by Alex Lidell
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we won. Or, at least, survived.
On the Helix’s deck, a half-dozen seamen howl still, blood coming from eyes forever melted shut. More lie motionless. The twelve-year-old middie isn’t among the dead and wounded, though. Red-eyed, the boy is leaning on the rail and, like the others, staring at me with unhidden disdain. Their captain, who is panting and shaking, leaning against the mast in the wake of action.
Getting his arms under me, Quinn moves me toward the ladder leading down to my cabin. My mouth is dry, my body weak as a newborn foal’s. And if I know myself, there is a convulsion riding in my shadow now, waiting for the right moment to spring.
Bear is waiting for me in my cabin, and I drop onto my cot, my head pounding and cradled in my arms. The dog hops up beside me, his worried wet nose nudging the back of my neck. Quinn hands me a glass of water, but my hands tremble so much, I spill most of the liquid before managing a sip.
“Eight months ago, you weren’t capable of a tenth of this magic.” Quinn eyes me with a mix of personal concern and professional curiously. “And you were already more powerful than any Gifted I’d ever met. I’ve no guess as to what price your body will demand for abusing it like you had to, but we’ll take it one breath at a time.”
I draw a shaking breath into abused lungs. On the deck above, the sounds of a ship recovering from battle start up slowly as the wounded are carried away and carpenters begin to take stock of the damage. Hammers strike bulkheads, debris splatters overboard, feet move about as crews put the ship to rights. Both my tail-tucked departure and current absence have been noted, the unflattering comments easily penetrating the Helix’s thick bulkheads. “What do I tell them?” I ask Quinn, waving my hand toward the overhead. “They all think—”
“The Helix’s crew is fortunate they can think,” Quinn says, cutting me off. “The Thorn’s as well. Had you hesitated, you and your brave image would either be at the bottom of the sea or in an enemy prison. All of ours would be. I’m more worried about how quickly your Gift is scaling. Not that I’m ungrateful, but I can’t imagine that the extra power is going to come without extra challenges.”
A knock sounds against the door, which opens without further warning to allow Domenic into the cabin. Bear hops to the deck and wiggles his rear in greeting, though he refuses to stray farther than a step from my side.
My hand tightens on the edge of my mattress.
“Might we have the cabin, Mr. Quinn?” Domenic asks, waiting until his request is fulfilled before striding forward to crouch beside me.
My chest tightens as I struggle to ignore his salt-and-brine scent, now mixed with sulfury gunpowder residue. Behind my eyes, needle-sharp pain pierces my head. I want to curl into a ball around myself, but I force my back straight to meet Domenic’s eyes instead. “Yes, Lieutenant?”
“How are you feeling?” Domenic’s blue eyes search through mine. Unlike me, Domenic is as unruffled as always, minor things like near brushes with death granting no cause for a less than pristine uniform.
“Like I look, I imagine.”
“You look like you should be dead.” The back of Domenic’s hand twitches toward my face, halts, returns quickly to rest on his knee. In the following silence, I hear the echoes of a seaman’s voice inquiring about the Helix’s fearless captain, the answering throaty laughs cut short by Zolan’s bark.
“The next man to make light of a lady—any lady—is going to find himself answering to me,” the first officer is saying. “Am I understood?”
A chorus of contrite “aye aye, sir.”
I rub my temple. For situational awareness, the captain’s cabin is designed to have strong acoustics to the deck, but just now, I wish the ship’s architects had been a smidge less diligent.
“Ignore them,” Domenic says quietly.
Like he ignored all the seamen on the Aurora who thought him a sadistic, bloodthirsty tyrant. Maybe Domenic does have more mettle than I do. “Is there something I can help you with just now, Mr. Dana? I don’t imagine Mr. Zolan would approve of your presence here, so let’s be about your business as efficiently as we can.”
“Really, Nile?” Domenic’s calm voice finally snaps. “You think I came here on ship’s business?”
My skin heats, my fingers flexing into fists. I’m too tired, too prone to do something I’ll regret. Like grasp that hand that almost reached for my face. A tried and failed road. “I think I’ve little to say to someone who wishes to support me only in secret.”
