by Mackenzi Lee
Then she hauls herself up the stairs and disappears onto the upper deck.
Monty manifests suddenly at my shoulder like an obnoxious ghost, grinning at me in a way that makes me realize how close to my ear Sim was speaking.
“I think she likes you,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “Just because you and Percy live in unholy matrimony doesn’t mean every same-gendered pair also wants to. And we only kissed once, and that was more an experimentation to see if kissing can be an enjoyable experience for me. And the answer is no, though I’d say she’s the best I’ve had. But the point is moot as I don’t think it’s ever really going to be good because I just don’t seem to desire that sort of relationship with anyone the way everyone else does. But just because she kissed me doesn’t mean she likes me. I once saw you necking a hedgerow.”
Monty blinks. “I meant likes as in begrudgingly respects, but my word, how long have you been bottling that up, darling?”
“Dear God, you really are the worst.” I stalk past him toward the upper deck, trying my best to ignore his hooked talon of a smile. “Is it too late to be unrescued?”
20
Even if we had a map in a medium other than needlepoint, the journey to the island would not be a brief one. First we have to rally with Aldajah’s ship, the Makasib, off the coast. It’s a skinny skeleton of a rig, smaller even than the Eleftheria, but it cuts through the water like a hot knife through butter. Were we not in possession of the map, and therefore taking the lead, we’d be limping behind it, the Crown and Cleaver flag snapping from its mast calling for us to keep up.
We are upon the sea for a fortnight. A tense, monotonous fortnight of following an embroidered map and losing our heading where my stitches got knotted and running afoul of some winds I did not have time to embroider as thoroughly as I wanted to.
The distance is great, and nothing is so hard to find as something that no one has yet found. There still seems a chance we will sail straight through the spot Sybille Glass marked to find it’s nothing but another stretch of empty sea, or that we will discover the true reason maps were not made out of thread and fabric, which is that they are impossible to follow. We could be wasting weeks chasing our own tail while Platt happily collects sea monster eggs undeterred.
The further the Eleftheria plows into the Atlantic, the more it begins to feel like winter again. The open water turns the weather so damp and cold that I am soon certain my hair will never again lie straight, nor will complete feeling be restored to my fingers. The air is thick, a combination of the sea spray and low, coffee-dark clouds that spit rain intermittently. It only takes a day before I abandon my spectacles—they grow too misty to be seen out of as soon as they’re placed upon my nose. Monty catches some sort of head cold three days into the voyage and collapses into histrionics, which Percy only encourages with doting concern. Since he’s given up spirits, Monty has leaned in even harder to his addiction to attention. His good ear is blocked up by the chill, rendering him almost entirely deaf, though I think not as deaf as he pretends to be when I mention a remedy I read in An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases, in which a head cold can be doused by rolling up an orange’s peel and shoving it up both nostrils. When he refuses to listen but continues to moan, there’s somewhere else that I consider threatening to shove it.
As the days creep on, we all grow more restless, and though none say it aloud, I’m certain I’m not the only one sinking into the dread that Platt and his men will not just arrive before us, but depart as well. We may already be too late.
So it is a great shock when the first call that comes down from King George in the crow’s nest is not of another ship sighting, but of land.
Sim and I, playing cards under the overhang of the top deck, both spring to our feet and run to the rail. The thick mist rising off the ocean is almost opaque. I don’t know how he saw anything through it. Sim calls for a flag to be run up, signaling for the Makasib behind us to halt its progress too, and it glides to our starboard side, both ships bobbing in the rough swell. On the opposite deck, I can see Aldajah crossing toward the bowsprit, a spyglass unfolding in his hands.
I squint forward into the mist, my hair plastered to my face by the sea spray. If I work at it, I can make out a dark shape through the fog, an illegible inkblot looming over the ocean. Then the pale outline of a craggy cliff breaks through the clouds, and suddenly it’s in silhouette before us, a small, rugged fist of land thrust up from the waves. The sort of place mutineers would maroon their captains. Somewhere you leave a man to die.
