The Broken Eye (20 page)

The only slave he’d treated like she was human was Marissia. He’d been good to her, at least. More than good. He’d been an excellent owner to the slave closest to himself. That had to count for something.

“You’re certain your father doesn’t want you back?” Gunner asked.

“You saw where that sword was, didn’t you?” Gavin asked. He meant when Gunner had fished him out of the water. He didn’t remember it himself, but he’d been told he’d been impaled on the damn thing. “My father put it there.”

That was true, as far as it went. Gavin had taken the dagger into his own chest when he saw it was him or Kip. An odd touch of mad heroics. And now Kip was drowned. Which showed all the good heroics do.

“What do you want?” Gavin asked.

Gunner spread his arms, soaking up the sun. His jacket parted over his sinewy bare chest, and he held the ivory and ebony musket-sword easily. “Gunner wants a legend,” he said.

“You’ve got two. The Sea Demon Slayer? You’ve been a legend since you were six and ten. And you captured me, a legend if there ever was one.”

“If you says so yourself,” Gunner said, grinning.

“I figgered Gunner wouldn’t be one for false modesty,” Gavin shot back.

Gunner paused. “Indeed, no.” He got pensive. Finally, he gestured to his ship, his crew, even his miraculous sword. “It ain’t enough. You understand? Of all of ’em, you understand, don’t you? I was a boy when I did that other. That can’t be the pineapple of my life, can it?”

Gavin didn’t grin at the malapropism. Gunner wouldn’t take even a hint of well-meant mockery, not now.

“It was half luck,” Gunner said. He shook his head. “A man’s more than one act, ain’t he?” But he didn’t wait for Gavin to answer. He pointed to the horizon with grim amusement. “There, you see it?”

Gavin couldn’t see it.

Gunner grunted, looking at Gavin’s chains, but decided to keep him in them. “We’re being followed by a galley. Belongs to one Mongalt Shales. He’s sworn vengeance on me. Two years ago, I was gunner for the famous Captain Giles Tanner. You know him?”

Gavin had to shake his head.

Gunner grunted, like it was a loss, but a digression too far to fill Gavin in. “Pirate, ’course. We found a galley and gave chase, and I made a shot from the long tom. Didn’t just blow the first mate off the wheel—I blew off the wheel. From three hundred paces. Bit of luck to that shot, I admit. Without her bein’ able to turn, fight was over like that. No one else even died.”

“The mate blown off the wheel was Shales’s kin?” Gavin guessed.

“Sister. He’s been following me since. Found me at a bunkhouse in Wiwurgh. Started a fight. I busted out half his teeth. Found me at a whorehouse in Smussato. Challenged me to a duel. I suggested pistols. He said swords. I left him with a dozen cuts and a broken hand. Found me at a tavern in Odess. Challenged me to a duel again. I stickulated that we fire pistols from forty paces. He missed. I shot him in the groin. Winged him, but never heard if I unmanned him or not. He lived, so it can’t have been bad, but I saw blood. Thought that would put him off finally.”

You thought castrating a man would
stop
his quest for vengeance?

“He follows me now. I keep enough distance to taunt him. To let him think he’ll catch me, if he just gets the wind right, or if I make one mistake. Not sure how he motivates his crew. Imagine they’ll mutiny someday.”

“So you’re letting a lethal problem fester because … why? Because you’re bored?” That Gunner hadn’t killed his pursuer either said Gunner was a better man than Gavin had thought, or a far, far worse one.

“Gunner likes that word. What’s that mean?”

Which … oh, fester. “Get worse. Like a wound that gets gangrene or leaks pus.”

“Knew it was a good one. You’re a smart man, Prism. Festure.”

“Fester,” Gavin said before he could stop himself.

Murder passed across Gunner’s face in half a second, then departed. “Fester,” he said carefully. “What would your father do if I sent him your eyes?”

Gavin suppressed a quick stab of revulsion and fear. “That depends.”

“Pray tell.”

“He would doubtless make some public expression of grief. That would be a mummer’s show I should be sorry to miss. He’ll come after you regardless, but you tell me, are my eyes still prismatic?”

