by Jon Skovron
As Captain Bane had predicted, they planned to claim the ship as a prize. It was why they boarded her instead of just blowing her out of the water. A sailor didn’t earn much pay, but everyone on board was entitled to a share when a captured ship was sold.
Before the sailors could follow their orders, Bane spoke up.
“Wait, Lieutenant. I request that I may be permitted to present my sword to your captain. That is the custom, isn’t it?”
The lieutenant didn’t look pleased, but turned to one of his soldiers. “Fetch the captain to accept the formal surrender.”
The soldier saluted, then hurried back across the gangplank to the frigate.
“Where would we be without our customs?” asked Bane. “Isn’t that right, Lieutenant?”
Jilly knew this was her chance to fix things. The lightning seemed to be groping blindly toward the iron rod above her, but she ignored that and grabbed on to the chain with both hands. She slowly made her way, hand over hand, across the gap to the frigate. Her calluses were thick from her time at sea, but even so, the chain dug into her palms. Her feet dangled high above the churning water between the ships. The wind buffeted at her, sending her swaying side to side. One gust blew so hard, she could feel a small movement along the chain as the grappling hook gave a little. She froze for a moment. She hadn’t considered whether it would hold her weight. But she was already halfway across, so it was too late now. And, she reminded herself, if she was still holding the chain when the lightning struck, falling would be the least of her troubles. That got her moving again.
Finally she reached the frigate’s mizzen topgallant yard. She hooked her legs around the mast, her butt resting on the yard. Then she took the knife from her belt and pried off the grappling hook. There was a moment when she felt the full weight of the long chain, and it nearly pulled her down. But she quickly slammed the hook into the thick wood of the mast.
Now all she needed to do was get off this ship before the lightning struck.
She slid down the mast to the topsail yard. Below on the deck of the frigate, all eyes were on the Kraken Hunter, where Bane was formally presenting her sword to their captain.
Jilly’s eyes scanned the rigging around her until they fell upon a nice stout sheet nearby.
She’d always wanted to try that…
Hope held the sheathed Song of Sorrows out to the frigate’s captain, a squat, sweaty man with the florid complexion of someone who drank too much. Every muscle in her body cried out to fight. But while she and her crew could take the men on her ship, there were at least four times as many on the frigate, ready to spill across the gangplank at the first sign of trouble. And then of course there were the cannons that would tear her hull to pieces in a matter of minutes. So she had to have faith in Jilly and Alash, stall for time, and suffer this baboon of a captain for a little bit longer.
“I present to you the Song of Sorrows,” she intoned.
“Very nice,” the captain said impatiently. He tried to take it from her, but she bowed, which moved the sword out of his reach.
“This sword was forged centuries ago,” she continued, her voice almost singsong, “by the powerful biomancer Xunera Ray for the legendary Vinchen, Manay the True, so that he might slay the dread Dark Mage and end his reign of terror on the empire.”
“Uh-huh,” said the captain. He rolled his eyes but seemed unwilling to suffer the indignity of bending over in front of his men so that he could take the sword from her.
“Its blade has no match in sharpness or elegance,” droned Hope. “It is said that by some art lost to the mists of time, it remembers every victim it takes, as if the very steel itself is alive. Its song strikes fear into all who hear it, its—”
At last there was a hiss and crackle from above, then the frigate’s mizzenmast exploded. Flaming splinters as big as spears flew in all directions, impaling imperial sailors, shredding sails, and setting fire to the ship. Men ran screaming, trying to beat out the flames or pull long skewers of wood from their bodies.
“What in God’s name—” The captain turned to his ship. That was a mistake. A moment later, he stared down at the end of the Song of Sorrows, which protruded from his chest.
Hope gritted her teeth as the surge of the captain’s death went up her arm. She had never stabbed someone in the back before.
Brigga Lin gestured to the gangplank, which crumbled as the wood rotted away. Sadie and Finn hacked at the lines that attached them to the burning frigate.
Out of the corner of her eye, Hope caught movement up near the top of the frigate’s mizzenmast. Then Jilly swung across the widening gap between the ships on one of the lines.
