Deathmaker

  She was already on her way, though she held her breath as she drew closer. Just in case.

  Tolemek headed straight across the clearing around the base of the fortress toward a vine-draped trail that disappeared into the dark jungle. Cas paused to touch the throat of the first man who had fallen, checking for a pulse. Surprisingly, it was there, beating normally. Aware of the alarm gongs and more shouts in the distance, she ran for the foliage too.

  She thought to veer off in a different direction, to find another trail into the jungle, but Tolemek had stopped to wait for her. Was he being thoughtful? Or did he want to make sure he didn’t lose her for his own reasons? The latter seemed more likely. But as thick and dense as the vegetation was, she ought to be able to slip away at any point along the trail once they entered the jungle.

  “You made them fall asleep?” Cas wondered, noting that he hadn’t killed anyone in their entire escape. She couldn’t make that same claim.

  “They’re unconscious. They shouldn’t wake up for a half hour to an hour, depending on how much they inhaled.” Tolemek looked like he might take her arm, but he stopped himself and simply pointed toward the dark jungle. “More will be coming.”

  “Right.” Cas strode down the path, glancing back before they left the clearing. Dragon Spit leered down from atop its rocky precipice, rock that wasn’t as solid as she had assumed when her cage on wheels had been hauled up the winding road to the top earlier that day. That road and the entire above-ground complex were lit by lights now, dozens of yellow dots against the night. There had to be a lot more guards out there searching.

  She and Tolemek slipped into the jungle. Though the main road meandered along the rocky coast, that would doubtlessly be watched. Their trail seemed to parallel the coast, but it was difficult to be certain. Even though it seemed to be regularly used, vines and large leaves hung low, and they had to duck often. Branches scraped at Cas’s bare shins, and once again, she lamented the shapeless canvas smock she had been forced to don. The shoes—more like moccasins—had soles like paper, and she felt every root and rock on the trail. When she wasn’t tripping over something, she was stepping into mud that kicked up, spattering her legs.

  The monkeys had fallen silent, but numerous large creatures shifted and rattled the leaves as they passed. A tiger or panther roared in the distance. Even though the jungle didn’t sound like a friendly place for a solo traveler, Cas would rather face it than a ship full of pirates.

  The trail split, and she saw her chance. Tolemek veered toward the left. Cas would take the right.

  She hadn’t taken more than a single step in that direction when dark shadows oozed out of the foliage. She barely managed to keep from yelping with surprise when someone appeared right in front of her, blocking her route. She whipped her rifle up, but someone grabbed her from behind. She tried to jerk away, to back into the brush so she would have more space to shoot, but the firearm was torn from her grip. She dipped her hand toward the pouch of throwing stars, but the man behind her caught both of her arms before she could grasp a weapon. She stomped down on his foot, but he was wearing boots, and her pathetic cloth shoes lent nothing to the power of her heel.

  Lanterns snapped open, and yellow light filled the pathway. Scarred, bearded faces full of missing or dead, brown teeth leered at her. Tattooed arms were wrapped about her body, restraining her—and squeezing all of the air out of her lungs. All manner of pistols and daggers were being waved about, more than one pointing in her direction. Cas’s first ludicrous thought was that these were some savage jungle nomads or bandits who scraped out a living by preying on those who dared walk these paths, but she realized the truth as soon as she spotted Tolemek. He was standing, his hands on his hips, next to a gray-haired man wearing an Iskandian general’s gold-braided hat, a spyglass on a thong around his neck, and a breastplate made of human finger bones. There were stories of cannibalism among some of the pirate clans, but they were just stories. Weren’t they?

  “I wasn’t expecting you, Captain,” Tolemek said as calmly as if everyone had shown up to smoke and play cards together. He looked at Cas and waved to the hulking man holding her. The death grip around her torso loosened slightly, though she still couldn’t have slipped a hand down to those throwing stars. At least the pirates had only taken her rifle so far. Maybe she could still find an opportunity to escape.

