Forty The Four Faces

FORTY

The Four Faces

SAMUEL

H art lay at the end of a long, broad dock on the west side of Ostchen. It was inaccessible from the main city, and not just because by the time we arrived, the tide had already begun to swallow large parts of the docks in calf-deep, icy water.

The area was guarded by a high wall and a strong gate, beyond which lay a private shipyard. As Grant and I watched from the shelter of an awning, guards moved into sight on the decks of the ships—all of them fastened to a nearly submerged dock. There was Hart , whole and well and facing out to sea, along with a nondescript galley with her rigging completely disassembled.

The question of whether or not my crew remained aboard Hart was quickly answered. A chorus of singing drifted up from the gratings in emphatic Aeadine. The guards, roused, stormed over to the grating and hammered. The crew sang louder.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked over to see Grant watching me with a broad grin.

"See, so many things can go well," he said.

"Since when are you the company optimist?" I replied, glancing at the sky. The sun had long since vanished over the western mountain now, and darkness was nearly complete. The tide would soon be at its highest.

Grant blew out his cheeks and gave a half shrug. "The post was vacant, I suppose. Should we make for the cathedral?"

"I will," I decided. "Please remain here and keep watch, mark if and when the guards change, and if anyone is allowed through that gate."

Grant saluted with a dandy's flick of the fingers. "Aye, aye, sir."

* * *

The open square before the Cathedral of the Four Faces was packed despite the late hour. A small army of monks, priests and priestesses from various orders moved through a crowd thick with wagons, children, and livestock—refugees, fleeing the Black Tides. Families slept under their wagons or rough awnings, several dozen braziers burned and soldiers lingered on the periphery, watching the crowd with equal parts pity and wariness.

I wandered the edge of the crush as the bells clanged a merry midnight chorus, then a half hour passed. Faces were nearly impossible to discern, mottled with light and shadow. But the Other still lingered at the corners of my vision, pocked with magelights. If Mary was here and had taken off her talisman, there was a chance I would be close enough to see her without stepping fully into the Other.

"Samuel," a female voice called.

I turned to see not Mary, but Olsa Uknara. She left the brazier where she had been warming her hands and disappeared down a flight of stairs, into an alleyway.

Startled and in need of answers, I followed her down a stair and two streets into the flooding region of the city. Olsa did not speak the entire time, leading me in silence through rising, frigid water. Unidentifiable objects drifted past us, and the chill of the night failed to curb the stink of brine and stewing human refuse. But the floodwater meant we were relatively alone—an old man passed with a child on his shoulders and a raft on a rope, two lanky youths carried crates on their shoulders, and that was all.

Finally, Olsa climbed a set of stairs clinging to a warehouse near the central docks. I splashed up after her, my anticipation rising.

Four figures waited inside, in the light of an oil lamp. My eyes were inexorably drawn to Mary, her face pale in the warm light. She looked haggard, her hair falling in tangles from her braid and her body wrapped in a boat cloak.

Before I was fully through the door, she reached for me. I crossed the intervening space in two strides and folded her into my arms, loosening only when she made a soft sound of pain.

I pulled back and looked down at her, discovering she wore only a shift underneath the cloak. She held her thigh, visibly thick with bandages, and offered me a tense smile.

"Not your fault," she soothed. "I was shot. Do not stop hugging me."

I obeyed but asked over her head, looking at the others for explanation. "What happened?"

"Very little." Illya offered me a distracted wave and a crooked but not altogether humorous smile as he fell into conference with his wife.

"A great deal, rather." Closer to the back of the room, a face I thought I would never see again smiled and half-bowed in greeting.

"Mr. Maren," I said, stunned into incredulity. Questions of how he was here stalled on my tongue as I recognized the last person in the room.

I stepped away from Mary to reach for my pistol. "Why is she here?"

Enisca Alamay stood by the window, positioned to watch both the street and the door. Her expression was wary but she made no move towards the long musket leaning against the casement.

"She saved our lives," Mary said hastily. "She's an Usti spy, Sam. Inside the Ess Noti. She knows where Hart is and arranged for the crew to be held there together. In exchange for taking her with us when we leave."

Mr. Maren nodded, putting out an earnest hand between us. "She has been helping me for months, and she ensured we had a clear path to escape tonight."

"Escape?" I repeated, reeling. "From the Ess Noti? Where is Ben?"

"I was captured by the Ess Noti," Mary explained. "But Ben escaped earlier."

