Even from up here in the forest of spikes that ran atop Darnielle Bay’s ramparts you couldn’t actually see the new Immaculate wall far to the east, but the view was nonetheless stunning. The afternoon sun glittered off the blue waters of the sound, the russet islands that spotted it, and the crimson sails of the Azgarothian ships they had passed on their way into the harbor. Darnielle Bay’s fleet was smaller than that of Diadem, but looking down on the black ships at the quays and the swarm of Chainites still spread across the promenade, Maroto supposed there was something to be said for quality over quantity. The Azgarothian frigates and sloops were crewed by actual marines, right, whereas there must have been some serious shake-ups in the Imperial navy right before they set sail for Jex Toth. There were more far more clerics and fat cats on board than actual sailors or soldiers, their holds light on weaponry and supplies and heavy on art, expensive wine, and other treasures. It was almost as if the Burnished Chain had been preparing to relocate to the Sunken Kingdom and not wage war on it, as the Holy See had claimed to Azgaroth’s elite.
Yet even if they took out his gag before giving him the goose, Maroto wasn’t inclined to waste his last few breaths pointing that out to people who wouldn’t listen no matter what he said. Better to try to exonerate Bang, Niki-hyun, and Dong-won, and when that inevitably failed at least apologize for getting them dragged down with him. He should have guessed that as soon as he announced himself to the Holy See the Chainites would take a strong interest in tracking down the other three curious castaways who had also come aboard at Jex Toth.
That was what really broke his heart now that they were all up here—that instead of going down on his own he was getting his friends killed in the bargain. The Star would be better off without Maroto around to louse it all up, presumably, but these pirates were good folk … well, okay, so they were pirates, but by piratical standards they were … no, no, actually, from the stories they’d told they were proper arseholes even by piratical standards. But they were his friends, if nothing else, and maybe with time and wisdom they would’ve become the sort of truly good people he didn’t have much personal experience with himself.
Assuming good people even existed in this nasty world. There certainly weren’t any to be found around here. The principal Azgarothian mourner with the clock sitting atop her veil was still present, but she’d left her overly dramatic coterie on a lower veranda, and so up here on the grand terrace she and the gagged prisoners chained to a stone loop in the center of the floor were the only ones bringing down the party mood. Merrily as the cardinals mingled with Darnielle Bay’s officers and senators and minor royalty you never would have guessed their province had repeatedly sided with the Crown instead of the Chain during all the civil wars. There were tables laden with tapas and sangria and even some ninny with a lute working the crowd, and nobody seemed to be talking about how even with the clean sea air wafting along to stir the many myrrh braziers, the whole place reeked from the decaying corpses stuck up on points. Staring at a sun-bleached skeleton that seemed to lounge across the tops of a number of spikes like a Raniputri fakir dozing on a bed of nails, Maroto decided Jex Toth was more than welcome to end the world after all. Mortals had to die, by definition, but if they couldn’t even offer a little mercy to each other, to say nothing of dignity, then why not just kill the lights and drop the curtain on the whole lousy production?
Dong-won sighed through his gag, and looking around at his friends, Maroto nodded. Niki-hyun was staring up into the floofy clouds and humming to herself, and Dong-won joined in. Maroto didn’t know the tune, wondering if it was an Immaculate shanty he’d never learned or some maritime religious thing. Bang kept shaking her head to dislodge the biting flies that had taken a premature interest in their dates for the evening, but when Maroto shuffled over to her she knocked it off. Instead of keeping with the cold shoulder she let him get close and then leaned into him, rubbing her sweaty forehead into his sweaty chest hair.
Tears began rolling down his face before he could even think about trying to hold them in, falling into the faded, dirty orange hair he had dyed a brilliant blood-coral red back when they were all castaways together. She had trusted him, and he had gotten her killed. And more than trusted him, she had come to rescue him, after he’d first been taken captive by the monstrous sentries on that ridge overlooking one of the ruined cities of the Sunken Kingdom. Dong-won had told him the whole story after they’d all been reunited down in the belly of Jex Toth. How Bang had declared Maroto crew, and how Captain Bang Lin would press-gang her own parents if she saw a profit in it but she never gave up on crew. Now that it was all over she forgave him, rubbing her face against his chest like a cat who doesn’t know how else to tell her master how much she loves him.
“Useless,” she spat as the thick leather edge of the gag broke loose against Maroto’s pecs. She must have been gnawing at it from clear down at the seafront. Staying perfectly still so the corded strap wouldn’t fall away but remained suspended between her cheek and his chest she whispered, “You’re ahead of me on the chain so they’ll lead you off it first. But they’ll wanna spit me before they do you, seeing as you’re the main attraction. So soon as I slip off the central chain I make a break for those lower roofs, and you make a big distraction to help me. Got that?”
