In the world between dreams and wakefulness, Arlo had visions of his quarters on Lost Pip’s Rock. He would descend from his office and come to sit by the fire in a tall-backed leather armchair. Above the mantle he had a fabulous painting called The Mother and Her Cat, which was a depiction of a well-dressed woman reclining in a chaise-longue by a rainsoaked window with a black cat in her lap. The cat was looking right at the viewer, and by some clever trick seemed to be so no matter where in the room one stood. The woman, however, was pictured staring to her side and out the window with a distant and somewhat tragic air; a long cigarette holder perched between her fingers. Arlo had been drawn to it instantly, and Valentena had been as well. He’d met her beneath it at the gallery, and it seemed like she’d been staring up at it for some time in deep contemplation.
Arlo had no need for such contemplation, and bought it immediately.
He had been extremely pleased when Valentena followed him out and asked if she might come view it sometime. So, they would sit by the fireplace and chat beneath The Mother and Her Cat once she moved in with him and became his lover. Arlo had been quicker to humor, back then. He remembered how he loved to prick her with little jokes and witticisms, how she always seemed to laugh so majestically and with such a deep sense of surprise; as though she had never expected him to actually be funny. They would play music, he with his chordonian and she with her cello. Once, they made love on the floor in front of the fireplace, long and slow strokes with her hands in his hair and her legs wrapped around him.
Arlo was aware that his nose was bleeding.
It was a cool stream by now, dripping off his upper lip and patting on his khakis to leave behind little scarlet pips on his lap. Arlo blinked tears away and tried to go back into his memory. He pictured Valentena on the floor after their session, nude and unashamed with her arm bent at the elbow as she laid back still flushed with apparent pride and enjoyment, her modest bust rising and falling in gentle breaths that ever so slightly shifted her breasts.
Arlo was crying, and he couldn’t be sure whether it was because of the pain or because of his situation. They had tied him to a three-legged stool and beaten him senseless, the two men in jumpsuits who he’d been given to by Ordon. One of the men had been called away, to his luck as it turned out, because the other man then produced a pair of garden shears to cut Arlo’s hair. Arlo was proud of his hair, and begged the man not to cut it– begging itself or perhaps the feelings behind it that caught the remote attention of Ordon. Upon seeing how they’d been torturing Arlo, the big man beat his underling savagely and then sliced off a portion of the man’s ear right in front of Arlo.
It was on the ground now between his feet, the little wet chunk of ear.
Arlo’s tears papped onto his lap next to the blood while they burned in his split lip. He tried to force himself to remember Valentena again. He remembered a brocaded morning suit he would often wear that she always seemed to love, her fingertips tracing the swooping filigree sewn onto his lapels whenever she came to him. His dream morphed to visions of Moriah in her shoregoing dress. He pictured her doing the same thing, though he couldn’t imagine her being as amazed by the filigree. He pictured her smile, felt with his mind’s hand the softness of the tail he’d discovered through her dress when they’d kissed. He remembered her telling him that if she wanted to make love to a man, she could lie on her side or climb on top.
The door opened, but Arlo did not move his head. He did not know much about the chamber he was in, other than that it was like a stern gallery. The thrum of a methsel engine vibrated his feet, and sunlight bore in from his left with a narrow view of the shore. He was tied to this stool, and a dead old woman with rabbit ears was tied to a stool across from him. Her buck teeth had been torn out and thrown on the floor in front of her, and blood had poured out of her mouth to cake and dry all over the chest of a rough-hewn frock. Ordon entered his eyeline, the older man now dried and dressed in a brilliant red and gold robe. An orange sash of shiny satin was now wrapped between his utility belt and his clothes, but he seemed just as comfortable as he had been in his saggy brown half-breeches. With a gentle palm on Arlo’s forehead, Ordon tilted Arlo back to examine his wounds with evident concern painted on his fatherly features.
“I am so very sorry they did this to you.” Ordon said, and it sounded like he meant it. “I did not want this at all. But those young men are on their first Crusade, and they showed remorse when we killed the villagers; so they think they have something to prove.”
“It’s natural to feel remorse for doing evil.” Arlo whispered, looking through a swollen purple lid and over a split cheek at Ordon with nothing but enmity.
“It’s natural to feel remorse for causing suffering.” Ordon half-agreed while gently wiping at Arlo’s wounded face with a warm rag. He seemed entirely placid, eyes wide open and alert unlike Placelle Lamella, but perfectly at ease while he worked and talked easily of his faith. “One must feel great compassion for the animals they kill. They cannot help that they are abominations before Khaldon, and they must be culled before paradise can be rebuilt. They don’t deserve to suffer so, but it is what must happen.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?” Arlo asked next, trying not to be grateful for the attention he was getting while Ordon applied a gentle salve to his cheek, “You remind me of one of them, who thought he could dress like a swashbuckling hero and suddenly his piracy would become vigilantism.”
“Hm, maybe it was vigilantism.” Argued Ordon with a shrug, “Or maybe we must all walk our own paths. But I’ve been given gifts that solidify my faith. I’ve been shown visions, and taken into sacred places. My path is clear. I hope yours will run alongside it.”
Arlo wanted to spit blood at the older man, but his mouth was so dry that he couldn’t even draw up the slightest dampness. Perhaps this was obvious, because Ordon next brought a waterskin over and squeezed it into Arlo’s mouth. Arlo was surprised to taste tea rather than water, but drank it greedily nonetheless.
