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Fugitive Storm




"The what?" Spider stared at the boy. "The what in her where?"

Surely the message had gotten lost in the travelling somewhere. Surely she couldn't have said that. It made no sense.

Except. He gestured for the boy to leave before he called in Little Petal, with her reports and news from the dock. "What ship did Amaranth leave with?"

Little Petal's eyes closed. "She was seen leaving with the [ship name], and her partner Martius's body was found on the docks dangling in the ropes underneath that slip a day later. The surgeon put his time of death the day before, which means they probably killed him before they left."

Spider made a face. That explained at least some of Amaranth's message; he knew that pirate clan and knew they were in bed with the Serpentines, had been for several generations. Whether or not Amaranth had known that before she'd gone chasing after Tyrell and his connections, he didn't know, but she was reaping the benefit of her inexperience now, wasn't she.

A serpent in her skirts. The most unfortunate euphamism aside, he did have to admit that she was most likely tangled past her ability to undo. Especially given the stories he'd heard about that ship's captain.

"What do we have on that ship and its captain?"

Little Wing joined her sister in the office, frowning at the question.

"The ship was commissioned privately and to specifications. The captain was cursed ten years ago by the head of a rival pirate family with whom he previously had a truce, possibly because of infighting or factionalism or because one thought he had betrayed the other. The details of the curse aren't known, but there is a pattern on that ship of young women arriving and only leaving a year later, as a corpse, and a withered and starved one at that." Little Wing tilted her head at him. "What are you thinking?"

Spider swore a stream of invective in all three languages he knew. "I'm thinking Amaranth may have gotten herself in deeper trouble than she thinks, and she's just idiotic enough to make it worse for everyone while trying to get herself out of it." He threw himself into his chair with a thump, reaching for his pen and almost knocking over the ink bottle. "Right. Bring me ..."

Someone. He frowned. Who would know the most about the current state of both pirate families.

"Bring me the money changer from Tin Row, he'll know where the fortunes of each family stand. Start making up a list, you of members of the first pirate clan, you of the second, I want to know their names, their affiliations, I want to know who they patronize and where their whores come from and what their favorite sweet is. I want to know what they're going to do before they do and that means all the information, ladies, so hop to it."

They were in motion almost before he had stopped speaking, one to the files and the other to the door, grabbing gloves and cloak as she went.

Spider was left alone in the main office to drop his head against the heels of his hands and then against the surface of the table, bouncing his forehead off the surface. This wasn't what he wanted. This wasn't what he wanted at all, this was all his fault for helping her with her damned crusade that he didn't even understand and couldn't condone, not for someone of her inexperience. And now she was going to turn the entire criminal network of three cities upside down.

"You damn well better hope you don't survive the Serpentines," Spider muttered. "Or I might kill you myself."



---

"That's all I can lay out, without knowing what she's already done on the ship."

Spider had sent for the two people in the city whose judgment he could trust to be as discerning and complex as his own. Manipulating people, he complained now and again, was a lost art. And if it meant he was more easily able to maneuver through both the tradesmen and the politicians, it also meant he was more frustrated and more easily annoyed by people in general and the people he had to deal with in particular.

The older man leaned over the table, frowning at the figures on it. "It's a difficult proposition to predict what the old bastard will do. He's impatient for a cure, he's desperate, but he also knows he has the luxury of time. Everyone wants to see him suffer, there's no one in particular who hates him enough and wants him out of the way badly enough to kill him."

Their third member, Ginger, a woman who ran a school for girls, shuddered. "If I ever find myself in that situation, please, someone kill me rather than let me live half alive and preying off the life of others for the rest of my existence."

"Existence?" Spider threw her a wry smile. It wasn't an inaccurate word, and she did have the habit of choosing her words with at least some care.

"That's what it would be, wouldn't it?" She pushed the little figure in the skirt closer to the other. "She'll gravitate towards the people she feels she can trust, even if it's only in ..."

