Give the Dark My Love(87)

A plank lowered from the ship to the stone steps, and six men walked onto my island, rifles at the ready. They called up at me again to surrender.

My eyes cut to Dannix. He clutched his son. I refrained from rolling my eyes. He had no reason to fear.

I pushed open the double mahogany doors and stepped into the light.

The Emperor’s men cowered beneath me. Behind me was a troop of the undead.

I felt drunk with power.

“We’re here to arrest you,” the captain called up at me.

I couldn’t help but smile.

Come out, I whispered in my mind.

My revenants moved as one, an unstoppable force descending upon the soldiers. I laughed aloud as the men with rifles panicked. They fired their weapons, but it did no good, and soon enough they turned tail and fled.

The captain shouted for the retreat, and the few brave men who’d tried to stand their ground raced behind him, up the plank, and back on the ship. The captain’s eyes drifted up to me at the top of the stairs. I relished his terror.

Let’s play with them, I told my revenants.

As one, every single revenant turned to the captain. Eyes wide, teeth bared, lips snarled up. Staring at him.

“Go!” the captain screamed at his men. They fumbled with the oars, trying to push away from the stone steps.

I want the ship.

The revenants drew closer. It didn’t matter that the captain had thrown away the gangplank. The revenants moved with superhuman strength, leaping at the boat, grappling up the smooth lacquered sides, scrambling onto the deck.

“Abandon ship! Abandon ship!” the captain screeched. The crew raced for the lifeboats on the other side. They let the pulleys drop before everyone had gotten inside, and some crew jumped from the ship, landing in the water as the lifeboats crashed into the waves. The men in boats pushed off, rowing as fast as they could, and the men in the water screamed for them to wait, come back, save them.

For a brief moment, I wondered if the captain would try to go down with his ship. He had the look of a noble martyr. But as soon as my revenants boarded the ship, he scrambled portside, tossing himself directly into the bay and swimming frantically to his men waiting for him. Shivering, he huddled on the lifeboat, his head bowed in defeat.

I grinned. I had my castle behind me, my army was growing, and now I had a ship. When I found the other necromancer, the one who had caused so much suffering, I would be ready.





FIFTY-EIGHT


    Grey



The Lord Commander was the governor’s right-hand man. Usually a person of extreme importance already, and an adept alchemist. I hadn’t known that Governor Adelaide had selected anyone to take the position since her inauguration. The news sheets had reveled in the tragedy of her falling ill, but the boring politics of who had acquired which title hadn’t been as popular.

The captain of the guard swung open the door of the Lord Commander’s office, and I followed him inside. Rather than a room, we were in another hallway.

The captain stepped back through the door. “Wait here,” she said, then shut it, trapping me inside.

I waited for several minutes, but nothing happened. I drifted closer to the door at one end of the hall; it was marked again with the Lord Commander’s seal, and I assumed it was his private office. I walked the length of the hallway to the other end and shifted the cloth just enough to see what was on the other side.

The throne stood on a dais overlooking the marble floor. An enormous oil painting of the Emperor hung from velveteen ropes behind the throne—a reminder that Governor Adelaide served the Emperor first and that he was the true ruler of Lunar Island.

I stepped farther out, surprised that no one rushed to stop me. Movement caught my eye, and I noticed a woman sitting on a chair positioned at the bottom of the raised dais, just under the throne. She was wrapped in black damask, with long dark hair streaked with gray. She turned her head, and I caught a flash of gold—a diadem was braided into her tresses.

I stepped down from the dais. Governor Adelaide looked up at me with milky eyes.

Her image was plastered throughout the city, but I thought of the last few times I’d seen her in person. At the quarantine hospital, walking with Nedra, her body regal, gracious, an easy smile on her lips in the face of tragedy—a mask clearly worn for the benefit of those around her. Before that, standing strong with her people on Burial Day. And before that, at her coronation ball, her face alight with laughter.

She was a shell of who she had been. The woman who sat before me now was faded, her face sunken in, her hair dull and brittle, her skin ashen. I had known she was sick, but I didn’t realize just how bad it was.

“We keep her from the public eye for obvious reasons.” Master Ostrum swept aside the red velvet curtain and strode into the throne room. “It would be demoralizing.”

“Os—Master Ostrum,” I said, shocked. “I thought you’d been—”

“Yes, the papers greatly overstated the situation.” His voice was dry. “I wasn’t arrested. I was promoted.” He tapped the bronze badge pinned to his alchemical robes. It was shaped like a hand forming the first rune of alchemy.

“You’re—”

“Lord Commander now, yes.”

I bowed my head quickly, then looked over at Governor Adelaide.

“I misjudged her,” Lord Commander Ostrum said as he walked closer to the governor. “My politics seem silly now, in the face of this plague. Especially since we were more politically aligned than I’d thought.”