Chapter 35
While the crew immediately went to work getting Omen into open sky and preparing weapons for a battle, Carolina hurried to Ophelia to help her off Kip. Ophelia had some obvious scrapes and bruises from being thrown off the mistling’s back — a few of Carolina’s own were stinging on her elbows and knees — but there was also an uncomfortable amount of blood seeping from somewhere above Ophelia’s collarbone.
“Where else are you hurt?” she asked, reaching for the collar of Ophelia’s shirt.
“Just there,” Ophelia answered, sucking in a breath when Carolina peeled the fabric away from the wound.
Carolina hummed as more blood trickled out of it. “It could use stitches.”
“There’s no time,” Ophelia said. “I need to sit down.” Carolina helped her over to the bulwark and to the ground, where she leaned her head back against the wood and sucked in gulps of air for several moments with her eyes closed.
“You’re losing blood,” Carolina said, squatting down in front of her.
Ophelia opened her eyes, swung her opposite hand onto the wound, and then closed them again for half a minute. When she opened them and removed her hand, the cut was gone, and she went back to panting tiredly.
“Are you sure nothing’s broken?” Carolina asked.
“I’m sure,” Ophelia breathed. She stared into the empty night sky for a few long seconds, and when she finally lowered her gaze to meet Carolina’s, her eyes were full of tears. “I’m sorry. ”
“No-” Carolina began to say.
“I failed,” Ophelia whispered, sniffling soggily. “All I did was infuriate him and now we’re all going to die.”
“We are not going to die,” Carolina told her, and reached out to cup her face, “and you don’t need to apologize. You tried, and that was the best you could do. I’m the one who had a clear shot on him and missed.”
“What are we going to do?” Ophelia asked.
“What are we going to do?” Rue seconded.
Carolina stood and turned to find Rue, Berkeley, and Carter standing around them, and many of her other crew standing beyond them. They’d already left Breezeport behind, but shadowed against the city’s lights was the silhouette of Sky’s Honor chasing after them. At least Rue had succeeded in temporarily disabling Penny’s ship, because it hadn’t yet taken to the skies to follow.
“I know we can’t outrun them,” she said to Ophelia with an apologetic smile, “but if you can put some wind in our sails, it’ll buy us a little time.”
Ophelia nodded and stretched up her hand, and after Carolina helped her to her feet, she altered the air near the sails to push it harder against them, and they immediately picked up speed.
“What kind of heart does Sky’s Honor have?” Carolina asked Carter.
“Dronium,” he answered.
She sighed her disappointment as that squashed her first plan, because they’d never be able to reach an altitude outside Sky’s Honor’s range with their stellarite alloy if the ship could climb as quickly as Omen.
“Could we send Ribbon to sabotage them?” Berkeley asked.
Carolina shook her head. “Simon will kill her.”
“Send someone on Kip, then,” Rue suggested.
She shook her head again. “That whole ship will be on alert. It’s too late for that.”
“We have to fight, then,” Carter said.
She cocked her head at him. “You’d fight with us? Against your own crew?”
“They’re not my crew so long as they’re following Simon,” he said, and shrugged. “And maybe seeing me on your side will give some of them pause.” She extended her hand to him, and he shook it.
“Been a while since we’ve been on the defensive,” Berkeley said. “This’ll be nice a refresher, then, won’t it? ”
“I always enjoy your positivity, Berkeley,” Ophelia told him.
“Thanks,” he grinned.
“But we need all hands on deck, now,” Ophelia added.
They all turned to find that Sky’s Honor wasn’t still catching up. It had caught up, and the bow end of it was even with Omen’s stern. As soon as they saw it, Rue sprinted up to quarterdeck to ring the bell, and any crew that wasn’t already above deck came rushing up to prepare for attack.
“Let the sails die,” Carolina told Ophelia.
Ophelia stopped putting wind in the sails, and it immediately slowed them down to let Sky’s Honor come parallel with them.
“No mercy!” Carolina shouted to her crew, glaring past her own ship at the crew aboard Sky’s Honor as she drew her daggers. To Berkeley, Rue, and Carter, she said, “Do not let him get to Ophelia. We keep him distracted at all costs.”
