’s belly. Leading the pair along the tight hallway to the portside stateroom, he opened the door with a flourish and stepped aside.
“Hammocks only, I’m afraid, but there’s space aplenty. You can dine with me or alone, as it please you. I’ve a bath in my cabin also, if you’ve a need. Arkemical stove. Hot water. Your privacy will be golden, and though I’d not expect it, you get lip from any of my salts, inform myself or BigJon and we’ll see it put arights.”
“Your ‘salts’?”
“My crew,” the man smiled. “Apologies, Sister, I’ve a sailor’s tongue. Regardless, the Bloody Maid is my home, and you’re my guests in it.”
“My thanks, Captain,” the sister said, easing herself into one of the hammocks.
Cloud Corleone considered the girl carefully. Her shapeless white robes were almost loose enough to hide another nun beneath—sadly designed to leave almost everything to the imagination. Her face was pretty, though, freckled cheeks, bright eyes the color of a cloudless sky. Dragging off her coif, she released long red locks down over her shoulders, creased with a gentle curl. She looked three turns tired and in need of a good meal, but still, you’d not kick her out of bed for farting, holy virgin or no.
But something about her wasn’t right.
“May I help you with something, Captain?” she asked, eyebrow cocked.
The privateer stroked his stubble. “I’ve a bed in my cabin, too, should the hammock grow tiresome.”
“Still trying to be charming, I see …”
“Well.” He gave a bashful schoolboy smile. “I’ve a thing for women in uniform.”
“More out of them than in, I’d wager.”
The captain grinned. “We’ll be under way momentarily. North to Stormwatch, swift as sparrows, then back to Whitekeep. We’ll be there by weeksend, winds be kind.”
“Let us pray, then, that they are.”
“Any time you want me on my knees, Sister, just say the word.”
The big fellow in the corner stirred slightly, adjusting one of those suspiciously sword-shaped lumps, and the captain decided he’d learned enough for now. With a wink that could charm the paint right off the walls, Cloud Corleone tipped his tricorn hat.
“Good nevernight, Sister.”
And he closed the cabin door.
Walking up the hallway a moment later, the captain muttered softly to himself.
“Nun my arse.”
The balls on that slick bastard,” Ashlinn whispered incredulously.
Mister Kindly coalesced above the cabin door.
“… i wonder where he keeps his wheelbarrow …?”
“I’m dressed as a nun,” Ashlinn said, looking about the room in indignation. “He does realize I’m dressed as a fucking nun, aye?”
Throwing aside her cloak of shadows, Mia faded into view in the far corner. Jonnen stood with his wrists bound, one of his sister’s arms about him, her other hand clapped over his lips. He glared at the Vaanian girl as his sister removed her hand.
“You have a filthy mouth, harlot.”
“Quiet,” Mia warned. “Or it’s the gag for you again.”
Jonnen pouted but fell silent, his eyes on his sister’s back as she crossed the cabin floor. Locking the door, Mia turned and met Ashlinn’s eyes.
“I don’t trust him.”
In the other corner, Tric drew his hood back off his head, thin white plumes spilling from his lips as he spoke. “NOR I.”
“Well, that makes three of us,” Ash replied. “He might as well have the word ‘pirate’ stenciled on the arse end of those ridiculous pants. It’s a good thing he only gets his second two hundred after our arrival in Ashkah.”
“I didn’t think the funds Mercurio gave us were still so flush.”
“They’re … not,” Ash admitted. “But we can burn that bridge when we arrive at it. The Siren’s Song already left port. This ship is sailing in our direction, and we’ve got nothing left to barter passage with elsewhere. So we take our chances here, or start marching across the aqueduct on foot and praying for a miracle. And considering we stole this habit of mine off a clothesline at a convent, I’m not too sure any of the divinities will be in a mood to answer nicely.”
Mister Kindly began licking a translucent paw on his perch above the door.
“… this whole endeavor would be made infinitely easier if, o, i don’t know, we could somehow make ourselves unseen for the rest of the journey …”
Mia scowled up at her passenger. “It’s truelight, Mister Kindly. I can barely manage to hide me and Jonnen with those accursed suns in the sky. But my thanks for making me feel shittier about our predicament than I already did.”
“… you are most welcome …,” he purred.
Mia turned her eyes to the door the privateer had left by.
“Our captain seems a clever one,” she murmured.
“PERHAPS TOO CLEVER,” Tric said.
“No such thing, in my experience.”
Mia eased herself into one of the hammocks with a groan and a wince. She sat and chewed her lip in thought for a while, fighting a losing battle with her leaden eyelids.
“But Ash is right,” she finally declared. “We don’t have much left in the way of choice. I say we take our chances on the Maid. As long as Jonnen and I stay out of sight, and you can put up with his flirting for a few weeks, I think we’re safe here.”
“… i am sure dona järnheim will loathe every minute of the attention …”
Ashlinn ignored the shadowcat above the door, looking at Mia with concern. The girl was slouched in her hammock, head hung low, rocking softly with the shush and whisper of the water against the hull. Mia looked about to fall over from sheer exhaustion. They could hear the Maid ’s crew overhead, BigJon’s rainbow-colored bouts of profanity, the song of sails being unfurled, the smell of salt and sea strung in the air.
Jonnen was still standing in the corner, Eclipse in his shadow.
“Did you hurt him, Kingmaker?” he asked softly.
Mia met her brother’s dark eyes, the shadow of Julius Scaeva hanging in the air between them. It was long moments before she answered.
“No.”
“I want to go home,” the boy said.
“And I want a box of cigarillos and a bottle of goldwine big enough to drown in,” Mia sighed. “We don’t always get what we want.”
“I do,” he scowled.
“Not anymore.” Mia ran her fingers across her eyes and stifled a yawn. “Welcome to the real world, little brother.”
Jonnen simply glared back at her. Eclipse uncoiled from the dark at his feet, the shadowwolf joining the boy’s silhouette on the wall, darkening it further. Without the daemon riding his shadow, he’d likely have been reduced to hysterics by now, but considering what he’d been through, the child was doing well.
Still, Ashlinn didn’t like the way the boy stared at his sister.
Angry.
Hungry.
“… WHAT NOW …?” Eclipse growled.
“… a quick round of crumpets