Steel's Edge

out of the bloodbath. She caught a flash of his face—he was smiling.

In two minutes, it was all over. Eight bodies lay on the ground. Jack shook himself and dashed down the dark street, melting into the gloom. The dog chased him. The women started moving after the two of them.

“Stop!” Jason roared.

The pretend slaves halted.

“Fall in! Find your squad captain. Now.”

The criminals separated with almost military discipline, forming four groups.

“Squad one, slave pens,” Jason barked. “Let everyone out, set it on fire, kill whoever comes to put it out. The slaves will run wild, let them. Don’t follow them. Squad two, hit the barracks and burn that shit to the ground. Kill as many as you can. Squad three, with me. I want these cannons, and I want them yesterday. Once we have the fort, a double green flare will go up. Squad four, hold the line here. Cut this port off from the city. Everyone, you see a red flare, we abort, and you get the hell out. Blue flare, haul ass to where it came from. Don’t loot until I give the all clear. You stop to stuff your pockets before I tell you to, and I’ll kill you myself. You get me?”

The criminals howled in agreement.

“Go!” Jason yanked a large sword from under his cloak. “Good luck, old man. Try not to get in my way.”

He strode down the gangplank, his monk’s habit flaring.

The criminals dispersed.

Richard held out a ragged gray cloak to her. “I’m wearing a disguise, but you aren’t. Someone might recognize you.”

It was unlikely, but there was no need to tempt fate. She put on the cloak, hiding her face in its deep hood, and adjusted her bag of first-aid supplies under the folds.

Richard unsheathed his sword. The slight curve of the long, slender blade caught the light from the lanterns.

“Our turn,” Richard said. “We must find the bookkeeper. Stay close to me.”

* * *

RICHARD marched down the gangplank, keenly aware of Charlotte following him. The Broken was forever closed to him, but its books were not, and he’d read extensively about the Broken’s military traditions. As a Marine, Jason was trained in the art of small wars. His particular branch of the military evolved to respond to an enemy employing asymmetric warfare, the tactic that involved striking against the vulnerabilities of the opponent rather than seeking to eliminate the bulk of its force. Jason would take a page out of that playbook: he would deliver brutal precision strikes against the vital points of the island, he would drown the island city in chaos and confusion, demoralizing the enemy and severing communication, then he would eliminate the fractured opposition. He would be ruthless and impossible to rein in, but he couldn’t blockade the entire island.

They had to hurry, before the bookkeeper caught on and attempted his escape. They needed his information.

He veered left, following the cobbled streets at a rapid walk. He would’ve liked to run, but Charlotte’s face had turned chalk pale after she’d eliminated the crew, and the color still hadn’t returned. He didn’t want to push her.

What she had done to the crew of the Intrepid Drayton shocked him to the core of his being. There was a kind of terrible beauty to her magic, and when he stood in the epicenter of her silent storm, a feeling of otherworldly awe claimed him, as if he became part of a mystical event that couldn’t be explained, only experienced. It was a peculiar, mesmerizing serenity with a touch of fear, the kind he sometimes felt when walking alone through the towering woods of Adrianglia or staring at the rough ocean and its sky, pregnant with a storm. He had encountered something greater than the limits of his ordinary life, and he was both alarmed and drawn to it.

Jason was right when he called Charlotte Silver Death. The name fit. Horror and beauty mixed into one. But underneath it she was a living, breathing woman, and when he’d looked at her, standing alone at the bow of the ship, vulnerable despite the potent magic swirling around her, while the rest of the people hugged the sides, afraid to step even an inch closer, he felt her isolation. He wanted to shield her, and he had.

He still wanted to protect her now. Despite everything he had gone through, despite his goal being in sight, if someone had offered him a chance to instantly transport her somewhere safe in exchange for having to relive the last six months over again, he would’ve taken it in a heartbeat. And she would deeply hate him for it.

Three people shot out of a side street, two men and a woman. Good weapons, good clothes of a similar cut —town militia or the Market’s slavers. They charged him.

He lent a part of himself to his blade, feeling the magic slide along the edge of his sword. In the Edge, becoming one with the blade took time and effort, but here in the Weird, where the magic was at its strongest, it required a mere fraction of a second. His flash surged along the blade, pure white, fed by the adrenaline coursing through him.

The first man stabbed at him with a short, utilitarian sword. Richard swayed out of the way and thrust into the man’s armpit. The sword slid into his flesh, cutting bone and gristle like it was warm butter. He felt the faintest resistance when the heart ruptured and freed his blade with a sharp tug in time to slam the pommel into the second man’s face. The second attacker stumbled back. The woman jumped into his place, swinging the heavy mace in a devastating sideways blow aimed at Richard’s shoulder to incapacitate his sword arm.

Richard leaned back, letting the mace whistle past him and sliced his sword across her throat. A shallow cut, all that was needed. She gulped her own blood and fell.

He grabbed the remaining man and hurled him against the wall, holding the blade an inch from the thug’s throat. The man’s eyes told Richard he was drowning in sheer animal terror.

“The bookkeeper?”

“House on the hill,” the thug said, his voice shaking. “Columns. White columns.”

Richard released him, and the man took off down the street at a dead run.

Charlotte stood unharmed, taking short, shallow breaths. An expression of deep frustration touched her face.

“Come, we have to hurry,” he told her.

She caught up to him, and together they started up the street, toward the low hill.

“Why do I always do that? Why do I freeze instead of helping you?”

“No killer instinct, remember?” he said. “It’s a natural reaction. When in danger, we fight, flee, or freeze.”

“You don’t freeze.”

“I’m too busy trying to impress you,” he said. “Is it working?”

She gave him an unreadable look. Perhaps now wasn’t the best time for levity.

The street ran into an eight-foot-tall stone wall. Small rocks, each paler than the gray stone making up the bulk of the wall, guarded its top, embedded about twenty feet from each other.

“Ward stones,” Charlotte said.

Climbing the wall was out of the question. The ward wouldn’t let them pass.

“New plan.” Richard turned, and they trailed the wall, heading down. Somewhere there had to be a gate or an opening.

Ahead and to the right, screams cut the silence. An orange-and-red glow lit the night, punctuated by a column of smoke. Jason’s crew had set something on fire.

The side street curved, and they followed it around the houses, closer to the fire and to another wall. An iron gate lay wrenched to the side. Richard ducked through the opening. A wide courtyard spread before him. To the right, near a blocky building, a fight raged between the slavers and a ragged mob armed with shackles and rocks. The slaves struck out, their haggard faces contorted with bestial fury, their bodies, gaping through the holes in their rags, bearing whip marks. They had no weapons. They ripped into the slavers with their nails and teeth like wild animals.

These weren’t the freshly acquired, to be sold as slaves. No, they were the rejects, probably used for manual labor on the island, little more than beasts of burden. No human being should have been treated this way, but they had been, and now they were finally venting their rage. They would kill anyone in their path.

Straight ahead, a raised platform with seven sets of metal posts stood, each post widening at the top. The slaves’ shackles would be fixed to the post, under that wide top, so they could be evaluated. To the right, another