“Filler!” Hope yelled and pointed.
Jilly slammed clumsily into the Kraken Hunter’s foremast and dropped, but Filler caught her before she hit the deck.
Hope, Nettles, and Brigga Lin quickly worked through the remaining sailors on board. With each slash or thrust, Hope felt their shock, their confusion, and their fear. Most didn’t even have the presence of mind to defend themselves. And with each death, she felt another hard surge up her arm. She didn’t fight it, but let it course through her body. If it truly was the blade’s grief she felt, what right did she have to wield it if she didn’t share in its burden? By the time the sailors were all dead, tears coursed down her cheeks.
“Captain!” called Finn. “The cargo ship is making a run for it!”
“Set course to come along its port side.” Hope wiped the blood from her sword, then wiped the tears from her eyes. “Sadie, strike the white and run up our true colors. I want that biomancer to know who’s coming for him.”
“Aye, Captain.” Sadie grinned her toothless grin.
“Captain,” Filler said quietly.
There was something in his tone that made Hope turn immediately. He had Jilly cradled in his arms. A splinter of wood, as thick as a knife and soaked red with blood, protruded from her thigh. There was blood all over Filler now, and it was beginning to pool on the deck, thinning and spreading out in the rain.
“Stupid girl!” Brigga Lin hurried over to them. She looked furious. “Look at that. It must have punctured a major artery. Pull out the splinter so I can seal the wound.”
Filler nodded and carefully eased out the wood while Jilly whimpered. Then Brigga Lin closed her eyes and placed her hands on Jilly’s blood-drenched thigh. After a moment, Jilly’s expression softened and her body began to relax.
“She’s lost a lot of blood, but she’ll be fine,” said Brigga Lin, looking no less furious.
“Thank you,” said Hope. Then she pulled out her glass and strode quickly to the gunwale. The cargo ship was moving slowly and things seemed even more chaotic than before on deck. The biomancer and captain were shouting at each other.
“Cannons at the ready!” Hope called.
She could hear them slam into place. The gun ports popped open as the cannon muzzles protruded from the sides of the Kraken Hunter.
“Port-side cannons at forty-five degrees!”
The Kraken Hunter slid alongside the cargo ship.
“FIRE!”
Clusters of thick chain exploded from the side of the Kraken Hunter, whistling through the air and tearing apart the sails and rigging of the cargo ship.
“Heave to!” called Hope. “Ready the grapples!”
Finn, Sadie, and Brigga Lin scrambled to stop the ship while Nettles and Filler prepared the spring-loaded grappling cannons at the bow and stern.
“Fire grapples!”
The grappling hooks shot out and latched on to the hull of the cargo ship. Then Filler and Nettles cranked the hand winches to reel the Kraken Hunter in close to the heavier vessel.
When Hope stepped up onto the gunwale, she saw only a small cluster of soldiers, nervous and unsure, their rifles clutched tightly in their hands. In front of them stood the biomancer, his face hidden by his deep white hood.
“Release the girls into our care, and I will spare your men,” said Hope.
“If you do it quickly and I find none of the girls harmed, I might even spare you.”
“Miserable pirate,” said the biomancer. “Do you have any idea whom you’re dealing with?” Most biomancers’ voices were altered or damaged in some way. Hope had learned from Brigga Lin that this was a result of practicing their arts for many years. But this biomancer’s voice sounded surprisingly normal. Even a little young. When he lifted his head, his unblemished face confirmed it. His expression was set with an almost comical level of self-importance. “Prepare to suffer the wrath of biomancer Dulcay Mun.”
Hope wondered if he had just graduated from his novitiate. “Don’t you recognize this blade? Or that flag?” She pointed up to the crossed biomancer emblem.
The biomancer scoffed. “I have no need to concern myself with weapons or flags. If you doubt it, come and face me. I have told my men to stand down. You need fear nothing from them. Only from me.”
Hope sighed wearily and stepped forward, half thinking she would beat him senseless with her clamp and leave him.
