“‘Rin’?” Guerin’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “Certainly, if it pleases you, but it’s a bit early to have gotten yourself into so much trouble that you need to hide behind a fake name, isn’t it?”
“It seems my family has an unfortunate reputation on these islands.” I dropped into the wooden chair across from the marine commander. We were in the Seahorse, and I had to raise my voice to be heard over the clamor from the rowdy mob who crowded the main room.
“Ah, family.” Guerin waved at one of the harried servers and raised two fingers, getting a brusque nod in return. “I’m sorry to hear that, Saint — er, Rin.”
“Quite all right. It’s not your problem, and with any luck it won’t be mine, either.”
“But other than that, did you have a good day?”
“I did some shopping. Picked up a few things I forgot to pack and bought more books. Posted a few letters. You?”
“I was only released from duty an hour ago. I hope you’re ready to do some serious drinking, because I am.” Guerin ran a hand through her short hair, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs. “And we need to discuss tactics — I assume you’ve never been a battle-beck?”
My lips quirked at the ridiculous term. “Beck” was a slang term for sentinel, coined because bale was at our “beck and call.”
“Not as such, no. I’ve coordinated with other sentinels to secure buildings, fight fires, and ….” I hesitated, “other things, but I haven’t participated in any formal military service.”
“I was told you’re ranked to four?”
“Yes, although if I’m holding four calls at once, I can’t do much else.”
“Pssh. Our last sentinel could only hold two, so you’re already doubling our strategic flexibility.”
The server returned with two mugs of beer.
“I hope you don’t mind?” Guerin asked as she paid. “We’ll move to something stronger after I’ve quenched my thirst.”
“Should we try the — what was it? — the kleren?” I inquired.
“Better stick to rum tonight if we want to get anything done. A bottle of four-year,” Guerin told the server, who nodded and left. She looked back at me. “Chevachèchen rum’s a cut better than the piss Mister Tio doles out to the hands. If you have any money left, pick up some fifteen-year-old spirits before you leave. You can’t buy it in a dump like this, but there are places uptown that sell it.”
I nodded and made a mental note to buy a few bottles for the wardroom. I’d paid the regular subscription fee upon boarding, securing my share in the wardroom’s chickens and goat, but I figured I owed the others for putting up with my illness for so long. Besides, buying your colleagues’ goodwill was always a sound investment.
We tapped tankards and drank.
“Ah, that’s better.” Guerin set her tankard down half-emptied. “All right. Then you’ve never tried to hold a call under enemy fire?”
“No. Never.”
“Then, first rule — in battle, you should always keep one call to defend yourself. Not only from cannonfire, but from sharpshooters and other sentinels, as well.”
“That’s not considered cowardice?” I’d read enough of the Imperial Navy’s admonitions against cowardly behavior to understand the gravity of such an accusation.
Guerin scoffed.
“Running away is cowardly. Hanging back when you’re ordered to fight is cowardly. Shielding yourself with a call while you’ve got three others serving the ship is just common sense.” She gave me a crooked smile. “Most Navy sentinels are first- or second-ranked. A fourth-ranker like you will give us a significant edge in battle, so I’d like to keep you around for a while.”
I gave a wry laugh. I supposed I might as well stay alive a little longer, since I wasn’t about to secure myself an heir in Chevachèche. At least being in the Navy should give me plenty of opportunities to look for my relatives elsewhere.
“I’ll do my best,” I promised. “How do you recommend I use the other three calls?”
“Like as not the captain will order you to shield our powder room and decks or drop balefire on the enemy,” Guerin drained her beer and reached for the rum. “Come on, finish up.”
I dutifully drained my tankard as the marine worked the seal off the bottle.
“His orders come first, but you have some leeway. You’ll want to put out any fires on our ship, of course. Oh — never set fire to an enemy ship without direct orders. Eats into the prize money, you know. And a burning ship too close to our own can put us in danger, especially if their powder room blows.”
I gave her a grave nod. I’d been allowed to peer into the Chaser’s copper-clad powder room during my first tour of the ship, but the gunner had been visibly nervous about it, cautioning me over and over in earnest tones to please avoid even thinking about calling balefire in the room’s vicinity. Fire, I’d been assured, was the greatest danger an enemy sentinel posed to a ship.
