Embers and ashes flickered slowly up into the chilly air like one-winged butterflies; levitating above smouldering long black shapes that were once men. In the courtyard of the chapel they burned in rows of five, the formations of the dead like a grid of shadows stark black against the green and yellow grass while they turned from flames to char to white powdery ashes on scorched ground. Brass trays filled with smoking cones of incense oozed twirling trails of green and blue smoke at the corners of the macabre grid of corpses, filling the air with the stench of fir, mint, mugwort, and bergamot.
Once they’d filled a full grid of twenty-five some unknowable urge for order made the priest and the Oathkeeper move a few paces over and start a second collection. Not all the bodies were constables who had resisted Gavin’s uprising. Those had been on the top of the pile, because they were on the bottom of some previous one that had existed behind the constables’ office before the single remaining constable on the island had drunkenly managed to hitch the wagon onto the back of a methroller and deliver it to the chapel with minimal damage to the methroller.
The monk Gister had been particularly hard for Dobran to splash the oil over. He’d evidently been caught in the crossfire of the gunfight, for he had succumbed to a single wound on his left side where the other men who had been shot were all shot in the head or chest. What agitated Placelle Lamella more than Dobran was the realization that some of the constables had clearly shot each other; either out of betrayal or incompetence on both accounts. Likewise, some of the corpses belonged to ordinary citizens who had stood up to the men that now controlled the island. The reckoning that would come when the Sunseeker landed would be more than welcome, but there was still a part of the Oathkeeper that wished the men didn’t have to keep order at the refinery so some of them might come and find her.
She wanted them to try on her what they tried on their own neighbours.
Placelle Lamella was hungry, and she was a lot more dangerous than the good people who had died for the pride and avarice of one foolish sinner.
Now they were deeper in the wagon and it was hard to fish the bodies out with dignity, Placelle Lamella was just hefting herself over the side of the wagon and heaving two bodies onto the wall before pulling them onto her shoulders from the ground below. On one shoulder she had an old woman who had died in her sleep, and on the other a fisherman who had smashed his head upon a rock bringing in his daily catch. At least, this was what Dobran told her while she laid them onto their backs on unlit pyres of linen and wood in front of her and then neatly arranged their stiff limbs into something more like repose. As she turned back to the wagon for more corpses, Dobran came along behind her with a brass urn under his arm. Using a simple tin ladle he dipped sweet-smelling oil from the urn and threw it across the bodies while muttering long prayers to The Goddess beneath his breath.
“May the Jade Queen watch over you and preserve you.”
Placelle Lamella climbed into the wagon and wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her arm before dipping her grimy powder and gore coated hands down to lift the last two corpses
“May our goddess take your soul unto her bosom.”
Placelle Lamella moaned softly beneath the strain of the weight as she rolled them over and flopped them onto the side of the wagon, then massaged her lower back and looked up at the grey clouds climbing across the sky.
“May you know the peace of death, eternal sleep without thought or dream beneath the eternal vigil of She Who Watches, She Who Guides.”
On the horizon, a horizon only visible from the raised position of the wagon, she could see the Sunseeker making its way to the headland they’d passed around with the buzzer before. It was so much slower than the buzzer, so it looked almost like it was standing still in the bay. She stared at it for a few seconds trying to determine how long it would be before it was in port, eventually deciding that she did not know enough about nautical matters to really tell.
“In Her name, I absolve you of your hate and fear. A child again, I send you into her waiting arms.”
The Oathkeeper hopped over the side of the wagon and landed in the grass at a half-squat before pulling the bodies onto her shoulders again.
“In Her name, I cleanse the world of your suffering and sorrow. What good you’ve done is all that remains and we shall use it In Her name.”
Placelle Lamella carefully laid out the last two corpses on the last two pyres. One was an apparent suicide, an unkempt fat man with ligature marks all around a swollen blue neck. The noose had been loosened, but was still draped over his neck as though it were an accessory of his roughspun tunic and threadbare trousers. The last one was a much thinner man, finely dressed with only eyebrows for hair and a strong masculine chin. He bore a knife wound on his chest, right through his heart, a deep sanguine stain blossoming from around it and ruining the brocaded filigree of his fine frock coat. Blood also ran around the ring finger on his right hand, where he wore a gold signet ring that had been nicked while his palm and thumb were slashed, presumably grasping the knife that had killed him. Placelle Lamella had seen other wounds like it before.
