26. TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SIX
FANKALO
Location: North Sea
Fankalo woke as her limbs were seized by multiple calloused hands. She screamed, earning herself a slap across her face. The blow shocked her into silence as she was hauled from between the cargo crates and manipulated into a standing position. Timbre. It was Timbre.
And Declar. And Bren.
Anger pooled into her stomach like liquid flame. She flailed, her arms going nowhere in their talon-like grips. The only part of her that moved freely was the indignant shriek pulling from her chest.
“T-Timbre?! What?”
A fist found its way into her diaphragm.
Her body seized; stars pressed against her eyes.
The men dragged her across the main deck.
She was so stunned, she could hardly encourage her mind to catch up.
Then, with appalling awareness, she realized her wrists had been tied.
A hook wiggled between her hands to catch at the ropes that held them.
It hoisted her until the tips of her toes scraped the ground.
When her father learned of this, they would be brigged. Bled. Marooned. He would gut them and sew them back up again seven times over.
She dared another scream, but another slap suppressed its reach.
Then a whimper sounded beside her: a more dread-inducing noise than the bestial bellows of her once-brother.
Fankalo’s neck snapped around. Two meters from where she hung, ropes dyed crimson secured her father to the center mast. The scent of blood mingled in her nostrils with brine and betrayal.
Her father’s eyes bored into hers, pained, pleading.
A dagger protruded from his gut. Another from his chest. A third from his thigh, as if he were a fish skewered for roasting.
Her memory had cheated her: she had forgotten that human skin was fragile.
For others, perhaps, but certainly not for Captain Keane of the Rogue’s Rapture.
Timbre, Declar, and Bren slunk away. Not one spoke. Where was the rest of the bleeding crew? Surely someone would find them. Help them.
Tromping sounded in the hold below. Stifled shouts. Bangs. Bumps. The minutes did not spare her any pain. Her fingers began to itch, then sting. The sounds from below moved beyond the hatch and spread to the deck.
The stars glared down at her with judgment. Her father never once looked away. His eyes did not judge; they adored. She wished they didn’t. Somehow, this must be all her fault.
It might be her last chance to speak to him. “Father,” she gasped, falling short.
“I love you,” he mouthed. Only then did she see the purple mark around his neck. How it was swollen to twice its usual size.
The footsteps were beside them now. One by one, members of the crew came into her line of sight. Most were bound by their wrists, while Bren and Declar jostled them forcibly. Their feet dragged, like they’d taken ale from a well.
A hand grabbed Fankalo’s shoulder to spin her around.
She fought to keep her weight on her toes to ease the excruciating pull at her wrists.
Gelhard’s narrow face came nose to nose with hers.
“You enjoy reading about war. So you should understand: this.” His words were clipped, in the way one spoke to an imbecile. “Is. A. Mutiny.”
No fucking shit.
She shrieked—flailed to kick him, damage him, maim him. The effort only agonized her. Gelhard stepped away. Her father whimpered again. That noise turned her to stone.
Wasn’t anyone going to stop this? There were maybe two dozen tied, Drogus, Cam, and Zeb among them. Which meant fifty others had allowed this to happen willingly. But where were they? And where in Chaos’s bush was Mitek? Mitek would rescue her. He shratten owed her enough.
As if in answer to her question, a skirmish sounded behind her and Timbre wrestled Mitek onto the main deck and to his knees. Mitek was crying. Sniveling. Whimpering more than any of the rest. Her hope evaporated.
Gelhard placed a hand on the center mast, just above her father’s shoulder, in a gesture that was almost tender.
“Captain Keane, this crew has determined that you are no longer fit to lead.” He grabbed Fankalo’s hip and heaved, spinning her around like a bottle on its edge.
“For six years, this child has poisoned your mind. Roaming into Tera’thian occupied waters to abduct the Shadewalker has many of us at a tipping point.
” That was kretch. Who knew how long Gelhard had been planning to seize command?
“But I guess ‘Creation’s gift’ can’t predict everything. ”
Fankalo’s body burned with fury. Her Luck had been trying to warn her about this. She’d confused it for bad news about Calver. Gelhard had waited for her to be vulnerable to make this move. Fates help her, if she made it out of this, no one would ever see her vulnerable again.