“I have been on the radio with your ship, the Sunseeker.” Ordon told him now, pacing around Arlo to inspect him from other angles. “She is a recent-built destroyer of two batteries, very substantial firepower. She could sink us here in Khaldon’s ship with a single barrage, I have no doubt. Lucky for us, she cannot fit into this cove.”
There was nothing else for Arlo to do except let his head drop. With his chin on his chest, he could at least let his eyes droop and try to go back to picturing women’s bodies. Ordon seemed amused by whatever he was getting from it, but made no comment except to say, “I have spoken to Placelle Lamella, just briefly. She has the cutest little voice. She has told me she will come and give herself up in exchange for your release.”
“It was hard to be sure with the mess, but I’ve known her to kill ten men at once, perhaps more,” murmured Arlo while his half-lidded gaze bored down to the floor. “Maybe she will kill your entire crew.”
“Maybe so.” Ordon half-agreed once more. He seemed awfully cooperative as a conversation partner even if he was not quite so generous as a host. “I don’t think so, however. I explained to her that I would like to bring you with us back to the mainland.”
Arlo snapped his head up with bared teeth. “The mainland!? You would be vaporized in an instant if you tried to land anywhere near Corovos.”
The Khaldonite chuckled. “No, Arlo, we have our own mainland.”
“She will kill you all.” tried Arlo next, even though he’d done it before, mainly because it felt better than just admitting he was wrong. Ordon seemed to think so, too, because he smiled down at Arlo and patted his shoulder gently.
“Placelle Lamella says she wants to come talk to you, to ask you what you want in person.” he went on now, striding to the window and crossing his hands over his stomach while he eyed the blackened trench on the shore outside. “I will come across to the Sunseeker and pick her up. She will come back here and ask if you want to go back. If you do, I will drop you behind us in a boat once we are out of the Sunseeker’s weapons range. If you wish to stay, you can berth with her here on the ship until we get back to the mainland.”
“There, I suppose, you will dispose of me.” figured Arlo with a grim expression. He wasn’t sure he could live with himself after letting yet another woman exchange herself for him. The guilt of Gromlaw’s loss burned him enough as it was. Placelle Lamella, he had already pushed away once.
With his eyebrows climbing high, Ordon turned around and twisted his face sideways, surprised at the very suggestion. “No, Arlo. You’ll be given a house and a job. If you rise high enough in the Church, or catch the eye of someone who has, you could be taken as a spouse.”
Since there was no reply, the burly man approached Arlo and knelt to get at eye-level with him.
“Listen,” Ordon explained gently, “In the Redlands we have no currency. There’s no food shortages, no homeless, no want. Every person has medicine when they are ill, and neighbours to stand beside them when they are belaboured. We don’t differentiate between men and women, we have no rich or poor, no races or borders. Every servant is equal under Khaldon’s law. The only status in our society is aptitude.”
Arlo said nothing. He wasn’t sure he even believed it, but supposing he did it was not worth it to go around killing beastfolk and unbelievers.
“Think of what you want to do in life. Everything that’s been denied from you in Imperial lands,” Ordon pleaded now, one hand on each of Arlo’s knees while he looked up with such sincere emotion in his eyes that Arlo couldn’t help but go along with it on some deep level in his psyche. “What they won’t let you have due to money, or placement, or rank; you could earn it in the Redlands. No path is shut off to you except one, and that’s only because of your age. But any job you could think of that you might want to do, you can start out at the bottom and show your talent; really work your way up.”
It was impossible for Arlo to not instantly picture himself curating an art museum, or putting together shows for some nebulous authority figures in the far away ‘Redlands’ as Ordon had called them. He gulped, and Ordon’s face lit up in a broad smile.
“Just think about it, Friend Arlo,” Ordon said next, then stood once more. “Think about it while I go get my prize, and you can talk it over with your friend when I bring her back.”
Wind howled from the mouth of the cove and stirred the edges of the heavy linen cassock and prayer shawl Placelle Lamella wore over her armor. She carefully gathered either side of the combination and eased them over her shoulder so that they hung more like a cape from the gorget of her cuirass and then knelt to dust the tops of her boots. Her face was extremely passive, even more sleepy than usual while she waited for the two crewmen to toss down the rope ladder for Ordon to climb aboard from the little pilot craft he’d come out of the cove on. The Oathkeeper did not reach for either of her weapons, though they were quite openly displayed on her belt. Instead, she crossed her hands over her lower stomach and stood with her feet shoulder-width apart on the fore gun deck of the Sunseeker. Some childish inkling had told her to climb atop the turret to meet Ordon, but in the end gravity won the day and she simply stood waiting upon the deck in her pastoral way.
The gathered crew was extremely nervous, something the Oathkeeper could sense even without the talents of her curse. Those who were not needed directly to man the bridge or the engines were all on the weatherdeck in various places with arms and armor. Their grey fatigues meshed well with the hard green armor vests bought surplus from the Imperial Navy and boarding pikes with underhaft shotguns. Even the galley cooks stood near the rear superstructure of the vessel, crowding the entrance of the stern gallery with stubbier amidships shotguns in hand behind the short but grimly intimidating form of Ali the Implacable casually honing a fat curved cleaver fit for gutting porpoises and tuna.
It went without saying that Worthy Ali considered a Khaldonite Speaker to have gills and fins.
