Chapter 21 Raising the Nil’hellyn
One thing about mages is that we are unusually quick on our feet.
The moment the words left Fahr’s lips, the four of us cast protection spells.
Good thing, as the cabin erupted like a fireball.
In fact, it was just like that day on the Dawn Watch, when the deck exploded beneath me and my life changed forever.
This time, I was prepared, and the force blew me backward into the cabin’s wooden wall.
Dion was not so lucky, and he was flung into the large port window. It shattered under his weight, and he disappeared through to the darkness below.
The room was on fire, and de Sous was on fire, and I couldn’t see Polley or Lean or the others, but I’m sure they were on fire. Fahr grabbed my arm and spun me toward the hole in the wall.
“Go!”
My eyes stung from the smoke, but I braced myself in the shattered window and breathed in the oily fish air. The ships that made up Bilgetown’s foundation were coming apart, raining planks and iron into the canals. But still, in the longboat below us, hand on one oar, Buck stood waiting for us.
There was another boom, and the entire cabin shifted, tilting toward the canal. A bowsprit teetered beneath me, its lantern swinging and casting shadows across the wood.
“Go!”
I dove from the ledge, catching the bowsprit with my bare hands, and the force almost jerked my arms from their sockets.
Chimeric crackled, and the sprit shot with sizzling rune as I dropped to the walkway.
Dion was facedown, a large plate of broken glass protruding from his back.
I glanced up. Above me, Cable leaned out the shattered port.
“No!” I cried, but I was too late. He leaped out to grab the sprit, but it had been weakened by the chimeric, and it snapped. He plunged into the canal, striking his head on the dock as he went, slipping into the inky water and leaving a slick of red across the boards.
My chimeric. My fault.
There was the flash of pattern, and I pushed to my feet. Fahr was silhouetted in the cabin, runes spinning from his hands.
“Go!” he cried. “I’ll catch you at the Bilgegate!”
“Jump!”
“They won’t shoot me! Just go!”
The cabin lurched, and he disappeared from view.
“In, Blue!” snapped the bosun.
I was grateful that Buck was a waterspinner, for I’m convinced that without it, we would not have made it out of the city.
Spinning a longboat was much faster than rowing, and we clipped along on the crest of a thrummed wave as Bilgetown fell apart around us.
Hulls of ships slid down upon one another, dragging behind them rigging, sail, and stay.
Light beamed in shafts, with rain pouring through the sliding cityscape above us.
Wreckage pelted down, crashing onto the walkways and splashing into the canal.
The longboat bucked as the way grew wild, and it was rough weaving the boat between the debris in the water.
The last thing we needed now was a crack in the hull.
We rushed toward the steam wheel, which was now bent in a sharp angle over the canal, its paddles churning water across the docks.
I ducked low in the boat, feeling the metal blades skim my spine.
Buck was much bigger, and he howled as he went under.
He came through with horns intact, but stripes glistened on his back.
A child’s wail pierced the thunder, and I saw the girl with the big eyes, clutching her stick doll against a doorway.
I bolted to my feet, but a figure grabbed her and pulled her through.
The doll dropped to the dock and rolled into the canal, and I snatched it as we sped past. I hugged it to my own chest as I looked around at the chaos.
My heart pounded in my chest, and I fought the urge to vomit.
People screamed as they raced along bridges, reached for each other as they staggered across catwalks.
They were ordinary people, I realized, perhaps the hands of the confiscated ships, perhaps the sons and daughters of pirates past, living in the only city they’d ever known, eking out a living in a world both hard and cruel.
These people, the Bilgefolk, were not to blame.
Was Thanavar? Were we?
The knot in my stomach drew tight as I watched the men, women, and children racing for safety, clawing for a rail to brace against the storm that followed us.
And what the hels was this Nil’hellyn?
The Touchstone had said a word earlier.
Sister.
And I knew she didn’t mean me.
I frowned and slipped the doll into my waistcoat. I had to do something. Anything.
I’d spent my life running—before dawn, before trouble, before it could cost me more than I was willing to give. But not now. Not here. Running wouldn’t save them. I had to stand. I had to try. Even if it killed me.