“Mmmm …” Even without a gag in place Maroto wouldn’t have known where to begin with all that was wrong with her plan, but perhaps sensing the skepticism of his murmur she bit his tit. Hard. “Mmm!”
“You owe me, you fucking turd,” she hissed. “You’re gonna die anyway. So you put on one hell of a show to cover my exit, I don’t care how many times they stab your stupid ass. Useless fucking clot.”
Bang bit him again, so hard he had to dance in place to keep from screaming through his gag, and then Niki-hyun and Dong-won informed them with their own muted noises and head bobs that maybe the captain and her cabin boy weren’t being as inconspicuous as they could be. Bang let him go and caught the broken gag back between her teeth as she turned away, a fair facsimile of a helpless prisoner. Looking around the busy rooftop with all its armed guards and then down at the manacles on all of their hands and feet, he highly doubted Bang would make it halfway to the edge of the terrace even if she did slip free of the main chain … but grinning into his gag he swore that by all his ancestors’ forgotten deeds he’d do what he could to help her try.
“You are the Maroto?”
That was what Dong-won and Niki-hyun had been trying to warn them about—the small woman in mourning lace with a coffin-clock crown had crept up behind him.
“Mmm-hmm.” Maroto nodded down at the biddy. He had better stay on his best behavior right up until they took him off the chain gang, to give Bang any hope of escape. Even if there was no way she was getting the real deal, hope was better than nothing.
“You fought at the Lark’s Tongue? Against the Azgarothian regiment?” She sounded more spry than she moved, no doubt worked up over the prospect of gory revenge for her province’s soldiers. It was always the pinch-faced old prunesacks who got the most juiced up about violent tragedies.
“Mmm-hmm,” said Maroto again, figuring as long as she stuck to the basics the fact that he had a salty sock tied around his mouth wouldn’t fully stifle the art of conversation.
“My brother-in-law died there, along with the rest,” she said flatly. “He was an officer, like you. I hate war stories, so I never asked him about what he did, but before a big battle is it anything like it is on the stage? Do the two sides send out their commanders to meet and talk and see if maybe nobody has to die after all?”
“Mmmm …” Answering that was a tall order, but then the short woman motioned him to lean over, and when he did she started untying his gag.
“Baroness, I would strongly advise you not to do that,” called the cardinal who had brokered the arrangement, sloshing sangria onto the mosaic floor of the terrace. “From the mouths of sinners, that is, from the mouths of anathemas—”
“Thank you, Cardinal Diamond, but I have this well in hand,” she said, grinding the words so hard you’d think she had to crush gemstones between her jaws to get them out. The head of the Holy See looked a bit taken aback by her curt dismissal, but he also looked a bit drunk, and was then distracted by a portly man wearing an Imperial uniform with enough medals to laminate a small dog. Tossing Maroto’s gag to the sea breeze, the baroness said, “I asked if you met before the battle, you Cobalt officers and the Crimson ones.”
Smacking his sore lips and wiping away as much drool as he could, Maroto said, “Nah, I’m afraid not. That does still happen, or it’s supposed to, but being frank with you your Azgarothian regiment skipped that part of the protocol and charged right in.”
“Our regiment did not keep with protocol?” The baroness sounded skeptical.
“No, ma’am, they did not,” said Maroto. There was no telling what sort of thing might irritate this grieving woman, so he might as well keep it completely on the level instead of guessing what she wanted to hear. “They came sweeping down on us before dawn, and after that, well, that wasn’t the only breach of the chivalric codes I witnessed, I’m sorry to report. I heard what the cardinal told you, about how it was the Cobalts’ fault that the Gate opened and everything else, but I swear on my friend Purna’s memory that we didn’t do none of that. If anyone did, it was the Chain who—”
“I do not believe I asked you about any of that, Captain Maroto,” snipped the crone, and he was guessing it was a good thing he couldn’t see her face, nasty an expression as she must be wearing. “I merely sought to discover if you had met Colonel Hjortt before my idiot brother-in-law fulfilled his life’s ambition to die as pointless and preventable a death as possible. Today is a sentimental one for me, and I would have liked to hear from someone who was present, who had seen him just before. To ask if Domingo appeared happy. If he smiled. I don’t know which would disappoint me more, mind you, if that sort of thing actually did put a spring in his step, or if he was just as crabby in his element as out of it.”