When the first wisp of salt and pepper hair popped up over the top of the ladder, Ordon stopped at the top rung and peered around before rising the rest of the way to show a broad, smiling face. Placelle Lamella could feel smug happiness rolling off him along with the stink of her own curse. Her lazy eyes followed his unbending form as he approached her with his head agog, swiveling around to take in the fixtures of the ship, the armed crewmen, and the various shapes of more recent ship design from the far East. He saw the bridge in the tower above him and raised a black-gloved hand to wave with his grin unmoving.
Then, he turned to Placelle Lamella at last and eyed her with the same apparent interest. Although her face remained slack, internally Placelle Lamella had a similar interest in the other man as well. She had met enough of her kind before to expect a certain simplicity to the emotions rolling off the big man, but somehow he had something more akin to true feelings. Most heartleeches had emotions that were like broad, shapeless smatters of color, and Placelle Lamella was sure that she was no exception to this. Speaker Ordon did not have the scrollwork and elegant fractal complexity of real folk, but his crude brush strokes were somehow composed into something like a sketch of sincere human curiosity. It was like looking at a glow-worm and seeing the fangs of the anglerfish glistening behind it; or perhaps like watching a scarecrow trying to walk around.
“Uncanny, isn’t it?” Ordon asked cheerfully, instantly sensing her curiosity without the limitation of the Waking Rest. “I could teach you. I aim to teach you, in fact.”
Placelle Lamella followed him with her eyes, only turning lazily as he paced around her with an appreciative look. She did not react at all when he pinched her prayer shawl and brought it close enough to see the gold moons and stars embroidered into the green fabric.
“The cassock, or cloak underneath, whatever it is…” he started while also lifting the cassock and laying his hand on the armored breastplate beneath. He stroked the warm metal and added, “As well as the armor, as I suspect it is infused with bloodstone. You can keep those things. The hammer as well. It suits you. The shawl will have to go, of course, as well as the pistol. They offend Khaldon.”
Placelle Lamella said nothing in response, but did waggle her elbows a little so that the cloth would drape more freely. Ordon paced the rest of the way around her and peered into her heavy-lidded eyes with a look of wonder. “You can also teach me whatever it is you are doing there, if you wish. It is fascinating. What is the point of it? To hide yourself from others like us? There’s other ways of doing that, you know.”
The Oathkeeper tilted her head and blinked stupidly at him for only half a second before realizing he could not tell what the Waking Rest was. Her flat mouth twitched into something like a smirk before she answered, “What I am doing to myself reduces how much of my strength I use. It also helps me ignore my hunger, and the temptation that hunger creates. So I can stay healthy just on common, everyday feelings and not have to cause trouble.”
Speaker Ordon laughed and clapped his hands. His shoulders shrugged and he covered his cheeks like a blushing schoolgirl. Utter amusement poured out of him while he said, “You throw away your potential! Instead of learning discipline to control your temptation, you learn idiocy so you can ignore it. You Imps, you neuter yourselves.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” muttered the big woman with her eyes trailing down the brocaded front of Ordon’s robe to his axe and then further on to his dull black boots.
With a shake of his head, Ordon put a firm hand on Placelle Lamella’s shoulder and sighed contentedly. “You will have to wear the leash for a few years while we get you used to accepting your gift instead of ignoring it. Of course, once that’s done, you will go far. I can tell you are used to bloodshed enough already. You could be a Blood Foot quite easily. You may even be a Speaker like me, or even better if you go on a few well-regarded Crusades.”
Ordon felt the need to dry wash his hands and look at the assembled men with a sly smile before saying more covertly, “Why, trained up right, the two of us could take this ship by ourselves. You are quite the prize, Placelle Lamella.”
“What about Arlo?” the Oathkeeper asked now, surprised at how much volume there was in her voice. She made a show of clearing her throat before recrossing her hands over her middle and fixing the other heartleech with a purposeful set of her brow.
Ordon shrugged. “Oh, he’s tempted, I can tell. When I left him behind on Khaldon’s ship, there was hatred in his heart of course, but I could taste his temptation as well. If he could sense my honesty like you could, I think he would have bitten. We shall see what he is feeling when he sees you, of course. May I pinch your bottom?”
There were affronted gasps from one of the nearby crewmen who had heard this question, but Placelle Lamella blandly answered with a single word. “Yes.”
Approaching, Ordon leaned forward with his broad grin still showing and reached into the cassock. As he reached around and grasped the firm, bulbous shape of her rump, the crude sketch of lust came across and his smile grew as he sensed her interest. Her gauntleted fingers came down tight like a vice around his wrist, and his smile turned wicked; almost dangerous.
“What about love?” she whispered with her eyelids just barely beginning to strain.
“I have a husband and two wives.” Ordon answered as he slid his hand out of her grip. His eyes were sharply focused on her own, his smile unshakable while a sense of superiority washed out, “And I love all three dearly. It feels like this.”
Vanity, smugness, and self-certainty swirled up and parted in favor of something new while Ordon thought about his family back home. It was not like human love as Placelle Lamella had ever tasted it before. There was a singular flavor to that, which grew with richness and intensity the longer and more requited the attachment was. Ordon’s so-called love was less like romance and more like his simple aped lust wrapped around the way Placelle Lamella already felt about Arlo and mixed with something akin to the way brothers and sisters seemed to regard one another. It was an interesting little facsimile to the heartleech, and though it certainly was obviously not the real thing she desperately wanted it for herself.
“If you became one of Khaldon’s Feet, you could take a husband or wife.” Ordon told her in a tempting voice. “If you rose to the rank of Blood Foot, you could have one of each. A Speaker can have as many as they like. Maybe you already have one in mind?”
