Chapter 7 Stormveil #2
“Take him to the surgeon’s pit, Mr. Neale,” he said. “And ask the doctor to join us on deck.”
The midshipmage nodded and disappeared into the hatch.
The rain was cold, and the ship pitched rough in the high waves.
The Endorathil was plainly visible now. Whatever the winter hawk had done to pierce the ship’s stormveil incant was working still, but she’d slipped out of range and I knew it wouldn’t hold long.
I could see the lights of the Marelethan, banking off our starboard bow, and the many lights of the Dreadship rocking hard across the waters toward us.
We were effectively outfought, outgunned, and soon, out of time.
Fahr stepped to the main.
“Smoke, the wheel is yours, and prepare to tack sharp,” he called out over the winds. “Buck, Kit, Nix, Griffen. Fall in and be quick.”
The quartermaster gripped the wheels as Fahr joined the bosun and two other seamages on the deck.
Suddenly, I realized they had formed a pattern—our mages in a diamond.
It was the Adamanthus, the best pattern for augmentation of patterns and runes, and I stepped over to the wheels for a better view.
Prepare to run dark, crew, a voice rang in my head.
Echo appeared from the hatch, and he looked around, blinking as his thin mane slicked into his eyes from the rain. A surgeon had no place on deck during a battle. He also wasn’t a mage, yet he stepped into the center of the diamond as if home.
Run dark, crew, please.
This was a different voice than before, and I realized this was Echo. He was a clearseer, true, but what if he was more?
The harpy swept up to the crow’s nest and spread wide her arms, leathery wings beating in the winds.
What if Echo were a thoughtspinner?
Fahr’s hands moved. The minotaur’s massive arms danced.
The seamage, a faun called Griffen, dropped to his knee, fingers spread wide against the deck boards.
They were spinning again, bending runes and blending them together to create something stronger.
The Touchstone’s sails began to shimmer, and above us all, Kithriit rose from the nest. Eyes closed, she began to turn, slowly, hypnotically, between the sails.
Lights from the Rhi’Ahr ships grew brighter. I could hear shouts and clangs and the rumble of cannons. But the Touchstone’s battered crew moved silently, stepping over debris to douse lamps and snuff lanterns as we rippled into the darkness.
Run dark and hold.
The Endorathil fired rear chasers, but they splashed into the water off our stern.
We were veiled. Just like the Endorathil, we were stormveiled on a furious sea.
I held my breath as the Endorathil and the Marelethan tacked in opposite directions, intending to come about onto our position and rake us between them.
Yet we glided silently, tacking our own to mirror the larger ship, rising and falling on the waves like her.
We were directly off her starboard now. I could even see her lethal crew with their golden armor over black silk.
There was a man standing on the pup, tall and broad and awash with golden braids.
He scanned the empty waters, looking for a sign, and somehow, I knew he was their captain.
He hadn’t seen us, this arrogant skipper of an enemy cruiser.
He knew we were there, but he just couldn’t see.
Looking everywhere but where we actually were.
Trust me, Blue, Fahr had said. We would keep you if we could, even just to teach you a thing or two about seeing.
The Endorathil’s captain barked once, and her cannons boomed one last time as we slipped by.
My scars lit up in response. Quickly, I hid them against my ribs, unsure if he’d seen.
For an instant, his gaze felt fixed on me, sharp enough to bore through bone—but then it was gone.
A breath later, he was looking elsewhere, our ship already swallowed by the veil, and I let out a sigh.
I stood on deck for a long moment afterward, soaked to the bone, and watched as the Endorathil slipped away under dark, heavy skies.
I turned back to the Adamanthus on the main.
Echo was already gone—back down to the pit, most likely—and two other seamages had taken the place of mate and bosun.
Fahr picked his way across the slippery deck.
He drew up beside me to watch as the enemy cruisers became one with the Dreadship, and soon their lights shrank to pinpricks in the storm.
“Did he see you?” asked Fahr.
“No.” I hoped it wasn’t a lie.
“Well fought, then,” Fahr said, not looking at me.
“You led like a captain,” I said, not looking at him. “You should be captain.”
“And you can stop fighting now.”
I swung around to face him.
“This is war, Fahr. Someone needs to fight it, and if he won’t, I will.”
Fahr tossed me a hard look. “You earned your keep today, Ensign. Don’t ruin this with a runaway tongue.”