“Oh,” said Maroto, because that just went to prove that it didn’t matter if you were a barbarian from the Frozen Savannahs or a baroness from sunny Azgaroth, you couldn’t escape your connection to your family, couldn’t suppress the part of you that demanded closure even when you and they couldn’t be more different. Besides being intent on killing each other as horribly as possible, that was another thing all peoples of the Star seemed to share, another unavoidable wart of the human condition, and … and … “Sorry, did you say your kinfolk was named Colonel Hjortt? Sharp-eyed older gent, been with the Fifteenth out of Azgaroth since back when Kaldruut was king?”
“That is he,” said the featureless lace scarecrow, turning her clock up to study Maroto’s features. “Or was, to be more precise, since he was not among the few prisoners the Cobalts left behind when they abandoned their camp, and to hear the reports precious few survived the initial engagement to begin with. You did know him, then?”
“Well, let me level with you, Baroness … Hjortt?”
“Lupitera is fine, Maroto.”
“All right, then, Baroness Lupitera—”
“No, just Lupitera. We are both veterans with our better days behind us, Maroto, no need to squander even a moment more of those few we have left with meaningless honorifics.” There was an archness to her voice that Maroto found comforting, and not just that, a realness you would never hear from a Chainite or a career politician. “You knew my brother-in-law, then, from some older campaign? You and he have been on opposite sides since the time you first swung a mace, I suppose.”
“I expect we have … or were, I guess,” said Maroto. Remembering the fury in the old man’s eyes as he lay bleeding and broken in the sparse grass of the Imperial camp in the Kutumbans, Maroto relived the shame of that night all over again, because he still could not reconcile the colonel’s vaguely familiar face with his name and rank. “So he knew me from the old days, yeah, but I honestly can’t say I recall him. But more relevant … more recently … well, shit, I don’t know if your brother-in-law ever made it to the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue.”
She didn’t speak, the sun reflecting off the dials on her coffin-clock, and Maroto closed his eyes to do the one thing he’d had a lot of practice with in his storied careers as a rogue and a rascal, a prostitute and a performer, a captain and klutz—he gave her the bad news:
“I was leading a Cobalt scouting party through the mountains and we got stuck between a pack of horned wolves and an Imperial encampment. We didn’t have much choice so we booked it down through camp, trying to throw the monsters off our scent, and … look, I’m not telling you this ’cause I expect you to be any more lenient with me if you don’t think it was by design. I’m just telling you how it went down.”
“I’ll be able to tell if you fib,” said the old woman. “Pray continue.”
“Not much else to it,” said Maroto. “We tried to sneak through undetected but that Colonel Hjortt, he recognized us. Recognized me. Had us captured. Dead to rights. But then those horned wolves we’d riled up burst onto the scene and started attacking, indiscriminate like, and your brother-in-law … well, he took down one of them, and it took my whole team to lay out the other, but it wasn’t without cost. No it was not. I had a look at him afterward, and we exchanged a few words. He remembered me, like I said, but I couldn’t place him. I promised I would, the next time I saw him, but rough as he looked I didn’t expect any future reunions were taking place in this world.”
“I see …” said Lupitera. “I would like to think he fell fighting monsters instead of his neighbors. And if he died before the Lark’s Tongue, that would explain all those uncharacteristic breaks with protocol … I couldn’t believe he would ever turn the Burnished Chain loose like that, but this, this makes sense … Thank you, Maroto.”
“I’d say anytime, but I don’t expect we’ll have many more opportunities,” said Maroto, seeing that the cardinals clustered around the tables looked to be about done with all this Azgarothian sunshine. Cardinal Diamond was energetically engaging his new friends, gesturing from the naked spikes at the edge of the terrace to the huddle of prisoners, a few other members of the Holy See already recumbent in daybeds, pulling their big silly hats forward to shield their eyes.
“I understand the circumstance of your meeting was different from the scenario I initially suggested, but do you think he was happy?”
“Huh?” Maroto had assumed she was done with him after he’d told all there was to tell, but that was another thing about the elderly—always ready to keep jawing, so long as there was an ear to latch onto. Well, Maroto was old, too, and one last chin-wag beat being impaled by a substantial margin. “The colonel, happy? Well, no. He seemed about as unhappy a man as I’ve ever seen, but in his defense he was probably so smashed up inside that his parts had stopped working … well, that and he really seemed offended I didn’t recognize him. That really put the sand in his shorts.”
