Kingdoms of the Cursed, page 24
“You know the man—the thing, really—that killed you, made you a nov. He survived. This was his ship before I acquired it.”
“He’s not the only one who killed me,” Veronica said. “Or tried to.”
Dusk nodded. “I don’t blame you for being angry with me.”
“That’s awfully sweet,” Veronica said.
“We were allies,” Dusk said. “Companions. Sisters in arms. The four of us—you, Errol, Aster, me—we worked well together. I betrayed you. I don’t ask forgiveness for that, but I will admit that I regret it. I understand one day you will want satisfaction from me. I do not flinch from that either. But right now I need you. Aster needs you. And Errol . . .”
“Holy crap,” Veronica said. “Are you crying?”
“I have some bad news about Errol,” she said.
“You mean the fight with the big bad dragon?”
Her eyes widened. “You know of it?”
“Yes. I was there. You can stop the crocodile tears. Errol is fine. I saw to that.”
Veronica wasn’t sure she fully understood the look that went across Dusk’s face, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“Is this true? He lives?”
“As far as I know. I took him back to the Pale, so you can’t get him into any more trouble.”
“You’re aware, then, of our travails?”
“The glass pyramid and all that? I think I’m up to speed.”
“Yet you are here, without him.” Her eyes narrowed. “You let Vilken’s divlings take you captive, didn’t you? You arranged it.”
“That’s a gold star for you,” Veronica said. “Or another one, I guess. You know, ’cause you have one on your head. If you think I have a score to settle with you, you can imagine what I have planned for him.”
“Then we do have common cause,” Dusk said. “Aster is his captive. Together we liberated this ship, but she was taken. I intend to rescue her. I intend to slay the chancellor and put whatever plans he has to wreck. Will you delay your revenge on me long enough to help me with those things? Help me set things right?”
“And if I say yes, you’ll trust me? Trust the word of a dirty nov?”
Dusk bowed her head. “If you give me your word, I will take it.”
“Fine,” Veronica said. “I won’t do anything nasty to you until Aster is free and the chancellor is dead. But you have to make me the same promise.”
“And you would trust me? After what I did?”
“Sure,” she said. “After that, you’ve got no place to go but up, right?”
Dusk grinned wryly. “Well said.”
“Shall we spit-shake on it?” Veronica asked.
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” Dusk said.
Veronica showed her. Dusk looked appropriately disgusted.
“Now what?” Veronica said.
“His demesne lies through the Cloud Straits,” she said. “Any ship approaching his stronghold must pass through them. That has benefited me up until now—I’ve been able to capture his ships as they approach. This is the fourth.”
“You’ve got a regular fleet.”
“Aster’s father supplies Vilken with ships and sailors. He has at least fifty more. I fear if we sail through the straits, he will spring a trap on us.”
“What is the plan?”
“My hope was that word of my resistance would spread, and that my brothers and sisters would join me in the fight. I have begun to despair of that. But you bring me new hope.”
“How is that?”
Dusk didn’t answer right away. Instead she withdrew a key from her pocket, bent down and released Veronica from her shackles.
“Come above with me, if you please,” she said.
The crew stared at her as she came up into the light. They were chiefly girls, but it looked to her like at least a quarter of them were male.
The ship was high in the air and nearby, Veronica saw the other three ships Dusk had spoken of. Clouds surrounded them, and a glance over the rail showed only clouds below, fluffy and white.
Up ahead, however, were clouds that were neither fluffy nor white. There were almost black, except when lit from within by wriggling blue-white snakes of lightning, when they incandesced in strange shades of red.
“The Cloud Straits lie there,” Dusk said. “As you can see, they are aptly named—they must be approached from the air. The sea is far too dangerous—a maze of reefs and seamounts which would be perilous enough, but there are also sea serpents of particularly ill-temper that dwell in those waters. But you, with your gifts—you might be able to find us a way through.”
“Come around from the back, huh?” Veronica said. “Well, I can try. When do we start?”
“We have a bit of mending to do, after this last fight, and we must set our captives ashore someplace. Then we should proceed with all speed.”
“We probably should proceed with all speed right now,” Veronica said.
Dusk frowned, and followed her gaze, but the lookout in the crow’s nest was already shouting. In the distance, the storm clouds flared with lightning, outlining a number of shadows in the shapes of ships—and at least two with big bat-wings.
“I don’t think he’s waiting for you to sail into a trap,” Veronica said. “I think you already have.”
With at least eight ships and two dragons encircling them, there was no question they should stay for the fight. Dusk wasted no time in ordering the retreat. In moments their ships were diving down through the clouds in a fashion Veronica thought of as very un-ship-like. At times they dropped so quickly her belly went funny.
She remembered lying on her back as a little girl, watching jet planes etch white trails though the sky, looking forward to the day that she was grown and could ride in one herself. She wondered if this was anything like being on a plane.
They broke through a final layer of cloud and the sea appeared, spackled with gold from the morning sun.
And more ships waiting for them. Dusk swore as the guns on the nearest thundered from only a few hundred feet away. She could actually see the balls coming, as if in slow motion, but it took far less than an eyeblink for them to arrive. The impact quaked through the wood of the ship and into her bones.
