Blackveil

He’d wronged Lady Estora, but tried to rescue her when he realized what he’d done. He helped the G’ladheon woman escape the torture of Second Empire thugs and found ... he found he rather liked it, this helping others. He’d liked helping Galen Miller tonight.

He smoothed his hand down his shirt as though stepping beyond the bounds of his own self-interest made him nervous. He wasn’t sure what he liked about it, but maybe it was the thrill of danger, like when, as the Raven Mask, he’d scaled the wall of some manse in the depths of night to enter a lady’s bedchamber to steal her jewels, and perhaps other things, even while her husband slept in the next room.

Yes, there was that. The danger, the excitement.

Yet, there was more to it.

A glow of light flickered to life in the uppermost room of the Cock and Hen—perhaps the attic—and someone moved around in it. Galen Miller? Amberhill could have chosen to leave the old man to the toughs here on the street. There was a time when he probably would have. But now? He shook his head. There was the thrill of chasing the toughs off, no matter they were no challenge to him, and there was the pleasure of being the object of the old man’s gratitude. Yes, he liked that.

Maybe this was also a little step in the direction of finding redemption. Amberhill could never right the wrong he’d committed against Lady Estora, and really the ripples of that wrong radiated out to her family and clan, to king and country, magnifying it a hundredfold, but he could at least take steps to redeem himself in his own eyes.

Besides, one never knew what a good deed could lead to. Maybe Galen Miller would in turn come to someone else’s aid in some way. Amberhill smiled at the thought.

PEARLS AND BONES

Amberhill maintained his vigil into the early morning, listening as the city bells struck the hours. Patrons of the Cock and Hen came and went in varying degrees of drunkenness. He yawned, thinking he’d misheard the rumors and that maybe he’d do better to call it a night and go to bed, but just then two men staggered up the street toward the inn.

They were lumpy forms beneath the light of streetlamps, and Amberhill’s nostrils flared much like his stallion’s when he caught a disagreeable scent on the air. The stench of rotten fish, pickled livers, and years of unwashed grime. It was familiar. Very familiar.

The two reeled back and forth, arm in arm, as though on board a ship on a rolling sea. They sang, if it could be called such, their words slurred and their rough voices off-key. They were bound for the Cock and Hen and Amberhill wondered if even that establishment would welcome these two into its premises.

He did not have to see them up close to know he had not killed all of Captain Bonnet’s pirates that fall morning in a clearing of the Green Cloak Forest. The rumors told how these two tottered from tavern to tavern each night drinking, alledgedly, gallons of rum and ale, and how they attempted to go whoring, but how no woman would have them. Seldom did pirates find their way this far inland, and the particular vileness of the duo—not to mention their ragged clothing and bare feet—left Amberhill in little doubt of who they were.

He was drawn to them like an ant to honey. He had questions ...

He stepped from the shadows and strode into their path before they reached the inn’s door. They staggered to a halt, one still singing in wretched strains until his companion jabbed him in the ribs.

“Whaaa?” the singer asked. He was short and round. The dim light from the inn glanced off the cracked lenses of his specs.

“Someone in our way,” the other replied. This one was tall and skinny and carried, Amberhill noted, a cutlass on his hip.

“What does he want?” the singer asked.

“Dunno.”

“I want to know,” Amberhill said quietly, “if you recognize this.” He held his hand before him so they could see the dragon ring. The ruby caught in a glimmer of light and turned to red fire on his finger. The two pirates stilled.

“That’s Cap’n Bonnet’s,” tall and skinny said.

“That means ...” short and round began. Both gazed at Amberhill. “The cap’n. Where is he? We got separated in them woods.”

“Dead,” Amberhill said. “Very dead. As is the crew with him.”

The two pirates glanced at one another with wide eyes. Then, “You kilt them!” tall and skinny cried.

“I had little choice at the time. It was me or—”

But the pirate did not want to hear an explanation. He whipped out his cutlass.

“No,” Amberhill said, “I have questions!”

The other pirate caught at his companion’s arm. “Don’t!”

“Git off, Yap! Lemme kill ’im!” He shook free of the other’s grasp and swung his cutlass at Amberhill.

Amberhill danced away. This was ridiculous. The pirate was so drunk he could hardly walk much less engage in combat. His companion, Yap, moved out of range of the flailing cutlass and pressed his back against the wall of the inn.

“I just want to—” Amberhill began, but he needed to duck as the cutlass scythed for his neck. The momentum made the pirate spin all the way around before coming to a staggering halt. Amberhill thought he could hear the rum sloshing in the pirate’s gut.

“I’ll flay yer skin and wear it as a shirt,” the pirate declared. “I’ll ...” He stumbled and wove about the street. “I’ll ...” He swayed one way, then the other, as if unable to control his feet. He swung the cutlass like a blind man and it flew from his grip through the air and clattered onto the street somewhere in the dark.