“Why not?”
The question took her aback. She’d never considered letting herself fail before—the struggle’s difficulty always seemed proof of its value. “If we do, they win: the Cardinals who wonder why you’re at the table, or I am. The little gnome in your skull who says you shouldn’t be here, and when you try and fail it laughs and says, ‘See? You never should have tried at all.’”
“He’s in your head too?”
“Inside everyone’s, I think.”
“You don’t let on.”
“Mine’s loud enough I got deaf to the little bastard a while ago.” She looked down at her hands, and over at his, and before she could think better of it she laid her left on his right. Abelard was skin and gristle and bone. Not fit for roasting, Ma would have said. “The church will need a saint before this is over. It’ll need you. And I might, too.” Gods and demons, but that last felt hard to say—like peeling a hangnail into blood. What diagnosis would a headshrinker make of a woman who found admitting weakness less terrifying than necromantic war?
His hand stayed limp under hers. “I’ll try,” he said, and smiled weakly.
She hoped her disappointment didn’t show. “Good.”
She’d reached the ladder down before he spoke again. “We can win this, can’t we?”
“Sure,” she said, covering the lie.
15
Cat dove from the Bounty in the dark.
She never liked swimming. She liked it less in the ocean, and even less at night, but duty and preference were rare bedfellows. Not even bedfellows, she thought as the black water closed over her. They’d had one bitter night when duty and honor were on a break and preference was too drunk to remember she hated duty’s smirk and the way he treated waiters.
How could you not like swimming? was one of those questions fellow gym rats asked, with a precious emphasis on the last word. So calming, so rhythmic. Good for your back and blood pressure. Cat didn’t like calm, and she distrusted rhythm. More to the point, the Suit sank, an after-effect of its connection to the gargoyles and their goddess: she wasn’t made of stone, but the Suit convinced the world she was. Dive Suited and you’d tumble to the seafloor, which admittedly helped when the time came to dredge Alt Coulumb’s harbor.
So if you were a Blacksuit and knew how to swim (which Cat did, because, dammit, instinctive hatred for an activity was just the world’s way of challenging you to master it), you sometimes ended up doing things like this: swimming un-Suited, read weak, read human, leading a team toward an anchored ship after dark, with—how deep was the water here, a few hundred feet?—anyway too much water underneath you, and Lord Kos alone knew what monsters below, star kraken and bloodwhales and saltwater crocs. She surfaced, gulping air.
The ship’s swelling sides blocked out the stars. Moonlight glinted off the black paint that named her Demon’s Dream. Cat turned onto her back to watch the bowsprit figure pass overhead: crystal carved into a woman’s shape. The rest of Cat’s team followed her, dark V’s against dark water.
The ship rocked as she slipped along its starboard side. Waves lapped barnacled boards. Anchor chain links rasped. She stopped near the chain, touched the wet hull, and triggered her climbing bracelets. Her hands burned as if she’d rubbed them hard against rubber, and when she touched the hull, her fingers stuck. She pulled herself out of the water and triggered her anklets; her toes clung to slick planks. Her team followed, smooth and slow. Their wetsuits wept themselves dry as they climbed.
Strange to feel safer clinging by magic to a pirate ship’s hull than swimming out of sight beneath.
She paused below the railing, counted footfalls, and timed the operation.
Ten sailors on deck, two more than Raz expected. Varg’s delay might well make her XO paranoid. Others would be asleep, many on deck on such a warm night. Good thing Raz’s team had done this before.
She heard creaking sheets an instant before the watch called: “Sail approaching off the port bow!” Raz ran dark, not invisible.
Boots drumrolled on deck: eight pairs, she thought, approached the port rail. Even the two that remained starboard turned to watch. Sergeant Lee, beside her, pointed up. She shook her head and waited for the signal.
“Kel’s Bounty,” came Raz’s voice, very near. “Raz Pelham here, bearing a message from Captain Varg.”
“She’s late.”
“Problems landward. I have a letter from her, sealed. Permission to come aboard?”
“Why run up on us dark like that?”
“You want the coast guard to see us both? Then I’ll light my lanterns.”
“Send the letter over.”
Come on, she thought, give the cue. You’ve made your distraction; we can take it from here.
“Varg told me to deliver it in person.”
“She have anything else to say?”
“Just that.”