Gunner’s fist came out of nowhere, crushing the side of Gavin’s face. Unable to defend himself in his chains, on his knees, Gavin crashed heavily to the deck. He heard a mechanical sound and looked up, blood filling his mouth, to see Gunner had the musket-sword loaded, cocked, and pointed at Gavin’s head.

“You mock me?” Gunner asked.

What? “My eyes,” Gavin said. “Do they look like prisms? Do they reflect light anymore?”

“No, plain blue,” Gunner said, staring down the barrel. “Ah, prismic. Right. ’Pologies.” He hoisted up the gun. “Prismic?”

“That’s right,” Gavin said.

“Prismic?”

“Prismatic,” Gavin admitted.

“Prismatic. That’s right. Your eyes did used to be all prismatic. If Gunner popped ’em and sent ’em to Papa, he’d think that I don’t have his boy after all. Looks like you keeps your peepers. ’Course, I could pop one out. Just because.”

Karris, could you please come and save my ass? While there’s ass left to save, please? “You know, Gunner, I like you a lot. But you frighten me.”

Gunner smiled big, and the danger passed. He looked out at the sea again.

Gavin thought to speak, then thought better of it. Gunner was pensive. Let him think.

“A great musket and an impossible task,” he said after a long minute.

“Hmm?”

“That’s what I want. That’s all.” He looked at the musket-sword he’d pulled from Gavin’s side, somehow without killing him. “I used to want to make the perfect musket. This destroyed that for me. I can never make one this good. I used to want to shoot the Everdark Gates. This ship has destroyed that for me. It’s all been done.” He stomped on the deck. “Gunner was born too late. The last impossible task in this world, he accomplished in his youth.”

He sank into himself, the bright sun no longer penetrating his darkness.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Gavin said. “There are a dozen challenges worthy—”

The butt of the musket flashed out, slamming into Gavin’s stomach and knocking his wind away.

“Do not think to placard me, Guile. I’m no child to be twisted round your twosies. Take him below!” he roared. “Now! Before Gunner blows off the head of our prize!”

Chapter 19

Even as Teia’s feet beat the paving stones, her mind locked up. She was like an animal. She got to a narrow intersection in the alley, and realized she had the bloody knife still in her hands. She skidded to a stop, turned, and flung the knife down the alley, then turned and went the other direction. The ringing of the steel on the stones felt like another alarum bell. She scrubbed her face with a sleeve. It came away bloody.

She was
covered
in blood. Dear Orholam save her. Teia sprinted down the block, slowed to a walk at the corner, entered the main street, and moved toward the first shop. It was a wool carders’ and weavers’ store, broad shutters open, some of their wares displayed on the street. Seeing an old, toothless woman at the counter inside, Teia squatted down between a rack of woven goat wool ghotras and the wall outside. If the woman came out, the opening door would shield Teia from her.

There was only long enough to wonder if she’d made a terrible decision; then the whistles started. Teia heard men running, not ten paces away. The watchmen, blowing their whistles, high and angry. Running toward the murder, though, not away from it. Trying to figure out what had happened, right now, not yet trying to catch who’d done it.

It was agony not to be able to see anything, but Teia kept down, and in a few more seconds, the door squeaked open and not just the old woman but another woman as well walked out of the shop past Teia.

“What you figure they’re on about this time?” the younger woman asked.

Teia vaulted through an open window into the shop and with light, quick steps, darted up the heavy stairs. The large room upstairs was packed to the rafters with raw wool, but the door to the roof was bolted and locked.

“Jofez?” a man’s voice called out, apparently having heard her steps. “You up here?”

Oh, blackest hell!

She heard footsteps on the stairs and moved behind one of the stacks of wool. The man hadn’t brought a lantern with him, but neither had she, and her eyes weren’t accustomed to the darkness. She’d frozen up before and let fear stop her from dilating her pupils consciously. What if she always did that? What if she was destined to fail when it really mattered? What if—

Teia closed her eyes, let out one breath, and opened them again. She felt the stretching as her eyes dilated open, wider, wider to good night vision and into sub-red.

The warm blob of a man standing on the landing at the top of the steps came into the soft focus that was the best you could get from sub-red. Hottest at the face, hot everywhere skin was bare, duller everywhere clothes covered skin, except groin and armpits.

She tried to circle opposite the man, but in staring at him rather than paying attention to the darkness around her, she stubbed her foot against the wooden base beneath a stack of raw wool. It made a dull thunk.

