Chapter 4

They were waiting for her at Fishmonger’s Quay.

Every street had a pair of redcloaks watching passers-by, forcing any hooded or veiled to show their faces before they were let through. Angharad, keeping to the alleys, saw how they compared the faces to small pieces of parchment. She was only able to get close enough to see it was a drawing, but that told her enough: her hunters knew what she looked like and where she was headed. Worried, Angharad decided on patience. She spent one of her last three silver arboles on a ratty room and a meal at an inn two blocks off the edge of the Quay, figuring she would have a better shot come night.

After the streetlights dimmed and the guardsmen tired she would make a run for the Bluebell. She got directions to the ship at the cost of breaking a second arbol to buy sailors ale with coppers, then settled in to wait. The naps she took on the straw mattress were intermittent, somehow leaving her more tired than when she’d begun, all the more so when she was jolted out of the last by angry shouts. Awake in an instant, she drew her saber and made for the door. Cracking it open just enough to peer through, she saw a gaggle of redcloaks whose officer was loudly arguing with the innkeeper and his pair of toughs.

“-paid up for the month, you don’t get to come in here and hassle my patrons,” the innkeeper was snarling.

Angharad did not hold out hope: one side had swords and muskets, the other clubs. The argument would last only so long as the Guardia officer let it. She stole a glimpse ahead, saw they would be taken utterly by surprise and steadied her breath before bursting out. Defence is delay. The redcloaks had swords out but not before she got a head start, only two at the back going for their muskets instead. Angharad kicked a table in the closest man’s leg, tripping him as he shouted curse, then ducked low as a shot whizzed past her head. A stolen glimpse told her there was no ambush ahead so she ran out into the night, boots thumping against the pavestones.

The redcloaks followed.

In a city so large as Sacromonte it should have been the easiest thing in the world to lose them, but for all that she could steal away for slices of an hour the enemy always caught up to her. They never seemed to know exactly where she was, but neither were they far off. Contractor, Angharad shivered in realization. They had hired someone whose spirit-given gift could find her. Knowing of it was little help, the hours stretching into a torment of constant running and hiding. She was exhausted, as much from the flight as the constant drawing on her own contract to avoid ambushes.

The Fisher was not as some other spirits, whose prices were constant: she had sworn a single oath in return for his gift. Yet that did not mean taking glimpses was not tiring, slowly turning her thoughts feverous. It felt as if her brain was swimming in warm water, pressure slowly building behind her eyes. How long could she last? She did not know, but salvation came without warning at morning’s cast. Just as the streetlights returned to their full glare the redcloaks fell behind. No longer was their hunt aimed, instead stumbling about as if she were no longer tracked.

Relief brought tears to her eyes and she crawled into dark alley smelling of trash and human filth to collapse behind a pile of broken planks. What felt like a heartbeat after she woke to the sound of movement, drawing her saber, but before her was no man. It was a red-eyed rat, large as a cat and watching her unblinkingly. Behind it, scrawled on the wall, she saw a bloody mark she had missed in her earlier exhaustion: seven rats whose tails were tied in a knot, itself swallowing up a skull. It was raw work, little more than outlines, but somehow she knew exactly what she was looking at the moment she saw it. Swallowing loudly, Angharad dropped her blade. It clattered loudly against the ground.

“Manifold apologies, honoured elder,” the noble hurriedly said. “I did not mean to disturb your shrine.”

The red-eyed rat watched her still, unmoving. An apology would not be enough. Grimacing, Angharad slowly reached for her abandoned saber and pressed her palm against the edge. It cut shallowly but drew blood, enough she was able to hold out her hand and drip red on the stone before her. After the third thick droplet fell the great rat finally moved, darting forward to lick at the red while Angharad let out a relieved breath. Her offering had been accepted; rare were the spirits that would turn on you immediately after accepting a gift.

In the moment that followed the noble felt her blood cool, as if a cold tide were washing through her veins. The Fisher’s presence filled her. He felt neither angry nor worried, only… expectant. The spirit was watching, and the red-eyed rat stilled for a moment before licking up the last of her blood.

“Good manners,” it praised in a voice that was like a like a thousand chitters threaded into a single, desperate scream.

Angharad struggled to keep her horror off her face, a struggle that she lost when the massive rat suddenly began to retch. It convulsed, as if dying, and spewed out what she thought to be red bile. Only the bile was in the shape of a rat. The Fisher’s approval rose at the sight and his presence withdrew, shivers strumming down her spine in his wake. That moment of distraction was enough for the red-eyed rat to be gone from her sight, leaving only the scrawled mark on the wall and the bloody little abomination at her feet. Sheathing her sword, Angharad rose tiredly and pressed the cut on her palm closed. She would have taken the time to dress it if not for the blood rat beginning to scurry away.

