“Exactly, so fuck him.” Clay pointed Moog back toward the helm. “Go. Keep us in the sky. I need to …” He scanned the deck: Matrick had downed one of his attackers and had the other on his heels. Ganelon, surprisingly, was still facing off against three opponents. The monks seemed content to engage him without committing to an attack that might get them killed, likely hoping to keep him distracted until their mistress finished dealing with the others.
Larkspur, meanwhile, had her hands full with Gabriel. The monks she’d sent ahead of her were facedown on the deck, and now the manhunter herself was being slowly pushed back, her swords whirling to keep Vellichor at bay. Gabe wore something between a smile and a snarl on his face. Larkspur, he saw, bore the same expression. The rain slicked their hair and hummed from the steel plates of their armour, bone white and deathly black.
“Clay?” said the wizard beside him.
“Mm?”
“You need to what?”
“What?”
“You said ‘I need to …’ and then you just sort of trailed off.”
Clay gestured frantically at the empty cockpit and yelled, “FLY. THE FUCKING. SHIP!”
The wizard clucked under his breath and yanked his hat back onto his head. “Fine,” he said petulantly and stalked off.
Clay’s nose was throbbing. He could feel his right eye swelling where he’d smacked himself with his own hammer. He wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, and set off to help Ganelon.
The monks were too preoccupied to see him coming. He pushed one within Ganelon’s reach and the warrior took care of the rest, impaling the poor man on the tip of his axe. Clay leapt at the other, fending off a kick with Blackheart and striking back with Wraith. The monk evaded him once, but Clay caught him on the backswing. The hammer clipped the side of his head and the man stumbled, off balance. Clay pinned him against the rail and pummelled him until he stopped flailing.
Ganelon chased his remaining adversary to the bow, where the monk, his eyes fastened on the hulking southerner, backed accidentally into Kit, who’d been standing innocuously by while the battle played out. Now the man spun, one hand raised to strike, and screamed when he saw the revenant grinning back at him.
“Good evening,” said Kit.
To be fair, that smile was a dreadful thing, but even still the monk reacted badly. Between what he likely mistook for a ravenous zombie and certain death at the hands of Ganelon, he decided to take his chances overboard. He climbed onto the rail and fanned out his garment, preparing to glide toward the dubious safety of the forest below. As he leapt, however, Ganelon managed to grasp a fistful of red robe. The monk slipped out the other end, naked as an infant, and fell screaming into the storm.
Matrick was pulling a knife from his opponent’s sternum. He managed to wipe his blades clean on the dying man’s clothes before the monk dropped dead. When he saw Clay watching he gave his daggers a theatrical twirl.
“I’ve still got it,” he said smugly, before fumbling the weapon in his injured hand and chasing it awkwardly across the deck.
A growl from Larkspur drew Clay’s attention. The daeva was growing frustrated. She’d doubtless hoped to deal quickly with Gabriel, but instead found herself on the defensive. Her allies were dead, or unconscious, or too busy lamenting their hopelessly crushed testicles to be of use, and now Clay and the others closed a wary circle around her.
“Larkspur!” said Matrick, but she ignored him, slashing viciously at Vellichor, ignoring everyone but Gabe as if they were nothing more than spectators. “Larkspur, it’s over! You’ve lost!”
The daeva bared her teeth, dancing back and crossing her swords protectively. Gabriel relented, but kept his blade ready. He was breathing hard. If the fight had gone on much longer, Clay knew, he would have faltered, and Larkspur would have killed him.
Then again, that was the point of being in a band, wasn’t it? A tiger, however fearsome, could be hunted into a corner. It fought alone, so it died alone. But to hunt a wolf was to constantly look over your shoulder, wondering if others were behind you in the dark.
“Lost?” Larkspur’s laugh was mirthless. “Know what happened to the last man who told me I’d lost? I put his cock in his mouth and his head on a pike.”
“No way my cock would fit in my mouth,” said Matrick, as though it were an obvious fact. Kit barked a short, incongruous laugh.
Larkspur wasn’t amused. She returned her focus to Gabriel. “Is it true you’re headed for Castia?”
Gabriel seemed reluctant to answer, but finally nodded. “That’s right.”
“Why?” she asked.
“My daughter is trapped inside.”
For just a moment Clay could have sworn he saw something change in the daeva’s expression, as though the ice in her eyes were melting into merely frigid pools. Whatever it was, it passed quickly. The ice returned, harder than before.
“Then she’s dead,” Larkspur told him. “And you’re a bloody fool for going after her.”
“You’re half right,” said Gabriel. “Anyway, like Matty said: You’ve lost. Go back to Lilith and tell her … actually, I don’t care what you tell her, but kindly get the hell off my ship.”
As if on cue the Dark Star appeared off the portside rail, a behemoth roaring in the rain.
“With pleasure,” said the daeva. She made as if to stab at Gabriel and he slipped into a guard. Then she lashed at Ganelon, who parried with the haft of his axe. Clay brought his shield to bear, but Larkspur was already lunging at Matrick. She was inside his reach before he could react, tackling him against the rail. He cried out in pain and once again lost his grip on the knife in his damaged hand. His bandmates dashed to his rescue, but Larkspur unfurled her wings, forcing them back.
The daeva launched herself into the air, dragging Matrick with her. Her wings swept down once, lifting them both out of reach, and then again, propelling them toward the open sky.
“Matrick!” Gabriel raced to the rail, but Clay pulled him back by the shoulder as the air around them cracked with static charge.
“Wait—” he managed, before thunder made a whisper of his voice, and light, impossibly bright, blinded them both.
Against the red glow of his eyelids Clay’s mind played out the last thing it had seen: the shadow of wings against the searing glare of a lightning column …
… Larkspur and Matrick entangled and falling, like birds shot dead from a tree.
Chapter Thirty-one
A Walk in the Wyld
When his vision returned and the ringing in his ears abated, Clay saw Gabriel slumped against the side of the ship, one hand still clasped on the moonstone rail. Only minutes ago, as he warred with Larkspur across the storm-wracked deck of The Carnal Court, he had seemed formidable: a legend come alive, a champion sprung from the pages of a storybook. Now he looked decidedly mortal again, old and wet and weary.
Gabe glanced over, and Clay saw the struggle warring across his friend’s face: to delay their journey and risk landing in order to look for Matrick (who was probably dead), or to press on without him and be left to wonder ever after if you’d condemned a friend to certain death. To Gabriel’s credit, it was not a decision he weighed for very long.
“Tell Moog to land,” he said hoarsely. “We’re going down.”
Clay had heard it said that once you’d walked in the Wyld, you could never really leave it behind. The adage was particularly true of those who contracted the rot, since the forest had literally infected them, but for Clay it carried a lesser, if nevertheless tormenting, connotation.
He dreamt of it. Not often, thankfully, but now and then his slumbering mind would find itself lost on its labyrinthine paths, mired in its boiling swamps, or running terrified from one of its many deadly denizens. He would awake panting, sometimes screaming, occasionally sobbing, and Ginny would kiss his sweat-soaked forehead. She would whisper soothingly and stroke his face until the dreams receded. She never asked about them, and he never spoke of them out loud. It wasn’t the sort of thing you shared with someone you loved.