THIRTY-NINE

THE IRON FLEET

Okay, so, it’s not like we all sat down and decided what the naming conventions for Vagrants ought to be. People who can make other people explode into tiny pieces with a thought can, by and large, call themselves whatever they want.

But it’s still considered both polite and aesthetically pleasing for a Vagrant to take a name relevant to the art they practice. A Siegemage is the Hammer, a Quickmage is the Razor, and so forth. It’s not an ironclad rule, of course, but we generally adhere to it, otherwise you get situations like—

“WHY DO YOU CALL YOURSELF ‘THE NIGHTMARE’? YOU’RE A SKYMAGE, YOU FUCK!”

Yeah. That.

I shared Agne’s concern, but I didn’t bother shouting it like she had. After all, it’s not like Tenka was going to hear me, anyway.

Not over the sound of the hurricane he was hurling at us.

The sound of the Lady Merchant’s song rang and it beckoned the wailing wind. Great unseen serpents of air came flooding in through open hatches, shrieking as they coalesced at the tip of a spear to become a great, howling gale that tore down the hall. At the center of it all, positively insignificant in the face of the screaming wind, Tenka the Nightmare, no matter how inappropriate his name, sent the sky itself against us.

A Skymage’s powers are as fickle as the winds that love them. A few, knowing the wind’s barest affection, can only content themselves with flying a few feet off the ground. A few more are loved enough to call the wind to them and send flying anything not nailed down.

And people like Tenka…

Well, he must be really funny or something, because the wind fucking loved him.

Planks creaked, were torn up from the floors. Pipes trembled, were ripped free of the walls. Scrap metal, furniture, crates, stray weapons—anything that wasn’t nailed down, and some things that were, became part of the wind’s wild song, just errant notes carried on a disharmonious chorus to smash against us.

Or one of us, anyway.

Agne stood against the hurricane, arms crossed over her face, as the debris struck her, one item after another. A stray pipe tumbled out of the wind and broke itself across her arms. A flying crate smashed against her, the clothes inside scattered in the gale as the box broke into timbers. A stray gunpike came twisting out of the gale and splintered across her body in an explosion of severium and metal.

The Lady’s song coursing through her, fueling her Siegemage’s power, she shrugged off each blow, unbothered by them. Or, at least, I hoped she was unbothered by them, since my plan, at that moment, consisted solely of wrapping my arms around her leg while the rest of me flailed in a wind desperate to add me to its maelstrom of trash.

Given that she was all that stood between me and being battered against the metal walls like a broken toy, I guess I can forgive you if you think I was ungrateful for saying what I did.

“DO SOMETHING!”

But fuck you, I was out of ideas.

“I get any closer and I go flying!” she shouted back.

“Use more of your magic! Get… heavier or something, I don’t fucking know! Give up another Barter!”

She shot me a cold glare that told me two things: that would not be happening and if I asked again, she’d be using me as a shield. More magic would have allowed her to tear this fucker’s wind and his stupid name apart, but whatever emotion the Lady Merchant would demand, Agne would not give.

We were stuck here until Tenka killed us or made enough noise for more people to come and they’d kill us.

Which, I guess, left things to me.

Or rather, to us.

I let out a whispered prayer lost on the wind as I took one hand off Agne’s leg and reached into my satchel. I felt my legs flailing behind me like reeds as I fished around, running my fingers along the shells within.

Discordance? No—I tear this hull apart and we all go flying off, but he can fly. Hellfire? Probably not a great idea to use in a ship made mostly of wood. Hoarfrost? No. Sunflare? No.

Steel Python?

NO.

We might have been about to die, but that was no reason to consider it.

Fuck, fuck, FUCK. What’s left?

My fingers wrapped around a shell. The only one left that wasn’t an utterly terrible idea. And with a resigned sigh, I shut my eyes, fished it out, and fumbled with the Cacophony to load it.

From behind Agne’s leg, I aimed. Tenka looked like an impossible target at the other end of the hall, his spear guiding the gale against us. An impossible target made all the more impossible by the wind whipping my arm around and the barrier of debris between us.

But what else could I do? I had no choice but to shut one eye, pull the hammer back…

And pull the trigger.

Anyway, turns out that was the wrong choice.

The shell sped out from the Cacophony’s maw—whatever evil magic gun juice kept him going, it was stronger than wind. At least by a little. In a spray of cobalt electricity, it exploded. Across the walls of the ship, lightning danced in jagged arcs, brushing electric fingers against the walls, the pipes, the floor.

I shut my eyes.

I held my breath.

And… nothing happened.

Agne shot me one of those “the fuck was that” looks. Even Tenka, far away as he was, gave me a clear look of befuddlement. But though he might not be a proper magic, the Cacophony was an art, same as any. And every art has its philistines that just don’t get it.

Not until they do.

The pipes in the walls began to tremble. The metallic struts of the hull shook and quaked. Even the screws and nails holding them in place began to jiggle.