Gelhard shifted to face the line of restrained men on their knees. “Now I want you to watch as the rest of your projects betray you.”
Projects. Fankalo understood then. Every bound crewman was one her father had personally saved. Those most loyal to him.
“If you find yourself among the bound, you still have a chance to live. You may choose to die by Captain Keane’s side with Fate’s brat, or you may choose to sail, serving me as your captain.”
Gelhard removed a dagger from his sheath and approached the first crewman, a swabbie named Menlan, held in place by traitors. “What say you?”
Menlan’s sunken eyes darted towards her father. He licked at his lips. “I choose to serve you, Captain,” he gasped, like he was trying to hold back vomit.
Gelhard nodded and moved to the next man, Jerand, their carpenter.
“I choose to serve you, Captain,” Jerand parroted, before Gelhard even had the chance to ask the question.
Bile rose into Fankalo’s throat. She could hardly hear past the hammering in her ears as Gelhard approached Gai, a galley hand.
Gai looked Gelhard in the eyes and shook his head. “I,” he said, his breathing labored, “will die beside Captain Keane.”
In the space of a blink, the dagger slashed across his throat.
The spray seemed too red beneath the moonlight to be real.
Gai crumpled to the deck with a gurgle. Gelhard, unflinching, stepped over him and up to Mitek, who had given up on thrashing against Timbre. The front of Mitek’s sirwal darkened.
Fankalo closed her eyes so she didn’t have to see her coward of a best friend betray her at knifepoint. She hoped he did.
She’d make sure he did. “Mitek, serve him!” she screamed. At least this way she could tell herself he did it at her bidding. At least this way his corpse wouldn’t be the last thing she looked at.
Another slap stung her face. She couldn’t even tell where it came from. Gelhard was still in front of Mitek. His tears and snot mingled into one on his chin.
“Serve him!” she shrieked again. The only power she had left was ensuring her mistakes didn’t slice open Mitek’s stupid, stupid veins.
A hand groped at her face, prying her eyes open. It was Timbre. Timbre, whom she and Mitek had once thrown into the ocean as a part of an ongoing joke. It didn’t seem funny now.
“Wise words, for once,” Gelhard whispered, staring at Mitek, who was too much of a blubbering mess to string any words together, let alone a dedication of service.
But Mitek’s muscles stiffened. His eyes rose to meet Fankalo’s before darting to the traitor. “Fuck. You. Gelhard.”
The three most beautiful and idiotic words she’d ever heard. A sob escaped her throat as she tried to wrestle herself away. A worm could no more wrestle itself from a hook. Her skin prickled as her Luck muddied around her, a harbinger of the massacre to come.
Without warning, the curved scythe of a dowaga sprouted from Timbre’s chest. Rib, tissue, and organ parted in its wake. The steel halted just inches from Fankalo’s throat. Her breath caught in her chest.
Timbre released her, howling, before the sound was extinguished by another slash. Blood rained across Fankalo’s cheeks, into her eyes, her mouth. Her shrieks melded with those of the men around her.
The wide whites of Timbre’s eyes glowed in the moonlight.
Calver, still shackled, wrists bloodied and bruised from what should have been an impossible escape, pulled his weapon free of the body and rounded on Gelhard.
Gelhard stumbled, raising his dagger in pitiful defense.
Calver maneuvered around the paltry blade with astonishing speed, severing Gelhard’s forearm and then slashing the dowaga across his abdomen.
Pandemonium broke out. The crew of the Rogue’s Rapture did everything in their power to put space between themselves and the Shadewalker.
Those without bindings fired tankas at him.
Each bit was deflected in a dance of deadly precision.
Declar, Bren, and Timbre fell. His blade slipped through them, a silver fish darting through water.
She’d never seen movement like that before.
Her trance broke when Calver poised himself over Zeb, flat on the deck with his hands still tied. The old shipwatch turned towards the deck to shelter his face.
“Stop!” Fankalo screamed.
