Chapter 18 Into the Sheets
Three Rhi’Ahr ships bore down on us through the gap, led by the dreaded Endorathil, and my heart froze in my chest.
How? How could she be here now, when only weeks ago she was stormveiled in Oversea?
“Close it, Mr. Fahr!” called Thanavar.
“On the ships?” cried Fahr.
“Yes, on the ships,” he barked. “Unless you want three Rhi’Ahr cruisers chasing us in a fading gap?”
“I do not, sir! First crew, continue! Second crew, stand ready on my word!”
“Brace yourself, Aro’el!” said Thanavar. “We end this now.”
And he flung wide his arms, sending a massive pattern toward me at a rate of knots. The force of it almost pushed me from the pup.
The chimeric sizzled as I caught it, racing from the tips of my fingers to the hairs on my head.
My teeth rattled, my knees trembled, and my runescars threatened to split me apart.
Everything I had and was and knew settled into my chest. I closed my eyes and poured it all into the Auctorus, seeing nothing but light and pattern, stars and moons.
The magik was like fire in my blood, burning through bone and sinew.
My breath came in gasps, the pain hissing along my spine.
My arms shook, but I would not let my crew down.
I would not fail. Be damned if I had too much pride for the Ship of Spells.
So, I augmented and expanded, augmented and expanded, augmented and expanded.
Thanavar shouted something, but it was as though he was underwater.
I had no ears to hear, lost as I was in the pattern of the Auctorus Circulaia, caught in the tides of the Worldrune’s net.
But if I was going to meet our Mother the Sea this day, I’d make sure as hels the Endorathil would meet her first.
When my arms couldn’t hold the spell a second longer, I let the wylde magik take it from me. Surrendered to the power coursing in my veins.
Runechaser!
I spun on my heel and let loose a scream as I hurled it with both hands into the oncoming ships and the breach.
With a boom of worlds, the ocean roared upward, obliterating the breach in a spray of whitewater. Up it went, cascading in a reverse waterfall, roiling into the sky like a thundercloud and taking the ships with it.
I stood like a rag doll, limp and lifeless, before I peered out from beneath my tangle of hair. The captain stared at me as if holding his breath. As if seeing me for the very first time.
“Glorious,” he murmured.
“Well done, Blue,” cried Fahr over the din. “Second crew! Get us out of here, now!”
The Touchstone leaped forward, sails snapping, waterspinners creating current as the eerie fog that had dogged us for the last days began to roll in at our stern.
With the breach closed, the gap would crumble, and it was then that I realized that the narrow corridor we had so easily navigated, with its blue sky and stiff breeze, would close behind us.
If we didn’t outrun it, we would be swallowed by the Silence, trapped in her sickly embrace.
The Sheets would follow suit, bringing with it an entirely different fight.
Hels ’n’ holy commission, indeed. This was madness.
“Sail!” cried Kit again. “Sail due south!”
Thanavar pulled his spyglass.
“The Endorathil,” he growled and leaned over the rail. “She has survived the Auctorus!”
“Double time, seconds!” Fahr cried and turned to the crews. “Our fates are in your hands.”
“Will she attack?” I asked, my knees struggling to keep me upright. That spell had taken so much out of me, and I reached for the railing. “Surely, she stands to be trapped in the Silence, as do we.”
To my surprise, the captain stepped beside me and put a steadying hand on my elbow, offering the power of his body, giving me the strength to stand.
“There are few ships that wish the Touchstone sunk as much as the Endorathil,” he said. “And she is not afraid of the Silence. She has spinners of her own.”
There was a boom from behind as the Endorathil fired her guns. She was clearly out of range, and I barely noticed the balls splash into the sea astern.
“Shall we equip the pup with some chasers, sir?” called Fahr from the deck.
Thanavar thought a long moment, a furrow deep between his brows.
“Have Mr. Broom set up two.”
“Only two?” said Fahr.
“I don’t trust Ilvalour. Firing guns like this is futile.” He turned to the first mate. “He is baiting us. Keep the main chasers afore.”
“Aye, sir.”
First a whistle, then a roar, and suddenly a massive shape plunged from the sky, splashing off our starboard bow.
Waves went up all around it, but finally, it surfaced, bobbing in the currents as we swept by.
It was the transom of a ship. Just the transom, and I caught a glimpse of the name before she sank.
“Meradah Thenn,” said Thanavar. “Bright Sky.”
“Not anymore,” I said, and this time, I swore he laughed.