They returned fire even as the ship groaned into a sharp turn; Veronica smelled burning wood.
The whole left side of the sky flared yellow-white. Veronica snapped her eyes shut, but the light had already burned red streaks and blobs into her retinas.
When she opened them again she saw the dark coils and snaky body soaring back up into the clouds. One of Dusk’s ships was burning. The sails were like torches, and she saw little figures, like insects with yellow wings fluttering downward toward the sea, trying in vain to fly.
The ship careened through another turn, dipping nearer the swells below. Above, the dragon burst back through the clouds.
“Take us lower,” Veronica said. “Take us to the water.”
“We’ll be caught if we go that low,” Dusk said. “We won’t be able to maneuver.”
The dragon belched once more on the burning ship, and this time the timbers caught.
“Looks like Raggedy Man isn’t afraid to lose a few girls this time,” Veronica said. “That’s going to be us in about three minutes. Take us to the water.”
Dusk barked a few orders at the girl at the helm, then at those working the sails. Booms swung; sheets snapped in the wind; the nose of the ship swung downward, so Veronica had to grab onto the rail. She looked up and saw the great beast making another turn, and more ships were coming through the clouds, the flare of their guns appearing as distant sparks.
The whole ship shuddered as it slammed into the water.
She closed her eyes again; the red stain of the dragon’s fire remained, but now she sensed the life around her, the salt and the spray, the sleeping might of the deeps.
She leapt overboard, and the sea rose up to welcome her.
All her bones shattered; her skin scalded, blistered and split as the water boiled furiously around her. Agony was everything, and all her purpose was briefly forgotten. But as swiftly as the pain arrived it faded, replaced by a giddy elation. She surged upward, rising up in her cloak of spume. The dragon was there, almost too high.
Almost, but not quite.
The impact shocked through her, but ordinary human feeling was distant now. She felt the light of a thousand little lives wink out—slippery, swift, silvery lives—but that was her skin, not her core, her organs, her being. That was far too deep for a dragon to harm.
She wrapped the dragon up and pulled him beneath the waves. His strength was immense and ancient; a billow of flame erupted, burning even in the depths, but she held him tightly, as she had held all of those men who came willingly her to grasp, sinking toward the bottom, fathoms distant. Still he fought, the fire in him shining through like nothing she had ever seen. She felt her own strength ebbing, a balance point approaching as they both weakened. She sensed the hammer and anvil of his heart, the furnace began to falter, but by then she was starting to come apart, her mind breaking into flitting, flashing fragments seeking safety in the dark waters, trying to school away from her in to the shallows, the labyrinth of the nearby reefs.
Then something took hold of her and pulled, and she no longer had the strength to struggle.
Light and shadow poured through her eyes, but it meant no more than the babble of voices around her, not until she began to remember, until her bones set back the way they had been and blood replaced the seawater.
She realized someone was holding her, someone familiar.
“Errol?” She murmured. How was it possible?.
“Never leave me again,” he said. “Never.”
“I won’t,” she agreed, although she knew she was lying. But she was dizzy, open, her defenses down. She’d resigned herself to never seeing him again, never feeling his embrace, but here he was. She pulled herself up on the wet deck, just in time to see a giant whose head was almost literally in the clouds snatch a ship from the air and hurl it down, as if he was a child and the sea a bathtub.
She had seen a giant before. It had coarse, simple features without anything resembling human expression. And yet she knew who it was.
“Billy,” she said.
“Yep,” he replied.
Billy had knocked a lot of the ships down before shrinking to human size again, but not all of them, so they fled.
Veronica led Dusk’s three remaining ships through a maze of reefs, beneath thunderheads so low their tallest masts were nearly in them. After a few hours, she found them harbor at a small island where they weighed anchor.
As far as they could tell, none of Vilken’s surviving ships had followed them. Flying was impossible in or beneath the oppressive, lightning-filled clouds, and the shallow seas were deadly to anyone who did not know or could not magically navigate them as his girlfriend could.
Billy was human sized again, and clothes had been found for him. Veronica had also dressed; whatever she had been doing in the water had apparently been rough on her garments. Now she wore grey sailor pants that came right below her knees and a pale blue shirt way too big for her, belted at the waist. Dusk had greeted Errol with a brief clasping of arms, and been busy since, but now that things were a little calmer, his unease grew.
He began trying to catch up with what was going on.
It wasn’t easy, not with both of them there. Dusk looked more tired and worn than he had ever seen her. Veronica was—different. When Billy had first pulled her from the water, she hadn’t been human, exactly, although even now his mind had difficulty trying to picture accurately what she had been. Even now, her skin had a blue-green tint to it, although that was fading. She clung to him; physically she was very near. But he felt a distance like he hadn’t since they had first met. Some part of her felt very far away—a little like Billy, who was still settling back into his smaller shape.
Eventually he would ask her what she had done, what she had become, or whatever. But in private.
The good news, he guessed, was that when he and Billy showed up, the two women hadn’t been trying to kill each other—but that was possibly because they had been too busy fighting flying ships and dragons.