Ordon’s surety blossomed to a fever pitch as he put a hand on each of her biceps to lean in close and ask in a hushed tone, “Maybe Friend Arlo?”
Though he had intended for her to smile, something in Placelle Lamella’s easy smirk surprised him and made him feel uneasy. The other heartleech blinked at him a few times and then her eyelids fluttered open. He watched her pupils shrink and rapidly focus on his own while she responded, in a vivacious tone, “Not Arlo, because he’s not going anywhere with you.”
Cautiously, Ordon took his hands from her and lurched back slightly to eye her up and down. With the Oathkeeper’s hands still crossed over her middle in plain sight, Ordon felt the need to look at the gathered crewmen distrustfully. None of them pointed their guns at him. Just to be sure, Ordon fixed Placelle Lamella with a warding glare and warned, “In case it was not clear last time we spoke, he will be killed if I do not return by an appointed time. In fact, if I return without you I plan to kill him myself, the poor man.”
Placelle Lamella bared her teeth in a shark-like grin and said, “Maybe I do have trouble controlling myself when I’m hungry because of all my time in the Waking Rest, but there’s one thing I get from it that makes me better than you.”
The Khaldonite Speaker dipped his hand down into his belt now for the head of his axe. His back hunched while his brow furrowed and he looked around at the assembled men. They all held their guns in a low-ready position, but none dared point their muzzle at him. Ordon whipped his head around to every single one he could spot to make sure before turning back to Placelle Lamella with an extremely tense face. Emotionally, he suddenly became invisible to her. He looked furious, but he seemed placid and numb while she told him, “I can feel much farther than you. I can feel all the way to your ship and past it, Speaker. I can feel almost half of this whole island, and you can’t even perceive anybody off this ship, can you?”
The implication struck the other heartleech like a bolt of lightning. Instead of cursing her or his luck, Ordon only looked mildly disappointed and replied, “You throw away much in this.”
Greedily, happily, Placelle Lamella whipped her hammer out of its frog and right into Ordon’s chin, only for him to hook the beard of his axe around its haft even as one of his upper teeth folded up out of his mouth and clattered onto the deck between his feet. The Oathkeeper drew her gun next, and Ordon snatched at it with his free hand from below. He kicked her between the legs, and then bashed her hand against the nearby taffrail to disarm her.
While the shotguns came up and pointed at both of them, Placelle Lamella happily grappled with the Khaldonite priest, grinning in utter manic joy. Internally, she muttered a quick prayer that Ordon would not be able to stay invisible forever so she could hurt him and feed on him until he died.
Less than an hour earlier, Irina had watched Speaker Ordon board his stolen pilot boat and motor off into the narrow channel leading out of the cove. She was prone upon a hillside, peering through the prism sight atop her carbine, at a distance of some two hundred paces. The prism magnified things on a power of three, so it was mostly fit for close or medium ranges; but it still helped Irina keep an eye on the gunboat below. Her experience with Khaldonite soul-suckers and the tactical primers she’d obsessively collected and read over the years told her that one-hundred paces was enough distance to remain undetected, but Irina was nothing but nerves while she watched the indistinct shape of the robed figure depart onto the boat below.
It wasn’t only the caution of her bad experiences that had made her nervous, but also the fact that earlier in the day Placelle Lamella had seemed to detect something happening on the other side of the island, when in the middle of their third shouting match while they loaded the back of the truck with Pluramon’s things the enormous woman had frozen in place and dropped a heavy crate onto her own foot with wide eyes.
Irina had shouted at her to wake up multiple times, but the Oathkeeper had just stood there with her eyes flicking around her and her head slightly tilted for what seemed like an entire minute before blurting out some story about Arlo being in trouble. From there it had been a series of what felt like one poorly-made hasty decision after another. They drove the truck to the ship and had it lifted entirely aboard, where Placelle Lamella had received some kind of radio message directed at her by name.
It was all very irritating to the Tribune, who despite her extreme displeasure with Arlo’s behavior was still eager to rescue the lad if for no other reason than to put one in a cultist’s eye. Only, she came to find out as she carried out the first wing of their joint plan that this was no simple cult but an actual band of crusaders in a gunboat that had made it all the way out to Hookthorn from the distant Redlands few Corovokians had even seen.
Seeing the distant black gash of the burning trench next to the red-painted shape of the gunship with belching black smoke pouring out of its funnel filled her with a sense of vengeful hatred that did little to help her feeling safe and secure from the prying mind of the heartleech supposedly aboard. Only when the little red and gold shape was motoring away with a frothy white wake behind him into a narrow rocky valley, did Irina feel at least a little confidence that she wasn’t going to have to put a bullet into the man and pray The Goddess would permit her to simply pick off all the Hands and Feet on the gunboat before they decided to kill Arlo. It would’ve been fun to just march down there with a gang of Sunseekers and a few heavy weapons she had no doubt were stored in the destroyer’s armory and lay siege to the little gunboat until everybody on board was dead or it was forced to flee out of the cove to the waiting guns of the destroyer which could sink it in the blink of an eye.
In fact, Irina had suggested as much and even though Captain Hardwick wanted into her trousers the clanner had refused to leave his writ-cousin’s fate in the lurch of a protracted firefight. On top of that, Irina had to confess to herself that she had some small attachment to the foppish little princeling as well and it wounded her to imagine losing him because of her brash action. Finally, she was certain that if she came back from the cove without Arlo it would be hard to predict the reaction of the heartleech that was so bizarrely obsessed with him. It was easy to turn away from her own feelings and view the situation with the detached dispassion required of a Tribune, but her fancy green coat and her fine peaked cap would do nothing to protect her from death– a death she jokingly hoped would at least be by way of her head being crushed between the Oathkeeper’s powerful thighs.
