“Can we outrun them?”

  “Not too likely,” she said. “But we could try. It’s a slim chance, but probably the only one we have—and it gets thinner with each breath we waste on words.”

  “Billy?” Errol said. “Do you think—”

  “No.” It was Aster, her voice flat and dangerous. “Billy’s tired. It takes a lot out of him to change back and forth, and he’s at his limit. He’s also not invulnerable. You all can leave if you want. Or you can stay here with me and end this, now.”

  “That sounds great,” Errol said. “But Dusk says we can’t defend this place, and you can see we’re way outnumbered.”

  “We don’t have to defeat all of the ships,” Aster said. “Just one of them.”

  Dusk frowned. “Vilken’s ship. You’re suggesting I sail my ship right into the middle of his fleet.”

  “Yes.”

  Dusk turned her mouth a bit to the side, then tilted her head.

  “Can you tell which ship he’s on?”

  “I believe I can,” Aster replied.

  “What about the dragons?” Veronica said.

  “The dragons were Kostye’s,” Delia said. “He talked about it. He had an arrangement with them. I don’t think Vilken can command them on his own.”

  “I don’t see any dragons,” Dusk said. “And even if I did—Aster, my ship is yours. Tell me where to steer it.”

  By the time they were airborne, Vilken’s fleet was closing in and arcing around them so they had nowhere to run.

  But they were running, anyway, or pretending to, steering hard to the west. Aster didn’t feel as confident as she sounded, but she was heartsick and angry, and one way or another determined to finish this. In fact, she had lied to the others; she’d thought of a way they might escape.

  But she didn’t want to.

  She could feel Vilken—they had a connection now. His ship wasn’t marked any differently from the others. The real Vilken—the man they had called the Sheriff—had been a warrior. He would be leading the charge, flying the banner, the point of the spear and all of that. Not so the thing that had taken his body and his strength. Veronica’s Raggedy Man was no general, no warrior. He was a coward, a thief, a rapist, and a murderer. He would let the boys he had twisted into devils do his work, or at least the most dangerous part of it.

  No, his ship was near the rear, and continued to hang back as his servants pursued them, stretching his fleet out to close off their escape.

  “That closest ship is almost in range,” Dusk informed her.

  “How much ammunition do we have?” Aster asked.

  “We have more shot than powder,” she said. “Very little to waste.”

  “Fine,” Aster said. She had thought to stretch the feint out, put up a bit of a mock battle to make things more convincing. But if they were low on powder, best they save it.

  “Hold off until the last second—until right before they come in range—then turn us toward that one in back.”

  “Very well,” Dusk said.

  A moment later the warrior-woman began shouting orders, and the girls on deck and in the rigging began working furiously at the sails.

  Aster closed her eyes, preparing herself.

  The deeper she got into the Kingdoms, the more magic she remembered, but up until now, the most powerful spells she could recall were the Profound Recondite Utterances.

  Now, in this place where she was born, something new had formed in her memory. Something her father had mentioned, with almost his last breath.

  A Name.

  It welled up from the light inside of her, found her tongue, and spoke itself.

  Errol was standing a few paces from Aster when her mouth opened and a sound came out like none he had ever heard. It was almost below the register of hearing, but he felt it in the atmosphere, in the wooden planks of the ship. Aster seemed suddenly bigger, and her skin was the color of ash. Her eyes were gone, replaced by blue-white slits.

  “What the—”

  Before he could finish, the wind came. The sails stretched full, the ship creaked and groaned, and somewhere something splintered. Aster raised up her arms, and the hurricane grew even stronger. The ship was hauling ass, jumping and skipping as if beating through waves.

  Cannon barked behind them, but they were far out of range, and ahead of them, one of Vilken’s ships was coming up fast, very fast.

  “I think we’d better find something to hold on to,” Veronica said.

  “I think you’re right.”