“Aye,” Berkeley said, holding his sword in one hand and his pistol in the other.
They all watched in anticipation as Sky’s Honor leveled with them. Several of its crew members twirled roped grapples in preparation for sending them to Omen. Several more stood poised on ratlines, ready to swing over and attack. Simon was among them, and he hung there, sneering with cold hatred at them while Wyatt hesitantly hung back.
And there wasn’t one more moment to prepare before it all unfurled at once. The crew swinging their grapples sent them flying over Omen’s bulwark and then pulled, catching the hooks on the lip to begin bringing Omen closer. Carolina’s crew responded immediately, rushing forward to chop their swords at the ropes. Some of the Sky’s Honor opened fire, and the rest of hers responded in kind, returning shots while those soldiers who’d been poised on the ratlines finally began to swing over.
The first group of them thudded onto Omen’s deck with Simon at the center, and all chaos broke loose. Gunshots ceased as the sound of clashing weapons filled the air, and though her crew tried to keep up with the grapples drawing Sky’s Honor closer, the endeavor was a lost cause as more soldiers used the ratlines to board Omen. And as soon as the grapples brought their bulwarks together, soldiers flooded the ship.
Carolina immediately lost Berkeley, Rue, and Carter amidst the sea of fighting as she crossed her daggers to parry the first blow of a sword against her, but she kept a keen awareness of Ophelia and Simon in her peripherals to make sure they never reached each other. Ophelia had found two of the Alters from Sky’s Honor and was deflecting their attacks, while Simon bulldozed through one crewmember after another.
His path was fixed on Ophelia, and as Carolina parried a second strike and maneuvered herself around the soldier to shove her knife through the back of his ribs, she locked eyes with Rue through the crowd. Rue followed her nod to Simon, and swooped after him just in time to block the strike of his sword with her own, rescuing the crewmember at the receiving end of it.
Another soldier interrupted Carolina’s march toward them, and she ducked backward away from the swing of an axe and flipped one dagger to a backhanded grip, slicing upward as his swing arched him away from her and cutting through the triceps of his dominant arm. She kicked him in the back to get him away from her and searched for Rue, who had just dropped to her knees under the power of Simon’s sword strike.
Carolina took off running, sliding from knee to knee to avoid the sword of another soldier who stood between her and Simon, and as she reached Simon, she slashed one of her blades across his thigh. It made him divert his next swing at Rue as Carolina regained her feet, but even together, they were hardly a match for him. He used his air magic to add speed to every swing of his sword, so that they never had time to lash out at him because they were constantly dodging and blocking his blows, and he was resourceful with the rest of his magic in a way she’d never experienced.
While Carolina barely managed to knock away one of his strikes, Rue attempted to slash at him with her sword, but he materialized a thick sheet of ice from the moisture in the air to cover his forearm and used it to block her blade. Then he punched and sent the broken pieces pelleting into Rue’s face and knocking her backward. His arm arced from that punch toward Carolina, and she turned her chin just quick enough to avoid his knuckles against her jaw.
She rotated into the punch against the backside of his arm, leading with her dagger to try and shove it through his skull, but he ducked and grabbed her arm, trapping it against his shoulder and using it to fling her over his back and slam her to the ground. She rolled away from him as he followed up with a stomp of his boot, and as he pounded toward her, Rue rushed him and slammed shoulder first into his torso.
It knocked some breath out of him, but he planted his feet and altered the wind at his back to keep himself upright, so that all Rue managed to do was slide him a couple inches across the deck. He huffed a laugh and brought his elbow down against her back, dropping her flat onto her stomach. He adjusted his grip on his sword to drive the point of it down through Rue’s back, but Carolina pitched herself forward, grabbing his arm as she sailed over Rue’s body to take him to the ground with her.
They both dropped their weapons as they rolled, Simon gaining the upper hand as they tumbled and ending up on top of her, and he invoked a red-hot flame around his fist as he drove it down at her face. She blocked with her forearms, shouting in pain as the pommeling strike burned her flesh. He drew back to hit her again, hesitating for only a moment when he noticed the pale skin where her manacle used to be, and then he drove his fist down with even more fury. The flames licked at her ear as she dodged her head and his knuckles met the wood.