This was why (despite her best judgement) Irina was lying prone surrounded by grass and leaves with her carbine among the trees at the top of the hill, all by herself with a horde of dangerous Redlanders below her. Well, she wasn’t entirely alone, per se. Aside from a heavy leather satchel on her hip, she also had a heavy weight on her back. Though none of the electrodes were connected to her body, Irina wore Pluramon’s tank on her back and his headset was strapped around the crown of her hat like a pair of unused goggles. As she shifted from lying to a cautious, crouching walk through the underbrush back towards the road, she remarked to him, “First time I seen a soul-sucker that had dark hair. Most’ve been pale and pink all-over like our Fat-Tits.”
The headset was much quieter than normal due to a slight adjustment of some little dial on its side, but Irina could still hear the professor clearly as he responded, “Although albinism is an extremely common comorbidity with antigastronomic sentiphilia, one in five sufferers of the disease are born without it. In fact, even Placelle Lamella of Saint Tetra exhibits unusual qualities with her amber eyes. Though her iris does maintain a slight crimson coloration, many of her ilk have eyes of either pale blue, violet, or even outright red. This is common among albinistic people even who do not suffer from antigastronomic sentiphilia.”
Irina plodded with her head low towards the road, but did not go onto it, instead walking alongside it and ducking beneath branches while she listened to Pluramon’s explanation. While Arlo always seemed to find them tedious, Irina actually enjoyed them so long as they were not interrupting something. Having Pickles as a sort of accessory to her wardrobe made it even better, because she didn’t need to wait for him to pilot Razor along behind them or think about how the huge beastman was going to get around. It was almost like the good doctor was her personal thinking-mind dog, a living encyclopedia to the world around her. She banished the temptation to have him identify a few of the plants and trees around them as she made her way across to the fork where the road descended to the shore where the gunboat was moored and the blackened trench was dug.
“How far can you see, Pickles?” she asked now while peering through the trees to find some less visible means of ingress than the road even though it looked like nobody aboard the gunboat was even watching that approach despite knowing that they were holding a hostage from a group of Imperials. Did they not know how much a blood-relative to a Clannarch was supposedly worth? Debatable though it was whether Arlo merited that worth, Irina doubted Treistan would respond to a ransom request with ‘I have no nephew Arlo’, but colder things had happened.
“Even when I was corporant, my eyesight was quite poor,” the headset admitted to her, “In my current state I am so nearsighted that it’s easier to just observe the echoes of my own voice; which I should point out you have diminished for the sake of stealth.”
“Right, can’t be helped then, I suppose.” Irina whispered back to him before sighing and plotting a surreptitious zig-zagging route through the trees on the hillside that would land her on the shore next to all the upturned boats and the trench full of corpses. The very thought of it was enough to cause a lurch in her stomach of reverse-nostalgia.
Carefully she advanced down the hillside, easing herself off one tree and then another to keep herself from gaining too much momentum until she reached the last stretch and had no choice but to slide down in a half-squat with one foot pointed ahead of herself amidst a rustling of leaves and branches that would not have sounded so like deafening cacophony if it weren’t for the fact that she so deeply wanted to go unnoticed. The end of her slide transmuted into a stumbling forward jog that took her up to the trench and against all of her heartfelt desires she lunged ahead and dove into it for the sake of cover. She was among more timber and ruin from the boats than corpses, but just the way her boots had collapsed a degraded head or the way a patch of silk dress was visible among the wreckage did enough to make her mood even fouler. She wanted to complain to Pluramon, but was too scared to make noise while she huddled in the trench lest she alert some sentry she hadn’t spotted on her way down.
She sat for a long time, certain they had to have heard her. Did they think she had been a deer or a rabbit? To keep calm she joked to herself that she would be a rabbit or at least do a decent job acting the part if she could get her hands on one of the painted dancing girls who undulated in the upper windows of certain disreputable pubs near the docks when she returned to Corovos. Irina undulated herself somewhat as well after she peered over the edge of the trench to determine there were no men standing at the taffrail of the gunboat looking down at her. She slithered up onto the rocks and crouch-walked to the nearest boat, a humble gig of rotting wood with its nose half in the gentle lapping waves coming onto the shore. She kept her eyes on the gunboat with every step and held her carbine in front of her with the stock already touching her shoulder.
For a long time she peeked over the bottom of the boat until she determined that the men aboard the little gunboat were all either below decks or gathered at the prow looking out to the mouth of the cove as though they could somehow observe the distant form of their Speaker on his ill-fated quest to go fetch himself a soul-sucker to take home in a taped-up cardboard box with holes poked on top. Glad for their foolishness and lack of professionalism, she gently flipped over the little boat and eased it into the water before slinking into it and using a dangling foot to push herself out into the lapping water. She made no sound crossing the short gap to the gunboat and used her other foot as a bumper to keep the little boat from colliding with it before slinging her rifle and taking stock of the hull laid out before her. After a quick survey of the various fixtures and portholes along the side of the little ship she decided to try the other side and hand-over-hand walked the little boat around the stern of the gunboat, underneath the stern gallery, and over to the other side where she found a shroud of chains leading up to a gap in the taffrail. With cat-like grace Irina ascended the shroud careful not to rattle the chains and rolled onto her stomach on the deck rather than stick her head up into the open. She was near a side entrance to the stern gallery with a white seven-pointed star painted on the door along with the label, ‘Speaker’s Contemplation Chamber’.