Against most of my foes, Shockgrasp isn’t much of a shell. Outside the rare occasion I meet someone with a lot of armor and an urge to kill me, it’s not a lot of use against the various beasts and bandits of the Scar. But in the proper time and the proper place, a spell that magnetizes every piece of metal within forty feet is pretty handy.

As it turns out, in the bowels of a ship positively laden with metal is neither the proper time nor the proper place.

“HOLY SHIT!”

You know. In case you were wondering.

I heard Tenka’s scream over the wind. But not over the sound of several hundred pounds of metal being torn out of the walls.

Pipes. Plates. Struts. Screws. In brass and copper and iron, the Shockgrasp shell pulled them free and sent them into the maelstrom of wind. The whine of metal twisting in the wind was added to the hurricane chorus as metal clashed with metal, sparks bursting in bright angry kisses as they collided, separated, and flung themselves into the wind with jagged, glistening edges.

I cowered behind Agne’s leg, wincing each time a shard of metal struck her. Pipes and struts came twisting out of the wind to bounce off her. She let out a grunt, a cry, a snarl—but she did not give an inch.

The same could not be said for our foe.

Skymages, as you might imagine, are not exactly renowned for their self-control and a guy with as stupid a name as Tenka the Nightmare wasn’t going to be breaking any molds that day.

The metal torn out of the sides proved too weighty for his wind to control. They began to fly in every direction, including toward him. A shard went shrieking by, grazing his temple and sending a spurt of blood into the vortex. His scream was accompanied by the Lady’s song as he summoned another gale, sending out a new wind in a desperate bid to keep the metal debris from killing him.

Admittedly, the finer points of anemology are lost on me. I have no idea what makes the wind do what it does. But on that day, I learned that introducing two hurricane-force gales in opposition to each other to a whole mess of metal garbage…

“No, no, no, no, NO!”

Turns out it’s a bad idea.

Tenka was screaming as he went from certain victory to certain death. He waved his spear around wildly, hurling the winds this way and that in a futile struggle to keep the metallic debris from smashing into him. With each gesture, the maelstrom became more chaotic, the hall shuddering as wild winds sent pipes and plates smashing against the walls and the floor and each other.

About the time I narrowly avoided an iron spike the size of my forearm plunging into my eye socket, I suspected I probably should have thought of a better idea.

But this could still work. Agne, despite her clothes being torn, was unscathed. Tenka was unfocused, panicked, using too much power. Skymages gave up their breath to the Lady Merchant to keep their magic working and he was going through his like a wineskin with a hole in it.

Either he’d run out of magic or an errant piece of trash would tear a hole in him. One way or another, he’d have to stop and then we could take care of him.

There was an ominously deep creaking sound.

The hull shuddered.

Metal screamed.

Or everything could go fucking wrong, I thought. That’s fine, too.

An explosion of screws and sparks. A great sheet of metal the size of a man tore itself free from the ship’s hull. Jagged edges went twisting into the winds, hurled against the ceiling, the walls, the floor. Splinters shot up as it carved a massive hole in the deck before it tumbled back into the wind and went flying…

Straight toward us.

“AGNE!”

I shouted into the wind. The Lady’s song rose in my ears. Agne let out a low growl, setting her feet, clenching her fist…

And swinging.

Her punch split it in twain, turning one gigantic fucking metal sheet into two gigantic fucking blades. One of them tumbled, struck the floor, and bounced up to cut along my arm. I screamed and I bled and both were lost into the wind as a great gout of red swirled. Pain lanced up my arm, loosening my grip.

And I flew.

I went twisting into the wind, my blood trailing behind me, just one more piece of trash in the maelstrom. I shouted, flailed, struggled to find purchase as I bounced off the walls, the floors, my bones shuddering with each strike.

Flying toward the ceiling, I saw a blur of movement beneath me. The floor trembled as Agne charged toward her foe, undeterred by wind or trash. I reached out, caught her by the shoulder, trailing behind her like a fleshy string on a fleshy kite as she rushed toward Tenka.

But I’d lost too much blood, my body ached too much. Even holding on to her clothes was too much effort. I lost my grip. I collapsed to the floor. I rolled across it.

And I fell.

The splinters of the hole raked against me as I tumbled through the hole in the floor and crashed into something. Glass shattered. Wood splintered. Something wet and reeking washed over me.

I told my body to get back up. My body screamed back that it couldn’t. I tried to argue with it, but I couldn’t hear myself think. My ears were full of the wind’s wail and the Lady’s song, growing fainter. My vision swirled, darkness sweeping in from the edges. The only sensation not overwhelmed by agony was scent.

Which, unmercifully, was how I recognized the wet stuff covering me.

Somehow, this felt oddly fitting.

Sal the Cacophony, who’d set out to end the greatest of all wars, somehow managed to die by her own incompetence.

