Seafire

by Natalie C. Parker

  Caledonia understood that he knew this because he was talking about himself as much as Hime. She didn’t know if the sensation in her chest was a resigned kind of sadness or an unsettling sense of comfort.

  She met his eyes and was surprised when her first thought was that they looked honest.

  “Captain!” Redtooth appeared, standing in the gash at the front of the hull. She leapt to the ground with a firm smack of her boots. A long bruise was darkening along her pale jaw. Amina had not pulled her punches. “The hold’s in good shape. You can dump that Bullet while we’re here. So you don’t have to cart him around with you.”

  “Or I can help.” Oran stepped closer to the small group. “My hands work, and I’m pretty good with ships. A ship tech, actually.”

  Redtooth pushed a finger into his face. “Damn dirty Bullets don’t touch my ship. Try it and I’ll put you down.” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “Unless the captain says otherwise.”

  “Believe me,” Oran said with a grim smile for Redtooth. “I’ve felt the hammer of your fist. I’m not touching anything until you tell me to.”

  “We should let him help,” Pisces said. “There’s a lot of work to get done, and he’s capable. I’ll watch him.”

  “No.” Caledonia’s voice was decisive. “The queen’s orders are clear. He’s to stay tethered to me at all times. I’m not going to give them any excuse to think I’ve disobeyed, so he’ll stay with me. Basic tasks only.”

  Pisces wasn’t fast enough to hide her frown, but Redtooth gave the boy a satisfied glare.

  He smiled in return, saying, “I might not be quite the hammer Redtooth is, but I’ll do my best.”

  Redtooth leaned in to answer, “Don’t feel too bad about it. The way you take a beating, you make one helluva nail.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The next days vanished between long hours of work and short hours of sleep. Tin put the crew through its paces, implementing a punishing duty rotation. Caledonia and Pisces took turns, ensuring one of them was always present on the ship, and Nettle was given the task of sounding alarms when it was time for the next shift to wake and return to work. By the end of the sixth day, the Mors Navis was in better shape than she’d been in years. They would be ready to leave in the morning.

  Caledonia’s cabin was a lot smaller with her command crew crammed inside, but they made do, taking down the hammocks to make more space. Oran sat in one corner of the room beneath the shadow of Redtooth, who loomed over him like a mast pole. Caledonia had released the tether again, more for her comfort than his. After days of working side by side, they’d found a strange sort of harmony that consisted mostly of Oran anticipating Caledonia’s movements.

  They’d taken Lace’s map of the Bullet Seas from the Mors Navis and spread it out between them. A small chunk of metal representing the Mors Navis was mired in the Drowning Lands.

  “Starting tomorrow, we have six days,” Caledonia said. “And from here, we’re headed straight up through the Perpetual Storm.” She tried to sound confident, but none of them knew what to expect in those waters. “Oran, show us the best point of interception once we reach the Northwater.”

  Oran was on his feet before she finished speaking. Taking a gnarled pencil from Amina’s hand, he lightly laid out the Northwater conscription routes. They were as expected; the only difference was that Oran worked with a confident hand, marking each specific stop along the northern colonies with precision.

  “Here,” he said, marking the westernmost edge of the routes. “If we get there early enough, we’ll have time to hide in one of these coves and catch them off guard.”

  “And what about Electra herself?”

  Oran flipped to the schematic he’d been drafting every evening after returning from the Mors Navis. He’d located the coils that generated the electric field around the exterior of the ship and indicated the most strategic point of impact that would compromise the ship without tipping it over.

  “I can’t guarantee it, but your brother used to be assigned to the engines. Here,” he said to Pisces. “And yours is more likely to be in the command tower somewhere,” he said without raising his eyes to Caledonia.

  They studied the schematic in silence. Placing Amina’s electro-mag was easy in theory. As long as they got close enough, they’d disable the hull before the Electra knew they were under attack. It was the second part of this plan that was challenging: how to storm the ship without accidentally killing the brothers.

  Every single plan the crew had ever executed was designed without a care for the lives of their enemies. Saving Bullet lives ran against every natural instinct they possessed.

  “Never thought I’d be trying to figure out how not to kill Bullets,” Redtooth grumbled.

  “There has to be a way.” Pisces studied the schematic feverishly, as if in looking away she would miss the moment it revealed the answer.

  “There is.” Every head snapped up at the sound of Oran’s voice. “Send me in. I can get aboard without much trouble. Once I’m there, I can find your brothers and get them off ship.” No one spoke, and Oran continued. “There’s a good chance they won’t have heard that I turned traitor, so they’ll have no reason to suspect me.”

