Page 2 of Tempest

She had believed them once but knew better now. Certainly, the first Meridian explorers found more than empty sand; she imagined them burning villages and plundering temples, their ships leaving disease and death in their wake. It was the same across the rest of the Lyrian Sea, where the flags of foreign crowns sprang up across conquered shores. On every island, save one.

Whatever the first invaders found—whatever they removed—left no testament but the stone arch in the water and a whisper in the trees.

So the flag was planted. The Meridian Empire built the fort, the prim little church, and the lighthouse. Merchants, sailors, wayfarers, and all those seeking their fortunes built the rest.

Since then, the island city had stood through hurricane and siege. Treaties and war. Pirates and kings. And now, with the return of the navy, too many sailors to count, from gallant officers to ruddy enlisted to scrappy cabin boys.

Some slept on their ships at the new docks or anchored in the bay, the towering men-o’-war too big for the close shallows. A few in the barracks at the fort. But most were left to sailcloth tents on the beach, and all were constantly underfoot. Cat despaired of the shanty town of navy men, polishing their new buttons as they slept in the sand. The new lads sported the worst sunburns and sweat stains, fresh to life in the Lyrian Sea. Others were glass-eyed with the heat, or quarantined on the other side of the beach, already succumbing to island sickness. Some still wore dress uniforms, stubbornly sweating in their stiff wool coats. Cat knew they would soon learn to fear heat stroke more than wounded pride.

She scanned them as she passed, eyeing the few officers and men of rank. None looked promising, both useless and uninteresting. Poor customers at best. No money, no prospects, all simple and desperate to make their fortunes in the Lyrian Sea.

That is a tale I know all too well.

There were even more sailors in the city, alongside all manner of merchants and indentured servants and craftsmen going about their busy mornings. Like Cat, they had to adjust to the new balance in Archenport, trading pirates for the navy. A precarious transition, if not deadly, but gold was gold at the end of all things. So long as goods were bought and bills paid, life went on. So it was under the pirates, and so it would be again beneath the Empire.

Albeit with quite a few more gallows, she thought.

The new colonists were wide-eyed and sunburned as the sailors on the beach. Cat paid them little attention. Most would go screaming back to the Continent after their first storm season.

She scattered crumbs from a hard biscuit as she walked, and bright green parrots chirped in her wake, skittering along the cobblestones. The crows did not bother. They had more than their fill, gorging on the bodies adorning the streets.

The city was worse than the harbor, with less wind to carry away the smell, and more corpses left to rot. Dozens hung through the city, strung up like drying tobacco. Many were tarred and caged in gibbets to preserve the bodies as long as possible. It made for a ghoulish sight, impossible to ignore.

Cat named the dead as she walked. So many names, they ran together. So many faces, she could hardly distinguish one skull from another.

It didn’t matter; they always blended into one, the single face she could never forget. A man who did not hang with the rest. A man with eyes the color of a tempest and hands familiar as Cat’s own name.

And a snarl like a lightning bolt across a hurricane sky.

It was my head or theirs, she thought again, the words like a shield, like an explanation to the man who did not hang and would hardly care to hear her excuses anymore.

My head or theirs.

She passed noose after noose, body after body, face after face, each one a harsh reminder of the days she lived in now. And the days that would never come again.

It was always going to end this way.

The pirate republic had fallen, and none could escape the new governor’s justice or king’s law. The Meridian Empire had returned, its islands reclaimed.

A new age had begun.

And Cat could only weather it, as she had every other storm.

* * *

WHILE HER LITTLE house was on the edge of town, the tavern sat at the center, well located on Hargrove Square. Though most called it Crow Square now, thanks to the mass of black birds perched across rooftops, fence posts, and even the hats of sailors standing too still.

Cat took a well-practiced breath as she stepped onto Hargrove, trapping a gasp of air large enough to carry her across. Even so, the smell grew worse every day, and her eyes watered as she hurried.

As she did every morning, Cat told herself not to look.

And like every other morning, she raised her eyes. It felt like the least she could do, a punishment she deserved and would always endure.

Familiar as the sight had become, Cat could not help but gasp against her handkerchief, her stomach turning with revulsion.

The corpse watched her cross the square, staring without eyes: Harry Morovant, captain of the Seadragon, the last and only old lord of the Lyrian Sea. For such a man, Governor Osprin demanded a different ending, one befitting the conquered.

Cat remembered Captain Morovant’s final moments plainly. The edges of that day still bled in her mind, like a wound that would not close.