Across the dark seas, the corsairs bore down on them. Five in all. Sails abloom and lit by fire lamps in the rigging. They rode across the midnight waters like a storm of flaming clouds.
“Mayhap they’ll miss us in the dark,” Rogger whispered from his perch atop the Fin. To steady himself, the thief kept one hand on the tall fin cresting along the back of the craft, riding the swells.
Tylar shook his head as he peered out of the hatch. “Both moons already rise. The night will be clear.”
Delia agreed from below. She watched from the Fin’s window as the tiny vessel rolled in the gentle waves. “And the greater moon is full faced this night. The entire sea will be burnished silver under her glow.”
Tylar scowled at their situation.
As the sun had set, all they could do was watch as the fleet spread out in a furious search, scribing a path along the fringes of the floating mat of tangleweed. Captain Grayl must have told Darjon ser Hightower where he had taken the godslayer before being hanged. Or more likely, one of his crew had spilled all. Tylar refused to think ill of the good captain.
Either way, they were doomed. Even now the corsairs swung out in a wider sweep, aiming for where the trio still foundered in the tiny Fin. They lacked even a paddle to maneuver out of the way.
“We have no choice,” Delia said. “We must try.”
Rogger turned to Tylar. “She’s determined to kill us as much as that bloody Shadowknight.”
Tylar dropped back into the Fin’s cabin. Delia crouched between the two front seats, staring at the glass sphere, now empty of its alchemy. She unscrewed a silver plug from atop the sphere. “I’ve studied the mekanicals. I think we should risk it.”
“Use my own blood to fuel the Fin?”
She pointed the stopper at him. “You carry Meeryn’s Grace in you. The Grace of water. Like Fyla. Why shouldn’t it power the Fin?”
Rogger spoke as he reentered the cabin. “Because it is not pure blood that runs a Fin. It’s an alchemical mixture. A blend of humours known to those trained in their manipulations. And as I recall, alchemists live very short lives. Blown up by their own miscalculations.”
Delia dismissed his concern. “The mica tubing still contains residual alchemy, the last dregs. All we need is a bit of fresh blood to ignite the Grace inside the mekanicals for a brief time. Enough to flee out of reach. It’ll take just a little blood.”
“A little?” Rogger repeated. “We’ve had this discussion already. If you’re wrong… if the explosion doesn’t kill us all, any fiery blast will draw the corsairs down upon us.”
“They’re already upon us, if you hadn’t noticed.” Delia cocked a thumb toward the window.
Tylar glanced from the lamplit sails back to the open cylinder. She did make a good argument. But it was his blood that would slay them if the works exploded. He found himself staring at his hands, unsure. Was it any better to take their chances with Darjon’s corsairs? He had only to think of Captain Grayl to know how his companions would fare. He pictured Delia and Rogger swinging from their necks.
He would not let that happen.
Earlier, Tylar had hoped the corsairs would dock at Tangle Reef and remain unaware of their presence, giving time for the current to drift them out of harm’s reach. Yet even that choice had its own difficulties. Adrift at sea-no food, little water-was only a slower form of death. But something had sent the corsairs searching wider. With Fyla distracted by the Gloom, word must have reached Darjon: The godslayer was loose.
Now, as the corsairs bore down on them, hard choices had to be made.
Tylar held out his hand to Rogger. “Your dagger.”
The thief backed up a step, the only space left to him. “You’re both as bad as blood witches… fooling with Grace that you know nothing about.”
Delia snapped at him. “I’m a Hand, not a skagging witch.”
Rogger lifted a brow at her cursing.
Tylar noted how tired she looked… and young. It was easy to forget. She had lost her god, seen her life turned inside out, and for what? To be hunted. He recognized the exhausted fear in her eyes, a haunting desperation.
He continued to hold his palm up toward Rogger. He had his own sword sheathed at his belt, but the long weapon was unwieldy in the cramped space, ungainly for the work needed here.
Finally, the thief slipped a tiny steel dagger from a sheath at the small of his back and placed it in Tylar’s palm.
This calmed Delia. She nodded, wiping back a stray lock of hair from her eyes. “We’ll just try with a few drops. See how the mekanicals hold.”
Tylar moved next to her. “Do I need to concentrate? Direct some will into the blood?” He thought back to the curse of ice he cast upon the jelly shark.
