Chapter 16 Sofie
Chapter sixteen
Sofie
The storm passed with Blue Moon sailing just on its nausea-inducing edge.
I would say our travels were peaceful after that, except that I’d spent the last several nights enduring the Bride’s increasingly frustrated attacks in my dreams. She was trying her hardest to breach them. As if I would let her!
It was something of a surprise, then, when instead of more shadowed dreams, a voice snapped me awake just after dawn.
“Wake up, Dar’Vester. We’re under attack.”
The figure in the doorway was not the one I expected. Slowly, he resolved into that of the man I’d once mistaken for the captain.
“Aoki?” I blinked at the first mate, not understanding.
I glanced at the captain’s bed. It was empty, and in complete disarray.
“You need to get below deck, sorceress. He’ll want you alive.”
“How can you be under attack? I didn’t sense anything.” With horror, I realized the Bride’s attacks must’ve been wearing me down. I should’ve felt the approach of other ships.
“It’s Blackbeard,” Aoki said. “He’s rallied and come for us at last.”
“But…but you’re protected. The death-curse—”
“This close to the Hidden Isle?” He laughed bitterly as he hoisted me out of my blankets and furs, pulling me to my feet. “That would be too generous of the Bride. It’s a cruel little trick. And it doesn’t keep our ships afloat, neither. We’ll all be shark food if Blackbeard keeps this up.”
My eyes widened with understanding. I was suddenly, fully awake. “You’re no longer invincible.”
“No, and Blackbeard knows it.”
“But how?”
“Never trust a pirate,” he said with a grimace, holding open the door for me. “Go show yourself, Sorceress Dar’Vester. You’re too good a prize to risk losing to the small gods of Prevaria, especially if he believes you’ll break the curse. Maybe he’ll call for a parlay.”
A volley of arrows and the twang of unseen crossbow bolts greeted me as I stepped onto the deck.
My breath caught as I calculated the distance between my foot and one of the still-quivering arrow shafts.
Not even three feet. I poured a little extra magic into my usual protection spells, changing them into a hardened shell.
The second sight that greeted me as I stepped out of the cabin was Jax hauling Marigold toward the ship’s rail by the back of her shirt. Before I had opened my mouth to scream “stop,” he threw her overboard.
Another volley of bolts launched from Blackbeard’s fleet, thrumming into the hull of Blue Moon or cracking through boards. The ship lurched horribly, taking my stomach with it. I staggered a few paces to the starboard side.
When I glanced around, looking for signs of injuries, I realized Aoki was nowhere to be seen. But the cabin door—why was it shut?
A shield in her hand, the Lady de Gorm strafed towards me.
“I picked a ship,” she said, her teeth gritted. “That one.”
At first, I grappled for what she meant. Then I remembered the morning we’d reached the pirate stronghold of Starfall, when I’d wanted to show them I was no “beachmaid” and could be just as ruthless as any of them.
Now it was time to prove it.
My limbs were like swaying willows in the wind as I climbed to my feet, trying to focus on the ship she pointed at. “Too close,” I said.
“Pick another one, curse you!” de Gorm shouted.
And so I did.
While fragments of spellwork tumbled through my mind, I snatched bits and pieces of past spells, melding them with the active strands of chaos magic in the air.
Slowly—too slowly—the elemental magic began to form, a wild, shifting thing usually only possible with the aid of a spellbook. Not for me. The sea began to churn against itself, waves shifting and colliding, forming an impossible new pattern. One woven out of chaos itself.
I asked, and chaos obeyed.
The whirlpool was small at first, pulling the ship out of its lane as it chased us. Then I heard the groaning of its sides as it began to bob, then turn. The churning waves increased in size, pulling at the ship and its brethren.
Just as a second ship was caught in the swirling waters, there was a sharp crack that made my ears ring, followed by screams.
The ship broke in half. As the fore sank quickly, taking the crew with it, the aft tipped into the sea, the whipstick spearing the sky. Then it, too, went under, pulled into the abyss my curse had made.
I wanted to clap my hands over my ears, to drown out what I had done. But that was not how I was raised, on Aegle or by Dewspell Academy.
A fairy godmother of the realm always took responsibility for what she had done. And that went double for balancers.
So I watched, and silently commended their souls to whatever gods were left and would take them.
Another volley of crossbow bolts flew towards Blue Moon, but this time, they mostly fell short, slipping into the water with barely a splash. The three ships of Carabosse were nearly out of range.
With a hint of a satisfied smile, I turned toward the Lady de Gorm…
…and found her slumped backward at an unnatural angle, a crossbow bolt protruding from her side.
“Healer!” I called, my voice breaking, for even as I said it, I knew no healer would come. I knelt beside her, avoiding meeting her eye. “I can help. I can…”
She tried to speak, but no words would come. Blood trickled from her mouth. At last, I dragged my eyes towards hers, fumbling for one of my horrid healing spells. But I was a mage of chaos—the opposite of the order that healing required.
The Lady’s eyes traveled up my face, then past me, pleading for help as I laid my hands around the shaft, willing tiny filaments of chaos into a restorative order they did not wish to take.
“Can you heal her?”
The voice behind me was gruff. Jax. I didn’t turn. I couldn’t.
I could hear the grief in his voice.
“Not like this. If you help me remove the shaft—”
Jax pushed me aside roughly, light flashing in my eyes. Before I could so much as whimper, his sword drove home into the Lady de Gorm’s heart.
“May the gods commend you for your loyalty,” Jax said, the words clipped. “You served well, and died even better.”
The Lady’s eyes went blank, a faint curve on her bloodstained lips.
She was gone.
