A Radical Act of Free Magic

by H. G. Parry

  Perhaps it would have once. But not now. She had fought too long and hard for her identity for it to ever be taken from her again.

  Stop, she said. It was the first command she had ever given all those years ago in battle, the swiftest and easiest to give.

  Stop now.

  It stopped.

  For a moment, for the two of them, the whole world held still.

  Kate was standing at Nelson’s side on deck when the kraken froze. One moment it was rising out of the water in a surge of green too fast to see; the next it was there, towering above the Victory as the Victory itself would tower above the tiny pilot ships in the Great Pool.

  This was what had wrapped around the ship where Christopher slept or watched or lay awake in the dark, and pulled him to his death. She waited for the horror, the revulsion, to fill her veins like salt water.

  But it was only a creature. She had seen riots in town, and battles at sea; she had been spat at in the streets because of the bracelet on her wrist, and leered at by sailors, and shot at by the French. She knew what hatred looked like. The kraken’s giant eye blinked at the ship, black and limpid and flecked with green, and it held no feelings about her at all. It was like looking at the ocean itself, implacable and ancient and wild and brimming with magic. Water streamed from its horned head, and foam surged about it.

  My God, she thought. There was something unfurling in her chest, tender and awestruck, and she could almost have cried. It’s beautiful.

  “The cannons aren’t high enough,” Hardy was saying. It wrenched her attention back to practicalities, where there was a battle to be fought. “And they say iron can’t pierce its hide. Even if we get alongside it—”

  “We’re not getting alongside it,” Nelson said without turning to him. His fingers were tight on the wheel. “Get the magicians off the quarterdeck, Mr. Hardy. We’re staying on course.”

  “But—” Hardy began, then stopped. He had turned white, but he nodded. “Aye, sir.”

  Kate’s heart, which had been suspended along with the kraken, gave a sudden squeeze. At once, her blood turned to ice. She knew now what Nelson was planning to do.

  And what was more, she knew it was right.

  Hardy tried to take her hand; she shook it off, impatient, and planted her feet firmly against the deck. The captain shot her a look somewhere between irritation and despair, but he moved off. There was too much else to do.

  “Get belowdecks, Miss Dove,” Nelson said tersely.

  Kate shook her head. Disobeying an order from an admiral was punishable by death. But if she was right, that was unlikely to be a problem in their case.

  “With respect, my lord,” she said over the rumble of cannon fire, “you need me.”

  Without a strong rush of wind, in exactly the right place, the ship wouldn’t be going fast enough when it sailed forward. The natural breeze was quiet—Nelson would hit the kraken at no more than a walking pace. And he was intending to do more than that.

  Nelson didn’t argue, nor did he agree. Perhaps he didn’t even hear. His good eye was fixed on the mass of dark green ahead of them, an impossible mountain in the midst of the sea.

  Kate’s eyes were fixed there too, only it was hard to see through the dazzle in her eyes. It was difficult to tell what it was—blood, or salt water, or tears. It refracted the light off the sea and made the sky glow.

  It had been night when Christopher died. Now it was a warm, clear day, and she was exactly where she wanted to be.

  Her magic stirred, wild and free. She pulled the wind to her in a roar, Nelson’s hands tightened on the wheel, and together they rushed the ship forward.

  The ships in the ocean were very distant now. Whoever controlled the kraken from the French ship must have renewed their orders, because its limbs strained against Fina’s control. She held it still, but barely. It had been ordered to attack the British ships; its body raged to carry out those attacks. Its own will was silent. It waited to see what she would do.

  What she wanted to do, with all her heart, was to free it. Here and now, she didn’t even care about the stranger, or about Nelson. She ached to swim it out to sea, as far and as fast as it could go, and then slip away from its mind and leave it swimming on its own. But she didn’t have the power to break the spellbinding, only to act in its place. As soon as she left it, the French could call it back—and sooner or later, she would have to leave it. She couldn’t take the strain of being behind its eyes for long. She didn’t even know if she could make it move. It was taking all her magic to hold it in place. Her power had never been so stretched before. She wondered, distantly, if this would be what would kill her, and found she didn’t care.

