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CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

BASTIAN

Much of power comes down to acting like you already have it. Behave as one who should be listened to, and people will listen.

—From Comportment , by Yvonne Angier

B astian wasn’t surprised to see Val and Mari, once the skiff got close enough that he could make out their faces.

Still, relief hit him like a glass of wine on an empty stomach.

Lore would kill him if he let something happen to her mothers.

It wasn’t much of a surprise to see Michal, either, though the sight of his old boxing nemesis brought a sort of painful nostalgia—he’d heard that the other man had taken up with Malcolm and been part of the escape to Caldien, but the sight of him was still something from before his life spiraled completely out of control.

The fourth person on the skiff, though, was unfamiliar.

Not unfamiliar to Gabe, apparently. His monk’s tattooed hand closed around Bastian’s shoulder, trying to maneuver in front of him.

Bastian brushed him off. “Touched as I am by your protectiveness, Mort, I am capable of holding my own.”

Gabe crossed his arms with a scowl.

“You seem to recognize their fourth passenger,” Bastian remarked.

“You could say that.” Gabe’s scowl carved itself even deeper into his face. “That is the acting leader of Caldien, now that Eoin is dead. The leader of the navy, at least, which puts him in a more powerful position than anyone left in the Rotunda.”

His heady relief turned colder. “Eoin is dead?”

“Lots of people are dead,” Gabe replied, in a tone that made it sound like he didn’t think any of them a great loss.

Worry closed a fist in Bastian’s gut.

From behind a mast, Lilia crept into the sunlight, her lips pressed together. She stayed quiet, though when she saw Val and Mari, she wrapped her arms around herself, as if guarding against her own collapse.

Bastian and Gabe both glanced at her, their heads pulled by the same string.

Then they looked at each other. Neither of them had yet had a chance to speak much with Lore’s birth mother.

Bastian, for his part, didn’t know what to say to the woman.

She’d birthed Lore into a cult, but it’d been out of desperation.

She’d told her to run, then tried to catch her again.

Now she was here, sailing to what could easily be an apocalyptic battle with the god she was supposed to serve.

He of all people knew that love was complicated, but he couldn’t make head or tail of Lilia’s.

“Before you send us on our way because of the company we keep,” Val yelled up from the tiny skiff as it bumped against the hull, “please know that we didn’t want to bring him.”

Mari gave her wife a put-upon look. “But we thought it would be best if we could discuss everything at once.”

“I,” Bastian muttered, “have had enough discussions to last a lifetime, frankly.”

Malcolm rushed from the prow. The crewman glanced backward, then quickly turned away again when he saw Alie.

She must have put the fear of all the gods in them somehow. Good for her.

Michal climbed up the rope as quickly as he could, reaching for Malcolm before he was fully on the ship. They fell together in a messy kiss, and when they pulled away, Michal shook Malcolm by the shoulders. “I don’t know what kind of god-fuckery that was, but do not ever do it again, you hear me?”

“Never.” Malcolm kissed him again. “Never.”

“Listen,” Val huffed as she came up the ladder, “Finn told us what set you off, Gabriel, and I assume you’ve learned better since you’re here and the King is… oh.”

“The King is what?” Bastian gave Val a level stare.

The grizzled poison runner studied him a moment. Then, she smiled. “Doing better than anticipated, apparently.”

Mari said nothing once she was up the ladder, though her eyes narrowed at Bastian and her hand hovered in the vicinity of the dagger at her waist. Val glanced at her wife, gave her head a tiny shake. Mari didn’t seem completely convinced, but she dropped her hand.

Finally, their fourth passenger ascended, hopping out onto the deck. He was handsome, though Bastian as a general rule didn’t go for dark-haired men, with green eyes and a scar over his cheekbone.

Bastian gave him a dazzling smile. “I hear you’re after my crown.”

Finn returned the smile. “It’s a topic for discussion.”

“Is this really the time for that?” Mari looked witheringly between Bastian and Finn. “Please hold your coups until after the apocalypse.”

