by James Maxey
Sorrow’s eyebrows shot up. She had heard of him. “You’re the perfect being that the Church of the Book has been waiting for?” The words sounded odd as they came from her lips. The book that the church was founded upon was far too sacred for any ordinary man to dare open. For the last thousand years, the church had been awaiting the arrival of the Omega Reader, the flawless human who could open the book without its holy purity burning out his sinful soul. She’d never believed in such a being, but she’d never seen an aura like this before.
Numinous leapt to the mast, then bounced to another set of ropes, easily avoiding Slate’s outstretched arm.
“I didn’t expect the Omega Reader to be a common pirate,” Sorrow said, as Jetsam rose silently in the air behind him. Jetsam was carrying the light rapier that she’d seen him use to great effect. She almost wanted to call out a warning to Numinous—she would have preferred to capture a child his age without harming him—but held her tongue. The boy had already proven himself too dangerous to play with.
“I would hardly call myself common,” said Numinous. He shifted sideways as Jetsam lunged, and the tip of the thin blade poked the air where his belly button had been a moment before. Numinous snatched the rapier away, then kicked Jetsam in the throat, sending him to crash on the deck below, gagging.
Numinous stretched the rapier toward the rigging Slate was climbing and made two fast slices. Slate frowned as he found that the ropes supporting his weight were no longer attached to anything. He fell to the deck, his head smacking hard on the wood.
Sorrow asked, “Why, exactly, if you’re the savior that the church has been waiting for, are you out here robbing boats and threatening women?”
“The Omega Reader is both savior and destroyer,” said Numinous. “If it’s my fate to bring an end to this wicked world, I thought I should first investigate the true nature of sin. So far, the Seahorse has been an entertaining classroom.”
Numinous dropped from the rigging as Brand started to rise. He’d been knocked unconscious earlier when the ship slammed to a halt, and had been sprawled face down. Numinous drove his foot into the back of Brand’s skull, smashing his face into the deck, rendering him still once more. By now, Poppy had recovered. She grabbed a belaying pin and pressed it against the mast. When she let go, it shot toward Numinous. Her mermaid gift was the power to ‘pop’ whatever she touched, turning anything she placed her hands on into an impromptu missile.
The boy made a show of yawning as he leaned three inches to the left so that the pin flew past his ear.
He cast a quick glance toward Sage in the rigging, then his eyes darted back to Poppy, who was fishing about for something else to fire at him, and Cinnamon, who was hiding behind the hatch that led to the cabins below. He looked back to Sorrow. “Your only remaining allies are three unarmed girls. Ready to switch sides?”
Sorrow rose, riding her serpent body ever higher, until she loomed over Numinous by a good ten feet.
“You seek an education in wickedness?” she asked, drawing her swords. “You’ve just met your final teacher.”
CHAPTER NINE
SPOILS OF WAR
BEFORE SORROW COULD act, Poppy somersaulted toward Numinous, bouncing high enough that she could land perched upon his shoulders. Numinous grinned as he stood frozen, almost as if he was looking forward to the attack.
Poppy’s hands pressed down on his shoulders as Slate rose from the deck barely two yards away, shaking his head. He wasted no time in spotting the boy and lunged, attempting to tackle Numinous by driving his shoulder into his gut.
Unfortunately, Slate’s tackle came just as Poppy bounced off and Numinous shot straight up with the speed of a cork popping from a champagne bottle. Instead of Slate hitting Numinous, he wound up slamming into Poppy as she dropped back to the deck. The force of his blow was powerful enough to send the girl flying. Her head banged against the ship’s rail with a loud WHACK and she tumbled limp into the sea.
“That was unfortunate,” Numinous said from above. He was standing on one the yardarms of the foresail. He’d apparently escaped being launched completely off the ship by grabbing a rope. “I know that legends say that Wanderers can’t drown, but I wonder how they fare unconscious in shark infested waters while bleeding from a head wound?”
Sorrow knew Numinous was trying to taunt her into jumping into the sea to rescue Poppy. But if she rescued the girl, she would leave everyone else aboard to the mercy of this boy.
She’d already made her choice when Slate jumped to the railing, scanned the waters beneath him, then dived in.
