The men in red called themselves ‘feet’. There were white feet, and black feet, and one man was even called a Blood Foot. The respective colors were represented by a stripe painted roughly around each man’s boot at the left ankle. Other than that, their clothes were plain jumpsuits with a straight collar, held together with buttoning snaps. They wore their gear on simple leather or rubber harnesses, but that gear made them unmistakably soldiers. They trudged through the shallow mud on what used to be a moonlit battlefield dragging prisoners behind themselves. The prisoners were bound at the hands and feet, then gagged; though few resisted or even wriggled as they were slid through the sludge on the ground that had been flattened into shiny brown-black slime by the repeated passing of armored cars and methrollers full of supplies and men to occupy and destroy the town burning on the hill above them all beneath the ugly grey skies. They had been beaten more than once since their capture, so what little spirit the prisoners had was impotent and insectile at best. The trail of soldiers were dragging their prisoners to a long, narrow trench that had been dug in the gully, a trench that was now alight in tall billowing flames. Dark shapes burned in the fire, some still moving on their own while others simply fell as things beneath them compressed and gave way.
The soldiers left their prisoners in an orderly row next to the trench where there were another kind of soldiers waiting. They wore the same red jumpsuits, though the gear they carried was closer to tools than wargear. These types were called ‘hands’ and of the four of them there were two with the backs of their left glove painted white, one black, and one a bright red lighter than the crimson of the one who had been called ‘Blood Foot’ before. With them was a man in a splendid red robe brocaded in golden embroidery. The embroidered shapes looked like screaming faces turned upwards in horror as though they were about to be crushed by something falling out of the sky. They called this man ‘Speaker’, and he had a chain in his hand that acted as a leash reaching up to the shackled neck of a woman with pale skin dressed in similar robes to his, but more plainly embroidered with simple gold piping. She stared away from the prisoners in cool detachment, looking for all the world like a bored school child putting up with a particularly drab lecture. In his other hand, the Speaker held an elegant golden dagger that oozed a faint sickly ruby glow. He idly traced little shapes in the back of his leash hand with its tip, and though he barely touched it to himself each tiny stroke drew sequins of blood that welled up into pearls when he flexed his hand around the chain of the leash to pull his pet towards the prisoners as they were brought forth.
The black hand tore the gag from the first prisoner. He was a machinists’ mate on an Imperial Navy gunboat that had been moored in the harbor when the red ships arrived. He was the only survivor of that vessel’s crew. He coughed and started begging for his life when they tore away his gag, but a swift kick from the red hand silenced him.
The man in the fine robes approached the prisoner and knelt down to look him over. He used his thumb and forefinger to shove the man’s eye open wide. When he was satisfied, he asked, “Do you wish to rebuild the world?”
The prisoner looked so confused, but did at least respond, “Sir, I only wish to survive this day.”
The man in the robe tousled the prisoner’s hair affectionately, then idly and easily sliced off a matted brown locke to crumble apart in the bloody fingers of his leash hand while he mused, “Of course, we all do, son. Would you accept Khaldon’s divinity? Would you serve him gladly?”
The prisoner vehemently nodded his head with every ounce of strength he could muster, feeling the presence of that glowing knife right next to his face. “Yes, sir, yes, of course! Anything you ask!”
“But you have to believe it.” the Speaker coached, “You have to believe you will.”
“I mean it, sir!” cried the prisoner, “Anything at all if you just spare my life!”
The Speaker looked up and over his shoulder at the leashed woman. She had the features one would have expected to see on a person with dark skin and hair, but her long horse-like face was paper-white pale and her hair was an almost-pink strawberry blonde to match her sunken yellow eyes. Those same eyes were directed pitilessly down at the desperate prisoner, and she unceremoniously declared, “He’s lying. Doesn’t mean it, just scared.”
The prisoner’s eyes darted to her, his mouth gaped. He dry-heaved and tried to get off his knees and onto his feet. The man in the red robes pushed his little dagger into the prisoner’s chest without even dimpling the fabric of his shirt and then shoved him into the burning trench with another. The next prisoner was brought forth and his gag removed. The man was dressed in low, plain clothing that showed he had been quite poor before this day and if anything his current station was an improvement.
“I will join.” he said before he had even been questioned. He met the Speaker’s eyes with his own and let the larger man see the fire in them. This time, the Speaker did not consult the woman on his leash, but simply gestured a flicking hand towards one of the white hands, who whisked the man away without another word.
