Slowly recovering, Guld leaned against a wall and pushed himself to his feet. “Damn you, Bauchelain-”
The sorceror turned in surprise. “Whatever for, Sergeant?”
“My men. That’s earned my own blood-vow-”
“Nonsense. They are not slain. They wander confused. Nothing more. This I swear.”
“If you lie, Mage, you’d best kill me now, for I-”
“I do not, Sergeant. And proof of that is found in my letting you live.”
“He speaks true,” Birklas said to Guld. “As I intimated earlier, we will tolerate only so much.”
Bauchelain laid a hand on Korbal Broach’s shoulder. “Let’s be on, friend. We can join our able manservant at the docks.”
Waves of pain half-blinding him, Guld watched the two men stride off.
Princess Sharn seemed to shake herself awake. Her face white as the moon, she stared after them as well. Then she hissed in outrage, “He meant to kill me!”
“He’s a damned eunuch,” Guld rasped. “What charms would you have offered him? He doesn’t even need to shave.”
Steck Marynd groaned, then slumped to the cobbles, his crossbow clattering but not discharging. Guld glanced down to see the man unconscious, a slightly stupid smile on his features.
Birklas Punth and Blather Roe offered Guld elegant tips of their hats, then sauntered off.
The sergeant took a step away from the wall, tottered, but managed to stay upright. Blood flowed down around his neck. He heard distant shouts. His men were finally on the way. Guld sighed, his eyes falling on the handmaiden. Her body lay in a spreading pool. He watched a mongrel dog trot purposefully in her direction. The sergeant’s stomach lurched. “Madness,” he whispered. “All madness!”
A hacking hiss sounded from the shadows further down the alley, then a rasping voice sang out, “See what comes of a life of vice?”
Emancipor Reese awoke groggily, and found himself staring at the four travel trunks strapped to the wall in front of him. Creaking sounds inundated him, and the cot he laid on pitched and rolled under him.
The Suncurl. I remember now. Hood, what an awful night!
He slowly sat up. The ship climbed and fell-they were in the Troughs, beyond Moll Bay and in the Tithe Strait. The air was hot and damp in the close cabin. Barely time to send her word. She’ll manage, might even be relieved once she’s calmed down some. He looked around. The other two berths were empty.
Emancipor glared at the trunks. Damn, but they’d been heavy. Come close to breaking the cart’s axle. Of course, Bauchelain’s second trunk had held a huge wrapped piece of slate-the man had taken it out, and set it on the floor. On its flat surface was an intricate scribed pattern. He blinked down at it, then frowned. There had been a sound, he suddenly recalled, a sound odd enough to awaken him. Something was slapping around in one of Korbal Broach’s trunks. Something had come loose.
Emancipor climbed to his feet. He unstrapped the retainers, examined the lock. The key was in it. He unlocked the latch and pulled back the trunk’s heavy lid.
There were no words to describe the horror of what he saw within. Gagging, Emancipor slammed the lid back, then, his hands fumbling, he reattached the retaining straps.
The cabin was suddenly too small. He needed air. He needed… to get away.
Emancipor staggered to the door, then out into the aisle and up the weathered, salt-bleached steps. He found himself amidships. Bauchelain stood near the prow, seemingly unaffected by the Suncurl’s pitching and yawning. Crewmen scrambled around both the necromancer and Reese-you sweated blood in the Troughs.
Gaping like a beached fish, Emancipor worked his way to Bauchelain’s side.
“You seem peaked, Mister Reese,” the mage observed. “I have some efficacious tinctures…”
Emancipor shook his head, gasping as he leaned on the rail.
“I’d have thought,” Bauchelain continued, “that you’d not be inclined toward seasickness, Mister Reese.”
“The, uh, the first day, master. My legs will find me soon enough.”
“Ahh, I see. Did you peruse my handiwork?”
Emancipor blanched.
“The slate, Mister Reese.”
“Oh, yes Master.”
“I indulge Korbal’s ceaseless efforts to beget,” Bauchelain said. “And so devise… platforms, if you will. The inscribed circle preserves and, if need be, provides sustenance. It never fails that, in such endeavours, I learn something new. And so we are all rewarded. Are you all right, Mister Reese?”
But Emancipor did not answer. He stared unseeing at the swelling grey waves that kept rising like a wall toward him with each plummet of the bow, and trembled without feeling the thundering repercussion through the ship’s hull. Begetting? Oh, the gods forgive! What lay within the trunk, heaped and throbbing and twitching, sewn one organ to another, each alive and no doubt retaining souls in a torturous prison from which escape was impossible-what lived there in Korbal Broach’s trunk… only to a mind twisted beyond sanity could such a… a monstrosity be deemed a child. The eunuch’s dreams of begetting yielded only nightmares.
“Does not this crisp, clean air revive one’s spirit?” Bauchelain said, breathing deep. “I am always… rejuvenated with the resumption of our wandering, our explorations of this world. ’Tis a good thing, the appeasement agreed with the Storm Riders. Passage on the seas should not cost more than a jar or two of blood- we can all agree on that, I’m sure. Now then, Mister Reese, allow me to treat you for this unfortunate illness of yours. My past efforts in dissection and vivisection have determined the cause of the malady-to be found in, of all places, the inside of your ears. As an alchemist of some skill, I have some talent in addressing this sensitivity from which you suffer. I assure you…”
Oh, Subly…
“Daylight is such a remarkable thing, isn’t it, Mister Reese? The gods know, I see so little of it. Oh, and there’s Korbal…”
Emancipor turned to where Bauchelain was pointing. There, in their wake, flew a single crow amidst a dozen wheeling seagulls. The black bird dipped and glided on the wind like a torn piece of darkness.
“He’s tireless, is Korbal Broach,” Bauchelain said, smiling fondly.
Tireless. Oh.
“I should warn you, Mister Reese. I have sensed something awry with this ship. The captain, she seems disinclined to provide details as to our destination, and then there’s the oddity of the nails, Mister Reese, the nails holding this ship together…”
He went on, but Emancipor had stopped listening. Destination? Damn you, Bauchelain-you say eastward, as far as anyone’d go. So I done what you said, damn you. And now, here I am… trapped. Beyond Tithe Strait lay the open sea, stretching… stretching away, for gods-damned forever, Bauchelain! That’s the ocean out there, dammit!
“Mister Reese?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you anticipate this journey to last very long?”
Forever, you bastard. “Months,” he snapped, his jaws grinding together.
“Oh my. This could prove… unpleasant. It’s the nails, you see, Mister Reese… they may affect my scribed circle. As I was saying, the iron’s aspected, in some mysterious manner. My concern is that Korbal’s child might well escape…”
Emancipor clamped his mouth shut. He felt a tooth crack.
His laughter, when it burst out, set off the seagulls astern. Their wild, echoing cackling ended abruptly. Sailors shouted. Emancipor fell to his knees, unable to stop, barely able to breathe.
“Unfortunate,” Bauchelain murmuered. “Even so, I had no idea seagulls burned so readily. Korbal so dislikes loud noises, Mister Reese. I do hope you succeed in restraining your odd mirth, soon. As soon as possible, Mister Reese. Korbal is looking agitated, very agitated indeed.”