  I’m sorry, she said to it silently. I’m sorry you have to die. But I’ll be here with you. You won’t die alone and unknown.

  Perhaps that didn’t matter to the kraken. But it had mattered to her, on the Middle Passage, and it had mattered to every slave she had ever known.

  The Victory was turning about. So, too, were the French ships. She wondered at first if they were coming to save the kraken, then felt the sting of metal on its hide. They had realized it was no longer under their control, and they were panicked. They were trying to kill it themselves.

  Keep still, she told it. I’m very sorry; it isn’t your fault; it will be over soon. But you have to keep still.

  She knew now what Nelson was planning, and why he had looked so pale. She knew, and so she held still as the Victory hurtled toward the kraken in a rush of weather magic.

  Fina had been inside men’s heads as they were shot or stabbed. She had felt bones shatter and skin split. Her own body had been whipped and beaten and worked to the brink of collapse, over and over across many years. This was different. Human bodies, in her experience, expected to be hurt; they braced for it, and the pain that followed. The kraken had lived for a hundred years, and it had never been harmed. It felt wood and metal tear through the vulnerable point of its skull, and the rush of pain was overwhelmed by its own confusion and rage. The force of that bewilderment broke her heart; somewhere distant, her own eyes filled with tears. It didn’t understand. It didn’t understand what had been done to it those few years ago when it had been drawn from the water; it didn’t understand what its life had become; it didn’t understand now what the piercing agony at the curve of its skull meant. It didn’t understand why its body was failing and its vision was darkening, and why it couldn’t move.

  Fina’s magic recoiled; she gathered it and forced it to stay within the creature’s head.

  I’m here, she told it. You’ll be back with the sea soon.

  And, against all her hopes, it heard her. Its heart rate slowed, and its terror faded. Her own did too, even as its tentacles shuddered and convulsed. The water churned around it. One limb lashed across the side of the Victory with a splintering of wood. Fina held on.

  Soon, she said. Soon.

  The ship surged forward, and with an audible crunch it penetrated bone.

  Fina screamed, or the kraken did: the ululating call resounded over the crash of waves and the rumble of cannons. Black blood sluiced over her vision; the great lungs heaved and bubbled; its limbs thrashed weakly; and she wondered if this was how it ended for both of them, if she would be pulled into death after it the way a sinking ship pulled its men down with it to the bottom of the ocean.

  Of course she would. Even if she got back to her body, her body was on the Victory, and the Victory itself must be buried too deep in the kraken’s skull for it to pull loose. They would all go down together, she and Nelson and the kraken and perhaps even the stranger. It wasn’t the way she wanted to die, but it wasn’t the worst way. Toussaint would understand. And if he wouldn’t, Molly would.

  The kraken moaned. Its limbs were quieting, and the terrible confusion of the sea battle around was dim and quiet now.

  The water closed over their heads and took them both.

  She woke slowly. It was like floating upward from underwat
er: sound filtered through, then feeling; then her eyes flickered open. Her bones ached, and her skull throbbed. She heard a pathetic moan and realized it had come from her.

  Kate Dove, lying in the next bunk with her arm bound in a sling, heard it too. At the sound, she pushed herself painfully upright.

  “Fina! You’re awake. Careful,” she added belatedly.

  Fina had raised herself to sit. Pain rippled across her chest, and she caught her breath sharply. Her vision swam in nauseating waves.

  Kate winced. There was a cut across her own forehead, and bruises were blossoming green gray under one eye. “You were thrown about by the ship. We all were. The doctor said you’d be bruised, but nothing broken. It was the magic we were worried about. We thought you had gone down with the kraken in mind if not in body.”

  Her throat felt scoured with salt water; she had to swallow twice before she could speak. “I almost did.”