“They are your secrets.” Domenic stands, crossing his arms over his chest. “Gifted aren’t allowed to captain Felielle ships—so tell me, how do you wish me to spin what just happened? Suggest that you had simply been crouching to check your boot buckles?”
I throw up my hands. “You all but told the Felielle Admiralty that I wasn’t to be trusted.”
“You told the admiralty that yourself with your actions. And Admiral Pyre doesn’t know the half of it, thinking your actions rooted in a snap decision to make the most of suddenly fortuitous weather—not premeditated insolence.” Domenic’s nostrils flare, his chest heaving with deep, solid breaths. “Breaking the law has consequences, and yours have just come to collect the bill.”
“I believe the words you are seeking, Mr. Dana,” Kyra’s voice says from the doorway, “are thank you for saving all our lives.” The young woman holds her left hand tight to her chest as she walks forward and plants her small body between Domenic and me. “If there is nothing else, the captain needs to rest.”
Domenic’s whole body tenses, freezing for a moment before he touches his hat and strides out of the cabin. My heart continues to pound in the reverberating silence while Kyra tucks herself onto the cot beside me.
“Would you like…” Kyra directs her words to my blanket, her voice quiet. “Would you like to know what he is feeling?”
Yes. “No.” I blow out a slow breath. “Domenic deserves his privacy like anyone else.”
A small, relieved sigh from Kyra. “What can I do, then?”
I scrub my hands over my face. Exhausted I might be, but my gut says we aren’t at the end of a disaster, but at its beginning. “Could you find Quinn for me, please?” I ask, reaching back to rebraid the hair that came loose during the gale. “I believe he has a few things to enlighten us with.”
An hour later, I step from my cabin into a different world, one painted bloody and dark with new knowledge. The deck is still a mess with blood, vomit, and urine staining the planks, but the wounded have been removed below. Eight seamen, including Lieutenant Phal, are laid out in neat rows atop their hammocks, their mess mates sewing the cloth shut over the bodies. Despite the open air, the deck smells of death. A harsh butcher’s bill, but not as harsh as it could have been.
My legs still shake, but Quinn’s words ring in my ears as loudly as the report of the great guns.
“Mr. Zolan,” I call out the moment I clear the companionway ladder and stride onto the quarterdeck. Faces that I ignore turn to stare at me. I hold my back as straight as my bones allow, keeping up the damn illusions that are part of naval fabric. “Signal to the flagship. Helix requests meeting. Emergency. Then have a cutter lowered. You will accompany Mr. Quinn and me to the Thorn. Mr. Dana, you have the con.”
Domenic spins toward me, questions plain on his face.
I ignore him and wait on Zolan, who, after a heartbeat’s hesitation, touches his hat and executes my orders with a calm that sizzles in contrast to the fire raging inside me. With the seamen in motion, Zolan strides back toward me.
I turn away.
“A moment of your time, Captain?” Zolan says anyway, the words hitting my back. He closes the distance. “Might I know the reason behind the meeting?”
“I imagine you will discover it shortly, Mr. Zolan.”
Zolan catches my arm, his voice low. “I would like to assure you that I will get you safely to the Diante Empire and back. If the battle—”
I jerk
away, my balance faltering before I regain my footing. Any other captain in any other navy would have stripped Zolan’s rank for the manhandling, even before the commander uttered his insults. Not that Zolan would have taken such liberty with a male commanding officer. Just now, however, I’ve more pressing problems. “You have no idea what is going on, Commander,” I say, striding to the boat that sways rhythmically on the dark blue waves. A few yards away, a sea turtle surfaces and paddles on in blissful oblivion of our problems. “Get in.”