"In the way of trusting someone whose actions are predictable," the old man frowned. "Does she know enough of the people on the ship to think she can predict their actions?"

"Think she can predict, keep in mind that you're relying on her to have a clear assessment of who and what she can predict," Spider snorted. "This is the woman who thought she could take Tyrell among his backers, not tucked away in his cushioned home."

Ginger and the older man, Canton, chuckled. "If it were any other nobleman with a connection to criminals she'd be right, Spider. They'd have their own private guard thicker at the house than they would in the seedy places they go. It's just her bad luck that she found the one nobleman who has little money of his own to employ guards and a great deal of friends in the pirate families."

"Mmph." He shook his head. "So she'll gravitate towards the lady no she hasn't," he switched sentences in mid thought as his mind chased ahead of his words. "She said the problem was specifically with a serpent in her skirts. She's made the ship for a Serpentine vessel, or she's made an enemy of the woman in particular. And why hasn't he eaten her yet?"

That question was directed to no one in particular, but he looked up at Canton anyway, who shrugged.

"Maybe he's saving her for something. Maybe he still has a woman left, who knows. My guess would be the latter, but there's always the possibility that he sees something in her that he can use beyond having her for his next meal for the next year."

Spider grimaced again. Not that he would admit to caring for the irritating little woman, but he didn't wish that on anyone. A slow death to prolong the life of a murderous thieving bastard. More of a murderous thieving bastard than he was, anyway. It was disgusting, disturbing magic, both what had been done to him and what he was doing to keep the worst of the ravages at bay. Only no one was taking a stance against it in public, because if they did that then they would have to admit that they had engaged in similar, smaller scale efforts themselves.



---

"What happened to the Captain?" Ginger asked. Her head was pillowed sideways on Spider's ribs, her body twisted in a position that looked awkward. He played with the ends of her coppery hair, fanned it out over the bed and his side as they lay there in the sweat and the heat.

After a few minutes of contemplation he did answer, though. "There's no one who can say for sure, or if there is, they're not talking." He shook his head. "Something happened. There was a big feud between the Crimson Tear and his crew and the crew of the Lion Majestic. Actually, between both factions." Because neither Tolliver nor the captain of the Majestic whose name slipped his mind at the moment was limited to only one ship. Hence, their formidable reputation.

"A feud. The feud I remember, something to do with the reputation, with the perceived or actual betrayal of Captain Bartiss, yes?"

Bartiss, that was his name. Spider nodded, his head making a deeper indentation in the goosedown pillows. "Supposedly Tolliver stole his daughter or niece or something away from him, made her change her loyalties. I don't know how true that is, and if her loyalties are that easily swayed Bartiss is probably better off without her in the first place, but he was furious anyway. He vowed vengeance, and he got it. Some day he hired a magician to do the work for him, others say he did it himself."

"Tore Tolliver apart from the inside out." Ginger shuddered, shoulders to toes. It made her body quiver in ways that interested Spider.

"Something like that. Destroyed his life, and by his life I mean his life force. Now he's reliant on the life force of others, usually women, although so far he hasn't gone near the woman in question. Rumor has it she won't let him near now, although she hasn't left his ship."

"Now there's a piece of irony," Ginger snorted. "If the rumors are true and she changed sides because of loyalty or they became lovers or something. Now his power base is weakened and she won't touch him." Her fingers ran idly along the underside of his thigh where he'd crooked up his knee, tapping his foot on the bed. That, too, interested him. "But why does she stay with him?"

Spider glanced down the length of his body to her thoughtful expression, half-hidden behind her hair. "Who knows why a woman does anything?" he asked, only for her to smack the back of her hand against the side of his hip.

"Don't be childish."

"I would never." A moment's pause. "Maybe it's not him at all, but someone else in his organization. Or maybe he has something she wants. It doesn't matter, she's not going back to her father-uncle, and the feud is ongoing. They won't stop until tehy've destroyed each other, even if she has nothing to do with the original cause."

