Lady Smoke Read online

  For a second, he looks like he wants to argue, but then he places his hand over mine and holds it there. I try to ignore how hot his skin is.

  “Why couldn’t you sleep?” he asks me finally.

  I can’t tell him about my nightmare, but I can’t lie to him either. I settle for something in the middle—a partial truth.

  “I can’t sleep alone,” I tell him, as if it’s as simple as that. We both know it isn’t.

  I wait for the judgment to come, for him to tell me how ridiculous that is, that I shouldn’t miss having Shadows to watch my every move. But of course, he doesn’t. He knows that’s not what I’m saying at all.

  “I’ll sleep with you,” he says before realizing what he said. It’s too dark out to say for sure, but I think his ears turn red. “I mean…well, you know what I mean. I can be there, if that will help.”

  I smile slightly. “I think it will,” I say, and because I can’t resist, I don’t stop there. “I would sleep even better if you tried to sleep, too.”

  “Theo,” he says with a sigh.

  “I know,” I say. “It isn’t that simple. I just wish it were.”

  * * *

  —

  As Blaise and I make our way to my cabin, I feel the eyes of the crew on us. I can imagine how this looks to them, the two of us walking together at this hour. By sunrise, they’ll all be whispering that Blaise and I are lovers. I would rather people didn’t whisper about me at all, but if that rumor eclipses the ones about Søren and me, I wouldn’t mind.

  A romance with Blaise is a much better rumor because it’s one the crew will support wholeheartedly, if for no other reason than that he’s Astrean. And the more support I have from the crew, the better. I can’t help but remember how dismissive Dragonsbane was when I came on board, how she spoke to me like I was a lost child instead of a queen. Her queen. I worry it’s going to get worse.

  I force myself to stop that line of thought. How did I become so conniving? I do have feelings for Blaise and I know he has them for me as well, but I didn’t even consider that. I went straight to plotting, straight to seeing how he could be used to my political advantage. How did I become that sort of person?

  I’m thinking like the Kaiser. The realization sends a shudder through me.

  Blaise feels it. “Are you all right?” he asks as I open the door to my cabin and lead him inside.

  I turn to look at him, and push the Kaiser’s voice out of my mind. I don’t think about who saw us come in or what they’ll say or how I can work that to my advantage. I don’t think about what we talked about a few moments ago. I just think about us, alone in a room together.

  “Thank you for staying with me,” I say instead of answering.

  He smiles briefly before glancing away. “It’s you who’s doing me a favor. I’m bunking with Heron, and he snores loud enough to shake the whole ship.”

  I laugh.

  “I’ll lie on the floor while you sleep,” he says.

  “Don’t,” I say, surprising myself.

  His eyes widen slightly as he looks at me. It feels like we’re going to stand here in frozen, awkward silence for eons, so I break the spell. I step toward him and take him by the hand.

  “Theo,” he says, but I press a finger to his lips before he can ruin this with warnings I don’t want to hear.

  “Just…hold me?” I say.

  He sighs and I know he’s going to say no, that he should keep his distance because I am not his childhood friend anymore. I am his queen, and that makes everything so much more complicated. So I play a cheap card, one I know he won’t say no to.

  “I’ll feel safer, Blaise. Please.”

  His eyes soften and I know I have him. Without a word, I let my hand fall away from his lips and I pull him with me to the bed. We fit together perfectly, his body curling around mine, his arms around me. Even here at sea, he smells like hearth fire and spice—like home. His skin is scorching hot, but I try not to think about that. Instead, I feel his heartbeat thrumming through me, falling into a rhythm with my own, and I let it lull me to sleep.

  WHEN I WAKE UP, BLAISE is gone and the room is too cold without him. There’s a note on the pillow next to my head.

  Had swabbing duty this morning. I’ll see you tonight.

