Chapter 23 #2
Those were the words his parents once said about their own feelings for one another. Augustus understood them now in a way he never dreamed possible.
Blaze nodded. “She’s pretty incredible. I wish I’d had a chance to get to know her better.”
“You could see this through with me.”
He hated that hope had filtered into his tone, but it was too late to take it back.
Blaze’s eyes lowered. “We’ll go with you as far as Okos.
The others are itching to find more work.
And, it wouldn’t hurt for you to take a few days to fill your crew before you face Thorne.
Or, better yet, use a bit of that wealth you’re hoarding to hire an army of mercenaries. The city is full of them.”
Augustus didn’t trust men who were transactional.
Cassia’s voice rose from memory. “Gold buys blades, not loyalty. Don’t mistake the two.”
She never trusted anyone who didn’t bleed for something worth more than coin.
But…he may not have a choice.
“I’ll think about it,” he said. “Although I think Scout’s worth five of one of your Rangers in battle. We may not need anyone else.”
Blaze laughed. “It’s too bad you can’t replicate Bee, Rook, and Fish. Those three…” He gave a low whistle. “I pity anyone on their bad side.”
A beat of tension reinserted itself—they weren’t ready to dive back into “friends” territory just yet. It was too forced after what just happened.
Blaze started to go, but paused, not facing him. “Tell Selene…thank you. For loving you the way I never—”
A bell tolled from the crow’s nest.
The crew faced the same direction, standing like a stone tableau captured moments before the world blew apart. The air weighed down on Augustus’s shoulders as he crossed the main deck.
“What’s going on?” he asked William. “Willy” was Omar’s youngest son and close in age to Augustus.
Willy nodded southwest. “Ghost ship.”
Blaze strode with him to the nearest railing, and there it was. The ship cut through the haze and fog with torn, limp sails, nothing more than a silhouette from this distance. It looked strangely small all alone in the vast ocean, though it must have been the size of the Entia.
Augustus joined Lili on the forecastle, where she, the Rangers, and Oskar watched from the railing.
Lili peered through a spyglass but dropped her arm suddenly. Her face contorted into what could only be described as anguish.
“What?” he asked.
Her voice cracked out the words. “It’s the Akias.”
Augustus snatched the spyglass from her. Through the lens, a nightmare version of the ship he grew up on. And roaring from the bow, the familiar three-headed god—bull, bear, and jackal. There was no movement, no figure at the helm, no echo of voices on the wind, no clatter of rigging.
He lowered the glass. “It’s her.”
“No. Let me see that,” Blaze said, taking the spyglass. “Gods.” The Ranger fumbled the glass and stepped aside, his jaw muscles flaring. His gaze shot to Augustus with a sea of apologies in his eyes.
Oskar, from Blaze’s other side, asked Augustus, “You’re certain?”
The air seemed to tighten around his chest. “It’s my father’s ship.”
“I don’t see anyone aboard,” Blaze said. “They probably just cut her loose.”
Lili grabbed his wrist as if to squeeze that bit of hope into his bloodstream. “They’re all right. They have to be.”
The words were as much for him as for herself.
Her father, Loto, sailed with Mettius.
A pit opened in his stomach. Losing his father only months after his mother… He couldn’t fathom that the gods would be so cruel.
As they drew near, the creak of the ship reached far and wide over the waves. No lanterns, no signals, no flags.
No life.
It was like witnessing the stillness of a cruel death.
“Pull alongside her,” he called to Victoria at the helm. Then, to everyone else, “Prepare to board.”
Oskar stepped further toward the bow, a shadow in wait.
A groan unrolled across the water, a deep and guttural sound as if the ship was sighing its final breath. The sea slapped against the hull, then nothing. No cry of birds, no flutter of movement, no creak of rope.
Below on the main deck, a child’s voice asked, “What’s that smell?”
Augustus’s stomach turned, and Blaze squeezed his shoulder.
That was decay on the wind, faint but putrid.
The ship held its breath as the Entia pulled alongside her mate.
Silent stares from all over crept along the back of Augustus’s neck, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the main deck of his father’s ship.
Dark streaks slashed across the planks—blood or tar? He couldn’t tell. The smear trail led below into the bowels of the ship. Broken crates littered the deck, and ropes dangled uselessly. Barrels had been shattered.
Behind him, Omar called out an order, though it was quiet. “Arm yourselves. Just in case.”
