As they frantically tried to prepare for the king’s arrival, the manor of House Mar was, as Kayden had predicted, in chaos. Lady Mar, Kayden’s mother, was seemingly everywhere at once—directing the firing up of ovens, the preparing of rooms, the setting of more tables in the hall. Lord Mar was hastily calling in retainers to make a show of his authority in Felcamp. And everyone was washing up, the cold water from the well leaving faces red and bright.
One of the servants brought Shae a change of clothes after she’d run the frigid water over her skin. Dark-blue leggings and a black dress with silver buttons, long-sleeved and high-necked against the chill in the air.
She tried to stay out of the way after that, conscious of her foreign status as she watched them preparing foods or fretting about the positions of various esteemed people for the meal.
Still, she wasn’t surprised when she was eventually hurried into the manor hall—long and wide, with a high, timbered ceiling. Benches and tables filled the space, with an open path between them. She’d once told Kayden that it reminded her of rowers’ benches, but he’d not understood what she meant. At the far end of the room there was a dais, only a couple of steps high, where the lord’s table usually sat. They’d moved it away at word of the king’s coming. Only the lord’s seat remained in the bare space, tall and waiting. Lord Mar, who’d filled the seat on the day Shae first arrived with Kayden, and all the days since, was standing in front of it now, just ahead of the first row of benches. All the household was arrayed behind him, row by row. The servant who’d summoned her led Shae to the front, too, but to the opposite side of the aisle from Lord Mar.
After a moment, Kayden arrived, as well. He took his place and stood beside his mother, who was at her husband’s side.
No one spoke. The air in the room was taut with expectation.
A servant in the back coughed lightly, and someone shushed her.
And then, at last, footsteps. Shae wanted to crane her neck to see, but to care about the rulers of this place seemed a betrayal somehow. She wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction.
After a few moments, six guards appeared from the aisle between the benches. They were wrapped in plates of silver armor, their faces hidden behind full-visored silver helmets, and while no one else was allowed weapons in the presence of the king, they had silver spears in their hands. They were meant to look, Shae was sure, like the dead aluman in the river. It was probably intended to be intimidating, but to her eyes, it was a laughable comparison, like a little girl wearing her mother’s clothes.
The armed guards arrayed out across the front of the hall, and from the moment they took position, they seemed still as statues, though Shae could see their eyes through the slits in their visors, moving across the crowd in the hall, ever watchful.
What kind of leader would need such protection? Certainly no Bone Pirate did. The woman who wore the mask wore it because those who followed her believed that she should wear it. The idea that the king would need protection from his subjects seemed to make a mockery of his rule.
Next came an assortment of fine-dressed people that Shae assumed were members of what Kayden called “the court”—advisors and powerful attendants who jockeyed for the king’s ear. Whenever Kayden had spoken of them, he’d always seemed to need to spit, as if admitting their existence left a distaste in his mouth. They fanned out behind the guards, turning to examine the good people of Felcamp. Many leaned at each other’s ears as they watched and whispered, and Shae understood at once his urge to spit.
Sylverlyn was the last of them, one of the most beautiful women Shae had ever seen. Kayden’s sister seemed to float down the aisle, straight-backed in an emerald-toned dress, the picture of elegance. Sylverlyn had been the Windborn emissary who’d come to the Spire for the negotiations, an ocean away from this place. She’d been there when the evoker Mabaya had attacked them all. She’d fought Kayden when he insisted on bringing Shae aboard the airship to save her life, and Shae would never forget how she’d laughed at her when they’d approached the Pillars that first time. They were lifting higher and higher in the airship, and Shae had asked what stone made the line of peaks such a soft white. She’d simply never seen snow. Sylverlyn had also mocked the light in her eyes just minutes later, when the first flakes of it drifted across the deck. “Gods forbid,” the woman had said in her achingly superior tone, “that she might ever face a walk in winter.”
Sylverlyn, Shae had long since concluded, was a bitch.
Kayden’s sister reached the rest of the court gathered at the foot of the dais. When she turned to take her position among the others, she did not meet her parents’ eyes, or those of her brother. She looked straight ahead, and Shae thought there was a darkness upon her.
And now came King Mark, walking alone. There was no doubt it was him. He wore a thin golden circlet around his head, and the cloak over his shoulders was a luxurious white fur that shone in the light of the oil lamps, brightening the room itself. He was middle-aged, with a trimmed beard along a strong jawline, and he looked at the room as if he owned it—which, from what Shae knew of things, he more or less did.