The next prisoner was in a Tribune’s greatcoat, an exceedingly tall man with stern blue eyes and a face scarred from many previous encounters. The moment the gag was removed from his mouth he spat in the Speaker’s face and shouted, “Jade Queen watch over me! I will not yield! Do it! Do it, blood-drinking rat!”
“Blasphemer, blasphemer, blasphemer.” muttered the red-robed man disapprovingly. The Speaker jammed his hand around the Tribune’s jaw and used his knife to lever the man’s mouth open. There was a wet clicking noise as the tip of the dagger ran along the spit-slick teeth of the Tribune’s lower jaw. With a look of disappointed disapproval, the Speaker sawed pitilessly through the Tribune’s writhing tongue and cut it free from the wrenching jaw amid wet, gurgling groans. Blood poured out from between the man’s teeth as the Speaker tossed the lump of flesh into the mud where it landed with a sickening plap. Then, instead of dispatching the Tribune like he had the first prisoner, the Speaker simply kicked the writhing, moaning man into the roaring fire still alive to burn slowly while the first fat drops of rain started to fall from the dark and cloudy skies.
The next prisoner was the Tribune’s cadet, a slender young woman with huge, lovely brown eyes overflowing with tears. Her uniform had been torn and cut in multiple places, but the Speaker took special care in lifting her up. He surveyed her with a thoughtful expression before yanking the chained woman’s leash and asking, “Is this the one?”
The leashed woman looked down with utter indifference at the new prisoner and shrugged, “Yes, what about it?”
The Speaker grinned. “Does she recognize you?”
The cadet was shuddering now, absolutely devastated. They had left her gag on her, but even through it her mournful cries were lamentable to every listener. The leashed woman watched her for a short time and then said, “She’s in deep shock. I can’t tell what she’s feeling other than that everything hurts and she wants it to stop.”
“Poor creature.” remarked the Speaker. “I’ll make it stop for her.”
With sincere pity in his eyes, the Speaker wiped the tears from her cheeks and petted back the young woman’s mud-soaked hair before he drove his knife into her side and tossed her into the flames. She was face down in the ditch, mud rolling in and coating her on her left side with the rainwater pouring over the edge of the trench. The Tribune she had been assigned to, the man who had been tasked with mentoring her and training her up just like him was on her other side in the fire. Horrible wheezing and crackling emanated from his still moving form. The cadet lay there unable to move with the horrible pain in her side, the blood leaking out of her and soaking her uniform. The corpse of another prisoner came over the edge of the trench and crushed the dying Tribune, with a sound of crackling and little hissing jets of steam. Still, weakly, a mutilated and burned arm emerged from the flames clawing at the mud on the side of the trench. With the last seconds of life in him, the Tribune was desperately clawing and piling more and more of the hot, sticky mud onto his cadet; desperate to save her life.
The fire roared, the moans of the dead and dying played a macabre harmony to the distant pitter-patter of gunfire and whistling artillery shells.
The heat was scorching, tearing, drilling down to the bone on one side while the icy cold chilled the other in an antipodean roar of unyielding pain and terror.
It overcame all sensation.
Irina awoke in a panic with cold sweat pouring over her forehead. She sat straight up with her hand falling to her left where she kept her carbine leaning up against the washbasin booth in her cabin. Her hand clenched the shape of the handguard, the reassuring wood and steel letting her know that whether she died or not she could at least go down with a fight. But she was in a darkened cabin, on a quiet ship, in the middle of the sea. She looked around the room to make sure it was still empty, but in the dim red light trickling in through the portholes above the two beds she could see that she was alone. The other bed had held Placelle Lamella for all of two hours their first day aboard, but to Irina’s extreme pleasure the soul-sucker had quickly gone off to jam a straw into Arlo Harkon instead. Once she was satisfied no monsters lurked in the shadows, Irina slipped out of the bed and carried her carbine around to the washing booth. She didn’t turn on the lights in the cabin, but merely opened the door and surveyed her scarred and tattooed face in the mirror, laughing with some inward amusement to see herself there; a scarred-up little woman in a loose-fitting romper with huge messy hair and a military carbine.
Woe unto whatever fool man broke into her house one day if he saw a sight like this come down the stairs. At least if she took the romper off first the fellow could die with a show. Irina palmed the tears off her cheeks, disgusted by their very presence, and thought herself another joke. Perhaps, she figured, if she had a fat pair of udders like Placelle Lamella did then the robber might even surrender to her and leave empty-handed.
