Prologue
On a storm-whipped sea, some prayed, some puked. Catherine Blade wedged herself between the bed and the bulkhead of her stateroom and went on with her breathing exercises, ignoring the fifty-foot swells of the North Atlantic and the teetering of the steamship.
A muffled shriek, faint but entirely unexpected, nearly caused her pooled chi to scatter. Really, she’d expected more reserve from members of the British upper class.
Then something else. A blunt sound, as if generated by a kick to the back of the neck. She checked for the box of matches she carried inside her blouse.
There was no light in the corridor—the electricity had been cut off.
She braced her feet apart, held on to the doorknob, and listened, diving beneath the unholy lashing of the sea, the heroic, if desperate, roar of the ship’s engines, and the fearful moans in staterooms all along the corridor—the abundant dinner from earlier now tossing in stomachs as turbulent as the sea.
The shriek came again, all but lost in the howl of the storm. It came from the outside this time, farther fore along the port promenade.
She walked on soft, cloth-soled shoes that made no sounds.
The air in the passage was colder and damper than it ought to be—someone had opened a door to the outside.
She suspected a domestic squabble. The English were a stern people in outward appearance, but they did not lack for passion and injudiciousness in private.
A cross-corridor interrupted the rows of first-class staterooms. At the two ends were doors leading onto the promenade. She stopped at the scent of blood.
“Who’s there?”
“Help…”
She recognized the voice, though she’d never heard it so weak. “Mrs. Reynolds, are you all right?”
The light of a match showed that Mrs. Reynolds bled from her head. Blood smeared her face and her white dressing gown. Next to her on the carpet sprawled a large, leather-bound Bible, likely her own: the weapon of assault.
The ship plunged. Mrs. Reynolds’s body slid on the carpet. Catherine leaped and stayed her before her temple slammed into the bulkhead. She gripped Mrs. Reynolds’s wrist. The older woman’s skin was cold and clammy, but her pulse was strong enough—she was in no immediate danger of bleeding to death.
“Althea…outside…save her…”
Althea was Mrs. Reynolds’s sister, Mrs. Chase. Mrs. Chase could rot.
“Let’s stop your bleeding,” she said to Mrs. Reynolds, ripping a strip of silk from the latter’s dressing gown.
“No!” Mrs. Reynolds pushed away the makeshift bandage. “Please…Althea first.”
Catherine sighed. She would comply—that was what came of a lifetime of deference to one’s elders. “Hold this,” she said, pressing the matchbox and the strip of silk into Mrs. Reynolds’s hands.
She was soaked the moment she stepped outside.
The ship slanted up. She grabbed on to a handrail.
A blue-white streak of lightning tore across the black sky, illuminating needles of rain that pummeled the ankle-deep water sloshing along the walkway.
It illuminated a drenched Mrs. Chase, dressing gown clinging to her ripe flesh, abdomen balanced on the rail, body flexed like a bow—as if she were an aerialist in mid-flight.
Her arms flailed, her eyes screwed shut, her mouth issued gargles of incoherent terror.
A more distant lightning briefly revealed the silhouette of a man standing behind Mrs. Chase, holding on to her feet. Then the heavens erupted in pale fire. Thunderbolts spiked and interwove, a chandelier of the gods that would set the entire ocean ablaze. And she saw the man’s face.
What had the Ancients said? You can wear out soles of iron in your search, and you would come upon your quarry when you least expect.
The murderer of her child.
A dagger from Catherine’s vambrace hissed through the air, the sound of its flight lost in the thunder that rended her ears. But he heard. He jerked his head back at the last possible second, the knife barely missing his nose.
Darkness. The ship listed sharply starboard. Mrs. Chase’s copious flesh hit the deck with a thud and a splash. Catherine threw herself down as two sleeve arrows, one for each of her eyes, shot past her.
The steamer crested a swell and plunged into the hollow between waves. She allowed herself to slide forward on the smooth planks of the walkway. A weak lightning at the edge of the horizon offered a fleeting glow, enough for her to see his outline.
