Steel's Edge

SEVEN

NIGHT came far too quickly, Charlotte reflected, patting the muzzle of her horse. She stood under an oak. The wolf-dog sat by her feet and showed his teeth to anyone who came too close. In front of her, about forty people assembled in the clearing. The moon hid behind the ragged clouds, and what little illumination they had came from the tall torches thrust along the edge of the clearing.

About half of Jason’s people, the “slavers,” wore an assortment of leather and carried weapons. The other half, mostly women in filthy clothes, busily tied knives and cudgels under their skirts and shirts. A few had on the Broken’s jeans, others wore the Weird’s dresses. Here and there clothes were being strategically ripped. A young woman walked around the gathering with a bucket of blood and a paintbrush, and smeared the red liquid on random bodies.

Richard was somewhere out there, getting ready. George and Jack had concealed themselves at a good observation point, ready to play their role in the mission. She and Richard had dropped the Draytons off half a mile away, with Richard giving them strict directions to stay out of sight, to which both teens informed them that it wasn’t their first time.

“Beautiful,” Jason said next to her.

The dog growled low. She petted the big black head.

She hadn’t heard Jason walk up. He wore a monk’s cowl. Stripes of white paint crossed his nose and cheeks, while a horizontal black stripe darkened the skin around his eyes. He looked terrifying.

“Shouldn’t you be joining them?” He nodded at the slaves.

“I suppose I should.” She walked over and took her place between two “slave” women. The redhead with the bucket of blood stopped by her and casually painted some blood on her neck.

“Whose blood is it?” Charlotte asked.

The redhead shrugged. “No clue. Got it at the butcher shop.” She moved on.

At least it wasn’t human.

“You got a knife?” a slender, filthy girl asked her. There was something familiar about her . . . Miko.

“I don’t need one, thank you.”

“Take a knife.” Miko offered her a curved, wicked-looking blade. “It might save your life.”

“What about you?”

The girl grinned at her. “I have several.”

Charlotte took the blade, slid it into the waistband of her trousers, and pulled her tunic over it. She looked up and saw a ghost striding through the crowd toward her. Wide-shouldered, wearing a padded leather jacket, his hair in a ponytail, an eye patch covering his left eye, leading a black horse. His name was Crow, and she’d killed him. She had watched him die in that clearing with the rest of the slaver crew.

Her heart hammered. She took a step back.

Crow kept coming.

That was fine. She would kill him again. The dark tendrils slipped out of her.

“Charlotte?” the one-eyed slaver said in Richard’s voice.

She had always prided herself on excellent control of her magic. Between the moment her magic slithered out to kill him and the next instant, her brain made the connection, and she withdrew her power, aborting his murder in midstrike.

“Yes?” she asked, sounding as normal as she could.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes.” No. No, please take me away from here. “You look older,” she said, to say something. His face was covered with wrinkles.

“Liquid latex,” Richard said. “Processed tree sap mixed with water. If you slather it on your face, it will shrink as it dries, wrinkling the skin.”

He resembled the dead man so much, it was uncanny.

Richard leaned toward her. “Once we get to the island, things will be chaotic. It’s essential that we aren’t separated. We must find the bookkeeper. He’s our only lead to the top of the slaver ring.”

A shrill whistle made them turn. Jason had mounted a horse.

“Wretches, scum, and villains,” he called out. “Lend me your ears!”

Light laughter rippled through the crowd.

“Every single one of you is owed a debt by the slavers. Tonight we collect. We’ll board their ship. We’ll sack the Market. We’ll be legends.” He paused and smiled. “We’ll be rich.”

An enthusiastic riot of catcalls and guttural grunts answered him.

He tilted his head. “But we don’t do this just to get rich.”

“We don’t?” someone asked with pretended shock.

More laughter followed.

“No, we don’t. Look around you.” Jason spread his arms. “Go ahead, look.”

Heads turned as people looked at the woods and the night sky.

“Tonight, we’re the masters of all we see. Tonight, we will triumph and grind those bastards under our boots. We’ll take their money and their lives.” His voice gained a savage intensity. “We’ll listen as they scream and beg us for mercy. We’ll smell the gore as we cut them open and bathe our hands in their blood. We’ll gouge the light out of their eyes. Tonight, we’ll truly live!”

Silence claimed the clearing.

“Hell, yeah!” Richard barked in a deep voice.

“Yeah!” another male snarl echoed.

The crowd erupted in shouts, shaking their fists.

“He gets carried away sometimes,” Richard told her under his breath.