Perhaps, she told herself next with a smirk growing on her face, if she let him just weigh them in his hands the guy would even be happy for her to just go ahead and kill him; preferably by smothering him with the voluminous milk wagons that would’ve been absolutely ridiculous on her much-smaller chest. Finally, Irina found herself chuckling in the dark while she leaned the carbine against the wall and slid out the privy so she could jump out of her romper, squat over the pot, and finish waking up.
The sun still had not risen a half-hour later, and the entire ship was awash in a warm red glow beneath the radiant Blood Moon. Irina was in full uniform with the tails of her greatcoat billowing behind her on the weatherdeck holding a still-warm paper sack of freshly-baked shortbread in one hand and her peaked cap under her opposite arm. Implacable Ali had agreed the night before to kindly produce a batch to her specification, but then she had yet to find any loyal Corovokian chef on the Stone who wouldn’t. At most, she usually had to pay some kind of bribe which was fair enough as she saw it. ‘Customary gifts’, as they were called, were an artifact of lower-class life that made the Tribune feel downright at-home anywhere on the Ten-Thousand Seas. Irina pressed her cap down over her freshly-braided hair and adjusted it by the visor before she started gently massaging the bag full of shortbread in an attempt to prompt all the little bricks inside to line themselves up in a row. Once it was more or less flat, she slipped it into one of the side-pockets of her greatcoat and huddled up next to an oiler who was smoking in the little cubby between the curve of the tarped Huber Bell and the hull of the ship.
“I reckon The Goddess forgot to turn the heat on for us out here, hey, shipmate?” she asked the man genially.
He sniggered and responded, “Nah, shipmate, she jes’ forgot to close the icebox door.”
Irina slapped the man’s back in the dark and had a good hardy laugh at that one, then stuck out her hand palm-up to him. “Say, gi’us a fag, hey? I’ve not smoked since bed last night.”
“You are who I will be in nine hours, I make no doubt.” the man responded with a careworn sigh as he produced his cigarette case. “My bloody feet are screaming like middies who’ve just had their rum ration stopped, but at least the shift’s nearly done.”
Irina commiserated with the man by giving him another pat on the back before lighting the cigarette and digging out a warm stick of shortbread for him. “Here, chew on this after you’ve smoked, a fine pick-me-up to get you through the last stretch.”
The oiler thanked her and they smoked in pleasant joint magnanimity for a minute or two longer before the man flicked his butt into the icy water and bid Irina farewell. She sent him off with a casual wave of her cigarette-laden hand while she covered her yawning face with the other.
When dawn finally came, it found her in her romper again on the floor of her cabin. She’d started out on the bed, but couldn’t get back to sleep. Instead she’d just tried a little fantasy in her head, thinking about the warrant officer who manned the engineering console on the bridge during the Day Watch. Irina wasn’t sure what their actual job titles were, but whenever it was a pretty girl she always called them ‘bridge bunnies’ in her head. Now she was picturing the Sunseeker’s bridge bunny, a sweet little redhead with cute plump freckled cheeks, sliding out of her uniform. In Irina’s mind the girl would be wearing a thin little negligee or something underneath and the Tribune would carry out an ‘investigation’ into its contents. Just before Irina could get the pillow between her thighs, however, she was distracted again by thoughts of Placelle Lamella.
Sure, the bridge bunny was a fit bird alright, or so her imagination told her, but that soul-sucker was stacked. And to top it off, she had looked down at Irina with her hair rolling off her hand like a waterfall and those marvelous pumpkins heaving, and said she would pleasure Irina.
So instead of passing the time pleasantly, Irina had a temper tantrum in the privacy of her cabin, screamed into her pillow, and then set to doing sit-ups on the floor while the golden rays of morning sunlight stabbed through the portholes above the beds. She rinsed off with water from the basin, then changed rompers and washed the sweat-soaked one she’d been wearing before hanging it up and donning her uniform once more. This time, a cigarette was requisitioned from the scullery boy who gladly handed it to her after they’d chatted for a while; mainly because she’d taken off her greatcoat, rolled up her sleeves, and scrubbed a few pots while they talked about what a fit bird that bridge bunny really was. Apparently, the girl’s name was Davrine, and the scullery boy had it on good authority that she had got drunk off stolen Guilder champagne the night she had got promoted and everybody in the engine room had got to see her nipples.