Scipio comes up behind me, his own spyglass pressed to his eye before he passes it to Sim. I hold out a hand for my turn, but clearly am not in charge enough, for after a scan of the horizon, she returns it to Scipio. “Do you think that’s it?”
“It must be.”
“Then where are they?”
“Who?” I ask.
“The English,” Sim replies. “I can’t see another ship.”
“Perhaps they’re on the other side of the island,” I offer.
“Doubtful,” Scipio says. The spyglass is pressed to his eye again. “They would have approached from the same direction as we did. They’d have no reason to navigate around—there’s too great a chance of running aground when you’re this near land in unfamiliar waters. It would be easier to go by foot overland if needed.”
“Maybe the eggs are on the other side of the island,” I offer. “That would be enough reason to risk it. Or perhaps they got lost and had to retrace their steps.”
“Maybe they’ve come and gone already,” Scipio says.
“Or perhaps they haven’t come yet,” Sim adds.
Scipio lowers the spyglass, folding it in and out in nervous thought. I squint forward again into the fog, trying to make sense of any details of the island beyond a shadowed mass. I can see the outline of trees crowding the cliffsides, their trunks bare and their tops bushy. The cliffs themselves drop straight into the ocean, sides polished from the constant battering waves that break white and frothy against them before settling back into a green that courtly ladies would have cut off their thumbs to have their dresses dyed. The whole landscape looks rough and inhospitable, not a place made for human life. No wonder it hasn’t been found—even if stumbled upon, no ship would stop for such a wasteland.
The shallows around the island seem to wink when the waves retreat, an opalescent flush like the seafloor is made of pearls. “Let me have a look,” I say, and Scipio passes me the spyglass. Magnified, it looks like huge bubbles are collecting beneath the waves, visible only when the water stills between beats.
Then I realize. They’re eggs.
There are dozens of them, cocooned along the shallows with a shiny, translucent netting connecting them to each other and tethering them to the seafloor. Their insides glow green, the source of the water’s color, their outer shells so translucent and soft that they pulse when the water hits them.
“The eggs are in the water!” I’m so excited, I forget I have the spyglass and nearly knock Sim in the face when I spin to face her. “In the shallows, you can see them netted together. They tie their eggs to the island but keep them in the water. Look!”
“What’s going on?” I hear Johanna ask behind us, and a moment later she’s at my side at the rail, leaning so far over I nearly grab the back of her dress so she doesn’t tip overboard.
“We found it. And there are eggs, look! You can see them in the water.”
“That’s it?” Johanna asks.
“It’s got to be,” Sim replies. “But the English aren’t here.”
“Then who’s that?” Johanna asks, pointing.
Sim drops the spyglass, and she, Scipio, and I squint forward, following Johanna’s finger but seeing nothing.
“There’s smoke,” she explains. “Someone’s lit a fire on the shore.”
Sim curses under her breath, tearing away from my side just as I see it too. A small, thin finger through the mist, black a
nd rising in a column from the beach.
“They’re here!” Sim has her hands cupped around her mouth and is shouting across the water. I don’t know if her father can hear her, but he turns, one hand held up to shield his face from the spray. “The English are here already!”
I look to Scipio. “What does that mean?”
“They’re waiting for us,” he says. “This is an ambush.”
My stomach drops. When I look to the water again, the Kattenkwaad has torn itself from the fog and is gliding toward us, a silent predator with toothy guns already rolled out from its lower decks.
“How did they know we were coming?” I ask. I can hardly catch my breath.
“They must have spotted us on their tail, or had men watching us in Gibraltar.” Scipio is already rooting around in his belt, coming up with a powder canister and a handful of grapeshot. “Get down to the d—” he starts, but he’s interrupted by the first shot from the Kattenkwaad, a warning shot that sails over our bow. Several long, still seconds pass as they give us a chance to run up a flag of surrender. Then their front-facing gun belches a set of twin cannonballs connected by chain that hurtle through the air and wrap themselves around the foreyard of the Makasib with speed enough to knock the foreyard to the deck with a crash that sends the men scattering.
“All hands!” Sim is shouting. “All hands to stations! Load the guns and give no quarter!”