  Her surroundings had settled now. She was on her own bunk, in the quarters she shared with Kate and Hester. The cabin was dark but for a single lamp; it was difficult to tell how much damage the ship had taken, or how long the battle had been over.

  “I’ve never seen magic like that.” Kate’s tone was somewhere between curiosity and awe. “I know you said what you could do, but I didn’t expect it to be so powerful. We could never have brought down the kraken without you.”

  “Did it feel the way you expected?” Fina asked.

  Kate knew what she meant. “I don’t know.” Her honest blue eyes flicked down and then rose to meet Fina’s. “No. I’m glad it’s gone, more than I can say. I’m glad I saw it. But it didn’t matter to Christopher. That poor creature had no more desire to kill him than the ocean itself.”

  Fina nodded. She thought of her own brother, who had still been alive somewhere in the West Indies when the stranger had last called on her. Perhaps he was dead now, or free.

  “How do you feel?” Kate added. “Shall I call for the surgeon?”

  It wasn’t needed. Clearly, someone had heard their voices. There was a sharp rap on the door, and Hardy’s face appeared. He seemed to have aged twenty years since the bright, cold morning before the battle.

  “Thank God,” Hardy said as he saw Fina. Some of the new lines around his eyes smoothed. “We thought you might not wake.”

  “Are we going to sink?” Fina asked. She still felt a very long way away.

  Understandably, Hardy took a moment to understand the source of her question. “Oh! No. No, not at all. The mizzenmast is gone, and we’re taking in water, but we’ll make it back to Gibraltar with some assistance. The kraken pulled loose of the prow as it sank beneath the waves.”

  It could have been chance—Hardy seemed to think so. But Fina thought back to those last few, quiet moments, and she knew it hadn’t been. The kraken had let the ship go. It had let her body go, so that when it died, her mind could flee back to the ship. She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath.

  “It’s gone back to the sea,” she said.

  “Fina—?”

  “And the fleet?” Her eyes flew open. “Napoléon’s fleet?”

  “Either destroyed, retreated, or in our hands. Our ships are pursuing some of the stragglers. Nelson’s plan was successful.”

  “What about the Redoubtable?”

  “Captured. The prisoners are confined on board, if you want to inspect them later. Less than 100 men left alive and unhurt out of some 650 aboard. Not including the dead, of course.” Hardy smiled a very little. “We put them in a French ship, crammed tightly, and then we set that ship alight. It’s over. That’s the last of the army of the dead.”

  Perhaps he expected her to be more pleased than she was. She was pleased: she had seen enough of the dead in Saint-Domingue to hate and fear them. But there were those among the living she hated and feared more.

  She got to her feet, ignoring Hardy’s attempt to take her elbow. “I’ll go now, and check the prisoners in the other ship. The stranger might be among them.”

  “That’s out of the question. The battle only ended an hour ago. Besides, Admiral Nelson wants to see you.”

  “He won’t want to see me until I can give him word of the enemy.”

  “He’s unlikely to be alive by then.” Hardy’s voice, which had been steady, caught at that. Fina looked at him more closely and saw that his eyes were red-rimmed. “He’s dying, Fina. The kraken caught him a blow with its tentacle in its death throes. His bones are shattered, and a piece of wood has penetrated the base of his spine. That’s why he wants to see you. He wants to see you before he dies.”

  Fina paused to let that catch up with her. She wasn’t quite forgiving enough to feel grief—Nelson was no friend to her, and would never have been. But she did feel a flicker of regret. He was a brave man, and a clever one, and he had respected her magic and trusted to the end that she could do what she promised.

  “I’ll go to him, then,” she said.

  Hardy blinked—it had probably not occurred to him that she had any say in the matter—but wisely kept quiet.

