Day four. Dago thought this when he awoke, that morning. He lay awake thinking about what it meant. Four days, in a smoky port, only a few days sail from the coast near Yarik, or less than fifteen to almost any useful port. He had been in this room, on board the Steadfast Star, for much longer than he had been able to keep track of, but he had made sure to count these days. These four days were critical.
Miss Puzzle had not yet returned.
She had sent Avice, Sirth, and who knows how many others into the rioting town. When they had not returned, she’d gone in with her own troop. And had not reappeared.
As had been the case on the other three days, Dago was not fed anything in the morning. When Miss Puzzle had been in charge, he had been. She had wanted, despite everything, for him to regain his strength. The Captain was not as invested in Dago’s future, and he gave Dago a bit of slop after lunch, usually whatever was left from his own meal. Each day, he’d been less gracious to his guest, as he began to realize that their commander was unlikely to return.
After he smelled the fish they were cooking, he waited a long time for his food to come, but it never did.
A light rain obscured the sun, shortly thereafter, dripping inside the rickety room as it did outside his small porthole. There must have been a storm on the continent, Dago thought, because the rain came so erratically, and it was not the rainy season.
No meal came that day. During what must have been mid-afternoon—Dago still could not tell, for rainclouds obscured the sun—the Captain entered Dago’s quarters himself. He was a broad man, with a square build and a square job, marred by a wicked scar from his chin to his ear. He was a half-blood, his skin a lighter shade than his comrades. Dago hated half-bloods. And the Captain of the Steadfast Star proved to be no exception.
“You’ll want your crutches. Walk with me, if you’re able. Crawl if you’re not,” the man said.
Dago was on his crutches in a moment, if only to see something outside this damnable room. The Captain led him through the crew quarters, past a few sleeping sailors, and out onto the lower section of the ship’s surface deck.
“Glad to stretch my—”
“I’ll be frank,” the Captain said. “My business with Miss Puzzle, no matter her fate, is complete. Your stay onboard my vessel is done. The other mercenaries she left will be dropped off up the coast at a port of their choice. But you, I’m afraid, cannot pay for such privilege.”
“So this is my port?”
“Indeed,” the Captain said. He led hobbling Dago to the plank of his ship, which a few crewmen had just set down onto the wharf. “Off my ship, sir. I will not ask again.”
Dago blinked. He was free? Or is this a trap? The Captain would most certainly do him harm if he stayed, so Dago put his crutches up onto the blank and stepped over the rail of the boat. His healing leg protested, giving him a few sharp twinges, but then he was back on his supports, limping across the plank toward the dock. “Do I get any supplies? Anything?” he asked. Ahead of him, a few grungy men, homeless ones likely, sat around a half-broken fountain. Water was spraying out all a mess. The buildings that faced the harbour were in decent shape, save one or two warehouses that had been gutted and burned. When he reached the end of the plank without answer, he rotated on the dock to look back at the ship.
“Best of luck, fellow,” the Captain said, and nodded to the nearest sailor. The man yanked the plank away from the wharf and started barking out commands to his comrades.
They had already readied the sails and a few of them put oars out to push off from the wharf. Small eddies formed in the water as the boat edged away from Dago. As he watched, the Steadfast Star drifted gradually out to sea, until the wind began to catch in its red-crossed sails.
The weary sellsword shrugged and hobbled away from the water’s edge. He needed to think. Best way to do that was to drink. He ignored the ring of chatting men and walked down the nearest street until he came to an abandoned inn.
The door was broken on one hinge and hung at an odd angle, inward. Dago gave it a little push and stepped into the empty tavern with a loud creak. The place had been the scene of a fight. There were two dead bodies lying against the bar on the floor, and one slumped over it with his head in his hands. Dago gave that man a solid push with one of his crutches until he was leaning way over. Satisfied they were all three dead, Dago trudged behind the bar. He leaned his crutches against the countertop and began rummaging through the cupboards until finding a glass bottle that interested him.
The cork gripped in his teeth, he yanked open the bottle, and poured himself a drink.
He needed to get out of this dump. Revolution was never a good sign. He had helped start one or two, but he had never wanted to be on the ground during one. Assuming that Miss Puzzle wasn’t about to walk through the door at any moment, he needed a plan to get out of town.
