The Colonel was overseeing the disbursement of more of the prisoners while Captain Pleasant stood with arms folded a few paces away. Mercy stood beside him with Feather watching everyone and everything from nearby.

It wasn’t hard to notice the regulars keeping their weapons to hand, muskets with bayonets attached, for the most part. Our own people watched from a short distance away, swords and flintlocks sheathed, an air of simmering anger about them.

“Fuck,” I whispered to Nimble as Cautious walked us straight towards the three people who each individually wanted our heads.

She didn’t reply but she made sure to keep her hands well away from her weapons. It wouldn’t take much to mistake a movement and we would both end up skewered, shot or both.

“You’re alive.” Mercy looked us up and down, a sneer worn openly. His breastplate bore deep gouges and blood covered half his face. “Might have been better if you weren’t.”

Not a good sign, I was willing to admit, but I had experienced worse.

The Captain didn’t speak though he did look directly at me and I began to sweat all the harder. We stopped a handful of paces from them and waited, standing with backs straight and heads high as we looked straight ahead.

A group of men had been lined against the wall of the house in front of the Colonel. Their skin, a much deeper brown than that of the city’s native inhabitants, stared back at him as one of their number spoke in a language I couldn’t recognise.

Unlike the natives, who wore light cloth loincloths or skirts, with colourful cloaks that tied at the shoulder, the darker-skinned men wore beaded skirts and long-sleeved robes of crimson embroidered with golden thread.

The speaker had the skin of some great cat wrapped across his body with the unfortunate creature’s head against his shoulder. Twisted golden chains hung around his neck and he bore golden rings upon his fingers.

Clearly, then, a man of some importance.

“What did he say?” Colonel Draugh asked the dark-haired native beside him. The poor man visible trembled before the Colonel’s anger. “Well, man!”

“Forgive me, sir. He demands that you allow him to leave.”

“Demands!” The Colonel’s cheeks reddened and his right hand reached across his girth to grip the hilt of his sword. A sword that I very much doubted had been drawn for combat for some time. “Who is he to demand release?”

“He is, Busara, or the Kiswahili.”

Colonel Draugh blinked as his brows furrowed. The short translator who had been brought with us from Gokar kept his eyes down and his head lowered. Opting not to say anything more than he absolutely had to.

Smart man.

“Sergeant!” the Colonel screamed, spittle showering the translator.

“Sir.” The Sergeant, a barrel-chested man with a face chiselled from stone, knew exactly what to do. He raised his hand and his soldiers lifted their rifles to their shoulders. Busara looked about in obvious confusion, and then the command was given. “Fire!”

The guns thundered, blood sprayed the wall of the house and fresh bodies littered the ground. Colonel Draugh considered that a job well done and he turned back to the Captain as his soldiers began to strip the bodies of their valuables.

And they dared to say we were the scoundrels.

“Is this them?” Colonel Draugh asked, waving at both Nimble and me. Cautious had sidestepped away until it was clear he wasn’t with us.

Bastard.

“It is.”

Since arriving on this continent, I had begun to believe that I would never feel anything but the hot, sticky, heat that assailed me every single day. The ice in the Captain’s voice disabused me of that notion.

“Why did they open the tomb?”

“Curiosity, sir,” Mercy said, grinning nastily. “A habit we’ll whip out of them, you can be sure.”

“And what… did they find?”

All eyes were firmly fixed on us then and I cleared my throat, then coughed as I cast a quick look at my friend. She shook her head, the movement barely perceptible and I realised I was on my own.

“Ah, sir. There were many items of a religious and magical nature. Some cursed, others not.”

“Trinkets!” The Colonel snapped. “You released that creature for magical toys and trinkets!”

Mercy grinned all the wider, the Captain didn’t so much as twitch and the Colonel spun towards his men.

“Sergeant!”

“Sir.”

“Search these miscreants!”

The soldiers were rough as they emptied out my pockets, making sure to pull my knife from its sheath first so that I couldn’t use it. They rifled through my coat and opened the satchel that hung at my hip, before pulling it from me and tossing it aside.

As rough as they were with me, they were more so with Nimble. Thick fingers cupped her breasts as the sergeant himself chose to check that she had hidden nothing beneath her legs. She grimaced but didn’t move, nor did she look away.

Neither did I, as I committed his face to memory.

“Nothing, sir.” The Sergeant stepped back with a final leer for Nimble.

“Not even these magical trinkets?” Colonel Draugh asked, eyebrows arching. “A score dead and the beast escaped to wreak havoc, and you have nothing to show for it!”

“Wasn’t ours to take, sir,” I said.

“Sergeant! Flog them. Fifty lashes a piece and then-“

“No.”

A single word but it cut straight through the Colonel’s bluster and he stared at the Captain, shocked into silence. A silence that lasted a whole five seconds.

“You dare, sir!”

“I will discipline my people.”

“You forget yourself, Captain.” Behind the Colonel, the soldiers had reloaded and their weapons were held ready. I could practically taste the tension in the air. “I am in command of this mission.”

