by Alex Lidell
Chapter 18
Kyra
Kyra hunkered at her assigned battle station, a dark, tiny hold deep inside the ship’s bowels where she, Rum, and Bear were tasked with not getting dead. The air hung thick and stale, making her take shallow, halting breaths lest she inhale lungsful of mold and rat droppings. Blackness swallowed her fingertips. Above her, the Helix vibrated with the pounding of bare feet and carpenter’s tools and occasional bellowed orders. And then silence. Silence and darkness and the never-ceasing scrape scrape scrape of the rats.
No one had explained anything. Kyra knew that this wasn’t the usual daily drill only because the timing was wrong and there was an anxiety saturating the ship. And because it wasn’t ending. Not when she counted to a thousand, or two thousand, or ten thousand. The walls of the hold closed in around her, her heart pounding against nothingness. Each breath was too small, the air threatening to end altogether while the ship hummed with tension.
The ship jerked as if struck by a storm. Or enemy shot.
Kyra’s heart lurched into her stomach, and she screamed into the darkness. One of the dogs whined pitifully. Kyra’s mouth dried, her fingers trembling as they wrapped around her head. Someone was firing at the ship. Iron balls designed to fracture hulls and masts and bodies. Would she even know that the ship was sinking before the water blocked the door of her hold? Would she drown quickly, or would she still be here, pounding on the planks of a ship that had sunk? Would she be dead and not know it for minutes? Hours? A day?
She rose, a hand on the bulkhead as the ship bucked again. Rum growled his displeasure, but she couldn’t stay here in the darkness, helpless as the world exploded around her. She couldn’t face death from inside a coffin.
Heart pounding loud as thunder, she pushed open the door of the hold. It creaked, but there was no one around to stop her, to usher Kyra back into hiding. The seamen were higher up, at their stations. Doing something to protect themselves. Breathing real air.
Trailing her hand along the bulkhead, Kyra felt her way to a ladder and climbed up through one hatch. Then through another. The air freshened and cooled the higher she went, light bathing her skin. She would go to the deck and stay out of the way. She would face death with the wind on her face and the sun and…
Screaming shattered the air as she reached the top of the companionway ladder, gagging on the blizzard of fear and pain, fury and excitement leaking from the crew. Men rolled on deck, clawing at bloody faces as their comrades moved to fill in the voids and man the great guns. By the rail, Catsper stood with his musket aimed at the enemy. The marine’s hair whipped behind him, and his shoulders were open as if inviting enemy shot. Daring it to strike flesh.
Nile. Pulling her gaze away from Catsper, Kyra visually swept the deck, trying to find the princess amidst the carnage. Before she could, a misshapen iron ball plopped onto the deck several paces from Kyra’s companionway ladder. There was a crunching sound inside, like the fracturing of a clay pot. Kyra’s breath, which had gone still with the shot’s arrival, returned. Thanking the stars for the defective projectile, Kyra took a step forward.
“No!” Catsper hollered, launching himself at her across the deck. The marine’s shoulder hit Kyra’s face, knocking her up and back and—Kyra screamed as she fell backward into the hole of the companionway ladder while another explosion echoed above. Her hands flailed, her left wrist screaming as it tried and failed to brace her body against the impact. The crack of wood against Kyra’s back and shoulders and skull thudded through her body. Another weight fell atop her, heavy and hard as the planks beneath.
The weight lifted, coming to its legs with a feline grace.
Kyra fought for lost breath, but Catsper grabbed her arms, jerking her to her feet. Pain shot through her wrist and elbow.
“Move!” Catsper had her by the back of her dress, forcing her ahead of him. His grip stayed on her dress, shoving forward faster than her feet were willing to move. Her head pounded, echoing pain and noise inside her skull.
A second ladder. Kyra balked, digging her weight into the deck. She wasn’t going down into a coffin. Not again. Not ever.
This time, the marine didn’t bother with orders. His arm wrapped her waist, lifting her as if she weighed nothing at all. She landed a kick against his shin as he cleared the ladder to the deck below and finally shoved her away.
“Are you suicidal?” Catsper growled.