“Other than that,” Guerin continued, turning the tankards upside-down and giving them a firm shake to dislodge the last drops of beer, “respond to emergencies as they occur and as you’re able. If a mast or yard is shot down, shield the hands standing below; if a cannon breaks loose, keep it from careening across the deck and crushing its crew. You’ll have to be sharp-eyed and quick-thinking. And most of all….” she grimaced as she set the tankards back upright on the table. “… we’ll need you if there’s a Line breach.”
“Have you ever seen one?” I inquired. The answer was written on Guerin’s face as she splashed a generous portion of rum into the bottom of each tankard, setting the bottle back down on the table’s rough surface with a bang.
“Once.” She pushed my tankard over and lifted her own. “I was on the Valiant, a 98-gun second-rate, during the action of Xece Batu. Three Imperial ships of the line and a brig against Sherenyu-Rek’s four frigates and two corvettes.”
Guerin paused to taste her rum, and I did likewise. Ah, that goes down so much better than beer. I would definitely add some bottles to my sea chest.
“Since you aren’t a sailor,” she said, lowering her tankard, “you probably don’t care about the tactical details. Suffice to say we took two of their frigates and destroyed the corvettes. But the Sher exacted a price — never let anyone tell you their seamanship isn’t just as good as the Empire’s. The Valiant lost sixty-eight hands, including both its becks. Another twenty-nine were wounded. The breach happened about an hour after the battle ended, thank Kyrchye, or we would have lost the ship altogether. I was on deck helping with the prisoners when all of the sudden I heard this hellish screaming in the orlop. The next thing I knew, transients were pouring up out of the hatches….” She shuddered and took another, deeper drink. “Like the stuff of fucking nightmares.”
“How did you stop it?” I set my own emptied tankard back down, fascinated by her tale. “With both of your sentinels gone…?”
“Luckily for us, the flag sentinel, Tobias Gagnon, discerned the break.” Guerin reached for the bottle. “He used balewalls to create a bridge from ship to ship and literally ran across the line of battle, shouting for help. The Durable’s sentinel joined him, and one of the Sher sentinels who’d been hiding among the captured crew stepped forward to help close the breach, too. Won a lot of goodwill for it — I heard she was traded back to the Sher fair and square after the battle. Anyway, the three of them sealed the breach and cleared the ship, but ….” Guerin shook her head as she splashed more rum into our tankards. “We lost all twenty-nine wounded, plus the surgeon and all his mates, and a lieutenant who’d been down in the orlop checking on one of the wounded cadets. Over a hundred crew members were killed, and a lot more injured. It was ugly, Saint — um, Rin — so damn ugly. Thank Kyrchye I wasn’t sent below to help clean up the mess. Got enough nightmares about those damn things scuttling across the decks and through the rigging.”
“Gagnon’s famous.” I took another sip of the rum. The war with Sherenyu-Ruk had been over ten years ago and halfway around the world from Cislunar, so I’d paid little attention to it except insofar as it had occasionally affected our shipping lines. But I’d read about Tobias Gagnon, who’d served under two fleet admirals and garnered sentinels a measure of respect from even the most conservative branches of the Imperial Reverence. We’d draped the Vigilance Orderhouse’s windows and doors in mourning black for a month after hearing of his death. “He passed away here in these islands, didn’t he?”
“From yellow fever, the poor sod. Dismal way for a hero to go.” Guerin set her tankard down. “Have you ever seen a breach?”
“Once.” I didn’t want to talk about it. It had occurred after the first bomb had gone off, the one that had killed my family. I deliberately pushed the memory away and considered the difficulty of preventing a breach aboard a ship in battle. ‘Pain summons, blood satiates, death dismisses,’ as the saying went — and certainly Naval battles would cause plenty of all three. “I’m surprised you haven’t seen more. In Cislunar we’ve set up multiple emergency clinics around the city, so in a disaster we can separate the wounded and reduce the strain on the Line … but obviously you can’t do that aboard a ship.”
“There haven’t been that many ship-to-ship actions since the treaty with Sherenyu-Ruk. Mostly pirates, and in general they prefer to run than fight. The Damme Boy’s an exception, may Yzyrche damn their souls.” Guerin met my eyes. “Could you seal a breach alone, if you needed to?”
“Certainly,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. A breach in the Line — a hole through which the alien transients who dwelt on the other side, on the hell side if you believed the Reverence, could pour into the world to feed on human pain — could only be closed by sentinels with steel nerves and strong wills. Once upon a time I’d possessed both, but after seeing my family blown to bits … I reached for the rum and poured us each another shot. “I won’t let you down.”