“Jofez?” the man repeated, stepping closer.

Sub-red wasn’t good enough here. With speed she didn’t know she had, Teia relaxed her eyes further and drafted a paryl torch, but the paryl light didn’t cut all the way through the heavy wool. Useless.

Come on! Her desperation lent her will, and the paryl light sharpened and stabbed the way through edges of the wool stacks. It illuminated them only dimly, but it was enough for her to make out the figure stepping forward mere feet away from her. She wended her way through the stacks carefully, able to make out every detail of the ground easily, not making a sound now.

“Melina, if that’s your damned cat again, I’m gonna kill it. Scares the hell out me all the time, doesn’t even catch rats.” He continued grumbling and made his way down the stairs. “What the hell is going on out there?” he asked, finally hearing the whistles.

Then he was gone.

Adrasteia breathed. She was almost out of paryl, so she let the light die out.

She didn’t have much time. This was a dead end, so she had to move. She navigated her way through the stacks until she found washed and bleached wool by smell and touch, and then grabbed some and scrubbed her hands. She had no mirror, and no idea of exactly where she had blood on her, but she’d have to do the best she could quickly. She tucked what she’d used deep into the pile—maybe they’d blame the cat and think it had killed a rat here. Sorry, folks.

Then she stripped off the boys’ clothing she’d stolen and rubbed her face and chest and arms with the clean back of the tunic, hoping she was cleaning off all the blood. She pulled on her dress in the darkness, fumbled with the laces.

Hurry up, Teia. Get moving.

She debated leaving the bloody clothes here, but it might only be minutes before someone came upstairs with a lantern, and if they put things together, the guardsmen would immediately start asking if anyone unusual had been seen leaving the shop. Someone in the neighborhood would say they’d seen a discipula, and the search would be quickly narrowed.

So she was going to have to carry bloody clothes—damnation!—right under their noses. She folded the clothes as tightly as she could, pulled off her hat, stuffed the clothes inside it, and walked downstairs, trying not to give away the riot inside her chest.

No one was in the shop, but quite a few other shopkeepers and passersby were walking toward the alley to see what had happened. Teia scanned herself for blood. It looked like the dress was clean—she’d worried that blood soaking her shift might have wicked through the dress, but as far as she could tell she’d been lucky. She glanced around for a mirror. There was none in the shop.

With her heart in her throat, she stepped back over the window frame and caught a glimpse of her hand—there was blood under her fingernails, and rimming every cuticle. Both hands.

Oh hell.

She stepped out into the street, slipping behind the old woman. The younger man and woman had already walked into the alley and left her to mind her shop.

Glancing over her shoulder, Teia almost bumped into another store owner who was standing in the street, looking torn between minding his shop and going to see for himself. “They say it’s a murder,” he told Teia.

“Orholam bless, that’s awful,” she said. She meant it. A wave of emotion rose up from the depths. She swallowed hard, clenched her fists and jaw.

Not now, Teia. Not. Now.

“That sort of thing doesn’t happen up here,” he said. “We’re good people here.”

She made a sound of agreement and kept moving. He barely noticed her go.

It was terror to walk against the flow of the curious, knowing that looking over her shoulder would make her look guilty. She heard someone running. “Make way! Make way! Watch coming!”

She kept walking. A sharp whistle blew twenty paces behind her.

Don’t run. You look like a helpless little girl. He won’t tackle you; he’ll grab your arm. Then you counterattack. If you run, he tackles you. With his weight against yours, you’re dead.

The whistle sounded again, almost right in her ear. When he grabs your arm, turn with it, bring your elbow to his head to stun him. Then run. Two blocks to an underground gutter. Figure it out from there.

Then, from the pounding footsteps, she realized there wasn’t one guardsman, there were two. Two? Her plan wasn’t going to work for two.

She froze.

The two guardsmen ran right by her.

“Watch coming! Make way!” one of them bellowed. They ran on, and were swallowed by the evening crowds.

Within another block, everything resumed as normal, the crowds unaware of the death so nearby. Teia made her way to a fountain in a market, where some of the vendors were already closing up. She sat on the edge and trailed her fingers in the water as if idly. She sat up, looked around for anyone watching, and rubbed her fingernails on the folded tunic.