The Bright and Breaking Sea Read online

  NOVELS BY CHLOE NEILL

  The Captain Kit Brightling Novels

  The Bright and Breaking Sea

  The Heirs of Chicagoland Novels

  Wild Hunger

  Wicked Hour

  The Chicagoland Vampires Novels

  Some Girls Bite

  Friday Night Bites

  Twice Bitten

  Hard Bitten

  Drink Deep

  Biting Cold

  House Rules

  Biting Bad

  Wild Things

  Blood Games

  Dark Debt

  Midnight Marked

  Blade Bound

  “High Stakes”

  novella in Kicking It

  Howling for You

  (A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)

  Lucky Break

  (A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)

  Phantom Kiss

  (A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)

  Slaying It

  (A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)

  The Devil’s Isle Novels

  The Veil

  The Sight

  The Hunt

  The Beyond

  The Dark Elite Novels

  Firespell

  Hexbound

  Charmfall

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Chloe Neill

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Neill, Chloe, author.

  Title: The bright and breaking sea / Chloe Neill.

  Description: First Edition. | New York: Berkley, 2020. | Series: A Captain Kit Brightling novel; vol 1

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020025237 (print) | LCCN 2020025238 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984806680 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781984806697 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3614.E4432 B75 2020 (print) | LCC PS3614.E4432 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025237

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025238

  First Edition: November 2020

  Cover art © Rovina Cai

  Cover design by Adam Auerbach

  Map illustration by Cortney Skinner

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Novels by Chloe Neill

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  About the Author

  War was a bitter scourge and curse;

  Yet peace is, somehow, ten times worse.

  Henry Luttrell, Advice to Julia

  PROLOGUE

  1812

  War was a god, arrogant and proud. War was a human, earnest and ambitious. War was a child, petulant and demanding.

  Gerard Rousseau, emperor of Gallia, knew its rhythm well. Knew the beat of soldiers’ footsteps, the whinny of battle-tested horses, the look in the eye of a man who understood victory—or defeat—was already guaranteed. He didn’t love war, but he loved to command. To place his mark upon a battlefield, upon those who served him. To be victorious, and to pull that victory from the bloody grasp of defeat. To win.

  War was a means to an end. War was the tool that brought him control, power, people, territory. And with territory, magic. Magic buried inside stone and water and grassy plain, currents of power that feathered through the world like veins of gold through marble that could be felt by those who were Aligned to it. Some gave the lines a name: ley, aetheric, telluric. Some gave it an origin, said it was the fingerprint of the gods, the remnants of their physical touch upon the world.

  Gerard didn’t care how it came into being, or what name was given to it. He cared only for its potential . . . and for its possession. Whoever held the most land held the most magic. And whoever held the most magic held the most power. Literally and figuratively. He now ruled a large piece of the Continent, and intended to have the rest of it soon enough.

  War was a game, and he was its master. Chess spread across oceans and continents. And hadn’t he placed the pieces so very carefully across the board? A knight. A queen. A pawn. One at his side, one at his control, one unaware of the limitations of its position.

  He looked down at the spread of maps across his campaign desk.

  “At dawn,” Gerard said to the man who stood silently beside the desk, awaiting the emperor’s orders, “we move.”

  * * *

  War was dirt and dust and exertion beyond exhaustion. War was time borrowed from death itself. War was escape from the strictures of obligation, a life narrowed to its thin, hard edge.

  A mile away from Rousseau, a man lay in the slope of a dusty hill, his linen nearly the same color as the orange-red dirt. The land was scrubby, rocky, and not useful for much that he could see—except observing the enemy.

  Rian Grant was one of Sutherland’s observing officers, tasked with learning the land, finding Gerard’s troops, uncovering their plans.

  He wasn’t Aligned, didn’t care for phenomena he couldn’t see or touch. But half the men in the twenty-member unit were. They could feel the terrain miles ahead, guide troops where to make camp, where to find water. One of the Aligned, a man named Bourne, had found the unit of Gallic soldiers, could feel the disruption in the currents of the earthworks they’d built to secure their position. Bourne had led them here, where Grant and his fellow officer, Dunwood, would listen and learn.

  For two days, they’d watched Gerard’s men eat, sleep, smoke, and drill, waiting for some sign of the army’s direction and destination. The first night, they’d nearly been captured by
sentries scouring the hillside for nosy locals or enemy spies. But the sentries tramped off toward the camp again, none the wiser.