Finn stretched out his hands, gold rings glinting. “I only try to make the best of every situation.” He looked at Bastian again, still perplexed. “Though this one seems more complicated than I anticipated.”

“You aren’t alone,” Malcolm muttered, his hands still held tight in Michal’s.

“Aren’t you supposed to be possessed?” Finn asked, peering at Bastian.

“I got better,” Bastian answered.

“Just like that?” Val frowned, her hand hovering by the grip of her pistol. So prone to violence, were Lore’s mothers.

“A bit more complex, but just how complex remains to be seen.” Bastian turned a level eye on Finn. “However, this situation actually seems fairly simple, if we’re talking coups.”

“Notice that I came without backup,” Finn said sardonically. “I’m trying for diplomacy here.”

Gabe put himself in front of Bastian again, his one eye dark. Finn held up his hands. “No coups. We’re putting a pin in the coups.”

“Excellent.” Bastian patted Gabe’s shoulder. “Down, Mort. You don’t have to hover.”

“I’ll hover all I please,” Gabe growled, but when Bastian reached out and grabbed his wrist, he let him. Idly, Bastian entwined their fingers. Gabe slid his thumb in a half-moon over his knuckles.

Gabe’s hand was unnaturally warm. Orange still shone in the white of his eye.

He didn’t know what to make of these glimmers of Hestraon.

Bastian didn’t have a real sense of what this all was like, for the others.

His own possession had been fierce and total, blocking him completely out of his own mind.

He didn’t think it was exactly the same for Gabe, but he still didn’t like it.

Especially since it felt like his fault.

Alie stepped up, chin held high, and faced Finn. “Truce. The last thing we need right now is to be fighting you and Apollius at the same time.”

Finn glanced at her dismissively, looked away, then glanced back, a double take as blatant as if they were in some seedy tavern. His eyes didn’t travel up and down her form, but only just, remaining on her face and very appreciative. “And who might you be?”

“My sister,” Bastian answered, warning in his tone. “And very, very far out of your league.”

Understanding dawned on Finn’s face. “So you’re the one marrying the Emperor.

The one that the erstwhile fire god here was so intent on saving, along with the Queen.

” He waved a hand at Gabe, brow quirking as he noted his and Bastian’s clasped hands.

“I figured it was because he held a candle for you, but it seems I attributed that candle to the wrong person. And where is the Emperor?”

“Dead,” Alie said evenly. “So tread lightly.”

Bastian’s hand jerked in Gabe’s, shock moving through him like a lightning strike. He turned to Alie, mouth open with a thousand questions poised behind it, but Gabe squeezed his fingers. “Later.”

Were the pirate captain of the Caldienan fleet not right in front of them, Bastian would say fuck you to that later . As it stood, he swallowed his half-formed questions.

The appreciative light in Finn’s eyes only got brighter. “I see.” With one last look at Alie, he turned to Bastian. “Now, what’s this about Apollius being gone? That seems to solve nearly all of our problems, doesn’t it?”

“He’s not in me anymore, but He’s not gone.

” Bastian jerked a thumb toward the Burnt Isles on the horizon, his brain still spinning around the fact that Alie had apparently killed Jax.

There was a tremor in his sister’s hands, a wavering behind the steely resolve in her face, but there was no time to address it now.

“We have reason to believe He’s there. What with the sudden clearing of a smog that lasted centuries. ”

“Fair assumption,” Finn said. “And your plan to deal with that is…”

“Kill Him,” Gabe answered, low and pointed. “However we have to.”

Low fire in his voice. Unease sat uncomfortably in Bastian’s middle, like the morning after too much wine.

Movement behind him. Bastian glanced back. Lilia was still next to the mast, and still silent. Her hazel eyes were wide, staring at Val and Mari, her pale hands working over each other, worrying at her nails. She hovered there, caught between moving forward and hiding herself away.

“Fine by me.” Finn looked back over the water, toward where his fleet waited. “Getting to the Golden Mount shouldn’t be terribly difficult. And that’s still where you want to go, right?”

“What happened to your plans on my crown?”