Augustus was the first across the gangplank, cutlass in hand, knuckles screaming. He jumped into the oppressive silence, the ghosts of his past a shroud. The stench of rot and decay clung to everything he passed.
His crew held handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses, taking it all in. They kicked the pieces of crates out of the way and picked up discarded weapons coated in dried blood. A bucket and brush lay on its side, the water that had been inside long dried up.
Augustus followed the smeared trail of dried blood, moving hanging ropes aside as he went. The more he walked, the less he felt his own feet or hands.
He paused at the stairs that led below, and Lili stopped in his periphery. She wobbled.
Augustus shot back to her side to hold her up. “Lili?”
“I can’t,” she whispered, words catching.
“You don’t have to. I’ll do it. Stay here.”
Oskar halted him with a hand on the arm. “Let us go first.”
Relief ripped at Augustus’s knees. This ship had been his home. He’d run and laughed and played and worked and fought and fucked all over these decks. He’d grown into a man here.
What he hadn’t been before now was a man frightened by the unknown in the dark below.
Oskar motioned to the Blades within the group, and the half dozen men in black tunics descended into the bowels like a dense shadow.
An eternity crept by with Lili to one side and Blaze to his other. He hadn’t moved in so long that he wasn’t sure he remembered how.
“I could go,” Blaze offered when the Blades didn’t return.
Augustus’s body screamed yes, but something inside him held firm. A voice.
Cassia. "A captain doesn’t send others into the dark to face what he fears. They go first, Augustus. They face their dead. They carry them home."
Cassia’s words, snapped years ago when a younger Augustus balked at delivering news of a crewmate’s death to the family waiting at home. She’d cuffed him on the back of the head, and made him walk barefoot to that house with a bottle of whiskey and no excuses.
“If you ever want to command your own ship, you’ll learn this: your crew follows your courage, not your orders.”
His mother had never softened the truth. And now, her truth sat in his chest like an anchor.
Augustus unclenched his teeth. “No. I’ll go.”
Blaze glanced over to Lili, then said, “Why don’t we all go?”
Lili nodded, her lips pinched together.
The air cooled as they descended, and the smell worsened.
In the cargo hold, Augustus released his held breath.
The damage was worse here than it had been above, but still no bodies.
No life, either. The contents of overturned barrels leaked onto the floor, forming dark puddles.
Crates were smashed. And shackles had been used and discarded—hundreds of them.
“The Blades must be in the lower hold,” Lili said with tears streaming.
They all understood what had happened here. The crew had been held captive here until the end.
Blaze opened the hatch, and lamplight erupted upward like rays of sunlight. He met Augustus’s eyes, then went through.
At the hatch, the smell hit Augustus in full force, but all he saw were piles of decaying food and swarms of flies. Was this all it was?
“Food,” he said to Lili, breath flying from his chest in a gust. “It’s rotting food.”
She laughed through her tears. “Really?”
Blaze appeared in his eyeline, his expression grim. He shook his head.
Augustus flew down the stairs only to skid to a stop.
He didn’t understand what he was seeing at first. Couldn’t process it.
Oskar and the Blades strolled through the upright planks that had sprung up like stalks of dry wheat. Hundreds of them nailed to the floor with blood streaking the pale wood.
He’d never seen anything like it—the time it must have taken to fashion them in such a way—
Lili took one staggering step. Then another. Her hand flew to her mouth.
“No,” she moaned. “No, no—”
Her scream curdled his blood. She bolted forward and crashed to her knees before a face too familiar to mistake.
Then it all came together.
Lili clutched the face at the top of the board, Loto’s expression frozen in death, skin sagging, eyes missing. No body.
Just his head.
They were all just heads.
The entire crew of the Akias…this was all that remained.
A spot of royal blue drew Augustus’s attention.
He dragged his entire body toward it as if weighted by an anchor.
He trudged by Dominik and Maria and Peter and Riley—
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Following that spot of color as if it were his only lifeline.
Each step quieter than the last. The creak of the floor a whisper. Only the color remained. Blue and gold.
His father’s waistcoat.
They’d nailed it to the plank just where a head should have been. And just above that, pinned by a glinting, bloodless blade, was a piece of parchment. Scrawled across the middle was Augustus’s name.
Augustus yanked the paper free and skimmed the words.
Blaze appeared at his side and read over his shoulder: “‘Come and get me.’”
Augustus balled up the note, his voice like steel across stone. “With fire and blood, then.”