He wondered how much chance they’d had for conversation, and what they might have shared.
He listened as Dusk laid it out. Aster’s capture, her own escape, her plan to rescue Aster. But something about her determination didn’t sit right.
“Why?” he asked. “I mean, I’m all for rescuing Aster. But why do you care so much?”
Dusk sighed and nodded. “Because she is necessary. Without her we cannot end the curse.”
“Why didn’t you go after her, then?” he asked. “Why kidnap me?”
“I didn’t dare,” Dusk replied. “If I had come against her—or Veronica—in the Reign of the Departed—either would have easily defeated me. I did not go into this blindly, Errol—I had information. You, also, are key and I think you know that by now. All of you are. I knew that if I brought you here, they would follow.”
“And here we are,” Veronica said.
“Aster,” Billy said.
“Yeah,” Errol said, putting his hand on the giant’s shoulder. “We got this far. We’ll find her.”
Dusk nodded out at the sea. “If there’s a way, it’s out there. Veronica?”
She’d just finished speaking when something fluttered down from the sky and landed on the bowsprit.
Errol saw that it was a swan.
“I think we’re in,” Veronica said. “I may have to chat with a sea serpent or two, but yes.”
They spent a day making repairs. Veronica, worn out, slept. Dusk was apparently avoiding him, so he sloshed ashore to answer a question he’d been dreading finding the answer to.
He found a pool of clear, fresh water fed by a stream coming down from the mountains, and there he tried to strip off his armor so he could bath.
As he feared, it wouldn’t come off. It was fastened to his skin as if glued there.
He was alone, so he let his anger out, screaming at the sky, slamming himself into trees, punching the stone cliffside. Why was this the choice? To either be normal and helpless or strong and a freak? Was he never going to be free of what he had done, of trying to take his own life? Was this his punishment, for now until the end of time, to live inside a suit of armor?
But he’d known what he was doing, that there was probably no going back. If it meant his friends didn’t have to take pity on him, exclude him for fear he would get hurt, it was worth it, at least for now. And maybe, someday, after this was all over, Aster or someone could figure out a way to get him out of the wood and metal that were again so much a part of him.
Meanwhile, he would suck it up.
So he bathed with the armor on, went back to the ship, and waited for it to get underway. If he was stuck in the armor, he was ready to use it.
He was ready to fight.
TWO
HIDDEN
There had been times when Delia wished she was invisible. She had majored in psychology long enough to recognize that impulse in herself, along with the contradictory urge to be noticed and admired. She had once called it the “Look at me! Don’t look at me!” syndrome.
After a few days of the actual thing, though, she was tired of invisibility. Part of that was the constant fear of being discovered. She wasn’t silent, after all, and just as Copper had seemed to see her from the corner of her eye, several of the guards had somehow noticed her briefly. There was also the matter of getting food without being discovered, taking care of the business that eating and drinking inevitably led to—worst of all, finding someplace to sleep where no one could possibly trip over her. If you had a rat in your house, it was usually evident even if you never saw that rat itself—and she was much bigger than a rat.
Fortunately, the castle was also much bigger than an ordinary house. And had rats.
It took her a few days to search most of the building, narrowing her hunt down to a few rooms that were locked. These she had to stake out, waiting for someone to come and unlock them before she could see what was inside. In so doing, she discovered a small treasury, an apparently special wine cellar, and an empty room where one of the handful of female servants met to make out with one of the more human-looking guards.
Eventually, she found Aster, in a room near the top of the castle. Almost no one went beyond the fourth or fifth floor due to the climb, except for the soldiers who manned the watch from up there. But one day Vilken passed her on the sixth floor, and she followed him. He unlocked a door and entered the room where he was keeping Aster.
It wasn’t large; it didn’t have to be. She lay asleep in a small bed, and didn’t stir when he came in. Delia watched with growing disgust as he fondled her unconscious body and murmured to her all of the things he planned to do to her once Kostye’s spell was completely removed. He opened her mouth and poured a yellow liquid in. He made sure she swallowed it all, wiped her lips clean with a small rag, and kissed them. Not a little peck or a nip, but a long, lingering kiss that ended with what might have been a playful little bite if it weren’t part of a pervert’s assault on a drugged, sleeping girl. He kissed her neck, too, and her breast, before rising with what was clearly great reluctance.
She watched all of this from the threshold, trying not to vomit. The room was so small she feared he would notice her if she went in.
Finally, he left, closing the door behind him. She followed him down at a discreet distance, hoping to see where he put the keys, but he vanished into his room with them, locking his door behind him.
She kept careful watch after that, and the next time he went up, she did slip into the room, practically holding her breath the whole time he was there. When he left, he locked her in, as she knew he would, and she spent the next several hours trying to wake Aster—but whatever it was he gave her, it kept her asleep, and her breathing so shallow that at times Delia feared she was dead.
She woke after a brief nap, feeling something was wrong, or different, and turning, found herself nearly face-to-face with a swan perched in the narrow window. It stared at her for what seemed a long time before taking wing and gliding off toward a nearby river.
