“Allow me to demonstrate,” the Storm smiled.
Watching him lunge across the battlements to skewer the first hüsguard, it would’ve been easy to believe the Storm was named for his swordarm. He moved just like his namesake, his blade swift as lightning. His boot met the short hüsguard’s groin like a thunderclap, dropping the man with a whimper. The last guard mounted a valiant defense with a sharp battleaxe, but with a flick of the Storm’s wrist and a bright flash of arkemical powder, the guard was sent reeling backward, and the Storm’s rapier signed the poor fellow’s death note in red.
The Storm looked down from the battlements into the courtyard below. The keep’s alarm had been raised, and more hüsguards would be on their way. Kael Three Eyes and Windseer were blocking off the lower stairwells, but trouble would be on the Storm’s heels soon enough. He’d only a few minutes before he’d have to turn this daring rescue into a daring escape, with the Earl’s daughter in hand or no. The Storm had hoped this job might be seen through with a little luck and a lot of guile, but with Brightstone Keep now on full alert, he and his merry crew had a shorter life expectancy than a bottle of top-shelf goldwine in a brothel full of pissheads.
“Ahoy!” he called. “Windseer!”
Now, swordsmanship aside, some said the Storm was named for his voice—a booming, honey-smooth baritone. Oftentimes as the Bloody Maid sailed the Sea of Stars, the Storm would stand at her prow, harp in hand, and simply sing. His songs were so bewitching, it was rumored even rayfolk and deepweres would swim up from the gloom to listen. Old Stomper swore blind that one turn, he even saw a craykith weeping when the Storm put his harp away.
“Windseer!” the Storm called again.
Down in the courtyard, a hulking Dweymeri man turned from gutting some hapless hüsguard. “Aye, Cap’n?”
“The game is up! Make for the skiff!”
“What about the girl?” his first mate shouted.
“You mean the dona?” The Storm flashed a handsome grin. “Leave her to me.”
“There’s a hundred more of these bastards, Cap’n, I’ll not leave—”
“And I’ll not have your lives put to forfeit without need! Go, brother! If I’m not back aboard in half an hour, tell your wife I love her!”
The first mate cursed, but the loyalty of the Maid’s crew was unshakeable. The Storm of Galante wasn’t the sort of captain who hung at the wheelhouse and let his men do the fighting, gentlefriend. When the Maid had been becalmed for seven weeks in the Sea of Sorrows, it’d been the Storm who’d gone without rations that his men might eat. When half a dozen of his crew had been snatched by fleshrunners in the Straits of Tsana, it’d been the Storm who led the charge into the fenpits to rescue them. Time and again, this captain had bled for his men. His command was the word of Aa himself. And so Windseer and the rest of the Maid’s crew broke out, fighting their way back to the wall and escape into the ocean below.
The Storm turned from the battlement, kicked through the doorway into Brightstone tower. The keep crouched atop vicious bluffs along the coastline of southern Vaan, known as the Boneyard. Approach from land was only possible across a single narrow drawbridge, guarded by the best of Hüslaird Kustaa’s men. Approach from the sea was an even dicier proposition—it’d taken the Storm and his band the best part of a turn to make the climb, and they’d lost three of their number on the ascent. Now, those damned bells seemed set to finish what the Boneyard had started.
He met another pair of hüsguards on the stairs, shooting the first through the throat with his hand crossbow and flinging the last of his arkemical powder at the second, cutting him down in the flash’s aftermath. Reloading as he dashed up the stairwell, he found himself in a long hall, run with rich red carpet and crowned with an ornate, gilded mirror. The Storm peered down the stairs for pursuit, and satisfied none was forthcoming, stopped to check his reflection in the glass.
He was about to rescue nobility, after all.
The privateer was clad all in black; leather jerkin and suspiciously tight breeches spattered with blood. Sapphire-blue eyes gleamed beneath the brim of his feathered tricorn. Short whiskers dusted a jaw you could break a shovel on, and a perfect smile completed a portrait that didn’t so much turn heads as break necks.
It was said by some of his crew that he’d seduced one of the baphomantii, and pleased the she-daemon so thoroughly she’d gifted him a face all would love. Others whispered he’d out-riddled one of the betweenfolk and stolen her glamour. Whatever the truth, his first mate, Windseer, claimed that here was the source of his captain’s moniker. For it was said that wherever he traveled, much like his namesake, the Storm left members of the fairer sex somewhat … damp in his wake.*
The Storm of Galante peered at his reflection.
Adjusted the ruffled cuff of one black sleeve.
And he winked.
He dashed along the corridor, crashing between servants with hurried apologies and sprinting up more stairs, thinking he’d left the last of the laird’s men dead behind him. And finally reaching the landing outside the keep’s master bedchamber, he was disappointed to find a dozen elite hüsguards in heavy plate armor waiting for him.
The men were lumps of scar and muscle, armed with short, double-edged pigstickers and curved rectangular shields. And handsome though he might be, every one of the bastards looked like he’d gleefully pick his teeth with the Storm’s shiny rapier of Liisian steel, right after eating the rest of him for breakfast.
The Storm skidded to a stop twenty feet from the mob.
“Good turn, gentlefriends. Do you know who I am?”
“Aye,” said a towering lump of beef. “You’re the soon-to-be-dead Storm of Galante.”
“The same,” the Storm replied, sweeping off his tricorn with a bow. “But do you know why they name me so?”
“Because you’re soon to be dead?”
The mob advanced, axes raised. Seemingly unfazed, the Storm reached into his doffed tricorn, and produced a bulb of polished glass. With a twist of his fingers, he tossed the bulb into the group, stuffing his hat back onto his head before diving back down the stairs he’d charged up from.
White flame scorched the walls as an explosion bloomed, and a deafening boom tore across the landing. Glass splinters and the occasional unidentifiable body part bounced down the stairwell to smoke at the Storm’s feet.
The privateer uncovered his ears, picked himself up from his crouch, and propping his hat at a jaunty angle, skipped back up to the landing. Stepping over the minced wreckage of Kustaa’s elite, the Storm drew his rapier and stepped through the now-open bedchamber door.
“Dona Astrid?” he called.
The shutters were sealed, the room beyond shrouded in gloom. The scent of candles and overcooked meat hung thick in the air. Black smoke from the arkemical bomb billowed about the Storm’s shoulders, his silhouette outlined against the summer blue outside.
“Dona Astrid?”