The Hidden Lands: The Orphan Fleet, #2

By Brendan Detzner

In the aftermath of the Dragot Empire's failed attack on the Mountain skyport, seventeen year old Amber, former bride of the invasion's commander and current traitor to the empire, is on the run. Alone and pursued by Dragot assassins, she seeks political asylum in the Hidden Lands, a mysterious and isolated alliance of countries on the far side of the world, and is taken to the Embassy District, a refuge for political criminals, abandoned spies, and lost souls from every corner of the earth. Everyone has an agenda and no one is who they appear to be. Amber must figure out who to trust quickly, or the shadows of her new home will swallow her whole.

"The Hidden Lands" is the second installment of the "The Orphan Fleet" series. Other works by Brendan Detzner include "White Rabbit Society", "Millersville", and the short story collections "Beasts" and "Scarce Resources". His short fiction has appeared in Podcastles, Chizine, Pseudopod, the Exigencies anthology from Dark House Press, and many other venues. He also runs the Bad Grammar Theater reading series in Chicago.

"This is the second book I've read by Detzner. The Hidden Lands will not disappoint readers. The excitement continues! The imagery is awesome; readers are easily brought into the adventure. The characters are well developed and seem so real. Having meet Amber in the previous book, I liked her even more with this book. She is a strong tough girl who proves that strength is found when it's needed. The author writes in a way that makes readers want to be there for her; even if it's just to give her a hug."
Beth at Boundless Book Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brendan Detzner
• Release date: Oct 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393182252

Book preview

1

From the time she first left home to the time she abandoned her husband, Amber felt free exactly once. It was when she was still attending boarding school. She was twelve. They’d gone on a trip to the capital city, and their usual teacher and chaperone had fallen ill and stayed at the hotel, leaving only her younger subordinate in charge of seven girls. When the museum they'd been scheduled to visit closed unexpectedly, the substitute brought the girls to a nearby penny arcade, gave them each a handful of coins, and told them to spend the afternoon as they pleased.

It was an enormous breach on the substitute's part; she disappeared after it became known what she’d done, and if she was lucky she'd only gotten fired. But that was the furthest thing from Amber's mind at the time. Walking through the dark corridors of the arcade, surrounded by flashing lights and ringing bells and smoke and strange people, Amber had felt like she might be falling or flying, depending on which way the world had been turned.

The first machine she dared to approach was the only one she had a clear memory of now. It had been called Pilgrimage of a Whore. The name had been written in black on a red cloth banner hanging over the machine. She'd put a coin in the slot, turned a crank over and over again until something clicked, and stepped back. The curtain surrounding the glass box on top of the machine was pulled away in a halting, uneven motion, revealing a set of overlapping paper puppets and backdrops that rotated into and out of sight, telling the story. It was nothing she hadn't heard before— a naive girl disobeys her parents, gets in trouble in the big city, and flees to the Hidden Lands, only for devils with pitchforks to seize her and drag her to hell upon her arrival. But for a few seconds, before the story reached its end, a set of three fans rose and unfolded as a red light bulb came to life behind them, revealing the Embassy District, or at least a storybook version of it, for just long enough to imprint itself on her imagination, before the demons came out and the scene disappeared in a puff of chemical smoke, and the curtain was drawn back shut.

But in that short time, Amber saw lights in cellophane windows, a few of them in the cluster of buildings inside the red wall and many more in the city outside. And Amber remembered thinking about how each little window could have a person inside of it, and each person had a whole other world inside of them. And it made her wonder.

2

The journey to the Hidden Lands from the Mountain had three sections. The first was by air, and the second was by horse-drawn carriage. The final leg of the trip was unknown, to Amber or to anyone else from the civilized world who had not made the journey themselves. All they had were conflicting rumors.

The civilized world. Amber caught herself. She knew better than to call it that now, after the people she'd met and the places she'd been. But the detritus of her old life was like water coming from a hose- the harder you squeezed, the greater the pressure. The way she walked, the way she judged the people around her at first glance and the way she assumed that they judged her.

The airship that took her to the forest made a single stop after it cleared the wastes, a skyport about half the size of the Mountain. It was a colony and a business, not a home. The people who worked there cycled in and out every nine months. It was a place with a divided mind, full of little stores you could just barely walk into. Each store took a side. One faction tried to pretend it was some kind of satellite of the Mountain, and inside those shops you could buy scandalously loose clothing, or paintings of performers in costume, or knick-knacks that bounced around when you threw them on the floor and were supposed to look like acrobats.

One of the nicer stores even had little music boxes that supposedly played songs from the Show. But Amber had seen the Show, and heard the songs, and nothing coming from the boxes sounded familiar to her. She'd been raised to be a snob. Maybe now she was being a reverse snob. But the Mountain was a real place. She'd been there. It was where her new life had started, where she'd reached through fear and claimed the world. It meant something to her.

The other faction reached back in the opposite direction. Those stores were miniature versions of the kinds of places where Amber had been trained to assemble her identity. Dresses and shoes and jewelry and perfume. When she arrived at the skyport, she was still wearing the rags she'd been given on the Mountain, and had nothing but the fat bag of mixed currency she'd been sent on her way with. She couldn't look like this when she reached her destination, but she wasn't sure how she did want to look.

Her scar was what freed her from the trap. The moment she stepped into each stall, talkative salesmen with soft hands would emerge with powders and creams and veils to hide her terrible deformity. And Amber would look them in the eye, and tell them exactly what she was and was not interested in purchasing today, and they would reluctantly put away the makeup and bring out the dresses and necklaces instead. Liberated from the utility of capturing and holding a husband, Amber was pleased to realize that she loved these things. Petticoats and bodices, columns and empires, brocade and chiffon. She assembled her new wardrobe with more of a thought towards movement and comfort than her old one, but it wasn't something anyone who wasn't an expert would notice. Generally speaking, she looked about the same now as she had when she'd first debuted and gone to the balls and the tea parties. Except now she had a crescent moon reaching from her eye down to her jaw where a knife had carved into her flesh.

She was alone, she was seventeen, and had nothing in the world aside from what she was carrying. But no one tried to steal from her, no one threatened her, no one tried to become her protector. The scar kept them away. She was not a girl alone in the world. She was a widow. Like the spider.

Amber boarded her ship an hour before departure. She'd paid extra to have a small bench to herself below decks, a space where she could pull a curtain shut and not be seen. She waited until she was alone before she finally allowed herself to smile. She was scared, and she didn't know what was going to happen next, but so much had happened already. She remembered the boy she loved holding her and looking into her eyes— and yes, love was what it was. Even if it was only that one night, even if she never saw him again. Amber had had a great deal suggested to her about love over the course of her life, and very little said. Love was spontaneous, except when you planned for it. It was the most important thing, until it was inevitably the slave to something else. It was real and it was a fairy tale. But Amber remembered Jiaire and she decided. It had happened. Even if