“No,” Delia said after a moment’s hesitation, sounding unsure. “Raw Grace is needed here, pure force.”
Tylar poised the dagger across his palm.
“Let me,” Delia said softly, touching his hand. “It is my duty.”
Tylar opened his fingers gladly.
She took the knife and, with her other hand, turned his palm down, then up again, seeming to study the length of his fingers, the hairs along the back of his hand, the architecture of his bones. Finally, she pointed the tip of the blade at a ropy vein on the side of his wrist. Her other hand latched above it, causing the vessel to bulge. “Hold steady.”
Tylar was surprised by the iron hold of her fingers. She had wicked strength. Her middle finger dug into a painful point behind a wristbone.
“Take a deep breath.”
He’d just begun to suck in air when she stabbed the dagger’s tip into the vein. Caught by surprise, he coughed with the bite of the knife-but there was no pain. She pressed her thumb over the wound before it even bled and stepped back, passing the knife back to Rogger.
Delia drew him by the arm to the glass sphere. She positioned the wound over the hole in the tank and released her thumb.
Blood flowed thickly down the inside of the glass.
Tylar watched. With the release of Delia’s fingers, he felt a dull ache bloom from the wound. “How did you… I hardly felt-?”
“Training,” she cut him off and knelt, studying the flow of his humour into the jar, watching it pool at the bottom.
“I thought you needed only a little blood?” Rogger commented.
“It is only a little. The bleeding will slow on its own.”
Tylar saw she was right. Already the seep of blood thinned to rolling drops.
“A true draining requires a slice deep to wrist, throat, or back of knee. This should be enough.” She stood and slipped a silk kerchief from a pocket. She tied a knot in it, placed it over the wound, snugged the ends tight around his wrist, and tied it in place with deft fingers. “Do not remove it for half a day.”
Tylar had watched the seas through the window as she worked. “Here they come,” he mumbled.
A quarter reach away, the sweep of high prows could now be seen, cutting through the black seas. Men moved in the rigging. Screened fire lamps shone out over the rails, lighting the waters, searching. Off to the left, the greater moon crested the waves, casting a swath of silver over the seas, pointing a finger directly at them. As Delia had noted earlier, there would be no hiding this night.
“If you’re going to blow us up,” Rogger said, “let’s be quick about it.”
Tylar made out the swinging form of Captain Grayl from the lead vessel. He felt the accusing eyes of the dead upon him. Then a fierce brightness enveloped the Fin. The path of one of the fire lamps had glanced over the craft-darkness descended again as the blaze swept away.
Had they been spotted?
Everyone held their breath. Even Delia halted her ministrations of the mekanicals.
The blaze swung back, skittered over them again, then fixed in place, lighting the seas around them as bright as the midday sun.
They had been found.
The lead corsair turned, digging deep as it swung about. The macabre decoration swayed from the prow, the dead captain’s feet brushing the waves. Shouts echoed across the water, ghostly yet urgent.
“I’m becoming more and more resolved to the blowing up part now,” Rogger said as he looked on, one hand raised against the glare.
Delia hurriedly replaced the silver plug in the crystal sphere. “I’d hoped to test it first… to leach no more than a drop or two of blood into the mekanicals.”
Tylar crouched beside her. “We don’t have the time.”
Delia licked her lips, taking a deep breath.
Tylar reached over and gathered her hands in his. Her fingers were ice cold. He warmed them by squeezing tightly. “You were Meeryn’s servant. She gave you her deepest trust and so do I.”
“But-”
“Let the Grace flow.”
Delia nodded, her gaze firming. “Everyone hold on to something secure.”
Tylar climbed into the pilot’s seat and waved for Rogger to sit.
Delia reached to the plunger that controlled the flow. Her eyes glanced at Tylar, questioning. One last chance to change their minds.
He gave her a nod.
She pulled the plunger.
The blood- his blood-drained down the bottom of the sphere, feeding into the mekanicals. The effect was immediate. As the fresh flow met the residual alchemies, the mica tubes flared to a brilliance that blinded, white hot and searing.
“Oh, no…” Delia mumbled, slamming the plunger home again with the heel of her hand.
White fire exploded outward, tracing the rib cage of mica tubing, passing over their heads, under their feet, sweeping back toward the stern. Tylar tasted the power on the back of his tongue, felt its heat on his skin.
“Hold tight!” he choked out.
