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“Can we avoid any more swimming in the future?” Dom muttered, stripping off his leather jerkin, then his undershirt. He was glad to be rid of the wet, filthy clothes.
Sorasa gave him a withering glance as they walked down the deck. Her cloak was gone, discarded in an alleyway, leaving only her battered leathers.
“I shall take your comfort into account for our next escape,” she said acidly.
Overhead, they were finally out from under the smoky clouds of Ascal, and a few stars winked to life in the night sky. Dom scowled, noting the pink haze to the once-bright constellations. He remembered the sunset in the city, as they fought their way up out of the dungeons. The sky looked red as blood, unnaturally so. It unsettled him deeply, and he longed for the empty blue of Iona, crisp and cold.
Worse still was Sorasa. She squinted up at the sky as he did, concern evident even through her emotionless mask. They exchanged worried glances, but kept their mouths shut.
This is the realm breaking, Dom knew, one hand trembling at his side.Little by little.
All the pirates watched as they passed, the oarsmen looking up from their benches and crew looking down from the rigging. They were fearsome as mortals could be, armed even on the deck of their own ship, marked by scars and tattoos and sun-worn skin. Sorasa stared back at them darkly, reading faces as Dom did.
“How quiet is your crew, Captain?” the assassin bit out.
Meliz glared over her shoulder with a look to freeze blood. “There isn’t a soul aboard who would sell you to the Lioness, or her Rose Prince.”
It sounded like the truth, at least to Domacridhan. He looked to Sorasa, weighing her reply. She understood mortals better than he ever would.
She seemed satisfied, and Dom relaxed a little.
“Good,” Sorasa said, as close to a thank-you as someone like her could manage. “And hang a red marker on your flag.”
This time, the captain furrowed her brow, confused if not annoyed.
“A spare shirt, a sheet, a rag,” Sorasa added, explaining. “Anything, just red.”
“Who are you signaling to?” Meliz wondered, her eyes narrowed.
“Perhaps no one,” the assassin muttered.
Sigil, Dom thought.Wherever she may be.
The single door on deck opened into shadow, a cramped set of stairs falling away below. Meliz led them without breaking stride, well-used to the sway of the sea and the tight quarters. Only Dom’s immortal grace kept him from pitching sideways or tumbling down to the deck below.
The Lioness and the Rose Prince.Dom turned the titles over in hismind. They sounded like characters from legend, not flesh-and-blood mortals.
“What do you know of Erida and Taristan?” Dom asked, watching Meliz through the dim light.
The pirate frowned, reaching the bottom of the stair. Over the collar of her jacket, her throat bobbed.
“I know little of queens and conquerors... but what I’ve seen with my own eyes is terrible enough,” she said, indicating her own neck, showing the edge of a circular scar.
Dom knew the sight too well. He thought of the kraken’s tentacles, puckered with fleshy, sucking circles.
“And the rumors,” Meliz pressed on, her voice harsh in the close air of the lower deck. “The red sky. Whispers of the dead walking.”
A cold chill went down Dom’s bare spine. He was too familiar with the corpse army, men and women slaughtered only to rise again. The Ashlanders and their rotten skeletons, lurching from one realm to poison the next. And What Waits behind it all, a puppeteer with Taristan on His strings.
“Something is wrong in the realm, and it seems to flow from the Queen and her prince,” Meliz muttered.
Dom glanced to Sorasa to find her already staring, hard-eyed against the shadows. Her lips pursed to nothing, her gaze shining with the same memories Dom carried.
“You have no idea,” the Elder muttered.
Dom had to hunch as they walked, his ear half-pressed up against the ceiling. The floor below made a hollow sound. It was a false bottom, hiding another few feet of storage. What theTempestborncarried beneath the decks, he did not know and could not care.
At last they reached a door at the far end of a collection of hammocks, a few occupied by snoring crew. Kireem left the door to his cabin open,the interior lit by a lantern. He was even good enough to leave a jug of water and a basin.