Chapter 20
Nile
“The ships you encountered are Bevnian.” Quinn’s Tirik accent echoes off the walls of Admiral Brice’s deathly silent great cabin. The sun has begun to set in the time it took for all the captains to gather, the rays painting the water with orange and yellow hues. Beyond the window, the drizzle of light rain taps the ocean surface, sending splashes and ripples along the cresting waves. The sea doesn’t care about the evil cruising across it. Despite having heard Quinn’s story before, I tighten my fingers on the table’s edge. Quinn’s jaw tenses, and he draws a fortifying breath before continuing. “The Bevnians are a clan-based people from the northwest part of the Tirik continent. Bevnian lands are vast and hard, with severe weather and little fertile soil. Until now, they’ve stayed clear of the Lyron-Tirik conflict—”
“-Conflict?” the Rose’s pinch-faced captain snarls. “Is that what you call your people’s bloodthirsty aggression? The People’s Party’s relentless murder, plunder, and destruction?”
There were few happy people in the great cabin to begin with, and the tempers are quickly rising hot enough to cook a deer.
Quinn stares the man down with quarterdeck-trained calm. “I have no commentary on the nature of the war, Captain. As satisfying as insulting me might be, might I suggest we focus on today’s attack?” Quinn waits a beat, nods to no one in particular, and continues. “The Tirik seamen you’ve encountered before today were from the civilized, southeast part of the Tirik continent. That wasn’t by accident. As of seven months ago, when I left the Tirik command, no one in the People’s Party would come within shouting distance of Bevnia, much less allow Bevnians into the navy. The general Tirik population did not venture even that close, preferring instead to scare children with tales of their savage, but fortunately very distant, neighbors.”
Admiral Brice, sitting with his ample bulk at the head of the table, rubs his upper lip. The small smile of welcome he offered me when I entered is now a distant memory. “Am I to understand that—in over a dozen years of armed conflict—the Tirik Command had consistently and purposefully ignored a whole source of able-bodied warriors? That the People’s Republic was saving up these uncivilized neighbors for…what exactly? A stormy day?”
“The Bevnians are from the Tirik continent, but the People’s Republic doesn’t consider Bevnians to be Republic citizens. The Bevnians likewise consider themselves a separate nation, if clans can be called such. They are…” Quinn hesitates, as if searching for words. “The Bevnians have a different moral code from the one you are used to, sir. The Tirik People’s Party has made several attempts to reform their Bevnian neighbors to a civilized way of life. All the attempts ended with the Tirik emissaries eaten.”
A bone-deep silence echoes through the cabin, battle-hardened commanders at a loss for words. Even the Rose’s captain sits frozen, suddenly rendered out of his depth. We all are.
“Eaten?” Admiral Brice echoes, his voice slightly choked. “Eaten how?”
“Usually roasted,” says Quinn. “Sometimes raw. And sometimes a bit at a time, keeping the victim alive for weeks to do it. The Bevnians are from a hard land. They do not like to waste food or risk it spoiling.”
Even having heard this before, my stomach still turns at the image. Around the table, the men shift in their seats, the wooden chairs creaking beneath them.
Zolan recovers first, tugging down his uniform as he straightens his spine and nods to Quinn. “Please, continue, sir. I presume the Bevnians’ dietary habits are not the only reason for concern over their entry into the conflict?”
“No,” Quinn says grimly. “It is only a reflection of their approach, which is mirrored in all aspects of Bevnian decision-making. As another example, you may be used to warriors ready to give their lives in battle, but Bevnian warriors will plan their own death as part of basic strategy. It changes the calculations.”
“What makes you so certain that the ships we encountered were Bevnian?” Admiral Brice asks shrewdly. “You’ll forgive my suspicions when a Tirik—forgive me, an ex-Tirik—officer suggests that a new and horrific weapon is not really part of the Tirik navy’s arsenal.”
Quinn puts his hands behind his back. “I observed the ships’ decks through a spyglass. The Bevnians look different from the other mainland citizens. Stark white hair, pale skin and eyes, as if the cold leached them of color. As for your real question, sir, I do not know how the Bevnians fit into the People’s navy. After several failed attempts to unite the continent, the Tirik People’s Party eventually concluded that civilized relations with the Bevnians were impossible. Perhaps the Bevnians truly deviate from other humans at some core level, or perhaps their harsh lands had bred conscience and morality out of them. Either way, for the past decade, the official Tirik policy has been isolation. It was thus when I left.”