  Dunwood lay beside Grant in the dirt, spyglass to his eye, the metal scoured so there’d be no glint of sunlight to give away their position. “They’ll be going west.”

  Grant snorted. “Copper says you’re wrong. Again. They won’t march directly toward the lines. They’ll move around, try to outflank.”

  Marcus Dunwood considered the bet, nodded. “I’ll take that.”

  Four hours later, when the lines shifted and began to move west, Dunwood cursed.

  “Why are you complaining?” Grant muttered. “You won.”

  “Only bet a copper, didn’t I?” Dunwood shook his head with disgust. “I should have known better.”

  “Next time you will. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  * * *

  War was full canvas, the drumbeat to quarters, the strike of blade against blade. War was honor and bravery beyond fear.

  Two hundred miles away from Gerard’s troops and Sutherland’s officers, Lieutenant Kit Brightling was at the helm of the Isles ship Ardent, dark hair whipping in the wind as the ship streamed through high seas near San Miguel. She looked back, found the line of Frisian brigs—wide of beam and tall of mast—flying toward them with all sails. The Ardent had managed to stay ahead, but the brigs had more canvas, and they were gaining ground.

  “Lieutenant, I believe it’s time.”

  “Sir,” Kit said to the woman beside her, whose eyes were concerned beneath a furrowed brow. Kit respected no one in the Crown Command more than Captain Perez. And she understood well the uncertainty in the captain’s eyes.

  Kit was Aligned to the sea, could feel the currents of magic that spun beneath the waves. Magic was energy, power; and humans were still only beginning to understand its scope, its potential—and the horrific costs of its misuse. Reading the stories told by the currents was harmless, as far as anyone could tell. Manipulating them—trying to shift them, to absorb them, to weaponize them—had been calamitous. Three months ago, Aligned Gallic officers had warped the current to the surface at Contra Costa, hoping to ignite it and send a current of fire through Isles troops. Ten thousand had died in the resulting inferno.

  But Kit had found a path, a slender space between seeing and manipulating. A gentle grasping of the current, touching it just long enough to pull a ship into its arms—and speed the ship along its path. Too much, and the current would snap back—and break the ship in two.

  Perez had been confident enough to let Kit try, her crew trusting Perez enough to follow her orders despite the risk. And when they’d felt the ship fly, more than willing to try it again.

  “Get ready,” the captain said. “Hard to port when we’re there. We’ll come hard around,” she added with a thin smile. “And drive right toward them.”

  Kit closed her eyes—easier to focus—and reached down through wood and tar and hemp to the water, deep and dark and swirling below, feeling for the shimmering current that crossed somewhere beneath them. Not directly—they hadn’t been that lucky—and nearly a mile to port. But that was close enough . . .

  “Starboard brig is gaining ground, Captain!”

  Kit heard the shout from the waist, ignored it as her fingers began to tingle from the brush against the power, and reached farther, sweat on her brow as she drew closer to it. And then the heat of the ley line itself, the center core, bright and glimmering. The ship—an arrow; the current—a bowstring. The heat building, her skin damp with it, and she reached farther—just a bit more—until the current wrapped around her.

  “Ready when you are,” Perez said quietly, and Kit released fingers she’d clenched into hard fists, and then released the connection.

  Like a loosed arrow, the Ardent shuddered and jerked forward, and Kit opened her eyes as lieutenants shouted orders and the ship made hard for port. She looked down at her hands, found a new constellation of spots, dark and minute, across her palms. Burns, the physick had said. Painless, but invariable, the scars of flying too closely to the magic.

  “Let the canvas fly,” Perez called out, and the Ardent roared forward against the breaking sea.

  One

  Three years later

  There was a ribbon pinned to her coat, and a dagger in her hand. And as Captain Kit Brightling stared down at the little wooden box, there was a gleam in her gray eyes.

  Two months of searching between the Saxon Isles and the Continent. Two months of sailing, of storms and sun, of crazed activity and mind-dulling monotony.

  They hadn’t been sure what they’d find when the Diana set sail from New London—the seat of the Isles’ crown, named for the city rebuilt after the Great Fire’s destruction—only that they’d almost certainly find something. It had been nearly a year since the Gallic emperor Gerard Rousseau was exiled to Montgraf, since the end of the war that had spread death across the Continent like a dark plague. Gerard had finally been beaten back, his surrender and abdication just outside the Gallic capital city, Saint-Denis. The island nation of Montgraf, off the coast of Gallia, was now his prison, and a king had been installed in Gallia again.