The lines of fire converged upon the tapering stern and slammed together. The Fin reacted as if kicked. It bucked forward, throwing them all back.
Half-turned, Tylar’s neck jolted. He used his handhold on the Fin’s wheel to pull himself around. His ears rang. He stared through the window.
The blood-fired craft had taken flight-or so it seemed. It skimmed the surface of the black sea, riding atop the twin fins that ran along the belly of the craft. The Fin struck each shallow wave with a shuddering impact, rattling teeth. Tylar tried to slow them, to eke out some measure of control with the wheel.
No response.
Like a bolt from a crossbow, they shot across the seas, as straight as a marksman’s aim.
The target loomed ahead.
The lead corsair.
Its bulk swelled into a planked wall before them, filling the world.
Tylar yanked the wheel to the right and left. It made no difference. They were headed for a deadly crash.
Rogger grumbled behind him, “Now this is much better…”
“Forget the wheel!” Delia cried out. “You have no rudder. The Fin’s tail is out of the water!”
Her words awakened Tylar to his mistake. He had only been thinking port and starboard, right and left. In the ocean, there was also up and down. He shifted his feet to the floor pedals.
Ahead, the flank of the corsair rushed toward them, ready to slam them from this world.
Tylar shoved both pedals down to the floor. The Fin dipped its nose and dove down into the waves. The waters, lit by the moon and the fire lamps, swallowed them away, shining a deep aquamarine. Bubbles blew past as the craft sailed deep, descending toward the darker waters.
But escape still eluded them. A monster blocked their path, a black behemoth. It was the submerged keel of the corsair.
The Fin dove steeply, but their speed and proximity blurred their chances of ducking cleanly under it.
The view went murky. Tylar held white-knuckled to the wheel.
The wheel! He had forgotten! Now submerged, the rudder was back in the water.
With a sharp twist, he rolled the vessel to starboard, swinging low the fin protruding from the top of the craft.
And not a moment too soon.
The port side struck a glancing blow against the keel as it passed beneath the corsair. But they cleared it. If the Fin had remained upright, the ironwood keel would’ve cleaved the top fin as surely as any ax, shattering open the tinier vessel.
Free now, they swooped deeper into the darkening waters.
No one made any joyous sounds, too raw with their fright.
Tylar used the moment to test their controls. Wheel and pedals responded with the lightest touch, whetted by their speed. He stopped their descent. “We’ll have to turn around, sweep back,” he mumbled, more to himself than to his companions. “We’re heading south. We need to go north.”
Delia rolled out of her seat and checked the glowing tubing. The white-fire brightness had already faded. She ran a finger cautiously along one of the mica channels. “Cracks. Everywhere. The pure blood is too raw, too volatile. It sheds its Grace violently, burning up quickly.”
Tylar noted the controls growing sluggish.
“But will the mekanicals last long enough for us to reach safe haven?” Rogger asked. “Somewhere solid enough to plant our feet upon?”
“We must let the tubes cool,” Delia said, “then proceed more slowly from here. Only leach blood in drop by drop. I wasn’t sure how much would be necessary to fuel the Fin. Now I have some idea.”
Tylar swung the Fin around, gliding upward into the moonlit waters. Ahead pools of brighter water marked the corsair’s lamps. He aimed for them.
Rogger noted his course. “Are you daft, man? Where are you going? Circle around them.”
Tylar ignored him and continued toward the fleet. He aimed for one ship. It lay ahead of the others. He owed someone a debt. He wouldn’t leave these seas without settling the matter.
He sailed the Fin up to the pool of light surrounding the lead ship, then ducked into its shadow. He raced under the keel to the bow. Once there, he kept pace with the ship and gently guided the Fin upward, surfacing just under the prow.
“Take the controls,” he ordered Delia. “Just keep us steady.”
He climbed past Rogger-but not before relieving the man of his dagger. He crossed to the Fin’s stern and unhinged the hatch. He opened it enough to pop his head and one arm out.
Death scented the salt air, gagging him with its immediacy. His target hung overhead, limned in lamplight. Close enough to touch one of the dangling feet. Grayl’s boots were missing, most likely stolen by one of Darjon’s crew. His body appeared sorely used.
Tylar cocked his arm and threw the dagger with all the skill of his training. The blade flew true, slicing cleanly through the rope holding the captain aloft.