“However, I am not under your command.” The Captain unfolded his arms and rested his left hand on the hilt of one of his flintlocks. “I was directed to support your company in the taking of this city. Nothing more.”

“By order of the King, and the Knight-Marshal, of the Empire, I have been tasked to take command of our efforts in this savage land. All here are under my command.”

The Captain did not immediately reply, instead, he just stared and I thought for a moment that the Colonel would burst a vein as he stared back, cheeks growing ever more crimson with each passing second. His soldiers exchanged looks, they knew our reputation well enough to not want a confrontation, not when there was easy loot to be had elsewhere.

“Continue with your mission, Colonel,” he said, voice cold and hard, his tone brooking no argument. “Gather the slaves and pillage the city. I will discipline my soldiers.”

For a moment, the Colonel seemed unable to reply, cheeks so red I fully expected them to burst into flames. Then he tugged at the lapels of his red coat, brushing at dust that was not there, and said, “See that they are disciplined.”

He spun on his heel and marched quickly from the area, his soldiers following behind as Mercy snickered. I smiled too and then felt the Captain’s eyes on me and quickly forced myself to stillness.

“We lost brothers.”

“Yes, sir.”

“There will be a price.”

I swallowed hard. “Sir.”

Mercy stood to attention as the Captain shifted his gaze to him. A quick salute of fist pressed to the left breast and the Captain left. We watched him leave and only when he was gone did Mercy come towards us.

“You found it?”

“Yes.” I stooped to gather my things and lifted the satchel too. I opened it and he looked inside brow furrowing.

“Empty?”

A wave of my hand and a single word was enough to dispel the illusion magics I had sewn into the case and where before he had seen only worthless tools of my art, instead he saw the crystal. His eyes lit up with a light that I had rarely seen and he clapped me on the shoulder.

“You were right!”

“Of course I was.”

He didn’t reply, just gestured for me to close the case which I did before slinging it back over my shoulder to rest once again at my hip.

“What happened to the creature?” Nimble asked.

“Was more interested in leaving than in killing us.” Mercy smoothed down the long mustachios that were his pride and joy. A habit he had when he began to think deep thoughts. “Burst through our lads and tore up a company of colonials that were marching to the temple.”

His grin was nasty.

“Colonel was spitting fire about it.”

“Fuck him!” Nimble snapped. “And his soldiers. You seen what they’re doing in this city?”

“Stealing whatever they can carry and raping anyone they can catch.” He snorted. “Aye, no surprise there. Those soldiers reflect their leader and Draugh is one step away from the gaol.”

“Do they send lords to the prison?” I asked. If they did it was news to me.

“If they embarrass the crown they do, aye. That fuck had one foot in the gaol before his family persuaded the high and mighty Lords of the Realm, that he was the right person to bolster the Satrap.”

Empire politics. It wasn’t something that I had ever taken much interest in, at least not until those same politics had affected me personally. If not for the politicking of the highborn, I would not have joined the Company, nor would I have sailed across the Sentinel Sea to help keep a weak ruler in power by slaughtering and enslaving his rivals.

Still, with some luck, the crystal that I had found might go some way to helping with my situation. Played well, it could allow me a return back to a life that I had very much enjoyed. Of course, to do that then I would have to betray the Company and they would very much take that poorly.

I let out a sigh.

“Buck up, lad.” Mercy clapped me on the shoulder once again and grinned nastily. “Things are going our way for once.”

“Maybe.” He chortled but I shook my head. “That creature was being fed.”

“What?”

“The priests. They were feeding people to it. The entire tomb was littered with their bones.”

“Savages!” He shrugged. “Our own priests used to sacrifice to the gods for a bountiful harvest only a few centuries ago.”

More like millennia, but I had no desire to argue with him. Instead, I nodded glumly and tried not to think of the beast that had been released. Instinct told me that it had been placed in the tomb a long time ago and that it had been placed there for a specific reason.

My fingers touched the leather satchel and I felt a chill on my skin. It was entirely likely that the thing it was set to guard or protect was now in my possession. I could only hope we would be headed back before it chose to come looking for it.

“How long till we return to Gokar?”

“A day or two,” Mercy said, gently steering me towards the street the Captain had left by. “Plenty of time for you to rest and heal up before we have to leave.”

“Heal up?”

“Brothers died, you fool,” Nimble said, allowing herself to be pushed along beside me. “There’s a price to be paid.”

“Not to worry.” There was laughter in Mercy’s voice, a nasty kind of mirth that had me shuddering. “I’ll hold the lash myself. I won’t go easy on you, but I’ll not strip you to the bone.”

I swallowed past the sudden urge to vomit and stumbled, almost tripping. Nimble, beside me, set her jaw but kept her eyes forward and head high.

Fuck that and fuck her. Fuck the Company too and the fool that convinced me to join them.

Yes, fuck me too.

I marched on, grimly to my fate.