Gritting her teeth, the dark-skinned noble cast aside her hesitation and followed the boon the spirit had granted her.

It stayed always in the corner of her eye, moving so quick that she could not spare so much as a glance at her surroundings as she followed. Weaving through a maze of dirty alleys she ran, slowly coming to realize that she was being led in the direction of Fishmonger’s Quay. The little creature kept away from the glow of lamplights and palestone pillars, its path labyrinthine, but through shadow after shadow Angharad was led to an end. The stink of sewage filled her nostrils, making her gag, and as she had a dry retch she saw the little blood rat glancing at her once before scurrying to the edge of a sewer gate.

There it broke apart, turning into drops of blood that slid into the cloying vileness.

Minding her manners, Angharad offered the sewer gate a shaky bow of thanks before covering her mouth. She carefully stepped to the edge of the alley, eyes squinting at the lamplight’s glow she had somehow grown unused to. Dealing with spirits was never simple as you might wish. For the first few glances she was lost, until she peered further out and saw a pair of bored redcloaks inspecting everyone passing through the street. Only, Angharad saw, she was already past them. Heart beating in relief and excitement, the noble turned to the sewer gate and bowed again.

“I will remember this favour, honoured elder,” she promised.

In the heartbeat that followed a gun was cocked behind her and Angharad Tredegar was duly reminded that dealing with spirits was never simple as you might wish.

“Don’t move,” a woman’s voice harshly ordered in Antigua. “Turn around and show me your-”

If she ran for it-

(The ball tore through her back, a line of burning pain.)

-Angharad threw herself to the side, the shot catching the edge of her coat. In a single smooth spin she unsheathed her saber and faced the redcloak, who judged she would not be able to reload in time and was dropped her musket in favour of the straight sword at her hip. The noble timed her breaths with her steps, her body moving with the fluid grace of years of practice. There was no need to steal a glimpse of the future when she could see it writ in the lay of her enemy’s movements. The redcloak’s blade came free, striking out, and Angharad calmly twisted her wrist to deny the blades contact before snapping it back into place. Her back foot pushed her forward in a clean, textbook strike that opened the redcloak’s throat.

The other woman fell down with a wet gurgle, the sound drowned out by the Guardia killers already coming this way. Angharad ran for it, the directions she’d bought last night just enough for her to avoid charging off in the wrong direction. This cursed hovel of a city had no signs, as if Sacromontans expected all to know their way around. The docks were close, only a few blocks away, but the ruckus had seen people empty the streets so Angharad could see the redcloaks running after her. Only a dozen, at first, but more were coming from seemingly every street. She hurried, sweat pouring down her back as she struggled to stay out of musket range – shots kept sounding, keeping the pulse of fear in her belly alive – and finally reached the long stone dock she’d had described to her.

An old cog was waiting at the end of it, its sails painted black like all the Watch’s ships, and Angharad felt her spirit rally. Close, so close now and… The shot came from closer, the window of some warehouse behind, and though she threw herself down in time it was straight into a pile of crates. Mercifully empty, she thought even as her aching shoulder toppled two into the water, but she got tangled in the net keeping them together. Ripping her way free cost her precious time, the pack of baying hounds nipping at her heels reaching the dock.

“Stop her,” a man shouted. “Manes be my witness, if you keep fucking missing her-”

The Bluebell was a mere thirty feet away but the Guardia were so close she could almost feel them breathing down her neck. Half-turning, she saw a man reaching for her arm and twisted away but then there was a shot and…. and the redcloaks stopped cold. It’d come from the front of her, Angharad realized belatedly, and there she found a grizzled old woman holding a smoking pistol in her only hand. She’d unloaded in front of the redcloaks, a warning shot.

“Angharad Tredegar?” the old woman called out.

“Yes,” the noble replied, the word half a sob of relief.

“We’ve been waiting for you, girl,” the blackcloak grunted. “Get on the bloody ship, we’re going to miss the tide.”

Angharad took a hesitant step towards the Bluebell, then saw her hesitation reflected on the face of the redcloaks looking at her and was emboldened to take a second. Before she could take a third a Guardia officer pushed his way to the front of the pack, a moustachioed young man whose shoulders were dripping with ornate braids and medals.

“What are you idiots doing?” the man shouted. “Take aim, she’s-”

“She’s under the protection of the Watch, boy,” the old woman interrupted from above. “Turn around before this gets unpleasant.”

Angharad slowly took another step back, trying not to draw anyone’s attention as she was uncomfortably aware that there was no cover at all on the dock: it was all bare stone. There were at least a dozen muskets in the crowd and with that many people aiming at her a glimpse would not be able to save her life.