Covered in shit.

Are you there?

A voice. Or a dream. Or whoever waited for me at the black table.

I can feel you.

Echoing in the darkness. Not a sound. A feeling.

Such a fragile thing. So easily broken.

In my bones. In my blood. In my skin.

What makes you want to get back up? Why do you bother?

Reaching. Clawing. Probing.

Tell me.

Infesting.

Tell me.

Screaming.

TELL ME.

Everything came back to me in a massacre of light and sound and color. I shot up with a ragged gasp, pulling cold air into cold lungs. My vision came flooding back, darkness swept aside as a nauseating wave of color swept over me. My heart started beating again, pumping blood back into my veins, and the pain came with it, that slow, dull ache that told me I was hurt.

But still alive.

Yet, as I sat there, I could still feel it. That voice. That feeling. That noisy twitching that had crawled through every part of me. Its skittering legs, its whispering claws, the harsh and desperate need in it… I could feel it, surely as I could feel my own blood.

How long had it been inside me? How long had I been out?

I looked up above. The jagged rent in the ceiling stood a silent, open wound. The sound of wind was gone, the Lady’s song fled, not a single noise but the distant hum of the airship’s engines. And Agne…

“Agne,” I whispered. I shouted into the ceiling. “AGNE!”

Had she won? Had Tenka? Had either of them survived? I didn’t know what had happened or what had reached inside me or how I’d ended up here. I had to find her, if she was still alive, but I didn’t know how. It all felt like a long and terrible nightmare.

Well, except for the fact that I was covered in shit.

That part felt—and smelled—all too real.

I cringed as I pulled myself to my feet, realizing that, not for the first time, I was covered in way more fluids than any woman should rightly be expected to. Pools and puddles of liquids of scintillating colors were smeared about the floor, shattered vials, beakers, other sciencey birdshit beside it, along with the fragments of the table I’d just crushed.

And books. Everywhere were more fucking books.

It looked like I’d crashed onto a bunch of alchemists having an orgy.

Or a laboratory.

I didn’t like this.

I mean, obviously I didn’t fucking like this. Agne was gone, the others were gone, I was bleeding, broken, bruised, and far from the helm and hijacking the ship like I was supposed to be.

More than that, I didn’t like what I’d seen here. The Revolution, if nothing else, was reliable. You could usually count on their propaganda-addled brains to act predictably: they liked guns, they hated dissidents, and they loved using their guns on dissidents. Nowhere in any of my long experiences with them did they like studying.

Yet here I was. On an airship full of Freemaker’s tools, alchemist’s laboratories, and books.

I didn’t like it. Worse, I didn’t know what was going on. Like most people who feel angry and stupid, I decided the best course of action would be to find someone and hurt them.

I wiped off the shit and blood as best I could. I bit back the pain that surged up my leg as I started toward the door. Circumstances might have changed, but the goal hadn’t: find the helm, take control of the ship, wait for Jero and Agne. If either of them was still alive, they’d be making their way there as well.

“You have an astonishing amount of faith in them.”

There would never be a pain so sharp that I couldn’t hear the Cacophony’s voice through it.

“What if they’ve been captured? Or killed?”

“What if they have?” I growled back. I make it a point to try not to answer when he starts talking—sets a bad precedent—but I was too angry and hurt to think.

“Then it would seem this mission is folly. Hence, we should seek a new conquest.”

“Yeah, no, I’ll just ask the Revolution to land the ship so we can go off to the nearest tavern. Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Many thought so. They’re dead now, of course.” He giggled, steam rising from the sheath. “But there’s no reason we have to be. I have a plan.”

“No.”

“You haven’t even heard it.”

“Are you a talking gun?”

“Yes?”

“Then I’d be out of my fucking mind to listen to you.” I winced as I grabbed the door and made ready to shove it open. “No plan you came up with would get us all out of here.”

“And?”

“And I’m not going to have it said Sal the Cacophony abandoned her people.”

“Tch. That’s hardly bothered you before… but it’s different now, isn’t it? You’ve grown fond of them. Ugh. How disgustingly cliché.”

I ignored him, pressed my ear to the door. No sound greeted me. None but his voice, anyway.

“You jeopardize more than just good taste by indulging them. We made a bargain, you and I. Your affection for collecting broken miscreants continues to hinder our efforts.”

I ignored that, too. I grunted, shoved the door open.

A pair of dark eyes met me.

She was exactly as I remembered her. The same short, slender thing in dirty, functional clothes. The same writing quills stuck in her black hair, the same scrolls and inkwells affixed to her belt. The same slender face with the same wide eyes behind the same big glasses wearing the same expression of anger and shock and hurt she always did whenever I came back to her.

Her memory was as much a part of me as my scars.

Yet looking at her then felt like someone had carved a fresh new wound in me.

“Sal,” Liette whispered.

And from his sheath, the Cacophony giggled.

“Told you.”