Upon A Starlit Tide

28. A Light in the Storm

28

A Light in the Storm

‘ Luce! ’

Her name was light across storm-dark water. Breaking the surface, Luce swam toward the sound. Samuel had abandoned the Veronique and stood in one of the ship’s boats, a lantern held high in one hand.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’ She angled her body slightly, the better to drag Morgan, limp and heavy, along with her.

‘Is he—’

‘He’s alive.’

Barely. The sea had yearned for him, had begged and wept. It must, after all, have its number. And for a long, terrible moment, Luce had been more than happy to indulge it. Had it not been for Veronique, she might have.

Hoofbeats and voices sounded on the beach. Torches, their flames leaping across the sand, revealing, through the ribs of the half-finished ships, the crimson coats of English soldiers.

A hiss of startled breath in Luce’s ear. She turned, saw Morgan’s eyes fixed on her—on the impossible, glittering length of her—in wonder.

‘I knew it,’ he muttered. ‘I knew it when your slipper turned to water in my hands.’

He wound his fingers through her hair as though he would steal one last, treacherous kiss.

In the dark water below, something brushed against the flukes of Luce’s tail. She peered down. There were faces in the water, bloated and unseeing, rotting hands grasping. She yelped in panic as more and more men appeared in the darkness, reaching up from the deep.

‘Luce!’ Samuel had seen them, too. ‘Luce, get away from him!’

‘Don’t leave me!’ Morgan was choking with terror. He clawed at Luce like a drowning man. Shoved her under, into those hideous, swollen faces, and used the momentum to launch himself toward the Veronique , clutching desperately at the ship’s side.

The Dauphin ’s crew barely glanced at Luce. As one, they drifted after Morgan.

On the beach, flames flickered and danced, growing and spreading. The soldiers were torching the ships in their stocks, the ropeworks and timber mill. Others were upending a row of beached fishing boats and carrying them to the water.

Something flared against the Veronique ’s sails. Flame kissed canvas.

Morgan, still struggling to save himself, gazed up in horror as fire sidled across the ship, licking along the yards, teasing at the rigging.

Fire above, and darkness below.

The drowned crew reached Morgan, closing their rotting hands around his ankles, his waist, oblivious to his cries, to the flames spreading across the Veronique ’s decks. He kicked and punched at them, screamed and splashed and fought, but it was no use. The strength of the dead was with them.

‘Stay back, Luce,’ Samuel warned. ‘The debt must be paid; you cannot stop it now.’ She felt the truth of his words. Understood that, even had she wanted to, there would be no interfering with the sea’s ancient reckoning.

Down they pulled him, down and down, until Morgan’s terrified eyes and white face disappeared beneath the surface; until he stilled beneath their hands, graceful in his drowning, and the darkness swallowed him whole.

Impossible not to be shaken after witnessing such a loss, even when the person being lost was Morgan de Chatelaine. Luce wanted nothing more than to be out of that dark water, and as quickly as possible. With one powerful push of her tail she swooped beneath the surface, angling rapidly toward the ship’s boat. She emerged at its side with a gasp, reached up. And there, reaching down for her, as he always had, as he always would, was Samuel. He hauled Luce out of the water and into the belly of the boat. Drew her against him, heedless of water and cold and fins, and held her close.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘So sorry.’

A wind blew across the harbour, snatching at the flames from the Veronique and tossing them playfully into the rigging of the next vessel. The English soldiers, too, were busy—rowing merrily between the ships, hurling flaming bundles onto the decks and severing the moorings. There were cries of dismay from the Malouin volunteers aboard the Veronique and her sisters, splashes as they leapt overboard to escape the growing flames. The pride of Saint-Malo, its beautiful corsairs—with seven or eight of Jean-Baptiste’s finest among them—was in danger of becoming a fleet of fire ships. Nothing, not even the storm-stone ballast many of them carried in their dim, damp bellies, could stop it.

