The Princess Beard

by Kevin Hearne

  Feng went to the ship’s wheel, where the captain cocked a beady eye at the docks. Down below, a crowd was gathering as the sun dipped toward the horizon, and they were getting a bit shouty and pointing at The Puffy Peach. Al saw that one of them was the caked watchman, his features smeared with cream-cheese frosting and a desire for vengeance. Al had no way of knowing if they would be pursued, but he privately bet that Captain Luc was planning for contingencies if they were.

  “Odd, odd, odd!” the sea lions cried, amassing as they sensed a captive audience already roused to anger. No, Al would not miss Bustardo.

  Morgan and Tempest went belowdecks, probably to finish Tempest’s extreme salad. After a few moments of standing around on the deck, looking awkward, the flamingo shrieked and fluffed its feathers and followed them.

  Since Qobayne had the rest of the crew jumping to various duties, that left Al and Vic some space alone on the deck. Although Al had heard stories about the supposed benefits of centaur giblets, just like he’d heard the stories of unicorn horns and mermaid tails, he’d never seen such ignorance on display—never thought anyone would be cruel enough to attack a centaur in a public restaurant in a civilized town. Before Vic, centaurs had seemed to him like another far-off magical creature, as impossible as a gryphon. But here was Vic, standing eight feet tall, shivering by himself under the yardarm, terrified and alone.

  “You okay there, buddy?” Al asked, giving the centaur a friendly pat on the wither.

  Vic’s flesh shuddered, and he looked over his shoulder and down at the shorter-than-usual elf.

  “That was scary,” Vic said quietly. “I guesh…I guess nobody’s ever tried to really hurt me before.”

  Al nodded. That was indeed a scary feeling. He well remembered the moment an unhappy customer at the lighthouse had straight up punched him in the nose because they’d disliked the way they looked in the Uglification Mirror of St. Uggo. He’d felt surprised and angry and hurt to think that someone would actually cause him injury.

  “Yeah, the world can be a scary place. But it’s over now. And you’ve got friends.”

  Vic sighed, a deep and sad sound, and gently folded his legs until he lay on the deck. Now they were almost eye to eye, although Vic had to have ten times Al’s mass.

  “Nobody likesh me,” Vic said, and Al could tell that although time and exertion had cleared some of the drugs from his system, whatever it was, it was still lowering the centaur’s inhibitions.

  “I think maybe they don’t know you very well yet. You can be…a little aggressive.”

  Vic looked down. “Imma centaur. S’what I’m s’posed to do. Be all swole and manly.”

  Al grinned, loving the feel of the deck swaying under his feet again; the sea changed things for him, and maybe it would change things for Vic too. Al was a different person now that he’d left the lighthouse and given up on the Sn’archivist. He was still learning who that person was, but he liked him better than any other version of himself so far.

  “I don’t believe in the word supposed. I think you can do whatever you want. Out here on the sea…well, anything is possible. You don’t have to be swole or manly or whatever. You can just be Vic.”

  “Thosh guys didn’t like Vic. They wanted to kill me.”

  “It wasn’t personal.”

  “Theresh nothing more personal than murder!”

  Al had to agree. “I just mean…they weren’t trying to kill Vic. They were stupid bigots trying to kill a random centaur. If they knew you, I bet they wouldn’t want to hurt you. And it’s sad for them that they won’t get that chance.”

  Vic’s eyes, which had always been full of fury and swoleness before now, began to tear up. “You’re a real nishe guy, you know that? Even if you’re all covered in mustard. Somebody tagged you real good back there.” And then Vic was crushing Al in a hug that smelled strongly of horse. And mustard.

  “And you make really nice cookies,” Al whispered at the end of the hug.

  Vic drew away and looked at him, suspicious and angry and terrified all at once.

  “I don’t…there’s no…no cookies!” Vic growled.

  Al held up one he’d stuck in a pocket on their run. “These are delightful. And that cake was perfect, I could tell, even though I never had a bite. You don’t have to hide your gift,” he said.

  But Vic wouldn’t meet his eyes. He took the cookie and tossed it overboard. “Yesh, I do.”