As he drew back again, Berkeley tackled him, landing two swift strikes of his own against Simon’s face before Simon could react. But then Simon grinned devilishly at him as he reached up and grabbed Berkeley by the hair. He muttered something under his breath, and then struck the palm of his free hand against Berkeley’s chest, sending him flying off of him and landing on the deck with a heavy thud.
Berkeley was on his feet the very instant after he’d landed, his teeth bared, his eyes wild and empty. It was a fury spell, and his barbaric gaze landed on the first person closest to him, one of Omen’s own crew, and he let out a savage yell and charged the man.
“Ophelia!” Carolina screamed, because she was the only one who could undo the spell and keep Berkeley from getting himself killed.
But just after she’d screamed, a dark draken swooped out of the sky and landed on the deck directly beside her, scaring her so badly that she leapt aside. There were two people on its back, and both of them jumped off.
“Isaak?” she asked in shock.
Isaak slapped the draken on the haunch, and it took off back into the air. “We came ahead to help,” he told her, and pointed into the darkness at the deck lights of a ship in the near distance. “The rest of my crew is on the way to help.”
“I’m Lia Kane,” said his female companion, who immediately ducked away through the fighters to hurry toward Berkeley.
“We need to get Simon off this ship,” Izaak told her, “ now .”
“If I could’ve kept him off it,” she countered, “I would have. ”
“Izaak Davar!” Simon shouted through the sea of fighting crew that had filled the space between them. He stomped through until he was standing two arm spans way. “I missed you back on Balshire.”
“Sorry,” Izaak said, drawing the sword at his hip, “being assassinated wasn’t on my to-do.”
“Who warned you?” Simon asked.
Izaak smiled. “A friend.”
All that did was make Simon mad, and he roared and charged at them with his sword back in his hand. Carolina slid for her daggers while Izaak met Simon’s blow, and then rejoined the fight to try and keep Izaak alive. They did their best to attack Simon at the same time, stabbing and slashing in unison, but they never managed to land. And after every other strike, Simon’s eyes canted elsewhere in the battle. Toward Ophelia. Then toward Lia. And Carolina couldn’t help but wonder if he felt the pressure of having two Casters against him instead of one.
So, she tried to use that to her advantage. The next time she noticed him searching the deck, she feigned a slash with her right dagger, and as he went to block it, she drove her left toward his torso. He noticed it just a second too late, and though he reacted quickly and dropped to one knee, bringing his shoulder in and down to guard his belly, it only made the point of her blade pierce into the back of it.
He bellowed with fury, drawing his arms in close to gather a tight ball of fire between them, and then released it all outward in a sudden combustion that blasted her and Izaak backward. He turned on her as she hit the ground on her back, snarling with rage as he advanced. She climbed to her feet to search for her daggers, coughing and disoriented from inhaling a flash of searing air and then immediately having it knocked out of her. Before she knew it, Simon had grabbed the collar of her shirt to hold her steady and struck her across the cheek with his other fist.
He let her go so that she staggered and caught herself against the main mast. He drew back his sword-wielding arm as he grabbed her again and pressed her back to it, and the only mercy she had then was that he was too furious to plan the strike appropriately. Because he swung, and she leaned away as much as she could, and the blade of his sword struck the main mast so hard that it buried several inches into the wood and only a hair’s breadth away from the skin of her neck.
“Simon!” Lia yelled .
Simon didn’t loosen his grip on Carolina’s shirt, but the authority in the shout caused the rest of the fighting to pause, and he looked over at Ophelia and Lia, who were standing side by side with Izaak, Berkeley, Rue, and Carter behind them. He turned a fierce scowl back on Carolina, looking like he was still debating whether he could withdraw the sword and kill her before addressing Ophelia and Lia. But then his eyes widened as they were drawn past her, somewhere over her shoulder, and he stared for several long seconds before meeting her eyes again briefly.