She ignored this for now and worked her way forward, but when she poked her head around the corner to examine the deck, she could see that there were sentries posted on the hatches leading down below the weather deck who hadn’t been drawn with their comrades to the front of the ship. So, with nothing else to do as of yet, Irina backed away and rode the wall back to the door leading into the Contemplation Chamber.
What she saw inside galvanized her like the acts of Khaldonites so often did.
The door opened to a head-on view of a butchered old woman, well and truly dead with a heavy smear of blood coating her chest. The only visible mutation she’d had were long, floppy rabbit ears hanging from either side of her head, but the Khaldonite scum had tortured her nonetheless. Irina had seen them butcher people for less, even everyday folk with no mutation what-so-ever. This woman had been at least sixty, and maybe older, but still they’d tied her to a chair so she couldn’t resist and tore out her teeth and her tongue. Irina imagined they had done it with glee, though she couldn’t say she had ever seen a Khaldonite smile over anything. To her left was a hunched figure on another stool and then a huge desk illuminated by angled sunlight. As Irina eased into the room a little further, she recognized the figure on the other stool to be Arlo and her heart dropped. With his hair a loose mess around him and his unmoving head lolling against his chest, it was hard to tell if she was too late or not until she got closer and saw his unfocused eyes staring down at the floor while the nostrils of his long nose gently swelled with shallow breaths.
In the next instant, he looked up at her and his bruised face lit up with recognition, though he said nothing. Just to be sure it stayed that way, Irina held a finger up to pursed lips while she eased her satchel down onto the floor in front of the desk. Inside was a fairly simple-looking device shaped like an upturned vase with a stopwatch strapped to the front, a two-stage explosive that would pour hot thermite out the bottom to make a hole for itself to fall into before its secondary fuse would cause a powerful explosion. Borebombs were meant to sabotage the powerful lifestone engines of dreadnoughts, so Irina had no doubt it would more than suffice to destroy the little Khaldonite gunboat. She set it down in front of the desk, but did not start the timer.
Next she went to Arlo and knelt before him, peering up into his tortured gaze with a look of concern before asking in the quietest voice she could manage, “Can you move on your own, lad? I have Pickles here on my back, and he says even if you are badly hurt we can put you to sleep and he can ‘drive’ you out, so to speak.”
Arlo blinked at her a few times and licked his lips before saying, “I think I can move. I have not had the chance to try since they strapped me to this seat and beat me.”
Irina nodded and drew her boarding axe. The notches in its underside tore through the tough rope that had been used to secure the young man to his stool and she cringed on the inside seeing the deep red ligature marks in his wrists. Arlo did not massage them once they were loose, however, and simply let his arms dangle at his side while he continued to slump forward. Irina looked up at him again and saw his expression had not changed at all. She didn’t want to seem judgemental, but she’d expected something like grace or relief.
“Did they do more to you than I can see, Arlo?” she asked next, gently dancing around the topic in case he’d been used in some terrible way.
Arlo took in a deep breath and gently shook his head before telling her, “They said I could be safe if I came with them. Or rather, the one they call Speaker Ordon said I could be safe. He said I could have a job doing what I wanted… anything I wanted. They would give me a house, and food… They have no money, they do not use it.”
Irina sniffed at him and prepared herself to leave him on the ship while she blew it up, but softened herself seeing how he suffered. At least, she was fairly certain it was the younger man’s suffering that softened her rather than the threat of her head being crushed to death between a pair of luscious milky-white gams.
“They have money, Arlo.” Irina assured him in a motherly voice while she rose and lowered her hands to help him up. “Carved ebony coins with seven-pointed stars on both sides of them. They use them to buy methsel and food when they’re not stealing it. Usually they trade their ill-gotten plunder to get it back when they’re redbound once more. Let’s come along home now, Arlo.”
He put his hands in hers and together they managed to get him onto his feet. Irina put her shoulder under his arm to help steady him and whispered, “Asides that, you told me this morning you have a beastgirl to ruin the life of or be heartbroken by. Khaldon don’t let you do that sort of stuff, he just has you kill them. Or haven’t you noticed the smell of your cellmate here?”
Arlo did not reply but simply stumbled, guided her to the desk, and started rummaging through it with his free hand. In the middle drawer he found his watch. The shock of being in his pocket while he was whiplashed against the ground had stopped it. Arlo made a distressed little wail behind his closed lips and shook it. It ticked a few times before grinding to a halt once more and he made another pitiful noise that Irina did not want to admit she found somewhat adorable.
“It’s just a turnip, Arlo, they aren’t made to stand up to the rigors of life on the sea.” Irina told him in that same gentle tone from earlier while she presented her hand for it. “Just gi’ it here, I’ll hold on to it for you until we get back.”
Again, Arlo said nothing, but he did use the arm he had draped over her to give a sort of half-hug while he wrapped the chain and charm around his watch once more and continued rummaging through the drawers. Eventually, he separated himself from her entirely and shuffled over to a cabinet behind the desk where he rifled through the compartments until he finally was able to produce his beloved garrison belt. The shoulder strap was warped from being used to bind him and the cravat he’d been using as a hair band was missing as well as his waistcoat. It was likely they’d been too soiled to bother keeping. His sword and revolver were in the cabinet as well. He sighed as Irina helped him fit the belt onto his trousers once more, trying to put the appearance of gentle care over her apprehension that a Hand or Foot might walk in on them at any moment.