"Then where is he?"

Mary shook her head. "I don't know. He said he would try to meet up with me at Hart , but we never had a chance to look."

"Fuck," I muttered.

Illya gestured at me emphatically. "This is also what I said."

"Perhaps he has already found your ship," Alamay interrupted us. "You can join him after you give me a moment of your attention, Captain Rosser. I was an Usti spy inside the Ess Noti. Now, I am an Usti spy in need of a way out of Ostchen. I know you will not be inclined to trust me, but I have saved the lives of your companions, taken care of your crew, and I have something else for you as payment for my passage. Mr. Maren informed me of your quest."

I grew very, very still. I felt Mary's eyes on the side of my face, glimpsed the hope in her expression, but could not take my eyes from Alamay.

"What is that?" I prompted.

"I know how to cure you and your brother." Alamay's words were low and level, but seemed to reach every corner of the room. "I do not possess all the skills to execute the cure, but Mr. Maren does, and I have shared what I know with him."

"How?" The word cracked, a lifetime of dread and anxiety cresting around me. The blurred edges of the Other crept a little deeper into my vision, and my head began to ache.

I reached for Mary's hand. She fastened both her hands around mine, anchoring me without a word.

"How can it be done?"

Mr. Maren began to explain earnestly. "At the height of the second Black Tide, the barrier between the human world and the Other will be at its thinnest."

"The first Black Tide is tonight," Mary leapt in, her hope as fierce and sudden as my own. "Can we not use it?"

"It will not suffice." Mr. Maren shook his head, shattering the pair of us in four words. "The barrier is thinner, yes, but not enough for—"

He cut himself off as Alamay cast him a reprimanding look.

"At the right time, with the help of various… items, which I must make," he went on, somewhat more cagily, "both you and your twin can physically traverse the barrier between worlds. There, your bond to the Other—that which supplies your power—can be healed. It will take moments, I believe."

There was more than one way of Otherwalking, it seemed.

"Mr. Maren does not know what those items are yet, precisely," Enisca cut in. "So do not think to abandon me in favor of him. I come, or you go mad and your brother becomes a monster."

"Where did you find this information?" I demanded. A part of me was already rampant with elation, hope fizzling through my veins like sparks up long matches. "How do you know it is true?"

Alamay's patience with me was clearly wearing thin. She forced another of her small, tight smiles. "I am—was—close with the Ess Noti's High Cleric."

"Very close," Mr. Maren added. Alamay glared at him again and this time he looked away, his eyebrows high and a hint of a sad smile on his lips.

"The Ess Noti are a blight upon the world, and Cleric Ines is as much a victim as any of you. Only they fight from within, while we turn tail and run." Alamay exhaled a long, steadying breath. "Now, if you are satisfied, we do not have much time."

Mary's eyes flicked behind me, brows drawing together. "Where's Charles?"

I scrutinized Alamay a moment longer, weighing her words. "Mr. Grant is keeping watch on Hart . We located him earlier this evening."

Speaking the words aloud reset something inside of me, and I began to move past the last moments and their revelations, on to what needed to happen next.

Return to Grant. Reclaim Hart .

Find Ben.

In these clean-cut objectives, I found relief.

"Then Charles and Benedict may already have reunited," Mary said. "If Ben never came to the cathedral."

"Right," I said, gathering myself. "We make for Hart . Our priority is releasing him and the crew—if Ben has not arrived by then, I will go into the Other to search for him."

I expected a protest at the last, but my assertion was met only with silence and weighty looks.

At length, Alamay said, "There is a possibility that my betrayal has been revealed by now, though I believe my credentials will still get us onto the ship. Sailing out of the harbor will be another matter, even if the tide is with us. The entire fleet is in that fog."

"It will be treacherous," I affirmed.

"I can manage the fog," Mary said, to which Olsa nodded in agreement. "A distraction would be useful, though."

My mind drifted to the implings on the hill and the words of the midwife.

I straightened, feeling steadier and more confident than I had in weeks. "Leave that to me."

* * *

Enisca Alamay approached the gates to the small, private shipyard where Hart was moored. We watched from the shadows of an alleyway—Grant, Mary, the Uknaras, Mr. Maren, and I, all silent and still with weapons at the ready.

Alamay looked small before the closed gates, knee-deep in floodwaters with her hands shoved into her pockets. She removed one hand to tug a bell rope, then waited, growing visibly impatient.