Each row in the hall bowed as he came down the aisle. When he passed forth into the front of the room, the first row did the same—Lord and Lady Mar, Kayden, and all the rest—but Shae did not.
He strode into the middle of the open space, turned, and immediately landed his gaze upon her. His eyes moved up and down her body in the same way a butcher might examine a pig for the slaughter. “So you’re the Seaborn witch,” he said.
Every eye in the room followed his. No one had been standing exactly close to her, but the nearest ones seemed to back away ever so slightly. “I’m a pirate,” Shae said. “I’m not a magicker.”
The king glared at her so fiercely that it took a sheer force of will for her not to look away. She could feel the stares from the others in the room, too, not anger so much as shock that she’d dared to go against his word.
After a moment, the king’s mouth curled into what might’ve passed for a smile. He rolled his gaze from her to Lord Mar. “All these months, and she’s as wild as an unbroken stallion.”
The idea that she needed breaking—and what she assumed that was meant to entail—made Shae’s face flush hot. Her fists clenched.
“Your Grace,” Kayden suddenly blurted out, “she speaks true. She’s a pirate, not one of their evokers.”
Lord and Lady Mar stiffened visibly at their son’s voice, but it was the king who spoke. “Ah, but you’ve been well broken, haven’t you, Lordling Mar?”
A number of the court members arrayed in the hall laughed at the obvious joke. It suddenly occurred to Shae how the hall, seen from above, might’ve seemed split in two: the king and his court at the front, and the leaders of Felcamp with Lord and Lady Mar all standing before them. The spears of the guards suddenly seemed to take on new meaning.
Kayden’s shoulders sank. Beside him, his mother’s hand found his and gripped it tightly.
She looked to his father, who twitched for a moment as if he wanted to come to his son’s defense—then bowed his head in a deferential nod. The sight of it made Shae’s stomach twist in knots. She hadn’t known her own parents—the Bone Pirate had found and taken her young—but she still knew the truth of parental love. She’d seen it again and again when they’d captured Seaborn vessels and listened to the pleas of the condemned. What kind of man wouldn’t defend his own son?
King Mark smiled and turned away. In slow steps, he walked toward Lord Mar’s seat at the head of the room. “But we know all this,” he said over his shoulder. “We’ve read the reports. The Seaborn girl isn’t one of their magickers, but the … Bone Pirate, was it?” The members of the court were all looking at her again. “And we know something of that too. A skull-faced woman who rides with the dead, who sits on a seat of bones and beats war drums of human skin.” He climbed the steps to the chair and turned around as he settled himself into it. “Is this so, Shaesara?”
Shae smiled—the way that she would look at a pig. “Every word.”
Whispers ran through the court around him. His eyes didn’t leave her. “Then, as we said, a witch.”
“I’m not Seaborn.”
“Ah, yes. You think you’re not one of them because you prey on their ships. You’re a cat, chasing mice, but you live in the same house.”
Shae’s fists wouldn’t unclench. He liked this game, whatever it was, and she wanted to pummel the superior smile off his face. It was a good thing, she thought, that she didn’t have her pouch of fangs on her. He was close enough that she wouldn’t even need the blowreed; she could probably have thrown one of the darts into the vein at his neck.
“What you fail to understand,” he continued, “is that the hunting eagle sees no difference at all between them.”
“This cat killed one of your eagles.”
For all her rage, Shae smiled as she said the words, proud to think that her near-capture of one of the Windborn airships might’ve diminished this man. But in the instant her words echoed against the high timbers in the hall, she wanted to take them back. She knew what the king would do with them, and he didn’t disappoint. “A loss for the eagle more than a win for the cat, we think.” His eyes shifted back to Kayden. Once more, the court snickered and whispered.
Kayden’s eyes were hollow, his head low. He had the look of a beaten man.
“The Seaborn will be making more of the weapons I used,” Shae said. It wasn’t anything that the Windborn wouldn’t have guessed on their own, but it would at least turn their attention back upon her and not Kayden—though for the moment she didn’t want to think about why she cared.
King Mark’s smile only broadened. “We can only assume. Which is why our invading fleet will have a ship in the waves for every ship in the sky.”
The court stared—it was clear they knew this was coming and were anxiously waiting to see the reaction—but not all of them were staring at her. Shae followed where many were looking, and she saw that Lord Mar was wide-eyed in shock. “Your Grace?” the old man said. “A fleet?”
