Chapter 18 #2
When their feet hit the deck, Nia still seemed dazed, even as the night crew swarmed around them. The two ships were gaining fast, and even if the Monsoon could run again, it was looking like they’d have to fight for it. The aft bell started clanging the alarm.
Zanta grabbed Nia’s hand. “Get below. You’re not safe up here.” She dragged her toward the doorway, where sleepy crew members already spilled out into the night.
“I can help,” Nia said unconvincingly.
“Can you fight? Load a cannon?”
“No.”
Zanta squeezed her hand. “Then you need to go below, where you’re safe and out of the way.”
Nia nodded, but for a moment, neither of them let go. Finally, Nia seemed to gather her wits again. “Be safe.” She disappeared through the door.
Alarm bells hounded Nia’s footsteps. All around her, the Monsoon sprang to life.
Pirates rousing from their slumber to answer the call to action.
Nia wished she could help; it was true she didn’t know the first thing about fighting, but Zanta sending her away left a sour taste in her mouth.
She was only useful for one thing when it came to pirates, and without her treasure, even that was lost to her.
Nia stumbled on the last step as a crew member pushed past her. Even in trying to get out of the way, she was an obstacle. She tucked herself far into the corner next to the stairs until there was a lull in activity, then dashed toward her room.
Boom!
The second cannon shot sounded far closer.
The first had been a test. Their pursuers breaking the element of surprise because they thought they were in range.
This second shot was confirmation that the Monsoon was in their sights.
It set Nia’s nerves on edge, snaring her mind in memories she would rather not relive.
Her breath shallowed, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
This was not then. This was not the Silverfin.
But the memories overtook her anyway. She dashed into the first room she could find, slamming the door behind her.
The interior was dark as pitch, but in the brief flash of lantern light from the hall, Nia had seen it was the storeroom with all the clothes. She could hide here. She could wait out the battle and the memories that came at her from the dark.
Nia stumbled toward the back of the room, barking her shin against the corner of a trunk.
But she couldn’t feel the pain. Her brain barely registered her surroundings.
Her hands found the cool wood of the wardrobe at the end of the room and wrenched the doors open.
She climbed in, tangling in the fancy dress as it fell from the hanger, and slammed the doors behind her.
Nia curled up into a ball, her side pressed to the back of the wardrobe. The heavy dress settled onto her, its weight an odd comfort. She clutched it to her chest, burying her face in the folds of silk.
Breathe, Nia, breathe.
But her breath only came in short, uneven bursts, and memory dragged her down into its depths.
She was a child and alone. Her father had locked her into her tiny, hidden room within his quarters as a battle raged outside.
The Silverfin had stumbled upon a tax ship sailing from Souna to Talva, and her father was determined to obtain its riches.
It was all coin, nothing that could be destroyed by water.
So it didn’t matter if the pirates sank it, Nia could always retrieve the goods from the wreck.
As always, she remained in pitch darkness.
No lantern or window to light her nightmares.
Because really, the room was a closet, and there was only room for Nia’s hammock strung overhead, and a chamberpot and small trunk on the floor.
Nia had huddled in the corner, her back pressed so tightly to the chest the iron filigree left imprints in her skin.
She did not have the key to it, but it contained her life.
Her pelt, her true skin. Locked away from her and the sea.
Maybe if she had had it, she would not have been so afraid of the constant thunder of cannons around her, the shouts and screams of her father’s crew.
Though she was a child, she knew deep down that by locking her in this room without access to her pelt, her father had condemned her to death if the ship went down.
If she had her pelt in its entirety, she’d be able to leave this place.
Dive beneath the waves, beneath the battle, and go home.
Not that there was anything waiting for her there either.
For there was one more thing in the cramped room with her.
She held it clutched to her chest, its weight like a hug.
Her mother’s pelt. The pelt her father had taken with him when he left her mother behind with Nia in her belly.
The pelt whose absence had caused her mother to wither away and finally die when Nia was only nine or ten.
The pelt her father had finally brought back when it was too late.
