Kings of the Wyld (The Band #1)

“Okay,” she said, wringing her hands. “Okay. You’ll bring her home? Good, yes. Please, Gabriel. Please … bring our little girl home.” She reached out with trembling fingers to stroke his cheek. Gabe flinched as though her touch were a burning brand, but he endured it.

Clay tried to imagine such a rift existing between himself and Ginny. There had been a time when Gabe and Valery had been inseparable, as blissfully happy as two people could be. They’d been lovers, yes, and they’d been friends as well. But now the two of them seemed like strangers, or animals of separate species, neither of whom knew how to act or react around the other.

“We should go,” said Gabriel. “We’re taking Kal with us so he doesn’t try and stop us from reaching the forest, but we’ll leave him a day or so south at the Heartwyld’s edge.”

Her expression lapsed deeper into confusion. “The forest? You’re not going to walk all the way to Castia? There’s a skyship—”

“Bitch!” snarled Kallorek. “Shut your godsdamned mouth!”

This time it was Matrick who struck, so hard the booker went sprawling. “Shut your mouth,” he said, and then added, “bitch.”

Gabriel took his ex-wife’s hand in his. “Valery, tell me about the skyship.”

Valery scratched absently at the scars on one arm. “They found it in the Underground, when they dug for the renovations,” she said. “There’s a brook on the south side of the hill. A cave. It’s in there,” she insisted. “You can take it. You can fly.”

“We can fly,” said Gabriel, and his face lit up like parchment kissed by a candle’s flame.

They found the brook, and the cave mouth from which it issued. It was guarded by sentries who they relieved of both duty and consciousness. Inside they discovered a vast cavern housing a massive skyship that was as much a brothel as it was a boat.

It was huge—near as big as the Sultana’s flagship they’d seen at Lindmoor, and again in Fivecourt—with three ribbed sails slanted to shield the deck from sun and rain. The deck had been restored with darkly varnished wood, and the rails were capped with white moonstone. Leaping from the bowsprit was a solid gold siren with arms outstretched, her bare breasts gleaming in the ruddy light from outside.

The vessel’s name was carved in florid letters beneath the prow: The Carnal Court.

Inside was a galley stocked like a palace kitchen, a lavish dining hall, several bathrooms, and no less than eight bedchambers, each so gaudily furnished as to make even a spoiled princess cringe.

A master suite at the stern, likely reserved for the booker himself, was the most garish of all, hung with a series of lurid paintings that ranged from distastefully erotic to disconcertingly vulgar. The worst of these portrayed a shamelessly nude Kallorek and a wild-maned female centaur engaged in what could most safely be termed as “horse play.” The bed was draped in red silk curtains and looked as though it had recently been slept in. The bottom sheet was missing, and Clay shuddered to imagine what depravity this room had borne witness to.

Near the bow was a commons, complete with plush couches, gaming tables, and a bar that put the Old Glory’s to shame. It was here they found a zombie sitting on a stool, tuning what Clay assumed was a bizarre-looking instrument and nursing a glass of red wine.

“Oh! Well, this is awkward.” The corpse set aside the instrument—which looked like nothing so much as a spiderweb encased by an eight-sided wooden frame—and stood. “I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting company, or I’d have made the bed. And probably hidden underneath it until you left,” he added.

“Who are you?” asked Gabriel, his hand straying toward Vellichor’s hilt.

“Not your enemy,” the zombie cautioned. He had a strangely prim accent, at odds with his ghastly appearance. He was dressed in what looked at first glance like a robe, but was in fact the missing sheet from Kallorek’s bed. He sketched a formal bow, which revealed a savage-looking dent in the back of his skull. “I am Kitagra the Bold,” he introduced himself. “Also known as Kitagra the Reckless, and sometimes as Kitagra the Willfully Suicidal. I am a roving revenant, itinerant poet, and was once, briefly, Court Musician to Exarch Firaga of Teragoth, though I am currently seeking employment. You may call me—”

“Kit!?”

The zombie blinked. Well, it didn’t so much blink as one of its withered eyelids twitched in apparent surprise. “Arcandius Moog? Is that you, you incorrigible scallywag?”

The wizard rushed past Gabriel and threw his arms around the creature. “Kit, you old ghoul! I thought you’d gone west! What the heck are you doing here?”

Clay’s mind had just now pieced together the fractious puzzle of who this was: “Kit the Unkillable,” who had formerly been trapped inside the sarcophagus in Kallorek’s treasury.

The zombie pried himself from Moog’s grasp. “Well, I’m hiding out,” he said. “I’ve been daydreaming, and playing cards against myself, and drumming up a few new songs. And also drinking like a Phantran fish. But before all that I was locked in a very dark box for a very long time, courtesy of that piggish-looking man in your company.” He cast a disdainful glance at Kallorek, bound and gagged behind them. “Not a friend of yours, I assume?”

“Not currently, no,” said Moog.

The zombie scratched a partially exposed rib with grey fingers. “Glad to hear it. But how about you? Have you discovered your miraculous cure yet?”

Moog looked down at his feet—or foot, maybe. “For the rot? No. But that potion I made for your, um, condition? It’s been very successful, actually.”

“The phylactery? As well it should be!” stated Kit. “I had that erection for two weeks, you know. The whores of Conthas thought I was Lusty Lucian back from the dead. Well, to be fair, that’s who I told them I was, and then I paid them a king’s fortune to believe it. Ah, but don’t worry, my friend—you’ve got the cure in that maze somewhere.” He pointed at the wizard’s head. “Just keep wandering till you find it.” He glanced past Moog at the others. “Am I to assume you are commandeering this skyship?”

“We are,” said Gabriel.

“Very well then. If you gentlemen will but give me a few moments to finish my drink and collect my things, I’ll be out of your way.”

Moog waved dismissively. “Nonsense! Why don’t you come with us? We could use a bard!”

Clay smirked, finding it somewhat ironic that, after all these years, Saga might actually enlist the services of a bard that was already dead.

Kit looked intrigued. “Oh? Where is it you’re going?”

“Uh, well, Castia.”

“Castia!” the zombie actually sounded pleased. “Jewel of the Republic! A shining bastion of human civilization. I used to sing in a chorus at one of its theatres, oh, sixty years ago? Lovely, lovely city.”

“Not anymore,” said Ganelon.

Kit’s eyelid twitched again, but before Moog could explain Gabriel broke in. “We’re wasting time. If the zombie wants to come, he can come. We should go now and hit up Conthas for supplies.”

“I’ll come,” Clay said, already anxious to be off this eyesore of a ship.

“Me too!” said Moog. “I could use some things in town as well. Kit, you wanna tag along?”

“I suppose I wouldn’t mind stretching my legs,” said Kit, then favoured Gabriel with a grisly smile. “Also, I feel it necessary to point out that I am what is known as a revenant—or a ghoul, if you’d prefer. Either will suffice. But I am most certainly not a zombie.”

“Ghoul, zombie … what’s the difference?” asked Matrick.

“There are several, in fact. Most notable, however, is that zombies eat people.”

“And what do you eat?”

Kit sipped his wine, looking thoughtful. “Anything but people,” he said.





Chapter Twenty-seven

Bounty

Nicholas Eames's books