Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) (7 page)

This place is about to get a whole new clientele,
Jaren thought with growing excitement. His plan to gather a pirate army and liberate Tharis had gone up in flames, but Dan had salvaged his dream from the ashes with a simple change of venue.

“Take us in,” Jaren told Deim. Realizing that his junior steersman hadn’t been to the Island before, he added, “The entrance is in the middle of the bigger rock.”

Deim found the dock with no trouble. Most of the berths were filled: for the first time in years, to judge by the look and odor of decay.

“Nakvin, Teg, and Deim will debark with me,” Jaren told his twenty remaining crewmen. “The rest of you stay put and lock up tight till we get back.”

Jaren led the way through a transparent tube extending through space to the smaller asteroid, where only a decrepit bar remained open. He strode through the door and into the raucous, liquor-soaked heart of the first pirate conclave since time out of memory. The freelance community had shrunk in recent years. As a result, most of those present knew each other by reputation if not by appearance.

A scattered chorus of grunts and applause greeted Jaren as he took a seat at the bar with his senior crew. Though he didn’t expect many more attendees, custom demanded that stragglers be given time to arrive. Fielding the crowd’s questions about internal politics and swaying fence-sitters who doubted that anyone could beat the Guild gave Jaren plenty to do in the meantime.

Half an hour later, Teg was on his fifth round of rye liquor. Deim was nursing his second beer, and Nakvin still sipped idly from her first glass of red wine. Jaren's mug of mead stood full on the dirty counter while he scanned the motley crowd.

Jaren's eyes kept wandering back to Dan, who held forth at a corner booth playing cards with the Oison brothers and some newcomer—a Kethan, by his speech. Dan’s laughing eyes never left his table mates. His gnarled hands shuffled and dealt by feel.

A thought not his own occurred to Jaren:
What’s bothering you?

Shame warmed Jaren’s cheeks when he realized his transparency. Nakvin had noted his watchfulness and was communicating in her peculiar way of skipping words and going straight to ideas. He ignored the question, preferring to stay alert rather than repeating his blunder at the fortress. His sense of impending doom had returned, and it centered around Dan’s table. As Jaren watched, Dan folded his hand, excused himself, and vanished through the door behind the bar.

Jaren remembered his drink but found he wasn't thirsty. He picked absently at Teg’s plate of heavily salted, breaded vegetables and watched the kitchen door for Dan’s return. What was his gut telling him? Was Dan walking into an ambush? Jaren was about to have Teg check the kitchen when his eyes began to burn and the muscles in his neck and shoulders to cramp. Jaren reached for his zephyr, but his head was swimming. His vision clouded and went black.

Nakvin was contemplating her wine glass when her vision briefly fogged.
I hope I'm not allergic to the vegetables
, she thought just before her three companions slumped face-down onto the bar.

With a start, Nakvin cast frantic glances around the room. All of the other patrons sagged unmoving in their seats or lay sprawled upon the floor. Most of them still seemed to be breathing, but none stirred. She checked her associates’ vitals and was relieved that their pulses, though slowed, were still detectable.

Nakvin realized with growing alarm that someone had meant to sedate the whole conclave, yet she alone remained awake. Calming herself, she weighed her options. A glamer would rouse a few of the victims, but singing might alert the culprits. The best course of action was to wait for her enemies to show themselves. She dropped back into her seat, let her upper body collapse upon the counter, and lay still. Her half-closed eyes stayed focused on the door.

The front doors banged open, admitting a pair of men whose slurred Byport accents, staggering gaits, and pungent odor betrayed their drunkenness. Nakvin doubted that these two had masterminded the mass poisoning. Their indiscreet entrance, combined with their dumbfounded expressions, convinced her that their timing was mere dumb luck.

The two besotted latecomers took a moment to digest the scene before them; then they began looting the comatose pirates with frantic glee.

One of the men: a scraggly bear of a fellow, swaggered up the center aisle toward the bar; leaving his younger, slimmer, and even filthier accomplice to work the area near the door.

An unwelcome note of recognition lit the larger man's face. “'Ey! I know them folk!” he announced like a priggish exam candidate. “That there's old J. P. what's supposed to be one o’ them ever-buggerin’ Gen!”

“Them's just stories!” his partner snorted. “Don't nobody live more'n a hundred years; ‘specially not no jacker!”