Kyra was on her hands and knees, grasping for purchase in the gloom. “Are you homicidal?” she barked back. The illumination coming from the hatch was too weak to be of use, but Kyra thought she saw outlines of water casks and salt pork barrels. The air was stale with rat dung and mildew.
A click and a lantern sputtered to life.
“At the moment, very much so.” In the haze, Catsper’s chiseled form loomed over Kyra. His hair, streaked with either dirt or blood, was soaked with sweat, and his eyes flashed with a bitter-tasting fury. Catsper’s hands opened and clenched at his sides as if it took all his willpower to keep from striking. “What the bloody hell were you thinking going on deck in the middle of action? Were you going to feel the enemy away? Or ask them to please stop and have a spot of tea instead?”
She scooted away from him. Catsper occupied the one bit of light, the one path between her and the ladder. His anger, his fear, barreled into her. Now. Of course it would be now that she’d feel him. The ship lurched, tossing Kyra like a sack of debris. This was her coffin all over again. Stale air and wild wind. No windows. No doors. Not enough air. Not enough light.
The magic inside her whimpered, absorbing Kyra’s terror, the need to escape this place. Kyra’s head pounded, and she reached out blindly, searching for hand- and footholds. She wanted to get up. To steady herself. To run.
Kyra’s magic reached out as well.
The hanging lantern burst into flames, the tongues of fire reaching toward Kyra like snakes. Her magic pulsed, her blood alight with sudden life. Stars. Kyra’s stomach cinched down on itself. She’d done this, set off a fire within a ship’s sensitive belly. Just as the merchants had feared she would. She was as dangerous as the Tirik pelting the deck with iron shot.
Catsper swore, throwing his coat to smother the freed fire.
Kyra opened her mouth to apologize and thought better of it. There was nothing to say that would make the slip of magic anything but atrocious, and she doubted she could get any coherent words past her numb lips anyway. Her heart stuttered as the hold descended into darkness once more and the marine stepped toward her.
He was going to hurt her. Punish her for coming to deck, for making him leave the battle, for setting the lantern ablaze. Over the racing thud of her pulse, Kyra heard the boards creak beneath Catsper’s boots. She pressed her injured arm protectively to her chest and braced herself.
Catsper’s earthy scent filled Kyra’s nose. Earth and copper. There was blood on him. His or someone else’s.
“Kyra.” Catsper’s voice brushed her cheek.
She flinched.
“Kyra,” Catsper said again, his voice low and even. “Would you consider burning the ship down later? It is a very long swim to shore just now.”
She blinked into the darkness as if her eyes could adjust to see through Catsper’s game. All she saw was the outline of a crouching figure. So very big and close. A breath’s space away. A tendril of darkness reached for her. There. His hand. A small gasp escaped her, but she bit her lip to stifle the noise and raised her chin.
The darkness stopped. “Are you in danger of setting anything else alight right now?” the marine asked.
Kyra considered the question. Her magic simmered in her blood, anxiety and fear spurring it on in wild, unexpected bursts. Now that she was paying attention to it, however, she likely could ensure no further flames… She didn’t think the marine would like the sound of “likely.”
“I don’t know,” said Kyra. It was a struggle to keep her voice from shaking. “So long as flame doesn’t already exist, my
Gift has nothing to divert toward me. I can kindle new flame when I touch something, but that’s an active process.”
“So long as you aren’t touching the hull, you won’t turn it into a torch—correct?” Catsper asked. He wanted everything in tight, neat parcels. Direct answers to questions that weren’t simple at all.
Kyra swallowed. “Yes,” she said. It was close to the truth, but it didn’t make them as safe as the marine would think. She would always be touching something.
Catsper moved faster than she could breathe. One moment she was crouching on the deck, her fingers spread on the wood—and the next he had her trapped against him, her back against his chest, his arms iron bands around hers and her feet dangling off the deck.
Kyra screamed.
“Oh for hell’s sake.” Catsper put his mouth close to her ear. “I’m not going to harm you if I can help it. But you aren’t going to destroy this ship either. Understood?”
Kyra nodded quickly. “Yes. Understood. Let me go.”