Guerin nodded and raised her tankard. I tapped it with my own, a salute and a promise. We tossed back our shots and I picked up the bottle again.
“Goes fast,” I observed, gazing at the much-diminished level with a measure of warm satisfaction.
Our conversation turned to specific strategies, and soon enough the empty bottle was on its side, representing the ship, as Guerin described the various ways in which an observant sentinel could assist marines and gun crews in the course of battle. At some point we were joined by the Chaser’s second lieutenant, Owen Thomas, who found the conversation so engrossing that he emptied his bottle of sweet red wine into our three tankards in order to contribute a second ship to the tabletop battlefield.
When the demonstration deteriorated into a rapid exchange of technical jargon between Thomas and Guerin, I leaned closer, straining to make sense of their words over the argument at the next table.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I protested, slapping my palm on the table. “Explain the weather gage to me again. You mean a compass?”
“No, it means you’re upwind of the other vessel, like so —” Thomas reached for the rum bottle just as one of the sailors at the next table leaped to his feet, jostling him so that his fingers send the bottle rolling away.
“Cheat!” somebody shouted. Guerin lunged for the wayward bottle, but she was a moment too late. It rolled off the table and hit the wooden floor.
“Ho, Lieutenant, your wind gage just blew the IMS Rum off —” Guerin’s jest broke off as the standing sailor backed away, his heel landing on the bottle. The bottle spun out from under his foot.
“Careful!” I stood to steady the man and we both ended up staggering. I realized with amusement that I was a little drunk. I hadn’t gotten drunk since I’d set foot on the Chaser. My tolerance for alcohol must have diminished over the last month.
“Hold that bastard fast!” one of card players shouted. I glanced over my shoulder.
“Which one of—” I broke off as I saw something — a tankard? — swinging toward me. Lieutenant Thomas grabbed my arm and yanked me out of its way. Losing my balance and my good humor, I sprawled on the floor.
“Take it outside, you bastards!” Guerin roared.
Disgusted, I pulled myself back to my feet, scrubbing my palms on my uniform trousers. The Seahorse’s patrons were liberal with both spills and spit, and I felt decidedly unsanitary. Beside me, Guerin was grappling with the tankard-wielding card player while Thomas fended off two others who were shouting with incoherent belligerence. The man who’d started it all was crawling away under the table. Around our tables, other patrons were getting to their feet, some entertained, others annoyed.
“Stay out of it,” I warned, calling a balewall across the Line and planting it between the fight and the nearest onlookers. The last thing we needed was a large-scale tavern brawl on our hands.
Lieutenant Thomas seemed to be getting the worse of it, so I grabbed one of his opponent’s shirts. The man turned, swinging wildly, and his fist caught me across the right cheekbone. I winced, one hand rising to my face. I hadn’t been punched since my brother and I had grown too old to fight over toys. Wealth, social rank, and a sentinel’s pin usually protected me as surely as any balewall. It hurt.
In response, Lieutenant Thomas buried a fist in my opponent’s stomach. The card player bent over with a startled ooof, but the other man Thomas had been fending off took the opening to land a quick one-two punch combination, sending the lieutenant staggering backward. Thomas’s legs hit the chair behind him, and he lost his balance, falling into the table.
I gathered my wits and snapped another call over the Line, catching the collapsing table with a low balewall just as it and the lieutenant were about to go crashing together to the floor. Then I clasped both hands together and brought them down on the back of my previous opponent’s neck. He dropped. I spun to glare at Thomas’s assailant, sending a third call across the Line. It failed. I tried again, and a smallsword fashioned out of bale appeared in my hand, slick and softly glowing.
“Stand back!”
Wide-eyed, the card player raised his hands and stepped backwards, his eyes darting from my glowing sword to my silver Vigilance badge. Oh, now he notices.
“Thank you, Saint-Cloud,” Lieutenant Thomas said, righting himself and snatching his hat off the floor. “Guerin, how are you doing?”
“All secure.” Guerin had managed to work her opponent into an arm lock, his tankard and right arm bent at an uncomfortable-looking angle behind him. She pulled her opponent closer and spoke into his ear. “Feeling any calmer?”