  Lightning slashed on all sides; the boiling, tar-black vapors of a thunderhead followed behind. Dusk screamed orders over the shrieking wind. One of the masts leaned forward crazily before the cables holding it upright snapped. With a terrible wrench the entire mast and the sails on it tore loose and hurled itself ahead of them. The other ship grew larger with breathtaking speed.

  Errol kept waiting for them to start slowing down so they could board.

  Then he realized that wasn’t what was about to happen at all.

  The broken mast slammed into the other ship. So did they, but in the moment of impact, Errol felt something wrap around him, supporting him. A cloud of flying wood splinters and broken beams parted around him, Veronica, Billy, Dusk and her crew. They were all suspended in a breath of wind as the bow of their ship crashed into the side of the other, cutting it almost in half. The deck beneath him buckled under the strain, the boards springing up as Dusk’s ship cracked along her centerline.

  Weight returned—along with vertigo—as both ships, turning horizontally, began to fall. But not too quickly; whatever magical force allowed them to fly in the first place hadn’t entirely dissipated.

  Dusk screamed like a bird of prey and charged. Errol followed, along with Dusk’s warriors.

  Many of the divlings had been flung from their craft at impact; others were struggling to find their equilibrium when he sprang onto the ruined deck. One of the creatures swung a nasty looking scimitar at him. He dodged to the side and whacked it hard in the jaw.

  Dusk, a few feet away, had no compunctions about killing. Her sword sent blood spraying left and right.

  Errol knocked another of the things down and turned to see Vilken standing a few yards away, pointing a pistol at him. He tried to turn, but there was no time; the gun puffed smoke, and something slammed into him so hard he fell to the deck. He clutched at his chest and found, not a hole, but something stuck to his armor.

  It resembled a black starfish, and it was chewing him. It was also growing, quickly. Distantly, he heard the pistol fire again, and once more as he tried to beat the thing off of him with his sword, but the angle was weird, so he dropped the weapon and began prying it off with his hands. The pain, small at first, was quickly becoming agony.

  Aster was a grain of sand, she was the sky. She was Savare the Namebearer, without fear or pity. She was herself, watching as from a great distance as Errol went down beneath some strange horror, and Dusk was flung back by the weapon in Vilken’s hand.

  It is done, Savare told her, in speech that wasn’t speech. My debt to you father is loosed.

  And with that Savare was gone, and all Aster’s senses came rushing back to her body.

  “Vilken!” she shouted.

  He turned, and pointed his gun, but she Uttered a bolt of lightning from the storm Savare had left behind. It struck through him, and his long coat went up in a blaze. He staggered back, and she yelled in triumph; but he wasn’t down yet. His blue-eyed gaze caught her, and in an instant she was back in the room in his castle, with him pulling himself on top of her, as she lay there helpless. Fear greater than any she had ever known gripped her, and she watched him as in a nightmare, striding across the broken deck toward her. One of Dusk’s warriors leapt at him, and he shot her in the face, never looking away from Aster, never breaking eye contact.

  Mine, his voice laid on her like gravity. You have always been mine.

  He was a few steps away now. There was no one between him and her.

  Then the ships hit the water. The impact threw Vilken from his feet, and sent Aster bouncing painfully across the deck, but the dagger of terror in her brain was withdrawn. Everything rocked as the broken vessels settled upon the waves. She saw him begin to stand, just a few feet away. He locked his gaze with her again, but this time she was ready, drawing on the deepest marrow of her nature.

  “I am Aster, daughter of Kostye, daughter of Nevese,” she told him. “And you will not take another step toward me.”

  His eyes blazed with fury; the veins on his forehead stood up. The knife trembled in his hand.

  “I am Aster,” she shouted, “Companion of Errol, companion of Veronica, companion of Dusk.”

  She felt a swell of strength as she said their names.

  “You are no one,” she said. “Motherless, fatherless, without companions, without love. You are nothing, and you are no one.”