He snorted. “Not a chance.” Without loosening his hold, Catsper lowered the two of them to the deck, Kyra’s body tucked into his the entire time, no part of her free to touch anything but him. He settled finally with her in his lap, her arms pinned beneath his own. “Get comfortable,” he said with that eerie even calm. “I’m not letting any part of you touch the Helix until I’m certain I won’t be roasting my dinner on the embers of the ship’s hull.”
Kyra heard the words distantly, dull syllables barely audible above the roaring hold of a man’s hands pinning her wrists in the darkness. Her body jerked. It knew that pressure constricting her muscles and tendons, knew what would come next too; thrashing hands pinned to the dirt, knuckles scraping stones, a weight so heavy that it was hard to breathe, crushing her chest. A familiar voice demanding compliance, ordering her to stop struggling before she made things worse. Before she made things hurt.
“Stop fighting,” a very real voice said into her ear. Catsper. “You won’t win.”
Kyra didn’t care. She wouldn’t stay here either.
Kyra’s arms were trapped, crossed over her chest, her left wrist throbbing with pain. But her right… Kyra opened her palm slowly, twisting and working the fingers into position over the marine’s round bicep. Her magic shivered in joyful understanding, already savoring its coming freedom.
It took little heat to burn flesh at close quarters. The key was to ensure that only the marine’s skin blistered and not her own—just as when she lit the tip of a stick without burning her own hand. Loosening the reins on her Gift, Kyra gathered the marine’s own heat and focused it on a single point deep inside his bicep.
Behind her, Catsper’s chest still rose and fell in a steady rhythm, his warmth seeping through his shirt into her back. That would change soon enough. He’d feel the cold first, a chill as his body heat shifted to answer her Gift’s call. Then the heat inside the belly of his muscle. Then the pain.
Five seconds. Ten. Twelve.
Catsper tensed. Tensed but remained still, his grip unyielding. Even when a soft hiss escaped his lips. “I was wondering how long it would take you to do that,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m still not letting you go, in case you were wondering.”
Kyra swallowed. “It will get worse. In case you were wondering.”
“Better me than the ship.” Catsper’s heart beat hard enough now that Kyra felt it through her back, his inhalations slow and measured. Stars, his pain tolerance…
His pain tolerance. Not hers. Catsper had done nothing beyond what he’d said he would—kept her insulated from the Helix’s planking. Kyra swallowed, her thoughts sliding like pieces of a strange puzzle. If what Catsper claimed he wanted—to keep the ship safe—were true, Kyra should be tasting his anger now. Fury at her resistance, at her unwarranted assault.
Yet there was no fury. Only a bizarre mix of concern and pain echoed off him, lathered in a thin layer of gratitude. Who the man was thanking just now, and for what, remained a mystery.
“Are you… Do you enjoy pain?” she blurted, reining in her magic. Some people did. Perhaps…
A chuckle vibrated Catsper’s chest. “No.”
“You seek it out often enough.” The cold night on the stones. The beating at the commander’s hands. The stance at the ship’s rail, all but daring the enemy to fire into his flesh. What he’d done just now. No, he wasn’t enjoying it, but he was seeking it. Was grateful for it.
“What did you imagine I was going to do?” Catsper asked, all amusement gone from his voice. “When I grabbed you, what did you think would happen? And why?”
Kyra shook off the question. The general answer was obvious, the specific none of the marine’s business. His reaction, on the other hand… “You want to atone,” she whispered, more to herself then to him. “You did something, and you want absolution.”
His emotions disappeared from her with a deafening explosion of silence. “I could teach you to defend yourself.”
“Tell me what you did,” said Kyra.
Catsper’s arms, wrapped tightly around Kyra’s body a moment earlier, loosened, dumping her unceremoniously on the deck. “You want to burn down the bloody ship?” Catsper said with eerie calm as he rose to his feet. “Get your head blown off by the Tirik? Do it.”
Catsper’s foot was already on the ladder when Kyra found her voice again. “I’m right, aren’t I?” she called into the darkness.
“No.” He started to climb. His final words, said so softly that Kyra was unsure she was meant to hear them at all, glided down the hatch. “There is no absolution for what I did.”