  Yours,

  Blaise

  Yours. The word sticks with me as I try to smooth my frizzy hair into something presentable and adjust my rumpled clothes. In another life, I would probably flutter over a word like that, but now it rubs me the wrong way. It takes me a moment to work out why that is: it’s the same way Søren signed his letters to me.

  I try not to let my thoughts linger too long on Søren. He’s alive and safe and that’s all I can do for him now. It’s more than he deserves after what he did in Vecturia, after his hands became too drenched in blood to ever really be clean again.

  And what about your hands? a voice whispers in my mind. It sounds like Cress.

  I pull on the boots Dragonsbane gave me. They’re a size too large and they clunk when I walk, but I can’t complain, especially considering that unlike Blaise, I don’t have any chores on the ship. Yesterday, during Dragonsbane’s tour, she explained that everyone aboard has some assigned daily task to earn their keep. Heron got a daily shift in the kitchens and Artemisia will have to run the sails for a few hours each day. Even the children take on small tasks like pouring water at mealtimes or running errands for Dragonsbane.

  I asked Dragonsbane what I could do to help, but she only smiled and gave my hand a condescending pat.

  “You’re our princess. That’s all we need for you to do.”

  I’m your queen, I’d wanted to say, but I couldn’t make my mouth form the words.

  When I step out onto the deck, the sun is surprisingly high in the sky, so bright it’s blinding. How long did I sleep? It must be close to noon, and the ship is buzzing with activity. I search the crowded deck for a face I know, but all I find is a sea of strangers.

  “Your Majesty,” one man says with a bow as he hurries past, carrying a bucket of water. I open my mouth to reply, but before I can, a woman curtsies and repeats the sentiment.

  After a while, I realize it’s best to just smile and nod in response.

  I make my way across the deck, nodding and smiling and searching for someone I know, but as soon as I find a familiar pair of eyes, I wish I hadn’t.

  Elpis’s mother, Nadine, is standing beneath the mainsail, mop in hand as she washes the deck, though she stands frozen now, the mop suspended and dripping gray water. Her eyes are heavy on mine, yet her face remains blank. She looks so much like her daughter that it took me aback the first time I met her—the same round face and dark, deep-set eyes.

  When I told her about Elpis last night after Dragonsbane’s tour, she said all the right things, even through her tears. She thanked me for trying to save her daughter, for being a friend to her, for vowing vengeance against the Kaiser, but the words felt hollow and I would have rather she railed against me and accused me of killing Elpis myself. It would have been a relief, I think, to hear someone give voice to my own guilty thoughts.

  She tears her eyes away from me and focuses on her mopping again, scrubbing hard at the deck, as if she wants to wear a hole in it.

  “Theo,” a voice says behind me, and I’m so grateful for the distraction that it takes me a moment to realize it’s Artemisia calling me.

  She stands against the railing of the ship in an outfit like mine—slim brown trousers and a white cotton shirt—though hers somehow looks better, like it’s something she’s wearing by choice and not because there are no other options. Her body faces the water, with her arms outstretched, though she looks at me. Her hair hangs down around her shoulders in messy white waves that transition to bright cerulean tips. The Water Gem pin I stole from Crescentia is embedd
ed in her hair, and the ink-blue stones glisten in the sunlight. I know she’s self-conscious about her hair and I try not to stare at it, but it’s difficult not to. At her hip is a sheathed dagger with a gold filigreed hilt. At first, I think it might be mine, but it can’t be. I saw mine moments ago in my room, tucked away under my pillow.

  It takes me a moment to realize what she’s doing. The Water Gem in her hair isn’t glistening in the sunlight—it’s actually glowing. Because she’s using it. When I look closely at her fingers, I can almost see the magic flooding from them, as fine as the ocean’s mist.

  “What are you doing?” I ask her as I approach somewhat warily. I like to think that I’m not afraid of Artemisia, but I’d be a fool not to be. She is a fearsome creature, even without her magic.

