Page 28 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)

ARTHIE

One might not have been able to tell from the outside, but inside, Arthie was a tempest at sea.

She didn’t look to the Ceylani shore when she emerged on deck.

She went straight to Vane to instruct him to berth away from prying eyes.

But he was one step ahead of her because he didn’t “quite like the look of the people at shore,” the ship turning as she strode toward him, forcing the island in front of her.

Her island. Her home. The sticky heat she had once attributed to her daily life was as foreign as the first time she’d set foot on Ettenia and the cold, dry air had scraped her skin. It might not have been an Ettenian climate, but the sight of the harbor could have fooled her.

There was nothing Ceylani about it.

Colonizers had torn up the trees and shanties and erected a miniature White Roaring sea port, with cargo stacked high beside branches of popular Ettenian shops.

There were even a number of horse-drawn carriages in a land full of thatched bullock carts, and for what?

As if they needed to be reminded of home while they pillaged and looted every resource they could find a use for.

She didn’t see a fortress and wondered for a moment if that was a worse truth, for it meant the fortress was elsewhere, that the Ettenians had constructed far more throughout the island.

Why have you returned? the sea seemed to ask her as it rushed against the sides of the ship. Why are you here?

It was so ridiculous that it was maddening. Some strange and twisted hallucination that couldn’t possibly be real. How could someone take over another land and live guilt-free? How could they destroy and pillage and act as if it was wholly natural and their right to do so?

All she saw were Ettenians, their skin a lot less peaky and a lot more golden from the sun. She had expected it, hadn’t she? Ceylan was now an Ettenian colony, but how were there more of them than there were brown-skinned Ceylanis?

“Wicked knives, it’s hot,” Jin exclaimed as he joined her, shaded by the canopy of his umbrella. He stood close. Their earlier conversation had smoothed some of their wrinkled bond, but only time could mend the rest of it.

His lips tightened as he took in the view just as the ship completed its turn and lanky tropical trees crowded their view.

Matteo was just as speechless beside him, anger pulsing at his jaw.

His umbrella was a deep shade of crimson, casting a shadowed, reddish hue over his face.

There was a familiarity to this moment. She’d stared into another pair of vengeful eyes before.

Only this time, this anger was stirred because of her pain, because of how the scene before them affected her , nothing more. It was a strange distinction, indeed.

“You will leave your mark,” he said quietly, reminding her of her own words.

“How? By tearing down every Ettenian building standing proud on Ceylani soil?” Jin asked, scorn at the sight before him apparent in his voice.

“Retribution needn’t be so loud,” Matteo said. “Spindrift wasn’t.”

But this wasn’t the same. This required something loud. A statement, as Matteo had said when he wanted them to steal the EJC vessel.

He was watching her. “Or maybe we can destroy their ships on our way out, possibly even dump their cargo into the sea.”

Those were two solid ideas.

The ship wrenched to a halt.

“A port would have been safer,” Vane said apologetically as his men extended the longest plank they had.

Arthie shook her head. “We were right not to trust them.”

It didn’t look entirely safe, but the twisting trees were less risky than showing their faces to the Ettenians at shore.

Their ship had been spotted, and no doubt a scouting party would venture this way soon enough to see why they’d berthed so far away, but Arthie and the others hadn’t been seen, and that was enough.

Besides, she didn’t think she had to worry much about an Athereum vampire who also happened to be a naval captain. He could handle his own.

“Best of luck out there,” Vane said as Arthie stepped over to the plank, Jin and Matteo in tow. “We’ll circle and keep out of sight until your return.”

“That’s a good man,” Matteo observed as soon as they were out of earshot.

Arthie glanced down. The rocky shore was far below, bordering a sea of green leaves—one misstep and she would break her neck. She didn’t want to know what that would be like as a vampire.

Matteo gulped. “I’m not too fond of heights.”

“Neither am I, which is why I’m not yapping,” Jin snapped, his jaw cinched tight.

Arthie raced to the bottom and hopped off, the leafy covering softening her landing as the heat layered her like a coat. She pitched open her umbrella and glanced up at them wobbling and hobbling and bickering their way down. “Any day now.”

At last, the doddering men joined her, and Vane’s men retracted the plank. Arthie started through the trees without comment, both Jin and Matteo muttering complaints as they dirtied their shoes.

Until a terrifying shriek echoed through the jungle—a bloodcurdling screech. The two of them froze.

“What was that?” Matteo asked, his voice tight.

“Arthie?” Jin whispered.

“A devil bird,” Arthie murmured in response, searching the trees. “They’re usually only out at night. They say a devil bird’s cry portends death.”

“How sweet,” Matteo said with false cheer.

“Simply wonderful,” Jin added.

Arthie ignored them, trekking ahead. She used to be afraid of the bird’s shrieks in the dead of night as a little girl.

Now there were scarier things in the world.

She studied her surroundings. She didn’t know where she was.