“We’ve been preparing for months now,” the king replied. He leaned back into the Mar family seat. “We thought it best not to inform you, Lord Mar. We had to decide what to do with you all.”
The old man’s confusion was evident. “What to do with us?”
“The loss of an airship isn’t something taken lightly.” The king stared down at Kayden. “When you lit the line of powder, when you decided to kill every man and woman aboard the ship, did you think how many of them might be noble-born?”
Kayden swallowed hard. His shoulders shook a little, as if the air had suddenly grown colder. “I thought only of my duty, what I was supposed to do. I swore an oath that the ship couldn’t be seized.”
“Only its captain, apparently.”
“I… I didn’t abandon them. I was going to stay, I—”
The king raised his hand, cutting Kayden off. “You were seized by this Seaborn witch. She captured you, took you prisoner. And then you bartered with your life, tried to negotiate a peace with these savages.”
Kayden shook his head. “With respect, my king, we were sent to find a new home across the sea, safe from the alumen. I thought if I could negotiate a peace, if we could come to terms with them, then we could resettle in their isles without more bloodshed.”
The king’s eyes narrowed, an eagle seeing its prey. “Their isles?”
Kayden stammered for a moment, trying to think of how to recover what he’d said. “The isles that are theirs now, I mean. Your Grace would rule, of course. But with less killing, I thought—”
“It’s not your place to think, lordling.”
“Your Grace, would you have preferred that the entire crew was captured? And the airship fallen into the hands of the enemy?”
“We’d prefer we didn’t lose a ship at all.” King Mark let the words hang over the court. An accusation and a judgment both.
Shae wanted to say something in Kayden’s defense, something to help the poor man who’d saved her life, but what was there to say? She’d helped to design the harpoon ballistae that they’d used to catch hold of Kayden’s ship. And after she’d sensed that he was going to destroy the ship—though she didn’t understand exactly what the lit firepowder was at the time—she’d jumped overboard with him into the sea. She’d captured him, before they both were captured by Belakané in turn. And he had indeed tried to negotiate with them. It was all true.
“And so the only real question is just what to do with you. And with House Mar. You should know that the disgrace of your failure was enough that we considered tossing you all out, installing a new lord at Felcamp.” Kayden’s mother gasped audibly at that, a sound that the king acknowledged with a twitch at the corner of his mouth before he continued. “You should know it was our counselor, Sylverlyn Mar, who voiced her objection. What was it you said?”
Kayden’s sister opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
“Speak up now, Sylverlyn. The hall didn’t hear that.”
“Ten generations,” she said. Her voice was audible now, but her gaze was fixed on the hall’s floor as if she dared not look up. “Felcamp has been held by House Mar for ten loyal generations.”
King Mark nodded, and his voice was solemn and grave. “Ten loyal generations. She is right. A long hold to toss away, though one generation beyond the tenth, it was another family that sat on this seat. Felcamp came to House Mar when another line failed, and now its line, too, stands in failure. It has but one heir”—the king’s gaze fell upon Kayden like a hammer upon a nail—“and he will not sit upon this seat of his father.”
Kayden’s mother buckled at the knees. Lord Mar caught her and held her upright.
Kayden himself looked as if he’d been physically kicked in the gut. “Your Grace,” he said, and then he stepped forward and knelt. “Your Grace, I beg you. Let me bear my failure alone. Expel me. Strip from me my family name if you must. But my guilts are mine, not theirs.”
The king let the moment linger, let everyone see how small Kayden had become. Shae hated him more with every heartbeat.
At last, the king looked to Kayden’s father. “Have you other children, Lord Mar?” Lord Mar was fighting to hold his head high, even as his wife tried to compose herself.
His voice trembled. “Only my daughter, Sylverlyn, our Grace.”
King Mark acted as if this was new and unfortunate news as he looked back to Kayden. “Then yours is no solution, lordling. There is no male born to House Mar who can rule. So the line will end here.”
“What if there were, your Grace?” Sylverlyn suddenly said.
Whatever game he’d been playing, the king seemed genuinely surprised by her entrance into it. “What if there were what?”
“Another male born to House Mar.”
The king looked back to Lady Mar as if confirming something. “She’s past childbearing,” he said.
Kayden, alone in all the room, seemed to sense what his sister was about to say. “Syl,” he croaked, “don’t—”
Sylverlyn closed her eyes, nodded. She swallowed hard. “But I can still bear a child.”
So much was happening so fast—so many things being said and implied—that Shae hadn’t been able to keep up. But this she understood. This cut her to the core.
