8. EIGHT #2
“Not easy. You’ll have to practice for ages to get any good, like me,” Mitek said. His laughter had subsided, but one corner of his mouth still twisted into a smirk.
Fankalo ignored him and reset seven bits into the groove. “Did I do that correctly?”
“Yeah, at least you didn’t mess that part up.”
She aimed for the bottles again, but waited this time, reaching out to her Luck. The magic was there any time she went looking for it—which was when she stopped thinking about anything else. Before coming aboard the Rogue’s Respite, she had ignored it. Now things were different.
When she’d hidden her Luck like Mother told her to, she had stayed invisible in a shanty.
But when she used it, people thought she was important.
Using her powers got her whatever she wanted, like books: books on war, on sailing, on science—not just the same stupid stories.
Maybe the better she got with Luck, the more important she would be.
Her father’s falcon, Killari, chose that moment to swing in from the sky and perch on the crate beside them. Fankalo had taken quickly to her, a creature possessed by a spirit of dash and daring seemingly too grand for one small bird. And Killari had taken quickly to Fankalo’s Luck, it appeared.
“Oh—ho, Killari,” Mitek said, voice touched with excitement. “She usually doesn’t like anyone besides the captain. Nearly bit my fingers off once.”
The falcon hopped onto the boy’s shoulder, and he flinched but beamed. “Look here! She’s—”
Killari turned, defecated down his tunic, and took flight again.
Mitek’s face soured. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a more worthy target for tanka practice.” He held out a hand. “Give it back here.”
“Not yet!”
Fankalo moved her arm around in small, sweeping circles, thinking about hitting the bottle. At some angles, the Luck caught like wind in the ship’s sails. At others, it fell flat. Experimentally, she turned and aimed her arm at the hatch—
Definitely not lucky.
Mitek opened his mouth in alarm. Before he could say anything, she spun back to face the bow, listening. When she felt like her Luck pulled strongest, her skin prickled with warmth. She flexed her fingers.
A heartbeat later, she was rewarded with the sound of tinkling glass. Green shards of bottle cascaded against the deck and into the sea.
“Bite me,” Mitek said, with a hand clapped over his hat.
Fankalo grinned. Her Luck thrilled through her as she lined up her arm with the next bottle. Flex. Crash.
And again.
Flex. Crash.
And again.
“How in Chaos are you doing that?!” Mitek’s despair was music to her ears.
She ignored him, focusing instead on the fastest flowing threads of her Luck to continue her sabotage of his display.
The pull of magic was like a current, a delightful one she’d bathe in all day, had she the mental fortitude to hold on to it.
She was lined up to fire again when she felt something else she was not actively seeking.
Behind her.
With a gasp, Fankalo spun and aimed into the ocean, past the stern. The feeling pressed against her like a wall. It was all-encompassing—like the day of the Kaidechi scourge.
Bad Luck.
Sunlight glittered off the water so brilliantly she was forced to pull her hat lower over her eyes. Something was out there, and she didn’t want it to come any closer.
Fankalo unlatched the tanka from her forearm, letting it slump hastily to the deck.
“Thank you,” she said to Mikek. “I need to go find the captain.”
He beat the tips of his fingers together, his mouth open, looking not unlike a dead fish. “Hang on!”
She paid him no heed. The bad Luck pressed around her like a weighted shawl, and she didn’t think she had very much time.
Fankalo rapped her knuckles against the door to the navigation room, then pushed her way in before permission was given, a confident swell in her chest. She had learned quickly of her status, at least in the captain’s eyes, aboard this ship.
To him, she was a gift from the Fates: more divine than human.
She hardly required permission to do anything.
Her father sat in a leather armchair across a desk from his sullen quartermaster, Gelhard.
The quartermaster was thin in every sense of the word: spiderlike limbs, wraithlike hair, and a temper you could see clean through.
His reedy voice dripped with self-importance.
“The paperwork was just signed off this morning. Spices are difficult, but it will look as though we procured them from one of my affiliate merchants in Chira’na.
I have them registered for delivery in Casowhatan. ”
Fankalo cleared her throat, and their conversation faltered.
Her father’s dark eyes lit like tiny suns; his warm mouth pulled into a smile.
She climbed into his lap, draping her arms around his neck.
As she did so, she caught sight of the scowl on Gelhard’s face.
It was hard to forget that he had tried to convince her father to leave her in Kaidech’s ashes.
