“Ready when you are,” Perez said quietly, and Kit released fingers she’d clenched into hard fists, and then released the connection.
Like a loosed arrow, the Ardent shuddered and jerked forward, and Kit opened her eyes as lieutenants shouted orders and the ship made hard for port. She looked down at her hands, found a new constellation of spots, dark and minute, across her palms. Burns, the physick had said. Painless, but invariable, the scars of flying too closely to the magic.
“Let the canvas fly,” Perez called out, and the Ardent roared forward against the breaking sea.
One
Three years later
There was a ribbon pinned to her coat, and a dagger in her hand. And as Captain Kit Brightling stared down at the little wooden box, there was a gleam in her gray eyes.
Two months of searching between the Saxon Isles and the Continent. Two months of sailing, of storms and sun, of crazed activity and mind-dulling monotony.
They hadn’t been sure what they’d find when the Diana set sail from New London—the seat of the Isles’ crown, named for the city rebuilt after the Great Fire’s destruction—only that they’d almost certainly find something. It had been nearly a year since the Gallic emperor Gerard Rousseau was exiled to Montgraf, since the end of the war that had spread death across the Continent like a dark plague. Gerard had finally been beaten back, his surrender and abdication just outside the Gallic capital city, Saint-Denis. The island nation of Montgraf, off the coast of Gallia, was now his prison, and a king had been installed in Gallia again.
There were reports of Gerard’s growing boredom and irritation with his exile, with the inadequacies of the island he’d been exiled to, with the failures of his replacement. There were rumors of plans, of the gathering of ships and soldiers, of missives sent across the water. Queen Charlotte had bid Kit, the only captain in the Queen’s Own Guards, to find those missives.
They’d patrolled the Narrow Sea that separated the Isles from the Continent, visiting grungy ports and gleaming cities, trading for information, or spreading coin through portside taverns when tipple loosened more tongues. Then they’d found the grimy little packet ship twenty miles off the coast, not far from Pencester. And in the captain’s stingy quarters, in a drawer cleverly concealed in his bunk, they’d found the lovely little box.
She couldn’t fault its design. Honey-colored wood, carefully hewn iron, and brass corners that gleamed even in the pale light of dawn. It was intended to hold secrets. And given its lock—a rather lovely contraption of copper and iron gears—hadn’t yet been triggered, it still did.
Secrets, Kit thought ruefully, were the currency of both war and peace.
“You can’t touch that.”
That declaration came from the sailor in the corner.
“I believe I can,” Kit said, sliding the dagger into her belt and lifting the box from the drawer. She placed it on the desk that folded down from the worm-holed bulkhead, then glanced up. “It now belongs to Queen Charlotte.”
“It already did,” sneered the man, his teeth the same yellowed shade as his grimy shirt. His trousers were darker; the cap, which narrowed to a point that flopped over one eye, was the sickly green of week-old bread. “I’m from the Isles, same as you, and I’m to deliver that to her. You saw the flag.”
“The flag was false,” said the lanky man’s captor. Jin Takamura was tall and elegantly built, with a sweep of long dark hair pulled back at the crown. His skin was tan, his eyes dark as obsidian in an oval face marked by his narrow nose and rounded cheekbones. And his gleaming sabre was drawn and currently at the neck of the grungy sailor.
Kit thought Jin, second in command of the Diana, complemented her perfectly—his patience and canny contemplation, matched against her desire to go, to see, to do. There was no one she trusted more.
“You’ve no papers, no letters of marque,” Jin said, looking over the sailor’s dingy clothes. “And certainly no uniforms.”
“You aren’t from the Isles,” Kit concluded, “any more than this box is.” She walked toward the pair, smelling the sweat and fish and unwashed body emanating from the smuggler three feet away. Baffling, since water, salty or not, was readily available.
Kit was slender and pale-skinned, with dark hair chopped to skim the edge of her chin. Her eyes were wide and gray, her nose straight, her lips full. She clasped her hands behind her back when she reached the two men, and cocked her head. “Would you like to tell us from whom you obtained it, and to whom it will be delivered?”
“It’s for the queen,” he said again. “A private gift of some . . . unmentionables. A fine lady like you shouldn’t have to deal with that sort of thing.”
Kit’s brows lifted, and she glanced at Jin. “The queen’s unmentionables, he says. And me a fine lady.”
“Maybe we should let him return to his business,” Jin said, gaze falling to the box, heavy and full of secrets. “And avoid the impropriety.”
“Best you do,” the sailor said with a confident bob of his chin. “Don’t want no impro—whatever here.”
“Unfortunately,” Kit said, “we’re well aware that’s nonsense. You’re smugglers, running the very nice Gallic brandy in your hold, not to mention this very pretty box. But because I’m a pleasant sort, I’m going to give you one last opportunity to tell us the truth. Where did you get the box?”
“Unmentionables,” he said again. “And you don’t scare me. Trussed up in fancy duds or not, you’re still a girl.”
At four-and-twenty years, Kit was more woman than girl, but she was still one of the youngest captains in the Crown Command—the Saxon Isles’ military—and there were plenty who’d thought her too young or too female to hold her position. But she’d earned her rank on the water. At San Miguel, by finding deep magic, and reaching for the current just long enough to give her ship the gauge against a larger squadron of Frisian ships—and capture gold and munitions that Queen Charlotte was very pleased to add to her own armory. At Pointe Grise, she’d helped her captain avoid an attack by a larger Gallic privateer, and they’d captured the privateer’s ship and the coded dispatches it was carrying to Saint-Denis. At Faulkney, as a young commander, she’d found a disturbance in the current of magic, and led her own squadron to a trio of Gallic ships led by an Aligned captain that had made it through the Isles’ blockade and was racing toward Pencester to attack. Kit’s ship successfully turned back the invasion.
“Am I a trussed-up girl or fine lady?” Kit asked. “You can’t seem to make up your mind.” She glanced down at the trim navy jacket with its gold braid and long tails, the gleaming black boots that rose to her knees over buff trousers. “Personally, I enjoy the uniform. I find it affords a certain . . . authority.” She glanced at Jin, who nodded, his features drawn into utter seriousness.