Chapter 19
Nile
Another iron-that-isn’t-iron lands on our decks, this one condescending to explode on impact. More shrapnel and powder flies into the air. Zolan shouts for men to cover their faces, but neckerchiefs aren’t enough. Nothing we have is enough.
Except me.
I fling my magic loose to the wind, the swooping gale racing through me so hard that I’m knocked backward against the mainmast. We can’t protect eyes and flesh from the powder, but perhaps with enough air current, I can sweep the toxin into the sea and knock the incoming shot off its course. Not a small, controlled breeze, not even the tight burst of gale I called to move the Eclipse through the gunnery games—no, none of these will do. This wind has to cover one hundred forty feet of deck, blowing at once from port to starboard with an upward and outward trajectory, or else I’ll be spreading the powder over the Helix’s own decks.
No, storms and hail. A direct port to starboard wind of that scale will capsize us outright. At a slight angle, then. Against the natural winds already blowing lengthwise along the ship. The absurdity of my calculation would make me laugh bitterly if I had the breath for it. I’ve unleashed a wild beast from a cage, and now want to neatly herd it down a convenient trail.
A twelve-year-old middie falls to his knees, and I’m done counting angles, fretting over my control. The boy doesn’t have time for hesitation.
My arms wrap around my chest, uselessly trying to soothe my burning lungs as the winds howl through me. My heart pounds, my magic a raging beast fighting for freedom, for unchecked destruction. The hard wood of the mast behind my back is the only thing keeping me upright.
Zolan shoots me a glare of pure disgust. To him—to them all—I look like a cowering girl, too frightened to keep her knees from buckling, because the men can fathom no other explanation. And I don’t bother offering one. I’ve not the energy to spare to worry about appearances, not if I want the middie now floundering on the deck to keep breathing.
And he is breathing, I realize. They all are now. Bending against the odd wind, holding on to ropes, but breathing. Zolan shouts orders to shift the sails, steadying the Helix against hard currents, setting course to get out of the Tirik’s range.
My spark of relief dies as Brice’s majestic three-decker moves against our attackers. The Tirik take aim at the admiral’s ship, and the rain of shot they
send upon it chills my blood. There are a thousand sailors on the Thorn, and no wind caller to clear the toxin. When that shot lands, the Thorn’s butcher bill will be ten times the Helix’s. A hundred times.
There isn’t a choice. Trusting Zolan to keep the Helix afloat through my recklessness, I focus all my strength on shaping the magic’s path to the Thorn. I am a sail, my tethers to the magic a set of ropes to control.
The Helix bucks under the sudden change of the wind’s path, rocking to and fro on the gathering waves. My pulse rises, my knees shaking from the strain of holding the roaring magic. Time slows. Or speeds up, perhaps. Another Tirik death shot touches the deck and explodes. More shrapnel flies. More powder that I must clear before returning my attention to the flagship. More orders from Zolan.
I’m trembling. Even the magic is exhausted, burning my blood with its displeasure. There is a haze before my eyes, the world a blur of shapes and color too abstract for comprehension. All I know is that wind is life. Stagnation, death.
“Nile. Nile!” A man’s face appears before me, though it might have been there for some time. Speaking. Shouting, maybe. I don’t know. Jagged shards of glass cut my lungs with each breath. The man grabs my shoulder. “Stand down. It’s over.”
Another voice joins him, this one with a familiar songlike accent that sends a jolt of fire through me. “Get her out of here, Mr. Quinn. Now.”
“Working on it, sir,” Quinn replies. A hand shakes me again, then gives up, grabs my face, and forces my eyes to meet a familiar gaze. “Stand down, Nile.”
Quinn’s words finally penetrate, and I rein in the wind. My magic is half-furious at its sudden bridle, half-relieved at the reprieve. Darkness and light swim before me, my back pressing against the mast, my hands braced on my thighs. My eyes are as heavy as anchors as I lift them to the ocean, my wits slowly coming into focus. The enemy is fleeing, having delivered their horrors and received a taste of a Felielle broadside for their trouble. I’m not even sure which ship had fired. Whether the Helix had fired.