“You don’t say.” More violence. More murder. More joy as her magic devoured lives. Charlotte swallowed. She vividly remembered the seductive rush of pleasure she had derived from killing the slavers, and experiencing it again terrified her to the very core. Her teeth chattered. She clenched them, and her knees began to shake.

“We move!” Jason roared.

Around her, people picked up their gear. She wanted to turn around and run the other way.

“May I?” Richard asked, holding a pair of cuffs.

She raised her hands. Carefully, Richard placed the pair of handcuffs on her wrists. “Twist like this, and they’ll open.”

The cuffs felt so heavy on her wrists. Charlotte forced herself to nod.

His fingers brushed her hands, the rough sword master’s calluses they bore scraping her skin. His hands were warm. She looked up at him, asking for reassurance.

He met her gaze. “I won’t let anything happen to you, my lady.”

He said “my lady” as if it was a term of endearment. There was such quiet conviction in his voice that, for a moment, the clearing and everyone around them faded away. It was just the two of them, and he was touching her hands and looking at her in that particular way, concerned, almost tender. Such a strange emotion in the eyes of a man who was a killer. Her worry melted into the air. If only she could walk right next to him, with him holding her, nothing could hurt her.

“Form two lines,” Jason called out. “Slaves in the middle, slavers on the sides.”

Reality rushed at her in a terrifying avalanche. What she was doing, standing with him like this, was wildly inappropriate. She didn’t care.

“Stay safe,” she said.

“You, too.”

Richard released her and nodded to the dog. “Come.”

The beast hesitated.

“Come,” Richard ordered. The big beast rose off his haunches and trotted over to Richard. Richard locked a long chain on the dog’s collar, mounted his horse, and took position next to Jason. The women formed two lines behind her and Miko, and they started down the road, the “slavers” on horses around them.

They trudged down the trail. The oaks ended, and the marsh began, a perfectly uniform field of low grasses. The trail veered left and right, cut in the grass. The horses clopped through the slushy, oversaturated soil, their hoofs splattering her clothes and face with mud.

The anxiety returned full force. Charlotte knew they’d only been walking for a few minutes, but this trek through the vast field of mud seemed endless. It felt like she was marching through some extended nightmare to her death. The wind rose up, flinging the salty smell of the ocean into her face.

She thought of Tulip’s ashen eyes, and Éléonore’s charred body, and George’s haunting voice. “Please, Mémère . . .”

She would stop it. No matter how much it cost her.

An eternity later, the marsh gave way to sandy dunes rough with clumps of sea-oat grass and blanketed with patches of short, creeping grass with wide leaves. Thin spires, like the stamens of a water lily, rose between the leaves, glowing with green, and as the breeze touched them, they swayed, sending dots of brilliant emerald into the night.

“Don’t step on those,” Miko said next to her. “That’s fisherman’s trap grass. It will burn your legs.”

They crossed the dunes and finally stepped onto the beach. In front of her, the ocean stretched, dark and menacing. To the left, the coast curved, forming a small peninsula, cutting off her view with trees. To the right, the distant turquoise lights of Kelena shimmered, like a mirage above the water.

“Three torches,” Richard said. “One in front, two in the back, about twenty feet apart.”

A “slaver” on her right slid off his horse, took three torches out of his saddlebag, ran forward, thrust the first torch into the sand, and lit it.

“It’s a dark night,” Jason said.

“Dark works for us,” Richard said.

The third torch flared into life. They waited.

The dog strayed back, the chain stretching, and licked her hand.

The dark silhouette of a brigantine slid from behind the peninsula.

GEORGE lay on his stomach atop a sand dune. A small black box rested on the sand in front of him. Below, the false slavers and their “captives” waited on the beach. In the distance, the brigantine dropped anchor. It was a Weird-style ship, with six segmented masts that rose in a semicircle from the deck, like the wings of a water bird about to take flight. The masts bore panes of gray-green sails. In the open sea, the sails melted against the sky, making the ship harder to see.

Mémère was dead. It had been six months since he’d last seen her. She had come up to visit for a week at Midwinter. He remembered her face as if he’d seen her yesterday. He remembered her smile. The scent of lavender that always floated around her. He knew that scent so well, that years later catching a whiff of it calmed him down.

When he was younger, Mémère was a constant presence in his life. He barely remembered his mother. She was a distant smudge in his memory. He recalled his father better, a large, funny man. When he was eight, he was invited to a friend’s house in the Broken. He was given a choice of movies to watch, and as he flipped through the cases, he saw a man in a leather jacket and a wide-brimmed hat, holding a whip. The title read Raiders of the Lost Ark. He’d read the description and realized that this strange man, Indiana Jones, did the same thing his father did. He hunted treasure.