  It stalled him, but he was ancient; he had the strength of time. Like a river that had been flowing in the same bed for ten thousand years, he had etched himself into the foundations of the world; not a strength of presence, but the hideous power of absence that nothing could fill. Against that, her mortal fury and determination could only last so long; she began to waver. He began, very slowly, to move again.

  “Child,” he snarled. Something snapped in her, and she staggered back.

  Then something struck him from the side. She had the briefest glimpse of something huge, gray and white, a fin, a tail, a vast spray of water . . .

  Then he was gone.

  She realized then, that she stood in water up to her knees; the ships were sinking, fast.

  As she started to collapse, Veronica was there.

  “Easy,” she said.

  “What happened?” Aster asked.

  “Some problems,” Veronica said solemnly, “Are best solved by shark.”

  By the time Errol ripped the thing off his armor, it was as big as he was. Its whole underside was teeth, one big star-shaped mouth flopping toward him through the water that was rapidly engulfing everything. He kicked at it, but it latched on to his foot.

  Hollering, he cut at it with the edge of his sword. It was the first time he had used the sharp part of the blade, and he was pleasantly surprised at how readily it cut. It went through the monster like a hot knife through butter.

  He chopped it off his leg and kept mincing it until it left him alone. He wasn’t sure if it was dead or if it could die, but he didn’t care so long as it wasn’t chewing on him, anymore.

  Panting, he tried to take in the situation.

  They seemed to have won. The divlings were either gone or motionless, and Vilken was nowhere to be seen. Veronica was holding Aster, who looked out of it, and Dusk was being tended to by several of her sailors. She looked wounded, but how badly it was hard to tell. Her eyes were open, and she was swearing, which was hopefully a good sign.

  They still had a few worries, though. In a very short time, both ships would be underwater, so they would have to swim, and fight the drag of the ships trying to pull them down. It was probably better to try and get clear now. Except for the other thing—all around them, Vilken’s other ships were arriving, and soon they would have an army to deal with. Besides himself, Dusk, Veronica, and Aster, he figured there were about fifteen girls left capable of putting up a fight.

  He sloshed over to Veronica.

  “This is going to be rough,” he said.

  “Might be,” she agreed.

  “Look, about before—”

  “Hush,” Veronica said. “I might be able to get us out of this. Dusk, too. It won’t be fun for you, but . . .”

  Above, the sky rumbled. He thought it was still Aster’s storm, but that was dissipating. He realized that some of the ships closing in on them were firing on the others.

  “Why are they fighting?” he wondered aloud.

  Dusk limped over, holding her side. She looked jubilant, despite her injury. “Their standards, you see? Those are not Vilken’s ships.”

  “Whose are they, then?” he asked.

  “The flag with the field of black and eight stars, that is my sister Nocturn. The golden sphere—”

  “Yeah,” Errol said. “I know that one. Your brother Hawk.”

  “And there is Dawn and Gloam,” she said. “They’ve come after all.”

  “Is that good? Errol said. “I mean, Hawk did try to kill me.”

  “Nocturn imprisoned me and had me tortured,” Veronica added.

  “Those are my siblings,” Dusk said. “Contentious and untrustworthy. But if they are together, it is a good sign.”

  “Why?”

  “It means they have agreed to come together to end the curse.”

  “Yes,” Veronica said. “But they do have a friend of ours tied up to their mast.”

  Errol thought Veronica’s eyesight must be better than his—maybe a lot better. As the ships drew nearer, he saw she was right.

  “That’s Haydevil,” he said.

  “Huh,” Veronica said. “At least we know how they found us.”

  SIX

  FIVE KINGDOMS

  It was Hawk’s ship and his creepy little gold men who fished them out of the water. When Hawk saw Errol, he grinned ruefully.

  “You were a worthy foe,” he said. “I hope now you can accept me as an ally.”

  “I’m just—your guy shot me,” Errol said.

  Hawk shrugged. “If you wish satisfaction, I understand. We can fight at your convenience. But if it’s all the same to you, I think it would be better to end the curse first and fight later.”