“Boy?” the young man repeated, turning red. “It’s captain to you, you old bitch, and you best disappear back into your ship before I-”

Angharad took another step back but this time she was noticed and half a dozen muskets were turned on her. Yet in the time that’d passed the blackcloaks had not been idle and now sailors leaned over the side of the ship to aim their own muskets down at the redcloaks. She counted nine, a number that had her stomach clenching. Were there not more sailors on the ship?

“Before you what?” the old woman sneered. “You so much as take a shot at us, boy captain, and it’s a war you’ll have on your hands.”

“A war I’ll win,” the mustachioed man retorted. “I have the numbers to storm your ship if you do not desist.”

He seemed confident, and as Angharad glanced as the still-swelling numbers of redcloaks – more were still coming from the backstreet – she had to admit he was right. Not all of them had firearms, but all were armed and there had to be forty by now. The blackcloak laughed scornfully at the threat.

“And what do you think’ll happen, after?” she asked. “Once word gets to the Rookery that Sacromonte has broken the Iscariot Accords, that you attacked a Watch ship in the discharge of its duties?”

A ripple of unease went through the guardsmen.

“Our orders are absolute,” the officer flatly replied.

“They’ll recall every company from Broken Gates to the Weeping Light, boy,” the one-armed blackcloak said, “to burn this fucking city to the ground. To make an example of Sacromonte.”

She scoffed.

“Only whoever owns you won’t want that war on their head,” the blackcloak said. “So instead what’ll happen is that they’ll send all your heads to the Rookery in a basket as an apology before denting their treasury for reparations.”

Unease turned to dismay, a few guardsmen even taking a step back. The officer’s face was bright red with anger but he had no answer.

“I wonder how the infanzones will like paying up for your mistake,” the old woman added with a nasty little smile. “Surely they’re forgiving souls? They wouldn’t take it out on your families after you die.”

And that was the shot that sounded the rout. Another officer, older but with only half as many gaudy medals, took the captain aside and spoke in a hushed voice. It was a done deal anyhow, the rank and file already putting away their weapons. Whatever loyalty they had it did not stand stronger than the prospect of having their heads cut off. For all that was she was grateful, Angharad could not help but feel a thread of contempt. True soldiers would not have balked in the face of threats. It was the weakness of Sacromonte that it did not have proper ruling nobles, a weakness that trickled all the way down.

“I’ll remember this,” the captain snarled, tearing away from the other redcloak.

“And we’ll remember you, boy captain,” the blackcloak called back. “You ought to be a lot more worried about that.”

The Guardia cleared out in haste, as if ashamed of being seen driven away, and Angharad at last let out her breath. She’d made it. The old woman called out for her to hurry and she raced up the ramp, seeing that hidden behind side of the ship there’d been another dozen sailors. They were putting away muskets and orbs of metal bearing fuses that Angharad recognized as zhentianlei, those dreaded Tianxi grenades. No wonder the one-armed woman had not feared the redcloaks: packed tight as they had been on the docks, without cover, it would have been a slaughter. The noble offered said blackcloak a short bow of gratitude.

“My thanks for your protection, my lady,” Angharad said. “I will not forget it.”

“The name’s Celipa, and I’m no lady of any kind,” the old woman snorted. “You owe me nothing, girl. You’ve got blood in the black and you’re kin of Osian’s besides.”

She blinked.

“You know my uncle?”

“We were both part of the hunt for the Hull-Eater,” Celipa told her, then tapped the stump of her missing arm. “After a thrall took a bite he helped set me up on the Bluebell.”

Angharad choked. The Hull-Eater, as in the great spirit whose claws rent ships apart and whose army of crazed thralls had famously turned some ancient fortress into a den of horrors? Its death a few years ago had been widely celebrated back home, but Uncle Osian had never so much as hinted he’d been involved. She could hardly imagine a man her mother had always considered – however fondly – to be useless in a fight anywhere near such a monster. At loss about anything to say, the noble got out something about how her uncle was a dutiful man while Celipa herded her across the deck towards broad stairs descending into the belly of the cog.

“I’ll be two days before we get to the Dominion,” Celipa quietly said. “Use the time to find allies, Tredegar. Loners always die early in the second trial.”

It would have been ungrateful of her to demand that a woman who’d saved her life address her properly as Lady Angharad, so the noble bit down on the sentence before it could leave her lips. Instead she nodded her gratitude at the advice before traversing the lower deck – the kitchen, dormitories for the crew and the arsenal – to make her way to the hold at the bottom. There she found the travellers she would share a journey with, having haphazardly claimed corners and cots. All eyes were on her from the moment she entered, the cost of being the last to arrive, but she kept her back straight. It would not do to show weakness.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A sweeping look at the hold told her there had to be more than twenty people in there, but what drew and kept her eye was the well-dressed quartet being attended to at the back of the hold. Two men and two women. The men’s close looks and identical red and blue cloaks outed them as kin, but the other two were dissimilar: one tall and lean, her short blond hair pulled in a bun while the other was a sultry dark-haired beauty with beautiful green eyes. Nobles, she instantly knew. Infanzones, as Sacromontans called them. The beauty met Angharad’s eyes, smiling sweetly, and then addressed an older girl at her side in servant’s livery.