Elpan was a city on the Crimson Highway, which meant that coin or hard work, or both, could purchase safe passage with the Highwaymen. Unfortunately, Dago was neither in possession of the former, nor currently capable of the latter. That was a problem. He took a drink and considered the dilemma. Either way, he’d need to get into proper shape once more. It had been a month and a week since his injuries had been sustained, and he was on the right track to the ability to secure passage on the Highway.
He doubted that sailing, the less timely or expensive means of travel, would be a valid method. The few ships left in the harbour of Elpan were at the bottom of the drink, masts poking out and little else.
Once he had finished the drink, he took a shoulder hanging sack from around the shoulders of one of the dead men and put it around his arm. The brandy he had found went into that. Unfortunately, there was no food left in the ransacked inn, which made it his next priority. If the inns had been looted, that meant the city’s guards and upper class still held enough power to shut down the frequent meeting places of the revolutionaries.
The next best place for food was the market itself, or any shops on the way. As Dago navigated down the streets, hopping along on his crutches, he found a slain guard. He was well aware that people in the houses were peeking at him from behind bolted shutters and overlooking eaves. The streets had become more haunting than some of the jungle ruins that Dago had seen in his day.
On the dead guard, he found a scabbard and sword, a simple one made of brass. He buckled the weapon around his waist and continued deeper into the hilly town. Some alleys were so low that seawater soaked up into them, others so high that Dago had to labour himself to the point of panting for breath in order to climb them. From the top of one, he glimpsed the castle of Elpan, a three-layered cake that someone had struck with a brick, leaving behind bits of gravel and torn holes in the delicate consistency of what had once been a sturdy masonry. Smoke billowed out of the castle still, making low clouds over the blood-struck city. Night was setting, and the light from fires lit that dark fog with an eerie glow.
As the castle disappeared from view, another view approached. Ahead was the market, and before it, a slew of bodies wearing black clothes.
One of the first that Dago stepped over wore a black mask. It was Avice. Dago knelt, and removed the mask, to see who the secret man was. He was just a dark skinned warrior, like any other. The man had been looted, and no sign of that marvelous little crossbow remained.
Most of Miss Puzzle’s mercenaries lay dead here, as well as dozens of civilians. No doubt, they were attacked by rebels; the townsmen and women that were dead here were all armed. Even after all of his jobs, there was something that stirred in Dago when he saw a dead woman. He looked at all of them, but none were Sirth. She had survived it seemed.
Dago didn’t see Miss Puzzle either, not with the rest of the bodies. Another mystery, then. Will I ever know what she planned? Dago wondered. Or why she did?
He kept walking, toward the market. He could see shops and stalls ahead, but also a fair bit of debris, bricks torn from buildings, wooden ruins instead of shelves. He sighed, and limped onward, coming upon another dead body. Another rebel. He looked up.
Miss Puzzle lay against the nearby wall, her black leather jerkin damp and shiny. Another man lay next to her, dead. Two more were strewn between the man at Dago’s feet and her. Four dead. Four she had killed on her own. She wasn’t a weakling, he’d give her that. She had fought to survive with every scrap she could muster.
In vain. Dago, despite the pain in his leg, knelt beside her. He touched her neck, and waited for a pulse. Her skin was cold and it stuck to his fingers a little. He smirked, and started to remove his hand. On second thought, he turned his hand into a flat board and slapped her cheek. “Got the last laugh, you fiend,” he told her. “No damn answers though.”
The corpse of his captor gave no reply. She had been slashed across the shin, stabbed twice in the breast, and her hair had enough red in it to tell Dago she had hit this bloody brick wall too hard. Dago looked her wounds over with recognized irony. Dead women, he thought, are too vulnerable.
But he needed coin as much as he needed answers, so he checked her pockets. Her legs were cold, through the fabric within the seam of her black leather pants. There was a pocket in her jerkin too, on the right side. Within it, he found a folded piece of paper. A letter. It was sealed. He’d have to read it tonight, after he got some shelter from the ghostly streets.
He rested a hand on her arm for balance as he tucked away the clue in his own pocket. Then, for good measure, he groped the dead body as he’d wanted to while she lived. It wasn’t the same when she was dead, but in a way it was a further triumph over her. “I’ll leave you for the dogs,” he told her, and stood up. His crutches tucked into his sore armpits.
He was free. Truly. But he still needed food. He hobbled toward the market without looking back.