Life was good sometimes, or so Irina felt it must’ve been as she considered what Davrine’s nipples must have looked like and puffed complacently through this second cigarette with the distant dark shape of Lortar Island looming on the horizon. They had arrived the night before. The ice wall was still visible as a sort of yellow hue to be squinted at if one peered to the stern of the ship, but it was so late at night that Hardwick had decided to wait until morning when the sutlers were open before bringing in the ship. Irina was fine with it, for her part, because despite not getting much sleep in either case she wanted to put young Arlo to the test in the colony and there wouldn’t likely be much testing to be done if his only job was not to wake the poor townies up. This way, she could hop a buzzer with the lad and cruise off for a looking-in run on the port. Maybe they could scrape some local news out of the tavern nearest to the docks, and if Irina was really lucky she could get some beer into her gut for the first time since boarding the Ravenheart five months hence.
Thinking of the long lad prompted Irina to roll back the sleeve of her greatcoat and squint down suspiciously at the face of her wristwatch. Lovely brass hands on a dark green dial with luminous numbers looked back up at her, but the accursed thing claimed that it was still seven of the Blood Watch so she smacked it a few times before realizing the sweep hand wasn’t even moving. Three gold moons that could have been spent on Queen-only-knows how many nights of smoke, feasting, dancing, and dicing might have fetched a fancy shock-resistant, waterproof watch from the finest atelier in Corovos but it wasn’t worth said atelier’s farts if she forgot to wind the thing. Growling, Irina pulled hard on her cigarette before spitting it into the sea and stomping off towards the rear superstructure of the ship while she furiously wound the watch. With her eyes on the dial of the watch she plunged face first into an oncoming body likewise distracted by its own watch and fell straight back onto her rump with guttural grunt.
“Why can’t you learn to make a lane, you awkward, slab-sided–” she was already in the process of saying, but when she saw Arlo in front of her yelping and bouncing his pocket watch from hand to hand like a schoolgirl trying to handle a hot kettle, Irina just decided to snatch his watch out of the air and snag at his chain to pull him by his buttonhole. This prompted another little yelp from the young man that made Irina sneer. She looked him up and down while she held his watch, taking in his outfit. His normal little khakis, scuffed brown boots, and waistcoat were all present; but he’d finally abandoned that ridiculous little bolero that made him look like a minstrel bugler and slipped into a waxed canvas overcoat with a slight swell at the hips that Irina felt gave him a not altogether unpleasant figure.
“Here, you silly man,” she told him, shoving the watch back into his pocket with one hand while she palmed the deck to get her feet beneath her again with the other. “Dust yourself off and gi’us the time, sire.”
Arlo blinked back at her for a moment before getting his mouth shut enough to open it again. “B-beg pardon, Madame Tribune?”
Irina tapped her wristwatch meaningfully while she glared up at the princeling. “The time, the time, lad. What have you got? I know you have got it; which I just stuffed that bloody turnip you’re always squinting at back in your damned pocket. What’s it blinkin’ say!?”
“Ah, uh,” squelched the man ridiculously while he drew his watch again. He looked down at it in his right hand while sweeping one side of his overcoat behind the scabbard of his sabre, and read out, “I have zed and thirty of the Day Watch.”
“Exactly?” Irina asked, already twisting the crown of her watch to set it.
“Well, it’s almost zed and thirty-one.” he added with a gentle attempt at helpfulness. Irina waved a dismissive hand right in his face once she finished adjusting the hands on her watch. Some vague cautious impulse pulled her head back up, however, and she peered up at Arlo for a moment before tilting in place to look behind him.
“Where’s… the creature?” she asked carefully.
Arlo quirked an eyebrow. “Which one?”
Irina wrinkled her nose, “That big tumor growing off your arse that calls itself an Oathkeeper.”
The Tribune liked how she could tell that Arlo was annoyed by the inference, but that he kept to himself about it. It was the place of softer, work-shy folk, in her opinion, to keep such complaints and sensitivities to themselves at all times if possible. When the princeling stacked a few boxes or took the time to do something other than comb his (admittedly very lovely) hair, Irina would permit him in her heart to have an opinion about things. For the time being, she was happy that he seemed irked but only felt licensed to answer her as though she’d asked nicely.
“I asked her to go to the officer of the watch and see if we could get a cox’n to help us with the buzzer.” he answered in the even tones of a man who did not want to offend a difficult woman. “I was checking in on Master Mirana to see how he was recovering from his rather short little jaunt, and I felt it prudent to give her some task so the two wouldn’t nip at one-another.”
Irina chuckled at that, nodding in agreement. She liked watching the mutant and the soul-sucker go at it, personally, but could at least imagine how it might be tiring to Arlo seeing as how both of the freaks seemed in rut for him. Irina flicked her hand to beckon Arlo on a stroll with her and proceeded back towards the buzzers, the crane, and the Huber Bell with her hands tucked behind her. She walked and talked, explaining, “I can’t say as though I care much for the yellow slime, though he is fun to card with and he dresses and acts like a very pretty man.”