The captain had died because of him. He would not leave the man to be picked at by seabirds and to bloat in the sun. Tylar owed him at least this. A burial in the salt of the sea. An honorable resting place for one of the plowers of the Deep.
The body fell heavily into the waves, sinking rapidly away.
The missing body would not go long unnoticed.
Tylar dropped down, reaching out to slam the hatch.
The arrow pierced his outstretched wrist, striking completely through and into the Fin, pinning his arm down. The shock struck him before the pain.
Over the rail, a ragged scrap of darkness swept over the stars, skirting the risen moon. It swooped toward him.
Darjon ser Hightower.
A trap.
The Shadowknight landed on the back of the Fin, cloak swirling, his eyes aglow with Grace. He seemed more ghost than man, fraying at the edges as the night ate the lines of his form.
He spoke no words, had no hesitation. As soon as he landed, his sword swept for Tylar’s throat.
Tylar ducked as low as he could, but his arm remained pinned outside, keeping him from escaping below. His shoulder wrenched. He moved too slowly. A whispered edge of the blade sliced across the crown of his scalp, leaving a line of fire behind.
Below, in the cabin, he found Rogger staring up at him, unable to help.
“Go!” Tylar shouted. Hot blood ran through his hair, past his ear, along his throat.
Delia responded. The Fin jolted forward.
Tylar hoped the sudden movement would unsteady the Shadowknight. Using this moment, Tylar leaped straight up and rolled out of the hatch.
At the stern, Darjon had fallen to one knee, but he was already rising, a surge of shadow.
Tylar focused on wrenching his arm free. Luckily, his own flesh had slowed the bolt. It had not struck the pod with much impact. He yanked his wrist free, taking the arrow with it.
Agony blackened the edges of his vision. But Tylar had lived with the daily tortures of a broken body. The pain focused him, reminded him of his fury.
The pair rose as one atop the back of the vessel: Darjon on one side of the tall central maneuvering fin, Tylar on the other. Darjon’s sword stabbed with Grace-borne speed, but Tylar anticipated it. He danced forward, using the fin as cover.
Only then did he realize his mistake.
Darjon had intended only to drive him away from the open hatch. The Shadowknight stepped around. He stood now between Tylar and escape.
It was a foolish slip, one Tylar would never have made before. He may be hale of body, but he was far from his former sharpness of mind and reflex. But he knew enough to cast aside the mistake. It was done. A knight had to stay focused on the moment.
The pod bounced regularly as it sped across hummocked waves. Footing was tricky on the wet surface of the craft.
Tylar eyed the open hatch. If he could get below and seal the hatch, the pod could sink away. Darjon would be washed from its surface, forced to swim for his ship.
The Shadowknight read the intent in Tylar’s gaze. With a sweep of cloak, he kicked the hatch closed and positioned himself atop it. “Where is your daemon now?” he taunted.
Tylar did not parry words. With his good arm, he slid free his sheathed sword, letting moonlight trace its length in molten silver.
A hiss of recognition greeted its appearance.
Tylar held Darjon’s own blood-sworn sword, stolen in the Summering Isles.
Tylar stepped around the maneuvering fin. He cradled his wrist, still impaled by the crossbow’s bolt, to his belly. He noted movement through the Fin’s window below. Delia leaned forward, a hand pressed to her cheek, her eyes bright with concern as they met his. She reached from her face to the glass, laying her hand on it.
He turned away. It wasn’t good-bye yet.
He studied Darjon. Tylar knew it would be impossible to lure the knight away from the hatch. He’d have to go to him, meet him.
Darjon kept his sword low, waiting, ready.
Tylar edged along the Fin, keeping his balance as the waves rattled the craft. Past Darjon’s shoulder, the fleet of corsairs continued their pursuit, lamps aglow. Tylar recalled the ebbing power in the Fin. They did not have time to spare.
He stepped past the end of the maneuvering fin, facing Darjon.
They were beyond quips or barbs. A dead stillness lay upon them both. As in a match of kings and queens, the opening move was the most important. Feint or attack. Advance or retreat. Guard up or down.
The matter was settled in a flash of silver, lightning strikes in the night. Neither could tell who attacked first. Both moved swiftly, speed borne of Grace, fury, and desperation.
Tylar turned his wrist, blocking a thrust to his heart. The knight’s sword slid down his blade and struck his hilt’s steel guard with a resounding blow. Tylar felt the impact all the way to the shoulder. Darjon was damnably strong.
