Spectyr

When their second child’s form splattered to the ground, a dry mass of skin and bone, the two parents didn’t scream. Nor did they try to run. The mother’s eyes darted to the remains of her sons as if she thought it some magic trick in very poor taste. Then she looked at Hatipai. The geist was used to worshippers admiring her beauty, so she felt the nakedness of her brand-new body especially sharply. It needed covering.

The man was closest. His skin came free with a sound like ripping velvet, while his screams erupted from a mouth now devoid of lips. The woman wailed with him. It was only bare moments, heartbeats, since she had been pleased to see the gleaming angel in her home.

Mortals were such fickle creatures. They called into the dark, demanded answers and attention from forces they could not comprehend, and yet when they had that attention and those answers, they complained about them.

The skin settled around her form, and now Hatipai could feel the warmth of the room and smll the tang of blood and fear. It was a scent she remembered well. The man staggered, blood pouring from his body like a squeezed sponge, and then shock took him. He crashed into the small altar the family had been praying at, sending food offerings and incense sticks clattering into the gore. Then he was on the floor spasming like a gutted fish.

Hatipai was no longer interested in the man. She was already appreciating his gift.

Looking down, she saw that the body had also shuffled into a familiar pattern; it was modeled on a princess of Delmaire—one that Hatipai had devoured from within in the earliest years of her arrival in this world. In her opinion, this use of bone, flesh and skin was much better than any their original owners could ever have put them to. As she was admiring what she had made, the woman came at her with a knife.

It was certainly not the first time a mortal had attempted such a thing, but it was quite possibly the most pathetic. Hatipai caught her arm before it had even completed its downward descent.

While a knife blow could not have killed her, it would be a shame to mar this fine new form. It might not be enough to contain her for long, but she still enjoyed it. Holding the woman in place, she looked down. Her eyes still blazed gold; for some reason, the human eye was something her magic could not replicate. Her first instinct was to kill the pathetic creature, but when she looked deeper, she realized that would have been a kindness.

Hatipai was not prone to kindnesses—so instead she smiled, working her lips around teeth made from the woman’s child. That was when the new widow broke down. Sobbing, she slumped to the floor.

“What . . . what are you? What are you?” Her questions were squeezed out of a chest that appeared to be having trouble breathing.

Hatipai raised an eyebrow—an expression she had always been fond of. Her voice was sweeter than honey, more vicious than grief. “I am the goddess you called for. You did call, didn’t you?”

Through her pain the woman nodded, unable to deny their prayers and offerings.

Hatipai smiled again. “So for your faith and your offerings, I thank you.” And then, naked, she walked from the room, her tiny, perfect human feet trailing patterns of blood and gore after her. The music for her progress was the wretched lamentations of the woman.

As he stood on the quarterdeck of the Dominion and looked toward the shambling hulk of the ship on the horizon, the Young Pretender’s stomach clenched in anger.

Many people, Raed among them, acknowledged that the new Empire had brought with it advantages: warfare was a thing largely of the past, commerce was flourishing and the people were no longer plagued as frequently by geist activity.

One of the terrible things that remained, however, was a rotten, stinking carcass at a fine feast: slavery.

His grandfather had often been tyrannical—holding an Empire together was not an easy task—but the issue that had haunted his reign most of all had been slavery. His crusade against it had been one of the reasons the Assembly of Princes had turned on him. At least a half dozen of them claimed their kingdoms could not manage without it.

The new Emperor, the one who the Princes had imported from over the ocean, had proven far more compliant to their wishes. He looked the other way while islands off the coast were raided for their inhabitants, who were set to work in distant parts of the Empire. Perhaps he didn’t want to test the loyalty of his benefactors so soon. Perhaps he felt he needed to wait and find his feet. Whatever his reasoning, Raed had none of those concerns.

Slave ships were his natural prey. His hunting earned his father much kudos among the ramshackle towns of the scattering of small islands between Arkaym and Delmaire. Today he would free more slaves and then use the stinking remains of the ship for his own purposes. Two birds had never been more efficiently killed with one stone.

With nod of his head, Aachon called for the topsail to be unfurled, and the Dominion leapt through the water to her purpose. Her crew meanwhile sharpened cutlasses and prepared for battle. No slave ship, low in the water and with the blunt scow features, could ever hope to match the brigantine’s speed.

At his left shoulder, Tangyre drew her sword. “I find I am rather growing to like your plan, my Prince.”

“This is the easy bit,” Aachon observed in a low undertone.

“But also the most satisfactory,” Raed replied, as the Dominion bore down on the slave ship. This close, the grubby lettering on its hull could be made out.

Sweet Moon might be a very unlikely name for a ship of this ilk—slavers often had a curious sense of humor. On the deck, several of them could be seen, also preparing for battle.

Raed called out, and Aleck quickly raised their flag. The Rossin’s mer-shape flapped free and loose, spilling out into the breeze with a sharp snap. The Young Pretender felt his throat constrict at the sight of his tormentor. Yet it was not just he who feared the image. A cry arose from the slavers. They now knew whom they faced.

Skimming across the waves, the Dominion came on fast like retribution. Aachon steered them skillfully, until they were stealing the wind right out of the Sweet Moon’s sails.

“Heave to,” Aachon bellowed, “or we will blow your sorry arse out of the water!”

Perhaps the Rossin flag had been the wrong choice, because the slavers did the exact opposite. As the sailors of the Dominion scrambled to navigate their ship up within grappling range, the slavers on the Sweet Moon began throwing struggling forms off the stern.

“By the Blood,” Raed roared, standing on the rigging. “Filthy murderers!” He knew there was no time for grappling hooks.

“My Prince—” Aachon surged forward, but it was too late.

The Young Pretender wrapped one arm around a portion of the running rigging and kicked out hard from his ship. The ocean raced by under his feet, but years of sailing made Raed very adept at judging distance. Behind him a half dozen of his crew followed in his wake.

He landed on the swaying deck, dropped down lightly from the rope and grappled a swarthy shape that was about to thrust a manacled woman into the heaving sea. The slaver howled as Raed buried his knife into his neck. Blood poured onto the deck, while the woman screamed like it had been her who had been cut.

More of his crew landed next to him, and suddenly the slavers found their mettle was being tested by people who could fight back, sailors and soldiers trained in combat, and not shackled villagers.

The crew of the Dominion set to their work with relish, and for a little while the deck heaved with grunts and groans. Blood madethe deck slippery, but Raed barely noticed—caught as he was in the delight of good, honest combat.

It didn’t last long, however. Raed wiped his blade clean on the cloak of a fallen slaver. In truth he was glad they had put up a fight. He had no mercy for their kind, and yet he couldn’t have brought himself to act as they had. As his crew brought the Sweet Moon to a dead halt in the water, Raed found the ring of keys on the chief slaver’s body.

Gently he touched the woman on the shoulder. She looked up, tears streaking a face that was twisted with fear. “Please,” she whispered through a strained throat, “make it quick.”

Raed bent and unlocked her shackles. “We are your rescuers, not your killers, my lady.”

The look she leveled at him was not just filled with gratitude—it also contained a fair amount of anger—not at him but at a world in which people could be sold like cattle, a world in which you could be tending your fields in