"Like as not they've forgotten the original cause," Ginger shook her head, hair tickling his skin. "It definitely doesn't matter now that they've gotten the Finder's Guild and a noble house involved."

Spider shook his head. "The house of Tyrell doesn't look with favor on Leopold, and the Finder's Guild will only come after Amaranth if it's a convenient excuse for them to curry favor with someone or bite off chunks of Bartiss and Tolliver's empires for themselves. Amaranth isn't much of a Finder yet, she's not worth them coming after her." He hummed a little, curling a lock of her hair around his knuckles. "Although their empires might be worth it. Or at least, the power that they would gain by it."

"Because with their attention on the feud, they're not looking for trouble from the outside. They've been invulnerable for so long because of the trade they bring that they wouldn't be thinking a journeyman Finder or a black sheep lordling would be worth it."

Ginger picked up on his train of thought easily and with little enough effort that he chuckled, turning to his side and pulling her up against his stomach. She sat up with only a mild protest.

"Exactly." His fingers caressed down her shoulder, to the crook of her arm. "You have a mind for this, why don't you make your own plays?"

"You know why," she rolled her eyes and gave him a not altogether friendly look. "I hate politics. I hate playing them, just because I'm good at them doesn't mean I want to get involved. The stakes are too high for my disinterested self to bother with. Besides, I have my girls to think of."

That only made Spider laugh, low and wicked. "And what would your girls say if they knew where you were, and with whom, right now?"

She cocked an eyebrow at him, turning finally back to stretch out the length of the bed, facing him. "Oh, some of them would be shocked, no doubt. Others would be jealous."

"Jealous?" Fair eyebrows upraised, amused. "Really."

"Mm-hmm. If you don't know the ... effect you have on young women, you're very much more deluded or ignorant than I take you for. And some of them wouldn't be surprised at all. They're young, but they're clever enough..."

He had leaned in by this point and let her trail off, breath warm against his lips. "Of course they're clever, you taught them to be." Less interested in her girls' cleverness than in her own, though. Spider's fingers walked down her side and over her hip. "You're quite the teacher of... creative thinking."

"I hear that," she murmured back, leaning her head back to avoid the kiss he so clearly wanted to lay upon her lips. "You're not being very subtle."

"I was subtle enough earlier," he retorted. "I'm tired of subtle. I want to be ... bold."

Bold, yes, he was bold all right, gripping her hip and pulling her over on top of him. Not that she was any less, laughing as she drew her knees up on either side, straddling him and stretching her upper body out over his. "I'll hold you to that," she told him, before they skirted past words and into making the night a little warmer than it was already. Afterwards they fell asleep rather than continue the conversation, and when he woke in the morning she was gone again. Not that he expected anything less.

He did wonder, a little, what her sources were. She hadn't been near that well informed the last time this had come up.



---

Back to her little prison cell. Her very nicely appointed little prison cell, insulated from the chaos of the ship and the uncouth, rough natures of soldiers, if she were inclined to shrink from such things. But still a cell. She had a bigger room, this time, when she got back, and she didn't know what had happened there. Maybe this was more of Ambrose's strange largesse.

Amaranth would have traded the bigger room for not having to bunk with the strange white-clad woman, the bride, widow, whatever she was. Magical homunculus construct. Something. She sat on her bed and stared out the tiny porthole and did nothing, didn't even move, while Amaranth fidgeted and paced and wondered what the connection was between her and the Captain. The exact connection.

"So, what are you doing here, anyway?" Direct questioning was probably out. She waited for the other woman to respond, unsurprised when nothing happened. "It's like talking to the wall."

More pacing. Back and forth along the length of the bed, not the full length of the cabin but close enough. She'd end up on the top bunk, she knew, and even if she could raise the canvas she had the feeling she might end up falling out of it and possibly breaking something. Or maybe that was just her fear talking.

"Do they make you do anything, or do you just get to sit there?" And underneath that question, how did she get that way in the first place? Amaranth couldn't think of any particular spell or cantrip that would cause that kind of condition, but then again her knowledge of sorcery was limited to what was available to be bought and sold in the market. The open market, not the black market underneath. She'd never explored that.

