PART II: THE KINGSLAND

Propaganda painted the Kingsland out to be a picture of hope and leadership, a land of incredible good fortune and leadership, with a grand king to oversee it all. New technology, the advance of the modern world, on and on. The Kingsland didn't fit the stories.

Archer wasn't sure what he expected. Maybe he'd been thinking it would be sunny, that golden rays would bounce off the cobalt water, vibrant colours reflecting culture. But as the Avourienne approached in the evening, right before it would become invisible under the guise of darkness, all they could see for miles was dark, cold sky and rain.

The Kingsland was something of an island, perhaps, but not quite. The castle itself was built on nothing more than rock, and the surrounding tiny village was constructed on smaller outcrops. The rest was all water—there were no streets or walking paths, for the most part. There were little boats resting against the rocks that were used to jump from place to place. The lack of a real town or roads was not the most unsettling thing about the Kingsland, not even close; that was the spires. Years and years ago, the King had men all over the Cobalts search for the biggest and tallest cliffside rocks they could find, then had them shaped into spires and embedded in the sand bar that surrounded the Kingsland. They were impossibly tall, mere inches apart and countless in total; there was very simply no way to get around them.

The only way to get in was the gate. It opened at dawn every day to let out the navy ships from the inner port and let in the navy ships from the second, outer port. Then it closed, firmly, every day at dusk.

Archer's fingers instinctively touched the Orphano chain around his neck as he leaned against the rail, the regression of a nervous habit. Just the thought of heading into that cold, dark place sent shivers down his spine, but he dropped the chain as soon as he realized he was doing it anxiously. It wasn't his protection anymore; the hope of one day giving it up in return for parents was long fizzled out.

He took a deep breath as he gazed at the great piece of land before him. It was dark out, now, allowing the Avourienne to sail close without repercussions. They were circling, and although the crew of the Avourienne were scurrying around quickly, Britter told Archer that they were just scouting, nothing else.

Archer knew he was being lied to. Earlier that day, Silta and Britter had been discussing things in the strategy room when he had walked in, and they'd immediately halted their conversation upon seeing him. Somebody was hiding something, but they were doing too good of a job of keeping him out of it. He considered asking Silta, but he hadn't got her alone in days, and he wasn't sure he could trust her to tell him the truth.

He wished she would've repeated the words that he'd told her, or at least let him say them at all. Perhaps, though, she was keeping them in for a reason; if she told him she loved him, he'd never leave.

He turned to the deck and took the stairs up to the strategy room. He pushed open the door, preparing for that awful feeling of the conversation cutting.

It didn't, not this time. As was customary, Britter was sitting at the table with the map, and Silta was laid out on the couch. Archer sat down next to her with a huff.

"So it's you and Archer, Lyra, Denver and Bardarian?" Britter asked.

"Yes," Silta said, spinning a knife in her hands.

"You're staying?" Archer asked Liam.

"Yeah," he said. "I'll do the dynamite."

"Dynamite?" Archer asked.

"Yeah," he said again. "We're planting the whole perimeter of the castle with dynamite. When the gates go up at dawn, the castle will blow to pieces. Everyone has to be out by then."

"How will you plant it?" Archer asked. He wasn't sure he liked the whole idea. "You can't get into the Kingsland with the Avourienne anymore."

"I'll figure it out." Britter waved him off.

Again, something wasn't right. But what could he do about it?

"Speaking of," Archer said instead, "how are we going to get into the Kingsland?"

"They'll let us in," Silta said. "He's waiting for us. They'll send someone semi-important to let us in. Once they open the gates, we'll kill them and rig the gates halfway so that we can get out before dawn."

"You're sure that will work?" he asked. "They could send a lot of people."

"They could send an entire army of crisps. It wouldn't matter; we have their Prince. Can't shoot him."

Archer sighed. "Okay, and from there?"