“Oh.” Dobran seemed surprised to see the man laid out there on the pyre. He leaned over and looked at the corpse for a brief silent moment before saying, “I suppose that Mister Baxter didn’t plan on keeping Governor Umbrew hostage after all, since he’s dead right here, goddess bless the poor man.”
Placelle Lamella felt a hard pit of dread in her stomach at the revelation, but she wasn’t sure exactly why. There was a loose string somewhere in the knot of her psyche, veiled in fog but ready to unravel with just the slightest tug. The Waking Rest deadened her mind so much, but after her earlier moments without it the dark urge was waiting just outside it. She blinked slowly and tried to just follow her instincts.
“Brother Dobran,” she asked now while he splashed oil onto the two new corpses. “Can you handle the rest of this on your own? The wagon is empty. I want to wash my hands and splash my face with water, then go and check on my Wayward, Arlo. I’m worried about him.”
Dobran gave her a very forceful nod and even prodded (perhaps a little thoughtlessly) with the empty ladle, saying, “Yes, of course you must. Our duty to the living should always come before our duty to the dead.”
“Thank you, Blessed Brother.” replied the Oathkeeper, studiously forming a crescent over her chest and bowing to him before turning on her heel to seek the comfort of a stone fountain she knew to be on the other side of the building.
Even though she was mostly insensible to cold, Placelle Lamella was certainly feeling it as she made her way back down the street at a brisk trot now that her tunic and shift were damp and even her wrap beneath them was a little misted. Still, the nagging fear in her stomach pushed her onwards even though she wanted to go back for Brother Gister’s spare smock or her cassock. She trod through the muddy street up to the entrance of the Moon and Star and paused transfixed for half a moment as she suddenly realized the sign above the door matched the engraving on Arlo’s watch. The knot of dread inside her tightened and she levered herself ahead and through the door. The interior was empty save for the woman with messy brown hair behind the bar who Placelle Lamella imagined to be Abigail. She approached nervously and said in a mousey voice, “Excuse me, miss, my friend Arlo came in here a while ago. I’m looking for him. Did he happen to tell you where he went?”
The barkeeper looked up with an odd face, and Placelle Lamella could taste that the woman was somewhat startled to see her. Digging a little deeper she could also taste a hint of fading irritation. Had Arlo left without paying his tab? The woman licked her lips and couldn’t help giving out a comment with her answer: “It’s just women in all shapes, sizes, and colors around him, is it? Yes, he was in here, love.”
Placelle Lamella nodded, though she didn’t agree with the sentiment. She and Irina had been in a tiny minority of women on both ships so far, and Arlo always seemed to be surrounded by sailors more than anything else. Not that Arlo had a choice in what surrounded him. Placelle Lamella took in a deep breath through her nose and tried to focus before asking again, “But mistress, do you know where he went? I’m worried about him.”
“You should’ve worried about him a while back.” the woman shot back, now looking and feeling even more irritated as she recalled, “He came in and had one drink, then asked for another cigarillo. I invited him to come and smoke it with me in the club room where folks play cards, as we have cushioned seats back there; and he told me he was going up the hill to have a look at the old seafort.”
“He what!?” Even so subdued, there was a little outrage in the Oathkeeper’s voice. “The seafort where the gang of killers are? The seafort that is going to have a band of soldiers marching upon it soon? That seafort!?”
“Well, he said he wasn’t going to go in or knock or anything,” argued the woman, “Just take a look and see if he could see anything that may be of use to the Madame Tribune. He’s an agent of House Haradin, and a smart-enough seeming man to me. I’m sure he knows what he is doing.”
Placelle Lamella grit her teeth and winced her eyes shut. She felt an extreme misery and anxiety wash over her like a deathly pal and only just barely managed to explain, “Mistress, I’m sorry to tell you that my Arlo is very useless and I think he is going to get hurt, oh, I really do.”
She started to rush out the door, but halfway to it she turned back and added, “By the way, he does think you’re very pretty and he is really lonely so if you think he is pretty, too, then you should tell him so once I go and bring him back here.”