"We could swim around," Mary whispered to me.

"It may soon come to that," I replied, though burdened by sodden clothes, damp powder and frozen muscles was not the way I wanted to enter any fight. "But Benedict has still not arrived. Let us wait a little longer."

Even as I spoke, my gaze traveled inexorably down the docks, searching for a tall, dark figure.

Instead, I saw a lantern swing into sight and a group of figures turn our way from another street. I had the coin pressed back to my skin, sacrificing presentience to a few more moments without Hae's watchful eyes, but I recognized the way they moved—urgent but contained, coordinated and watchful.

"Soldiers," I warned, motioning everyone back. They complied but I waited another moment, watching to ensure Alamay had marked the soldiers too.

Sure enough the Usti spy turned, glanced at the light, and promptly left the gate. She exited my line of sight, heading up another road with water sloshing behind her.

By the time she reappeared, materializing next to Grant farther down our alley—to his shock and a fumbled, whispered, "Well, hello,"—the soldiers were paces away. They moved more cautiously now, eyes scanning the night. I pressed myself back into a damp wall as the ripples of their passage invaded our alleyway.

The soldiers arrived at the gates that, after a breath, groaned open. Two more soldiers waited on the other side, and they began a hurried exchange.

"Now we move," Illya said, crouching next to me.

The soldiers, however, were no fools—the gate was already closing, barring a now-swelled number of enemies inside the shipyard, while half a dozen broke off at a sloshing sprint in the direction Alamay had gone.

That was when Benedict separated from the night. He walked directly down the quayside towards the gate, black seawater tugging back the hem of his long coat. He strode directly past us, casting us not a glance.

"Ben," I started to hiss.

My twin either did not hear or ignored me. His focus was on the gate and the soldiers who had just departed.

Bloody, bruised red slipped into the corners of my vision. Screams and gunshots erupted from somewhere nearby, then silence blossomed.

In that tense, horrified hush, one side of the gate creaked open again. A single guard stumbled out, clutching at her chest. She collapsed into the floodwaters—a wash of colorless ripples swallowed her and she did not rise again.

"The Black Tide," Alamay's voice murmured, replying to a question from Grant that I had not heard. "All mages are stronger tonight."

Ben turned to look back at us, his black-rimmed eyes white in the shadows. "Are you coming?"

By the time we followed my twin into the shipyard, the remainder of the guards were either dead or in hiding. Ben preceded us, striding to the end of a long, partially submerged dock where Hart lay.

I strode after him, Mary's low whistling haunting my steps. A fog had already begun to roll in, shrouding us from sight.

"Your timing is impeccable," Ben said, waiting for me beside Hart 's placid bulk. Half the buttons on his coat had torn off and he was soaked, his eyes reddened with sweat and seawater and their dark rim of sailor's kohl bleeding down his cheeks. The blade of the saber in his left hand was clean, pebbled with droplets of water, but there was blood on his knuckles and caked around his nails.

Whatever qualms I harbored towards my brother's actions and sinister appearance, they silenced as I climbed aboard Hart . The ship's namesake ghisting swirled through the wood beneath our feet in restrained welcome, and, as my officers began to climb through newly unlocked hatches, a grin split my face.

"Mr. Penn," I greeted, grasping the man's forearm. Fog swirled past us, and Mary's whistling transitioned into a low, humming song.

His grin was equally as broad, and there was a gleam in his eyes. "Captain Rosser, knew I'd be seein' you about some time soon."

I clasped his forearm a little tighter, then released him. "Ms. Skarrow and Mr. Keo?"

"All worse for wear, but present and accounted for," Ms. Skarrow herself replied, joining us and tugging her fringe. "Shall we make him ready, Captain?"

"Yes, very good. We will leave the harbor as soon as possible and make for the Aeadine Anchorage," I replied, easing back into my role like muscles in warm water. I leaned over the hatchway and saw the remainder of the crew arrayed below, peering up and beset by ripples of barely contained cheers. I saw Willoughby among them, his arm around a weary-looking Poverly. But they were all well.

"You will all be up and free very soon," I promised, raising my voice just enough to carry.

A few ragged cheers broke forth, to which I saluted and withdrew. Ms. Skarrow and Mr. Penn had already scattered, joining a dozen of the best hands in preparing the vessel for departure.

Mr. Keo remained, watching me with his chin raised and eyes expectant.