After all that, he’d stolen the valuables off the body, and kidnapped their daughter away from the only home she’d ever known.
Nia pressed her face into the gray leather of the pelt, inhaling the slight, salty smell, and pretended she was hugging her mother.
If her mother had had to die, she wished her father had never found her.
Had never taken their daughter away and exacted the same cruelty onto her by separating her from her pelt as well.
Now in another dark room, in another closet, another battle, Nia remembered all of this with such intensity it felt like it was happening all over again.
The grief of her mother’s death. Confusion over her new life, and whether she should love or loathe her new captor, her father.
The square wound, fresh and raw on her back where he’d cut away a piece of her pelt to keep with him so she could never escape.
The Monsoon made a good run of it for a short while, the lead ship firing a few intimidating shots off their aft. But before long the two ships moved to flank them, and all hell broke loose.
The one on the starboard side swooped close enough that Zanta could make out the name emblazoned in red and black paint on its side.
The Marigold. Despite the color scheme, it didn’t bear the M.W.S.
prefix that would mark it out as a royal Marran ship.
In fact, if Zanta squinted hard, she thought she could make out the remains of the now defunct Kefryean prefix Q.R.S. beneath the new lettering.
So they were mercenaries. Or what amounted to it.
Zanta lowered her spyglass with a huff. After Marra had conquered Kefrye, with no small help from a faction of Kefrye’s own nobles, they’d disbanded the armed forces.
The Kefryean fleet no longer existed in an official capacity.
Marra had renamed them all. They had absorbed some into the Marran fleet, but it was an open secret that several ships had been reconditioned in a more unofficial capacity as mercenaries and privateers.
Now the evidence was in front of Zanta’s eyes.
Typical of Marra to use the ships of a conquered land to do their dirty work for them.
If these were indeed two of the ships that had attacked Roseforte, nothing could officially be pinned on the Marran Empire.
Even if Talva suspected they were behind it, they couldn’t retaliate without reigniting the cold war.
The other ship dashed closer and Zanta trained her glass on it, fingertips going cold as soon as she spotted the mermaid figurehead.
She’d been repainted: gone were the iridescent silver scales and flowing orange hair.
Now the wood was dark-lacquered like the rest of the ship, but there was no mistaking the raised arms holding a conch shell or the hauntingly realistic eyes.
Zanta’s gaze darted to the ship’s name. Lonesome.
But there was no mistaking it. The Silverfin, Silver Stroud’s former ship. The ship Zanta had used a shard of to stab Stroud in the heart. The ship she’d sold to the Marran Empire for the reward money when she couldn’t stand to sail it anymore, haunted by Emilie and Stroud’s deaths.
Grief welled up in her, and she forced it down like bile.
She couldn’t afford to let it prevent her from getting out of this situation.
Both ships closed quickly. Zanta was under no illusions they could get out of this if it came down to a contest of brute force.
She knew the Silverfin—now Lonesome—and its capabilities.
She’d have to outrun them, and Zanta knew of only one sure advantage her fan sails had over the mercenaries’ square-rigged ones. Maneuverability.
The first volley of cannon fire from the Marigold shattered Zanta’s thoughts. Most shots fell short, but one nicked the bow.
“Man cannons!” Zanta shouted, and her crew jumped to obey, despite most of them still being half asleep and half dressed. She spared a fleeting thought for Nia. She’d frozen when the mercenaries approached, and Zanta hoped she wouldn’t freeze again if it came time for her to take action.
Zanta shook her head. Nia would be fine for now. She had to focus on getting them out of this situation first. She took up position next to Sabriye, who’d taken over from the helmsman and now stood with both hands on the wheel.
“Stay the course,” Zanta said quietly.
Sabriye raised an eyebrow. “Is that an ‘I’m still thinking’ stay the course or an ‘I have a brilliant plan’ stay the course?”
“Little of both.”
Sabriye nodded, and the Monsoon continued gliding forward, the two enemy ships on either side at the edge of cannon range. Zanta waited.
The Lonesome, emboldened by the lack of retaliation or evasive maneuvers, banked closer.