"You'll get inside the castle and split up," Liam continued for her. "Denver will go with you, Kingsley, and you'll break off from the rest. Tolva's been informed he's to lose you and go back to the main group. He won't say a thing. Lyra, Nova and the Captain will find the King and take care of him."

"And Kingsley," Silta said, reaching up and tapping him to get his attention, "we'll have the Prince, which means we're safe. You won't. Get lost and get the hell out."

Archer didn't reply.

"Okay," Britter said suddenly. "We're done."

"Done?" Archer repeated.

"Done. Nothing left to plan."

Archer leaned backward. He didn't think it would sound so easy. And it did, in theory, sound easy.

Britter stood. "I'm going to have a drink," he announced. He pointed at Archer. "I'll see you there," he said as he closed the door.

The room lapsed into silence. Archer reached for his chain again, then stopped himself. Finally, he unclasped it, watching it sparkle in the candlelight.

"What's that?" she asked.

He looked down at her. "My Orphano chain." Then, like an afterthought, he held it out. "You want it?"

She tilted her head back to see him. "I'm not an orphan," she said, but she liked the way it shimmered.

Archer shrugged. "You will be soon, won't you?"

"I don't think the whole Orphano thing applies to patricide."

"Whatever," he said. "Just take it."

She sat up. "Why would I take this?"

He shrugged again and dropped it in her hand, wanting it gone from his fingers. It felt like dead weight, a reminder that he really didn't have parents. A reminder that his parents were as dead as dead could be and would stay that way. To her, it would be something pretty. Maybe not as pretty as whatever Bardarian could buy her, but it was all he had to give.

So that's what he said. "That's all I have," came his reply.

She closed her fingers around it, touching the metal the same way she had done that very first day. He remembered the terror of having been so close to her, her incredible gaze, those rapid replies.

He hoped that necklace meant to her what it did to him. He hoped it gave the message he wanted: Bardarian wouldn't miss the coins he spent on her, but Archer would remember the absence of that necklace for a very long time.

She watched him carefully, spinning that beautiful ring around that elegant finger, the diamond glinting in the low light. She looked back down at the chain.

She did get it, he realized, and it unsettled her greatly. Someone willing to give her everything he had, about to become some fragment of her past. Abandoning him for someone who had everything more but wouldn't give less.

His heart truly broke right there, in that moment. Somewhere, somehow, he'd been harbouring a little slice of hope deep in his mind that she would change her mind. She wouldn't. She valued what couldn't hurt her, what couldn't become a weakness.

"Archer," she said.

He glanced back at her, tapping the fabric of the couch. He'd expected to look up and see her cool demeanour, see the woman that knew her next move long before she made it. Instead, he saw conflict right there in her eyes. Something like uncertainty.

He waited, waited. In his peripheral, he saw her hand curl into a fist around his necklace, eyes fighting some internal battle.

"I want to—" she started.

The door to the strategy room was thrown open. She cut off and looked over to see Bardarian, standing tall in the doorway. Her lithe hands slipped Archer's chain down her sleeve.

"Come with me," Bardarian said, nodding to Silta.

She glanced at Archer, who hadn't looked away from her. Because he knew those words, he knew that tone. I want to leave with you. I want to think about it. I want to change my decision. He knew what she'd been about to say, and she knew it, too.

"Novari," Bardarian warned. Like an order, like a reminder. "Come here."

She got up off the couch, and she didn't look back as she followed him out the door. For his part, the Captain didn't spare him another glance as he went.

Archer wondered if he'd had his ear pressed to the door with the intention of bursting in if it got dangerous for him. That, or he just had impeccable timing.

He leaned back into the couch. So what? Silta would be back. She'd finished her sentence. What could Bardarian do to change that now?

*

Vallin tapped her shoulder over and over as he let her lead the way to the captain's quarters. He was a vicious man, cruel to the very core, but he was also a man who had just spent so much time lighting wax candles that the callouses of his fingers were burnt.