  Errol nodded as if he agreed; he had a hard time believing anything Hawk said, and even more difficulty turning his back on him. Every time he caught sight of one of the bad cupids he itched to draw his sword.

  It wasn’t a lot better with Nocturn. He’d never met her but knowing how she had treated Veronica didn’t endear him to her. As for Gloam—he had apparently been Vilken’s footstool up until recently. And they had all had a bad experience with Dusk. The only one he hadn’t heard anything bad about was Dawn. She was the youngest of the lot, maybe thirteen, with red hair and freckles. She was bubbly and affable.

  Coming from this family, though, he was willing to bet she had her moments, too.

  After they were all back on land, Hawk took his fleet back out, scouting to make certain Vilken’s forces were routed and not merely regrouping.

  Food and drink were unloaded from the remaining ships, and soldiers began setting up camp around the castle. Several of Dawn’s retainers were—or at least claimed to be—physicians, and began tending the wounded. Aster was found to be weak, but physically sound. After a few sips of some sort of tea, she came back to weary consciousness. Errol wanted to talk to her, but Gloam was with her, falling all over himself with apologies for the part he’d played in Kostye’s Kingdom. He was a very talkative fellow, and Errol wasn’t in the mood for pointless chatter. He went searching for Veronica, but couldn’t find her, which worried him. When last he’d seen her, she had that look in her eye he’d come to recognize, the one that meant she was up to something. But if she’d wanted him to know what it was, she would have told him. He took it as another sign that their relationship was even more seriously damaged than he thought.

  He hoped she wasn’t off to kill Nocturn or someone else. Everything finally seemed to be going their way, but at the same time, the peace felt very fragile. If anything happened to one of Dusk’s siblings, it was all sure to come apart.

  Whatever “it” was.

  He decided to look in on Dusk and see how she was. Maybe she could tell him more about what was going on.

  Dusk had been stripped of her armor, part of which had been dissolved by some sort of acid Vilken’s weapon had discharged. She now wore a flowing robe over her bandages. Her side had been burned, and the pain had obviously been terrific, but she acted as if nothing had happened.

  “What of you?” she asked him. “You were injured.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But the armor heals itself, you know.”

  “But what of the man beneath? You were bleeding.”

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore, so I guess it fixes me, too. But there really isn’t any way to know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  That sort of pissed him off. Why was she taunting him?

  She saw the look.

  “Errol?”

  “You know I can’t take it off,” he said.

  She blinked, looking astonished. He realized she wasn’t faking it.

  “Of course you can,” she said. “You have only to say the words.”

  “Words?” he said.

  “Oh. I suppose in all of the tumult I forgot to tell you,” she said. “You need only say bernas veras.”

  “Real boy?” Errol translated. “Seriously?”

  “You understand the reference? It was something Aster told me about, a story—”

  “Yeah, I get the reference,” he said. “It’s just—never mind. Bernas veras.”

  The last syllable was hardly out of his mouth before the armor simply fell off of him.

  “Well,” Dusk said. “This is hardly proper.” She turned her head away, but he caught a smile as she did so.

  “Oh,” he said, looking down. “Yeah. Sorry. Excuse me.”

  He quickly put it back on and made a mental note to ask some of the guys if he could borrow a shirt and pants.

  “Thanks,” he said, when he was decent again.

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  “Listen,” he said, lowering his voice. “We haven’t had a chance to talk, since, you know . . .”

  “There is nothing to talk about,” she said. “I made a mistake, yes?”

  “Well—mistake? I don’t know. But it’s just that—”

  “You’re loyal,” she said, her voice rather flat. “That is your nature. I must respect that loyalty—as you must respect mine.”

  He immediately felt a little wary. The last time her “loyalties” had come into play, things had gone poorly for the rest of them.

  He was wondering how to frame a question about that when Nocturn arrived. She looked like a spooky, dark-haired version of Dusk. He kept expecting her to smile and show vampire teeth.

 

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