Mr. Stitch

simply a regional appellation. Certainly, the tiny house was filled with far more people than might reasonably be expected in any immediately family. Twenty-two at the least, by Skinner’s count, though the noise and the panoply of voices made it difficult to be sure.

Though she was determined to spend the night sulking, one of Karine’s relatives-possibly an uncle or an older cousin-was determined to cheer her up. This was Pogo, and his constant overtures of good cheer were the reason that Skinner remembered his name. Karine had introduced the man as the ramo, which Skinner recalled was some kind of priest. Hardly a minute passed that he wasn’t regaling her with a story about how he had to stab Jorgi once for violating the tabu, or the time he’d found a sixty crown note in the gutter. When he wasn’t telling stories, he was pressing cups of hot mulled wine into Skinner’s hand, or offering her a bowl of starchy fish soup. His charm was aggressive and very nearly contagious, though Skinner struggled hard against it.

In truth, she was happy to just hear someone speaking Trowthi; the family spoke Indt incomprehensibly rapidly, and the only words of that strange tongue that Skinner knew were certain profanities she had hear Karine utter in times of distress. While they found liberal use in conversation, they did not lend any particular clarity to the topic under discussion. Certain words, like malaka, which Skinner knew for a fact to be a malign slander regarding the gender and species of a person’s sexual partners, were used with verve and laughter, belying the word’s clear intent; others, like lobber, which was the slang term that the Indige used for the Lobstermen and ought to be fairly neutral in its value, was said with the sort of unadulterated venom that one would suppose was ordinarily reserved only for the worst malakas.

Only the strongest and most committed of miseries can withstand such a relentless onslaught of charity and hospitality, and Skinner found her resolve weakening. The hatred she felt towards the Emperor was forgotten quickly, of course; her anxiety about her future took longer, but it, too, began to evaporate after the fifth time that Pogo tried to tell his “Fat Trolljrman” jokes. Only an icy pain in her heart when she thought of Valentine remained. The thin layer of ichor beneath the silver plate on her eyes had dissolved her tears before they could reach her cheeks, but she’d shed them, nonetheless, and still sometimes felt more coming. It wasn’t that she had liked Valentine, precisely. He had, in fact, been more than a little annoying. It was just that she missed him, as though she’d grown accustomed to his bumbling good nature. For all the petty inconveniences he’d caused (and Skinner couldn’t help but feel guilty recalling them, knowing that he had lost his life seeking to provide her one great convenience) Valentine had been a good man, and the world always suffers when a good man dies.

Skinner coughed, and realized that she hadn’t been listening to Pogo’s joke.

“You see?” He was saying. “Because he wanted grapes. Haha!”

“Yes, it’s very funny.”

“I know,” Pogo said. “I try and tell Jorgi”-this was the man that he’d stabbed in the leg two weeks ago-“This is a funny joke, I tell him. He doesn’t listen, though. Stupid, huh!”

“Oh, Miss Skinner!” Karine’s voice sprang up out of the forest of Indt. “Do you know this?” The indige girl passed her a wooden object, which Skinner ascertained to be some kind of stringed instrument; like a small guitar, but with a teardrop-shaped body. “I have seen you play something like it. Aga bought it-” she added, not disguising her contempt for Aga’s poor financial decisions.

“-but he doesn’t know how to play it or even tune it.”

Aga responded with an impassioned defense in Indt.

“Well, it’s because you are an idiot, Aga. Miss Skinner, do you know anything about it?”

Skinner lightly touched the instrument, counted the frets, plucked at the strings. “Well, it’s basically like my guitar, but with four strings, instead of six, and a little smaller. These three strings are tuned in fourths, this middle one is tuned to the third of the string below it.” She plucked at the strings again, then fiddled with the tuning keys until they made a proper chord. “Not out of tune at all.” She smiled slyly. “Good choice, Aga.”

“Oh, please don’t get him started, miss, or I’ll never heard the end of it.” The entire room-all twenty-two or so indige cousins held their breath expectantly. “Can…can you play it?”

“Karine, I can’t. I don’t even know…”

Pogo interrupted, saying something softly to Karine in their native language. Karine responded enthusiastically, then said to Skinner. “Please, miss? One song, just to show Aga how to do it, then he’ll play it for the rest of the night.”

Skinner grimaced at the thought of that, but relented. She hadn’t had the chance to play for several days, and it wasn’t all that dissimilar from the guitar. It was practically the same thing, really. “All right. I guess. Let’s see. Something simple, obviously.” She plucked aimlessly for a few seconds, then began to strum the chords for “By Sacred Text Redeemed”-an old rondel that had been one of her favorites. The instrument had a bright, jangling sound, that gave the song a sense of whimsy lacking in most interpretations.

After the first refrain, one of the men began humming a counterpoint in a low tenor. Another began tapping on the table. Two of the women joined in, taking turns switching between soprano and alto parts. They sang in Indt; the words flowed like water. The women invented melodic variations on the spot. More voices joined in, as the whole family took turns playing with the song. When there was a pause, Skinner grinned wildly, and began improvising her own tune, and a mad joy bubbled up inside her as she did, so that by the time the song ended she couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

Skinner played again.

Thirty-One

Fletcher had managed to preserve a fat cigar during the interminable voyage to the Dragon Isles, and he’d lit it up while they rowed ashore in the longboats. The cherry glowed red, almost unnoticed in the morning light, while the men passed it around and sucked on smoke. They were silent, grimly silent, unwilling to break the tension even for a laugh. Fletcher looked the worst-he was pale and twitched, and his eyes kept darting around, scouring the unforgiving landscape of the island of Karcaag, looking for Word only knew what.

Cook wasn’t much better, though. He sat still, but sweated abominably; before the men had even clambered into the longboats, he was already soaked through with salt water. Even Sergeant Garret was dead silent, and the fact that the men were free from his constant haranguing was a small mercy.

Two thousand marines climbed onto the pristine white beaches. Rocky cliffs reared above them, a dusty trail switching back and forth across their faces. Atop the cliffs was the city of Kaarcag itself, walled, blocky, shrouded in mist and impenetrable. This was the home of one of the Dragon Princes, and whatever manner of creatures he shared his island with. It was surely not all reanimates, and yet Beckett found it hard to believe that there were men there, living, human men who would willingly submit themselves to being cattle for the Dragon Prince’s thirst for blood.

The island was as dry as a desert. There was no life visible-no small scurrying rodents, no birds, hardly any plants except for the elephant roses, which looked like the dismembered feet of their namesakes. These had no blossoms or leaves, only thick gray stalks and roots that plunged directly into the rock. Far above, on the cliffline, some strange, twisted trees dotted the landscape.

The sun rose and beat heavily on the men as they disembarked. For two hundred years, the Sarkany Rend had plagued the empire, raiding Trowth’s ships, campaigning against Trowth’s ambitions, trying to seize territory claimed by the Empire. Only once, six months before, had Trowth ever delivered a resounding defeat to the Dragon Princes, chasing them from the nation’s shores in a scheme engineered by Mr. Stitch himself-long mistrusted by the people of his country, Stitch had finally earned their acclaim by thrashing the armada of the same princes that many people believed he secretly served. After Abenhrad, there was no question whose side Stitch was on, and no question as to how much the Empire valued him.

Now, for the first time in history, Trowth controlled the Sanguine Straits. Though Stitch had cautioned against an expedition, Arcon III Vie-Gorgon vowed that he would strike at the very heart of the Dragon Isles. Such a feat was uniformly deemed impossible and, indeed, it proved to be so. Kaarcag was the northernmost of the Isles, practically an outpost, and the only piece within striking distance.