Why? Because he did not lose. Not to other captains, not to orphaned children. He could hardly contain his excitement, but he did his best to seem reserved. He might play coy, but he truly found great amusement in himself at this moment.

He paused her outside the door. He spun her shoulders to face him and said, "You will not repeat to anyone what you see on the other side of this door."

She lifted her chin. "I smell wax."

"You like the smell of wax," Vallin reminded her.

She looked over his shoulder at the door. "Let me in. I don't like it when I'm behind."

He grinned. He turned the handle and pushed it open.

She was confused, at first. He knew because she ran her tongue over her teeth like she did when she was thinking. Then she took a step forward, glancing back at him as he shut the door behind them.

"You've done it, love," she said slowly, still thinking. "You've finally managed to confuse me."

Vallin gave her a transparent offended expression. "You don't like my candles?" he asked.

"Well, I like candles in general, yes, but I don't know why you did this. When you asked to marry me—that was the time for candles."

Vallin shrugged. "Say what you will about me, darling, but I know you. Marrying me is an old fantasy of yours, but it's not the ultimate dream. There's something you value far more than love."

Something appeared in her eyes at his words. It was an archaic spark, one that had disappeared a long time ago, some dream of hers that had been snuffed out by logic. Her lips parted just slightly, not quite believing it. She twisted her arm like there was something in her sleeve bothering her.

"For the sake of tradition," Vallin said, "I'll do the whole thing." He took a deep breath, walking towards his desk. "Novari Silta," he began. "You are an experienced member of my crew, an irreplaceable addition to this ship. You've become a reliable pillar of strategy and physical skill, consistently seeing the Avourienne through hard times."

Vallin paused, picking Bates' hat off his desk.

"There was a time putting you in this hat would've ruined my reputation," he said, brushing off a little dust from the fabric. "It would be dishonest to say that time hasn't long passed." He glanced over at her, watching her eyes dart down to the hat as he continued, "I still couldn't give it to you, not even when you deserved it. Say what I will about you, darling, but you know me; nothing has irreversibly destroyed my ego quite like you have. By the Devil, do I resent you for it."

He frowned, spinning the hat once. "But I have this recurring dream, night after night. This awful experience where I'm killed by some other captain in a fight for power, and that's not the bad part. The bad part is who gets the ship in my death."

He shook his head. "It can't be Bates. I couldn't bare it even from hell. It can't be anyone other than you. I won't let it be, just like I won't stand here and ask for you back." He took a step forward, watching her carefully with those dark eyes. "I won't get down on my knees and beg you to stay with me because I'll fall apart without you. I refuse." He took another few steps, slowly. "But you know what I will do?" His brows drew, the lines in his face practiced and cold. "I will use this hat to lure you back to me like the honourless man I am. I will play every one of your senseless games and allow you to cut off every single one of my fingers until I have none left. I will crawl back to you regardless of circumstance, time and time again until the day I die, killing and ruining the lives of anyone in my path. Those things, I will do."

Her face flickered in the candlelight, eyes the same colour as the flame. Her lips parted, fingers reaching for the hat in his hands.

"Just wait a minute, darling," Vallin said, dropping his voice to a whisper as he reached her. "Let me say it." He took the last step, then finally held out the hat to her. "I'd like to offer you this hat."

She was frozen, fingers outstretched to take it. "Just the hat?" she whispered.

Vallin made a shrug and glanced behind her. "The hat comes with something. It comes with a position of sorts."

She made a low noise in the back of her throat. "If you're playing some game with me," she said. "I'll never forgive you for it."

"I wouldn't play over this, pretty girl. First mate, Novari. It's yours."

She still didn't move, but her bottom lip quivered slightly. In years of knowing her, he'd agonized over how to render her silent, how to sneak something up on her, how to surprise her with something, and now here they were.

He smiled as he reached out to tilt her chin up. "Don't make me beg, now," he said. "Just take it."

