Seafire

by Natalie C. Parker

  For Donnally. Was he truly alive? Living amongst Aric’s fleet? The Bullet’s description was too specific to dismiss. She was helpless against the hope that now spun in her chest, kicking up old memories.

  On nights when Caledonia lay stretched on her belly along the bow of the ship, studying the water below as her mother had taught her, Donnally would lie next to her on his back, eyes trained on the stars above.

  “Nia,” he said one night when the wind had turned cold and they were bundled in layers of precious wool. He was the only one who called her Nia. Everyone else chose Cala or Callie or even just Cal. But Donnally had needed something different, something all his own. “Nia, I learned a new story from Ares’s papa. Want to hear?”

  “No,” Caledonia had said immediately, already annoyed with her brother’s incessant storytelling.

  “There’s a sea monster in the sky, and if you’d turn over and hoist your eyes I could show it to you.” “Hoist your eyes” was something their parents said when they thought their children were too focused on one thing. In Caledonia’s case, that almost always meant the surface of the ocean. Coming out of Donnally’s mouth it was just condescending. She ignored him and he continued. “It ruled the ocean, terrifying the king and queen, and in order to appease it, they had to sacrifice their own daughter. They called it Cetus.”

  In his excitement, Donnally had gripped Caledonia’s shoulder in his small hands. She shoved him away with her elbow.

  “That’s a terrible story,” she said. “I’m glad our parents aren’t like that.”

  “Don’t worry,” Donnally had said, inching backward with mischief in his eyes. “A boy came to rescue her.”

  He was gone before Caledonia could demonstrate who among them required rescuing. His laughter rang throughout the ship like bells. Annoying, sun-bright bells.

  Thinking of him lost somewhere in Aric’s fleet made her blood race. She imagined his dark curls still falling into his eyes, she wondered if he’d grown into his nose, she fretted that he’d forgotten his stories.

  He deserved a sister who would come for him.

  Rhona’s ghost sighed and clucked her tongue. At every sound, Caledonia pried open her eyes to look for her mother. But it was never a real ghost. It was a breeze through her open porthole, the pitchy slap of shallow waves against the hull. It was her own guilt over risking the lives of her crew based on the word of a Bullet.

  Morning was still young when a tapping sounded at her door. Caledonia recognized the pattern and called, “Come in, Pi,” without bothering to get out of bed. Pisces’s tall frame was a shadow in the graying air. She slid through the door, pulling it shut behind her, then climbed into bed next to Caledonia.

  When she was settled, she whispered. “I think it’s real. It has to be real, right?”

  Her dark eyes were wide and weary. She hadn’t slept either, but not because of fear or guilt.

  “He has every reason to lie.” Caledonia’s caution ran as deep as the ocean. “But—”

  “But the details!” Pisces forgot to whisper. “No one could have guessed that about Donnally if they hadn’t heard him sing. That’s real. Isn’t it? It has to be.”

  “I think . . .” Caution bent under the weight of her own hope. “I don’t know, Pi.”

  A shimmer of tears caught the barely there light of dawn in Pisces’s eyes. She smiled softly and pressed her fingers over Caledonia’s tattoo.

  “You’re hot.” Pisces ran hot, but this was more than usual. “Do you have a fever?”

  Careful of her wounded shoulder, Pisces snuggled into Caledonia’s pillow. “It’s just the healing process. Lovely Hime says a little heat is natural.”

  As much as Pisces worried over Caledonia, she’d turn herself inside out to keep Caledonia from doing the same for her. Most of the time, it worked. But the old world had left behind a few indestructible things: ship tech and fabrics and weapons, and a virus that burned through bodies like fire. Fevers were always cause for concern.

  “It barely hurts anymore,” Pisces continued. “And honestly, I feel like I could swim for miles right now.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Caledonia’s eyes drifted back to the trunk in the corner. “Rhona wouldn’t like this plan.”

  “You can’t know that.” Pisces rolled onto her back, one hand coming to rest on the charm she’d worn around her neck for four years. It was a small glass circle, inside of which was pressed a single green plant. It had belonged to Ares, and she’d rescued it from the burnt husk of the Ghost.

  “I think I can. She never would have risked it. The entire crew for two people? It’s bad math.”

  “Only if you’re thinking about people as numbers.”

  Caledonia sighed slowly. “A captain has to think about people as numbers. It’s the only way. When a small number of your crew is unreachable, putting the larger number at risk is foolish. No matter who they are, if two people are cut off from the rest of the crew, you leave them behind and keep the rest alive.”

  In truth, Rhona wouldn’t have agreed with the approach Caledonia had taken for years. It was too risky, too antagonistic. And it had landed her ship and her crew in the sticky center of a bounty.

  Pisces sat up suddenly. “Do you think she was leaving us on the beach that day?”

  “Of course.”

  “Cala!”

  “She had to.” Caledonia frowned at her friend. “It was their only chance.”

  “Cala, think about it. There was a lot of time between your gunshots and the fight. They had time to weigh anchor and flee. But when we got to the beach, they were exactly where we’d left them. Because they were waiting for us.”

  “What?” Caledonia asked, feeling numb, trying to find some shred of evidence in her memory that suggested her friend was wrong.