A few steps later the handmaiden was offering Angharad an elegant curtsy, bowing her head.

“Lady Isabel invites you to introduce yourself, my lady,” the girl said.

Angharad acknowledged her with a polite nod, gathering herself for a moment before approaching her fellow nobles. The men looked bored at her approach, one of them even seeming irritated, but Lady Isabel’s smile was yet sweet and her leaner companion looked curious. As the invited party, Angharad introduced herself first.

“Lady Angharad Tredegar of Llanw Hall,” she said, lightly bowing. “At your service.”

“How genteel,” the green-eyed beauty exclaimed, putting a hand to her heart. “I am Lady Isabel Ruesta, Lady Angharad, but you must call me Isabel.”

“It would be my very great pleasure,” Angharad replied, struggling to keep her gaze off the flattering cut of Lady Isabel’s dress.

Most her lovers had been cut more from the cloth of the other noble lady here than lovely Isabel’s, but Angharad could appreciate beauty in all its forms. Including form-fitting dresses of yellow brocade. As a willful distraction, she turned to the woman by Lady Isabel’s side.

“Lady Ferranda Villazur,” the lean woman introduced herself, tone cool. “A pleasure.”

Angharad returned the courtesy, though she was barely done speaking when one of the men cut in.

“You have the Malani look but the name does not fit,” the noble drawled. “Strange.”

Angharad’s expression grew stiff and the implied accusation of being an impostor.

“That is, Remund, because she is not Malani,” the other man scoffed. “These are Pereduri names.”

He then offered her a bow and a practiced smile. At second look he looked older than the rude one, his face sharper and more refined.

“I am Lord Augusto Cerdan,” he said. “Please forgive my brother’s rudeness, Lady Angharad. He never did learn his courtesies.”

“It is nothing, Lord Augusto,” Angharad briskly replied, her mood soured.

It was soured even further by Lord Remund’s appraising gaze on her.

“Ah, Peredur,” the infanzon said. “I had quite forgot about it. You’re not much paler than the other Malani, though. I expected more of a difference.”

Angharad’s jaw clenched. Peredur was not like the other isles of the Kingdom of Malan. It was nearly impossible to conquer without a great fleet so Angharad’s ancestors, unlike the Malani, had not swept across the island in a storm of iron and flame. They had instead settled the land and allied with the ancient dwellers of Peredur, twined the blood and slowly grown into a single people. And the ancient Pereduri had been men of pale skin, so to this day some ignorant souls expected Angharad’s people to be much paler than the Malani. The polite ones, anyway.

The less polite liked to imply that the ancient Pereduri had been hollows, darklings. Utter madness. The isles were drenched in the light of the Glare, no hollow could have lived there without burning! Besides some savage tribes encountered in the colonies had proved that some peoples of light skin were not soulless, turned pale not by the embrace of the Gloam but simply born with such flesh. Yet it suited some to imply the people of Peredur were descended from slaves and savages, the same hordes that allied with devils to bring about the Old Night.

“Alas,” Angharad frigidly replied, “it seems I must disappoint.”

“Remund,” Lady Isabel chided, gently slapping his arm. “Be nice.”

“Oh, I suppose,” Lord Remund groused. “The pleasure is all mine, Lady Angharad.”

Isabel seemed more amused than anything, which brought a glimmer of satisfaction to the younger Cerdan’s eye that Angharad recognized. Ah, she thought. Perhaps her appreciative gaze had not been as subtle as she thought. From the corner of her eye she saw Lord Augusto eyeing the Lady Isabel and his brother with evident displeasure before brushing it away with a forced smile. He made a chiding comment about immaturity, injecting himself between the two. Angharad almost winced.

“It appears your coat was scuffed,” Lady Ferranda said, drawing back her attention. “A traveling misfortune?”

The other woman’s steady gaze lay where the stray shot had caught her overcoat earlier. Angharad had no intention of mentioning her troubles to these strangers, fellow nobles or not, but then she suspected that Ferranda Villazur was well aware she was not looking at a simple scuff.

“There was a mishap with my trunk,” Angharad replied, carefully avoiding a lie. “I will be travelling light.”

“Oh,” Lady Isabel gently said as she drew away from the brothers, “that simply won’t do. Lady Angharad – or may I call you Angharad?”

Charmed, she returned the Sacromontan’s smile.

“Of course.”