She pushed off the deck and, borrowing the ship’s own downward momentum, leaped toward him, one knife in each hand. He threw a large object at her—she couldn’t see, but it had to be Mrs. Chase, there was nothing else of comparable size nearby.
She flipped the knives around in her palms and caught Mrs. Chase, staggering backward—the woman was the weight of a prize pig and the ship had begun its laborious climb up another huge swell.
She set Mrs. Chase down and let the small river on deck wash them both toward the door. She had to get Mrs. Chase out of the way to kill him properly.
More sleeve arrows skimmed the air currents. Fortunately for her, his sleeves were sodden and the arrows arrived without their usual vicious abruptness. She ducked one and deflected another from the back of Mrs. Chase’s head with the blade of a knife.
Catherine kicked open the door. Sending both of her knives his way to buy a little time, she dragged Mrs. Chase’s inert, uncooperative body inside.
A match flared before Mrs. Reynolds’s face, a stark chiaroscuro of anxious eyes and bloodied cheeks.
As Catherine set Mrs. Chase down on the wet carpet, Mrs. Reynolds, who should have stayed in her corner, docilely suffering, found the strength to get up, push the door shut, and bolt it.
“No!” shouted Catherine.
He wanted to kill her almost as much as she wanted to kill him. One of them would die this night. She preferred to fight outside, where there were no helpless women underfoot.
Almost immediately the door thudded. Mrs. Reynolds yelped and dropped the match, which fizzled on the sodden carpet.
Catherine grabbed the matchbox from her, lit another one, stuck it in Mrs. Reynolds’s hand, and wrapped the long scrap of dressing gown around her head.
“Don’t worry about Mrs. Chase. She will have bumps and bruises, but she’ll be all right. ”
Mrs. Reynolds gripped Catherine’s hand. “Thank you. Thank you for saving her.”
The match burned out. Another heavy thump came at the door.
The mooring of the dead bolt must be tearing loose from the bulkhead.
She tried to pull away from Mrs. Reynolds but the latter would not let go of her.
“I cannot allow you to put yourself in danger for us again, Miss Blade. We will pray and throw ourselves on God’s mercy. ”
Crack. Thump. Crack.
Impatiently, she stabbed her index finger into the back of Mrs. Reynolds’s wrist. The woman’s fingers fell slack. Catherine rushed forward and kicked the door. It was in such a poor state now that it could be forced out as well as in.
As she drew back to gather momentum, he rammed the door once more. A flash of lightning lit the crooked edges of the door—it was already hanging loose.
She slammed her entire body into the door. Her skeleton jarred as if she had thrown herself at a careening carriage. The door gave outward, enough of an opening that she slipped through.
His poisoned palm slashed down at her. She ducked, and too late realized it had been a ruse, that he’d always meant to hit her from the other side. She screamed, the pain like a red-hot brand searing into her skin.
The ship plunged bow first. She used its motion to get away from him. A section of handrail flew at her. She smashed herself against the bulkhead, barely avoiding it.
The ship rose to meet a new, nauseatingly high wave. She slipped, stopping herself with the door, stressing its one remaining hinge. He surprised her by skating aft quite some distance, his motion a smooth, long glide through water.
Then, as the ship dove down, he ran toward her.
She recognized it as the prelude to a monstrous leap.
On flat ground, she’d do the same, running toward him, springing, meeting him in midair.
But she’d be running uphill now, and against the torrent of water on deck.
She’d never generate enough momentum to counter him properly.
In desperation, she wrenched at the door with a strength that surprised her. It came loose as his feet left the deck. She screamed and heaved the door at him.
The door met him flat on at the height of his trajectory, nearly twelve feet up in the air, and knocked him sideways. He went over the rail, past the deck below, and plunged into the sea. The door ricocheted into the bulkhead, bounced on the rail, and finally it, too, hit the roiling waters.
The steamer tilted precariously. She stumbled aft, grasping for a handrail. By the time the vessel crested the wave and another lightning bolt split the sky, he had disappeared.
She began to laugh wildly—vengeance was hers.
Then her laughter turned to a violent fit of coughing. She clutched at her chest and vomited black blood into the black night.