Forced back a step, Tylar shoved the knight’s sword up and away. Bringing his own point low, he sliced through a fold of shadowcloak. If there was any flesh beneath it, Tylar did not find it.
Darjon knocked the blade down with a slamming blow from his hilt, then spun on a heel to slip inside Tylar’s guard. An elbow struck Tylar in the center of the chest, knocking air from his lungs.
Another misstep in this dance.
With Darjon atop him, Tylar swung out with the only weapon available: the dart impaled through his wrist. He felt the tip graze more than cloth.
Darjon hissed, confirming the strike, and fell back.
With space now, Tylar brought his sword to bear.
An arm’s length away, Darjon hunched. The wild lash of the sharp arrow had cut through the masklin hiding his features. For the first time, Tylar saw the face of his adversary.
The knight’s paleness struck him first-not a snowy white, but more an absence of any color, bloodless. Had it ever been touched by sunlight? Even the glimpse of hair was too starkly white, brittle in the moonlight. His other features were as sharp as his eyes: thin lips curled in fury, a narrow nose pinched in distaste. A ghost cloaked in shadow.
But it was not his paleness that gave Tylar pause. A more disturbing revelation was exposed. It was not the presence of something, but the absence. The fish-belly whiteness of Darjon’s features was unmarred by mark or blemish.
He bore no triple stripe of knighthood.
Darjon read the realization in his opponent’s eyes.
Angered and shocked, Tylar missed the flash of silver until it was too late. A dagger, thrown from the hip.
“I believe you left this behind,” the false knight spat.
Tylar twisted. The blade shot beneath his raised arm, carving a path along the underside of his limb, slicing tunic, skin, and muscle as it passed. It impaled into the tall fin behind him. Tylar recognized its quivering hilt. It was the same dagger he had used to pinion Darjon outside the gates to Meeryn’s keep.
Darjon followed the attack with a savage thrust of his sword. Tylar, off balance, parried the blade poorly. He managed only to deflect. He had no footing to counter.
Panic slowed everything, like a nightmare. Darjon expertly trapped Tylar’s sword with his own. Tylar, weak from the dagger’s cut, could not stop the blade from being ripped from his grip.
His sword flew and struck the curved back of the Fin.
It slid toward the waiting sea.
Tylar lunged for it, desperate-only to see its black diamond pommel slip beyond his fingertips and plunge away. Weaponless, wounded, he rolled around to his back.
Darjon stood a step away, death promised in his eyes as he raised his sword.
Tylar felt the hot trickle of blood down the inside of his arm, pooling around his hand. He tried to scramble backward, but the footing was slick from the slosh of waves. His back struck the end of the Fin.
If he could snatch the dagger…
But a fast glance showed it was beyond his reach.
Darjon closed, his sword point scribing a sigil of finality in the air.
Tylar, wiping cold sweat and blood from his eyes, flashed back to Delia, pressing her palm against the glass. He realized it had not been a good-bye, but a warning.
He looked at his fingers. Sweat and blood. As his yellow bile had charmed the miiodon, his perspiration could do the same to the nonliving.
Such as a wooden craft in the middle of the Deep.
Tylar brought his hand down upon the Fin’s surface. As before, he willed the world to ice, touching his memories of frozen tundras, snowstorms, and frost fogs.
From his fingertips, runnels of ice shot outward. In a heartbeat, the damp surface of the Fin froze over, sheeted with planes of ice, crystalline and scintillating in the starlight.
Tylar felt the frigid bite through the damp seat of his breeches, freezing him to the deck.
Darjon had hesitated as the Grace flowed. He now took a cautious step backward, confusion plain on his face. His inattention betrayed the heel of his boot on the slick ice. He skated for balance, lost it, arms pinwheeling.
With a distinct lack of dignity, the man’s legs flew out from under him. He landed on the slippery surface and continued his slide. Hands scrambled for purchase. But burdened by the sword he refused to abandon, he failed and soon slid over the edge and splashed into the sea.
Tylar ripped himself free of the frozen clutch of the Fin’s surface and crawled on hands and knees. He spotted Darjon a few lengths away, fighting the waves and the weight of his waterlogged cloak.
Shivering, Tylar crossed to the hatch. He fought to lift it, but a coating of ice locked it tight. He pounded a fist on the door, trying to break through the crust. He was too weak, left with only a child’s strength.
