Chapter 8
Ophelia sat forward on the floor in the brig when the heavy wooden door to the room opened. She’d been leaning against the iron bars, trying not to think about how sore her arms were from being locked in position for the last few hours, but it had been better than thinking about how alone and captured she was, and she all but glared at Gerald as he strode in and closed the door behind him.
“Come to gloat?” she mumbled.
He came up to the cell and leaned against it, gripping a bar in his hand. “There’s a ship that’s been following us since we left Breezeport. Pirates, we think. What do you know about it?”
Ophelia’s heart swelled so brilliantly that her face almost betrayed her. Her eyebrows lifted and her eyes widened, and she hoped Gerald would take it for fearful surprise rather than the excitement that it was. But she wasn’t as alone as she thought. Carolina was coming for her.
“Why would I know anything about it?”
“I don’t know how many pirates you’ve saved in the last eight years,” he said, “maybe someone owes you.”
“Four years,” she corrected as she stood, “I’ve only been a surgeon for four years, and I don’t do it so that people are indebted to me.”
He stared at her blankly for several long seconds before asking impatiently, “Who’s on that ship?”
“Pirates, probably,” she shrugged, “you said so yourself.”
His lips pursed, his knuckles going white with his grip on the bar as his eyes ran her over, lingering at the chains around her torso. “We have explicit instructions to bring you in alive,” he growled. “Unharmed. I’m trying to figure out a way to keep pirates from killing you if they take this ship.”
“Don’t act like you give a damn about what happens to me,” she spat.
“You’d like to think me heartless, wouldn’t you?”
She answered by giving a jerk at the chains around her arms and torso. “You don’t care if I die so long as you get paid.”
“I’m a bounty hunter, and you’re a criminal.”
“I’m a doctor !” she pleaded. “My only crime has been wanting a life of my own, where Sovereign can’t force me to kill at their behest. And for that, they’d have me executed.”
“Why are you so convinced they’ll kill you?” he asked.
“Why are you so convinced they won’t?” she countered. “Does it help you sleep better? Thinking all the witches you’ve brought to justice are serving out their sentences in prison or being rehabilitated. They’re not. They’re dead.”
He drew in a deep breath and held it for several moments as his brows converged and his gaze fell, and then he shook his head and let that breath out in a sigh. “Those pirates will kill you when they realize you’re a witch. If they’re not after you, then killing us is the only other reason for them to chase bounty hunters, and we can’t outrun them, we’ve been trying. We have Abner but… our ship is small, and our crew smaller.” He heaved another reluctant sigh. “Miss Parker, if you can assure me that you’ll help defend this ship if it comes to it, I’ll let you out.”
Her shock was as genuine as the concern in his eyes. There was so much concern there that her shock faded quickly to guilt, and she hesitated to nod. She wondered how many times she could run, how many times she could test his patience before he decided the bounty wasn’t worth it and killed her himself. But perhaps if Carolina rescued her and she never had to see Gerald again, it wouldn’t matter.
So she said, “I won’t fight against your crew.”
There was a beat of pause as he considered her words, and then repeated, “You’ll help defend this ship.”
“I’ll defend myself if I need to,” she stated, “and I won’t fight against your crew. That’s the best you’ll get.”
He chewed the inside of his lip while he thought about it some more. “Fine. Swear it.”
“I swear,” she said.
He didn’t appear entirely convinced, and added, “We can’t protect you if you’re working against us. ”
“I swear, Gerald,” she said sincerely. “I won’t fight you.”
He finally pulled out a key to the cell, and she swallowed down the nervous bile rising in her throat as he unlocked the door. She obeyed his forward gesture and met him on the outside, where he swapped keys, his gaze uncertain and untrusting as it held hers. Regardless of his reservations, he undid the chains and let her shrug them off to the floor.
Ophelia sighed and stretched her arms above her head, tensing her muscles to squeeze out the soreness while holding back a chuckle at how the sudden movement sent Gerald backward a step. He waited for her to finish before motioning for her to follow him up the stairs, and she trailed him to the deck where the rest of the crew was standing in wait.
