Chapter 4
The bell sounded again.
“All hands!” Fahr cried. “To the post!”
“What is it?” barked Smoke as he marched to the wheel. “What is she seeing?”
“Damned if I know.”
The ship banked starboard, and we braced against the strain.
I glanced at the wheel. It was a sunswheel, two wheels working together and reinforced for rough seas.
Smoke had a meaty hand on a grip, but he had no shoulder in it.
In fact, it seemed as though the ship were moving independent of her crew and the prevailing wind.
The harpy scrambled out from the hatch, and I watched her leap through the rigging to take her place on the bowsprit.
Her taloned feet gripped the spar, her leathery wings extended as if catching the breeze.
I could see her eyes sweep the horizon, and I wondered what she thought of life on the Ship of Spells.
She seemed born to it, like all of them.
My chest was tight, my throat dry as I gripped the rail and peered across the waters toward the distant flicker of red. I knew that sight. It was burned in my eyelids like the runescars on my skin. The crackle of timber echoed in my ears, the boom of cannons, the screams of my crew.
I was grateful for the cool spray of the ocean as I leaned over the rail. A flash of white swept overhead, and I looked up. It was a winter hawk, white and ghostly, and he streaked away from the Touchstone toward the glow. Echo moved to the rail, standing beside me as I watched him go.
“I know that bird,” I said. “He waited with me for a while when I was in the sea.”
Echo kept his gaze on the distance, the breeze blowing his ears back from his long face. “Indeed.”
“Should have saved me. Stupid bird. He’s big enough to carry me.”
“Maybe he reckoned you’d set him on fire.”
We watched until the hawk was little more than a speck, disappearing into the dark like an anchor in the deep.
Suddenly, the harpy cried out and pointed with the clawed finger of one wing.
“Gunners, at the ready!” Fahr shouted.
“Gunners!” Smoke repeated and leaned on the sunswheel.
Fahr stepped to the prow, raised a hand, and the bells fell silent.
“Weather eye, lads,” he called.
“Weather eye,” Smoke repeated, using the command to keep watch for changes on the sea. “Keep a lookout for swabs in the water.”
Fire was floating toward us. Fiery timbers, fiery boards, fiery barrels and crates and beams. I swallowed hard as burning debris bumped against the Touchstone’s oaken hull.
It seemed to be the remains of a fishing vessel, and we sailed through her bones, scanning for signs of life.
There were none, only fire and crackling chimeric.
Silently, we glided, but the flames were not finished, for another pocket flared on the horizon, leading us like stones down a garden path. We swept toward it, knowing what we would find.
“Those are new,” said Echo, nodding at my hands, and we both looked at the patterns gleaming past the edges of my gloves.
“The Carmen Lumiere did something, I think,” I said.
“You’re going to need longer gloves. Do they hurt?”
“No,” I lied again.
“You forget I can hear you.”
“You forget I don’t care.”
“Hmm,” he said.
I stared at the horizon, trying not to wonder what would happen if my hands never healed.
The crackling bones of a Navy frigate came next, and soon, the waters were littered with the smoldering wreckage of other ships.
Trollers and dories, packs and barrels, ropes and rigging.
The dark waves carried stories of life and death and the spoils of war, and I didn’t need my aching hands to know, beyond a shadow of belief, that the Rhi’Ahr had been here.
There was another flash of white as the winter hawk returned.
He dipped a wing at the harpy on the sprit before swooping around to disappear behind the pup.
Scavenging for dead and dying seamages, I reckoned.
He’d probably been hoping I was dead that day in the ocean.
He’d happily have picked my bones for his supper.
It was then that we heard the cannons.
The ship leaped forward, and the bells rang once more.
The suns were rising over the Bay of Hodges, and the docks of Hodgetown were ablaze.
Red, yellow, orange, and white, waves of heat rippled to the skies.
I saw the silhouettes of three ships leaving the bay through the eastern pipe.
One still peppered the docks as she swept past. She was clearly Rhi’Ahr, and she glittered in the dawn’s light, with her white-and-gold brightwork and her white-and-gold sails.
Dying ships floated in her wake, some burning, others crackling as chimeric worked to turn wood to char. Once again, my hands ached in response.
I pushed it deep down. Pain was as much a part of life as breathing, my mother had taught me.
“Captain on deck,” barked a midshipmage.
I looked back to see Thanavar step down from the high pupdeck.
Odd. I hadn’t seen him there before. He moved like a cat, lean, elegant, and swift.
His black hair caught the night wind, mirroring the dark skies that threatened above, and my heart thudded in my throat.