  “We were planning to while away the evening in the tavern, conducting a few repairs, and dodging a few lawmen,” the gray-haired man said, tapping his spyglass against the breastplate in a soft clink-thunk pattern. Was this Captain Slaughter? If so, he was one of the most powerful among the Roaming Curse, and perhaps the most infamous. “But some soldiers came by and were bragging about how they’d so daringly and cunningly captured you and that the commandant was going to torture you ceaselessly. I grew worried about you.” He flashed a grin—his teeth weren’t quite so poorly cared for as many of the ones in the other pirates’ mouths. “And my next batch of projectile naphtha you promised.”

  “Your concern is touching,” Tolemek said drily.

  Dry tone or not, when the captain thumped him on the shoulder, Tolemek shared the man’s smile. Cas didn’t like the easy camaraderie she sensed between the two. With her, Tolemek had seemed normal. Even solicitous. Oh, she was sure he had been using her all along, but, reputation or not, he hadn’t seemed like some vile monster. That might change now that he was back among his pirate brethren. Damn, she wished she had veered into the jungle just a few seconds sooner. She might have watched this reunion from some nearby treetop and then sped off before anyone caught her.

  “It seems you escaped on your own,” the captain said. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”

  Several of the men nodded and chuckled.

  “But this isn’t quite what I thought you were searching for.” The captain extended a hand toward Cas.

  “No,” Tolemek said.

  She caught his eyes—or maybe he was studying her at that moment anyway—and silently implored him to keep quiet about who she was. Or even to let her go. Did he have that kind of sway? Or were all decisions in regard to prisoners left to the captain?

  “She someone special?” the captain asked. “Or were you just feeling randy tonight?”

  That drew snorts and more chuckles.

  “She ain’t much to look at,” the man standing in front of Cas said. Yeah? Who was he to talk? How could he even chew his dinner with those teeth? “Not with all them bruises. Her whole face looks like someone used it for a punching bag. There’s some girls in town who—er...” The pirate’s expression grew nervous, almost contrite, when he glanced at Tolemek.

  “Wouldn’t be afraid to sleep with the Deathmaker?” The captain smirked.

  “I don’t know,” Brown Teeth said. “I mean, I haven’t asked. I figure he’s purty enough, but I ain’t a girl, so I don’t know if’n... uhm...” The man clasped his hands behind his back, apparently deciding he had shot enough holes in his flier.

  The captain smacked Tolemek on the chest. “Darts just called you pretty. If the girl doesn’t entertain you tonight, I think you’ve got a backup invitation.”

  “Coming up behind us,” someone called softly from ten meters back down the trail.

  “Shutter those lanterns, boys,” the captain said, pulling a pistol from his belt. “Target practice coming.”

  Cas caught a grimace on Tolemek’s face before the lights disappeared. Her captor—she had yet to see the man’s face, but he had the meaty arms of a smith and the breath of a dead fish—dragged her a couple of steps into the foliage. After the light, it took her eyes a moment to adjust, and she wasn’t the first to see the figures jogging up the path toward them. Three guards. It was too dark to make out their uniforms, but who else would be searching the jungle at night?

  At some unspoken signal, several pistols fired at once.

  Two guards crumpled immediately. The rearmost one cried out in pain and tried to run. More pistols fired, hamme
ring him in the back. He toppled into the brush beside the trail.

  The lanterns came back up.

  “Guess this isn’t the best place for a confabulation.” The captain grinned and dipped into an ammo pouch to reload his pistol. Cas’s gaze snagged on the pouch for a moment. It was probably made from some kind of hide, but that might have been human skin too.

  She told herself that as long as she wasn’t locked in a Cofah cell, her odds of finding a way back home were still better than they had been before, but it was a struggle to find greater optimism than that.

  She wondered what Tolemek thought about the downed guards. After he had worked hard not to kill anyone all night. His face didn’t give away much. His ropes of hair hung around his eyes, shadowing them, helping hide his thoughts. Maybe that was why he preferred the style. Or maybe he simply didn’t care, and his earlier efforts had been nothing more than experimenting with his various toys. Most of the pirates had the bronze skin and dark hair of the Cofah, though one had black skin and a couple others might have been from Iskandia. Wherever they hailed from originally, they didn’t seem to mind killing the Cofah.