“I almost managed to get the gun out of the leather this time.” he muttered pitifully as Irina cracked open the breech to check the primers of the shells in the cylinder. She shut the latch again and slipped it into his holster with a couple of sympathetic pats, but did not comment on his by-now expected inability to defend himself.
“Let me see you hobble, princeling, go stand by the door.” she ordered softly with one pointing finger before kneeling over the borebomb to adjust its fuse and timer. Watching Arlo walk with one hand on the wall, somewhat awkwardly but with no favored leg, gave her some faith that he would be able to make it down to the boat and across to the shore. From there, they could flip over the first thing with a motor and zip out of there while she covered the taffrail with her carbine.
“I will crack open the door and go left,” the little Tribune explained while she unslung her carbine and quietly tugged the charging handle halfway back as if the chambered round would’ve evaporated if she didn’t make sure it was still there.”You go directly across behind me to the gap in the rail. They have a chain shroud hung there, the Speaker used it to depart and I used it to board. Climb down fast, don’t mind the noise. I will be right behind you as soon as ever I can.”
Arlo met her eyes and gave a firm nod, then gave a meaningful glance to the bomb. She nodded back to him and returned to kneel over it once more. With her hand on the arming plunger, she met his gaze with her eyebrows raised and asked, “Ready, princeling?”
“Yes, mum.” came the oddly softspoken reply.
Irina armed the bomb and at once it began to tick like Arlo’s watch. She immediately glided for the door with her right hand bracing the carbine to her shoulder. As soon as she pushed the door open, her left hand fell to the handguard and she rounded the corner with the sight coming up before her eye. Both she and the Black Hand coming around the corner with a bucket of red paint were extremely surprised, but Irina was quicker to react and fired three shots right into the man’s middle.
Her carbine was noisier than any handgun, and the muzzle flash was like a frozen stab of flame that left spots in the eye, but its victim stumbled backwards while his hands instinctively crossed over his chest and he tumbled down the stairs already dead. The paint bucket that he’d dropped went over on its side and gushed more dark red fluid on the deck in a messy semi-circle that traced the arc it rolled in. Voices from ahead alerted Irina that the furious sound of her gun had not somehow gone miraculously unnoticed, but she kept herself braced in the doorway with only her right shoulder and knee exposed while she kept the almost-black green threads of her crosshair trained over the top of the stairs. Sure enough, two White Hands came running up the stairs with their own guns in hand. They were not holding them ready to use like fighters, but in the panicked idiocy of men who were not entirely sure what was happening.
Irina put a single round through the first one before pivoting to fire three more into the second. She pivoted back to see the first man slumping sideways over the railing with his gun dangling in his hand and put two more shots into him. Arlo finally gathered the courage to pass behind her and mount the chain shroud. She listened to it rattling for a few seconds before finally dislodging herself from the door and advancing on the stairs. The men who had been gathered at the prow were trying to get at a weapons locker in the open waist of the ship, and one who had already been armed raised his rifle partway before she cracked off another trio of shots at him. The others scattered, and Irina lowered herself to seek them before backing away and jamming her left hand into her satchel for a stickbomb.
Boots were pounding on the deck plating beneath her as men surged for the hatches to come towards the gunfire, and some man who had got his hands on a shotgun took a potshot at the stairs while Irina ducked back. She cracked the fuse with her thumb and lobbed the stickbomb underhand before blindly firing six of the remaining twelve rounds in her magazine over the top of the stairs. Without waiting to see what came next, she leapt back while slinging the carbine once more and swung around the railing with one hand. The toe of her boot only grazed the chain shroud and with a gasp Irina found herself hanging over the side of the gunboat, looking down at Arlo who was cowering in the little gig at the bottom of the climb. She kicked her feet like a child in a tall chair for a moment before saying, “Pickles, I shore hope you’re waterproof!”
The explosion of her thrown stickbomb drowned out the professor’s response as she opened her hand and fell straight down into the water while her heart climbed up into her throat. Thankfully, the little cove was deep enough that she didn’t end up compressing her legs like an accordion on the rocky bottom like she’d imagined, but in fact didn’t even manage to find the bottom before having to madly flap her arms through the salty froth all around her to surge towards the surface. She broke over the top of the water gasping for air and was surprised to see Arlo’s hand extended down in front of her. She grasped it without hesitation and climbed the rest of the way into the boat while she heard men scrambling on the deck above them. Arlo had already drawn his revolver by the time she shoved the hull of the larger ship to push them towards the shore, and Irina was pleased to feel the painful clapping of her eardrums as he fired it right next to her head at the men who dared to peer down at them. She was sure he hadn’t hit any of them, of course, but it had certainly given them something to think about.
She paddled madly with the butt of her carbine towards the shore while Arlo cracked open the breech of his revolver. Empty shells clattered all around in the bottom of the boat, but Arlo looked incredibly foolish holding it there as he realized he had nothing to replenish it with. Irina turned to look over her shoulder and saw a man with a bandaged ear standing at the taffrail with his head turned away from them and one arm pointing down towards them. She raised her carbine over his middle and shot him without feeling. She’d tugged the trigger to shoot him again, but a smoking shell casing was stovepiped and stuck sideways out of her carbine’s ejection port.
Irina was tugging the charging handle back and dumping the casing while the boat found sand, and she was pouring water out of the magazine while they climbed onto the beach to her ordering Arlo, “The trench!”