He stared at her just long enough for her to watch his confusion grow into a smile, and then he shouted at all of his crew, “Back to the ship!”
He brought his sword with him as he backed away from Carolina and retreated to the bulwark with the rest of the soldiers. Carolina almost gave the command to follow. To attack. But he wasn’t leaving because of a lost fight. Omen crew was still heavily outnumbered, even with Lia and Izaak, and Simon very well could have finished that battle before the rest of Izaak’s crew ever reached them.
In case it was a trick, Carolina kept her eyes fixed on the retreating crew — Wyatt included — until every last grapple had been removed from Omen’s bulwark, and Sky’s Honor pushed away from them. Then she turned her confusion on the main mast, at where her back had been pressed to it and he probably could’ve killed her if he’d kept at it.
The others ran up to her as she scanned the wood, Rue asking, “What the hell was that all about?”
“He had me,” she murmured, tracing the deep gash in the wood with her fingers, “but then he looked past me at-” She stopped short, her fingers finding the symbol on the mast.
Izaak groaned, but it quickly turned into a growl and then a shouted, “Dammit!” He turned to Lia. “Get back to the ship, tell them to follow us.” Lia nodded. “Then go and warn Vana that Simon’s on his way, and then I need you to get to Balshire as fast as you can and ready the army. Our schedule just changed.”
“To Trayward?” Lia asked.
“Every last one of them,” Izaak confirmed.
Lia summoned a mistling and took off on its back, leaving Izaak behind with them. Ophelia touched Carolina’s arm, and though the look on Ophelia’s face said she wanted nothing more than to hear whatever explanation Izaak was about to give, it was overshadowed by one of worry.
“Catch me up later,” she said. “I need to see to the injured. ”
“Thank you,” Carolina told her, and after she’d hurried away to begin checking on the crew, she asked Izaak, “What’s going on?”
Instead of answering that question, Izaak paced toward quarterdeck as he said, “Do you have any other Alters aboard who can speed us up?”
“No.”
“Then Ophelia needs to put wind in your sails as soon as she’s taken care of the injured,” he said. They reached the helm, but it was unmanned. “Where is your helmsman?”
“Ryland!” Carolina called, and a few moments later, Ryland reached them. “Are you hurt?”
“Not much,” he answered. “I’m fine.”
“Follow Simon’s ship,” Izaak ordered. “We’ll lose them, but they’re heading to Trayward.”
Ryland looked at Carolina, and she nodded for him to obey and asked, “Why are we going to Trayward, Izaak? How did you find us? What did Simon see in that symbol?”
Izaak sighed, retreating backward to sit against the bulwark at the stern end of the ship. He set his chin and mouth into his hand and shut his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again and dropped his hand, said, “I’ve been trying to catch up with you since you left Trayward.”
Carolina’s brow furrowed. “Was it you that gave the order for us to be detained?”
“It was my shipwright, Vana.”
“And is she the Caster who was in my cabin the night before?” she asked, and when Izaak nodded, demanded, “ Why? ”
“Because this is my ship,” he answered. “And she was trying to determine how you acquired it.”
She didn’t know what to say. She looked around at the others in stunned silence for several moments before managing to breathe, “What?”
“It was one of three,” he explained. “Built by Vana on Trayward. The aegides, we called them, the shields of the rebellion. But they were attacked by Sovereign in transit to me, a charge led by Admiral Kim. Only one ship made it out,” he pointed to the ship following behind them, “and another was taken by the emperor, and we haven’t been able to get it back.” He smiled gently at her and watched his hand as he patted the bulwark. “This one, with its unique alloy heart and infused hull, was meant to be my personal ship, our leading aegis, but all its transport crew was killed in the fight, and it was lost.”
“Until your shipwright saw it settled at Trayward,” Rue supplied.
Izaak nodded at her and then looked at Carolina again. He didn’t say anything right away, but after a few moments, said, “I can see your mind working.” She hummed. “I’ll give you a minute to piece it out.”
She squinted at him, because she knew he was getting at something. But what? What did Omen and the rebellion have to do with the symbol Simon had seen on the main mast? What did it have to do with his search for Ascension?