  “They died because they loved us too much to leave,” Pisces continued, hand fisting around the charm. “Your mother might have been all rules all the time, but that moment changed her. She would want us to go for our brothers. More than that, she’d want us to get the ones responsible for their deaths. I believe it and so should you.”

  A mix of dread and fear washed over Caledonia. It was rare for Pisces to display so much raw anger, but every so often, it was there, peeking above the surface like a shark’s fin.

  “This is our chance to do exactly that.” Pisces’s cheeks were flushed with fever and determination. Her voice found its steepest notes when she added, “We can avenge them.”

  Caledonia believed every word. She believed that if Pisces ever discovered who was truly responsible for the destruction of the Ghost, she wouldn’t hesitate to bury a knife deep in their heart. Her heart.

  That day would come. But first, Caledonia would get her own revenge.

  “He’s just a Bullet,” she said, thoughts turning to the boy in their hold. “He’s probably leading us straight to Aric.”

  Pisces laughed, pushing Caledonia’s lips back into a smile. “Stop thinking it’s a trap for one minute. Just . . . just enjoy this feeling. Donnally and Ares. Are. Alive.”

  It was such a dangerous dream. Let her heart linger there too long, and Caledonia was sure it would suffer. But here with Pisces, under the worn sheet of her bed, she let herself believe it for just a moment. If Donnally and Ares had survived, then maybe she could save them and redeem the smallest piece of her past.

  “I could hear him sing again,” she whispered, leaning her forehead against Pisces’s.

  “I could race him again.” Pisces rolled her head back and forth. “He’s probably bigger than I am now.”

  Even two turns younger than his sister, Ares could cut a path through the ocean as well as she, and he was just as fearless. Where Donnally was gentle, Ares was bold, but somehow the two had been as inseparable as their older siblings.

  “I can’t imagine Donnally being taller than yo
u. He was always so spindly and awkward.”

  The image landed harder than Caledonia expected, causing her heart to thump painfully in her chest. “Up,” Caledonia said, climbing over her friend and out of the bed. “That’s enough. We have work to do.”

  “You held out longer than I thought you might,” Pisces teased. “Were those real emotions or—”

  Caledonia threw her dirty shirt into her friend’s face. “You’re lucky you’re wounded.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The sun was sliding pink rays over the lip of the porthole, and the scent of fresh teaco wafted through the halls. The girls were up, dressed, and fed in moments. Tin was at the captain’s side the instant she left the galley, giving a full report of the night’s activities with a steady voice, though her hands seemed uneasy gripping the notebook Lace had used every day.

  “What’s the temperature of the crew?” Caledonia asked.

  “Temperature?” Tin looked momentarily alarmed, afraid she’d missed something in her accounting.

  “The mood,” Caledonia clarified. “How’s everyone handling it? Lace.”

  Tin narrowed her blue eyes and looked down at her list. It was an itemized record of their stores and duty rotations, nothing that would help her answer this question, but she studied it for a long moment before coming to a decision. “We miss her, but the chatter is about the brothers.”

  “What about them?” Caledonia asked, and when Tin hesitated, she covered the girl’s hand with her own and added, “I need you honest, Tin. I need to hear more than the bright bits.”

  Tin nodded twice and plunged ahead. “Everyone’s with you. We know it’s risky and we won’t all come back from it, but we’re with you, Captain. They belong to us as much as they do to you.”

  Maybe her morning with Pisces had left her too close to her own heart, but the news stunted her breath, and it took every bit of her control not to let it show on her face. For a second, she felt fifty-one sets of hands braced against her back, holding her up, pushing her forward. She could not let them down.

  “We’re ready, Captain,” Pisces called from a few feet away.

  Grateful for the distraction, Caledonia nodded her thanks to Tin, then turned sharply on her heel and followed Pisces across the deck.

  The map room was a windowless cube beneath the bridge. One wall was lined with shelves that contained the small number of maps they’d gathered over the years, each carefully labeled and organized according to region.

  This space had been Lace’s domain. Any time they found a new map, she spent hours in here studying it, trying to piece the old world together so that they might better understand the new one. The oldest maps contained large, unfamiliar landmasses surrounded by many oceans. None of those landmasses matched what they saw around them today. But Lace was determined to find some key that would unlock the past enough to explain their present.

  Maps of the Bullet Seas were few and frequently unreliable, but she had used them to piece together her own map. As they traveled, she filled in each new region with observations from the bridge. The northern region was the least detailed. The Rock Isles were mapped only along the eastern borders, to the west was a span of ocean known as the Perpetual Storm, and the Northwater current was loosely tracked toward the Braids and beyond, though those rivers were just a suggestion of ink on paper. The southern quadrant was flush by comparison. There was the eastern peninsula where the Holster was clearly marked with an X, the Bone Mouth where each island was drawn to represent the true shape of the archipelago; trails of arrows indicated the directions of the currents. The Net was marked with a series of hash marks, and beyond it Lace had written simply The Outside. A world in progress, she’d said.

  In addition to storing maps, this was also where the command crew gathered when they needed privacy. A second, larger table in the center of the room was circled by chairs. In the chair farthest from the door sat the Bullet.

