Tempest (The Lyrian Sea #1)

Chapter One After

SHIPS APPEARED ON the endless horizon.

It was hardly an unusual sight in the islands of the Lyrian Sea, where trade winds and swift currents brought countless vessels. Ships of war, ships of trade, ships of passage, ships with no direction at all.

Ships of every flag—and none.

Catrine Rose watched in silence from the shore, staring out at the Archenport harbor as it woke up.

She looked past the small boats and grander ships, her eyes fixed on the stone arch rising out of the water beyond the docks.

Wind and waves and time carved it thus, the white rocks worn smooth, older than living memory.

Once the arch had held the black flag, but the Meridian navy burned it upon landing.

Now the nooses hung in its stead, the bodies flag enough.

Her gaze snagged on the last salt-eaten rope in the line, its loop undone, leaving no trace of the man it once held.

“May the sea always sing for you,” Cat whispered, so low the gentle waves swallowed up her words.

But the old farewell echoed in her head, achingly familiar. She supposed the sea was a better fate for a pirate, to finally slip beneath the surface and escape the blistering cycle of sun and rot. It was where their bones belonged.

Shadows flitted in the water beneath the bodies, dark shapes twisting in the waves. Cat knew better than to suspect ghosts, mermaids, or anything beyond the harsh, hard reality of the world.

A fin broke the surface, black and slick. The sharks circled lazily, waiting for more corpses to drop like over-ripened fruit.

You will not have to wait long, Cat thought, eyeing the five bodies still dangling from the arch. All limped through the languid stages of decay. They were unrecognizable, but Cat saw their faces anyway. They felt burned in her mind, scarring deeper than a brand.

Somehow the corpses seemed to stare back at her, glaring without eyes.

Cat lingered, letting the ghosts watch.

There were worse things in the world than corpses.

Slowly, she raised her gaze, looking past the many ships at anchor, over the curved harbor of Archenport, beyond the rocky peninsula and lighthouse marking the western end of Beacon Island.

Cat shaded her eyes, squinting as if she could see past the horizon itself, through turquoise shallows fading to sapphire deep.

The Lyrian Sea had felt vast once, the unfathomable waters ringed by islands like jewels in a necklace. Now the sea grew small, the necklace drawn tight around her throat, threatening to hang her with all the rest.

Cat looked to the arch again.

The white stones held firm, older than everything else on the island. The curve used to sing when the wind was right, as if the Lyrian itself called out with a distant voice. But the arch did not sing anymore, no matter how hard the wind blew.

What a past it had seen. What a future it might still behold, Cat could not say. One thing alone was certain.

The horizon, once endless, had been conquered.

The sun reached her face, its touch hot and golden. At least some things never changed. While the bodies wasted and the ships flew different flags, the sun and wind and tide remained constant. For that, Cat was grateful. She liked predictable things, and little was predictable anymore.

With quick motions, she flicked her hand, lifting the gold pocket watch attached to her belt.

The face was cracked but the mechanism ticked, black hands counting out the minutes as they slid by.

The clock was off, more and more every day, if the bells of the church and the harbor guns were to be trusted.

But it was not the time Cat cared about, not truly.

She lingered on the painted image of a rose, intricate in miniature.

And fading away, the red bloom washing to pale pink.

Cat felt the same, a flower faded by the long march of time.

She snapped the watch shut and spun on her heel, putting the corpses and the harbor to her back with sharp efficiency. She did not bother to say goodbye to the bodies. Those men and women were not her friends, not truly.

It was just business, she told herself as she left the water’s edge. Survival.

My head or theirs.

Above the harbor, the city of Archenport unfurled. White sand and the dockside gave way to cobblestone streets arranged in neat lines. The reclaimed capital was small compared to the grand cities of the Continent, but still the jewel of the Meridian colonies.

Fort Morden frowned over it all, perched at the top of the hill.

Low and squat like its namesake, the first toadish lord sent to command the colonies, its limestone walls glowed above the verdant green palm trees.

Cannons ran its length, the gun battery a crown of iron against the rising sun.