Now she was rather regretting it.

"Are you actually in there..." she crouched down in front of the woman, tilting her head to try and make eye contact as best she could. Lifting the veil was out of the question; she didn't have the courage to see what was under there. But she did lean closer and closer, until the knock at the door startled her so badly she almost fell into the other woman.

It was the galley cook again. Or whatever his position was. He raised an eyebrow at Amaranth, with one hand on the windowsill and one hand on the bed between the veiled woman's knees, pulling her skirt taut over her legs and presenting a very awkward picture.

"Don't say a word," Amaranth muttered, crawling off the bed.

"I hadn't planned on it. Supper."

Supper for one, she noticed. "Doesn't ... doesn't she eat?"

"Not much," the cook shrugged. "Takes broth, goatsmilk. Mostly broth." Because there was very little way to get goatsmilk out here, Amaranth realized. She bolted down her food almost faster for that thought.

"Why doesn't..." she started, then swallowed her food before speaking. Then swallowed it again when she realized chewing might be a better intermediary step. "Why doesn't she eat?"

"Don't know," he shrugged. "Just doesn't. Don't think she can."

Amaranth shook her head and went back to her meal of tack and honeymilk and a little bit of fruit and stopped when she saw the bowl of honeymilk with the hard tack floating in it. Honeymilk. Goatsmilk.

No. Surely not.

"What did he do to her?" she asked, her eyes fixed on the veiled face in front of her, features barely visible through the cloth. "The Captain, what did he do to her?"

The galley cook had headed back to the door when he turned around at her question. "You're asking me? I don't know the ways and means of magicians, don't look to me for that." His tone was grumpy, but at Amaranth's pallid and sweating face he seemed to feel some kind of pity or compassion for her, and relented. "There's a curse on him, you know that much, yes? Something he gets from these women relieves it. Don't rightly know what, and it don't work too well, but it keeps him from being a cold corpse on a bed till he rots away living. Infuriates Captain Bartiss terrible, but I suppose that's the Captains' lookout."

Captain Bartiss. She remembered that name, something about a death or an abduction, a feud as a result. House Serpentine had figured in it, but she didn't remember how except that it was a family relation.

"So..." Amaranth's mouth and mind worked, her mouth forming questions that her mind wouldn't let her ask until she came up with one that wasn't too horrible to voice. "So he pulls his life from them. Their... their life gives him life... one life split between two people?"

And not much of a one, by the look of her. Now she was doubly glad she hadn't raised that veil, given what probably lurked under there. Looking at the corpselike features of the Captain was bad enough. And this was her roommate.

"Don't ask me to explain it. I just make the honeymilk."

He left, but Amaranth stared at the door long after he had closed it behind him. Goatsmilk, he'd said at first, and then honeymilk as though it had something to do with everything. Confirming her suspicions that she was being primed for something, fattened up like a goose for the feast because this one couldn't last very much longer. The bones of her hands jutted up through the fabric of her gloves. She swayed with every movement of the ship; Amaranth half expected her to go clattering to the ground in a heap of bones whenever she was led somewhere.

Which meant she was next. Which explained why they wanted her alive and, what was it they said, unspoiled? Something like that. Unharmed. So she could be the next goose on the spit.

"Be damned if I'll let that happen," she muttered, getting up off the bed again and looking around the room, but even her meal didn't come with any sort of knife for eating. There was nothing sharp in here, nothing on which she could anchor a noose, and the portholes didn't open.



---

He called her out to dinner the next night. It might have been because she had refused the morning's rations, though to be honest with herself if with no one else she didn't know how long she could keep up that sort of strategy. Already she was feeling her stomach churn with starvation.

As hungry as she was, she didn't know if she'd be able to eat with him at the same table. She counted with grim fascination the number of bones she could see poking through his paper-white skin, while the galley cook brought their food in with all the grace of a hobbyhorse. At least his grumpiness remained whether she was a prisoner or an honored guest, that was something.