“Me? Run away?” I barked. “He ran from the Navy.”
“Stop. Fighting,” he said, his words clipped as he spun round toward a seamage lifting a splintered timber. “Leave it, Bondi. Mr. Buck needs an assist on the mizzen!”
I waited until he finished the orders. “A captain’s place is on deck. You were here. He wasn’t.”
“Blue—” Fahr groaned and turned to face me, his thick brows low in frustration.
“He let the Marelethan go at Hodgetown,” I challenged. “He could have sunk her then, but just like now, he let them go, and your swabs are paying for it with their blood. He’s a Rhi’Ahr bastard, just like the rest of them, playing the king to save his own.”
“Suns, Blue,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Don’t you ever stop?”
“He pushed me into the path of cannonballs, then hid. That bloody bird did more to turn the tide than he did.”
He shook his head, his eyes glittering, mouth drawn in a tight line. Once again, I wished I weren’t so hard, so angry, but life had shaped me, and life be damned.
“Why do you sail with the enemy?” I pressed, stepping over a coil of rope I hadn’t noticed earlier. “What kind of coward do you follow on this ship?”
“Ensign, stand down.”
“I’m just a wretched girl from a lost frigate, remember? Well, he got me chasing, so I’ve done my due. Put me over the side in a dory, and I’ll row her straight to Hodgetown.”
I growled and looked down. More coils at my boots. I kicked them off and swung my face back up to Fahr.
“In fact, I’ll row straight to the Templemore and take this bloody chimeric to your friend, Bracebridge. I’ll chase you for him, and I’ll catch you, be sure of it. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see your captain swing by his coward neck until de—”
Suddenly, my feet were yanked from beneath me, and I pitched forward, cracking my cheek on the boards of the deck.
Before I could cry out, I was airborne, hauled into the rigging by my ankles.
Rope coiled around my legs, up my knees and thighs, and I was swung into the mainmast face-first. Heat exploded as my brow struck the crosstrees, and I swiped my hands up to grab the cords.
Chimeric crackled, and with a flash, the rope snapped.
I fell, only to be caught once more, this time by my arms, and I was yanked to a halt, feet dangling just above the crew.
“Let her down!” cried Fahr.
Aro’el
The rope was tight across my shoulders, but now, it began to coil at my throat.
I tried to grab it with my free hand, hoping the chimeric would work its magik once again, but this time the rope gleamed with runes of its own, brightening, tightening, biting into my throat.
My breath began to come in ragged gasps.
Aro’el stubborn
There was no one in the rigging, not a soul pulling the cables taut or deathly, no harpy or minotaur, no dworgh or homani. I was alone and swinging, and blackness crowded at the edges of my mind.
Aro’el not worthy
I heard Fahr shouting, but his words were drowned out by the blood drumming through my ears.
Beat to quarters! Lights popped behind my eyes as tiny blood vessels burst. Ignateus!
A fire spell! I needed to conjure a fire spell, but the words were lost in my foggy brain, scraps of incantations swirling, lost like leaves in a stream.
“Captain on the bridge!” It was the faun, yes. Echo was his name. My only friend on this ship. In this world. In my life.
“Magistrethii marei, di’am abythiia,” came a Rhi’Ahr voice from the deck below.
The rope eased around my throat, and I drew a deep, cold, shuddering breath.
“Intheria cortheama, plathere myth’illion…”
It was no language I knew, but I knew it. I knew it in my bones.
The ropes lowered me to the battered deck, but my legs wouldn’t hold, and I sank to my elbows and knees, my body quivering like a jellyhead.
Slowly, I lifted my eyes to see Echo and Buck at the hatch, holding Thanavar upright between them.
He was bare from the waist up, a black pendant round his neck.
His right arm was shredded, his hard chest peppered with blood, and I knew it was cannister shot.
And, in that moment, I knew all manner of things.
“Silaethe, mira,” he said. “Silaethe. Laethe.”
Thanavar was the winter hawk, a mirrormage.
It’s not him you have to worry about.
His sea-dark eyes locked with mine. Steady. Fixed. Dangerous and deep.
All the things I now knew.
Has the Touchstone chosen her?
Echo had said it, followed by Smoke:
She has her own mind.
They hadn’t been talking about me.
They had been talking about her.
The Touchstone was alive.
And more than that.
She loved the captain.