“Bring her around to starboard,” Scipio calls. I can hear similar shouts from the Makasib, and I realize that not only is the Kattenkwaad much larger and better gunned than us, but they’re in motion, barreling toward us with swivel guns and cannons already loaded, and will easily pivot so we’ll be facing down an entire hull of artillery before we can even bring ourselves around.
“Felicity! Johanna!” Sim shouts. “Get down to the gun deck! Out of the open!” I grab Johanna by the hand and we sprint together to the stairs, tripping over each other and the steep incline as we tumble onto the gun deck.
I nearly smash into Percy, standing barefooted at the bottom of the stairs and frantically trying to wrap his hair back into a knot. “What’s going on?”
“The English,” I gasp. “They caught us by surprise.”
The deck is flooding with men, everyone scrambling to their positions around the cannons and trying to hastily load the least hasty weapon in human history. “What do we do?” I shout to Ebrahim, who is worming debris from the barrel of the biggest gun with a spiraled rod.
“Get the swivel guns on the deck,” he shouts to Percy. “You remember how to load it?” When Percy nods, he says, “Take Monty and arm yourselves.” Percy bolts for the arsenal, and Ebrahim calls, “Johanna, open the gun ports. Felicity, to me!”
Johanna and I both stagger as another shot rocks the ship. A hammock flies from its hangings and whips like a serpent’s tail through the air, nearly slapping me in the face. We have drilled for this, and know our stations, but it feels unreal as Ebrahim tosses me a set of heavy leather gloves, their insides crusty with sweat. “Cover the vent,” he calls, and I press my thumb over the small hole at the base of the cannon while he loads the first charge.
“Hold for fire!” Sim shouts down the stairs. “We’re coming around!”
Our pivot is painfully slow. The three small swivel guns on our deck are all we have to fight back with while the Eleftheria heaves itself around so that the hull is parallel to the Kattenkwaad. Ebrahim and I wait, my hand clamped over the vent and both of us peering out the small square that the nose of the cannon juts through. It’s a narrow window that gives us a view of nothing but the gray sea and the grayer sky inching past. I’m trembling with the wait, the helplessness, the stillness, my thumb pressed so hard to the vent it goes numb. Beside me, Ebrahim has the linstock clamped between his knees, striking flint and a rod in his hand, ready for the call. There’s another shot from the Kattenkwaad, accompanied by a crack.
Ebrahim grits his teeth. “They’re bringing down our yards.”
I can hardly breathe around my heartbeat. It’s digging itself into my lungs and throat and making me feel controlled by fear. You are Felicity Montague, I tell myself. You are a brilliant cactus and a rare wildflower who survived capture and imprisonment and extortion, and you shall survive this.
And then, Sim’s voice down the stairs. “Open fire!”
“Fire in the hole!” Ebrahim shouts, and I let my finger off the vent and throw my hands over my ears, my body curled away from the cannon.
We never actually fired during our drills, and the blast rattles my teeth. The cannon kicks back, narrowly missing my toes. I don’t look where the shot lands, but the gray sky through the gunport has been replaced by a square of the Kattenkwaad’s hull. It’s somehow less terrifying than the empty sky and waiting, and also more, because now we’re in the fight. Through the mist, I can see the faces of their sailors at their own gunports, loading weapons larger than ours. Along the hull of the ship, beneath the waves, nets are strung, pinned like barnacles to the side and dragging in the water. I can’t fathom what they are until I catch the same pearly wink I saw through the spyglass. They’ve already collected the eggs, and have them dragging along the ship in rope nets.
A man slings himself out from the gunport across from us to swab the barrel before his partner has a chance to pull the gun back into the deck. Ebrahim whips a pistol from his belt and takes a shot through the gunport and straight into the swabber. He pitches forward in a tumbling pinwheel into the ocean. My stomach heaves, and I look away. Blood has never bothered me. Not sickness or injury or dying, but battle is entirely different. Ebrahim, whom I’ve played checkers with and who taught Percy how to dive and wound Georgie’s hair into tight braids along his scalp, just shot a man dead. But maybe that man would have shot us first. Perhaps it can be considered self-defense. In advance.