  Al patted Vic’s shoulder. “Maybe you won’t have to one day, then.”

  Al walked away and climbed up to the crow’s nest, sighing happily. His grin melted away, however, as he looked back at the docks of Bustardo. A rather large and ominous ship was detaching itself from the wharf, unfurling many lengths of canvas, including skysails and moonrakers. The red light of sunset revealed that the mainsail was emblazoned with a stylized gryphon, the insignia of the Pellican Royal Navy. And there were strange dark thunderclouds forming above it in an otherwise clear sky.

  “Battle stations!” Captain Luc squawked before Al could say anything. “They be afterrrr us, lads, and they be brrrringin’ the wizarrrrd along!”

  Filthy Lucre felt a cold thrill shudder through his cloaca at the sight of that gryphon sail. That was a royal clipper ship, specifically designed to take down pirate ships like The Puffy Peach. Very little cargo space but a whole lot of sails and guns. Facing that would be enough excitement on its own—cause for equal measures of dread and drama, the very best of stress cocktails to remind one that living should be full of such stimulation and should not descend into comfort or downy nests or giant vaults filled with sunflower seeds. But there was more: They had a battle wizard on board! He was summoning a bank of gloomy gray storm clouds, touched with magenta and purples as the sun kissed them good night, white strands of electricity combing through them like fingers through poufy hair. Soon he would send the clouds over their ship and strike them with bolts of lightning, setting their ship aflame or punching holes through their hull, dooming them to death by either fire or water. It was a strategy Luc had seen before, but he had never been on the receiving end of it until now. Those Bustardian bastards meant business.

  But that particular wizard made Luc’s gizzard wither, for he’d seen those exact storm clouds before. Once upon a time—not so long ago, really—Luc had perched on that very shoulder, back when said wizard was young and raw and itching to buck the system. Back when he could only conjure a tiny puff of a cloud. He’d been eager to listen and learn, eager to plunder the juicy cargoes of the rich and redistribute the spoils among the crew and give generously to the holy Cinnamonks, who lived on the fourth Toe Island and ran an orphanage and shelter for the wayward souls of Pell. That’s where Luc had found him, in fact. Had saved him. And now—Luc’s feathers flattened, crushed by hurt feelings.

  He remembered well the day he’d visited the Cinnamonk Succor Shelter and met young Ramekin Cloudtalker. A grimy kid with warm brown skin, he’d lost his parents to giants in Corraden who had twisted them into meat pretzels and eaten them with horseradish. Ramekin had no other family, so he’d been shunted down to the Cinnamonk orphanage, where he learned to be grateful for their radical kindness and resentful of an unkind system. He’d worked on the monastery grounds for many years, and when he was all grown up, he had the strongest yet tenderest shoulder to perch on as a result of that manual labor.

  Luc adopted him, and soon afterward young Ramekin manifested a talent for summoning storm clouds and lightning; his surname was no mere patronym but a magical heritage. Oh, the coastlines they’d pillaged! The squiffy mushrooms they’d bootlegged! The barrels of grog they’d gulped, the shanties they’d sung, the timbers they’d shivered! The chests of gold and silver they’d taken from greedy merchants and given to the Cinnamonks!

  And then they’d met some navy recruiter in Cape Gannet, a pretty woman with a bright smile, and she’d spoken honey-
throated promises to Ramekin—lies, really—and corrupted him to the side of government. The side of the establishment. Ramekin abandoned Luc, rejected the anarchy of piracy, and now he was in the navy, protecting the rich friends of the crown, the same people who’d done nothing for Ramekin the orphan. The same people who’d refused to pacify the giants so that kids like Ramekin wouldn’t have their parents turned into meat pretzels in the first place. Luc’s old friend was looking after those interests now, a living betrayal of his younger self. He’d been seduced by the narc side.

  And now here they were, facing each other over the sea. Luc’s crew had offended the rich people of Bustardo. And said people had turned to the government to protect their fortunes and wounded pride.

  So it came to this.