There was no time to say more or to explain how she knew. Instead, the heartleech hit the streets with her arms crossed over her chest at a near-jog and opened up the spigot inside her. She opened herself completely inside, awakened every fiber of her being and let pure consciousness surge to the surface of her perception. The alacrity of her thoughts brought a sense of extreme serenity over her even as her feet picked up speed. The sense of the emotions of all the people in the houses above her, of Abigail in the bar, of a distant Irina filled with excited apprehension, of Dobran in his solemn grief– all poured in and filled the Oathkeeper with a surge of energy like she hadn’t had in many years. She felt her very sinew seem to lighten as she rounded the corner into the courtyard.
Her senses were enriched by the succor, an amount of background emotion that would be hardly enough to sustain a typical heartleech but a grand feast for the starved junkie that was a domesticated one trained by the Marrowed Bone Order. She could feel the chill of the air more succinctly, down to little changes in it based on her entry into the courtyard. Her eyes, open wide, took in all the details of the limestone walls, the individual leaves on all the trees, the rising smoke from the burning corpses, the plasterwork strokes of the sheltered frescoes. Smells filled her nose in much more powerful ways: the thin remaining odor of death, the pungent incense, her own rank sweat and sebum that she had been unconscious of before. Placelle Lamella rounded the corner and found her armor in the grass with her eyes. She kicked open the clamshell with the toe of one boot while she yanked her leather gauntlets out of her belt. Brother Dobran spotted her frantic behavior and approached, clearly concerned, a chap-book clutched in his shaky hands.
“What ever is the matter, Blessed Sister?” he asked, watching nervously while she pulled the armor over her shoulders and reached to her sides for the buckles.
Instead of answering him, Placelle Lamella turned her open eyes at him, and he was startled to see such intense alacrity burning in them as she asked in a much firmer voice than she had used up until now, “Tell me, Brother Dobran, have you got a methroller? Methcycle? What about a horse? I need to get up to the seafort.”
Dobran rubbed at his bald head, clearly distressed by her new countenance, but trying his best. “I’ve got nothing like that. You’ll find a methroller at the warehouse that I’m permitted to use on occasion, it belongs to House Haradin. The keys are on the drivers’ seat. It will only get you so far, though. The road up to the fort fell partway down into the sea after they abandoned it.”
Instead of asking how that came to pass, the Oathkeeper eased her Oath in its holster first, and then her hammer second, to make sure neither would get snagged on a draw. She eyed her folded cassock in the grass, but decided against taking it while asking, “Where the road is broken, how far is it?”
“No more than fifty leaps, if that.” the priest answered. “You’ll need to proceed on foot from there, it’s too narrow for a roller. It could be just wide enough, but the ground is so soft there, you would likely fall off.”
“I will deal with it.” was all she would say as she started power-walking back towards the arch over the entryway to the chapel. “Pray for me, Brother Dobran, and pray for Arlo as well. I am going to get him before he hurts himself.”
It did not take long to cross the little strip of town businesses to the warehouse at the end of the row, but to Placelle Lamella it felt like an eternity. Even in her normal state she would have felt time slowing from how anxious she was to get back to Arlo and keep him safe; but fully awake and alert with her thoughts moving at lightning speed the jog was torturous. At least the addition of the armor plate freed up her hands.
The methroller stationed in front of the warehouse was a long-nosed cab on a short bare chassis with six fat knobby tires and faded grey paint that was almost white. Like many things on Lortar, it was relatively new but so hard-lived that it already seemed old. A washed out, sun-faded House Haradin coat of arms was painted over the door on the right-hand side.
The Oathkeeper’s bare arms flexed while she grasped for a handle on the side of the lorry and hefted herself up onto the running board behind the door. She dangled to one side while opening it and climbed inside without a second thought. She found the keys between her legs, having barely escaped being sat upon, and jammed them into the ignition. It only took a very brief survey of the dash for her to figure out the starting sequence.
The magneto had to come on first with a simple flick of a switch, then the starting carburetor had to be primed by twisting a spring-loaded dial next to the wheel. Next, the main carburetor had to be primed the same way, and finally because it was so cold outside a little knob marked ‘CHOKE’ had to be tugged on.
