coin, but god or not, that seemed wrong, so she stood on the deck and watched the proceedings with resignation. It was hard to feel bad about killing the man—he would have killed her—and none of the other sailors seemed terribly broken up over the loss itself … but then again, Lila supposed she was in no place to judge a person’s worth by who would miss them. Not with the closest thing she’d had to family rotting a world away. Who had found Barron? Who had buried him? She shoved the questions down. They wouldn’t bring him back.
The huddle of men trudged back aboard. One of them walked straight up to Lila, and she recognized her knuckle-hilted dagger in his grip. He grumbled something under his breath, then raised the knife and buried its tip in a crate beside her head. To his credit, it wasn’t in her head, and to hers, she didn’t flinch. She brought her bound wrists around the blade and pulled down in a single sharp motion, freeing herself from the cord.
The ship was almost ready to set sail, and Lila appeared to have earned a place on it, though she wasn’t entirely sure if it was as prisoner, cargo, or crew. A light rain began to fall, but she stayed on deck and out of the way as the Night Spire cast off, her heart racing as the ship drifted out into the middle of the Isle and turned its back on the glittering city. Lila gripped the rail at the Spire’s stern and watched Red London shrink in the distance. She stood until her hands were stiff with cold, and the madness of what she was doing settled into her bones.