The Jack of Souls (9 page)

“Do you recall a time that I wasn’t?”

Kogan laughed. “Not in my life. Thought I heard she finally forgived you and let you take your proper colors again. But now I think on it, your armor was always painted black.”

“Just now I am on a quest for the Queen.”

“How’s that if you’re out of favor?”

“Call it a redemption quest. If I succeed, she may welcome me back to court.”

Kogan grinned. “Back to the Lady Anna, you mean. Better be
some
quest, Will. Her Majesty ain’t famous for forgiveness.”

“Just so.”

Willard quelled the urge to raise his visor to speak; if Kogan saw the mortal change in his flesh, it would shock and confuse him, and there was no time for explanation. The empty ferries were more than half across the river already.

“Never got to thank you proper for holding that bridge on the West Isle whiles we escaped,” said Kogan. “Thanks to you, we liberated two-score from slavery that day and lived to brag it.”

“It was a fortunate meeting—”

“So is this one.” Kogan shook the dockmaster by the neck till the man’s false teeth flew from his lips. “You see this louse-bit, jack-a-pizzle ferry maggot?”

“Has he displeased you in some way?”

“He ain’t a maker, Will, he’s a breaker. Says he don’t ferry lordless peasants. Aims to make us wait on this side till we run out of grub, and then sell us back to some West Isle lord—mothers, babes, and all! I was fixing to drown him like a rat when you come, but I reckon a word from you would set him straight. That’d save me from becoming a wanted man in these parts.”

Willard nodded. “I’ll see to your dockman. In return, you can help me.”

Kogan glanced at the bound and blanketed ambassador, and cracked a conspiratorial grin. “You steal yourself a damsel, Will?”

Willard laughed in spite of himself. “Indeed not. Queen’s business. A brace of knights follows me on this road. Another awaits me on that ship.” He pointed to the Sapphire’s ship churning up the opposite shore. “Those aboard hope to beat me to the landing.”

Kogan scratched at his neck. “Don’t know how I could help with that, Will. But you say the word and I’ll try it; you know I owes you one.”

“You owe me three.”

Kogan grinned. “I always forget them first two.”

The thump of the waterwheels on the first returning ferry had grown louder during their conversation. It was a simple, flat-decked vessel, with twin engines and wheels amidships on either side, and the control booth on a raised bridge spanning the deck between. It appeared the pilot had fairly raced the boat across the channel, so its chimneys glowed red, belching flame as well as wood smoke as he eased it alongside the dock. Dockhands tossed lines to deckhands. Ship bells rang, and the wheels reversed, frothing the green water to foam.

Across the river, the Sapphire’s ship battled against the current, still three-quarters of a mile below the landing.

Willard leveled a finger at the dockmaster. “I shall board one ferry, sirrah. Father Kogan and his flock will board the other. You and your men will speed his loading.”

The dockmaster nodded weakly.

The priest released him. “There now, Docky. That weren’t so bad, were it?” The dockmaster retrieved his teeth from the mud, and slunk away. Kogan waved to the matron who’d urged him to flee. “Load ’em up, Widow Larkin. Docky here’s gonna help.”

She nodded, but her eyes scowled, avoiding Willard. “Don’t you make no bargains, Kogan. You got a flock now and can’t take no fool errands.”

Commotion erupted at the head of the valley above them. Six knights emerged from the canyon from which Willard had come, and bulled their way through the emigrants who had regrouped there. Once clear of the emigrants, the knights drew up within easy bow range on the slope above. Sir Green rode once again to the fore, and surveyed the scene below him. Molly snarled and pawed the gravel, sending ripples of distress through Kogan’s beasts as his people struggled to wrestle them onto the ferry. Sir Green signaled, and a squire in red armor stepped his horse forward and discharged a spitfire into the air. The brilliant blue signal flare arced over the valley and water. Moments later, an answering flare rose from the Sapphire’s ship across the river, confirming Willard’s suspicions.