“Indeed I am,” the man gasped, grimacing. “And I sincerely hope you’ll accept my apologies for any inconvenience I might have caused you.”
Guerin barked a laugh and glanced at me.
“Mind dropping the wall?”
“Not at all.” I let the balewalls slip away with a sense of relief. It was possible, I admitted to myself, that I may have imbibed a bit too much rum.
Our table landed on the floor with a clatter that made everyone jump. Lieutenant Guerin released her opponent’s arm and pushed him into the gawking crowd.
“Apology accepted,” she said cheerfully. “An unfortunate misunderstanding all around.”
“Indeed, excepting our friend’s fifth king, about which I’ve no misunderstanding whatsoever,” the man with the mug observed, rubbing his arm.
Everyone turned to look at the card cheat, who was picking himself off the floor several feet away from the scene of the scuffle. He flinched, then pointed a finger at me.
“Didn’t you hear that Imperial bastard?” he asked, looking around at the other tavern patrons. “That’s a Saint-Cloud!”
My stomach clenched.
“Indeed,” Lieutenant Thomas said sternly. “You had the audacity to attack —”
“Wait!” I felt a nausea that couldn’t be entirely attributed to the evening’s combination of alcohols. “Don’t say it!”
“— our sentinel, Mazarin Saint-Cloud,” he continued implacably, “Marine Lieutenant Ruth Guerin, and myself, Lieutenant Owen Thomas, all serving on our Imperial Majesty’s Ship Chaser. I strongly recommend you apologize to us and your fellow players before somebody feels it necessary to call in the watch.”
I looked around. About three-quarters of the bar was watching the altercation with the same amount of interest as before, but a handful of sailors and staff were staring at me, several of them making signs to ward off evil. I let my balesword dissipate across the Line.
“I think it’s time for me to go,” I said, uncomfortably.
Thomas turned toward me, his stiff formality wavering a moment to show a flash of concern.
“If you’ve been injured —” he began.
“No, no, I’m well, but I need to — to get out of here.” I backed away, looking over his shoulder to give Guerin a meaningful look. She met my eyes blankly. She may have had a bit too much to drink, as well.
“Well, if you must…” she said, dubiously. “But it’s bad form —”
I flinched but strode toward the door. The sailors let me through, some turning back to their interrupted conversations and others staring at me with open suspicion. As I neared the door, a grim-faced, older Chevachèchen woman wearing a bartender’s apron stepped into my path.
“Are you really a Saint-Cloud?” she asked, in Empyrian.
“It’s not what you think,” I replied defensively. I wanted to explain that I wasn’t a Chevachèchen bugaboo but a Cislunarite noble, a respectable holder of property and means whom, under any other circumstances, a bartender would be grateful to have patronize her establishment. But the beer and the rum were roiling in my stomach, my cheek was sore and swelling, and I felt unaccountably ashamed at having abandoned Lieutenant Thomas and Lieutenant Guerin, even though it was clearly the right thing to do.
The local woman watched me drop my gaze and scoffed.
“Your people aren’t welcome here, Saint-Cloud,” she growled. I made an incoherent reply and fled out the door into the warm, humid night.
Adrahan’s streets were still crowded, at least this close to the docks. I forged through the clumps of drunken sailors and prostitutes, my face down and my hands wrapped around my elbows. Only after reaching the protective shadows of the wharf did I stop, gasping for breath.
I was an aristocrat and the second-ranked sentinel in the Cislunar Vigilance. Over the course of my life, I’d been the focus of others’ irritation, anger, and even outrage … but strangely enough, this was the first time I’d been the focus of their loathing. I found that I very much disliked it.
I leaned against a low wall and stared at the lights on the ships that rocked gently in the harbor. A sour, rotten smell rose from the water that lapped against the edge of the walkway. It wasn’t helping my churning stomach in the least.
“Kyrchye,” I breathed, not sure whether I meant it as a curse or a prayer.
“He will not help you, Saint-Cloud,” a voice replied in accented Empyrian. I drew in a sharp breath and turned. “Your Imperial god’s got no time to waste for them he cast out.”
I could barely see the man who was speaking, but I heard enough movement behind him to realize he wasn’t alone.
“I’m not here for a religious debate,” I said, struggling to keep my voice firm. “And I don’t want any trouble. I sincerely apologize for whatever my ancestors did —”
Hisses and muttered Chevachèchen curses made me break off. The speaker murmured something and the others fell silent. He stepped closer, a broad-shouldered, middle-aged man wearing a laborer’s worn garments.