Nakvin's muscles tensed. The years had acquainted her well with all the slurs lobbed by sodden louts. Those who took offense at Gen could be unruly if given a free hand, and these two were mice in a granary.

“It's ‘im,” the stout one said. “And ‘e's got this rich little pudding with ‘im. Lets ‘er take the Wheel they say, but she's more useful when a bit o’ trampery's called for.” The bearish sot drew a short, hooked knife. “Seems game for a bit of pro bono work.”

Nakvin's hand was inching toward the hilt of her own blade when the kitchen doors swung open. Dan emerged from the back wearing a bug-eyed gas mask and packing a scatter gun with its barrel cut down to a nub.

“Stand down, Blackwell,” the old man's muffled voice warned. “You got your share. Now why don’t you and Jones there crawl back into the sewer?”

Blackwell stared dumbly as if struggling to understand Dan’s ultimatum. But he drew so quickly that his pistol cracked twice before the shotgun thundered in response. By the time it did, Dan was teetering backward, and his blast sent tile fragments raining from the ceiling. He fell behind the bar amid a cloud reeking of blood and smoke.

“You can get up now,” Blackwell drawled. “Saw you flinch.”

Nakvin realized with sudden dread that he was talking to her. There was no point in pretending; even less in cowering like a frightened child. She calmly rose and faced the bearish gunman. Blackwell’s antiquated revolver wasn’t trained on her, but she had no desire to test his speed. She leaned against the bar to disguise her hand’s retreat from her knife.

“’Ere’s the lay,” Blackwell said. “You take off that fancy smock and toss it over yonder.” He motioned with his gun toward a table on her left.

“Right here?” she asked.

“Isn't nobody ‘ere will mind,” he said, the gun barrel sweeping in a lazy half-circle. “Just me and Jones.”

Jones, who’d been busy rifling through pockets, paused to watch the show.

“Look at my eyes,” Nakvin said, hoping that the man’s bigotry would conquer his lust. “Do they look human? Don't you wonder why I'm the only one who missed the slumber party?”

Blackwell shrugged. “Don't much care.”

Nakvin lamented that Blackwell’s hypocrisy rivaled his prejudice. “It’ll take more than gunning down an old man to intimidate me,” she said.

“This'n might’ve been a ‘andful,” Blackwell said, indicating Teg's inert form. “An' that Gennish piece makes a big racket.” His cracked lips parted in a yellowed grin. “Don't ‘ear much o' you but that you can make a man do other than ‘e would a 'tween the sheets.” He stepped toward her, gun raised. “I’ll ‘ave it t'other way round.”

Jones giggled from the back of the room. Behind him, Nakvin saw a set of eyes like live coals brooding in the shadows of the doorway. There would be no way to contain the carnage unless she acted quickly. “Stop ogling me, and turn around,” she warned Jones.

Jones looked over his shoulder. When he did, the vicious grin vanished from his face. His eyes and mouth gaped wide.

“What's she waggin' ‘er tongue about?” asked Blackwell.

Jones squatted down and squinted into the darkened hallway. “It looks like a dog—at least partways. Got tusks and a lion’s mane.”

Blackwell gave Nakvin a close look down the barrel of his gun. “Call off yer dog.”

“What makes you think I can?”

“It looks t' have the same devilish mark as you.”

“You could be right,” Nakvin said, “but there's something you don't know.”

Blackwell stared back dumbly. A low, guttural snarl issued from just beyond the door.

Nakvin smiled. “I don't need you between the sheets.” Maintaining eye contact with Blackwell, she wove a subtle glamer as she said, “Jones, your partner’s about to put a hole in your back.”

The younger man jumped up and rounded on his associate, his face a mask of betrayal and fear. He shot from the hip and missed. Blackwell turned and fired in one startling motion, his slack expression unchanged. Jones fell among the sleepers, who seemed none the wiser for bunking with a corpse.

Blackwell had started turning back when a hideous lupine shape burst through the door and charged him. The gunman cracked off two more shots, but the beast’s wounds closed as soon as they were made. The look of vapid confusion never left Blackwell's face as a wolf the size of a young bull crushed his neck in its jaws.

Nakvin cringed. Soon her monstrous guardian would finish the fat man and gorge itself on sleeping pirates. She’d seen more than one such feeding frenzy; the wolf’s unpredictable intervention made limiting collateral damage difficult. There were only two constants: the beast never left until it had its fill of victims, and she was never one of them.