It wasn’t quite like the chapel hauler back at what used to be her home, but it was close enough that Placelle Lamella found herself thanking The Goddess for her familiarity as she wobbled the shifter and pressed down on the clutch. The methroller sputtered to life with a grumbling wail, and thick black smoke sputtered from the top of a short little stack jutting out of one side of its bonnet, a little steel cap bouncing slightly and rattling on the sooty expulsion. The whole cab leaned forward in a lurching tilt as the drive tires came to life and urged the lorry onto the muddy streets. The first flakes of snow were drifting down from the sky when Placelle Lamella reached the first switchback in the road, her hand deftly working the gear-shifter while her foot opened and closed the clutch like an accordion at play. Sliding around the corner with the front set of drive tires turning free, she passed between the first rows of houses on the hillside until she got to the second switchback. From this vantage point she could see the Sunseeker in the bay again. It seemed like the ship, so little like a toy or a model from this distance, had barely moved since she’d last glimpsed it in the wagon at the chapel yard.
She prayed while she drove that she was a lunatic for feeling so protective. She prayed that Arlo was smarter than he was brash, or as cowardly as everyone gave him credit for, or that he had hurt his ankle on the road and needed to stop. Placelle Lamella crested the next hill and turned at the next switchback with a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and gear shifter while she took in the red and brown cottages built along the road, full details coming to her open yearning mind in an instant without the fog of the Waking Rest.
She drank in the feelings around her, even those further away. Learning the Waking Rest had given her a longer ‘range’ of sense than a typical heartleech, but even still while her seeking mind stretched out tugging at the feelings of the people on Lortar she couldn’t quite reach out far enough to get to Arlo. By the time she was sliding around the last switchback and accelerating onto the narrow muddy road leading around the western coast of the island and up to the abandoned seafort, Irina’s impression had disappeared from her mind completely. Still, with the snowflakes gliding across the windscreen of the chugging methroller, occasionally getting caught by the swishing wiper blades, she could not see or feel her Arlo.
At last, when the final cottages were well and truly behind her there was a little tinge– some vague notion of a familiar shape. It was the perceptive equivalent of closing one’s hand around a familiar object lost at the bottom of a bag, knowing that one recognized the object, but not entirely knowing what it was. Placelle Lamella strained herself, pinkish-amber eyes watering while she leaned forward in her seat, and felt him there in the distance before her.
He was scared and angry, and not in the way he usually was. This was different. This was serious. Worse, there were the impressions of other people close around him, and they ranged from self-righteous victory to sneering contempt. Vindication was no salve to the Oathkeeper, and her foot was already pushing the accelerator pedal so hard against the floorboards of the big truck that they strained beneath the force.
Far down the road, on the other end of a gap bridged only with a narrow strip of rock and a sturdy but somewhat minimal catwalk, Arlo was looking up at an old grey stone seafort even smaller than the one he had once been the civilian leader of. Lost Pip’s Rock had been a much smaller island than Lortar, but its seafort had taken up the whole of the slimy little cay. A full five towers with relatively small batteries retrofitted from last generation’s dreadnoughts would not have been able to fit on this ugly little abutment of dirt and rock against the side of Lortar’s fat mountain. There was a central tower like the one where Arlo’s old office had been, stretching up into the sky and topped with a tile roof that had been patched beneath missing tiles with pitched thatch, and then there was a second tower not quite so high that seemed to grow out of the rock and hang over the sea like a wart on the firmament. A low garrison house joined both buildings, but the crumbling walls and poorly bricked-over windows showed that it had seen better days. Arlo suspected it had been abandoned long before House Haradin had built the refinery and the town to support it.
“Move.” a stern voice commanded from behind, followed by a slight jab from the sheathed bayonet on the end of what had once been a constable’s shotgun. The man Arlo had met on the road was short, but wide and stout. He wore a long shearling coat and a balaclava over the boiler suit Arlo figured to be a work uniform from the refinery on the other side of the island, and Arlo envied the attire from the confines of his waxed canvas overcoat that did little to protect him from the cold other than blocking the wind.
They passed through a pair of double doors with wrought-iron knockers surrounded by stamped representations of the Imperial moonburst whose green paint had long-ago chipped and faded first to black and then to a dusky patina. Two more men waited inside, warming their hands over the range of a stove whose door was gently ajar to reveal a modest pile of glowing embers. They were standing in a guard station that had once communicated with a vestibule but at some point walls had been knocked down to make the room larger and now it was more like a reception area with barricades and cots against the walls. Of the two men at the stove, one was wearing the same attire as Arlo’s captor while the other had a threadbare blue-green constabulary uniform beneath his shearling jacket. Both of them looked incredibly surprised to see Arlo.