"How are you enjoying my hospitality?" he wheezed, stretching his mouth in a toothy grin, yellowed teeth poking out of shriveled gums.

Amaranth tried for a diplomatic answer and managed only to come up with "Tolerable." Which wasn't quite an answer to the question anyway. No, she wasn't enjoying being a prisoner. "As much as any prisoner might enjoy a gilded cage," she told him, trying not to inhale the food as she ate. Or talk with her mouth full. No honeymilk this time, which made it even more palatable, although she eyed that cream sauce with skepticism bordering on paranoia.

At least the Captain didn't seem bothered by her accusations. He chuckled, moving the food around on his plate. She hadn't seen him actually lift the fork to his mouth, either, she was watching. Wondering in a detached way if he could even taste the food or chew it or if he had to gum it to death before he could swallow.

"You're free to go, of course, although I doubt you'd like to leave just yet."

"Hah," she sneered. Of course he would say that now that they were in the air again and there was nowhere to go but over the side and from there, very far down. "Thank you. I'll take that into consideration the next time we make port."

"Which will not be for several days," he told her, even more smug. She wanted to smash the plate straight into his smug, skeletal grin. "In the meantime, you're welcome to enjoy what we have to offer. I hope the rations are adequate."

"You really don't need to. I can get along on tack and water just fine." As though it would stop him. As though she would refuse food when everything, anything she ate was a chance to sustain herself until she could find a way out of here.

The Captain inclined his head in a show of politeness. "I'm sure you can, but there's really no need for it. I have everything you might need right here."

Double portions, too, since he wasn't touching his own ration. Amaranth waited for it. There was a catch to this, he'd treated her too nicely for a prisoner who had nothing to bargain with. And he waited for her response as she stared at him, refusing to play the game, to engage in small talk and falsely polite chatter while her stomach churned and burbled up what little she had had to eat. Her chest tightened, loosened to take a breath and tightened again, while the ease faded from his face.

"You're not going to let me go, are you." It wasn't a question. It wasn't even a statement, it was something to fill in the moment between her hand sliding up the table to hover over the knife and launching herself out of the chair, sprinting for the door.

He cornered her, faster than she would have expected for someone who looked so weak. Faster than she could reach the door, although the chair flying into her legs didn't help. Had he thrown that? Had he moved it by magic, she couldn't tell, her legs knocked out from under her and sprawling. Amaranth dragged herself to her feet, but her knee wouldn't hold her weight.

"You can't. You daren't..." The last gasp of a very young woman who didn't believe this could happen to her. After she had just been thinking that she had nothing to bargain with, nothing to hold over him if he harmed her.

His fingers closed over her wrists as he dragged her to her feet, far stronger than he seemed. And colder. His hands were like chains left out in the topmost rigging of the docks for three days, wind-chilled and solid. He dragged her back to the table, hauling her up onto it with strength that had to be augmented by something magical, something else. The door thudded open but all she could see was the ceiling of the room, and then the cadaverous face of the Captain above her as his fingers closed around her throat.



---

They were headed towards the Windward City, a city close enough to the surface and the ocean that you could feel the spray up from the docks and some places of the city. She knew this because the crew was talking about it, because she could hear them through the walls.

All of her senses were super-charged, like she'd been struck by lightning and everything was more intense. Things were sharper and more in color, they were louder, if she wasn't careful she could easily get overwhelmed. Tasting her food was going to be interesting. Either it would taste better or make her throw up. She wondered if this was the same for everyone, if this was why he had fed her honeymilk and was feeding the other woman goats milk. If the other woman was even still alive.

They were going aboard. She heard their boots clanking above her, could tell who it was and how many they were by counting the footsteps. Ambrose was the heavier and measured one. The woman, the Serpentine woman was the lighter one with the sharper, higher-pitched sound. There were three sailors behind them of about the same height and build, and another, smaller one behind that. And then there was someone coming up outside the door. She hadn't heard him approach because she'd been so focused on the sounds above her.