She had clearly been carried up to the clouds by the raging rush of water and shattered, her other pieces scattered across the Silence and then the Sheets. I never knew what happened to the second ship, but I came away with a far better understanding for the power of the Dreadwall.
We spent the next several hours this way, outrunning both the Silence, which continued to close behind us at a terrifying speed, and the Endorathil, which peppered our wake with shot.
Teams of waterspinners worked nonstop to keep us moving through the sweltering heat, and now, ahead of us, lightning forked over what was left of the gap.
Soon, we’d be outrunning the Sheets, and while stormy seas were nothing new, Echo said the Sheets brought with them waves larger than mountains, whirlpools deeper than oceans, and stormshears that tore ships in two.
Because of this, Smoke had agreed to up our rations.
Apparently, we needed nerve and rum in equal measure.
Sleep was impossible with this state of constant alarm, so I sat under the fife rail one night, cupping my rum and lime, counting the cannonshot from the Endorathil and wishing we were back in open seas, free of weather and enemy cruisers.
The skies were dark and heavy with rain, but through it all, I could see Thanavar on the pup, back turned, staring at the cannon fire in the stormy night sky.
Suns, what a puzzle he was. He could be harsh, and he could be ruthless, but he wasn’t the heartless, faceless, brutal enemy that I’d been taught to hate. Instead, he was a stoic, proud, elusive man who lived for magik, championed his crew, and confounded everything I thought I knew.
I’d never set my sights on a captain before.
I was not that reckless because, on a ship, there was nowhere to run.
No “fog and be gone before the suns.” And never, ever would I have considered bedding an enemy, but damnations if the thought didn’t dance around the edges of my imagination, whispering danger, teasing the rush.
It began to rain, and I lifted my face, let the warm drops caress my forehead and cheeks.
But what if it was more than simply danger, more than just the rush? What if he wasn’t the enemy?
And what if, for once, I didn’t run?
I opened my eyes. Worley had crossed to the cathead along with his basket of birds. Once again, he pulled out a swift, double-checked the scroll at its leg, and tossed it into the sky. It disappeared northward into the gap.
“So, this is normal, then?” I asked.
“Hels’ hooks, Ensign Blue!” he gasped. “Are you certain you don’t have a bit of the veil yourself?”
“Sorry.” I wasn’t. “Does this always happen when you close these breaches?”
“The furious flight from collapsing elements?”
“Yes.” I grinned. “That.”
“Well, yes,” he said, and he paused, thinking. Rain dripped into my eyes as I waited for him.
“Well, not the Endorathil, naturally,” he said after a moment.
“I’ve never seen a ship appear when we were closing a breach like that.
But the elements, yes. First the Silence, then the Sheets.
It’s all sunny and clear sailing toward the Dreadwall, but then hours and hours of running in terror out of it. ”
“But you do always outrun it.”
“The Touchstone is here, Ensign Blue,” he said. “I should think we would not be, were we unsuccessful.”
I wondered if he knew he was funny.
“When do you think we’ll be in open waters?”
“Two more hours, I expect. We always make good time once we hit the Hall of Sheets. Still, the Silence and the Sheets are all closing in now, and we’ll need all the magik we can muster so we’re not trapped.”
He looked down at his basket, the woven reeds growing dark in the rain.
“But the Endorathil,” he began. “She is a very different bird.”
“The captain said there were few ships that wish the Touchstone sunk as much as her.”
“That is the truth,” he said. “Captain Ilvalour hates our captain almost as much as Commodore Bracebridge.”
The rain was soft and surprisingly warm.
“That’s the captain of the Templemore, yes?”
“Oh, my. Yes. He hates Captain Thanavar with a most powerful hate.”
“But why? We have a Letter of Marque from the king.”
“Bracebridge does not recognize our Letter.” He clutched his basket to his chest and leaned down toward me. “It’s a rather personal hate.”
Forge bless Worley, the source of all gossip.
He glanced to the pup, to the captain’s turned back.
“I shouldn’t say…”
I rose to my feet.
“I won’t tell.”
Tiny rivers splashed along his thin face as he glanced from side to side. He wiped them away and leaned in.
“Many years ago,” he said, “our Captain Thanavar did a very bad thing.”
“He stole the prince.”
“He did. At that time, then-Lieutenant Bracebridge was charged with the boy’s security at High Temple, so losing the prince almost cost him his position, not to mention his head. He’s never gotten over the shame.”
I could understand that.
“To make matters worse, in the process, the captain sliced his face open with those terrible hawk claws. Cut his face clean off. They had to sew it back on with a thousand thousand stitches, or so I’m told.”