Except...

Samuel brushed the comb at Luce’s belt with his fingertips. ‘Will you do it?’

She knew what he was asking. With a whisper, a word or two, she could stop the wind, saving every one of those ships, including the Fleur de Mer, the Lionne, and the Thétis. She could save, too, any valuable cargo that remained unloaded in their holds, ready to spill more wealth and power into the pockets of the gentlemen of Saint-Malo. And, even more precious, their storm-stone ballast. Every piece of it taken from the Fae, from the land itself, without permission or payment.

Every piece of it stolen.

‘No,’ Luce said.

Too much has been taken.

She whistled a few notes, soft and enticing, and the breeze picked up the little boat, pushing it smoothly back toward the city. Together, they watched the flames spread through the ships. On the shore, the houses, the stores, and the dockyards were ablaze.

Luce flinched as the cannons of Saint-Malo roared.

‘They’re trying for the city again,’ Samuel said, getting to his feet. Luce, removing the sea-silk from her chemise, did the same. The Sillon was crawling with soldiers, their crimson coats blistering bright amid hundreds of torches. Shouts and commands rolled over the water. The soldiers were working hard, digging into the earth, unhitching cannon from stamping horses and manoeuvring them into position. More cannon fire, a dull boom as the guns at Fort Royale made their displeasure at this turn of events known. There was an explosion of dirt and bodies, smoke and stone. The high-pitched screams of a wounded man. The remaining soldiers, however, continued staunchly in their task, angling their own guns toward the city walls between strike after strike from the fort. Held between them in the seething, smoky mist, Luce glimpsed several enormous siege ladders.

Samuel was looking between the Sillon and the burning ships in horror. ‘They’re not going to stop, Luce.’

‘Yes,’ she replied calmly. ‘They are.’

It is a matter of breath, the raising of a storm. Breath and water, intention and will.

It begins slowly. A knife swirled in the shallows. A whisper.

Awaken.

What is this? the sea, jolted from its rhythm, replies. It had plans. Purpose. It is loyal only to the moon, its true and ancient mistress. You are not my mistress.

You must persist.

Yes, I am.

Next comes air. A gentle breath, a whisper, to alter its course. To summon.

It likes its freedom, the wind. Always has. It will cling to its wide skies. It wants no mistress, needs no mistress.

Yes, you say. You do.

Whistled notes, a sweet-worded song; your choice. The music brings forth a hush, a calm. The stars cease their glimmering to listen.

The weavings of the world tangle with your breath.

Waves are rising now, summoned by the turning, turning of a sea-knife through still waters.

Like this? The sea, finding its new rhythm, asks. It is eager to please, now, shuddering and rolling.

Yes.

The wind is singing, too, bellowing the notes you feed it, whipping up the waves. Spray and salt, roar and heave.

Heed me now.

Unbound hair and a silver comb. Ripples and snarls, weavings and tangles.

The sea’s might lies in a clenched fist.

Awaken.

That is what you hold to, as the skies blacken and the clouds roil. As day becomes night and the ocean shows its teeth.

Breath and water. Intention and will.

Light. Dark. Beauty. Violence.

And then the rain will come.

When the sea was good and riled, the rain sheeting across the rooftops and the lonely spire of the cathedral, Luce summoned a wave. It bore her obediently upward, pushing her over the city wall before waiting, as polite as any dance partner, for her to step smoothly onto the ramparts. Only then did it shatter and plunge back into the churning maelstrom below. Luce had selected a particularly lonely section of the wall to attempt this feat, one that faced neither the Sillon nor the harbour, and—hidden by the wind, the rain, and the dubious pair of breeches, shirt, and overcoat she had stolen from the ship’s boat—managed to remain unseen.

Dimly disappointed by this fact—Margot and Samuel would surely never believe her—she hurried along the walls to join the crowds of sodden townsfolk gathered on the eastern walls. It seemed the entire population of Saint-Malo was there, hunched against the rain, dripping with apprehension as they watched the roiling sea, the burning ships, and the horror unfolding on the Sillon.