He’d watched the movie twice in a row, which was probably why he was never invited back. But as he’d grown older, maturity had given him a new perspective. His father wasn’t Indiana Jones, no matter how much he wanted it to be true. His father had abandoned them when they needed him most, forcing Rose to take on all the responsibility of caring for them. There were days she’d come home so tired she could hardly move—once she even fell asleep in the kitchen while peeling potatoes.

But Mémère was always there. Her house served as their safe haven. No matter what trouble he would get into or how much Rose was mad at him, Mémère was always there with hugs, cookies, and old books. She was there the first time his magic showed itself. He was three years old. He’d been playing in the yard when he saw a squirrel. She had a bushy tail and fluffy red fur, and she didn’t seem afraid of him. She just sat on the trunk. He wanted to pet her, so he started moving closer and closer, one tiny step at a time. He was almost there; and then she fell off the trunk and died.

He’d picked up the fluffy body. He didn’t really understand death. He just knew that she wasn’t moving. He wanted her to move, but she wouldn’t. She just hung in his hands, limp, like an old toy. He remembered a feeling of stark terror. For a second he’d thought he would die too, just like the squirrel, then something pulled on him, hurting, and the squirrel turned and looked at him.

He’d dropped her and ran, across the yard and up the porch. He must’ve screamed because his grandmother had run out onto the porch and scooped him up. He’d buried his face in her shoulder, and she hugged him. A ghost of her voice fluttered from his memory: “It will be all right. It’s a gift, Georgie. Nothing to be afraid of. It’s a gift . . .”

George locked his teeth. Six months ago, he’d asked her again to move to the Weird. They had been sitting on the balcony drinking tea. She was leaving to return to the Edge later that day, and a feeling of dread had smothered him, heavy, like a wet blanket. In his mind, she looked exactly the same as she had been when he was little, but now every time she visited, he noticed incremental, alarming changes. Her hair was thinning. Her wrinkles cut deeper into her face. She seemed smaller somehow. It made him ill with worry.

“Please stay,” he asked.

“No, dear. I live in the Edge. That’s where I belong. This is very nice, but it’s not for me.”

He’d helped her get into the phaeton that morning. She’d kissed him good-bye.

He should’ve done more. He should’ve insisted. He should’ve compelled her to stay. If he really had begged, she would have. How could he have been so careless and stupid? Now she was dead. He didn’t even know how she died, if she had burned alive in that damn house . . . he closed his eyes tightly, stopping the tears from welling up.

He would have to tell Rose.

The brigantine was lowering two boats. The people on the beach waited patiently.

“We should be down there,” Jack said next to him.

But they weren’t. Of the two Mar brothers, Kaldar was the more malleable. His ethics had flexible boundaries, and he bent, if the wind was strong enough. But George had taken sword-fighting lessons from Richard over the past year. Richard was like a granite crag in a storm, immovable and resolute. The look in his eyes had told George he wouldn’t be getting his way. Not this time.

His Mirror assignment was over. George had failed. Jason Parris had identified him as an Adrianglian agent, and he’d already sent the dispatch to the Home Office. Erwin wouldn’t be pleased, but right now his handler’s disappointment was the least of George’s worries. He would watch Richard and Charlotte get on the ship; and then he and Jack would be forced to go home like good little children. Inside, he was screaming.

The boats pulled away from the vessel, speeding across the water, driven by magic-fueled motors. The magic residue slid off the propellers, turning their wake into a glowing trail of yellow-and-emerald radiance.

Small tongues of green lightning flared at the brigantine’s aft. They had a cloaking device, and they were priming it. Of course. The South Fleet of Adrianglia possessed three corsair-class vessels, five hunters, and an aerial-support dreadnought. Each carried pulverizer cannons as well as a host of other deadly toys. A fast and light civilian brigantine like this one couldn’t take more than one or two shots. Its best strategy lay in speed and in not being detected in the first place, which is where the cloaking device would come in handy.

A cloaking device was also hellishly expensive. The slave trade must’ve served them well. He ground his teeth again.

Jack bared his teeth, his voice a vicious whisper. “Stop grinding your teeth.”

“Shut up,” George whispered back.

“It bugs me.”

“Cover your ears, then.”

The crooked ribbons of magic lightning built. George opened the box he’d brought. Inside was a single glass bubble. He twisted it open, plucked out a glass lens edged with tiny metal cilia, and slid it into his eye. The lens’s delicate metal tendrils moved, searching, and locked onto his nerves. The pain shot straight into his brain, as if someone had hammered a wooden spike through his eye socket. The Mirror’s gadgets could do incredible things, but they always came with a price. He shook his head and looked up. The brigantine slid into clear, sharp focus, as though he were standing right next to it. He could see the carved sides and the slender lines of the ship’s rigging. If this brigantine followed the Adrianglian Maritime Code, the name would be near the bow.