And it was a small crew. She counted twenty-six people — including Gerald, Abner, and Piers — and with the helmsman and navigator, it made twenty-eight. She didn’t know how much crew Carolina had, but her ship was framed in the distance by the lingering gray of dusk and almost three times larger.
She followed Gerald to the bulwark as he asked, “Do you know who it is yet?”
Piers lowered his monocular and gave Gerald a weary look. “It’s a frigate…”
“Hellbird?”
Piers shook his head. “They’re not flying Hellbird’s flag,” he said, and when Gerald took the monocular and lifted it to his eye, Piers added, “it’s flat-hulled and the wood is dark.”
Gerald only looked for a moment before lowering the monocular and muttering, “Omen.”
“Carolina Trace has never attacked a bounty ship without a reason,” Abner said, eyeing Ophelia. “This isn’t worth our lives, Ger. I say we give her up.”
Ophelia kept her face as neutral as possible while Gerald worried his bottom lip and stared back at her. “We’re not risking it,” he finally said. “It’s nearly dark. Kill the lanterns, we’ll try to lose them.”
Abner sighed, passing a distrusting look at her as the lights were put out.
“Um, Sir?” one of the other crew members called, and he pointed up toward the top of the main sail. “What is that?”
Ophelia squinted through the fresh darkness at the small creature perched atop the main sail. It was a whippon, almost invisible in the dark except for its bright white plumage, with the silhouette of its small head tilted down at them innocently and its feathered tail stroking the canvas.
Nobody moved. Not for what felt like an entire minute until the sound of a pistol cocking pulled Ophelia’s gaze away.
Gerald lifted his gun-toting arm an inch at a time while he whispered, “Abner, water.”
His arm stopped and his aim steadied, but Ophelia couldn’t let it happen. She made a subtle pulling motion with her fingers, only enough to push a small gust of wind against the sail and scare the whippon just as Gerald pulled the trigger. The whippon burst upward, evading the shot and spitting a molten droplet of fire at the sail as it barrel-rolled in the air.
Abner was ready with a lob of water, but the whippon’s beak clicked and several more droplets pelleted the sail. The spots blackened, sizzling with a hit of Abner’s water before they could ever burst into flames, but the whippon didn’t stop. Not even when every crew member with a pistol loaded up a shot and fired into the air. It was the most agile thing Ophelia had ever seen, twisting and spinning, ascending and dipping all while keeping Abner occupied with the canvas.
And once it had finished peppering the white sail with scorched holes, it disappeared into the darkness. Everyone stopped, standing still and quiet with weapons poised while they searched around for another flash of white.
One of the crew members closer to the stern end of the ship sniffed loudly through his nostrils and said, “Does anyone else smell smoke?”
But there hadn’t been enough flames from the sail to cause the smell that wafted to Ophelia’s nose, and it only took a moment more for the crew to realize where it was coming from.
“The rudder is on fire!” someone shouted.
Everyone sprinted to the back of the ship, where the orange glow of a fire illuminated the smoke rising from the rudder. Gerald was the only one who didn’t move. He squinted thoughtfully as he searched the dark near the sails and blindly loaded another shot into his pistol, and sure enough, disabling the rudder had been another distraction.
While everyone else was busy panicking about the rudder or running below deck to make sure the fire hadn’t spread, the whippon returned and perched atop the halyard keeping the main sail up .
“Abner!” Gerald yelled, taking aim and firing a desperate shot at the whippon.
It missed, and the creature spat several pebbles of flame at the rope to begin burning it through. Gerald fumbled with his pistol as he tried to load another bullet, screaming for anyone else to come and help. He loaded and fired another shot before anyone heard him and came running, but it was too late. The last thread of the rope snapped with a crack, and the top wood batten of the sail dropped, crashing into the mast with a splintering thud and disabling the sail completely. They were dead in the air.