“I’m surprised to hear you think any man is pretty, considering your…” Arlo started as he double-timed a few paces with his long legs to catch up to her, then he trailed off. Irina cast a suspicious glance over her shoulder at him, half-expecting him to reveal that his little pet soul-sucker had blabbed just how hard up for girl-flesh Irina really was of late. Not that it was anything to be ashamed of, per se, just that a Tribune needed to be seen as dutiful more than lustful.
Arlo seemed to catch that this was the case, somehow, because he decided to finish by blushing and saying very quickly, “Your taste in playing cards, Madame Tribune, all of which are quite shocking to one such as myself.”
Irina chuckled again and nodded more forcefully. She’d forgotten how bawdy her deck of cards actually was. When she’d first won it in a game of Salvo from the boatswain of the HMS Bladebiter in what seemed like another life, Irina had been almost as shocked as Arlo. Though perhaps a better description of her feelings would have been ‘pleasantly surprised’. The hand-drawn illustrations were not exactly the works of masters, but they were detailed enough to excite the imagination and Irina had taken a great deal of pleasure in simply looking at each one and thinking about how the lovely woman on each card might have found herself in such a predicament.
“Well, if you must know,” she told Arlo now, as though he had probed her aggressively instead of making a passing comment, “I do fancy the girlflesh quite a bit. However, though I admit it is getting a little late for me to make that happen, I do still think of squirting out a few little Irinas every now and then. And you can’t make that happen with two girls.”
For some reason, the prospect seemed to make Arlo somewhat sad. Irina huddled beneath the crane on the cold deck and watched him process what she’d said, fighting her initial instinct to be offended and just waiting for him to say something.
“It sounds sad to me, that you would have to lie with somebody you didn’t love and that you wouldn’t even be able to enjoy it in order to have children.” he eventually managed, and then crossed his hands over his stomach with an expression somewhere between empathetic pity and indecision. “I don’t know if I could manage it, but I suppose a woman can do more than a man with nothing.”
“Oh, no, sire, don’t trouble yourself thinking like that,” Irina laughed with another dismissive wave of her hand. Honestly, the boy was all sorts of determined to make everything difficult for everyone in his head. The Tribune found it oddly endearing, but decided to painfully elbow Arlo in the ribs as a reward for his remarkable sensitivity. While he yelped and rubbed his side, she explained, “No, I’m not completely set against menfolk in bed. Why, the act itself probably feels fine enough, Queen knows every girl has made a little man out of the longest finger on her hand and tried it out once or twice on her own.”
Since Arlo was now turning beet red and blushing like a schoolgirl who’d just farted, Irina elbowed him again and went on, “No, nothing to get worked up over at all, princeling. I just need to find the right man, get me a fey little creature who looks good in make-up. Maybe you’d better help, hey? If you don’t find Irina a bit of meat before her clock goes off, maybe I put you in a whalebone corset and a pair of lace-topped stockings, tie you to the bed and have you meself like one of my girls.”
The shameful blush on Arlo at this stage was so deep that he even felt the need to cover his face with both hands, but this only egged Irina on. With her grin turning into something like a grimace, she circled behind the leggy clanner and grabbed his hips from behind, gently pushing them as though to encourage him to thrust, while saying, “Ooh-ooh, alarum, I think he likes the idea a little too much, don’t he?”
She was on the verge of giving Arlo a good smack on the backside and seeing if he would yelp again when the smooth and high voice of Placelle Lamella interrupted her.
“He doesn’t like that.”
Irina started and whipped around to see the gargantuan woman looking down at her while leaning around the corner. Placelle Lamella’s half-lidded gaze was pointed right at her, her features drawn into a look of sleepy concern while she watched Irina bully the young man. Irina crossed her arms and sneered at the soul-sucker.
“He never asked me to stop.” she protested, “And he’s blushing like he likes it.”
Placelle Lamella came around the corner and stood with them under the crane. The Oathkeeper had donned her armor and cassock for their journey, but now that Irina had seen her in nought but a thin little shift it was still easy to admire her shapely figure even with all the adornments. Their size difference made her feel indignantly small, however.
“He doesn’t like it.” Placelle Lamella repeated in her sweet, small voice, then reached over to pet Arlo’s shoulder a little while he just forced himself to look away from both of them, “It’s not nice to tease him like that.”