“No.”
Hope stopped and turned to see Brigga Lin, her hands still stained red from Jilly’s blood. “Please. Allow me.”
Hope nodded and stepped aside. This would be the first time they had confronted a biomancer since their attack on the palace. Brigga Lin had become slightly less bloodthirsty since then. Hope wondered if she might spare this novice.
Dulcay Mun looked at Brigga Lin suspiciously. “What are you, woman, dressed as a biomancer?”
“I have been many things, Dulcay Mun. But starting today, I am the atonement for our kind. Now I have a question for you, errand boy. How many little girls do you have in the hold there to bring to the masters for their work?”
Dulcay Mun shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. Some of them died already, and I haven’t taken the time to count them.”
“Funny how life is,” she said musingly. “It tries desperately to persist, no matter the cost. Even at the cost of other life. Some must prevail, others must perish. It is the way of all things.”
“Woman, cease your babbling or I will turn you into a hideous and painful shape before I kill you.”
Brigga Lin smiled coldly. “You must be a powerful and knowledgeable biomancer indeed.”
“The strongest of my year!” he said triumphantly.
“Since you are so learned, then no doubt you are aware that even within our own bodies, life competes. Creatures live in our guts that are so tiny, we cannot see them without the aid of a microscope.”
“Of course I know that,” said Dulcay Mun, although his bluster was beginning to falter. “We learn such simple things in the first year of our training.”
“Good,” said Brigga Lin. “Then what happens next will not confuse you.”
She made several fluid gestures with her bloodstained hands, then pointed to him. A moment later, he grunted and doubled over, clutching at his stomach. He straightened up partially and looked at Brigga Lin with wide eyes. “What did you…” He winced and curled over again. “How did you—” His words were cut off by a hoarse groan that changed slowly into a whimper as he dropped to his hands and knees. He writhed for a moment, his breath only a harsh, constricted whistle. Then he reached out his hand to Brigga Lin. “Please…”
Her cold smile twisted into fury. “Is that how the little girls begged when you took them from their homes? When you stuffed them in the hold with no food or water or light or hope?” The soldiers moved quickly out of her path as she began to circle the biomancer, her hands on her hips. “Please! Please! Please!” she mocked.
Dulcay Mun fell onto his side, his arms and legs thrashing wildly. His stomach swelled until it looked like he was pregnant. The normally loose robes stretched tight across his abdomen.
“Do you know what’s happening to you, Dulcay Mun, strongest of your year?” asked Brigga Lin. “All those tiny bacteria in your gut are multiplying at a previously impossible rate. Thousands become millions become trillions, all of them eating and multiplying, faster and faster, until there is simply no more room inside.”
Dulcay Mun began to choke, and a strange wriggling cream-colored paste spilled from his lips. A dark wet patch began to form around his backside as well. He shuddered for a few moments as he tried to take in air through a throat filled with the paste. Finally, he grew still.
During the entire ordeal, the crew of the Kraken Hunter and the crew of the cargo ship watched, motionless and silent.
Brigga Lin turned to the captain, a thin man with a weak chin. “Well?”
“W-w-we surrender,” he said meekly, taking off his hat to reveal thinning hair clumped with sweat.
The soldiers quickly placed their rifles on the ground and put their hands behind their heads.
“The first orderly action I’ve seen them perform on this ship,” Hope muttered to Nettles.
They locked all the sailors and soldiers in their own brig. Then Hope turned to the captain and asked, “Where are the girls?”
“I’ll take you to them directly,” said the captain.
He led them to the cargo hold. A foul smell escaped when he unlatched the door. A combination of excrement and death that reminded Hope of the basements of Gunpowder Hall, where the people of Paradise Circle took their dying loved ones. She peered into the darkness and saw shapes shrink back from the opening.
“It’s all right, girls,” she said. “It’s safe. You can come out now.”
There were whispers and rustling movement, but none of them came forward.
Hope turned to Nettles. “I thought they’d be desperate to come out of there.”