  “Bullets have radios,” Amina said.

  “Yes, but short-range only. And Electra’s hull makes even that a challenge. Her own electrical field gets in the way of communication.”

  “That’s true,” Amina confirmed. “And their radios are shorter range in the north because there are fewer towers. The colonists destroy them whenever they find them.”

  Amina spoke with the confidence of someone from the region. Aric had tried to subdue the Hands of the River in the same way he had the northern colonies, but the Braids were too winding and expansive to control.

  “Send me in.” Oran spoke again. “It’s a low-risk plan.”

  He was right. They could send him in, let him bear all the heavy lifting. If he was discovered they’d have lost nothing. Unless this had been his plan all along. Gain their trust, learn their ship, and lure them into an elaborate trap.

  “Drug rot,” Redtooth said, getting close to peer into Oran’s eyes. “Got his brain.”

  “Seems like a good idea to me.” Amina turned back to her own plans, unconcerned with whatever fate awaited Oran. “It’s no loss to us if they catch him.”

  “No loss to us? It’s a suicide mission!” Pisces rounded on Caledonia. “Cala, you can’t consider this. You know what they’ll do to him.”

  “I’m considering everything.” Caledonia took Pisces’s hand in hers, naturally weaving their fingers together, trying to ignore the twinge of concern she felt whenever Pisces leapt to the defense of this boy. Turning to Oran, she asked, “Why would you do something so risky?”

  Here, Oran stumbled, but he covered it quickly with a wry smile. “You’re going to hand me over eventually anyway, right? Might as well put the time I have to good use.”

  Pisces’s fingers curled around Caledonia’s. They all knew what would happen to a disloyal son of Aric’s. And it was no easy death. That didn’t bother her. Or, it shouldn’t. What bothered her was the thought of sending a Bullet to do their work. What bothered her was the thought of trusting a Bullet to do their work. Making him the lynchpin of their plan put everything, and everyone, at risk.

  “No,” Caledonia said decisively. “We’ll find another way.”

  In the end, the only plan that seemed to have any chance whatsoever, was the first: disable the electrical field, ram the ship, and board with a low-kill order. It wasn’t perfect, but it was what they had. If they didn’t take this chance, it would be another ten months before the Electra traveled the Northwater routes again, and by then Oran’s information would be old enough to be all but useless.

  The command crew departed as Jules arrived with another stack of boxes containing dinner for Ca
ledonia and Oran. This time, there was a young girl who scampered up the ladder ahead of her. On her back was a small satchel, which she offered to Caledonia with a soft smile.

  “Blankets,” she said. “We could have a chill tonight. There’s even one for . . . him.” She was easily as old as Nettle, yet somehow younger. Her long brown hair was thin, like Jules’s, and wrapped in a bun on the top of her head to match.

  “Thank you, Tilly,” Jules called. “That’ll be enough. She wanted to meet the pirate queen and her boy.”

  “Pirate queen?” Caledonia laughed kindly. Tilly stood before her with eyes alight. “Pirates were thieves and scoundrels. I’m not a scoundrel, but you know what I am?” Tilly shook her head, and Caledonia responded, “I’m a rebel.”

  “And him?” Tilly asked.

  “Pirate,” Caledonia conceded, winning a shy laugh from the girl.

  “You’ve had your words, now let’s get, Tilly.” Jules tapped her hands on the floor of the deck, starting to descend.

  Tilly’s eyes strayed to Oran even as she backed toward the ladder and followed her grandmother to the canoe waiting below.

  “Queen says to meet her after sunrise in the main hall,” Jules called from halfway down the ladder. “Whatever fight’s ahead of you, I hope you give them hell.”

  When Caledonia returned to the cabin, Oran had both hammocks hooked into the ceiling with a blanket on each and dinner laid out on the floor—chicken tossed with glossy brown grains in a bed of gravy, a dish of the same greens as every night before, and twists of a hearty bread.

  It took them very little time to clear the containers of each and every crumb.

  As promised, a chill pushed through the windows before long, and the blankets were not only welcome but necessary. There was still a smear of light in the sky when they settled into their hammocks, bellies full and eyelids heavy.

  Oran raised his arms without complaint. The skin of his wrists was getting worse, rubbing away in places. Caledonia hesitated.

  “Sit on the floor.”