“Noble, isn’t he?” Numinous asked. “I wasn’t certain which way he’d go. Something is masking his aura.” He squinted as he stared at Sorrow. “Either that, or he has no soul. While you, intriguingly, seem to have two.”
“Then you’re outnumbered!” Sorrow cried out, brandishing her swords as her serpentine body uncoiled to launch her heavenward. Numinous smiled as he jumped to meet her attack. His feet flashed over her face and he landed on her back. He slid along her smooth scales, zipping along her spine to reach the deck.
Sorrow twisted around and the boy lunged toward her torso. He was trailing a long length of rope that had been coiled near the main mast. He kicked hard and sailed over her head, the rope spiraling behind him. The hemp wrapped around Sorrow’s forearms. Her wrists clapped together forcefully enough to knock her swords from her grip, which was fortunate since her bound fists smacked against her throat as the line went taut. Despite her supernatural strength, she was helpless as the boy formed a makeshift pulley by running the rope through the base of the anchor chain. He reeled her in, until the top of her helmet smashed against the large iron loop. As she struggled, she felt something tighten around the tip of her tail. The lower half of her body began to rise into the air. She caught a glimpse of a rope whirring through a pulley high in the riggings. In seconds, she was completely upended, stretched with the tip of her tail high in the air and her bound neck and wrists fastened to the deck in such a fashion that her armored shoulders were pressed hard against the polished wood.
Numinous crouched beside her. “I apologize for the rough treatment. I hope you’ll take a moment to calmly contemplate your circumstances. It should be obvious that I can anticipate your every move. I see your truths quite plainly. Your predominant narrative is that you crave power. This has led you to make use of forces beyond your control. I’m the living embodiment of control. Serve me, and I’ll teach you how to see past your own lies. Only in truth will you find mastery.”
“I’ll serve no one,” she growled. “Least of all a brat like you!”
Numinous chuckled. “You’ll remain defiant for a while longer. But your surrender is inevitable. I see it quite clearly.”
Sorrow bit her lower lip. Was the boy onto something? Perhaps she could simply pretend to surrender. Could she bargain joining his crew in exchange for sparing the Romers?
She grimaced. Whatever the boy thought he knew about her, the one thing she knew beyond doubt was that she’d never surrender. She had only to tap into a fraction of Rott’s power and the ropes that bound her would crumble to dust. She could open the gate to Rott’s full power and the boy would be devoured by flies. But, if she did so, would she lose even more of her humanity?
“You’re afraid of something,” he said. “Something you believe is more terrible than me. What is it that troubles you?”
“You don’t want to find out,” Sorrow whispered.
At that moment, the hatch to the cabins beneath them banged open. Sorrow’s eyes darted toward the noise.
Bigsby stood in the opening, wearing a full breastplate and helmet, his limbs draped in chain mail. He brandished a large mace with both hands as he cried, “Face me, villain! You may have bested these common sailors, but you now face Princess Innocent Brightmoon, champion of the oppressed!”
Numinous burst out laughing.
Bigsby clanked and clattered as he advanced across the deck at a pace mo
re akin to a tortoise than a hare. Numinous yawned loudly, crossing his arms as the dwarf approached. He said, “Could you pick up the pace, ‘princess’? I’d like to get back to making a deal with the snake-woman.”
Bigsby responded by bounding forward and swinging his mace. Numinous leaned back to avoid the blow. To Sorrow’s surprise, a loud WHACK followed. Numinous fell to his back, clutching his right cheek with his hand.
His eyes were wide as he spat out blood and mumbled, “How did you—”
Bigsby answered by shuffling forward and swinging the mace over his head. Numinous rolled to keep his brains from being bashed in, but Bigsby still managed to strike a glancing blow to the boy’s shoulder. Numinous made it to his hands and knees and tried to crawl away, but Bigsby pursued him, driving the mace into the boy’s ribs.
Numinous sucked in air through clenched teeth as he rolled across the deck. He stared at the dwarf with terror in his eyes.
“Your reality... it’s fractured,” he whimpered, his voice trembling. “You exist outside the truth!”