“All hands!” Gerald yelled, and finally searched the horizon as his face fell. “Where’s the ship?” He glanced around at the others, his eyes wide and frantic. “Does anyone see the ship!?”
No one answered. No one could see it because it had disappeared while the whippon created a distraction and disabled their ship, and the now-complete darkness of night provided Omen with as much cover as it did Gerald’s schooner. Every crew member stood still and quiet, searching the darkness for danger. Omen was nowhere to be found, and there was no sound other than the soft whistle of a breeze as the last of their momentum carried them forward, drifting in a black, starry sky.
“Gerald,” Ophelia whispered so the rest of the frightened crew wouldn’t hear her. He ignored her in his focus, and so she said again, “ Gerald . I lied. They’re here for me. If you give me up, no one will be hurt.”
He shot her a fearsome scowl, and though he looked like he wanted to strangle her himself, it only lasted a moment before he said, “It doesn’t matter. If we give you up to a pirate ship, then Sovereign will have us killed.”
Piers asked, “Father, what should w-”
“Sh,” Gerald hushed.
Several more moments passed by, and then, from somewhere in the darkness, Carolina’s voice called, “Surrender, and we’ll let you live!”
It seemed to echo all around them, the crews’ heads swiveling left and right and upward, but still Omen was invisible.
“They’re below us,” Gerald realized, pacing to the bulwark and aiming his gun down over the side of the ship. He fired a shot, the bang of his pistol echoing emptily through the fog, and waited.
“Last chance!” Carolina shouted .
Ophelia also hurried to the bulwark, too interested in trying to spot the ship to remain where she was. Perhaps, if she’d been able to find the ship in the dark, she’d have been able to get to it. To avoid a fight altogether and make her escape without ever putting Gerald’s crew in danger, but the ship was invisible even in the moonlight.
Gerald huffed, resting his hands on the bulwark and leaning over it to call back, “You can’t possibly ascend quickly enough to take us by surprise.”
“Are you certain?” Carolina’s voice replied.
Gerald straightened up and looked around at the others, his brows high with concern. “Piers?” he whispered. “Can she?”
“I-I don’t know,” Piers stammered. “I suppose if she… if she had an Alter or if Omen’s heart is dronium, but it can’t be.”
Gerald peered into the darkness beyond as he tapped the barrel of his gun against his thigh, but he paused that tapping to pull a vial out of his pocket and drained the contents of the vigor potion in one shot. “Come on then,” he called, “try us.”
And no sooner than he’d finished did the top of Omen’s main mast rise beyond the bulwark. It sprouted rapidly in front of them in a matter of seconds, until they were face to face with long white sails and ropes and ratlines, and then they were level with the ship. It stopped climbing, having arisen so close that its bulwark thumped softly against theirs, and it hovered before them in the moonlight as Gerald’s small crew prepared for a fight.
But there was no one on Omen’s deck. It was empty, and several of the crew lowered their weapons to look around questioningly at each other, until someone shouted, “Behind!”
Ophelia whirled around, finding that ten of Omen’s crew – including Carolina – had ascended in a pinnace on the opposite side. They’d already boarded, and once the crew had all turned to look, the rest of the pirates hidden on Omen burst out of their places and flooded the ship.
The resulting chaos was instant. Pistols were thrown aside for swords in the close-range battle, and the clang of meeting metal filled the air. Carolina met a swordsman head-on with her daggers, crossing them in front of her to block his strike and then ducking around his arm and putting a blade through his ribs before he could react. As she moved on to the next man, her eyes were elsewhere, and Ophelia followed her stare to Gerald, who was glaring just as intensely at her as he dodged errant blows, using his enhanced strength to shove Omen crew out of his way.
She lost sight of them both as they met amidst clashing fists and weapons, but what she did notice was that Abner was almost done breathing life into the shadow of a veltis.