Alloys were impossible. But her very own ship had an alloy heart, and apparently it wasn’t the only one. So, what if someone had Ascended? Could they form an alloy then?
Vivienne had married a shipwright. A man from a tribe called Crimson Stone.
The stone in Omen’s symbol at the heart of the oak tree was the cut of a ruby.
There was an old, massive, out of place oak tree at the very heart of Trayward’s town hall.
Rue took in a deep gasp at the same time Carolina did, and they locked eyes as they said in unison, “Ascension is in Trayward.”
Izaak nodded and sighed, “And now Simon knows it too.”
“But how?” Rue asked. “How could he possibly know what that symbol meant?”
“My shipwright, Vana, is the granddaughter of the first Ascended witch, Vivienne Wright,” Izaak said, and they all nodded. “Simon is her descendant.”
“Simon is-” Carolina huffed a dry laugh. “He’s a descendant of Vivienne? If he’s always known about Ascension, then why does he work for the emperor? Why Sovereign?”
“His parents were collateral in a fight between Sovereign and the rebellion,” Izaak answered. “It was before I took over, and Freedom in Shadows’ previous leader was a man of… singular focus. When Simon went to live with Vana, he learned of Ascension, and he begged her to break the emperor’s curse. He begged her to rule because no one could challenge the power she had.” Izaak paused and shrugged. “She refused, and she could see how power-hungry he was once he presented for magic, and she refused to tell him how to Ascend. So, he left to find his own way. ”
Rue blew a hard breath through pursed lips while Carolina dropped her shaking head, and the others stared intently at Izaak.
“He became the first Caster in Wright history to turn themselves over to Sovereign for training,” Izaak continued. “And he’s been using Sovereign’s resources to search for Ascension ever since.”
“And now, thanks to us,” Carolina breathed, “he’s found it.”
“I’m trying not to hold it against you,” Izaak said.
She let out a hum of laughter as she began to pace, and said, “Thanks…”
“Ryland,” Berkeley mumbled, pacing over to the helm and holding out his hand, “let me borrow your spyglass, please.”
Ryland gave it to him, and he hurried to Izaak’s side to hold the spyglass to his eye, peering through it at another ship that had join their caravan.
“Who is it?” Carolina asked.
Berkeley growled a profanity under his breath and answered, “Looks like Penny gave up on fixing his ship and commandeered a different one from the docks. And there’s another Sovereign ship chasing him.” Berkeley lowered the glass. “The other ship will probably join Simon’s fleet once they catch up…”
“Penny?” Izaak asked. “Vinson Penny?”
“That’s the one,” Carolina said. “Simon enlisted his help in exchange for Omen.”
“Like hell that scum is getting my ship,” Izaak muttered.
Carolina resisted the urge to scowl at him as she said, “I said the same thing.”
“Look, Carolina,” Izaak said, standing from the bulwark, “this ship was built for the rebellion. Who’s captaining it doesn’t matter as much as the fulfilling of its purpose.”
She cocked her head at him. “What are you saying, Davar?”
“So long as you help me see all of this to the end,” he held out his hand, “consider it a gift from a friend.”
She didn’t hesitate to grab his hand and give it a hearty shake. “Deal.” The others then followed her lead in turning to search for Sky’s Honor, which was already several ship lengths ahead of them and almost devoured by the night sky. “I guess we should make sure the crew is ready for another fight.”
Izaak stuck his index finger and thumb into his mouth and let out a shrill whistle, and the dark draken he’d boarded with earlier dropped out of the sky and to his side. “I’ll send my healer over to help,” he told them as he climbed onto the draken’s back.
“If you have any Alters to spare for the sails,” Carolina added, “Ophelia will need rest.”
He considered that for a second as he glanced back at his own ship, and then nodded. “I’ll send one with the healer.” He took off into the sky, leaving the rest of them there.
There was no time to process all that they’d learned, not yet anyway. They needed to help Ophelia care for the wounded and tally up their dead, and then they all needed to rest, because Carolina had a feeling this fight was just the beginning.