Death of the Immortal King by Sarah McCarthy

Author:Sarah McCarthy [McCarthy, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-09-14T22:00:00+00:00

Elaine spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find someone who would hire her, but even when she offered to work for free to prove her skills, no one wanted her. They either didn’t want to deal with someone who wasn’t clan, or they didn’t need anyone, or they looked at her and saw a little girl who would scuttle their boat.

By the end of the day Elaine’s feet hurt and her spirits were more than a little dampened. But there was no way she wouldn’t find work. She was skilled, already better than many of the men who had worked for her father, and her father had hired the best. The thought of him brought a lump to her throat, and a terrifying sense of floating, of drifting apart, of being totally alone in the world. She wrestled her mind back and took a deep breath. There would be time to think about her father. When she had food and lodging and a job.

She picked her way back through the ramshackle docks and found the Onera right where she had left it. She would sleep in her boat tonight. She’d just crawl under the canvas cover and no one would know she was there.

Before she reached her boat, though, something set off an alarm in her mind. Glancing around casually, she scanned the area for anything unusual. A few old men were eating and smoking pipes on the next dock over, some children were poking at a jellyfish, but no one even looked at her.

“Nice boat.”

She glanced up and saw a man sitting on top of one of the pilings. He was about six feet in the air, and the piling was completely smooth. How had he even gotten up there? He took a long swig from a flask and hopped off, plummeting to the ground and rolling in a wild, ungainly way but somehow ending up on his feet, still swaying slightly.

He grinned and bowed, which was when she noticed he was wearing the black and gold uniform of the Kreiss guard. His eyes were as black as her father’s.

“Thank you,” she said, an edge in her voice.

He stared piercingly at her. “You’re pretty polite for someone with a stolen boat. Which is to say, polite at all. Thieves, as a rule, are not. Especially to me.”

Elaine swallowed. “It’s not stolen. It’s mine.”

“Ah, lies. That’s more like it. What you were supposed to say, though, was ‘Who are you?’” He lifted his arms wide.

“Who are you?” Elaine obliged.

“I—” he paused for dramatic effect, “—am captain of the gods damned palace guard. And you, unfortunately,” he pulled out a list with a flourish, stumbling sideways slightly as he did so, “are in possession of…” he scanned the list. “The Onera. Owned by the Connoly clan. Previously owned by…” he stopped, dropped the paper into the water next to him, and stared at her curiously. “What is your name?”

Elaine didn’t have time to think of a convincing lie, and she’d never been good at it anyway.

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