As he seemed unable to hear her, Irina snatched the young man by his bicep and twisted herself to force him in a running stumble towards the blackened char of the gash in the ground. He tumbled over and fell into it on his back, and Irina dove after him.
“Enjoy the view!” she commanded, straddling him and reseating the magazine in her carbine. Truth-be-told; though she did have her bum stuck right in his face she was sure he was mostly seeing a sopping wet greatcoat with ashes and dead bits of charred beastfolk stuck to it, but the quip had been meant more to calm herself than to entertain Arlo. She felt him warm underneath her, a welcome sensation in contrast to the chilly water pouring off her hair and down her neck. She panned the carbine up to the taffrail again and waited with bated breath. The timer of the borebomb had not been set for too long, but Irina had failed to keep count while she’d made a mad dash off the gunboat so now it felt like an eternity.
Gunfire from the deck chattered out over their heads and two men mounted the shroud to climb down to the water, thinking they were advancing while their shipmates suppressed Irina and Arlo. Irina watched them through her sight and weighed shooting them at the risk of exposing herself with her muzzle flash in case she hadn’t been spotted yet, but before she could make the decision she heard the tell-tale hissing fizzle of the borebomb’s first charge and with wide eyes threw one leg over to join the other and get deeper into the trench across Arlo’s middle.
“Are you hit?” he asked, looking extremely concerned for her. Irina did not have time to reply or explain, so she whipped off her cap and covered his face with it while slamming her eyes shut.
The second charge of the borebomb moved the world while they sat still.
The sound seemed to last far too long for what happened in such a short instant. Trapped inside the hull after it had fallen into the engine room, the pressure of the high explosive had rapidly filled the gunboat and superheated it before at the same time the weakest part of the hull cracked open. There was a high, crackling crash followed by a low, ripping whoosh as fire jetted out the side of the vessel in the instant before its magazine went up and a second crash blew apart the front of the ship. Irina held tight to Arlo in the trench until the ringing in her ears subsided and she could only hear crackling fire and gurgling water before raising her head to examine the wreckage. The two men who’d been on the shrouds were floating in the water on the far side of the cove now beneath stains on the mesa where they’d struck the rock above their gently bobbing forms. The gunboat itself was like the cracked-open shell of a nut, twisting sideways in the water and sinking with alarming speed. Wreckage and bodies floated all around it, and the water surrounding it was misted brown with churning sand and blood. A slick of burning methsel floated atop the water, an orange corona around the red-painted ruins of the quickly sinking ship.
Irina lifted her carbine again as she rose to her knees, but did not shoulder it. A warm feeling of elation poured into her and she pumped the fist of her left hand with extreme satisfaction before rising the rest of the way to her feet. Arlo sat up in the bottom of the trench and pushed her cap onto his head while arranging his tangled mess of hair behind his shoulders. He looked up at her with a haggard, confused face that reminded her of men who’d been shell-shocked. Warmly, she extended a hand down to him and he gladly took it while getting to his feet so he, too, could survey the blasted gunboat. Indulging herself somewhat, Irina put an arm around Arlo’s waist and gave him a little hug, saying, “I know it’s not glamorous, but it’s Her work, and it’s good to see it done. In the name of the Jade Queen.”
A tiny, garbled and distorted sound pitched from Pluramon’s headset, dangling out of Irina’s collar and halfway down her back. It sounded like the words, “Goddess be praised.”
“She watches.” Arlo weakly muttered, and numbly hugged the Tribune back before stepping out of the trench and onto the shore again. He wandered along the beach absently for a few paces while Irina searched for a boat with a motor on it. When she found it, they worked together to get it into the water. It took a little calculation to plot a safe line out of the cove that wouldn’t bring them close to the gunboat, but she managed well enough in the end.
Her sense of triumph was only increased as they emerged from the cove to see Placelle Lamella at the jackstaff of the Sunseeker with Speaker Ordon hanging below her off the front of the ship. While she’d only been asked to stall the other heartleech, it seemed that she had gone above and beyond the call of duty and went so far as to beat him senseless and subdue him. The Oathkeeper seemed pleased-as-can-be while she loomed over the hanging man who was determinedly grasping the railing with one hand while she took what appeared to be a little kitchen knife and repeatedly drew tiny cuts along the top of his arm. Neither of them were speaking to one-another, but both turned their heads at the sound of the approaching motor and Ordon’s furious face transmuted into one of outrage and betrayal when he recognized Arlo. For her part, Placelle Lamella’s face lit up into extreme pleasure and she jammed the tip of the knife right into the center of Ordon’s balled fist; which immediately opened and caused him to plummet well over thirty paces into the waiting maw of the sea below with a mighty splash that soaked the peak of the orlop. Placelle Lamella stood at the railing looking down at Arlo with a pleasant, blushing face, happily waving at him even as armed men rushed past her to mount the jackstaff and fire blast after blast with their shotguns into the churning froth where Ordon had fallen into the sea.
The water misted with blood, but the Speaker never rose to the surface.
When they got onto the deck, Placelle Lamella shamelessly threw her arms around Arlo and held him tight to her chest. There was something familiar about the way her breastplate deformed his cheek while she removed Irina’s hat from his head and eagerly pet down the messy raven hair beneath with both hands.
While she held him tight, she whispered, “I know you were tempted, Arlo. I felt it all. I would have come with you if I could. But The Goddess commands me to kill those people. Don’t believe their lies, and I will protect you from them forever.”