“I’m just embarrassed, is all,” Arlo finally put in, gently pushing Placelle Lamella’s hand away before turning down to Irina, still red in the cheeks, to explain, “I was brought up that you’re supposed to keep things like that private. In public you have to be patriotic and focused on your duty. Polite conversation could spread to hobbies like music or poetry, but fornication…”
Irina rolled her eyes at the word, and Arlo rolled his back at hers before finishing, “I was just taught that it’s not the sort of thing you talk about unless it’s with somebody you’re actually going to do that sort of stuff with. And I have not done that sort of stuff with very many people so even still I feel out-of-my-depth when you talk about it so freely.”
“You can’t convince me a lad like you didn’t have a bunch of pretty rich girls he made false promises to back at the old homestead,” Irina argued next. It was the very height of audacity, the boffinry of it, and something all upper class folk fell victim to. They always thought that they were invisible to their lessers. Two hundred years of wealth limits and the mass reduction of the aristocracy had done nothing to lessen true elitism in the Corovokian Empire, at least as far as Irina Rathbone figured it. “I’ve seen how you lot moon about. I bet you even had a few common girls on the side who thought they had a chance at the society life if they let you take a peek at their knickers.”
Now, for the first time in her memory, Arlo became indignant. It was a nice change of pace, at least. Irina found some feeling which resembled respect swimming in her gullet as Arlo’s brow furrowed, and made sure to countenance herself into an expression of respectful attention as he lectured, “Now, listen here, Madame Tribune, I don’t know what sorts of things you’ve heard but I am and always have been a man of my word. I would never lure a young lady under false pretenses.”
Then, all at once the vigour and fire was gone and Arlo deflated slightly before adding in a more dull tone that sucked the life out of Irina, “Besides, it’s quite bold of you to presume they would have me in the first place. I have not had good luck with women.”
Irina actually opened her mouth to apologize to Arlo. She could hardly believe she was doing it. But ultimately she had to admit to herself that she was being unfair to him, and if she had to admit it to herself then she owed it to Arlo to admit it to him as well. Besides, a Tribune had to be fair. That was the entire point of the job. Only, she hadn’t even formed the first word of her apology when Arlo suddenly turned to Placelle Lamella and used her as a living segue to change the subject.
“Were you able to get permission for us to use the boat?” he asked her hopefully.
Placelle Lamella nodded, then mangled a bit of nautical terminology that she had only heard and never read. “Yes, I did, Arlo. They said the ‘cock’s son’ will be up in just a few minutes to lower us down the side and we could even leave the boat at the dock if we wanted and they could pick it up when they came in later today.”
“Great work, thank you.” Arlo piped back with a satisfied grin splitting his face. Irina found herself rankling internally to see the lad pull a dog treat out of his coat, and even moreso to see him hand it to the Oathkeeper.
Irina’s disgust grew to absurd proportions as she witnessed the massive woman happily and greedily take the treat with an enormously pleased-looking smile.
The buzzer trip looking into Lortar Bay was nearly an hour, even with the ship standing in a little closer by the time they left and the aid of the receding tide. Coming in from an eastern approach meant the retreat of the Blood Moon into the west surged the sea with it, and the water was high as they rounded a rocky shoal surrounded by chiming buoys on both sides and the town proper came into view. Arlo seemed surprised when it was Irina who took the tiller and ran them out instead of the coxswain; almost as surprised as she was to find him prying open a waxed paper package fresh from the armory to load his revolver.
It wasn’t that she thought it was unreasonable for a gentleman to go into town with a weapon, even one who already had an armored slab of church zealot trying to keep her nose firmly planted inside of his rear end following him around wherever he went. It was more that she was surprised he had not loaded it before now. That an untested weapon had sat happily in the boy’s holster for four days seemed absurd. Irina would shoot targets with the marines of ships she was traveling on at least once a week. On the occasions the Tribunal Committee saw fit to attach stormtroopers to her, the Tribune would join them for all of their exercises. When she’d lost her last carbine over the side of the HMS Vixenfire a year or two before, she had spent every day practicing with the one slung over her shoulder in the buzzer; and again when she’d bought the prism sight for it on her last return to Corovos.
Arlo smiled weakly at her as he reholstered the revolver, so Irina supposed he could tell she was judging him. She tried to look away and give him a bit of space, but the bay was only water for a vast expanse and holding the tiller while staring straight ahead could only be interesting for so long. Irina let her gaze drift over to Placelle Lamella on the other side of the motor and instantly regretted it.