Across the sea, the fleet of corsairs swept toward them, filling the starry world with firelit sails.
A muffled call sounded below. He could not answer.
Then with a crack that sounded like splintering wood, the hatch banged open, coming within a hairbreadth of smashing Tylar’s nose. Rogger popped his head out, scanned the immediate area, then settled on Tylar.
“Figured the chill had to be more ’n a sudden change of seasons,” he said, his eyes drawn to the nearby splashing as Darjon swam toward the sweep of ships. “Looks like you shook loose that black-robed barnacle.”
“For now,” Tylar said hoarsely, picturing the murder in the false knight’s eyes. “For now…”
Rogger finally seemed to note Tylar’s bloody state. He helped Tylar below. Tylar bit back a groan when the arrow in his wrist jarred against the frame of the Fin’s hatch.
“Ay, take a care there,” Rogger said with his usual late concern.
They fell together the rest of the way into the cabin. Out of the sea breeze, the cabin was as warm as a hot bath, heated by the blaze of mica tubings. Rogger reached up and slammed the hatch.
Across the cabin, Delia dove the Fin deep.
Rogger helped Tylar sit up. “You took a foolish risk back there.”
Tylar shivered and coughed. “I had no choice but to fight the bastard.” He again pictured the unmarked face of the man, a false knight. For the moment, he kept silent, needing time to mull over this newest mystery.
“I meant,” Rogger continued, “it was daft going back to free the captain.”
Tylar shook his head. “Captain Grayl deserved the effort. My blood was a small price against his life.”
“Dead is dead. Debts end with one’s last breath.”
“Honor does not.”
“Spoken like a true knight. I thought you had given up on that.”
Tylar let his scowl answer for him. When he’d been a broken scabber in the alleys of Punt, his life had been without responsibility, even to himself. Now hale again, burdened at every turn, he found the need once more to acknowledge honor… even in death. Grayl would not have wanted to end his presence here by rotting at the end of a rope. If Tylar could grant him nothing else, he could acknowledge that and act upon it.
Rogger shook his head.
Delia called back. “Rogger, man the wheel. I’ve taken us under the waves. Just keep us moving straight. I’ll ministrate his wounds.”
“Ministrate away,” Rogger said as they switched places. “But do something about that stubborn streak of righteousness. It’ll kill him faster than any sword.”
Delia waved him off. Tylar allowed her to free his coat’s laces. Blood flowed from scalp, right wrist, and left upper arm. He read the concern bright in her eyes. “I’ll heal,” he insisted.
“Of course you will. Firebalm will mend the worst.” Delia expressed her true concern as she parted his sodden coat and saw his soaked linen tunic, more red than white now. “But you’ve lost so much blood.”
The world swam at the edges, watery and loose. “I’ll live.”
“That’s not my concern.” Realizing what she had said, she quickly corrected herself. “Rather that’s not my only concern. We need pure, uncontaminated blood to fuel the Fin. But we can’t risk taking more now. You’ve wasted so much of it.”
“Sorry,” he said.
She slipped a fruit-paring knife from a pocket and sliced off his tunic with deft strokes. She used the strips to bind the cut on his upper arm, then had him hold a wadded piece of his own shirt atop his head.
“We must free the arrow.”
He nodded. “Break the iron head, then withdraw it backward.”
“It’ll bleed afresh.”
“Then you’d best collect it,” he said with a tired smile.
She kept her eyes down. “Sorry… after so long with Meeryn. Every drop is precious. To see it spilled to no purpose…” She shook her head.
“Then you’d best find a bowl as you work the arrow out.”
“Only glass will preserve the Grace. Any other vessel will allow it to seep out.”
Tylar focused on her words as she worked the wooden haft behind the head of the arrow with her knife, scoring the wood to snap it clean. Each scrape stoked the pain in his wrist. He felt it in his teeth. He spoke to keep from screaming, his voice strained with the effort. “Why glass? Why not stone or metal?”
“Stone, clayware, bronze, steel, all come from the ground, from the aspect of loam. Grace wicks into it.”
Crack.
Tylar gasped out as Delia suddenly broke the arrow’s haft. She had given no warning. “But glass comes from sand,” he said tightly, riding down the pain. “Is sand not loam, too?”
“Yes, but glass has strange properties.”
“How so?” He used his curiosity like a crutch.