“You are really the Mazarin Saint-Cloud?” he asked, eyeing me with curiosity.
“I’m not the Mazarin Saint-Cloud you’re thinking of,” I protested, my voice rising. “She died a long time ago. I’m not a monster — I’m from Cislunar!”
A sharp laugh rang out, and more Chevachèchen was exchanged, one voice rising more urgently over the others. I couldn’t make out any of the important words, not with the speakers talking so fast. I took a deep breath, trying to clear my rum-spun head. At last the group’s spokesperson addressed the angry group, his own tone grave but unhurried. Then he looked at me.
“You go back to Cislunar and you stay there, Mazarin Saint-Cloud,” he advised. “Too many people here want to kill you. I have told these few that you are a harmless fool, but if you stay too long, somebody less generous than me will hear your name and send the spirits after you. So you go back to your ship tonight and never set foot on Chevachèche again. You are not welcome here.”
“I just came here to find my family,” I protested. “I just need to find an heir, and then —”
Somebody shouted, and another replied. The leader turned and held up his hands, but this time his companions ignored him and surged toward me.
I sent a desperate call across the Line and slammed a balewall between us, its length running from the wall to the edge of the wharf. The bale’s pale, sickly glow illuminated four, no five indignant faces and one weary one that gazed at me with something like pity as his companions jostled him in their rush forward.
For a moment I thought I was safe, but then my attackers hopped up onto the low stone wall, circumventing my linear barrier. Panicked, I called balefire across the Line, scorching the two lead attackers. They cried out in pain and reeled back. Then my call shattered, the conjured fire slipping back across the Line.
“None of that, Saint-Cloud,” the spokesperson said in a stern voice.
“You’re a sentinel, too?” I asked, dumbfounded, as my attackers pounced and grabbed my arms and shoulders. The Chevachèchen sentinel took a step forward, saying something as fists began to pummel me. I struggled under their blows, trying to send another call across the Line. Alcohol and pain kept me from focusing, and the few times I thought I had even the faintest grip on a call, my efforts were brushed aside by the other sentinel.
When my attackers’ hands finally opened again, I collapsed, curling into a ball on the wooden wharf and wrapping my arms around my spinning head. Somebody kicked me in the side, but then, mercifully, my assailants walked away, shouting and laughing.
A hand touched my shoulder.
“Stay out of Chevachèche, Saint-Cloud,” the sentinel said. A moment later he, too, left.
Some time later, when I finally thought I could move again, I uncurled and tried to pull myself to all fours. My stomach roiled. I managed to crawl to the edge of the wharf before I heaved, emptying my stomach into the stinking, algae-covered water of the harbor, over and over, until there was nothing left. Involuntary tears ran down my face, mixing with snot and bile.
And you thought you’d hit rock bottom in Cislunar, some distant and disgusted part of my mind observed. What would your peers say if they could see you now?
The moon rippled on the water, a pale disk that glowed like bale. I stared at it to keep the rest of the world from spinning.
This is it, I promised. This is the new bottom. The last bottom. I’ll never touch another drop.
You’ve said that before, the unsympathetic observer in my mind replied. Many times.
“I just need to find my family.” I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against the edge of the dock. It didn’t help. The world was still spinning around me, except now I didn’t have a steady point to focus on. I just need to find an heir.
I just need a reason to stay alive.
It would be so easy to pull myself a little farther forward. Was I too drunk to swim? Would anybody mourn me if I drowned?
Water dripped on my face. I dragged my eyes open. Pale, faintly luminescent tendrils rose from the moon in the water, touching my skin and sliding through my curls. My breath caught. It was a cold, damp caress, but I was desperate enough for it to feel like a sort of kindness, a sort of affection … as if the harbor itself wanted to draw me down into its dark but welcoming bosom.
Saint-Cloud. The words were in an alien whisper, a vibration of bale against my ears that possessed no human vocal resonance. I am the *** of the Saint-Clouds. I am *** *** to *** your call.
The words were Chevachèchen, and I could barely make sense of them.
“Saint-Cloud? Saint-Cloud!” Guerin shouted.
I blinked and the tendrils were gone, leaving behind a ripple of water and the stink of algae, dead fish, and rum-laced vomit.