Willard kept Molly between the ambassador and the knights on the bank, his eyes wary for crossbows, but none appeared. Indeed, Willard glimpsed bowmen among the squires, but Sir Green did not give the order. He simply watched Willard, as per his original strategy of waiting for his Old One.
Green doesn’t dare take shots now that he knows I can be slain by a stray bolt
, he realized.
I’ll wager there’s an Old One who’s given the order that I am for him alone, or that I must be taken alive.

Sir Willard leaned down and beckoned to the priest. “Listen close,” he said, his voice low. “This night is our last chance at escape. I need you to hold a bridge for me, as I did for you on the West Isle. Not with arms, mind. With wagons. Stage an accident after I cross it. Jam your vehicles at the foot, so it’s impassable. I need time to escape them.”

“What bridge you got in mind?”

“First bridge on the Hanging Road past Gallows Ferry.”

Kogan nodded, but his forehead creased in concern. His gaze wandered up past the riverbank toward the setting sun, then down to his toes.

“What’s wrong, Kogan? Worried about what your woman said?”

The priest grimaced. “Widow Larkin ain’t no trouble. She listens to sense. Still…she got me thinking, Will, or wondering, I guess, whether you still got that
night hex
on you…”

A stone of guilt sank in Willard’s belly. Kogan knew his curse. He’d seen it that night in West Isle, so there was no denying it or playing down its hazard.

Willard nodded. “It’s with me.”

“Guess I knew that. No offense, Will, but I can’t have my flock around you when the sun sets. That’s a whopper of a hex, and it ain’t nothing I can cast out—you know I tried—so it’s some other kind than the sort I know.” He made the sign of the heart in the air between them. “It’s just that we don’t need no more trouble than we already got.”

“You know I don’t wish to endanger you.”

A chuckle from behind the knotted beard. “You never want it, but it happens anyway.”

The Widow Larkin called. The flock had filled their ferry and now huddled between the houses under the control booth on the bridge. Father Kogan acknowledged her with a wave, then shrugged to Willard. “I owes you, Will. So I’ll help you. That’s that. But no man can slow the sunset. I reckon this oughta be worth
all three
what I owes you.”

Sir Willard grinned in his helmet. Was that all he wanted? To bargain away his debts? “Done,” Willard said. “I can count on you?”

Kogan hooted with laughter and strode to the dock, bare feet slapping the mud. “Be a maker, Will!” he called. He laid a good-natured smack on the dockmaster’s back and vaulted onto the deck of the ferry. “We’re going to the Free Lands!” he bellowed. “Free land and freedom for all!”

The tooler in the control booth sounded his bell. Bells answered from the engine houses, and the great waterwheels stirred to life, churning the river against the shore in turbid green waves. The vessel dragged from the bank and swung into the current, smoke plumes boiling from its chimneys like the wings of a mounting swan.

*

Willard herded the
ponies onto the open deck of the remaining ferry. The shouts and scurries of its deckhands choked off the moment they sighted Molly and knew it was their fate to carry her across the water. Several retreated to the dock, while others hid in nooks behind the engine rooms; the woodmen dumped a hurried load of firewood in the holds and departed as soon as Molly’s hooves drummed past them to the foredeck, where Willard reined her in with his ponies and mysterious passenger. At Willard’s signal, the pilot rang his bell, the toolers engaged the engines, and the ship set out at full steam in Kogan’s wake.

A glance back at shore confirmed that Sir Green and his company descended the valley for the dock.

Ahead of him, Kogan’s ferry plowed along, heavy in the water with peasants and beasts. Their boarding had been rushed, or Willard would have given orders for them to follow
him
across. He hadn’t expected Kogan to signal the departure.

Willard shouted to the pilot above the din of the wheels. “Pull ahead! I must land first.”

The pilot’s pale face appeared above the bridge rail; he nodded once and disappeared into his booth. A bell rang. More bells answered in the engine rooms, and the rhythm of the engine beams increased, churning the wheels even harder. The ferry drew up on the stern of Kogan’s vessel, which labored low in the water, then veered to pass on the downstream side. As Willard’s boat drew abreast, a spine-ripping shriek erupted from its starboard engine house. Brilliant steam burst up through its roof, splintering planking and blasting it into the air.