It took but a moment for Luce to understand why. Why they were choosing to remain on the walls—exposing their elderly folk and children to the weather—while the streets beneath them were empty, the houses shuttered and dim.

The English soldiers would soon be close enough to bombard the city and scale the walls.

The wind and rain Luce had summoned—which had just moments ago seemed so powerful, so relentless—had not been enough to deter Lord Marlborough. As the smoke cleared between rounds of deafening cannon fire from the fort and Saint-Malo both, Luce could see the redcoats plainly. Struggling in the mud, slipping in the rain, roaring at each other as they dug in? Yes. Bleeding and screaming, falling as a ball cut through their midst? Undoubtedly. But stopping? Retreating?

No.

Saint-Malo will burn, Margot had said. The sea, the sky, the stone... all will be flame and ruin. I have seen it.

Luce longed for the groac’h’s presence now. She was, Luce hoped, still waiting on the seaward side of Fort Royale. Samuel, for his part, had stowed the stolen boat and gone to join the Malouin volunteers preparing to defend the gates. ‘You cannot expect me to hide away like a shell-less crab while you do all the work,’ he had told her, before leaving her on the beach.

He was right. She knew it. Even so, Luce’s chest tightened at the thought of him standing alongside Saint-Malo’s people— her people—as they fought to defend the city. She touched the wall before her, taking comfort in its low, familiar hum, the gentle prickling in her skin. Thanks to her presence, the city’s supply of storm-stone was strong.

But was it strong enough?

As though in answer, the squall sweeping the battlements began to ease. No, no. Luce willed the last of her dwindling strength, her faeness, into the sky, the water. It was no use. The storm was fading. All her strength, all her need, had not been enough.

‘O God,’ someone muttered, into the stillness. ‘You have willed that Our Lady should shine forth as the Star of the Sea and protectress for us who are tossed about on the stormy waves...’

A second voice, farther along the wall. ‘Our Lady, Star of the Sea, you have provided a light in the storm...’

Then a third: ‘Grant that we may set a course through these times to reach our safe haven with you...’

Another prayer, and still another. The boom of the cannon, the roar of the flames on the vessels on the harbour, could not drown them out.

‘... through her help and direction, we may be safe from dangers of soul and body...’

‘... protectress for us who are tossed about on the stormy waves...’

Down on the Sillon, red-coated soldiers were moving tentatively onto the causeway. Stretched between them were several ladders.

More voices rose, a soft litany of prayer beneath the misting rain.

‘... we turn to you for protection.’

‘... shine forth as the Star of the Sea...’

‘... save us from every danger...’

Luce glimpsed her mother and sisters among the many faces. They were pale and bedraggled, clinging together. And then, beside them, she saw Jean-Baptiste. He was watching her, not the Sillon. As though it were only the two of them on the crowded battlements, and Luce, not the encroaching soldiers, was his greatest threat. Luce was taken with the sudden urge to leave the city. To step into the sea’s embrace and give of herself no more. It was only the presence of her sisters and her mother, the other innocent people around her, that stopped her.

‘... a light in the storm...’

‘... Star of the Sea...’

‘Save us, or we perish...’

Raising the weather had taken everything Luce had; all of her skill, all of her power, and it still wasn’t enough. Margot had once said that she could control a fleet, but it would take time and practice to master such magic. She looked helplessly at the vessels blazing on the harbour, the thick smoke lathering the Sillon, and the men creeping, ever so surely, toward the city gates, and wished fervently for more of both. As though it felt her presence, the storm-stone prickled softly against her fingertips. Distant thunder; threat and promise.

‘... protectress...’

‘... light in the storm...’

‘... shine forth...’

And there on the crowded ramparts, the rain-soaked stone gleaming like the fiery night around her, she knew what to do.