EPILOGUE

The Goddess Thief hugged the western coast of Jex Toth, now a solid week farther out than any craft from the Star had yet ventured. The coast of Jex Toth. Captain Bang shook her head, still scarcely able to wrap it around where she was, and what she was doing. When she, Dong-won, and Niki-hyun had absconded with this boat and a pair of others just before the Battle of Othean it had been with the express purpose of sailing in the opposite direction of this place, but then the gods of wind and sea had apparently had other ideas …

Well, if not the gods of wind and sea, then certainly the gods of fucking Bang Lin sideways: a massive Raniputri fleet had appeared on the southern horizon before her trio of ships were more than a few hours into their getaway. Who knew the Dominions even had a fleet? They had done a quick about-face lest the Raniputris try to conscript a few more tubs into their navy, threading east through the Isles to shake them off … and then running smack into more trouble when they hit the Bitter Gulf, this time in the form of a fast-moving Flintlander flotilla. Who knew the Noreast Arm even had a flotilla?

Nothing for it then but to try to lose them in the brewing tempest to the north, but the persistent peckers followed them every splash of the way, until the next thing Bang knew they were rounding the upper end of Othean. Niki-hyun had begged her not to sail into that ominous fog, too, arguing they’d be better off slowing down and trying to talk terms with the pursuing Flintlanders, but that just went to show why Bad Bang was the captain: because she was always right. Now admittedly, when they had careened out of the mists and crashed directly into that sea monster Bang had momentarily doubted herself, but in the end that happy accident had earned them the eternal gratitude of several nations who would have otherwise paid to see every member of her crew hanged, so there you had it.

The captain is always right.

It bore repeating, especially in the face of such madness as the verdant seaboard they currently surveyed, Jex Toth was not only back from the briny deep but apparently here to stay. Who would have believed such a thing could not only come to pass in her lifetime, but that a fisher girl from the Cuttlefish Cays would be the first to chart it? Dong-won, ever the pragmatist, had pointed out that cartography probably didn’t pay quite as well as piracy, but Bang had her suspicions that the first accurate map of the fabled land would be worth a fortune to every power on the Star. Peace was fine and dandy, but like most dandies she’d met it had a bad habit of slipping into the drink after a few of its own, and when that happened everybody was going to want to know the inlets and outcroppings of the Risen Kingdom.

Except by now they were well past the supposed borders of the Tothans’ territories and still the coast kept going and going, and that was really what gave Bang the itch. Anywhere they put in now would be completely unexplored territory, and from the look of it the jungles here were as vast as the sea, and even thicker with potential plunder. That ruined city she and Maroto had discovered on their first foray into the interior had stoked her curiosity, especially since the moon-touched, basement-dwelling Tothans apparently didn’t give a toss about their own ancient civilization, or material treasure in general.

She loved the sea so much it flowed in her very veins, albeit stained crimson from all the Azgarothian port she’d put away over the years, but exploring this strangely beautiful and exhilaratingly dangerous land had thrilled her in new and exciting ways … and the high probability that there were forgotten cities from the Age of Wonders ripe for the looting stirred a very familiar thirst in her purse.

But a woman had other thirsts, and other purses for that matter, and turning away from the spires of rock crowning the most recent bay she scanned over the ship, looking for a suitable candidate. As she did she unfurled her tubq pouch and packed her cutty with a coconut brandy-cased mixture of burly, lemon vergins, and sweet leaf, but then the stupid gum she’d tried to bond the pipe with came loose and the stem popped free. Again. She was still trying to reset it when the handsome new mate they’d taken on in Othean saw what she was doing and offered to help.

“If you can get it on there good this time, you can be part of my party when we go ashore,” said Bang, the wildborn holding up the bowl to peer in the shank.

“The stem has broken off inside,” said Choi, as though this were some revelation. “You will not be able to bind it like this. First you must remove the broken piece, and then carve a new stem.”

“Wonderful,” said Bang, scowling at her bad-luck briar.

“Let me see that thing,” said her cabin boy, and using one of the nails in his front pocket he began jimmying it around in the shank of the pipe. Even that mild exertion looked to be beyond his ability, his eye watering from the slight shift of his shoulder … Then he gave a triumphant cry as the broken bit of stem that had lodged in the briar came free, a tight cylinder of horn spitted on his nail. “There. Now that this busted tenon’s out of the way just wiggle a reed or coral tube up in there. Won’t hold forever, but should tide you over till someone good with their hands gives you what you need.”

“Uh-huh,” said Bang, the old dog’s lines not getting any fresher. “I’d sure find that useful. Maybe I should have just invited my old friend Moor Clell along—I bet she could’ve done it in a trice.”

“Don’t even joke about letting her on the boat.”

“My boat, my jokes,” said Bang. “It would’ve been something to see her face if I’d turned you over to her, after how well that witch-egg laid you out—I mean, I don’t fool easy, and up until you sat up in the berth and cracked your head on the top bunk I was convinced you’d fucked up and got yourself dead for real.”

“Nemi said she used the same trick to escape Hoartrap back in the day,” he said peevishly. “Does the Touch seem like he fools easy to you?”

“More the fool than Zosia,” said Bang. “But chin up, buckaroo, Hoartrap obviously got over his apprentice playing opossum on ’im, so maybe if some dark and stormy night Cold Cobalt bumps into you at a bar she’ll forgive the whole thing!”

“Not bloody likely.”

“From the captain’s account of their conversation it does not sound like your letter contained the full story as you relayed it to me, and also miscast your encounters on Jex Toth,” said Choi. “Why give her a worse impression?”

“Because sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is let them hate you,” said Maroto with that effortless charm and optimism that was his hallmark. “If this truce with Jex Toth is going to last, people are going to need a scapegoat, someone to hang the war on other than the Vex Assembly. That’s me. I as good as told them to attack Othean, so there you go! And as for how I put things in Zosia’s letter, well … okay, say I tell her the more complicated version? That I don’t have any proof it was my freeing Crumbsnatcher with the wish to see her again what led to everything happening to her town—”

“You don’t even know that’s what happened,” said Bang, mentally tallying all the demerits he was accruing for rehashing his sob story. A regular epicurean for discipline. Just the way she liked him. “You know you freed your devil, but you don’t know it planted the notion to go after her village in the young colonel’s head. No one can ever say for certain, ’cause who knows where dumb ideas even come from?”

“I know,” said Maroto, scratching under his eye patch. “And now so does Zosia, so she can get on with her fucking life without always wondering who was to blame.”

“She might have forgiven you, had you told her,” said Choi, the wildborn far more tender with her partner here on the deck than she was in the privacy of the captain’s quarters.

“You’re right, she might’ve—and that would have made it worse. A lot worse.” He turned the pipe over in his hand and then handed it back to Bang. “I’ve got to own what I’ve done.”

“Faking your death seems a queer way of doing that,” Bang pointed out.

“What can I say?” the Mighty Maroto said with a sad smile. “I learned from the best.”