The starboard wheel halted. The ferry swerved downstream, staggering Molly and the ponies sideways. Thankfully the ponies were too weary to spook, but Molly whirled and snarled and pawed the planks.

Bells rang, men shouted, toolers ran from one engine house to the other as the ferry lost its thrust against the current, and whirled downstream among the shoals.

The pilot managed to slow the port wheel and correct with the rudders enough to halt the spin and turn it upstream. By the time he had matched speed against the current, however, they held position many boat lengths down the river, and Kogan’s ferry was far ahead and nearly at the harbor landing.

Willard’s pilot appeared before him on the deck, hat in hands. He bowed from a respectful distance. “Begging your pardon, Your Holiness,” he said, voice trembling. “A hot-pipe blew. Lucky the whole kettle didn’t go. That would’ve done for us all. We’ll make it across, I reckon, but only just.”

Willard nodded. The man bowed, backed, and scurried up the ladder to his bridge.

“Things go from bad to worse,” said the ambassador. “Look. Your friend’s ferry has landed, but Sir Green’s master moves ahead of us.”

The Sapphire’s ship, which had been churning up the opposite shore as Willard’s limped along, now crossed their path to the landing, at a distance of two or three bowshots ahead.

“Black Moon take it,” Willard muttered. “The cards are not falling in our favor.”

Brolli turned his peephole toward Willard. “Do you think this Old One is on that ship?”

Willard frowned. “I don’t know. If he is and he disembarks to meet us on the shore, however, there will be only one course of action left to us: we turn this limping ferry downstream and hope to lose them under cover of darkness. You’d be safe if we could make it all the way to the court.”

Brolli shuddered. “No. I did not feel safe there. That is why I left. I wish to take my chances on this road.”

Willard’s brow lowered in concern. “Ambassador, you may not think much of our queen or her ways, but she has brought peace to our land, and abolished slavery and many other wretched things. You must see what we are now, in the light of what came before. Before Chasia, when the Old Ones ruled, there was no peace. War is their religion. And they do not hang their enemies, Brolli. They torture and dismember, using Phyros blood plasters to heal over the amputations so their victims survive to live long lives in West Isle trophy halls and entertainment at banquets.” Brolli made a small sound of surprise. Willard nodded. “Indeed. There will be no quick death by arrow for me. If I’m taken, I’ll spend my days at the foot of an Old One’s throne, a limbless footrest.”

Brolli said nothing for many heartbeats. “I see. This also for me, if I’m caught.”

“No. They don’t hate you, Brolli. They just want you dead, to start a war. With me, it’s personal. They can’t devise punishment enough for my crime.”

Brolli’s head quirked to the side under the blanket. “Which crime?”

Willard heard the jest in Brolli’s tone, but there was more to it than playful taunt. The ambassador wanted to understand Arkendian culture and also who he dealt with, and it wouldn’t do to distort or sugar the truth. Deception was what drove Brolli from the court in the first place. “I’ve committed a few crimes over the course of seven lives, Brolli. Fewer, I like to think, than some commit in one. But as far as the Old Ones are concerned, my only crime is that I spilled the Blood of the God.”

A pulse of guilt surprised Willard, and his lip curled in disgust. It was the Blood in his veins, absorbed through the plaster, twisting his mind, tormenting him for his ancient sin. He gave himself a shake, and Brolli must have noticed, for he grew still, watching.

“This god,” said Brolli, his tone newly serious. “You call him Krato, yes? It is his blood in the Phyros? And when you immortal, it run in you?”

The Blood craving howled in Willard. If it were anyone but the ambassador, he’d have bid him hold his foolish tongue. With an effort, he said, “Yes. Krato’s blood runs through Molly and all her kin. And when I was immortal…” He took a deep breath. “I bled her and drank of it regularly, as the Old Ones do of their Phyros.”