“Glass, though seeming solid, actually flows… like water.”
Tylar’s disbelief must have been plain.
She shrugged. “Despite appearances, alchemists insist on the nature of glass. It’s this constant flow-too slow to see- that keeps the Grace preserved and protected behind glass.” She reached to his wrist. “Now let’s see about removing the rest of this arrow.”
Tylar waved his bloody wad of shirt toward the bow. “Help me to the Fin’s tank. You were right a moment ago. We’ll need the fuel to make landfall.”
He allowed Delia to wrap an arm around his bared midsection as he climbed to his feet. The world went black for a moment. His heart thudded in his throat. Then after a breath, vision returned.
He hobbled forward, leaning more upon Delia than he had intended. Shame was a useless emotion at the moment, and he was still unaccustomed to his hale form-yet to lose it again discomfited him.
They reached the tank. Rogger eyed him, true worry shining.
“Shall I pull it out?” Delia asked softly.
“I’ll do it.”
“Maybe you two need a bit of privacy,” Rogger snorted, but his humor sounded forced.
Ignoring him, Tylar yanked the arrow free. His knees buckled. He hadn’t expected that. But Delia was there, catching him, struggling with his weight.
Maybe there was a use for shame. It returned strength to his legs.
He positioned his arm over the open spigot atop the crystal tank. Blood poured copiously into the vessel. He felt it drain from him with each heartbeat.
Again darkness squeezed his vision to a narrow point. He found himself no longer standing, but slouched in one of the rear seats, head lolled back.
He craned back up, assisted by a hand from Delia. Her palm was so warm against the back of his neck. A moan escaped him.
“There he is again,” Rogger said.
Delia held a cup in front of his face. “Drink,” she insisted.
Water flowed down his throat. He choked on it. Before he drowned, he pushed her arm away. He saw his wrist was bandaged. How long had he been gone? Delia tried to dote on him. He waved her away, more gently this time.
“I… I’m better.”
Delia sank into the other seat. Her words were for Rogger. “We must get him to a healer.”
“Fitz Crossing is closest,” the thief answered at the wheel. “We could be there by morning. But no doubt that Shadowknight and his corsairs will guess our course and head there, too. They may even reach the island before we do.”
Delia wrung her hands. “We must take the risk.”
“No,” Tylar croaked. “We make straight for the Steps. We can reach the First Land in two days’ time.”
Rogger stared back at him. “Of course, there’s a third choice. We’re free… with a boat. Why not head to some distant backwater where no one knows us?”
Tylar met the thief’s gaze. A part of him was drawn to this dream. But his mind’s eye kept coming back to Grayl, bare toes swinging overhead. He slowly shook his head.
“Why not?” Rogger asked. “Live our lives with no past.”
“Or future.” He swallowed hard, a bitter taste in his mouth. “I’ve been there before… the place you say you want to go.”
“Where’s that?”
“Where I came from. Where I’d been hiding. Some distant backwater. A place like Punt. I don’t want to go back.” As he spoke those words, he felt a noose around his own neck cut free. Something loosed in him and dropped away. “We go,” he said, putting every last bit of firmness in his voice.
Rogger slowly nodded.
Delia looked less convinced. “More than anyone, I want to expose what happened to Meeryn, but you must rest. I found a cache of supplies, old from the look of them, at the back of the Fin. There was powdered nyssaroot for pain.”
“Nyssa? I’ll sleep for days.”
“Exactly. You’ll leave your wounds undisturbed and give your body time to mend. I insist.”
Tylar frowned, sensing a core of determination in her that he didn’t have the strength to fight. He nodded. The world spun with even that small motion.
“Good. You should be feeling the numbness in a few moments.”
“What…?” He glanced to the abandoned cup. “You already-”
The world rolled backward, darkening.
“Sleep,” she urged him.
He had no choice.
A timeless span later, Tylar woke to snoring. It was not his own. He turned his head.
Rogger curled on the floor beside him, nestled in a pile of netting. Each breath rattled in and sputtered out, regular as a well-wound clock. The thief smelled ripe-or maybe it was Tylar himself.
He shifted.
The only light in the cabin was the perpetual glow of the skeletal tubing. Beyond the Fin’s window, the waters were inky dark, except for the speckling of spinning bits of phosphorescence. Tiny sea sprites chased and harried the stranger in their midst.