Bigsby swung his mace again and Numinous rolled away barely in time. Sorrow was surprised the blows were even close. Despite her poor skills with weapons, she was certain she could have avoided Bigsby’s blows, given that he was weighed down by armor and swinging a weapon twice as heavy as he could effectively handle. Perhaps Numinous wasn’t quite as in control of events as he’d like to believe.
Just then, soft footsteps whispered across the deck toward Sorrow. She turned her eyes toward the sound and found Cinnamon dashing from her hiding place with a knife in her grasp. The red-headed girl dropped to her knees in front of Sorrow and whispered, “Hold still.” She began to saw at the ropes binding Sorrow.
At the same instant, Sorrow felt vibrations near her tail. The second her wrists were free she turned her gaze upward and saw Sage Romer hanging upside down from the crow’s nest, grasping the cord that bound Sorrow’s tail. With a slash of a dagger, Sorrow was free. Her tail fell against the main mast and instinctively coiled around it.
“Mind if I borrow this?” she asked as she took the butcher’s knife from Cinnamon.
With her tail braced high above on the mast, her torso flew into the air to get a better view of the fight between Bigsby and Numinous. The boy was now near the back of the ship, with a fresh cut above his left eyebrow. Bigsby had apparently gotten in another lick.
Bigsby had the mace swung back over his shoulders with both hands and was lumbering forward to deliver another blow. Numinous furrowed his brow as he studied the dwarf’s motions.
Bigsby swung. Numinous jumped aside at the last possible second before bouncing forward and grasping Bigsby’s shining helmet with both hands. He snatched it from the dwarf’s head, revealing the platinum blonde wig.
Numinous clasped the dwarf by the cheeks, stared into his eyes, and shouted, “Your madness shall lift! Be healed!”
He let go of Bigsby’s face. The dwarf staggered backwards, tripping and falling on his butt. He reached up and pulled the blonde locks from his head and stared at them with a look of terror. He looked around and saw Sorrow, Sage, and Cinnamon staring at him.
“Oh, god,” he whispered.
Numinous picked up Bigsby’s mace from where it had fallen.
He limped toward the dwarf, lifting the mace high. He spat out blood as he grumbled, “Enjoy your moment of clarity, ‘princess.’ It will end when I splatter your brains across this deck.”
Sorrow flashed toward Numinous. The boy saw her coming and leapt aside, but his actions were plainly impaired by his injuries. She failed to grab him, but her fingers did close upon the shaft of the mace. He released it, dancing across the deck to land on the railing near the anchor chain. He looked back over his shoulder and grinned.
Sorrow’s heart sank. The Seahorse was now barely a hundred yards away. Fifty pirates stood upon the deck, many holding grappling hooks. Most were bestial blends of man and animal. A single ten-year-old boy had left the Circus all but defenseless against a crew of monsters.
“You win, kid!” Sage shouted from high in the riggings. “As the most senior officer still conscious, I’d like to talk surrender!”
Numinous looked up. He frowned as he said, “You’re lying. You’re trying to distract me so –”
At that moment, Cinnamon rose from behind an overturned barrel and dashed toward Numinous. He turned, facing her, and jumped for a rope overhead. Her fingers barely brushed the tips of his toes as he climbed into the rigging.
The small contact proved sufficient. Cinnamon had the power to control a person’s taste buds. The boy’s face contorted in a mask of horrified disgust. His body convulsed as he began to violently vomit. His trembling fingers lost their grip on the rope and he fell to the deck, landing hard. Any hope he would be knocked out by the fall was quashed as he rose to his hands and knees, his body heaving as he threw up once more.
Sorrow assumed that Numinous was too busy trying to purge the foul taste from his mouth to pay attention to her. She lunged toward him, the knife in one hand, the mace in the other, prepared to put him out of his misery.
Alas, her blows bit into the vomit covered deck as the boy again displayed inhuman reflexes in rolling aside. Spitting with each motion, he jumped to the rails.
Wiping his lips, he whispered, “My troops can finish you!” He spat again, and flipped backward into the sea.
“Mako!” Cinnamon cried, leaning over the rail. “Mako! Catch him!”