“Nobody cares to be forgotten,” said Lupitera, and as simple as the words were, and the truth behind them, her regal delivery cut right to Maroto’s marrow. He actually had gooseflesh, and not just from the sudden nip in the air as another gust came over the parapet, whistling through the spikes. “But anonymity has its advantages over infamy, as my aunt and her foul cohort hath discovered to gravest peril.”
“Sorry, your aunt is …” Maroto blinked as Cardinal Diamond swooned, dropping his goblet to the mosaic tiles, but two Azgarothian officers caught him, easing him down onto one of the few unoccupied daybeds.
“Nobody cares to be forgotten,” repeated the old woman with even more oomph, “but anonymity has its advantages over infamy, as my aunt and her foul cohort hath discovered to gravest peril.”
“The grave is only perilous to those whose querulous lives are naught but a frantic scamper away from its embrace,” said Maroto. He enunciated every fucking syllable so the Chainite guards all the way in the nosebleeds could hear him perfectly as their Azgarothian counterparts ambushed them. The scuffle was brief but loud.
“Wha …?” asked Bang, the broken gag falling off completely as she, Niki-hyun, and Dong-won all gawked at the double-cross.
“The Avenger’s Dramedy, Act III, line what-the-fuck-ever?” said Maroto, the long-forgotten words having been drawn from his lips like a devil from the First Dark.
“Well, I’ve never seen it before, but I am officially a fan,” said Bang as the last armored Chainite was driven to the ground and stuck through the helm with a pike.
“Nobody has,” said Maroto, his heart doing that thing hearts do when they’re so flooded with joy they sort of break, but in a nice way. Looking down at the lace-veiled baroness, he said, “The author knew there was only one actor alive who could play Antonio, but he ran away on opening night, and they never saw each other again.”
“Sweetheart, this play is a modern classic,” said Carla, the aristocratic bearing of the proud baroness dropped along with an octave or two. Maroto wondered if she was still wearing her clown drag under that mourning veil. “You think I don’t know how to fill a gaping role? Please. Your stage fright was the best thing that ever happened to that production. I kept expecting to see you in the stalls at one of the revivals, but that just proves I’m a better friend than you are.”
“Never any fucking doubt of that,” said Maroto, trying to give her a hug but reaching the end of his chain. “Carla, I—”
“Lupitera,” she said. “Carla and I don’t see much of one another these days, save when the moon is full, the manbane blooms, and the greasepaint is laced. The Baroness Lupitera Rossilini Hjortt. The First, the Last, the One, the Only.”
“Right,” gulped Maroto. “Hjortt. So, uh, small world, and really, really sorry about your brother.”
“In-law, and don’t be,” said Lupitera, but her brassy voice scratched a little on the end there. Calling over to the servants clearing the tables and the guards clearing the bodies, she said, “Keys, please! We don’t do chains in Azgaroth, burnished or otherwise.”
“You … you just jumped the Holy See,” said Bang. It was the first time since being brought into the company of the hyper-religious navy that she had sounded remotely reverential. “Their whole fleet and thousands of crew right outside your gate, and you just jumped their asses.”
“And I’m just getting started,” said Lupitera, shooing away the unhappy-looking Azgarothian officer who’d brought her a key ring.
“Everyone here on board with your coup?” Dong-won asked Lupitera as the woman in red parade dress went back to helping carry off the prone cardinals. “Or maybe some of them enlisted Crimson soldiers got the fidgets about going so hard at the Chain, and to help a Cobalt to boot?”
“For a man who’s yet to get out of irons you ask a lot of questions,” said Lupitera, turning the key in his lock.
“Sorry,” said Dong-won as she stooped over to get the ones off his ankles. “And thanks.”
“That’s more like it,” said Lupitera as she moved on to Niki-hyun. “And to answer your questions, young man, ever since word came down that Queen Indsorith fell and Jex Toth rose we’ve learned to stop worrying about what color flag is getting waved, so long as the hand that holds it looks human. So if some of the supporting cast are looking peaked it’s because this morning was the fun part, and now comes the danger.”
“For us danger is the fun part,” said Bang, which was exactly the boneheaded sort of catchphrase Purna would’ve come up with. “I’m Captain Bang, and my sloop the Empress Thief is one of the vessels you’ve liberated from the Chain’s criminal seizure. Can I have some of that food and drink? Or other food and drink, if that stuff’s poisoned?”
“We’ll put something in your belly soon enough,” said Lupitera, giving Maroto a pinch on the wrist as she unlocked him. “Just making sure you’re real. And who are your other rude friends?”
“Niki-hyun, ma’am,” said Niki-hyun. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“And I’m Dong-won, quartermaster of the Empress Thief,” said he, stretching that sort of delicious stretch you can only really get when you’ve been chained up for days and days.