The door creaked open. It was Grayson, Eagle Tattoo's friend. "We don't have a lot of time," he told her, without explanation or preamble. "Spider gave me a message. He told me to tell you to accept."

Amaranth blinked at him. "Accept?" That was it? Accept what?

"The Captain's prepared you, right? He fed you that stuff, you're all ..." he leaned in closer, peering at her. "Yeah, you look like you're staring off at other worlds right now. Your mind and body are starting to separate, at least, that's what I hear is happening. Pretty soon he'll bring you ashore and take you to the Havens and you'll either be killed or you'll be his next bride. Spider wants you to be his next bride."

She rose to her feet, fists clenched even if she didn't clock him just yet. "Spider's out of his tiny mind. There is no way I'm going to become one of those..."

"You'll be fine."

"You know better than that! You lived with this, you tell me I'll be all right under those veils?"

He shouted her down. "You'll be fine, it takes a year to get to that point, and Spider says he'll figure a way out of it long before that."

Amaranth started to yell and snapped her mouth shut when she realized. "Figure a way out of it. You mean he's not sure. And killing him won't ..." Killing the casters, the anchors the linchpin of most magics was the most commonly known way of destroying a spell. She didn't know if the Captain was the instigator of the magic or just hired the person who cast it, but if Spider didn't know that killing him would abolish it, then she was out of ideas and she was going to be stuck like this for the rest of her life and Grayson was shaking her.

"Are you done?" he snapped.

She blinked. "No." Done what? Oh, panicking, yes, right. No, she likely wasn't going to be done panicking for some time, but the mind-whirling terror of earlier had subsided, replaced by a calm that she wasn't sure was actually better. "Spider wants me to agree."

"Yes."

"Wants me to become one of those walking... fruits for him to suck on." That was a disgusting turn of phrase but it was what it reminded her of. Someone who kept a peach or a nectarine to snack on at some point or another, juice dribbling down their chin. Only it was her juice and she didn't want to think about that any further so she didn't.

"That's not the way I would have put it, but, yes. He won't dare let you out of his sight, then, and he won't dare do anything to drive you away, so you'll have a lot more leeway than you will now. And he thinks there might be something special about you, though ..."

Amaranth shook her head. "Wait, which he. Spider?"

"No, the Captain. He was going to throw you off the ship, but..."

"Oh, that's comforting."

More glaring. "Will you let me finish?"

She clamped her lips shut, clapped her hand over her mouth.

"Right. He thinks there might be something special about you, although as far as I can see the only thing different between you and the other girls is that you didn't fall over weeping when you were taken. Which might be enough, I don't know how this magic works, it isn't like anything I've seen before."

She waited another minute or two and gave him a questioning look just to make sure before she spoke. "How can you stay here? With this going on, how can you ..." Even for pirates and mercenaries, this was beyond the pale. This was the sort of forbidden magic that made up the worst of the nightmares of constables, the Finder's guild, anyone who enforced the order and peace in the cities. Not to mention other magic users. It was the sort of thing that not only was so forbidden they didn't study it, it made other folk scared of them so they suffered as a result.

He shrugged. "Because Spider needs me here. I'm useful, I pull down information for him and it's better than letting this kind of thing out in the world without keeping an eye on it."

And he had a point, but she still didn't like it. "You're participating in atrocities. You're..." He stood, headed back to the door. "Leaving. You're leaving, great."

"You know what you're supposed to do. If you don't want to help, that's your business, but Spider's really sticking his neck out for you, and it'd help your case a lot if you helped us out on this one."

Her eyes narrowed at him. "How do I even know you're with Spider? I never saw you before I got dragged onto this ship..."

"You don't. You take it on faith. If you want," he sighed, pulling out his knife and tossing it onto the bed. "There. You can either trust me and Spider, or you can take your chance when he drags you out for the ritual. Either way, I've done what I came here to do."