Next to him, Jack growled. “Are we just going to lay here like idiots?”

“Yes, we are.”

Lightning dashed from the stern toward the bow, dancing over the vessel’s sides, illuminating the ship. That was the moment he was waiting for. He trailed the lightning with his gaze.

“This is wrong,” Jack said.

“We stay put.”

The green sparks illuminated the name, written in thick black letters on the bow, and faded into darkness. George sucked in his breath.

No. No, he must have read it wrong.

He waited for another flash.

“George, breathe,” Jack growled into his ear.

The lightning flashed, illuminating the letters once more. It still said the same thing. George went cold. There could be only two possibilities for this ship to be here now, and he couldn’t deal with either.

Again. He had to see it again.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Jack hissed.

The magic sparked off the boards, and he read the name again, for the third time, each letter like the stab of a sword into his gut.

George yanked the lens out of his eye. “We have to get down there.”

“You said we had to stay put.”

“And now I’m saying we have to get down there.”

He slithered backward off the dune and took off running toward the beach.

Jack caught up with him. They went to ground again just behind the “slaves.”

“Why?” Jack whispered, barely audible.

George paused for a second, weighing Jack’s right to know against his explosive temper. If Jack blew up, they would never get on that ship.

He deserved to know. Better do it now.

“Because that ship’s name is Intrepid Drayton.”

Jack recoiled. For a moment he thought it over, and then the right gears caught in his mind. He made the connection between their last name and the name of the ship. His eyes sparked with fire. “Did they kill Dad?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is Dad selling slaves?”

“I don’t know.”

“He left us to rot in the Edge so he could sell slaves?” A snarl roiled through Jack’s voice.

George grabbed his shoulder. “Hold it in. Not until we’re on board and know exactly what’s going on.”

Jack ducked his head, hiding the changeling glow of his eyes, and sucked in the air through his nose.

They would have only one shot at this. The boats had to be close enough for Richard to be unable to do anything about their presence but far enough away that the sailors wouldn’t see any commotion.

George took a deep breath.

The leading boat rolled over the surf, its crew distracted.

Now.

George lunged forward, and Jack followed. They dashed into the line of slaves and thrust themselves behind Charlotte.

“What the devil are you doing?” Richard growled under his breath.

He didn’t even turn. The man must have eyes in the back of his head.

“Changing the plan.” George ripped off a piece of his shirt and twisted it around Jack’s hands into a makeshift tie.

“Go back,” Charlotte hissed.

Richard dismounted and walked toward George, pulling a pair of handcuffs off his belt. They stood face-to-face, Richard glaring down from the height of an extra four inches. It was a furious glare suffused with so much menace, it could end a riot. George stared straight into it. Today, he had the will to match it.

“You gave me your word,” Richard ground out.

George took a step forward, his voice barely above a whisper, meant for Richard alone. “The vessel’s name is Intrepid Drayton. Before Earl Camarine adopted me, my last name was Drayton. There is a painting of that ship in my dead grandmother’s house.”

He took the cuffs out of Richard’s hands and slipped them onto his own wrists with a click. “It’s my father’s ship. Either the slavers killed my father and took his vessel, or he’s working for them, and he’s responsible for his own mother’s death. I need to know which it is. If you stand in my way, I will move you, Richard.”

FOR a moment Richard stood there, glowering, then he checked the cuffs on George’s wrists. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

He turned around and strode to the front, next to Jason.

George exhaled. To Richard, family was everything. He understood blood debts and the right to exact justice for one’s family, but it had been a gamble.

His father couldn’t work for the slavers. Even he couldn’t have sunk that low. Even Rose, who bordered on hating the man, always said that he was never mean or violent. Opportunistic, unwise, and selfish, yes. Could he be selfish enough to work for the slavers? George was thinking in circles. He had to get a grip.

The boats landed, their flat bottoms scraping the sand with a soft sibilance. An older man stepped out first, followed by four other sailors. Tall and broad-shouldered, he walked like a sailor, lurching slightly with each step, planting his feet firmly on the ground.

George peered at him, noting every detail. Gray eyes, dishwater-blond hair, cut short, older face, once probably handsome, but puffy from lack of sleep and likely too much alcohol, graying stubble on the cheeks . . . Was it him? He strained, trying to remember, but in his memory his father’s face was a vague blur. He used to remember. He used to know what his dad looked like, but the years had passed, and now the memories were lost.

“Crow,” the man said. “Where’s Voshak?”