The monster froze, shoulder twitching, like he had a tick. A rumble echoed in his chest, and he moved like he might strike again.
“Leave them! All of them. We will have a trial.”
He stepped backward, then turned to face her, chest heaving, bare torso splattered in gore. He did not lower the weapon.
“Calverous,” Fankalo growled. “Stand down.”
He stared at her through a mask of indifference.
She tried to imagine the boy she once knew behind it. Her eyes narrowed. “Cut me down.” She fought to assert dominance in her voice when terror threatened to turn her into a sniveling sack like Mitek. “And then stand down. I command it.”
Seconds ticked by until she was positive he was about to turn the dowaga against her.
As if summoned by the very thought, Calver stalked toward her, dowaga raised.
She flinched—and then her gut wrenched as she dropped to the deck.
Her elbows rammed into the wooden planking, sending a jolt of pain into her arms.
Unable to look Calver in the eye, she ran towards Gelhard, still lying where he’d fallen on the deck.
She pulled his knife from the still grasping fingers of his severed arm and held it between her boots so she could cut her hands apart.
She didn’t spare the suffering traitor so much as a glance when she moved to Mitek, who had scuttled from the scene on knees and elbows.
“Brat,” he gasped. “I’m sorry. I smell like—”
“I don’t care what you shratten smell like,” she snapped. Of all things to focus on. “Who was in on the mutiny?”
“Those four, far as I can tell.”
“Where are the rest?”
“Taken ill.”
Her hands hardly functioned. She worried she might injure herself or Mitek as she worked to bream his ties with several clumsy pulls of the knife. Then she handed him its handle.
“Free the others.”
Mitek obeyed. The remaining tied crewmen watched wordlessly, trapped in a communal bubble of shock. Calver stood like a gargoyle in the spot where he’d cut her down, imposing and silent as stone.
No one stopped her as she ran to her father.
She raised her swollen hands to help him before realizing it was futile.
Each of his labored breaths forced a rumble from his throat.
Blood pooled at their feet; too much blood.
His eyes found her, and in them she saw relief.
She brought her hands to his face, wiping tears away from his cheeks.
“We’re going to be alright,” she whispered. But as she caressed him, his chest stilled.
Surely her own heart had stopped beating, not his.
Surely she’d gone mad. Life could not continue without Captain Keane at its center.
The sun could not shine if it didn’t glint golden off his skin when he threw back his head to laugh.
Who would throw her over their shoulder to steal her from the harshness of life now?
“Father—”
Her word did not pass between realms.
Fankalo made mindlessly for the weapons crate.
Pulled a tanka from within. Strapped it to her fisted forearm.
Sailed to Gelhard like her boots had caught flame.
His insides had spilled out, slicking the deck around him.
He ran his fingers through them, as though fascinated by his own cooling entrails.
Her rage was enough to fuel a storm. “Do you know why I never miss a shot, quartermaster?”
Gelhard said nothing. His chest twitched with shallow spasms.
“I don’t take one, unless I am positive it will land where I intend.”
The codex said to never kill, unless it was in self-defense. It didn’t say anything about killing to put someone out of their misery. That was fortunate. A mercy killing was more than he deserved. She fired the tanka. Its bit wedged into the deck, inches from Gelhard’s head.
Many of the crewmen Mitek had freed stepped forward from the ends of the ship to attend to her father’s body.
More appeared from below deck, bedraggled faces and soiled clothing betraying their condition.
None came within striking distance of the gargantuan form over her shoulder.
Fankalo moved two steps closer to Calver, though he didn’t seem to notice or care.
She cleared her throat and projected her voice the way her father always had.
“The Rogue’s Rapture belongs to me now.” He’d told them all she would be the one to fill his boots—only he had expected two decades to pass before the succession, not two days.
“Any who disagrees gets a free trip to the bottom of the sea.”
There was no dissent.
“Deckhands, ready the sails. Drogus, man the helm.”
Fankalo watched as they shambled about their duties. Stomachs and bowels let loose as they went, choking the air with the smells of their sickness. All the while, the shell of her blood brother stood behind her, ever watching, never seeing.