He knew me? Impossible. Shivers skittered from the back of my neck to the tips of my fingers. Away. I had to get away. But where? I was on a ship, still at sea. And those flames…
“Where is Randalf’s ship?” I asked.
“Hm?” His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Speak up.”
“The Juliette, where is she?”
He glanced over his shoulder to the fire. It was far enough out that, as the pirates parted, I could see the shape of the entire ship—Juliette, burning upon the waves. A few shapes dangled from her yard arms, and it took me a moment to realize that they were more people, hung from ankles, throats or hands. As I stared, mesmerized, I saw some of them were still moving. Convulsing. Roasting alive.
The horror of it lashed me like waves. I couldn’t rejoice at the demise of Randalf and his crew, not like this. So many lives ended in agony, before my very eyes.
Why would the pirates burn their prize? Randalf’s ship wasn’t large and the hole the pirates had blasted in it was certainly a flaw, but it was worth money, especially with a ghisting aboard.
A ghisting who had escaped, I now pieced together. A ghisting who’d looked at me with solidarity. She’d been freed by the fire, as ghistings often were.
The thought of her escape comforted me, in a distant, melancholy way. But that consolation was fleeting. I caught a waft of crisping fat on the wind, and the scream of a dying crewman aboard Juliette shrilled over the roar of the flames.
Above me, the hanging man swung with the roll of the ship, still dripping piss and blood.
“Are you going to ask who I am?” The pirate pulled my attention back to him. “Or perhaps you remember me?”
I found my voice. “Why would I remember you?”
His eyes dropped, lingering in the center of my chest in a way that made my skin crawl. It wasn’t a lustful look, but a prying one—as if he expected to see something on my dirty, cold-pinched skin. He reached out, pushing my collar aside an inch, and his finger brushed across my flesh.
Run. The impulse struck me again like an arrow in the dark. It was directionless, futile and irrational, but I couldn’t stop it. I inched back, coming up against the mainmast again. This time I didn’t stop. I twisted, ducking around the trunk and shoving through the crowd.
I burst out onto open deck. Pirates backed off and their captain—the man I should know but did not—trailed in my wake.
“There’s nowhere to go,” he called. There was no taunting to his voice, just statement of fact. “You’re safe here, with me. No need to run. No more need to hide.”
I hit the ship’s rail and stared over it, an animal in a trap. Dark water. Juliette, burning. Bodies, writhing. I locked the back of one hand over my mouth to keep from screaming and stared at the waves below.
The pirate was right. There was no escape. I was no ghisting, to slip between worlds or off through the sea, immortal and deathless. I was just a woman in a world of sudden brutality, and I had only one way out.
There are fates worse than death.
“Who are you?” I called the question over my shoulder on a cold wind. “Who are you and how do you know me?”
“Lirr,” was his simple response. I sensed he’d stopped a few paces behind me, and there was no other sound save the wind and the roar of the flames. He added, almost an appeal, “Remember me.”
I waited for him to go on, to answer my second question. When he didn’t I looked back, again glimpsing the fire over his shoulder. His expression was nearly inscrutable, but there was a tightness around his shadowed eyes, something that might have been hurt—if everything else about him hadn’t emanated danger and death.
I began to sing, urgently and softly. Within a few words I caught the scent of snow, and the patter of my heart against my ribs turned into thunder.
“You will remember,” he said quietly. He noted the snow, now a thick white veil between us and reached out, fingers parted. “Come.”
The need to flee still burned through me, but my thoughts thinned with every passing second. My vision was full of his face—his eyes, his compulsive draw. I felt like I was back on the gallows again, slipping prematurely from my own skin.
My ears began to ring. In that void, someone else took over—a feral, reckless side of myself that knew no fear or logic.
I hurled myself over the side of the ship.
OTHER, THE—Being that second plane of existence, which is outside the experience of common men. The Other is the birthplace of an array of creatures, including ghistings, morgories, implings, dittama and huden. It remains inaccessible to all humans save the preternatural: mages and their ilk, who may even walk its ethereal paths. See also DARK WATER, SECOND PLANE, WINDWARD REALM.
—FROM THE WORDBOOK ALPHABETICA: A NEW
WORDBOOK OF THE AEADINES
SEVEN
The Mereish Coin
SAMUEL
Hart nosed down the coast of Aeadine, tense and quiet. Half a dozen hands equipped with spyglasses were positioned all about the ship, from bow to maintop, with Fisher at the stern.
I scanned the horizon, all grey storm clouds and docile waves. We had found Antiphony Cove empty several hours before and commenced cruising the shoreline, but there was no sign of Lirr. The only vessels in sight belonged to fisherfolk, small and single-masted. Many of them were hauling in torn and tangled nets, yesterday’s storm having caught them unawares. Gulls wheeled over us all and converged on shit-streaked cliffs.
Lirr was gone. I felt the truth like I felt the cold wind biting my cheeks, freezing my breath in my beard and the fine hairs inside my nose.
I lowered my spyglass and fiddled with the oval coin in my pocket, trying to disperse the sense. But though it dulled, it stayed.
“Mr. Rosser.” I looked up as Slader joined me at the rail, hands clasped behind his back in his usual stance. He was not dressed for the cold—I wore a large overcoat atop my usual coat, along with scarf and a cap, but he wore only his frock coat and waistcoat. His cheeks were flushed though, and I caught drink on his breath as he ordered, “Find him.”
“Sir?” I released the coin, tension wending up the back of my neck.
“You’re a Sooth,” Slader stated, dropping his chin to glare at me. We were of a height, he and I. “He’s a mage. You told me you could track creatures like him in the Other.”
“If I had met the man, yes,” I protested. We had had this discussion before. “But without having touched him, I cannot just… find him. Sir, we ought to set course for Tithe. He had an interest in Randalf and the Stormsinger, that much was clear—”
“I’ll decide our course, Mr. Rosser,” Slader cut me off, loudly enough to earn glances from several nearby hands. The wind eased at the same time, and the scent of rum wafted off the captain as he leaned forward, offering his next words to me alone. “You’ve only one use to me, boy. So, prove your worth, or get the hell off my ship.”
I locked my expression down before my frustration—and worry—could show. “Sir,” I grunted, folded my spyglass, and went below.
The stove in Fisher’s and my cabin was cold when I entered, but I did not stoke it. The dragonflies in our lantern pulsed gently in their sleep, giving me barely enough light to see, but I did not wake them. Cold and discomfort would serve me far better than light and heat.