He was the enemy of our people, the scourge of our helm.
Which meant the war was here, on our very decks, if an enemy commanded the Touchstone.
He paused on the quarterdeck and swept his eyes across the sea. Even though he was Rhi’Ahr, I knew what was coming. Anyone who had spent more than a month at sea on a Navy ship knew, but still, I held my breath, hanging on his words.
“Beat to quarters.”
“Beat to quarters!” went the cry. “Beat to quarters!”
The minotaur strode to a trunk near the mizzen rail, flung wide the lid, and the alarm burst forth as, inside, a set of drums magikally beat themselves in the seafaring call to arms. Seamages rushed toward the cannons, and the crew scrambled to their posts.
In the bay, the Rhi’Ahr ship banked hard, filling her sails to catch the wind as we swept up behind her.
Marelethan was her name, painted in gold across her stern.
I could see the brightwork on her bells and braids in her rigging.
I could also see her crew race for the stern chasers.
They hadn’t been expecting us and were clearly unprepared.
Their arrogance would be their downfall.
At dawn, no less. I set my jaw, knowing that this morning, the Dawn Watch would be vindicated.
It would be music to watch the enemy sink. Forge, it would be a symphony.
“Chase guns!” barked the captain.
“Fore chasers!” Fahr cried to the hands assembled on deck.
“Fire guns!”
The cannons boomed their lethal shots, but most fell short, only to splash into the waters at the Marelethan’s stern.
She returned fire, but it was sloppy, her balls striking the waves and dissipating chimeric into the drink.
I hissed as runes burned from my new scars with each splash, and I cursed my lack of control.
From the quarterdeck, Thanavar glanced down at me.
“Come here,” he commanded.
My heart thudded in my chest. He wasn’t my captain.
I didn’t have to obey him. In fact, he was the enemy, and I was tasked to kill him swift and sure.
I’d be commended if I did that. Promoted, even.
But I had no weapon save my rebel tongue, so I exchanged the rail for the quarterdeck, raising my chin as I stood before this enemy captain.
“I hate you,” I snapped.
“Good,” he said.
“And I will kill you when I can.”
“Even better.” His gaze narrowed as he grabbed my wrist and pulled it up, pushing the glove to my palm.
“Fire again, Mr. Fahr.”
He did not release. I would not pull away. His grip was cold like ice on a river.
“Molly Boom!” Fahr cried. “Take out her topsail, if you will!”
A cannon thundered, shaking the deck boards beneath my feet.
I bit my cheek, praying the pain would overcome the fear of this terrifying man and his gold-shot eyes.
I heard, rather than saw, the ball tear through the distant rigging.
Heard, rather than saw, the responding fire, and I didn’t hiss when the enemy’s shot hit the water on our starboard side.
But the scars on my wrists lit up, and I gasped with the pain.
“Kirianae ik thay’ell,” the captain said in a language I’d never heard before.
“Kirianae sil,” said a voice I didn’t know.
But it was me. The words had rolled off my tongue, but they weren’t mine. My mouth, my voice, but not my words.
“Sister Moons,” Thanavar said, his sea-deep eyes growing darker as he stared at me. “What have you done?”
My breath caught in my throat, but I set my jaw, kept my eyes locked with his. I had no idea what he was asking, but I’d be damned if I let him see my fear. Besides, he hadn’t flinched at the touch of my skin like Fahr or Echo. But, like the chimeric, he was Rhi’Ahr. Perhaps they both burned deep.
“Pray I do not regret this…” he said after a moment.
He released me and stepped back.
“Cease fire,” he said. “Mr. Fahr, let her go and take us in.”
“Let her go?” I asked.
“Aye, sir,” snapped Fahr. “Cease fire, lads! Take us in!”
“Let her go?”
The Touchstone bowed shoreward, leaning into the hot wind and the blazing docks, and the Rhi’Ahr cruiser began to pull away.
“You can’t let her go,” I said.
With each crest of the waves, the Marelethan rocked farther and farther out of reach of our guns.
“Don’t take me back,” I said. “Follow them.”
Sure enough, the Touchstone was headed for shore. I spun to face the captain.
“The Touchstone is fast,” I gasped. “You can catch her. You can sink her.”
He stepped in, close enough that his coat brushed my arm. “Stand down, Ensign.”
My fury sharpened, but something else cut through along with it, as unwanted as it was unwelcome.
“You don’t have to drop me at the docks,” I begged. “I’ll take the dory. Please, just catch her and sink her hard.”
“Spinners on deck, Mr. Fahr,” said Thanavar, stepping back again.
“Aye, sir. Spinners on deck!”