“Mako can’t hear you,” Sage shouted. “He’s at the Seahorse. He headed there the second Numinous threw him overboard.”
“He left us even though we were under attack?”
Sage shrugged. “I doubt he thought we’d have a problem beating a little kid. You know he’d rather tear into a ship full of bloodthirsty pirates than fight a boy half his age. How much longer before the kid stops feeling sick?”
Cinnamon shook her head. “I had contact for less than a second. But I hit him with weeping cheese.”
“Weeping cheese?” asked Sorrow.
“Sometimes cheese aboard ships gets infested with a kind of translucent, gelatinous maggot,” said Sage. “When they break through the rind, it looks like the cheese is crying.”
“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth,” said Cinnamon. “But some rich people consider it a delicacy.”
“Let’s hope there are no rich people among these half-seeds,” Sorrow said as she watched the Seahorse draw to within a hundred feet. “We’re about to be overrun.”
“I can assure you that we aren’t,” said Sage, pointing toward the stern of the Seahorse.
Mako was climbing the massive rudder. He was biting through the heavy iron bands that held the beams together. The Seahorse lurched as her rudder suddenly tore loose. Even from a hundred feet away, Sorrow heard Captain Stallion curse, “What the devil?”
A dozen pirates ran to the stern and peered over. Mako reached up and flung the closest few into the waves, then leapt to the stern rail and shouted, “Fight for your lives, you scurvy dogs! I take no prisoners!”
Cinnamon ran past Sorrow on her way toward her mother. She grabbed Gale by the shoulders. The older woman’s face contorted, her nose wrinkling, and she suddenly sat up, spitting.
“Sorry,” Cinnamon said. “I had to wake you fast. You should be tasting mint now.”
Gale wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “That’s much better.” She looked around. “What’s going on?”
Sage shouted down the current battle status as Cinnamon moved to revive Rigger.
Sorrow wondered what had happened to Poppy and Slate, and moved to the rail to see if she could spot them. She found the big man climbing the anchor chain with the now conscious Poppy clinging to his shoulders.
“Are you both okay?” she shouted.
“I’m fine!” Poppy cried.
“I’m eager to hit someone,” said Slate. “Where’s the boy?”
“He went into the water,” said Sage. “
For some reason, I can’t see him. But if you need a little violence, we have a whole ship at the ready.”
“You can’t touch Stallion,” Gale cried. “He’s mine!”
“I’m not sure that got explained to Mako,” said Sage.
“Jetsam and Brand are awake!” Cinnamon shouted.
“Where’s Bigs—the princess?” Brand asked groggily.
Bigsby stumbled past, his wig in his hand, the kohl around his eyes running down his cheeks. “She’s going below to find a bottle of rum,” he said softly as he unclasped his breastplate, which clattered to the deck.
Gale paid the dwarf no mind as she readied her twin cutlasses and jumped to the railing.
“Ready, Rigger?” she asked.
“Bring the wind, Captain,” the young man answered as he took the wheel.
On the Seahorse, chaos had broken loose. A half-dozen pirates now flailed in the waves behind the ship. Mako had liberated a cutlass from one of the cutthroats and was busily cutting throats. Sorrow couldn’t guess how many dead bodies lay around him. Suddenly, a short, shirtless pirate covered with quills broke from the pack and flicked his arms toward Mako, unleashing a hail of barbed darts. Mako flinched as the tiny missiles turned his face into a pincushion. His eyes scrunched shut from the pain. Blinded, he dropped his cutlass and dove back into the sea.
The Circus turned toward the Seahorse and was closing fast. Brand intercepted Bigsby before he went below deck.
“Don’t take off your armor just yet, Princess,” Brand advised. “There’s about to be a big fight. Time to bring a little Brightmoon justice to these pirates!”
“I’m not a princess,” Bigsby said with a sigh. “I’m a fishmonger. You know that.”
Brand raised an eyebrow. “I’m just happy to hear that you know it!”
“Happy? Now that my secret’s out, I’m ruined,” Bigsby moaned. “It’s hard enough being a dwarf among the ruffians of Commonground. Now that everyone knows about my... other wardrobe... I’m doomed.”