Zolan cocks a brow. “And the Bevnians respected the boundaries the People’s Party drew on a map?”
Quinn shrugs. “Like other predators of the northern part of the continent, they appeared content to be left alone.”
The captain of the Rose snorts. “I understand the People’s Party little wishing to break bread with the Bevnians, but bringing them in to support an armed conflict is an entirely different game.”
“The notion of bringing Bevnians into combat was discussed several times,” Quinn says, not rising to the bait of disrespect in the other man’s voice, “but the final conclusion remained the same each time. Namely, that would be as deadly as bringing hungry bears onto a street.”
“It appears that the combination of an earthquake-ravaged coastline and the failed Battle of Siaman has led the Tirik to reconsider alliances,” Zolan says dryly. “Though the Bevnian weaponry appears rather sophisticated for a pack of hungry bears.”
“I said the Bevnians were barbaric and without conscience,” Quinn answers. “I didn’t say they were stupid or simple. It is quite possible they consider us the lower life-forms in this equation.”
I lean my elbows on the edge of the table and speak for the first time since introducing Quinn. “However the Bevnians entered into the war, they are here now. And with them, the rules of war as we know them have altered. The suicide attack at Port Mead, the airborne corrosive, these are all just a start. We all felt something shift four months ago, and I’ll wager my life that something has white hair and a taste for human meat.”
“Agreed.” Admiral Brice purses his lips, his gaze shifting from me to the others. “Let us call things as they are, gentlemen. If not for today’s fortuitous winds, our ships might well be keeping the sand company just now. We need to reconsider our naval posture. Are you familiar with these…flesh-melting explosives, Mr. Quinn?”
Quinn shakes his head.
“If I may, sir,” I inject into the pause. The light rain has morphed into a downpour, and I raise my voice to be heard above its beat. Above us, men scurry to gather foul-weather gear before the water drenches them to the skin. “Part of the reason for the Bevnians’ near victory is our ignorance of the danger. The fox was dressed as a sheep. Might I suggest the Helix continue to the Diante Empire alone, leaving the Thorn, Rose, and Violet free to pursue other duties? Warning the league of the Bevnian threat and mounting a defense should take precedence over an honor guard.”
Zolan’s eyes narrow on me.
“I flatter myself to think that the squadron offers more value than an honor guard, Your Highness,” Admiral Brice says dryly but without venom. He turns to survey th
e table. “That said, I fear Captain Greysik’s point is valid. The Helix must continue on to the Diante Empire alone, while we return to the mainland. Push the ships as hard as the hulls and masts can bear, gentlemen, and gather everyone’s observation of this Bevnian hell powder. Let us hope we are the first ones to have witnessed its effects.”
The boat ride back to the Helix passes in wet, hunch-shouldered silence, the pouring rain soaking us within moments. Zolan’s gaze stays on the dark horizon while my own sinks into the ink-black waves. While we thought we were winning, the world had changed. In the old war, the Lyron League battled a people who, behind their guns, politics, and ideologies, were the same as us. Now that the Tirik joined hands with the Bevnians, we fight against evil.
“The squadron will be making its departure signals within the hour, I expect,” Zolan says, his attention still on the horizon.
“Good.” The memory of Phal’s bloody body ripples through my thoughts. Before today, I never truly appreciated the power of surprise, which the Bevnians wield with ruthless effectiveness. “The sooner the better.”
“Should another attack come…” Zolan cuts his eye to me, likely trying to decipher why his cowardly captain advocated sending home her protection detail. Rainwater pours in steady streams off the sides of his hat, like a mushroom caught in the rain.
I let my neck stretch back, tipping my face up to the rain. It’s no wetter than, hunching my shoulders against the downpour, and it feels better than I expected. Cold but refreshing. Free. “Should another attack come, we’ll have fewer Felielle ships to worry about losing,” I say, not caring how little sense the words make to him.