“Well, you and I maybe don’t look like the friendliest mollies in the world. We are supposed to be pirates after all. Maybe they’re afraid of getting out of the rain and into the flood.”
“How do we convince traumatized little girls that we mean them no harm?” asked Brigga Lin.
“Get Sadie,” said Nettles. “She looks all grandmotherly.”
“Sadie?” asked Hope.
Nettles shrugged. “They don’t know her like we do.”
Filler volunteered to go get Sadie. When he brought her to the cargo hold entrance, she did not look pleased.
“Grandmotherly?” she asked Nettles.
“You got all them materny instincts from raising Red,” said Nettles, a slight grin tugging on the corner of her mouth.
“I’ll show you my materny instincts in a minute, you uppity slice,” growled Sadie.
But she went into the cargo hold. Hope could hear her scratchy voice faintly, although she couldn’t make out most of what she was saying. After a while, Sadie’s head popped out of the hold.
“Best step back and give ’em space. They’re still a bit wobbly.”
Hope, Nettles, Brigga Lin, and Filler all moved away from the hatch as Sadie motioned to the girls in the hold, saying, “Come on, little mollies. Don’t mind the scary pirates. Old Sadie’ll keep ’em at bay.”
They filed out behind her like ducklings, some no more than three years old. They were all thin and dirty and shivering.
The worst of the storm had passed by then, and the rain was only a drizzle. The sky was a dull gray, but the girls squinted like it was a sunny day. They clung to Sadie and called her grandma as she led them across the gangplank to the Kraken Hunter.
Hope turned to the captain. “Where were you bound? Vance Post?”
The captain shook his head. “We were stopping there for supplies, but the cargo—uh, I mean, those poor girls—were bound for Dawn’s Light.”
“Dawn’s Light?” Brigga Lin’s eyes went wide.
“I’ve been there,” said Hope. “It’s only an isolated military outpost, isn’t it?”
“No,” said Brigga Lin. “It’s where the most desperate experiments are conducted. Those deemed so dangerous that if they were to be done on a closer island, it would be a risk to the entire empire.”
“I don’t know none of the details,” said the captain,
“but I hear from the men that there’s something terrible happening on Dawn’s Light.”
“I see.” Hope gave Brigga Lin a meaningful look. This sounded like something they shouldn’t ignore. Then she turned back to the captain. “We’ll relieve you of any money and supplies we need. But before we leave, I’ll return the key to your brig so you can release your crew. It shouldn’t take too long for them to repair the sails and rigging. We’ll leave enough food so you don’t starve in the meantime.”
The captain looked surprised and cautiously hopeful. “You’re… not going to kill us?”
Hope turned to the bloated corpse of Dulcay Mun. “I think we made our point. And if anyone asks what happened here today, you tell them it was Dire Bane, come again to cast judgment on the biomancers and any who would side with them.”
“Whatever you say,” agreed the captain. “I’m grateful for your mercy, Captain, both to me and my men.”
Hope looked down at the hat he’d been turning nervously in his hands. It was black, with three corners. A long red feather protruded from it. “I will take your hat, though, Captain.”
The man practically shoved it at her. “Take it with my compliments, Captain. I think it suits you.”
Hope placed it on top of her head, liking the feel of it more than she expected. “I think so, too.”
Instead of sneaking ashore in a rowboat like last time, Hope sailed the Kraken Hunter boldly into the harbor of High Guster. A ship like hers was a rare sight on that island and word traveled fast. By the time they’d tied up at the dock, many townspeople already lurked in doorways and peered through windows, eyeing the new arrivals warily.
But when Sadie led the girls single file down the gangplank, they all came out at once. Parents scooped up their children, some crying, some laughing, some even singing and dancing.
Several embraced Sadie. Some tried to give her money or jewelry. She shook her head and pointed to Hope, who remained on the ship, watching from afar. She took off her newly acquired captain’s hat and inclined her head to them.
“Filler, will you take Kapany to her father?” she asked. “Then make sure he keeps his end of the agreement. I’d like those cannon parts done as quickly as possible.”