“You are just convinced if you keep telling me the name of your boat I won’t steal it—it’s cute,” said Lupitera, unlocking Bang’s wrists; the pirate shook her feet and the ankle manacles fell right off, no key required. Maybe she would’ve had a chance of escaping over the edge of the terrace after all …
“I tell you what, it is good to see you again,” Maroto told the lace blur. “Such as it is.”
“Keep up with the sweet talk and you’ll be back in my good graces sometime never,” said Lupitera, tossing the key ring over her shoulder and marching off. Maroto smiled to hear the familiar clicking of cha-cha heels under her commodious mourning gown. “Let’s get something to drink, I’m dying under all this chiffon.”
“So wait, you used to perform with Maroto back when he was an actor?” said Niki-hyun as they walked toward the stairs at the edge of the ramparts. “He hadn’t yet told us his real name, back then, but when we was first stranded together he sang some wild songs about the playing company he used to run with.”
“Except he must have had someone else in mind,” said Dong-won, always looking out for Maroto’s best interests. “’Cause you’re obviously good people, and the only Carla he ever talked about was a loudmouthed shipwreck with a centipede habit the size of Usba who once bit off someone’s ear for talking during her performance.”
“You did tell your friends about me!” Lupitera finally gave Maroto the warm hug he’d been jonesing for but hadn’t wanted to press. “All is forgiven!”
“Where do the fucking years go, girl?” Maroto asked as they squeezed each other on the top of a wall of human skulls.
“Blppppppt,” said Lupitera, blowing a raspberry that made her veil dance a moist tango. “Same place everything goes. The shitter. But we can make up for lost time on the boat.”
“The boat?” asked Dong-won.
“The Empress Thief?” suggested Bang.
“Any boat, what do I care?” said Lupitera. “We’re all going to the same place.”
“The shitter?” asked Niki-hyun.
“You tell me, I ain’t ever been to Othean,” said Lupitera with a shrug. “But it can’t be a plum holiday spot, what with the armies of monsters overrunning it, and that watered-down rotgut they call soju.”
“Wait wait wait,” said Maroto, swaying on top of the stairs, the sun too damn bright. “That can’t be right. Othean? Capital of the Immaculate Isles? The place we just got turned away from because they didn’t have a monster problem and didn’t need one, neither?”
“That’s the spot,” said Lupitera. “You think you’re surprised? Forget it. I just arrived in Darnielle Bay to get away from Cockspar for a while, because have you tried living in the place you’re supposed to govern? It sucks. Anyway, I blow into town, I’m meeting with the Darnielle Bay Senate, and in come two letters.
“One comes by gull, and it’s from the Holy See—they’re sailing down here fast, and they’ve captured one of the Cobalt officers who killed ten thousand Azgarothian soldiers to summon Jex Toth. The other letter comes from Othean, via scary fucking devil bird. It says the first wave of monsters has already broken on their shore, laying waste to the countryside and besieging the capital. Unless they get help the Isles are toasted turnips and the rest of the Star is next. So we heads of Azgarothian state think it over, propose some plans, put it to a vote, and that’s how we ended up with The Avenger’s Dramedy for Act I, and something completely fucking ad-libbed for whatever comes next. And you know my feelings on improv.”
Nobody said anything, the only sound the whipping of a Crimson pennant in the sea breeze.
“And you’re going because …” Maroto tried to put the pieces together according to all the usual rules of Star politics, but he knew at a glance that would never get them where they needed to be, so he tried following her off the script. “You’re going because whatever your province’s history with the Immaculate Isles, when it’s mortals against the First Dark you know you’ve got to step up and help your kind.”
“Fuck our kind sideways,” said Lupitera, hands on her hips. “We’re going because we don’t have much choice but to stop this thing before it gets to us—here in Azgaroth we’re all godless savages, remember? No life everlasting for me and mine. The Star’s all we’ve got. And since we’re all going to die and be dead forever, it’s better to go down screaming in the face of whatever wants to deny us the nasty little lives we’ve worked for. What’s the alternative? Pretend what’s happening to our neighbors won’t happen here until it’s too late?”
“Damn,” said Bang when not even the snapping flag at the top of a spike chimed in to break the silence. “You’re going to sail your fleet, and the Chain’s, right back up to Othean? To fight against hell monsters, all on the principle of the thing?”
“Well, mostly,” said Lupitera, sashaying back down the long stairs to the quays. “The empress is also throwing in governorship of Linkensterne to the first party who sends substantial aid, but if that’s such a cherry deal how come she keeps trying to give it away?”