"Mr. Keo. Ms. Firth shall see to our cover and Ms. Uknara our course out of the harbor. I shall need to step into the Other. You have the deck until I return."

"Yessir." Keo saluted. His wide-set, hooded eyes were subdued, and his smile less wild than Mr. Penn's had been. "It is good to have you back, Captain. I see you have what we came for?"

Benedict strode by just then, heading through the companionway and calling, "Sam, you need to hire a surgeon."

"Yes," I said, my own smile tightening. "I suppose we do."

Getting the ship underway was no easy feat, but it was conducted with haste and discretion in record time. Mary and Olsa took position by the wheel as the former began to truly sing, drawing the perpetual fog down the bay to meet her existing, subtler miasma. Another wind stirred our sails alone, propelling us away from the docks with a care and delicacy Mary had rarely exhibited before.

With Hart 's ghisten light rippling through the deck beneath our feet, we passed ships of every size and stoically bore the occasional curious watchman. We passed sleeping outer villages with their stilts and bridges, some completely flooded, others barely above the high waters, and entered an open stretch between the last settlements and the lofty outlook of the fort.

I joined Mary and Olsa, whereupon I finally pried the coin from my flesh and dropped wholly into the Other.

Olsa was there in that second realm, inhabiting the edge between worlds—guiding our ship through the fog with careful commands to the helmsman. I noted her glow, then passed deeper into that realm.

As the midwife had said, the Otherborn creatures around Ostchen were countless. Their glows swelled from dim reflections in the corners of my vision to a chaos of clashing, blinding lights. They shone off the Dark Water, through the water, turning it everything but dark. The Other was color that night, vivid and assaulting. Even the lines of ghisten ships faded in the force of their illumination, and, for a moment, I was forced to close my eyes.

When I opened them again the lights were no less overwhelming, but my focus was steadier.

And so I began to call. I called the white lights and the orange ones, the bruised purple and the muddy yellow, the gold and the rarest, most subtle pulses of dusty, dark rose. Some were indifferent to my summons. Others were aggressive, outwardly resisting me.

The rest came in droves.

Thus it was that we left Ostchen in an unearthly cacophony of muffled screams, bells, gunshots and crashing water. Here and there as the fog eddied, I saw my beasts at their tasks. A familiar dittama dove beneath the waves and remerged beside an anchored ship, shrieking. An enormous octopus with the head of a budding flower clamped onto one of the fort's cannon batteries, its legs a whirl of water and sickly orange light. A huden charged across waves lit by the blinding white of a morgory swarm, swirling around a clutch of ships whose ghistings stood manifest, warding the creatures away from their hulls. A sleek creature between a shark and a serpent with shuddering, thundering wings reared up to the height of a foremast before it crashed back down in a scattering of smaller, lesser creatures.

The Otherborn were not the only lights to be seen, however— either in the Dark Water or the waking world or the mire between where I existed. The lights of Sooths, Magni, and Stormsingers were cast throughout, defending their vessels, turning the winds, clearing the fog. Each and every one was brighter than I had ever seen before.

These became stronger as we passed the mouth of the bay and the full Mereish Fleet came into sight. They were a forest of masts to all sides, every one of them lit with ghisten glow. Just when I thought I could discern the edge of the fleet, I saw another mast, the bulk of another hull, the glint of more magelight. Ghistings manifested throughout, driving back creatures as Sooths—many of them Summoners—worked from the decks of their ships.

A hand closed on my wrist and, distantly, I felt the press of the coin into my flesh. Mary's voice came to me, joining my will to draw me back to myself. The clash of lights faded, though not entirely— so many creatures had come through the boundary between worlds, and my sense of the Other could not be wholly stifled, not tonight. It was disorienting, more than a little nauseating—but, more than that, it was exhilarating. My blood surged hot through my veins, and I felt my power everywhere around us, swirling and billowing like the cool damp of the fog across my cheeks.

"We're nearly through," Mary murmured. She stood close, her hands still cupping mine, holding the coin to my palm. She nodded out to the fog-wrapped fleet, but my eyes, I found, refused to leave her face.

When my gaze was full of her, the heady rush of my power relented, the lights faded that much more, and I felt a little more at rest in my bones. She anchored me with the cool touch of her hands, her nearness, and the sound of her voice.

She returned my stare quizzically. I folded my other hand over hers, and we held one another there, suspended, as the fog billowed and the fleet and all its monsters faded back into obscurity.

The open sea was before us and we changed course, heading for home.

Heading for war.