  She gives me an impish smile and rolls her eyes. “My mother thinks we should be going faster in case the Kalovaxians are following,” she says.

  “So she asked for your help?”

  At that, Artemisia laughs. “Oh no, my mother would never ask for help from anyone, not even me,” she says. “No, she ordered this.”

  I lean against the rail next to her. “I didn’t think you took orders from anyone,” I say.

  She doesn’t respond to that, only shrugs.

  I look out at the great expanse of blue waves, stretching as far as I can see. I can make out the other ships in Dragonsbane’s fleet trailing in the Smoke’s wake. “What are you doing exactly?” I ask her after a moment.

  “Twisting the tides in our favor,” she says. “So that they’re going with us, not against us.”

  “That’s a sizable use of power. Are you sure you can handle it on your own?”

  I don’t mean offense at the question, but Artemisia bristles. “It’s not as difficult as it seems. It’s pushing a natural body of water to do what it wants to do anyway, just changing direction. Literally turning the tide, as it were. And it isn’t as if I’m changing the whole Calodean Sea—just the bit around our fleet.”

  “I trust your judgment,” I tell her. Silence falls and I watch her work, her hands twisting gracefully in the air before us, the fine sea mist of magic seeping from her fingers.

  She’s my cousin, I remember suddenly, though I don’t think that thought will ever become less ludicrous. We are as different as any two people could be, but our mothers were sisters. Twins, even.

  The first time I saw her, she changed her hair from the blue and white that marks her Water Gift to a deep brown tinged with red, like mine. I thought she’d been mocking me or trying to make me uncomfortable, but that must have been the color her hair was before she was marked, the same as her mother’s and my mother’s and mine. She must have always known we were cousins, but she never said a word.

  The same blood runs through our veins, I think, and what blood it is.

  “Do you ever think it strange that we’re descended from the fire god but you were chosen by the water goddess?” I ask her after a moment.

  She glances sideways at me. “Not particularly,” she says. “I’m not much of a spiritual person, you know that. Maybe we are descended from Houzzah, or maybe that’s only a myth to enforce our family’s claim to the throne. Either way, I don’t think magic has anything to do with blood. Heron says that Suta saw me in her temple, that of everyone there, she chose me and blessed me with this gift, but I don’t know that I like that answer either.”

  “What answer do you like?” I ask her.

  She doesn’t respond, instead focusing on the sea before her, moving her hands through the air with the grace of a dancer. “Why are you so curious about my gift?” she asks.

  It’s my turn to shrug. “No reason in particular. I would imagine most people are.”

  “No, not really,” she says, frowning as she jerks her hands suddenly to the left, then back in front of her. “Mostly, people just tell me how blessed I am. Sometimes they say it while combing their fingers through my hair—I always hate that. Either way, no one ever asks me questions about it. That would dance too closely to talking about the mine, and they don’t want to hear about that. Better they think of it as something mystical that exists beyond the realm of their curiosity.”

  “I didn’t think you would be surprised to find that few things exist beyond the realm of my curiosity,” I say lightly, though her words still have a thorned grip on me.

  If Artemisia notices my discomfort, she ignores it. “You slept in awfully late,” she says instead. There’s a barb in there somewhere, but it doesn’t land as hard as her barbs usually do. It was the same yesterday, after we came on board the Smoke—she mumbled and fidgeted, and I’ve never known Artemisia to do either. There is none of the bite or sarcasm I’m used to from her. In her mother’s shadow, she’s become less of herself.

  “I didn’t mean to oversleep. I was up most of the night—”

  “Blaise said you weren’t feeling well,” she interrupts, but the smug look she gives me says she thinks that’s a euphemism for something else entirely. The rumors must have already begun to spread.

  My cheeks burn. “I’m fine,” I tell her before searching for a way to change the subject. After a moment, I nod toward the dagger sheathed at her hip. “What’s that for?”