  Outside her cabin, the orlop deck was a mess of pain. It was dark and close in the bowels of the ship, the lanterns illuminating flashes of wounds and dismembered limbs. The urgency of battle was gone, and yet the air was infused with a different kind of urgency as men fought, each in their own private battle, for their lives. Fina was used to battle surgery, but the smell of blood belowdecks took her by surprise; for just a moment, she was six years old again.

  “Fina!” It was Hester’s voice; out of the darkness, her friend took her hands. Hester’s were stained with blood, but it clearly wasn’t her own. “They said you were awake. Are you well?”

  “I’m well.” Her friend’s voice was an anchor. She clung to it gratefully, and the past receded. “Are you?”

  “Oh, we had no injuries at all down here—all the casualties are from abovedecks. I mesmerized most of them to feel no pain while the doctor took off their limbs.” She did look rather tired, but unflaggingly bright. “Neither of us can do anything for Nelson, though.”

  “Where is he?”

  Admiral Nelson lay on a bed, covered in a blanket that was stained through with blood. His face was stark white and glazed with sweat; his eyes had an unfocused look that Fina immediately recognized. He was very near death.

  The assistant surgeon was fanning him and offering him wine, but when Hardy dropped down by his head and quietly spoke to him, he pushed both away and raised his head an inch.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  At Hardy’s nod, Fina stepped forward. “I’m here.”

  “Did we achieve what we set out to?” His voice was little more than a whisper.

  There were times to lie to a dying soul, to make them leave the world comfortably. She didn’t lie to Nelson. “I don’t know. He was on deck before the kraken hit, and then he disappeared. I never saw him again. He may have been taken prisoner with the Redoubtable.”

  “Search for him. Hardy, see that this woman goes anywhere in the fleet she asks.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Hardy said gently. There were tears in his eyes. “He may be dead, of course. A good many went over the sides of that ship.”

  “He isn’t dead,” Hester said. “I can still feel him. It isn’t very helpful—I have no idea where he is, or whether he’s hurt. But I would know if he died.”

  Nelson nodded. “Then check the ships.”

  His voice was faint; the surgeon leaned down beside him and listened at his chest. “It won’t be long now,” he said—perhaps to Hardy, but Nelson heard.

  “Good. That’s good. I don’t want to endure this for long.” He caught his breath against a wave of pain; his body contorted as it broke and dispersed.

  “Still,” he added, in a sigh almost too quiet to be heard. “Still, I would also very much like to live a little longer.”

  Fina nodded. In that moment, despite everything Nelson was, her heart wrung with pity. “Yes,” she said, her voice a
s quiet as his. “Yes, it’s like that.”

  Out on deck, men were pointing at the fire that blazed behind them on the horizon: the fire of a single burning French frigate. The flames leaped high, and a thin, wavering plume of smoke trailed up to the sky. Once or twice they heard a shriek from across the water.

  Wilberforce was sleeping soundly when the news came; despite his best efforts to the contrary, he never really managed to rise early on any kind of regular basis, and lately his dreams had been troubled. Usually Barbara insisted he be left to doze until at least late in the morning, so when he was jolted awake by a boisterous seven-year-old leaping on the bed, he knew instantly something important had happened.

  “Papa!” William shouted. “Papa, you have to read the papers!”

  “What…?” Wilberforce sat up and blinked rapidly to fight off sleepiness. “Why? What’s in the papers?”

  “William,” Barbara warned, but gently. She had come in a little behind her eldest son, and he could hear a smile in her voice even as she folded her arms. “I said you could give him news, not jump on him.”

  “No, that’s perfectly all right, I frequently confuse the two myself.” Wilberforce managed to snag William into part hug, part restraint as he bounced up and down on the mattress beside him. “It makes dinner parties very awkward. What on earth is this about?”

  “Nelson!” William declared, holding out a paper. “He won!”

  “There’s been a naval victory off Trafalgar,” Barbara informed him more sedately, and a thrill of hope cut through the last of his drowsiness. “The paper says an important one. I know you’ve been worrying, so I thought—”