  “Let’s get back to the Night Hunter,” the captain said. “Too much law down here on land.”

  “I have an errand to attend to first,” Tolemek said. “It shouldn’t take long. I’ll meet you at the ship.”

  “And the girl?”

  “She helped me escape. Treat her well.” Tolemek looked around the circle of men, but he also pinned the captain with his gaze. The command pleased Cas, but she wondered what he risked in trying to give an order to his superior officer. Maybe the Deathmaker had enough of a reputation that Slaughter, too, walked lightly around him?

  “You mean, treat her well on the way to town and give her a swat on the rump to say goodbye, or treat her well on the way to our ship where we take her on?” The captain rested a fist against his hip. “If it’s the latter, I’ll be knowing who you’re bringing aboard and why.”

  Cas held her breath. This was her chance. If Tolemek gave the word, she’d be let go. At the moment, he was the only one who knew who she was, the only one who cared.

  He met her eyes and didn’t answer the captain right away. She lifted her chin and stared back at him. She wouldn’t plead—appearing weak in front of these scavengers was the last thing she dared—but she had to make sure he knew what she would prefer—after all, he had offered her a ride on his ship. She had answered with sarcasm but hadn’t given a straight-out no. What if he thought he would be doing her a favor, taking her across the sea, closer to Iskandia?

  “I can find my own way home from here,” Cas said.

  “Wait.” A pirate in the back of the group stepped forward, raising his lantern toward her. He had matted blond hair and paler skin than the Cofah men.

  Cas’s stomach sank lower than the pouch of throwing stars. She didn’t recognize the man, but what if he recognized her somehow? She hadn’t been flying long enough to be notorious, not like Zirkander and some of the older pilots, but there were pictures of the heroic flier squadrons back home, especially in the capital city, where they had their air base. She had been recognized on the street before.

  “That’s Gargon Ahnsung’s daughter,” the pirate said.

  Cas didn’t move, though her heart threatened to beat its way out of her chest. Was this some colleague—former colleague—of her father’s? If her father had ever killed a Roaming Curse member, she might not be any better off than if they knew her as one of Zirkander’s squadron, but at least they wouldn’t think to use her against the colonel. That would be intolerable.

  “The sniper?” the captain asked.

  Tolemek’s eyebrows rose. “I guess that explains the accuracy with rocks.”

  “Yeah,” Cas managed—her mouth was dry. “We all get together and see if we can knock over empty bean cans at family picnics.” In another situation, she would have laughed at the idea of her father hosting some family gathering, not only because she was his only living relative, but because he was as social as a mountain lion.

  The pale-skinned pirate was nodding. “Yup, that’s her. I been out to Ahnsung’s house once to deliver a message, back when I worked for the guild. Seen her then, shooting bows with him out back. Must have been nearly ten years ago, but she was a pretty little thing.” The pirate grinned. “Deathmaker, she might be all right once them bruises heal up. You might want to keep her.”

  Cas bit down her tongue to keep from calling the man a creep for ogling her when she’d been a thirteen-year-old girl. Nobody was cursing or sharing irate whispers about her father—hells, these criminals probably respected a mercenary sniper—so she might still get out of this alive.

  “She flies with Zirkander now though,” the pirate added.

  “What?” The captain’s head jerked up—no his whole body jerked to attention, the finger bone breastplate rattling with the movement.

  A blast of other exclamations, some curses, some streams of anger and disbelief, came from other mouths. The arm around Cas’s waist tightened again, putting images of boa constrictors in her mind.

  The oh-so-helpful pirate snapped his fingers. “’Course, you must have known that, Deathmaker. That’s why you brought her out, isn’t it? Now that’s a fine prize.”

  “I’ll say,” the captain whispered, his eyes as hard as steel as they bored into her. One of his hands was balled into a fist, and the other clenched the hilt of his pistol. “That man ruined—” He was so choked with emotion—with rage—that he could barely speak. “Were you flying with him last summer, girl?”