  She lowers her hands and the flow of magic ceases. She touches the hilt idly, the same way I’ve seen women at court fiddle with their jewelry. “I wanted to try to get some practice in after my shift,” she admits. “There wasn’t a lot of opportunity to use it after taking out your Shadows, so I’m rusty.”

  “You killed them?” I ask.

  She snorts. “Who did you think? Heron says it goes against his gift to cause harm, and Blaise doesn’t like to get his hands dirty unless it’s necessary. He likely would have if I’d asked it of him, but…” She trails off.

  “But you like doing it,” I finish.

  Her eyes flash and her smile is grim. “It feels good,” she says. “To take something back.”

  She opens her mouth and I ready myself for a pointed comment about how I couldn’t kill Søren when I had the chance, but it doesn’t come.

  “I can teach you,” she says instead, surprising me. “How to use a dagger, I mean.”

  I look at the weapon at her hip and try to imagine myself wielding it—not like I did in the tunnel with Søren, with shaking hands and paralyzing doubt, but like someone who knows what they’re doing. I remember the Kaiser’s breath on my neck, his hand gripping my hip, inching up my thigh. I felt helpless in those moments, and I never want to feel helpless again. I push the thought away. I’m not a murderer.

  “After Ampelio…I don’t think I have it in me,” I tell her finally, wishing that it weren’t the case.

  “I think you’d be surprised at what you have in you,” Artemisia says.

  Before I can reply, we’re interrupted by the approaching tap of boots against the wood deck, the sound stronger and more clipped than anyone else’s step. Art must recognize the gait, because she almost seems to shrink in on herself before turning toward it.

  “Mother,” she says, the hand on the hilt of her dagger fidgeting again. A nervous habit, I realize, though yesterday I would have laughed at the idea of anyone making Artemisia nervous.

  Steeling myself, I turn to face her as well. “Dragonsbane,” I say.

  She stands tall and poised, taking up more space than it seems like she should, given her size. She wears the same outfit as the rest of the crew, apart from the shoes. Instead of bulky work boots, she wears knee-high boots with a thick block heel. I wondered, at first, how practical they were to wear on a ship, but she never so much as stumbles, and they give her a few extra inches in height that I imagine make her appear more imposing to her crew.

  When her eyes meet mine, she smiles, but it isn’t the same smile my mother used to wear. Instead, she looks at me the way Cress would look at a poem she w
as having trouble translating.

  “I’m glad to see the two of you are getting along,” she says, but she doesn’t sound glad at all. She sounds vaguely cross about something, though I think that might be how she always sounds.

  “Of course,” I say, trying on a smile. “Artemisia was invaluable in getting me out of the palace and in murdering the Theyn. We wouldn’t have been able to do anything without her.”

  Next to me, Art doesn’t speak. She stares down at the planks of wood beneath her mother’s boots.

  “Yes, she’s quite special. Of course, she’s the only child I have left, so she’s particularly invaluable to me.”

  There’s an undercurrent in her tone that makes Art flinch. She had a brother. She told me he was with her in the mine, that he’d gone mad and was killed by a guard she later murdered. Before I can think too much about the energy between them, Dragonsbane snaps her attention to me.

  “We have plans to make, Theo. Let’s discuss them in my cabin.”

  I begin to respond, but Art gets there first.

  “Your Majesty,” she says quietly, though she still won’t look at her mother.

  “Hmm?” Dragonsbane says, yet judging by the way her shoulders tensed, she heard perfectly well.

  Artemisia finally looks up to meet her mother’s gaze. “You should call her ‘Your Majesty,’ especially where others can hear you.”

  Dragonsbane’s smile is taut as a bowstring ready to snap. “Of course, you’re right,” she says, though the words sound forced. She turns back to me and bows shallowly.

  “Your Majesty, your presence is requested in my most humble cabin. Is that better, Artemisia?” she asks.

  Artemisia doesn’t answer. Her cheeks are bright red and her gaze drops again.