The chimeric—the deadly, savage, articulating chimeric—was the source of all magik.
I pulled the gloves from my hands.
How did you stop the shot from the Endorathil?
The longboat bucked and wove through the waves as Bilgetown shook herself apart all around us.
I just formed a protection spell and willed the chimeric to compound it.
But I’d also formed an Auctorus the other night. I’d sent one into the gap. I’d managed to bind, protect, and hold with one wylde spell.
I drew a long breath and held it. The cries of the Bilgefolk pressed into my bones, steel rivets screaming, planks creaking and snapping. Then I released the breath and closed my eyes.
“Auctorus praesidium in ligus.”
I began to cast, knowing deep down that the magik didn’t start in my fingertips.
It never did anymore. It started in my gut, between my ribs and beneath my heart, right in the middle where you could put a fist. Heat and light as one, patterns formed behind my eyes, danced across my tongue, and left my body in a rush of breath and sparks.
Auctorus praesidium in ligus. She would not fall, this horrible, filthy, desperate city built on stolen dreams and loss. She would not fall because of us.
Time slowed, hulls slowed, planks and bridges and glass slowed.
“Auctorus praesidium in ligus,” I chanted, steady and strong. Again and again.
And the runes answered. They sizzled along my skin, lit like firebrands, a thousand thousand needles digging into my flesh, searing down to the bone. My lungs burned, each breath a forge bellows. I was on fire. I was the fire.
My hands trembled as I traced the air. Fist, fist, crook and tuck. Left finger swooped. I forced the words out, over and over, willing them to hold. Willing the world to just this once not leave destruction in my wake, not leave a hollow in my chest.
“Blue.”
And the world obeyed. The air thickened, humming with power. Runes flared against the storm, etching themselves across the rain, glowing lines binding ship to ship, plank to plank. The swells that should have swallowed Bilgetown shuddered, split, and broke harmless against the glowing net of magik.
“Blue!”
My body shattered, but the city stood.
“Blue! Now,” said Buck. “Gate!”
I opened my eyes, wiped the rain from my face.
We were near the Bilgegate, and while it was hanging askew, it was still barring our way.
My hands were numb, and I was tired. So tired. But now was not the time to start giving up. I’d never been taught an open spell, but I could sure burn it down with an Ignateus.
“Buck!” came a cry from the docks.
Just like at Flogger’s Bay, I turned to see Fahr racing after us.
He sprinted along the walkway, leaping over split planks and ducking under tilting yards.
He was still a considerable distance behind us when I saw a second man barreling after him in pursuit.
It was Polley, his catskin vest seared onto his chest, and I could have sworn the white skull was no longer paint.
I waved a hand, lifting the hold in that one spot, and the dock collapsed beneath the big man’s feet. He plunged into the miry water and disappeared as an entire cabin floor fell on him, a sliding gift from the deck above.
Fahr did not slow as he rushed toward us, and my heart leaped to my throat as he launched himself from the shattered dock.
He cleared the canal to land amidships with a thud, and Buck grabbed his arm to steady him.
The mate wiped the rain from his eyes and turned to face the gate, hands high, fingers dancing. The gate shuddered and began to glow.
“Told you they wouldn’t shoot me,” he said with a grin. “An assist, please! Let’s open this Forge-damned gate!”
And he flung a spell at me. I caught it out of instinct more than strength, not knowing what it was but not needing to. It was my job to augment and expand, and that’s what I did, but this time, when I growled and flung the pattern toward the gate, I sent chimeric along with it.
The gate crackled with runic light and shattered outward in a spray of wood and iron. Through the gate and the pelting rain, I could see smoke as Bilgetown’s twelve ships aimed to sink the Touchstone.
She did not return fire.
“Take us through, Mr. Buck,” said Fahr, and the longboat surged forward, out through the Bilgegate into the stormy sea.
A single blast with three echoes rang out from behind, and Fahr pitched forward, toppling over the side.
I lunged, grabbing the corner of his coat, but his weight yanked me off my feet and into the waters after him.
Head and shoulders, arms and chest, I followed him into the black swell, and chimeric boomed along with me.
I flailed underwater against the current and the tow but was stopped short by a hand at my ankle.