Can’t think of any of that.
I grab a rope on the cannon, and together, Ebrahim and I drag the gun backward again. There’s another pepper of fire, this time smaller pops of rifles from the Kattenkwaad, followed by a scream from our upper deck.
My shoulders and hands are aching after only a few shots. Down the deck from me, Johanna is passing cannonballs to one of Aldajah’s men, her face black with soot and one hand bloody from a splintered shot that burst our hull. Ebrahim scorches his hand on loose embers as he swabs the barrel—they slip down his sleeve and he has to pat them out against his skin before they spark his shirt. I lose count of how many rounds we fire, not because of how great the number is, but more because of how time seems to play by different rules in a skirmish. The time between shots pass like hours. The moments it takes for a cannonball to travel down the length of the barrel, for the linstock to catch, is half a lifetime. But the shots from the Kattenkwaad come thick and relentless, an impossible pace we can’t match. The only thing to be done is to keep yanking the gun back into place, keep covering the vent, keep throwing my hands over my ears and letting the recoil jostle my bones.
I’m only pulled out of the fight by the sound of my name from behind me. “Felicity!”
I turn. Sim is hanging down from the stairway leading to the upper deck. Her headscarf is speckled with blood, though there’s no indicator it’s hers. She jerks a frantic hand at me, and, at a nod from Ebrahim, I stumble across the deck toward her.
“You’re needed—” I can’t hear her over another of our cannons fired. The whole ship pitches, and she grabs me around the elbow, hauling me up and pressing her mouth against my ear. “—shot” is all I hear before she’s dragging me up and I’m scrambling up the steep stairs on all fours.
The deck is chaos. Yards have fallen and are tangled in the rigging, dangling like tree limbs in a jungle canopy and pulling the masts off balance so that they sway dangerously, their bases cracking. The bowsprit and figurehead have been blown off. One of the sails is on fire, two men perched upon the mast trying to beat it out. Smoke chokes the air.
Scipio’s leg is slashed open and dripping
a puddle of blood around where he’s crouched on the deck, a rifle jammed into his shoulder. Sim pushes me down so that my head is below the rail—I had started forward to help him without a thought to the gunfire—but she shakes her head and redirects me, shoving me toward the stern. She’s already tipping black powder down the barrel of her gun again, and I want to ask where she wants for me to go and what I’m meant to do, but as soon as I look in the direction she pushed me, I know.
Monty is crouched below the rail, one hand steadying the swivel gun he’s been charged with and the other pressed to Percy, who’s slumped against the deck, unmoving. I scramble forward on my hands and knees, my palm sliding in a puddle of blood. Flaming shreds of the sail waft from above.
A gunshot buries itself in the deck just ahead of me, and I flatten myself against the ground. Monty grits his teeth, then swings himself to his feet behind the gun. Percy doesn’t move. I can’t even tell if he’s breathing. Monty is pale as milk, blood all over his shirtsleeves and his hands shaking as he rips the top off a powder cartridge with his teeth. One palm bears a bright red burn, likely from grabbing the hot barrel too many times, but he doesn’t flinch.
I scramble forward to Percy and rip back his coat and shirt, searching for the source of the blood. It’s not hard to find. He’s been shot in the center of his torso, too low for the heart and too high for the stomach. It’s a small bullet, though that’s little comfort.
“Percy,” I say, giving his shoulder a small shake. He doesn’t respond, but his lips part. His breath is coming in long, labored gasps that rattle on the end. Each one seems to be too much work and have no effect. “Percy, can you hear me? Can you speak?”
Monty drops down beside me, dragging the back of his hand over his face and smearing it with blood. “They had a sharpshooter up in their nest,” he says, his voice gravelly. “Sim took him out, but we didn’t see until—”
Percy takes another breath that rattles his whole body, wheezing like a punctured bellows. Monty’s words trickle into a whimper, like the pain is shared. Percy is making a valiant fight to keep his eyes open, but he’s losing. His eyelids flicker.