Delia stood silhouetted against the window, chewing on the knuckle of one finger as she inspected the tangled mekanical heart of the vessel. She was mumbling, in midargument with herself.
Tylar shifted, aching all over, but it was a wooly discomfort. Not sharp. He tried sitting. The world shivered, but it settled quickly.
Delia turned.
“You’re awake.”
“I think so… Ask me again in a few moments.”
“Would you like some water? Do you need to relieve yourself?”
He nodded to both but asked only for water. He couldn’t face her trying to preserve his morning humours. Delia helped him up into a seat. The effort was like climbing a mountain with a full pack of rocks. He sat heavily with the cup in hand.
“This is just water, right?”
She smiled and nodded.
“How long have I been asleep?”
“Through an entire day. It’s night again. But the rest has done you well. You look good.”
“I wish I could say the same about how I feel.”
Concern crinkled her brow.
He held up a hand. “No, I’m doing better. Truly. Don’t worry.”
Her face relaxed. In this moment, her simple beauty shone. A softness and clarity that was pleasing to look upon.
Tylar cleared his throat, suddenly awkward with such thoughts. She was near to half his age. He glanced to the mekanicals. “How is the Fin holding up?”
Delia sighed. “We lost a few tubes. Shattered away. But if we don’t press the works, the rest should hold.”
“And the blood?”
“We’re fine. Plenty. But it’ll take another two days to reach the Steps.”
Tylar didn’t complain. They were moving, safe for the moment. And much of it was due to the woman seated across from him. He was impressed with her resourcefulness and skill.
He motioned to the crystal tank. “How did you come to know so much about alchemy? Were you schooled in it?”
She shrugged, shook her head, then glanced to her knees, pulling into herself. “My… my father had an interest in alchemy.”
From the hunch of her shoulders, there was more history than the words implied. Something unhealed. Only now did Tylar realize how reticent Delia had been about her past. Then again, he had been no more forthcoming, having been orphaned himself, birthed as his mother drowned, his father dead. His own past had no family stories or histories, so he had not missed the same from Delia… until now.
“Where did he practice his alchemy?”
She seemed to shrink further. “He was not an alchemist, only a dabbler. But his interest became mine when I was very young… before my mother died of the pox. She was a healer.” She added this last quickly, proudly. “She caught the pox during the Scourge, going into places others wouldn’t tread for fear of contagion.”
Tylar did a quick calculation. That meant she lost her mother when she was only eight birth years.
“After that, something died in my father. He sent me off to my mother’s family, a land away, a family who hardly knew me. He took back his name and left me my mother’s. I was not the easiest child at the time.”
Heartbroken and angry, Tylar guessed. He could relate. He had been bounced around from home to home himself. But he recognized a deeper pain in her. He had never known his family, long dead and buried. Hers had cast her away like so much refuse. A cruelty that surpassed tragedy.
“How did you end up in the Summering Isles?”
She shrugged. “My mother’s family could not control me. I was sent to the Abbleberry Conclave, where I was eventually chosen.” A small smile broke through the gloom. “One of the happiest days of my life.”
“And what became of your father?”
Her smile vanished.
“I’m sorry. I’m intruding…”
“No, it’s just… we haven’t spoken since I was sent off. I doubt he even knows what became of me. The only thing I have left from him is my interest in alchemical studies.”
“Yet he wasn’t an alchemist himself?”
“No.” She glanced to Tylar, her voice bitter. She pointed three fingers toward his face, toward his stripes. “He was a Shadowknight. Like you.”
Tylar felt a sting from her words, old anger glancingly aimed at him. He fumbled for words. “What was his name?”
Delia shook her head. “I won’t speak it.”
“What of his family name then? The one he took from you.”
She answered leadenly. “It was Fields.”
What little blood that still coursed in Tylar’s veins drained to his feet. He fought to keep from yelling. “Not Argent ser Fields?”
Delia’s gaze darted at him, eyes going hard. “You know him?”
Tylar pictured the long bench in the Grand Court of Tashijan, the line of adjudicators, soothsayers, and representatives of the Council of Masters and Order of Shadowknights. In the center of them all reigned the overseer of the trial. Beyond this knight’s masklin, only a single eye glowed, the other covered in a patch of bone, earning him the nickname One Eye.
Argent ser Fields.
“How do you know him?” Delia asked again, almost a demand.
Tylar could not face her. “Your father… he sent me into slavery.”