The guns were silent now, but Cat remembered Morden’s wrath.

Cannon fire like thunder. The smell of gunpowder and blood.

Archenport was nothing if not steeped in memory. Every step felt like walking through time itself, the days marked by old stone and new brick, worn iron and fresh wood. Year after year stacked on top of each other like matchsticks. And even more liable to burn.

Fifty years ago, there was no city at all on Beacon Island. Not even a stretch of tents on the sand or a boat in the shallows. Just a crescent beach, the swaying palms, and the stone arch alone to watch the dawn.

Or so the history books say, Cat thought, her lips twisting.

She had believed them once but knew better now.

Certainly, the first Meridian explorers found more than empty sand; she imagined them burning villages and plundering temples, their ships leaving disease and death in their wake.

It was the same across the rest of the Lyrian Sea, where the flags of foreign crowns sprang up across conquered shores. On every island, save one.

Whatever the first invaders found—whatever they removed—left no testament but the stone arch in the water and a whisper in the trees.

So the flag was planted. The Meridian Empire built the fort, the prim little church, and the lighthouse. Merchants, sailors, wayfarers, and all those seeking their fortunes built the rest.

Since then, the island city had stood through hurricane and siege. Treaties and war. Pirates and kings. And now, with the return of the navy, too many sailors to count, from gallant officers to ruddy enlisted to scrappy cabin boys.

Some slept on their ships at the new docks or anchored in the bay, the towering men-o’-war too big for the close shallows.

A few in the barracks at the fort. But most were left to sailcloth tents on the beach, and all were constantly underfoot.

Cat despaired of the shanty town of navy men, polishing their new buttons as they slept in the sand.

The new lads sported the worst sunburns and sweat stains, fresh to life in the Lyrian Sea.

Others were glass-eyed with the heat, or quarantined on the other side of the beach, already succumbing to island sickness.

Some still wore dress uniforms, stubbornly sweating in their stiff wool coats.

Cat knew they would soon learn to fear heat stroke more than wounded pride.

She scanned them as she passed, eyeing the few officers and men of rank. None looked promising, both useless and uninteresting. Poor customers at best. No money, no prospects, all simple and desperate to make their fortunes in the Lyrian Sea.

That is a tale I know all too well.

There were even more sailors in the city, alongside all manner of merchants and indentured servants and craftsmen going about their busy mornings.

Like Cat, they had to adjust to the new balance in Archenport, trading pirates for the navy.

A precarious transition, if not deadly, but gold was gold at the end of all things.

So long as goods were bought and bills paid, life went on.

So it was under the pirates, and so it would be again beneath the Empire.

Albeit with quite a few more gallows, she thought.

The new colonists were wide-eyed and sunburned as the sailors on the beach. Cat paid them little attention. Most would go screaming back to the Continent after their first storm season.

She scattered crumbs from a hard biscuit as she walked, and bright green parrots chirped in her wake, skittering along the cobblestones. The crows did not bother. They had more than their fill, gorging on the bodies adorning the streets.

The city was worse than the harbor, with less wind to carry away the smell, and more corpses left to rot.

Dozens hung through the city, strung up like drying tobacco.

Many were tarred and caged in gibbets to preserve the bodies as long as possible.

It made for a ghoulish sight, impossible to ignore.

Cat named the dead as she walked. So many names, they ran together. So many faces, she could hardly distinguish one skull from another.

It didn’t matter; they always blended into one, the single face she could never forget. A man who did not hang with the rest. A man with eyes the color of a tempest and hands familiar as Cat’s own name.

And a snarl like a lightning bolt across a hurricane sky.

It was my head or theirs, she thought again, the words like a shield, like an explanation to the man who did not hang and would hardly care to hear her excuses anymore.

My head or theirs.

She passed noose after noose, body after body, face after face, each one a harsh reminder of the days she lived in now. And the days that would never come again.

It was always going to end this way.

The pirate republic had fallen, and none could escape the new governor’s justice or king’s law. The Meridian Empire had returned, its islands reclaimed.

A new age had begun.

And Cat could only weather it, as she had every other storm.

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