“Hunter got him,” Richard answered, his voice a ragged growl. “Shot him on the edge of Veresk as we were riding out.”

“And Ceyren?”

“Got him, too. Arrow to the eye. A fucked-up thing to see.”

The man sighed. “That’s what he usually does. Somebody should take care of that fucker. He’s cutting into our profits.”

“Someone will take him down,” Richard-Crow hacked and spat in the sand. “Ain’t gonna be me, I tell you that.”

“I hear you.” The man looked past Richard at the slaves. “You did well for yourself.”

“Did all right,” Richard-Crow agreed.

Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe the slavers had killed him and someone else captained the ship. It would be far better if their father was dead than profiting from the murder of his own mother. Say your name, George willed silently.

“I take it you’ll be coming on board instead of Voshak,” the man said.

“Me and everyone you see here,” Richard-Crow growled.

The man raised his eyebrows.

Richard stepped forward, leaning in as if ready to punch. “I’ve been on a crew for four years. First, they gave the crew to Bes. Then, when his old lady killed him, they gave it to Carter. After Carter got his dumb ass shot, I went to them and told them to give me a crew. They said I ain’t got leadership potential. They gave it to Voshak instead. Well, their damn leadership potential is rotting in the woods. This is my crew, and I’m taking my wolves in to let them see that.”

The sailor raised his hand. “Okay, okay. I got it, spitting wonder. I don’t get involved in politics. I just ferry the merchandise. You want a ride to the island, you got it. Load them up.”

“Move them,” Richard snarled.

A whip snapped above George’s head. The slavers started forward, toward the boats. He was being herded like human cattle.

George moved, following Charlotte. He was hot and cold at the same time, every cell of his body keyed up, as if the core of his body were boiling. Sweat drenched his hairline.

The sailor’s gaze snagged on Charlotte. “Nice. I was always a sucker for a blonde with a good rack.”

George shut his eyes for the tiniest moment, trying to recall what little memories remained from his childhood. Was Mother blond? He strained, searching through the vague recollections . . . His eyes snapped open. She was blond. He was sure of it.

It didn’t mean anything. Many men liked blond women.

The sailor was looking directly at him. “Good-looking boys. Aren’t they too old for the Market? They like their kids younger.”

George’s stomach churned with acid. Next to him, Jack clenched his fists. A drop of blood slid between his fingers onto the pale scrap of fabric tied around his hands.

Hold it in, George prayed.

“Special order,” Richard said.

The sailor grimaced. “Never understood that myself.”

“As long as they pay me.” Richard spat again.

George climbed into the boat, Jack at his heels, and stared at the sailor on the beach. Say your damn name.

The sailor grinned. “Hello, my lords and ladies. My name is John Drayton. I’ll be your captain this evening.”

A hot, invisible knife stabbed George straight in the pit of his stomach. The world gained a red tint. Logic told him it was the capillaries in his eyes expanding in reaction to his increased blood flow, but that logic spoke from some distant place in his brain, and he shut it off. Grandmother was dead, and the scumbag who was her son and his father made his money from playing captain to her murderers. John Drayton trafficked in slaves. He had abandoned his children, so he could get rich off of other people’s misery. He might as well have killed his own mother with his own hands. He was responsible.

“Welcome aboard Intrepid Drayton for your island cruise. You’ll notice bluefin sharks following our ship. If you make any trouble, we’ll tie a line around your neck and toss you overboard. The bluefins like a little chase before their dinner. You behave, and they’ll go hungry. Personally, I hope you don’t—I enjoy a little spectacle. Brightens up a boring voyage.”

He had to kill his father, to bring him to justice. It was the only right thing to do.

A soothing current of magic prickled his skin. His heartbeat slowed.

“Sit by me, George,” Charlotte called, her voice like a rush of cold water onto his scalding anger. “Please.”

He forced himself to turn around. She sat in the bottom of the barge, her hand resting on Jack’s forearm. His brother’s head was down, the mass of brown hair hanging over his face. A hoarse, strained sound, a muted, controlled snarl, emanated from Jack with every breath. His brother was teetering on the verge of losing his human form.

They still had a job to do. They had to get to the island. His vengeance would have to wait. His legs felt wooden. He couldn’t make himself move.

A hard wooden baton smashed in the back of his knees. George crashed down.

“Sit the fuck down,” one of Jason’s slavers said.

“I see we have the first candidate for the shark feeding,” his father called. “One more, boy, and I’ll personally shove you off my deck.”

George forced himself to sit next to Charlotte. She was watching the rest of the slaves board, her face calm.

“There will be a time later,” she said, her quiet voice laced with menace. “We won’t have to wait long.”