“Now, who in the blood is this, Pickering?” asked the former constable.
“Come along with me and you’ll soon find out,” was all the captor would say in response.
Arlo at least took the effort of making a polite leg at the men, and muttering a sour-faced, “Good day to you gentlemen.”
All three men laughed, and then the one called Pickering jabbed Arlo with his sheathed bayonet again and commanded, “Get you further back on in, then, princeling.”
The three men now together urged Arlo on through a large room that used to be a management office of sorts for the fort. In its disuse it was now more apparently some sort of dining hall for the gang with two long tables that spanned either side of the long room and a few smaller ones in the middle. None of the new occupants seemed interested in scullery duty if the half-eaten meals and grimy place-settings were any indicator. They passed through a door at the back of the room that would have led into Major Gromlaw’s office if they had been on Lost Pip’s Rock. On Lortar, it led instead to the inner-sanctum of Gavin Baxter. Arlo had been expecting something more for the leader of a gang of cutthroat thugs who had taken an entire island hostage, but the man himself was actually somewhat plain.
A huge, broad-shouldered ginger man with dull blue eyes and unremarkable features, he sat shirtless on a sort of makeshift throne piled up with animal hides. A patchwork beard took up some part of his chubby jowls, but his features were otherwise somewhat boyish for such a supposedly charming man. He smiled with eminent superiority as Arlo was brought in, not bothering to stamp out his cigarette or stop scratching a rash on his left ankle with the tip of a thin, ornate spadroon that Arlo recognized as being much like one he had once owned.
The room itself was certainly no longer the office of a garrison commander, nor even an office at all but rather a den of drink and vice. A pile of pelts and furs similar to that which coated and draped the warped wooden throne was placed in one corner of the room surrounded by empty wine bottles, discarded cigarette packets, two overflowing ashtrays, and any number of crisp packets. To keep the pink shirtless man warm, a roaring fire burned in a hearth built along one wall of the room. Or maybe the fire was to help dry a hanging shirt and waxed overcoat much like the one Arlo wore, themselves having come out of a washbasin full of dark blue liquid placed on the other side of the hearth.
Arlo gave the fat man before him a half-bow while the man who had originally captured him walked around to present Arlo’s garrison belt to his chief. The fat man threw down the little spadroon and eagerly unsheathed Arlo’s sabre with his grin growing larger.
“Finally!” he cheered while giving the sword a few test swings from the comfort of his tall-backed throne, “A real sword and not a blinkin’ toy! And what have we got here?”
Next, Baxter took out Arlo’s revolver and handled it with the casual air of a person who both had no idea how to use a gun while also being confident that they were simple instruments anybody could figure out. He pointed the pistol at the hearth and without the least bit of reserve pulled the trigger three times. The noise was immense, and Arlo felt the men around him tense up while he himself just flinched. Baxter’s broad guffawing laughter could be heard first as the din faded, a child at play. Arlo looked around himself now at the other men in the room and could see the concern in their eyes. They weren’t afraid of Baxter, but they weren’t entirely confident in their leader either.
Baxter himself either didn’t notice or didn’t care, because he had not an ounce of shame in his body as he let the hand holding the revolver limply dangle over one arm of his throne while he leaned back to examine Arlo.
“So,” he finally said, now that his immediate joy in Arlo’s possessions had passed and he was satisfied to simply hold them in each of his hands while he reposed and prepared himself to receive the report from his henchmen. “Who did you bring me, Pickering? Obviously, he isn’t from around here.”
The man called Pickering nodded and answered, “Eaglin spotted him from the watchtower and told me about him, so I went out to see who it was. Thought maybe it was a message from the refinery or some worker wanting to join up instead of working. Instead I found me an outsider. Says he is from House Haradin, and wishes to negotiate the return of the island and the governor.”
It was true that Arlo had said this, but even more true was that Arlo’s original intention had been to just look at the place and then return to town to try again with Irina. Considering he was surrounded by armed men and had already had his most valuable possessions seized, Arlo was beginning to suspect that they either did not believe his lie or they did not care whether it was true or not. He tried to bow again to Baxter, but the fat man growled at him instead.