  Cas doubted he would believe her if she lied—he didn’t look like a man ready to believe anything that would interrupt his right to rage—but she kept her mouth shut. Wasn’t there a quotation about silence never getting a man in trouble?

  The captain slowly pulled out his pistol—every eye there was riveted by it, by him—and stepped toward her. “Answer me, girl. Were you with him last summer?” Between one word and the next, he shifted from a whisper to a yell. “Did you help take down my ship?”

  The pirate holding Cas stepped forward, forcing her closer to the captain. She tried to squirm free, to kick him or find an arm she could bite, but the man was no amateur at restraining prisoners.

  The captain stalked closer, his face burning as hot and red as a furnace.

  Cas didn’t notice Tolemek move, but he was suddenly there beside the captain, pressing his forearm—and the pistol—toward the ground. Several of the surrounding pirates drew in startled breaths. The tension was thicker in the air than the humidity.

  “She’s nothing compared to Zirkander,” Tolemek said. “And she’s worth even less dead. We can use her to get to him. Set a trap, make her the bait.”

  Even though Cas had suspected Tolemek had something like that in mind all along, she felt an overpowering urge to shoot him. If only these louts hadn’t taken her gun. She had to settle for hurling daggers with her eyes.

  The captain looked down at the hand on his arm, then lifted his gaze to Tolemek’s. He was hurling a few blades with his eyes, too, but he finally stuffed his pistol back in its holster and muttered, “It must be nice to be able to see everything so logically all the time.”

  “A boon and a bane,” Tolemek said. He glanced at Cas, but must not have liked what he saw on her face, for he soon looked away. “My errand won’t take long. Put her in my cabin, and treat her well,” he said again, then added, “She’ll make poor bait if Zirkander can’t recognize her.”

  The captain walked with him several paces away from the group, and they exchanged a few words. Tolemek must have soothed the older man’s anger, for their discussion ended with the captain slapping him on the back and waving. Once again, Cas feared she had made a mistake in not bolting in those first few seconds in the jungle. A big mistake.

  Chapter 4

  The airship’s hull was painted black, the deck was painted black, and the balloon above was dyed black, so Cas was surprised wh
en the wooden bulkheads and floors below had merely been treated with a clear varnish. Her pirate escort had dwindled to two, but there were guards at the railing next to the sophisticated disembarkation device: a rope leading down to the beach. There were also numerous people walking about on the main deck, all of them armed. It seemed against pirate law to carry less than three weapons about, even when engaged in repairs or polishing cannons. Even if Cas somehow subdued her escort, her odds of getting off the airship weren’t good.

  The guards pushed her below decks and down a narrow corridor. She could stand up straight, but the bigger men had to duck their heads. They stopped before a side door. They looked at it, then at her, then at each other.

  “Deathmaker said to put her in his cabin, right?” one whispered.

  “I think so. But maybe we could put her in one of the cells until he gets back.”

  “He said to put her inside.”

  “He doesn’t usually... I mean nobody goes in his cabin except the captain. If he does girls, he doesn’t do them here.”

  “Maybe she’s special.”

  “Maybe the door’s locked.”

  If Cas’s predicament had been less dire, she might have rolled her eyes at this waffling. Why did she get the feeling that neither of them wanted to go through that door?

  “Try it.”

  One of the men grabbed the latch. It turned freely, and he pushed the door open. Neither of them walked right in. The cabin inside stood dark, so Cas couldn’t tell much about its occupant, but there was a faint chemical smell. Was this where he made his batches of goo?

  “I’ll, uh, get a lantern. And shackles. Even if he wants to have some fun, he won’t want her touching his stuff.” The speaker released Cas’s arm and walked farther along the corridor, then disappeared down a ladder, leaving her with one guard.

  She eyed the pistol holstered at his belt. A six-shooter, but she didn’t see an ammo pouch. It would be risky, but if it was fully loaded, she might have enough rounds to take care of him and clear the deck above, at least for long enough for her to sprint to that rope.