  Running was not an option. Even if they could outrun the clipper ship—a highly doubtful scenario—they could never outrun the lightning that Cloudtalker would send against them. There was only one desperate chance at survival: destroying the other ship before those storm clouds could drift above their own sails.

  “Come about! Brrrroadside!” Luc ordered, and Feng spun the wheel. “We fight now orrrr we die! Qobayne, get me a rrrrrange-finding shot soonest!”

  “Aye, Cap’n!” the boatswain replied.

  Boots stomping on the deck and shouts floating in the air ruffled Luc’s feathers, but that was only the beginning. Soon there would be the sulfurous stink of gunpowder on fire and humans soiling their britches, the cacophony of explosions and people screaming at the end of their lives. Sinking that clipper as it came at them head-on would be a tall order for even an expert crew, and Luc did not have an expert crew. But maybe some would survive. They were not so far from shore that drowning was a given if they had to abandon ship. And Luc himself could always fly away, so long as lightning didn’t take him down. He had no assurance of that, however. This lightning would not be so random as that provided by nature. There was no nature behind it, after all. It would strike more or less where Ramekin Cloudtalker told it to strike. The question was, would he destroy his old ship and everyone on it or merely cripple them and deliver them to the dubious care of the navy, which would most likely throw them in a dungeon for a couple of weeks before executing them in public?

  Or…perhaps Ramekin didn’t know whose ship he threatened? No, that was impossible. He knew this vessel, even if no one had told him that he was after The Puffy Peach. He knew every creak of its boards, every booby trap in Luc’s cabin, and even where the seeds were stowed. He knew that Luc was aboard. He knew that Luc knew that he knew. And still he pushed those storm clouds their way, rumbling with promises of electric death, of sizzling internal organs with white-hot heat until they popped like popcorn. His betrayal could not be more complete.

  “Fire!” Qobayne shouted, and a single cannon boomed, and they watched the seas to see where the ball splashed down. It was well short of the clipper ship and off to its port side.

  “Load up! The rest of you, angle up ten degrees! Fire on the captain’s command!”

  Luc closed his eye for the space of three seconds and muttered a prayer to whatever face of Pellanus gave a damn about pirates. He hoped he or she would be more invested in this battle than the side that cared about the Royal Navy.

  He opened his eye and cried out, “Firrrre!” and heard the hiss of the fuses before they lit up the gunpowder and the cannonballs boomed out of their orifices. The ship rocked under the collective recoil, and the balls all missed, but they got much closer to the ship than did the original range-finding shot.

  “Very good! Reload!” Qobayne said. “Lower five degrees, because they’re coming fast! Fire when ready!”

  This was good. Qobayne would adjust each shot as needed, trying to get one good hit, maybe two, and that might be enough to let them escape. Get the clipper to take on water and it wouldn’t be so fast.

  They had to score a hit soon, however. Those storm clouds were starting to drift in their direction. And there, on the prow of the ship, distant but plainly visible, a familiar figure clutched at the air. In the ruddy twilight he was a pinkish phantom, but well could Luke imagine his mouth moving as he cajoled the winds and vapors to do his bidding and deliver death straight ahead.

  The rain began to sheet down between the two ships like a dishwater curtain; the cloud bank advanced and thunder growled, low and threatening. Visibility decreased as the sun kept sinking and the clouds and rain darkened the skies.

  Two cannons fired, and Qobayne told the others to hold while he watched the splashdown through his spyglass. Distance was correct, but they still missed to either side. He yelled for fine adjustments to the others and told the first two to reload, but then there was a squawk of protest.

  “Oi! Where you going, girl? Get back here!” Qobayne barked.

  “I have something that can help!” Morgan’s voice floated up from the cannon deck.

  “It’s muscle and gunpowder that can help us now, nothing else! Ye don’t abandon your post during battle stations!”

  “Trust me!”

  “How about ye obey orders or get your arse keelhauled!”

  “I promise it will work!”

