Steel's Edge (20 page)

One of Jason's men came to stand by them, saw Charlotte still wrapped in magic, and halted in midstep, maintaining his distance. He looked at her, looked at the console, shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably . . .

“Would you like me to move?” she asked.

“Yes,” he exhaled.

Charlotte took two steps to the right, away from the console and toward two other men near Jason, both looking like they crushed skulls for their living. The cutthroats shied from her, backing up. Jason held his ground, but his face locked into a hard, impersonal mask. He was deeply afraid and determined not to show it.

She felt utterly alone. So that's what it was like to be a pariah.

“My lady.” Richard's fingers touched her arm.

She almost jumped.

He offered her his arm. “May I?”

Charlotte rested her fingers on his forearm and stood next to him, painfully aware that their legs were almost touching and the streams of her magic wound about him. She dared to glance at him. His face was relaxed. He looked back at her and smiled, as if they had stopped during a stroll in a park to admire some flowers. It made her feel human.

Why, why didn't she take Éléonore up on the invitation to visit her family? Had she met Richard a year ago, things might have been so different. He was the kind of man she had always wanted to meet. Strong, honorable, and kind.
He is also a killer,
an annoying voice whispered in her mind. Well, so was she.

Too late now. They were on a ship sailing to deliver death. Romantic fantasies would get her nowhere. She'd given up that luxury.

Charlotte looked straight ahead. A large island loomed in the distance. Two ports hugged its coast. On the right, handsome piers of cut stone thrust into the ocean, flanked by graceful yachts and private boats. Picturesque palms spread their fanned leaves and wide roads, lit with blue and yellow lanterns, ran deeper inland, toward pastel-colored houses in shades of turquoise, white, yellow, and pink. To the left, rougher piers offered refuge to tugboats and barges, leading to a seedy boardwalk and hostile, dark streets. Farther to the left, a naval fort of gray stone stabbed the ocean, overseeing both ports.

“Where the hell are we?” someone asked.

Richard swore, a quiet, savage sound under his breath, and caught himself. “My apologies.”

“What is this place?” Charlotte asked.

“The Isle of Divine Na,” he said. “It's an independent barony—the Baron of Na purchased it from Adrianglia when the continent was being colonized. The entire place is one big luxury resort, full of tourists in the late summer and fall. See, the luxury port is in the north, and the commercial port, where we're heading, is to the south. We're barely three hours from Kelena. I've looked at this island as a possibility for the Market but dismissed it because I thought it would be too risky to run a slave operation on an island full of vacationers. It was here all this time under my nose, and I missed it.”

“Don't beat yourself up, old man.” Jason grinned, patting Richard's shoulder. “Happens to everyone.”

Richard glared back at him, his composure slipping, and for a second she thought he'd rip Jason's arm off and beat him with it.

She leaned closer to Richard, and murmured, “If you decide to throw him to the ground, I promise to kick him. Vigorously.”

“Thank you,” Richard said. “I may take you up on it.” He sounded sincere.

A green flare went up at the dock to the left.

“They want us to dock,” one of the older men said to Jason.

“Then dock us. Gently. We'll need this ship in one piece to get the hell out of here.”

The man barked some orders. The ship slowed, approaching the dock in a graceful arc.

“One fort,” Jason murmured, his face thoughtful.

“It has five long-range, flash-load cannons,” Richard said.

The slaves formed up in two lines on the deck. Jack moved to the front.

“Who the fuck put the kid on point?” Jason took a step toward the lines.

“Leave him where he is,” Richard said. “He sat in the hold for two hours, holding himself in check. He needs to vent, and none of us needs to be in front of him.”

The crime lord looked at Richard. “He's a kid.”

“He's a changeling,” Richard answered. “You've never seen one fight. Give him the benefit of the doubt.”

The faint hum of the cloaking device stopped abruptly. The fog dispersed. Charlotte hugged her shoulders, feeling suddenly exposed.

A metal chain clanged—they'd dropped the anchor. The ship slowed further, approaching the dock carefully, almost gently.

“Once we disembark and take the fort, take her out a few hundred yards,” Jason said to one of his men. “I don't want to strip this island and come back to a sunken ship.”

Three dockhands waited on the wooden pier. Behind them, a crew of slavers waited, no doubt ready to receive the merchandise. Some of the slavers were female. Women were no less capable of cruelty than men.

Lines flew from the ship to the pier. The dockhands secured them.

“Lower the gangplank,” Jason said.

Two men cranked a large wheel. A metal ramp slid from the ship's side toward the dock.

The moment it touched the stone, Jack started down the gangplank. The women followed him in two lines, still keeping their hands bound.

“You're eager for the slave pens, sweetheart?” one of the slaver women asked.

Jack swayed. A psychotic grin stretched his lips. His face jerked, his expression feral.

A tall slaver stepped forward. “Come her—”

Jack spun, leaping so fast, Charlotte barely saw the knife in his hand slice through the slaver's neck. Jack landed, catching the man's severed head by the hair, and hurled it at the slavers.

“Holy shit,” Jason said.

Her mind reeled at the amount of force it must've taken to slice through the muscle and bone of a thick human neck with a knife.

The slavers froze, shocked, and Jack ripped into them like a pike into a school of minnows. Blood sprayed, people screamed in pain. The slaves abandoned their fake shackles and charged down to join the slaughter. The dog shot down the gangplank and into the thick of the fighting. She tried to keep up with Jack, but he darted in and out of the bloodbath. She caught a flash of his face—he was smiling.

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

“Stop!” Jason roared.

The pretend slaves halted.

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

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

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

The criminals howled in agreement.

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

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

The criminals dispersed.

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

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

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

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

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The bookkeeper?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You don't freeze.”

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

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

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

“Ward stones,” Charlotte said.

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

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

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

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