  He was hunched over his hands, and though soaked through in sweat he shivered in waves. Each breath he took seemed more painful than the last, and his skin was both flushed and blanched in places. There was no danger in him at this moment, yet Redtooth stood behind him ready to quell any foolish action he might take.

  They’d all seen this before. Bullets his age needed Silt every day to stay functional. And it had been three days since his last dose. The fever would intensify, and he would sweat until he ran out of salt; the shivering would turn to shudders, and before long the hallucinations would begin.

  They could give him a dose. Keep him in his mind for another day or two. But offering him a dose meant revealing to Hime what she didn’t need to know: They’d taken refined Silt from the last barge and meant to trade it when they reached Cloudbreak.

  Hime stood far from the Bullet with her back pressed into a corner. She tried to look unaffected by his tremors, but her discomfort showed in the constant twist of her hands. When she’d been at her worst, she fought anyone who came near. And the first time they’d put a sword in her hand and took her into battle, she’d fallen into a blind panic, lashing out indiscriminately. If it hadn’t been for Redtooth’s intervention, she might have killed one of their own crew. As it was, Redtooth walked away with a single slash on her right palm.

  Caledonia stood between Pisces and Amina facing the Bullet. They needed all the information they could get from him while he was still coherent enough to give it.

  “Can you speak?” Caledonia stepped around the table, closing the distance between them.

  The Bullet looked up, meeting her stern gaze and holding it. “Yes.”

  Caledonia’s fingers curled into a fist, but she didn’t strike. “Name their ship.”

  He swallowed, bracing against a violent shiver. “Electra.”

  Caledonia ignored the distant part of her that regretted his pain and pressed on. “What sort of ship is she?”

  His shoulders jerked involuntarily before he could answer. “A hauler. Deeper in the draft, slower than you. Heavier.”

  “So we ram them,” Redtooth said, already excited by the prospect. “Knock ’em off balance and scatter the rats in the cold water.”

  “You can’t.” The Bullet spoke without invitation, eyes on Caledonia.

  “Why not?” Caledonia looked on him with unbridled irritation.

  “Their hull is electrified. Hit them before you take it out—”

  Redtooth loosed a string of her most colorful expressions.

  “How does it work?” Pisces asked. She’d taken a seat on the Bullet’s other side and was ready with a pencil and paper.

  The Bullet struggled to keep his tone even as he spoke. “Electra bears a double hull, but it’s not reinforced. The two hulls are separated. Only the external is insulated and charged with lethal voltage. It’s meant to look weak enough to puncture, but the second your hull touches theirs . . .” He raised his hands and pressed his fingertips together. “That charge transfers to your ship, and everyone on board turns into a conductor.”

  It was all too easy to imagine—the crush of metal against metal, the shrieks of her crew as their bodies filled with deadly electricity. It wasn’t all that dissimilar from Amina’s electric web, only this was always live.

  “How the hell do we board a ship like that?” Pisces asked, her expression imploring as she looked at the Bullet.

  “We disrupt the charge,” Amina said. “But to disrupt that kind of charge . . . we’ll need a lot of power. More than we have.”

  “Can you find what you need in Cloudbreak?” Caledonia asked.

  Amina’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “We can find anything in Cloudbreak. Getting it is always the challenge.”

  “If you can build something to kill that charge, I’ll get you whatever you need,” Caledonia said. “Can you do it?”

  Amina gave a determined nod. “Of course, Captain.”

 
She returned her attention to the Bullet. “Now, tell us where we can intercept them.”

  Clearing his throat, the Bullet pulled his arms tight to his body and began to speak again. “Electra sails the Northwater conscription route every ten-month to collect conscripts from the colonies. She’ll be there in three weeks. Her most vulnerable point will be when she’s farthest west.” The Bullet took a steadying breath. Pisces looked concerned, but he pushed on. “It’s an out-and-back run. They start at the farthest village and work their way back to avoid having too many conscripts on board at once.”

  They all knew “conscripts” was code for “kids.” Aric swept the Northwater at least once a year taking a percentage of the children who were between seven and nine turns. How the colonies determined that percentage was up to them. There was nothing quite as terrible as turning a people in on themselves, making them police their own in service to a distant tyrant. Saving their brothers would be even sweeter if they could take down that ship in the process.

  The Bullet shuddered harder, and this time Hime strode forward, hands raised. No more. He needs rest.

  “He’ll get his rest when the captain’s good and done with him,” Redtooth snapped.

  And if he doesn’t get rest, he’ll be no good to us at all. Hime glared up at Redtooth, unaware that behind her, Amina had moved a step closer.

  “Save your pity for someone who deserves it, Princelet,” Redtooth said, but she was backing down.

  Caledonia studied the Bullet for a long minute. “We have what we need for now. Get him up.” Redtooth hauled the boy to his feet and moved him around the table to the hatch. Before they were through, Caledonia caught Redtooth’s arm. “I have him.”

  The girl fought against her frown this time, but it was there, tugging her face into a picture of concern. “Yes, Captain.”

  Caledonia gave the boy a shove. “Move,” she ordered.