“Why?” I demanded, gasping, voice breaking. “I could’ve—”
“You would’ve prolonged her suffering. The Lady and I had a deal. Be it natural or from battle wounds, there was never to be any agony on the deathbed for her.” He sheathed his sword without cleaning it, his throat bobbing. “It’s what she wanted.”
I couldn’t look at him. Instead, I reached out and closed the Lady de Gorm’s eyes with a shaking hand.
Moments later, I was standing again, searching for anyone I could save. I was so determined to stop Jax from enacting a similar agreement with others on Blue Moon that I didn’t understand what was happening.
“Get your essential things, madam,” Jovus said, the cabin boy’s habitually dirty face clean where his tears had fallen. “She’s sinking.”
I felt as though I was in a dream. Some horrible, wretched dream tainted by the Bride. Not even the sight of Safira, stumbling up the steps from below deck, could wake me from it. For she was carrying a great burden behind her, dragging it. Even as she continued to labor, she was sobbing.
Omar. Oh, gods, please don’t let Omar be dead.
Jovus tugged at my sleeve.
“Time to go, madam. We’re abandoning ship.”
In a daze, I let him lead me toward the cabin, passing by more fallen members of the crew I’d gotten to know over the last couple months.
Cyan was dead, a bow still clutched in his hands.
Oasis’s face was ashen as she dragged herself across the deck, burns on her skin and a crossbow bolt in her hip. And Aoki—
“Wait. Where…”
My words fell short as I stumbled past Jovus, throwing open the door to the captain’s cabin.
Aoki lay dead on the floor. Run through, just like the Lady de Gorm.
I stared at his body numbly for half a moment. He’d tried to help me. He’d woken me…
He’ll want you alive.
At the time, I thought he’d meant Jax.
Blackbeard knows.
The doubts crept into the back of my benumbed brain.
Never trust a pirate.
Had Aoki betrayed us to Captain Blackbeard?
And when had I started thinking of it as us, as if I were part of the crew of Carabosse?
As I hurried to unlock my chest with the key from around my neck, I tried to correct myself. Not us. Bluebeard and his crew. But I was part of this, whether I’d meant to be or not. I’d told them all I’d break the curse.
And when I did, the treasure would be there for the taking—by any pirate.
Dragons blast these fool pirates! How could they care so much for riches and so little for the value of life?
Tears streamed down my face as I fumbled for my “go bag.” A good balancer always had one, ready with her most valuable possessions and enough coin to see her to safety, should she need to leave somewhere in a hurry.
I slung it over my shoulder, paused and grabbed my cloak from the cabin floor.
“I’m ready,” I told an anxious Jovus, now waiting in the doorway. I stepped around Aoki’s body, praying the gods would be kind to him.
So many years under this curse would drive anyone to foolishness. I didn’t blame him. I couldn’t.
For the first time, I felt my anger growing at the Bride. Her curse wasn’t just some puzzle to be solved. It was vile, cast with wicked intent, there to destroy lives and leave the survivors to live with the consequences.
She had to be stopped.
I followed Jovus onto the deck as the ship began to list more severely.
Jax was at the rail, waiting. He held out his hand to me.
Slowly, I met his eyes. They were shadowed, darker than I’d ever seen them. Wracked with grief. I took his hand, nodded, and let him help me over the rail onto the ladder, toward the lifeboat waiting below. Jovus scrambled after me, with Jax following last.
Omar lay in the boat in Safira’s lap, eyes closed, unmoving and soaking wet, while Oasis gritted her teeth and writhed in agony. I shifted to sit beside her, closing my eyes for a moment in order to calm my mind.
I could do this. I could. I couldn’t save the Lady de Gorm, but this—this I could help with.
I pulled together what meager healing spells I could as Jax untied the lifeboat, then began to row, guiding us towards another of his ships.
“Alright, captain?” a voice called down from the rail of Temerity.
“We’re alive.”
There was a pause. “The Lady?”
“She died in battle.”
I thought I caught a muffled curse. “Gods take her, she won our bet. May the gods of the sea carry your soul home, Aoife!” she shouted across the waters, her voice wavering.
The sentiment was echoed by the others aboard, then murmured by those able to speak in our boat.
I repeated it, too, in a whisper, adding it for Cyan, Mr. Smalt, and for Aoki and Marigold, too.
Just as we turned toward the intact ship, we heard a great cry.
“Man overboard!” the same voice called from aboard Temerity.
Jovus whooped. “Mr. Smalt! He’s alive!”
Jax stopped rowing, cursed, then changed directions, rowing with renewed vigor. “Of course he is.” From the way he said it and the grim look he still wore, it was impossible to know whether this pleased him.
Jax was rowing us in the other direction for a solid minute before I spotted the cook. There, on a piece of shattered wood, bobbed Mr. Smalt’s head and arms, pulled away from Blue Moon‘s listing bulk by the aberrant current from the whirlpool.
My heart clenched, my healing efforts pausing as I practically held my breath until Jax could reach him.
A gap-toothed smile beamed up at us. “Did you commend me to the gods of the sea, too?” he asked. “Because I think they spat me right back.”
“Brine and bracken, am I glad to see you,” Jax said, his voice still oddly emotionless. He shifted carefully to help Mr. Smalt into the lifeboat without tipping it.
“Not half as glad as I am to see you,” the cook answered, panting.
He slid over the side of the boat, coughing and gasping while it rocked.
He locked eyes with me, and his grin widened.
“That whirlpool—was that you? Saved my hide, I reckon. Pulled me right out of the wreckage once I found my way to the air. Some spell, that was. Some spell.”
But I wished, with all my heart, that it could’ve been something more. That I could’ve cast it faster, or fought better or, or—something. Anything had to be better than this.
At last, the boat stabilized. Jax began to row again, and I returned to Oasis’s care, busying my mind.
All the fear, anger and grief whirring inside me would have to wait.