My arms popped from my shoulders and water rushed into my lungs, threatening to burst my chest and split my skull, but my fingers were locked on the coat.
I remembered the Dawn Watch and the powder boy, and I would not let go.
I hadn’t saved Corwen. I’d be damned if I didn’t save Fahr.
It seemed like forever caught in the churning, crushing sea, but the bosun dragged us both back over the side. Blood slicked across the hull, and when we rolled him over, Fahr spat out a mouthful of red.
“He shot me,” he hissed. “Forge, he shot me!”
I glanced over my shoulder. Braced on the edge of the gate, Polley grew smaller as we left the waters of Bilgetown, his skull paint streaked, the flint smoking at his side. He’d only had one shot, but three lead pellets, and he had made each one of them count.
Fahr pushed to his knees, but I pushed him back, searching for and finding the holes under his shoulder blade.
“Be still,” I said. “Moving spills the blood.”
Cannon fire boomed from twelve directions, and the Touchstone’s hull erupted under the hail.
“We need to…” He coughed. “Smoke.”
He raised a bloody hand to touch his temple.
“Echo, tell Smoke we’re clear…”
There was blood on his tongue.
“We can talk to Echo,” I said. “What do we say? Dev?”
We were losing him.
I looked up at the bosun. He shook his head.
“Minotaurs can’t talk to fauns,” he said.
I remembered Echo’s voice in my head. Run dark, crew, please, he had said. Your thoughts are very loud, he had said.
Echo, fire, I thought as loudly as I could. Echo, tell Smoke to fire.
I think, at that moment, I may have prayed.
Suddenly, the Touchstone boomed, but it was like nothing I’d ever seen before.
Three of her cannons fired simultaneously—starboard, port, and stern—and the shots hit three of the Bilgetown Twelve, one in the middle, two near the ends.
Chimeric flared, racing along the hulls in succession and lighting the sails of all three.
Fire again, I urged silently. And again and again.
I had laced over six hundred balls. There was plenty of stock, but they only shot three.
Each cannonball exploded in succession, sending wood, iron, and chimeric into the black clouds above.
I narrowed my eyes at the sight of the chimeric, however, racing along the chains like a lit fuse, and I watched in horror as the three ships began to roll.
And as they did, they began to pull the others with them.
On board, men rushed to the chains that bound them, but the chimeric effectively prevented that.
Once a clever tactic, the cables now became a noose, and swabs leaped into the waters to free themselves from the drop.
Their cries echoed over cracking timbers and groaning hulls as one by one, the twelve ships died.
Death rolls were terrifying to watch. Twelve death rolls were another thing entirely.
Free of the snare, the Touchstone’s sails billowed, and she cut through the sea, making toward us like an eager lover. It was dark, and I waved my chimeric-bright hands to guide her in. Buck tossed up the ropes, the longboat was caught, and all hands hauled us up to the main.
I barely felt the woolen blanket that was thrown over my shoulders, and as I followed Echo down to the surgeon’s pit, I took one last glance across the waters.
Lanterns waved and smoke billowed, and I could hear the dreaded gong-gong-chunk-chunk fading away into the storm.
My wylde incants had worked, and the barge had stabilized, and now the work began for them to rebuild on the bones of other ships and crews.
That, in and of itself, was an unspeakable thought.
As I watched Bilgetown chug away, a bell chimed, and all hands ran to port.
Through the darkness, another ship rode the waves toward us.
She was as beautiful as she was broken. She had masts but no sail, doors instead of ports, and trailed what looked like a wooden catwalk in her wake.
At the wheel, a man in a dark cloak, but I didn’t have to see him to know.
It was the Nil’hellyn, the mysterious, stolen Nil’hellyn, with Gavriel Thanavar at the helm.
Sister.
Later, I tucked the wooden doll in my kit on the floor by my bunk.
I prayed that the little girl had survived the chaos and that the woman who had grabbed her would rock her to sleep with sweet songs and lullabies.
I also prayed that she would one day be able to chart a life for herself outside that dreadful place.
Sometimes things worked out, and sometimes people escaped.
That night, I dreamed of bears and little girls with big, sad eyes, and my mother.