Madame Celeste Gearhart's Arc

Chapter 19 of 24

The totem sat quiet, but Celeste felt the Barons stir beneath her palm. The blood bargain held. It would not hold on faith. She had promised the two spirits the dead of her enemies, and now they wanted their meal. Green light leaked from the resin flower without her call. The skull-face pressed its face to the glass. "You swore blood," Baron Shadowveil scraped through the vial. "We hunger. Feed us, or the pact rots." She had no fresh corpses. The pirates still lived down the water. If she starved the Barons, they would slip her leash when she needed them most. Celeste stood and gripped her cane. She could not conjure the dead from air. But she could hunt them to her door. She carried the totem to the workshop bench, beneath the gears wrapping her tree-grown walls. Then she opened the shutters and worked her mechanical crow loose from its perch. She sent it out over the swamp with one command: find the fleet, and lead them here. Mei-Ling Chen came before dark. She limped up the water path on her carved peg leg, sword already drawn, dreads swinging under her red hat. Two dozen pirates crowded the bank behind her. She stopped at the cottage door and smiled at Celeste through the window. "You called us in yourself, witch. That saves me a knock." She had waited weeks for the totem to burst. Now she meant to take it with steel. "Come inside, then," Celeste said. She backed toward the bench and set her hand on the totem. Mei-Ling kicked the door wide and stepped through. Her crew pushed after her, filling the small room, blades up. Celeste twisted the totem's valve and unstopped the flower. The Barons poured out. The skull-face swelled to the ceiling, bone beads clacking. The purple flame spread its feathered cloak across the doorway. This time no sap chain yanked their necks. They came free, by their own word, and they were hungry. Shadowveil fell on the nearest pirate before the man could swing. The purple flame swallowed two more. Screaming filled the cottage. Mei-Ling slashed at the skull-face and her sword passed through smoke. She understood then. She turned and shoved her own crew toward the door, but the Barons were faster. Celeste watched from the bench, one hand steady on the wood, feeding no command, only holding the door of the flower open. When the room went still, six pirates lay dead. The Barons drank their spirits down and slid back into the flower, sated, quiet, loyal. Mei-Ling had fled to the bank with what crew remained. Celeste stoppered the vial. The bargain was paid. The Barons served her by choice now, fed on real blood. But she had spent six lives to feed two spirits. To bind every restless dead in Everblack, the master totem would demand a slaughter she was only beginning to count.