“Nice coat,” Abelard said. She cocked an eyebrow at him.
Cat stepped forward, and snapped to attention. “Ma’am.”
Cat’s newfound formality gave Tara pause, but she continued: “Thank you both for bringing me in. Cat, especially, for…” Her brow furrowed. “You scared off the gargoyles. You’re a Blacksuit? Or did I dream that?”
“No, ma’am.” She bowed her head, a sharp, mechanical movement. “Lieutenant Catherine Elle, bound to the service of Justice.” She proffered the scroll. “Yesterday Alt Coulumb saw its first Flight of Stone Men in nearly forty years. We’re working to ensure they will be the last.”
“You don’t need to be this formal.”
“I do, ma’am.” Cat tapped the scroll in her left hand. “I’ve been assigned to protect you. We can’t let you go unshielded with Stone Men in the area.”
Tara stiffened. “Protect me? Against what?”
“Against the Stone Men, for one. And against whatever danger you may encounter in our city.”
“I don’t need protection.”
“I have my orders.”
“What if I refuse?”
She blinked, slowly, considering. “This is Alt Coulumb. Justice’s will is paramount.”
“Shouldn’t they assign someone else? You have a personal relationship with my assistant.” She indicated Abelard with a nod. “No offense.”
“I’ve known Abelard since I was a girl. He won’t stand in my way. Also, I think you overestimate the individual prerogative officers of Justice have in their work.”
“Individual prerogative. You mean free will?”
“Ah.” Cat frowned at that question. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Interesting.” Tara’s expression remained clouded. “Welcome to the team. We’ll discuss specifics later, but we’re on a tight schedule. Can you lead me to Captain Pelham?”
*
Tara’s eyes adjusted slowly to the dark room. The vampire lay spread out on the bed, long, slender, and naked from the waist up, sheets pooled around his hips, a fallen mast surrounded by twisted sails. Scars webbed his torso, earned from blade and fire before his death. One was a long, wicked, narrow burn that had not been caused by natural flame.
His chest neither rose nor fell.
“Your line,” she said, “is, Thank you for saving me.”
He laughed. “As I reckon things, we’re even. One rescue from drowning and one from, well…” His red eyes flicked left, to Abelard and Cat standing against the wall behind her. She had warned them to keep their distance. The stress of last night, combined with her hasty mental surgery, might have damaged Raz’s self-control. A Craftswoman’s blood was unappealing to most vampires, as a shot of rubbing alcohol was unappealing to most alcoholics. Theirs, though …
“What is the last thing you remember?”
“I was going to meet a client,” he replied. “Get paid.”
“At Club Xiltanda?”
His eyebrows rose. “Xiltanda. Huh.”
“Is that a surprise?”
A pause followed, about the length of a breath. Rhetorical habits died hard. “I,” he said, “am cursed by peculiar clients. There are not many owner-operators of my … persuasion. Clients with needs beyond the natural often choose the Kell’s Bounty over larger and better-equipped vessels because they know we’ll serve their needs and ask few questions. Understand?”
Tara nodded.
“For this reason, we have a reputation that makes it hard to get normal work.” His eyes narrowed. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s not as if I chose this.”
“You did,” she noted. “Vampiric infection won’t work unless you accept it.”
“Better unlife than death, as your boss said when she gave me the option.” His anger spent itself on her silence. “I suppose you’re right, though. I made the choice, even if it didn’t seem like a choice at the time, and its consequences have leapt in and out of my wake ever since. Like dolphins.” He made an arcing motion with one hand, and Tara saw nine feet of silver-blue glittering wet in moonlight above a silent sea.
“You were hired by a Craftsman.”
“I was hired south of Iskar in the Northern Gleb, in a port about thirty miles from the border of King Clock’s land. A man sought me out. Six feet tall, maybe, with thin, sallow features. Narrow mustache, long nails. Moved like a snake. Fringe of white hair.” He wiggled his fingers in a vague semicircle around the edge of his scalp. “Wore a silver skullcap. He…” Raz’s features twisted in confusion. “He wanted us to deliver a package. A chest of magesterium wood, with little silver runes. Told us to bring it east, to the Golden Horde…” He frowned. “No. Not to the Horde. We delivered it to Iskar. I can’t remember which city.” The words came out strangled. Had he been human, his forehead would have been beaded with sweat.
“When we first met, you said the Bounty came to Alt Coulumb from Iskar via Ashmere. Why stop there?”
“We needed repairs, fast ones. Most of the ship had to be replaced. Burned sails and a broken mast. Demon scars on the hull, a hundred small holes in the keel. It would have taken weeks had there not been a good Craftswoman at the docks.”
“I thought sailors didn’t like Craftswomen touching your ships.”
Raz bared his fangs. “Your boss robbed me of the luxury of such superstition a long time ago.”
Tara considered her next words. Raz was in a delicate mental state. Beyond the blackout curtains, orange light threatened the horizon. Morning weakened him, but if she pushed too far too fast he might break. In his rage he could cross the room and tear out her throat before the sun caught him, whether he liked the taste of her blood or not.
“Raz, when was your ship damaged?”
He looked at her as if she’d spoken nonsense. “In the battle.”
“Which battle?”
“With the Iskari treasure fleet. Three days ago.”
Good, she said to herself. Play dumb a while longer. Bolster his confidence. He likes telling stories. Ask him for one. “Treasure fleet?”
His grin turned rakish. “The Iskari still have colonies in the Skeld Archipelago and on Southern Kath. Diamond mines, silver. Oil. Magesterium wood. Every year, the navy brings treasure home in ships so big it seems wrong to call them ships anymore. Hulls of mystic wood worked by Craftsmen and reinforced with silver and cold iron. Sheets of steel, sails preserved by demonic pact. Charms and wards calm the waves about them, keep the winds loyal and turn attacks away. The Iskari treasure fleet.” His voice rose in rapture, and sank to a sigh. “Beautiful sight on a blue morning. Impossible to take.”
“Impossible?” she asked in her most curious voice.
“That’s what everyone said.” He turned to the window, his gaze passing beyond the curtains, beyond the city, to the sea. “They were right, but we came close. Night hid our vessels from enemy eyes and curses. The Craftsman called dead ships from the depths to aid us, crewed by lumbering monsters that once were men. Without him, we would have broken on their defenses. Without us, his clumsy dead things would have been too slow to cordon off the fleet. The Iskari called sea serpents to rake our hull and breathe lightning on us, but we pressed the attack until the fire came.”
This part Tara knew. The fire struck near dawn, Iskari time, around two in the morning in Alt Coulumb. Walls of flame and billowing columns of steam erupted from the suddenly boiling ocean as the treasure fleet’s admiral invoked the Defense Ministry’s contract with Kos Everburning. The pirates scattered, dead ships sinking again beneath the waves. Kos’s wrath scorched the Kell’s Bounty, burnt her sails and shattered her mast and raked her hull. The crew clustered on deck and prayed desperately to whatever gods might hear them—one or two Kosites begging for His mercy—until the fire died with its Lord.