The Oathkeeper was staring out over the bay to the headland they’d just rounded, her eyes actually opened and alert for a change. She seemed overjoyed by the ride and the view, and her hair was streaming out from behind her head to one side. The soft pink bloom of it caught the sunlight and almost glowed. When Placelle Lamella noticed Irina was looking at her, she looked back and smiled warmly. It seemed like such a sincere smile that Irina found herself blushing like Arlo often seemed to whenever the wind blew wrong on him.
Hastily, Irina whipped her head back around to the approaching docks and shore with a sour expression and made a show of shoving her hat down further onto her head even though the wind had never seemed to stir it once because it was already so tightly stretched against her.
Where larger islands were often so packed with shipping that one almost couldn’t even see the city from the water; Lortar’s harbor was small and very much empty. The town itself was built on a higher plateau than the docks. The docks themselves were only wide enough to fit two ships of the Sunseeker’s size at once, and they were made up of a monolithic concrete facade sticking out of the shore so regular and perfect against the chaos of the land with its shrubs and hillsides. At first it looked as though some kind of little white and grey pickets had been built along the top of the seawall, until one of the pickets flapped its wings and took off into the air to join its fellow gulls in a peeling chorus of screeching calls. In the center of the huge concrete docks, looking all the more barren for there being no ship moored within them, there was a lower platform right along the water’s edge with a canal leading to a series of boathouses for buzzers like theirs or other small boats. Irina eased the buzzer into the canal and found that the boathouses were at least occupied by some few small craft. Most were fishing boats, but the odd utility craft or trawler were also squeezed into some of the larger awnings. With the privilege accorded to a person of her station, Irina did not even consider whether the empty slip she had chosen belonged to somebody else or that there might be some kind of docking fee.
A Tribune did not pay docking fees.
Instead she slipped the buzzer into one of the little covered jetties and moored it. She briefly considered asking Arlo and Placelle Lamella to help her, but the way they both seemed to stare back at her with open, unashamed ignorance as she started tossing ropes onto the dock made Irina think she was better off doing it herself. Two tie-downs later, Arlo and Placelle Lamella were stepping off the boat onto the dock and Irina was walking with them along the surface of the greying wood with her eyes sharp on the lookout for the first person with even the remotest relative appearance of being a smoker. It was somewhat odd and disappointing to see the docks mostly devoid of intelligent life, even on an island as remote as Lortar. Irina had also been somewhat surprised to see no fisherman out in the bay though she supposed on an island as cold as this one and with so small a population there was little fishing to be done other than what would sustain the local townsfolk.
Still, there were subtle alarm bells going off in the Tribune’s head as they mounted the stairs and ascended to the wide packed-dirt road that ran along the dock. A tiny radiography shack was visible on the other side in a cutout of the rock with its antenna cable swirling and disappearing away into the trees around it to some faraway unseen place. To the left the road wound and narrowed to the town where it seemed the vehicles it had been widened for never went. To the right it bore around a corner and over a hill from which twin plumes of smoke or perhaps steam arose. Irina pointed in that direction and told Arlo, “That way I surmise is the gas well and the refinery. If the workers in town say anything is amiss there, likely you and I will have to go and call upon the foremen to see if they are up to their usual shenanigans.”
Arlo blinked in confusion with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his waxed overcoat before asking, “What do you mean to imply, Madame Tribune? I cannot conceive of any sort of shenanigainery my uncle would permit. He is, after all, known for his short temper.”
“Come along,” Irina said first, stuffing her own hands into her pockets before turning and with a flick of her head leading them on the road towards the town. As they drew closer, buildings began to take shape. It seemed the packed dirt had about five businesses on either side of it before rising into a switchback that took it to rows of cottages on another plateau above it. Irina tilted her head while she walked and took in the further rows of cottages just barely visible on yet another rise before deciding that Lortar must’ve meant ‘staircase’ in some long-dead language. While they trudged through the cool, stiff mud left by some methroller or another, she explained to Arlo what she felt his parents should have taught him as a child: “A clan is a big thing, lad. No single Clannarch is able to keep eye nor finger on every single moving piece in a Great House. Being that they possess a Limitless Wealth Decree, government can’t nationalize their businesses, either. There’s ways to maintain such a pon’druss thing, of course, don’t mistake me; but you’ll also forgive me if I find myself questioning your great man’s ability to enforce such maintenance when he spends all his time seeing red on red, if you catch my meaning.”