The tall, lanky creature stood two feet over even the tallest crew member, its long arms almost reaching its ankles because of its hunched back. It had a long, thick tail and unnaturally long palms and feet, all of which ended at four clawed fingers and toes. Where it should’ve had a nose on its round head is where its upper jaw ended, and its short row of eight razor-sharp upper teeth hung over its equally equipped bottom jaw when it closed the mouth of its hairless, earless head. Its wild, beady eyes looked around, finding its first target and throwing the man into the main mast with one swing of a long arm.
Ophelia stayed where she was, keeping her promise to Gerald not to fight his crew, but the fight wouldn’t last long. There were too many of Omen’s crew, and as she finally found Gerald and Carolina amidst the thrum of the fight, it was just in time to watch Carolina’s blade pierce his belly. Even a vigor potion wouldn’t save him from death if he didn’t stop this fight and get help, and as he dropped to his knees, Abner shouted and sent the veltis stomping through people to get to Carolina. It reached her, and though she tried to dodge its blow, its long arms covered far too much area, and it slammed her into the bulwark.
Ophelia abandoned the safety of her spot as Carolina staggered to her feet, and she sprinted to Gerald and dropped to her knees at his side as he sat, clutching at the wound in his stomach.
“Gerald, stop this,” she pleaded. “Surrender before anyone else gets hurt.”
“This is your fault,” he coughed.
“Dammit, Gerald, I’m not the enemy!”
He craned his neck to watch Carolina as she tried to dodge another hit from the veltis, only to get grabbed by the shoulder and thrown to the ground.
“It’ll kill her,” he said.
“If she dies,” Ophelia threatened, “I won’t heal you.”
“Abner will,” he said.
And they stared at each other, the straight line of Ophelia’s mouth letting him know that she wouldn’t fall for that bluff. Abner may have had training in healing basic wounds, but a wound like Gerald’s needed finesse. All she did when healing was speed up the body’s natural processes, but healing too much too quickly with that loss of blood would use energy he didn’t have, and it would kill him. Only, if she healed too little then it’d present its own risks. Either way, Abner would never be able to save Gerald from damage like this. They both knew it, and there wasn’t much time left. Either the veltis would kill Carolina or Omen crew would kill everyone else and the fight would be over, and Ophelia didn’t like either of those options.
But it seemed that she’d underestimated Carolina’s preparedness, because the next time she was flung to the ground, she flopped onto her back and abandoned one of her daggers to aim her pistol at the veltis’s heart.
“Stop!” Carolina screamed, and the weight of the command in her voice made everyone around them freeze, the veltis poised above her with one arm ready to swipe. “I’ve got a shadow purge and I will shoot!”
Ophelia stood, whirling to face her. “Carolina, don’t!” But while Carolina’s brow furrowed, Gerald scrambled to his feet behind her, wrapping his arm around her neck and pressing the barrel of his pistol to her head. “What?” She struggled under his enhanced strength. “What are you doing?”
“I will not let her kill him and that is no bluff,” he hissed in her ear. And to Carolina, he ordered, “Lower your weapon or she dies!”
Carolina didn’t respond, just lay there with her gun aimed at the glowing heart of the shadow, maintaining her end of the stalemate while both crews stayed tense and waiting for the fight to resume.
“Damn it all,” Ophelia huffed. She jabbed her elbow backward into the wound in Gerald’s stomach and ducked out of his grip as he buckled over, swiping the gun from his hand to point it at him instead. “Are you quite done?”
“You swore you wouldn’t fight me,” he objected.
“I also swore that I’d defend myself,” she said, and she kept her aim on him while she glanced back. “Carolina, lower your weapon.”
Carolina pushed onto her elbows and slowly rose to her feet, but her pistol stayed aimed. “Not until I hear him surrender.”
Ophelia quirked an expectant brow at Gerald, and his blood red eyes glared at her for only a few moments more before he fell to one knee and sighed. “We surrender,” he said, wincing as he gripped his stomach. “We surrender. ”
The rest of Omen immediately forced Gerald’s remaining crew onto their knees, holding them almost three to one in that position while Abner recalled the veltis and then raced over with Piers. Ophelia helped Gerald lie down, but when Abner reached them, he tried to push her aside.