Lady Mar gasped; she stepped forward, as if she would reach for her daughter across the open space in the hall that had been hers. Her husband’s hand pulled her back. “Sylverlyn,” he said. “Please—”
Sylverlyn took a breath. She turned from her parents to face the king upon the seat that would have been hers had she been born a man. She knelt. “I offer myself to the king’s pleasure, if he should choose. If it pleases the gods that I bear a son, allow the boy to continue the line of House Mar and hold the seat of Felcamp as my father has, in the name of the king.” She swallowed hard. “Just spare my brother’s life and preserve my family’s name.”
King Mark stared at her. Somewhere in the back of the hall, a servant—an older woman, Shae thought, perhaps the girl’s nurse when she’d been a babe—cried out and was quickly shuffled away from the hall by frightened companions.
“Agreed,” the king finally said. He turned to one of the silver-encased guards. “Escort the Lady Sylverlyn back to my ship.”
Her mother both sobbed and choked at once, and Kayden started to get up to reach for his sister, but the king’s hand made everything stop. “Let it be known that Kayden Mar has no claim to title in Felcamp, but that we grant him one mercy. We give him title to the Blue Keep, with orders that he leaves in the morning. We hope he holds it well.”
King Mark strode from the hall. Sylverlyn stood. Her eyes to the ground, she followed in his wake, a guard on either side. As he passed up the aisle, each row bowed. All but Kayden, who knelt, in the increasingly empty hall, his eyes fixed where, moments earlier, his sister had stood.
Shae didn’t bow either. She simply watched them all go: the king, Sylverlyn, the guards, and the court. When they were gone, she watched the household move to their tasks and chores with the silence of a house in mourning. Kayden’s mother was weeping, quietly, but trying to appear strong. His father stared down at his son for a few moments, like he was searching for something to say. Then he turned away, his fists tight over his wife’s arm, holding her upright as he led her from the hall.
In a minute, they were all gone.
Kayden still knelt. Shae walked over to him, took a deep breath as she tried to think of what to say. She didn’t understand all that had just happened, but she understood enough. She understood he was alone.
And that meant she was alone too.
When he looked up at her, his eyes were red with the tears he’d held inside. “Shae, I—”
“There was a storm once,” she said, cutting him off. “Probably the worst storm I’ve ever seen. We were crossing the western reach, and it rose up out of the west like a wall of darkness. Beating rain and howling wind. Waves like mountains crashed over the ship, scattering the crew belowdecks. My mistress stayed at the wheel. I was young. It was one of the first times I was put on watch, and I remember seeing those storm walls breaking over her. I remember seeing her living smile behind the death-smile of the skull mask that she wore. I thought we would all find the Mother’s Embrace that day, and I thought my own moment had come when a wave took out my feet and swept me across the deck toward the side. I caught myself, only barely, and when I looked up, my mistress was standing there, with her hand out. She said I had a choice.”
“What choice?”
Shae remembered it as if she were upon that heaving wet deck even now: the Bone Pirate looking down at her through the spray, down through the dark eyes of the skull. “‘We were dead in the beginning,’ she told me. ‘We are dead even now.’”
Still on his knees, Kayden rocked back and turned his eyes to the high window behind the seat that might once have been his. “Despair,” he whispered.
“Not despair. Acceptance. Life comes from death, and the only thing we know about our lives is that they will end. So what matters is what we choose to do with that time. The mark we leave behind.”
Staring at the seat itself now, Kayden almost laughed. “He just took my mark away, Shaesara.”
She shrugged. “Wasn’t your seat, so it wasn’t your mark.”
“My mark is blowing up my airship, all those men and women, and not going down with them.”
“No, Kayden, that mark is meeting me.”
He blinked up at that, as if a thin ray of light had cut through the storm clouds. “Meeting you?”
“And everything that you choose to do from this point forward. We make our marks with every choice we make. You can’t have this seat. Neither could anyone else in this room, but we all make our marks anyway.”
“You don’t understand.”
“There’s one other thing my mistress told me that day,” Shae said. “‘Just because we’re already dead doesn’t mean we’re not going to fight like hell to stay alive.’”
The floor wasn’t pitching beneath them. There was no slashing rain upon their faces. Shae didn’t have the skull mask. Yet Kayden, she thought, was every bit as close to going overboard as she’d been that day—and he was the only thing close to a friend that she had in this place. “Stand up,” she said. “Stand up, and I’ll come with you.”
She held out her hand. To her relief, he took it.