Darkdawn. Jay Kristoff

– both her sails and her hull. Black smoke was spewing out of her arse end, which had been somehow blown apart. She was listing hard, taking water fast. Burning sailors and marines were diving into the sea, regular and arkemical flames were eating the wood, and her decks were in absolute chaos. And as he watched, trying to make sense of exactly what was going on aboard the stricken warship, Cloud Corleone found his jaw slackening in wonder.

      ‘Four Daughters …’

      He thought it a trick of the light or smoke at first. But squinting harder, he realized that among the flames and embers, he could see …

      A girl?

      She moved like a song. Weaving and spinning, all pale skin and narrowed eyes and long hair, black as crow’s feathers. She held a gravebone longsword in her hand, a stolen shield in the other, drenched to the armpits in gore. As he watched, she skipped up to the aft deck towards one of the Luminatii. The man cursed and raised his sunsteel blade. A wolf made of what looked like shadowstuff flew up the stairs, mouth open and roaring. Cloud blanched as he realized he could understand what it was saying.

      ‘… RUN …!’ it roared, with a voice like winter. ‘… RUN, YOU FOOLS …!’

      The girl raised her hand, and the Luminatii cried out, reeling back and clutching his eyes as if blinded. The lass cut the terrified man down, striking his hand off at the wrist as he fell, tossing aside her shield and snatching up his flaming sword from the deck. And as she wove among the rest of the terrified mob, that shadowwolf howling for blood, twin blades flashing in her hands, something about her form struck him as familiar. Something that put him in mind of the smell of blood and sand, the taste of a comely lass’s lips, a bookman calling him a cockeyed fool as he’d placed all his winnings down on …

      ‘’Byss and blood,’ he breathed.

      Another explosion rocked the Faithful, her timbers cracking, her masts shattering. Cloud realized her arkemical ammunition stores must’ve been set ablaze, that she was tearing herself apart from the inside. Soldiers and sailors tumbled into the sea or made desperate leaps across to the Maid, only to be helped down into the waves by his own salts on BigJon’s order. Cloud watched, gobsmacked, as the girl cut the backstays securing the mizzenmast, her gravebone blade slicing through the thick, tar-soaked ropes as if they were spidersilk. She ducked low as the wind sent the mast falling with a splintering crack towards the Maid. And climbing up onto the fallen timber, she dashed along it like a cat, face twisted as she took a flying leap across the widening gap between the Faithful and the Maid.

      She didn’t quite make it. Her gravebone blade flew from her hand and clattered across the deck at Cloud’s feet as she hit the stern rail, her stolen sunsteel falling into the ocean below. She almost followed it down into the burning water, but somehow clung on, nails clawing the timber, knuckles white as she seized hold of a heavy block. Hauling herself up the pulley, her grip slippery with blood, she managed to swing one leg onto the railing and pull herself over, collapsing on the deck. Chest heaving. Coughing and sputtering.

      ‘Fuck me very gently,’ Cloud murmured. ‘Then fuck me very hard.’

      Dragging a stray lock of blood-soaked hair from her lips, the lass looked up into Cloud’s eyes. The captain now held her gravebone blade in his hands, its hilt sticky with red. Her shadow twisted, shifted, and the wolf that had struck such terror into the Luminatii and their men materialized on the deck between them, hackles raised, its growl seeming to come from beneath the floorboards.

      ‘… STAY BACK …’

      Its voice chilled his belly, the girl’s stare, even more so. It was like the fear was a living thing, leaking out of the dark at her feet and into his own. Cloud heard footsteps on the stairs behind him. Felt a now familiar chill at his back. He could hear his crew forming up below, cudgels and blades at the ready, a little drunk on the carnage and maybe spoiling for a touch more. BigJon was holding them in check, but one word would be all it took for it to start again.

      ‘Mia?’ he heard a voice ask behind.

      ‘It’s all right, Ash,’ the lass replied, watching Cloud.

      ‘You’re the Crow,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘Falcon of the Remus Collegium. The Bloody Beauty. Saviour of Stormwatch.’

      Cloud licked his lips. Forced his voice to steady.

      ‘You’re the lass who murdered Grand Cardinal Francesco Duomo.’

      She looked at him. Her face scarred and slave-marked and smudged with blood and smoke. Eyes black as truedark, circled with shadows.

      ‘Aye,’ was all she said.

      Careful so as not to spook anyone, Cloud Corleone placed the gravebone sword onto the deck, gentle as if it were a newborn babe. And leaning down to the lass, he offered her his four-bastard smile along with his shaking hand.

      ‘Welcome aboard the Bloody Maid.’