“Move,” he demanded, “let me heal him.”
She didn’t budge. “If you want him to live, you’ll let me do it. Go tend to the other wounded, on both sides.”
Abner conceded more easily than she expected, and trudged off to the rest of either crew while Carolina reached her side.
“You shouldn’t do that if you ever want peace,” Carolina said.
“I’ll do it because it’s right,” she replied.
Carolina didn’t respond to that and walked away instead.
“She’s right, you know,” Gerald said, “we’ll keep hunting you.”
“We’ll all do what we must,” she said. “Now shut up and let me work.”
He huffed with laughter, which made him cough as he said, “If you weren’t such a pain in my ass, I might actually like you.”
She gave a pursed-lip smile as she set her hands over his wound and began to alter the damaged tissue beneath them. “If you weren’t trying to ferry me to my death, I might tolerate you.”
He laughed again, coughed and hacked for a few moments as a result, and then his amusement faded as he looked past her at Carolina, who’d come to stand behind her again and was radiating impatience. “If Sovereign finds out you’ve got a Caster,” he said, “they’ll come after you.”
“And if they find out where we got her,” Carolina countered, “they’ll have you hanged. Let’s put it off as long as possible then, hm?”
Ophelia finished healing as much of the internal damage as she could so that he’d survive and be able to heal naturally. “Rest,” she told him. “Don’t do anything too strenuous or you’ll make it worse, and I won’t be here to fix it. Abner can bandage you up.” He grunted his acknowledgement, and Ophelia asked toward both crews, “Is anyone else critical?” There were several nods and gestures toward bounty crew, and she hurried to each one despite the looks of protest from Carolina each time. It wasn’t until she’d healed every person she could that she looked at Carolina and said, “I’m ready.”
“Back to Omen!” Carolina called.
And as quickly as they’d boarded, Omen crew retreated to the ship. Ophelia followed Carolina onto it, and while they pushed away from Gerald’s schooner and stood there waiting for the pinnace to return so they could leave, another familiar face wandered over.
“Well, well, well,” Berkeley said with a grin, “if it isn’t Devina Parker.”
“It’s Ophelia now, actually,” she told him, smiling just as big.
“Oh, yeah?” he asked. His eyes canted past her at Carolina, and though she didn’t catch what look Carolina had on her face, it wiped the smile from his. “That’s,” he cleared his throat and crossed his arms stiffly behind his back, “it’s nice, I like it.”
He didn’t say anything else, but Ophelia chalked it up to the seriousness of the fight, and hoped everyone would lighten up once they were a safe distance from Gerald’s ship. So she waited, and stood there between Carolina and Berkeley until the bounty hunters were lost in the darkness. Then she couldn’t contain her excitement any longer.
“You actually came for me!” she exclaimed.
She turned and threw her arms around Carolina’s neck, and though Carolina’s body was stiff, her arms circled lightly around Ophelia’s torso. When she released Carolina from the hug, Carolina’s hands caught hers on the way down, and they stayed clasped between them for several long moments while serious eyes held hers.
“You don’t,” Ophelia murmured, “you don’t seem as joyous about my freedom as I do…” She glanced briefly down at their hands. “Are you going to say something to me?”
All Carolina said was, “Berkeley?”
And at the very same moment that Berkeley said, “Sorry about this,” he slapped a fresh pair of chains over her wrists.
They locked into place automatically, and the two-foot bar between them prevented her from doing any magic to free herself as she tore her hands from Carolina’s and staggered backward from the betrayal.
“What is this?” she asked.
Carolina motioned to two other crew members and told them, “Take her below.”
“Carolina?” Ophelia asked, her heart starting to race with panic. “What is this? What are you doing?”
But Carolina didn’t say anything. She just stood there, stone-faced, and watched as the two crew members dragged her kicking to the stairs and below deck.
“Carolina!” she hollered, fighting desperately against her chains, as if she had any chance of breaking them apart. “CAROLINA! ”
It was no use, and they threw her into a cell and slammed the door.