Arlo nodded solemnly. He alone in the group had been permitted into the room with Treistan during a tantrum, but they had all heard it. Irina was sure that Placelle Lamella had gained a stone just weighing down the chairs while all that vitriol poured through the waiting room, forget that the heartleech had been sitting there every day already for Queen-knows how long when Irina first boarded the Dawnstorm.
“If you don’t mind indulging me,” Arlo said now with a studious gaze directed straight ahead, as though he was having a hard time looking over at Irina while drumming up the courage to ask, “Chief Huddlestone, our mutual acquaintance, told me that you were holed up in the Ravenheart with stormtroopers. Did you requisition those thinking you might have to use them on my uncle?”
Irina did not answer him. She did look over at him, though, then wrinkled her nose and looked away. This prompted Arlo to continue, “Sincerely, I ask because I am told he has gone mad. He seems obsessed, to be sure, but not truly insane. I ask you this not as a Tribune, but as a person who is my traveling companion– perhaps even you may consider us friends since you are so bold as to threaten dressing me in womens’ clothing.”
Irina sniggered at the suggestion, and decided that even though she did not think very highly of Arlo as a man, she would consider him a friend for the time being. Since they were friends, she took her hand from her pocket and patted him on the back a little too hard; just the way she decided he liked it. “I will tell you something true, shipmate.”
Arlo flicked his eyes over to her with evident interest and Irina grinned back at him.
“I requested the opportunity to handle House Haradin’s audit and used my not-insignificant influence with the Committee to get it.” said Irina with some pride in her voice, “For typically it is my domain to find wealth-limit dodgers and crooked governors. I am considered something of a maverick on the mainland as I often let things slide that the Committee would prefer I didn’t, but my results speak for themselves. However, your uncle’s infamous madness– and the man well and truly is sixes and sevens of a sort– is of particular interest to me.”
“And why is that?” Arlo now asked blithely, or with some attempt at polite blithety.
Irina widened her grin and walked a few more paces before confessing at last, “Because like your uncle I am wet in my nethers to kill cultists.”
Arlo blanched, though Irina couldn’t be sure if it was her bloodlust or her general impropriety, so she added for good measure, “I am with child to see as many of them die as possible, and I cannot imagine a better chance to do so than to attach myself to the Holy Task Force your uncle is assisting with the raid of Redbrook Bay. My only regret is that my stormtroops may have to go into battle without me because I threw in with you on this errand for Pickles.”
Now they were between the first two buildings on the little business strip at the entry to town. On the left was a large vittling warehouse with a somewhat-disused looking meth lorry parked in front and to the right was a long-abandoned business office that had the House Haradin coat-of-arms hanging above the door. Arlo wandered over to the entrance of the building and tried to peer inside through the dust-coated window in the heavy wooden door, then tried tugging on the door. Irina now noticed the streets in the town were as barren as the town itself. Not that she expected to see them teeming with people when the work day at the refinery had likely already begun, but a few idlers and at least one watchman from the local constabulary were expected to be milling about.
To make sure that everybody was on the same page with her, the Tribune stopped her gait and looked around with a very skeptical gaze before turning back to Arlo and the Oathkeeper who had so placidly followed them along this far to say, “Before anything else happens, I would like to tell you both that I have a very bad feeling about this place. I got no real way of deciding what it is, but something’s not right here.”
Placelle Lamella raised a gauntleted hand and pointed to a tall brown spire that seemed to emerge from the buildings at the end of town. It was a fairly simple wooden steeple with green boards between the support beams leading into a tall post that had a carved hellebore rising up high above the roofs around it. “There is a chapel down there, and even on an island this small there should be a priest and a monk living there so someone is available at all times. I was hoping to visit with them and ask if there was anything I could help with while I was here, but if you’d like I can also ask them to tell me if anything odd is happening here.”
Irina rankled at the prospect of soliciting help from the Oathkeeper, though she did often find help from local branches of the Divine Orderhood on other islands. She was surprised, however, to find that it was work-dodging Arlo who answered instead.
“That would be very good, Placelle Lamella, thank you.” the young man said with a gentle smile.
Irina thought she would be sick seeing how much the Oathkeeper bloomed before leaving them with a sickle hand and a half-bow. And yet, she still found her eyes seeking the swaying shape of the larger woman’s rump in the cassock before tearing them away and looking up at Arlo again. “Right, that’s sorted then. She will check the forum of the pious, and you and I shall check the forum of the patriotic.”
“The governor’s house?” Arlo asked with a cocked eyebrow.
Irina laughed at him. “Negative, shipmate. The local tavern!”