“Like I said, a pin in the coups.” Finn grinned. “We can discuss proper repayment for my help after the apocalypse is averted. Not much point in ruling a world where the God of Everything is trying to do the same. Fairly certain I’d lose.”

“Even if we can’t find where Apollius has gone, we can still restore the Fount,” Malcolm said. “That has to count for something.”

“There’s our plan, then.” Bastian nodded. “Go to the Mount, find Lore, restore the Fount.” He gave Finn a shrewd look. “Business between us can be resolved at a later date.”

“The pin in the coups can be removed then.” Mari’s eyes were flinty.

Finn didn’t respond, just gave Bastian a wolfish grin. “Well then, that’s settled. We’ll head back to…”

His words staggered, faded out; his expression changed to one of guarded puzzlement. Finn cocked his head toward the fleet. “Am I the only one who hears that?”

He wasn’t. Bastian heard it, too.

Screaming.

“Myriad hells.” Val leaned out over the railing, shielding her eyes as if shade could make her see farther. “What’s happening over there?”

“Maybe your crew decided to hold a coup of their own,” Gabe said darkly.

But then the sound of distant screaming was undercut by the slap of something hitting the hull, and a scream much closer than the waiting fleet.

Bastian half expected the ship to capsize, assuming that the slapping sound was some great beast of the sea. But when he turned toward the sound, back at the stern, there was no massive fin, no toothed snout.

There was a hand, rotting. Closed around the ankle of a crewman. It pulled him inexorably toward the side of the ship as he clawed at the planks, gouging runnels with his broken fingernails.

Gabe acted fast, running to the crewman, trying to haul him backward. Bastian went to help, but whatever pulled at him was too strong. With a tearing cry, the crewman went overboard.

Another hand slapped onto the deck.

Drowned bodies, eyes black and mouths yawning open, pulling themselves up out of the sea.

Looking just like the bodies Lore had raised in the catacombs, what seemed like lifetimes ago.

“Mortem.” Gabe seemed more horrified by how the corpses had been animated than by the fact that they were clearly attacking. More horrified by the implications. “Those were made with Mortem.”

Well, shit.

Reaching for Spiritum was instinct, trying to slip into channeling-space. But Bastian’s hands remained empty of golden threads, and his vision stayed in stubborn color. He had no magic, no way to sever the ties of Mortem animating the drowned bodies. He had nothing but the knife in his shoe.

Which he pulled and used, hacking at the hand still straining against the hull, trying to haul the rest of its bloated body up onto the deck.

The hand came off easily at the wrist, the rest of the corpse dropping back into the ocean with a wet plop.

The fingers kept wriggling. Bastian kicked it over the side.

When he whirled around, Finn was staring, a ring of white visible around the entirety of his irises. “What in every fucking hell is that?”

“Dead bodies that my wife is somehow reanimating.” Bastian looked to Gabe. “Either our girl has gone rogue, or Apollius made her do it.”

Gabe had looked right next to rage before, but now he was made of it. His hands spread open at his sides, flames poised in each palm. “I’ve got the next one.”

“There might not be a next one.” Val was leaning over the railing, staring into the water. “The dead don’t seem concerned with us, your now-handless fellow notwithstanding. Pity about that crewman.”

“What?” Bastian crossed to her, peered over the railing.

The dead were a school of fish, arrowing through the water, corpses slipping graceful as mermaids beneath the waves. All of them headed for the horizon, for the Isles. For the Caldienan fleet.

“Looks like they’re only going after Caldien,” Val said.

“Not quite,” Malcolm said grimly.

Bastian looked up from the macabre parade beneath the sea’s surface. More ships appearing on the horizon line, sapphire pennants snapping. Kirythea. All the ships that had been patrolling the sea around the Isles for the past year, now gathered up and headed their way.

And approaching from the north, barely large enough to see—more ships, with a sliver of purple waving from splinter-thin masts. Auverraine. Alexis must have gotten reports of Kirytheans on the move, given the word.

“Well,” Bastian said. “Now it’s a party.”