  There were reports of Gerard’s growing boredom and irritation with his exile, with the inadequacies of the island he’d been exiled to, with the failures of his replacement. There were rumors of plans, of the gathering of ships and soldiers, of missives sent across the water. Queen Charlotte had bid Kit, the only captain in the Queen’s Own Guards, to find those missives.

  They’d patrolled the Narrow Sea that separated the Isles from the Continent, visiting grungy ports and gleaming cities, trading for information, or spreading coin through portside taverns when tipple loosened more tongues. Then they’d found the grimy little packet ship twenty miles off the coast, not far from Pencester. And in the captain’s stingy quarters, in a drawer cleverly concealed in his bunk, they’d found the lovely little box.

  She couldn’t fault its design. Honey-colored wood, carefully hewn iron, and brass corners that gleamed even in the pale light of dawn. It was intended to hold secrets. And given its lock—a rather lovely contraption of copper and iron gears—hadn’t yet been triggered, it still did.

  Secrets, Kit thought ruefully, were the currency of both war and peace.

  “You can’t touch that.”

  That declaration came from the sailor in the corner.

  “I believe I can,” Kit said, sliding the dagger into her belt and lifting the box from the drawer. She placed it on the desk that folded down from the worm-holed bulkhead, then glanced up. “It now belongs to Queen Charlotte.”

  “It already did,” sneered the man, his teeth the same yellowed shade as his grimy shirt. His trousers were darker; the cap, which narrowed to a point that flopped over one eye, was the sickly green of week-old bread. “I’m from the Isles, same as you, and I’m to deliver that to her. You saw the flag.”

  “The flag was false,” said the lanky man’s captor. Jin Takamura was tall and elegantly built, with a sweep of long dark hair pulled back at the crown. His skin was tan, his eyes dark as obsidian in an oval face marked by his narrow nose and rounded cheekbones. And his gleaming sabre was drawn and currently at the neck of the grungy sailor.

  Kit thought Jin, second in command of the Diana, complemented her perfectly—his patience and canny contemplation, matched against her desire to go, to see, to do. There was no one she trusted more.

  “You’ve no papers, no letters of marque,” Jin said, looking over the sailor’s dingy clothes. “And certainly no uniforms.”

  “You aren’t from the Isles,” Kit concluded, “any more than this box is.” She walked toward the pair, smelling the sweat and fish and unwashed body emanating from the smuggler three feet away. Baffling, since water, salty or not, was readily available.

  Kit was slender and pale-skinned, with dark hair choppe
d to skim the edge of her chin. Her eyes were wide and gray, her nose straight, her lips full. She clasped her hands behind her back when she reached the two men, and cocked her head. “Would you like to tell us from whom you obtained it, and to whom it will be delivered?”

  “It’s for the queen,” he said again. “A private gift of some . . . unmentionables. A fine lady like you shouldn’t have to deal with that sort of thing.”

  Kit’s brows lifted, and she glanced at Jin. “The queen’s unmentionables, he says. And me a fine lady.”

  “Maybe we should let him return to his business,” Jin said, gaze falling to the box, heavy and full of secrets. “And avoid the impropriety.”

  “Best you do,” the sailor said with a confident bob of his chin. “Don’t want no impro—whatever here.”

  “Unfortunately,” Kit said, “we’re well aware that’s nonsense. You’re smugglers, running the very nice Gallic brandy in your hold, not to mention this very pretty box. But because I’m a pleasant sort, I’m going to give you one last opportunity to tell us the truth. Where did you get the box?”

  “Unmentionables,” he said again. “And you don’t scare me. Trussed up in fancy duds or not, you’re still a girl.”

  At four-and-twenty years, Kit was more woman than girl, but she was still one of the youngest captains in the Crown Command—the Saxon Isles’ military—and there were plenty who’d thought her too young or too female to hold her position. But she’d earned her rank on the water. At San Miguel, by finding deep magic, and reaching for the current just long enough to give her ship the gauge against a larger squadron of Frisian ships—and capture gold and munitions that Queen Charlotte was very pleased to add to her own armory. At Pointe Grise, she’d helped her captain avoid an attack by a larger Gallic privateer, and they’d captured the privateer’s ship and the coded dispatches it was carrying to Saint-Denis. At Faulkney, as a young commander, she’d found a disturbance in the current of magic, and led her own squadron to a trio of Gallic ships led by an Aligned captain that had made it through the Isles’ blockade and was racing toward Pencester to attack. Kit’s ship successfully turned back the invasion.