"That's Bates'," she whispered. Then, quieter, even softer, "That's Everson's."

"It's yours," he corrected. "Those men were half the woman you are. Everybody knows it."

She closed her eyes for a moment, so Vallin twirled the hat and placed it on her head. He thought she might look small under it, but she fit just fine.

She opened her eyes, looking only at the collar of his shirt. He could fumble for his calm in her silence, but he knew her too well.

She reached out and touched one of the buttons on his jacket. She brushed her fingers over the fabric, as if she was unsure how to tell him what she was thinking. "Did it scare you?" she asked. "To think you were losing?"

She wanted him to swallow his pride one last time. She wanted him to peel off the professionalism and the confidence, force him to admit it.

"It felt familiar," Vallin answered. He held her gaze—something he'd managed to do only after years of practice. "It felt like waking up drunk, clutching a piece of paper that said Halleviere monere like it was my lifeline."

She reached up, ran a finger delicately down the side of his jaw. There was no conflict in her eyes anymore, no inability to make some decision, so he felt no stress when she quietly said, "I think I love him."

"I know you do," he replied. "It's not as rigid a feeling as you'd think, Novari."

She looked right there in his eyes, where she felt at home, felt safe. So there, she admitted it to someone, and he did not hold it against her. She'd take her own advice: leave it as a dream, instead of turning it into a nightmare.

"Thank you," she said.

Who would ever get her like he did? Who would never disparage her poor decisions, never beg her to be alter herself to fit some conventional standards of morality or ethics or any of those things that had never saved her? Who would play her games, stand by her, never threaten her poor, so admittedly fragile heart?

Vallin reached for her hand on his neck and spun it around. The diamond on her ring finger gleamed in the light of all those candles. He lifted it and brought it to his lips.

"Let's take that throne, darling."

*

"No," Rusher said. "I don't believe it." He was staring at Starle, mouth wide open, when Archer entered the room. Neither of them looked up.

"It's the truth!" Starle was insisting. "Bates just told me!"

"Told you what?" Archer asked mindlessly.

Rusher turned to face him. "You're not going to believe this, Kingsley."

"What?" he asked again, becoming agitated. He could feel something bad brewing in his bones; he could smell it in the wax of the room.

Bardarian's footfalls were uncharacteristically heavy as he came down the stairs into the navigation room. He looked inside, eyes sparkling. "Hello, lads," he said. "Gather up the crew for me."

Starle cleared his throat. "Yes, sir," he said calmly. But as he and Rusher filed out and disappeared onto deck, they began shouting again.

Archer kept his eyes firm on the map in front of him. He didn't answer Bardarian, didn't even look at him. The Captain's presence still loomed on the stairs.

And all at once, he knew what had been, for it made perfect sense. What did Silta value more than love? That awful thing Archer had none of. He felt cold all over, like he'd been touched with ice on the most delicate parts of his flesh.

"You are good at politics," Archer said, keeping his gaze on the window across from him. If he looked, he might start a fight he couldn't win.

"I simply had more to gamble, lad," Bardarian replied, that horrible, awful tone of respect in his voice.

Archer caved and turned his head to look. He was Bardarian, King of the Sea, cutthroat man to end them all, but he was also, very simply a man so in love that he'd do dishonourable things to keep it. Of course he'd win, for he was the evil one; he had every option in the book at his disposal. But Archer, with his ethics, had very few.

Beneath the pain of the knowledge that he'd lost this fight for what he wanted so desperately, Archer managed a smile. "I hope it haunts you," he said, letting the venom creep through the words. Every day for the rest of his life, Archer hoped he agonized over how she'd picked him just for power.

"It won't," Bardarian replied. He smiled, pearly teeth shining. "That, lad," he said, "is the advantage of the immoral."

Archer nodded. It was at that. Bardarian turned away, back to the stairs, back to make his big announcement.

Loss after loss. Falling, with no ground to be seen.