“If Old Man Treistan thinks I’m going to give back his dog-shite island and go back to slaving in his blood-cursed fart factory for a little extra tin, he truly has gone barmy.” snarled Baxter, now pointing Arlo’s own revolver right at him. Arlo winced and shrunk away from Baxter, but one of the men behind him prodded him from behind with the butt of his shotgun and nudged him back forward.
“Asides that,” added Baxter, now letting the revolver hang limp once more, “I killed your precious governor anyway because he would not do his job.”
Arlo gasped in spite of himself. It was not just the shock of the open confession to murder, but the betrayal of the thing. Arlo clenched his fists at his side and defiantly said, “But sir, you betray the Empire! Are you not a Corovokian?”
A beat passed while the words sank in, and then the man behind Arlo hit him much harder with the butt of his shotgun, a firm hammer across Arlo’s upper-back that sent the young man buckling down onto his knees. From his throne Baxter laughed firmly again and shot into the fireplace again to put more scare into Arlo. He tossed the sabre onto the floor next to the throne and rose to approach Arlo on the floor. The barrel of the revolver scalded Arlo’s chin as Baxter shoved it beneath to point the younger man’s head up at him.
“Easy for you to ask with your fine manners, rat boy.” Baxter told him, haughty superiority mingled with contempt on his plump features, “But the Empire does not reward a man of my worth the value I command. That’s why I’m not planning on offering this island back to them. I’ll give it to folks who can appreciate my resourcefulness.”
Arlo’s expression of skeptical confusion angered Baxter and made the man slap the revolver across Arlo’s face. The fat man loved making him suffer, and so grasped the revolver around the outside of its cylinder and trigger guard so he could bash it down on the other side of Arlo’s face. The lanyard ring at the base of the grip pinched in its swivel and tore out a tiny chunk of Arlo’s eyebrow, prompting a weak little whimper that amused Baxter to no end. The trickling stream of blood that curved around the young man’s cheek seasoned Baxter’s amusement even more.
Out of a sense of self-preservation, Arlo threw up his hands to ward off another blow and blurted, “There’s a destroyer! House Haradin sent me aboard a destroyer. She was in the offing when I came here and will surely land soon.”
Baxter spit directly onto Arlo’s face and shoved him back onto his rump before returning to his throne with a dark look crossing over his features. The other three men in the room shuffled awkwardly in the silence that followed, and one even whispered, “Sir?”
Finally, Baxter spoke up again, crossing his arms over his bare chest. “You had better hope your destroyer wants to negotiate as badly as you did, then, little rat. Because if not, you die before we do.”
Arlo sat up and looked down at his knees, then slowly rose back to his feet wiping the blood and saliva from his cheeks with hands that next smeared the fluids across his khaki trousers. “What are your terms for my release?”
Baxter pointed to the hanging articles of clothing over the fire. “You will be my little scullery boy, take care of these clothes and the mess my men make. Your little destroyer will go off for six weeks and when it comes back they can pick you up from the island’s new masters.”
Disgusted internally by his instant acquiescence to this new situation, Arlo flicked his eyes over to the dripping clothes and gulped, “I, ah, am not sure how I should take care of your clothes, exactly, but I would try my best.”
As ashamed and disgusted as Arlo was, Baxter seemed pleased by his subservient nature and happily leapt to his feet again to approach the fire and take down the shirt.
“It’s gray!” he explained, shaking it at Arlo, “It was white, I threw it in with blue dye powder and it just turned gray! But I want it blue!”
Arlo looked down at the shirt and pinched the damp fabric in his hand, then leaned over to look at the waxed overcoat. It hadn’t taken any color at all from the dye bath. Next, Arlo turned and inspected the dye bath. While he knelt next to the blue liquid with his heart pounding in his chest and more blood trickling down the side of his face from his split eyebrow, Gavin Baxter gave orders to his men.
“Pickering, you go back up that watchtower and tell Eaglin to shoot anybody else who comes up that road before we’re ready.” he commanded, insensible to the second gasp this elicited from Arlo, “You, Stolton, you go and get whoever isn’t at the refinery and set them up with any weapons we can lay hands on. We gotta prepare to negotiate with House Guards and they can’t think they’ll be able to take us quick enough to not be worried about shitskin, here.”