As Blackwell went down the monster’s gullet whole, Nakvin ransacked her memory for a Working she hadn’t tried before or a glamer that hadn’t failed to contain the beast.

The wolf trotted over to Jones, made short work of his corpse, and began sniffing the closest man on its left. If the pirate was lucky, he would die without ever waking.

Nakvin assaulted the beast with a single desperate thought.

Stop!

To her amazement, the monster looked up from its chosen prey. Its burning eyes left afterimages in her vision.

Leave
, she thought with greater focus. Nakvin doubted it would work. She needed words to implant suggestions, and animals were oblivious to her mental signals. She’d only tried out of blind panic.

The wolf stared at Nakvin for another breathless moment. Then it slowly turned and loped back through the door, melting into the shadows outside.

When she was sure the beast was gone, Nakvin woke her friends.

Jaren found Dan lying behind the bar. He bent down beside the old man on reflex and felt sticky warmth soaking the knee of his pants. Perhaps Dan recalled that they'd shared something close to friendship, or more likely he refused to die quietly. Either way, his pale hands fumbling at his gas mask indicated that he had something to say.

Nakvin stooped down and peeled off the battered respirator. Dan’s face looked like a creased white sheet. Bloody drool stained his beard. “You folks clear out!” he wheezed. “Guild’s on their way.”

“The gas was their idea?” Jaren said.

The gurgling in Dan’s throat might have been a chuckle. “No sir. That was mine. Now get gone. They’re already in the hangar.”

Jaren shook his head. “Somebody played you, old man. The Guild won’t risk their ships in the Pebble Mill for a few scrawny rats.”

“
Old man
?” A grin split Dan’s blue-tinted lips. “I’m just a whelp, next to you.” The shopkeeper’s pallid face grew stern, and he clutched Jaren’s arm. “What the Guild will risk depends on the Master who sends the ships, and the one who shook me down would trade a whole fleet for you and your lady.”

Jaren furrowed his brow. “Who squeezed you, Dan?”

“New Guild minister. Ambitious pup. Sent you on that scavenger hunt.”

“What happened to the old minister?” Nakvin asked with transparent concern.

“New pup’s got him by the balls,” said Dan.

“So they finally changed the guard,” Jaren said. “Still, I can't recall a minister who did more than burn down some nomad camps and make a few token arrests.”

Dan sucked in a series of quick, shallow breaths that Jaren thought were a desperate attempt at laughter. “This one razed the Cut.”

“It's been done before. They'll rebuild.”

“Can’t build on sixty acres of glass,” Dan said. “I missed the fireworks. They picked me up in Shabreth. Waved a stack of old warrants under my nose. Said they’d clear the slate if I set you up. Blackwell got me first. So where's the harm in telling?”

“Then tell me who fucked us,” said Jaren. “Give me a name.”

“So you can get yourself killed gunning for him?” Dan asked between ragged breaths.

“So I know what to carve on his headstone.”

Dan’s face strained with effort, but he only managed a whisper. “Marshal Malachi.”

The nagging dread left Jaren's mind. With his last hope shattered, only cold numbness harboring a thirst for vengeance remained. “We're leaving,” he called to Deim, Nakvin, and Teg.

“How?” asked Nakvin. “They’re waiting for us in the hangar.”

Teg stopped looting the sleeping pirates, pocketed his ill-gotten gains, and started toward the kitchen. “Follow me,” he said.

“What about them?” Deim asked, taking in the sleepers with a wave of his arm.

Jaren shook his head. “If we’re caught, we can't help them or the ones Malachi took on Tharis. Getting away is job one. Payback’s a close second.”

Deim’s dusky face took on a sullen expression, but he fell in behind Teg and Nakvin. Jaren followed them into a cramped pantry smelling of rot where Teg stooped and ran his hands over the floor tiles. At length he motioned to Deim. “Get over here and earn your keep.”

Teg and Deim took up positions on opposite ends of a large packing crate. They lifted the box with belabored grunts; then set it down to one side with a heavy thud. This job done, Teg reached down and pulled on a groove gouged into the tiles. A square section of flooring swung upward, revealing a shadowy crawlspace beneath.

“It leads to the hangar, before you ask,” said Teg.

“How did you know about this?” asked Deim.

“I ran contraband for the last owner back when I was greener than you.”