“Skar.”
Stop.
The image shuddered, held, the figures frozen as they set the trunk down on the deck in front of her nephews.
Maris strode forward, putting herself in the center of the scene, her back to the image of Valick and Katros so she could better see the thieves.
“Enis.”
The scene rolled forward, just as it had. She turned in a circle as she watched it all play out, saw Valick’s death and the thieves’ attack, the first broken by the wards, the second gone with Katros over the side, saw the parcel break against the deck, only to be salvaged by the third.
And as he stumbled, dazed and bleeding toward the ship’s edge, she saw it, through the tear in his shirt—a tattoo, or perhaps a brand, across his ribs. And though she couldn’t see the entire image, she knew what she was looking for, and there it was: a hand.
Then the thief was gone, over the side, and Maris was there once more, kneeling over Valick as the past caught up to the present, and the glass splintered in her hand, and turned to sand, and blew away.
Maris sighed, and felt every one of her many, many years, and then she turned to Katros.
“Search the bodies,” she said. “And throw them over.”
“And then?” asked Valick.
Maris glanced at the horizon. The other ship was gone. Her aching fingers cracked as they closed into a fist. No one stole from the Ferase Stras.
“Clean yourself up,” she told him. “I have a favor to call in.”
Part Two
THE CAPTAIN AND THE GHOST
I
Delilah Bard leaned against the rail of the Grey Barron, watching the prow split the sea.
The wind was up, propelling the ship with enough force to send up a spray of mist that shimmered where it caught the light.
The sails snapped in the breeze, and Lila tipped her head back, brown eyes squinting at the sky. A stranger would never know that one of those eyes was real and one was fake. Would never know that the one she’d lost hadn’t been brown at all, but black as pitch, carved out by a two-bit doctor back in London, England—the only London she’d known of, then—when she was just a child. As if it had been a poisoned thing, a spreading rot, and not a sign of strength, a marker of extraordinary power, once-in-a-generation magic.
If only she’d been born in this world, the one that worshipped magic, instead of the one that had forgotten it. But she was here now.
She held out her hand, calling the water to her.
“Tyger, tyger,” she murmured, even though she no longer needed words to focus her power. She simply curled her fingers, and the water answered, drew itself around her wrist and hardened there into an icy bangle. Easy, effortless. As natural as breathing.
Lila smiled.
Over the years, she had been many things.
A con artist. A captain. A traveler. A mage.
Once upon a time—and a world away—she’d been nothing but an orphan, a pickpocket, a thief with dreams of stealing a ship and sailing away. Dreams of becoming a pirate, laying claim to foreign seas. Dreams of fine knives and good coins, and more than anything, of freedom.
It had been hard-won, bought and paid for in years and battle and blood—not always her own—but at last, she had it all.
She flicked her fingers, and the icy bangle shattered with enough force that a few bits of ice drove into the rail. She plucked them out, and dropped them over the side. In her head, she heard Alucard muttering about his ship. But of course, it wasn’t his ship, not anymore.
She had rechristened it, much to the old captain’s displeasure, but the Night Spire had had its time at sea; now it was the Grey Barron’s turn.
The Barron had spent its first few years as an independent vessel, under no flag but its own. It had been pleasant enough, to sail for the sake of sailing, to discover new ports, new markets, new seas. But Lila had spent the first nineteen years of her life with one goal, and in its wake, she found herself coveting a new purpose. She was almost relieved when the rumors began to spread, first of more trouble with the empire’s reluctant allies, Faro and Vesk, and then, worse still, of trouble at home. So Alucard had asked her to put the ship to use. To go where no royal vessel could, and do what no royal vessel would.
To spy. To sack. To sabotage. To plunder, and sink, and fight, and steal.
To plunge in like a knife, and disappear again before anyone knew they had been cut, let alone that they were bleeding out.
Now and then, when it suited, the Grey Barron would still don the Spire’s black sails, become the shadow on the sea again, but today, its sails were white, its hull a nondescript grey. With luck, they would blend right in with all the other smugglers and thieves traveling down the Blood Coast.