A decade ago, the world was larger, and she really only knew the places she frequented.

Under the shade of a towering tree, Arthie swatted away mosquitos as she waited for Jin and Matteo, a familiar scent tickling her nose.

It was faint but unmistakable. She glanced up: coconuts.

They clung beneath the fanning leaves, ripe for the picking.

When she was younger, her father would knot up his sarong and shimmy up to the top, hacking away with his machete until the entire bunch came loose.

He’d shimmy back down and free one of the heavy fruits to create an incision along the top with that same, broad machete and hand it to her with a sweaty brow and a proud smile.

Arthie would flip the coconut over into her mouth, lapping up the murky water and the sweet white flesh, though her favorite was when her mother would stir it up with a fresh squeeze of lime and a dash of sugar.

Arthie ached at the memory. She had gone from that—relishing coconuts as a treat—to needing them to survive. Not anymore . She glanced at Jin as he and Matteo joined her, remembering the bottles they’d clinked aboard the ship.

No, not anymore, she told herself. And perhaps one day she would go back to that time of her life, to relishing coconuts as a treat.

Goodness, she was beginning to plan for the future. Arthie tried her best to view this like any other job, trying not to let the trees, the heat, and the memories weigh her down. She passed a startled palm civet and beckoned Matteo and Jin to a vantage point on a hill.

“I couldn’t spend another second in those trees,” Matteo said with a sigh.

“I was melting,” Jin agreed.

Arthie sighed. “Men.”

In the distance, coconut trees leaned toward the sun, monkeys darted into the foliage.

She could hear the trumpet of an elephant, the snorting of oxen.

There were hens and cows loitering down one of the dirt roads that wound toward houses, and a river where women were gossiping while washing clothes.

She glanced down at the shine of her polished shoes, her tweed suit, the thread work that was Ettenian through and through.

Even the hat on her head was more Ettenian than she could ever be.

More Ettenian than she ever wanted to be.

And to think, she had regretted wearing a sari that matched her mother’s.

And to think, she had, in some minute way, attributed her failure that night to her heritage.

She clutched her anger as if it was a rope and she was hanging on for dear life.

Better anger than sorrow. Better rage than pain. Better vengeance than anguish.

Ettenia had forced its way upon her. She never asked to be taken away to Ettenian shores. She never wanted to forge a life for herself in a foreign land. She never asked them to destroy her life and her country.

“Thompson & Thompson Grocers?” Jin sputtered and listed out the rest of the Ettenian storefronts he recognized. “Edith’s Spools, Beautiful For Ever—they’ve gotten comfy.”

Arthie said nothing. Beyond the shops and Ettenian replications, there were stacks and stacks of crates waiting to be loaded into the ships crowding the harbor. She could read the name spelled across a fanciful banner even from a distance.

EAST JEEVANT COMPANY GOODS

“Are you all right?” Matteo asked.

“Just fine,” Arthie said, her tone clipped as she refused to dwell on her emotions, refusing to do anything but focus on their goal.

Still, she made the mistake of meeting his eyes. He stepped closer, enveloping her in his scent. “If you could use a distraction, just let me know.”

Arthie glared, drawing a laugh out of him that she devoured as eagerly as one who was starved.

Jin was watching the exchange but knew better than to voice his thoughts. “I don’t see the fortress. Maybe we deciphered it wrong?” He froze and panic flared in his gaze. “What if Flick’s cipher is wrong? What if some of her other findings are wrong too? What—”

Arthie pulled him down to a crouch. “Beyond the trees. There.”

She gestured to the massive, sprawling stronghold farther inland, just behind the port city, gray-brown stones rising at a slant to parapets. It was difficult to see at first, blending into the wildlife, but once one saw it, it was impossible not to.

The fort was built along the adjacent sea line.

Cannons jutted out of windows, ready to protect what was theirs.

She bit back a snort. A lighthouse rose toward the sea.

Closer, a clock tower with a face in bold black counted away the minutes.

Flags had been planted at intervals along the parapet. Not a single one of them was Ceylani.

“It’s a lot larger than I thought it would be,” Matteo said. “Then again, I’d never seen a fortress.”

“And a lot more fortified,” Jin said. What did either of them think a fortress would be? “Perfect place for a sanatorium to house vampires—if one escapes, they can cordon it off.”

“How do you reckon we’ll get inside it, then?” Matteo asked.

As they watched, gates rattled open for a line of carriages and a bullock cart.

Each was blanketed in black coverings, rocking beneath weighty contents.

The Ram wouldn’t have built the fort for the vampires alone.

It was massive , and she wasn’t one to waste an opportunity.

The place likely housed everything she wanted protected for her colony.

The silver sigil embroidered on the carriages was familiar, as were the men in charge: Horned Guards .

They inspected each one and the gates immediately rolled closed once they’d passed within.

“That’s how we’ll get in,” Arthie said.

Jin twirled his umbrella. “I’ve always wanted to commandeer a carriage.”