“Father, something ill moves in the east,” she whispered.
He was quick to cue in to her inklings by now. She had explained how she’d survived the Kaidechi scourge.
Gelhard’s mouth pinched. He alone among the crew acted the part of skeptic. “We’ve just left Cundulen territory,” he said. “If I had to put my money on it, I’d bet ‘something ill’ to be that damn Pazirian charter we intercepted from Tera’thu.”
Fankalo’s brow lowered. That was the spice ship she’d guided her father to for their latest heist. It was good Luck, she’d told him. She had been right. The cargo was worth millions.
Her father snorted. “Those spices were worth about as much as millet to them. As if they’d hold enough of a vendetta to attack the Rogue’s Respite this far southwest. That would take some major bronze.”
“You did leave the crew stark naked.”
Fankalo had heard that, in addition to being wildly rich, Pazirians were hyperfixated on decency—Mitek had referred to them as “the prudes”.
“It was funny.”
Gelhard’s mouth twisted. “They were a full fortnight from Pazir in winter. I dare say they wouldn’t agree.”
“Well, let’s see then. You’ll show us the way, lad?” Her father tilted his head toward her.
Fankalo nodded, eager to be free of the way the jerky spun in her stomach.
They exited the navigation room onto the quarterdeck.
The breeze seemed to have picked up in the sparse minutes since her tanka practice with Mitek, and the mizzencourse rippled loudly overhead.
Fankalo moved to the rail and pointed southeast toward the horizon.
Gelhard grumbled under his breath as he pulled a telescope from his belt and peered through it.
When the corners of his mouth drew downward, Fankalo felt a rise of satisfaction.
“Fuck me,” he said.
“What is it?” her father asked.
“Well—” Gelhard paused, cleaned the lens of the scope on his tunic, pressed it back against his eye, and adjusted the gear. “It’s certainly a ship, heading toward us.”
“What’s it flying?”
Gelhard offered an amused grunt. “Give it a few minutes to catch up, eah? We’ll see.”
“A few minutes to… Are you listening to yourself?”
“I’m just calling attention to the bleeding fact that the moment your ‘luck charm’ touched foot on this deck, the ship slowed down. Everyone knows it.”
Her father glared at him and turned his gaze back to the sea.
They paced the quarterdeck, pretending there was no need to be anxious, until the vessel on the horizon was as large as Fankalo’s thumb.
Gelhard peered through his lens again. “That’s a blue flag with a stag on it.”
Her father cursed.
His quartermaster raised his eyebrows, thin mustache pulled back like he’d bitten into a lemon. “I’m pretty sure they’re still mad.”
Fankalo’s father gave her shoulder a squeeze and put his fingers to his mouth to whistle.
“All hands!” he bellowed, his voice carrying to either end of the ship.
The raiders made their various ways to the quarterdeck.
They scurried down the ratlines and popped out from the hatch.
They leaned over the rails from the topdeck and scrambled down the steps of the forecastle and back up again.
All squinted against the glinting sun at her father with rapt attention.
Nearly seventy heads manned the Rogue’s Rapture, and almost two thirds had responded to captain Alberous Keane’s summons within twenty seconds.
Fankalo wasn’t sure what power he had that made them answer so willingly.
All she knew was she wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything.
“We’ve got seven leagues between us and Nelfinden waters. We need to get there before the Pazirian spice trade. Savvy?”
She couldn’t read the mixed emotions that radiated from him. He was nervous, but also excited? This chase at sea… it was like a game to him.
Gelhard did not look so amused. “You really think we can hit Nelfinden waters in less than two hours?”
“What do you see as the alternative?”
“We fight them off and leave them the way we should have in the first place.”
A shadow passed over her father’s face. “We’re plundering raiders. Not pillaging raiders. There’s a distinction.”
Fankalo had heard her father reference the two-law codex—the creed he followed—on several occasions. Those aboard the Rogue’s Respite were sworn to it. They only robbed those who could do without, and they did not kill, unless in self-defense.
Gelhard’s face was all hard lines and malice. “Ever since you lost Fankalo, your mind has been addled.”
Her stomach turned. He meant the real Fankalo, the son she was replacing. A war passed between the two men in a glance.
“Fankalo is beside me,” her father hissed.
She clasped his forearm, and he put a protective, sun-darkened hand on her shoulder. It was a strange ruse, sure. But he needed her, and she needed him, and if keeping up the lie was the only way they could have one another, so be it.