The two men dashed out the door and to the last one Baxter just gave a general wave of his hand to get the man to leave. This, Arlo decided, was how the man had taken charge of the island. It wasn’t that the man was good-looking or well-spoken; it was that he was decisive. Gavin Baxter was everything as a leader that Irina had just dressed Arlo down earlier for lacking. Gavin squatted next to Arlo now and jammed the revolver up against his scalp from behind while asking, “So, poodle boy, you had better figure out how to get my clothes blue soon or I’ll have to find some other use for you.”
Arlo nodded softly, then pointed down at the dye bath and meekly asked, “Did you put any salt in the water?”
“Why would I have to do that!?” rejoined Baxter, incredibly impatient. It was a bad combination to be an impatient man holding a loaded gun, but Arlo tried to be tolerant.
“Well, sir, as a man of fashion myself, I have some experience with fine garments,” he began miserably, trying to muster up a friendly and professional voice but entirely unable to meet Baxter’s gaze. “You must soak the undyed clothes in freshwater and the dye bath must be salt water. The salt will draw the water out of the clothes, the clothes will draw the dye bath back in. That won’t work for the overcoat, however.”
Baxter clubbed Arlo on the back of the head, then wrapped a set of fat fingers around the smaller man’s bicep and dragged him up to his feet then over to the overcoat so he could drill the revolver’s barrel into Arlo’s scalp once more and ask, “Fine then. What will work for the overcoat?”
It took a few seconds for Arlo to stop shaking, but luckily Gavin seemed to have grown a bit of patience now that he was getting information out of his captured fop. Once he could breathe straight again, Arlo explained, “Th-the, ah, the overcoat is waxed like mine. So you have to heat it up and get the wax out of it. Then you can dye it like the shirt, but you’ll have to wax it again after or it won’t be waterproof.”
“And you can do this for me, can’t you, poodle?” Baxter asked, not in a tone that suggested Arlo had much choice, but more in one that suggested it was the only thing that would save him.
“I’ve never done it myself, sir,” Arlo replied a little more steadily than he had so far. He was unconsciously dry-washing his hands in front of himself now, hunched over to get further away from the revolver, and entirely too unhappy for how polite he sounded. “I have only read about it when selecting my own clothes. I can try, of course. Of course, I can try, you know, I-”
Arlo shut up again as Baxter growled at him, but the big man soon released Arlo with a shove towards the door and the command, “You sit there by the door, do not go out it. When Pickering gets back, I will have him shackle you. If you behave and don’t try to run off, I may even let you keep your feet.”
Arlo hung his head and did as he was told. He settled on the floor next to the door, the cold stone chilling him from below while he tented his knees and drew them up close. He wanted to take out his watch so he could hear the ticking more loudly, but he was afraid drawing attention to it would cause Baxter to take either it or his mother’s necklace he used as a chain. After a moment passed while he turned over the possibilities with thoughts of Irina and Placelle Lamella in his head, Arlo gathered his courage and asked, “Mister Baxter, sir, if it is a woman who comes up the road; may I ask you to give your associate Eaglin instructions not to shoot her? I believe I can help you negotiate with either of the women traveling in my company.”
Baxter shot the fireplace one more time while growling at Arlo, causing Arlo to scrunch up even more in his little corner by the door. The thieving traitor didn’t even rise from his throne, but pointed the revolver right at Arlo from across the room, a little wisp of smoke rising from its barrel while he threatened Arlo with the last shot in the cylinder and spat, “No! I will say what happens. If they come upon us before we’re ready, they will die. Now be quiet so that you may live, poodle.”
Arlo hung his head and wrapped his hands over the back of his scalp. He tried to ball himself up as much as possible. He wanted so badly to jump to his feet and hammer Baxter with his hands, or pick up his sword and run the man through. He wanted to do so much, but the thought of those men with their shotguns outside made him afraid he would never leave the seafort alive. No matter how scared he was that either Irina or Placelle Lamella was about to die, Arlo could not make himself get up from the floor to face the risk of that last shot in the revolver, of being crushed by the big man in the throne, or of the possibility that whatever wild and desperate act he managed might succeed yet somehow make things worse. So he just cowered, miserable and ashamed, trying to strain his ears to focus on the muffled ticking of his watch coming through the fabric of his waistcoat.