  “Fire!” Qobayne said, and Luc lost what was said next, if anything, as the other two cannons doubled up. One of the shots missed entirely, but the other plunged through the fo’c’sle behind the battle wizard, and that probably meant they’d be taking on water soon if it continued through the hull. A cheer went up on The Puffy Peach, for that was a damn lucky shot.

  But neither Qobayne nor Morgan was cheering. They were raging at each other, the boatswain trailing behind the young woman as she protested that she had the solution to the problem and the old sailor pointing out that the cannons would do just fine if only she’d stay at her station.

  The rain caught up with them and began to soak the deck and the sails. Any bolt of lightning that struck the deck would travel through that moisture and fry a few people here and there.

  “We need to take them out now!” Feng said, stating the obvious.

  “We need anotherrrr hit, that’s most definite,” Luc agreed.

  And then the human woman Morgan stood before him, cheeks blackened with gunpowder and soot, Qobayne coming up quickly behind, his face purpled with rage and shouting that every single part of her was mutinous rubbish, and through the din she shouted at Luc, holding a gunnysack and a small golden something in her hand.

  “Captain, I have a gnomeric firebird!” she said. “Permission to deploy it against the clipper ship?”

  Luc flared all his feathers in shock and relief. Where on Pell had she gotten one of those? She answered his question before he could ask.

  “My cousin was a pyromaniac and he gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday.”

  “Perrrrmission given,” Luc crowed, “but only against the sails, do ye ken? Not against the hull!” He could not consciously send death directly to Ramekin, but with a set of burning sails, they’d never be able to catch up to The Puffy Peach.

  “Aye, Cap’n!” Morgan replied.

  “Do it now!” As Morgan scurried away, Luc swiveled his head to the right. “Qobayne! Let’s deal with herrrr disobedience laterrrr. Sails full! Now we rrrrun! Feng, come about south by southwest!”

  Qobayne began to shout new orders, as Luc watched Morgan tinker with the gnomeric construct and whisper instructions to it. He’d only heard tell of these things before, and he hoped it worked or they’d all be lost.

  It was fortunate that Feng spun the wheel when he did, for the bolt of lightning that lanced down through the air singed only the topsail as it missed the deck and struck the ocean to starboard, electrocuting any fish or sea lions that might’ve been swimming nearby. Tendrils of electricity flickered in the clouds as another strike built up, and the air smelled of blackened tuna, but not the good kind.

  Queefqueg laughed maniacal
ly and chucked Mort on the shoulder as they jogged to the stern to taunt the battle wizard, in defiance of Qobayne’s orders. That was the danger of letting Morgan go unpunished: Others would think it fine to shirk their duties as well. But Luc said nothing, because he was worried about the more important question of whether Morgan could deliver them to safety or not. If she didn’t get that firebird away, they were done for. She was fiddling with its tail-feather controls and whispering to it. The eye sockets glowed like orange coals. It belched a sulfurous, crackling affirmative and then took wing in a shower of sparks as terminal flames built within its breast, a forge of phosphoric heat that would burn even in water.

  With the firebird in the air, Luc’s attention was drawn back to Queefqueg, who was standing near the tiller, shouting imprecations at the clipper ship.

  “Ha ha! Missed us, you fool! You empty peapod! You will never! Sink! This! Peeeeeach!”

  A bolt of lightning shut Queefqueg up before Luc could. It lanced down and cooked him to a smoking cinder. He tumbled into the sea, a shocked moan of grief from Mort following him into the deep.

  Feng also cried out, and Luc felt his pain. Well did he know the abrupt tug of loss, a sudden emptiness where one used to be full, a missing piece of a pie that would never be whole again.

  But there was nothing to be done but tell Feng he was sorry. “Look, Feng, and see how ourrrr rrrrevenge begins,” he said, extending a wing at the gnomeric firebird, which was simultaneously growing smaller and brighter with distance. “Ourrrr special deliverrrry should serrrrve us well, if it not be shot down.”

  Two different strikes did indeed try to knock the small firebird out of the sky, each weaker than the one that killed Queefqueg, but they missed, and there was not enough charge built up in the clouds to summon more.

  “Yes! It’s going to hit!” Luc chortled.