  She found what she needed in the small stash of supplies in their bathroom: a glass bottle of disinfectant, a flat tin of salve, and a packet of gauzy bandages. She returned to find him seated on the floor, holding his hands away from his body so they didn’t bump or brush unnecessarily. He was hiding his pain, and she wondered just how long he’d been doing so. She crouched next to him, arranging the tin and bandages on the floor, then gently began to work at the knots of his bindings. They were tight, and in the end there was no other way to release them than to tug.

  Oran tensed but didn’t make a sound. Caledonia did her best to crush a sudden swell of sympathy. It was easy to ignore a thing you didn’t care about. But this was not easy. The ropes finally came away, leaving ghostly bindings of blood and ravaged skin in their wake. Oran released a long breath, and Caledonia winced as she inspected the wounds for rot or infection.

  “This is going to feel like hell,” Caledonia said, soaking one of the smaller bandages in alcohol.

  “Don’t enjoy it too much,” Oran responded, voice taut.

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” she muttered.

  He laughed until she pressed the bandage firmly to the top of his wrist, letting the alcohol penetrate the places where the skin was rough or rubbed completely open. Oran’s muscles clenched from jaw to thigh, but he held still and didn’t flinch when Caledonia lifted the bandage and repeated the process several times over until she’d covered both wrists. Next, she applied the salve, smoothing it across his skin in a thin, oily layer. Finally, she wrapped clean bandages around each wrist.

  “These next?” Oran nudged the old rope bindings with his foot. They were stained with his sweat and blood, the fibers darker where they’d pressed against his skin for so many days. They should be burned, their ashes scattered in the ocean.

  But she had no other options. The only other length of rope was the tether, and if she left him untethered when they left this cabin, she’d be breaking the queen’s rule.

  Surprising even herself, she frowned. “Yes.”

  Oran held perfectly still as she worked. She gathered the ropes and carefully wound them around his wrists, then tied the knots gently, giving them more slack than before.

  “I know I risk my tongue by speaking,” he said, climbing into his hammock when she was done. “But I would help you even if I weren’t your prisoner.” He looked up, not challenging except in his sincerity.

  Caledonia rose to her feet. Dusk had finally faded into the horizon, tossing dusty shadows across the cabin. Oran’s eyes gleamed with diffused light. The irritation she expected to feel remained distant and dulled. All she felt was a kind of curiosity. “Why?” she asked.

  “He took my family, too.”

  “Aric is father to all,” she reminded him. It was the lie Aric wanted them to believe, the one he told over and over again. If he was father to all, then no one needed a family elsewhere.

  “I was born in the Holster, given to service by the time I was seven. Even our parents tell us Aric is the only father we have, the only father we need. Not all of us believe it.”

  “Did you?” Caledonia’s voice was nearly a whisper.

  “Mostly. At first. I had no reason not to.” He paused, searching for something in her eyes. “But last year, Aric ordered me to prove my devotion and kill my birth father.”

  Again, Caledonia’s voice was thin when she asked, “Did you?”

  “No,” Oran answered, “But I didn’t save him.”

  A cool breeze shivered through the room, tightening around Caledonia’s throat.

  “Aric shot him in front of me.” The edge of bitterness in his voice was blade sharp and ready to cut. “Aric is not my father.”

  And suddenly, Caledonia heard it, the casual way he said Aric’s name without the honorific—Aric Athair or even simply the Father. She thought of his knowledge—how he knew the shipping schedule. How he had drawn the Electra’s schematic from memory. How he knew where their brothers would be on the ship. It was not the knowledge of a lowly Bullet.

  “Who were you to him?” she asked.

  Hesitation. A flash of regret. A flash of defiance. Oran was steady as a star in the night sky when he answered, “A Fiveson.”

  And for the first time, Caledonia believed him without a doubt in her mind.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  That night Caledonia dreamed of storms.

  Winds that plucked her ship from the water like it was no more than a shell, flinging them high in the sky where Bullet ships waited, guns ready to riddle their hull with fresh holes. They fell again into a sea of glowing blue waters, shadowed and thick with monstrous whales whose bodies were made of twists of shiny metal and dark green sea grass. When they breached the surface with mouths agape, the sound they made was the cacophonous roar of a hundred ghost funnels.

  When she opened her eyes, she found Oran turned on his side, pulled from sleep by whatever noise she’d made and watching her with a pinch of concern between his brows.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Think of me,” she said, unable to find any other words in her early morning state.

  She heard more than saw the smile in his voice when he answered. “I’m afraid our situation has made that impossible, Captain.”

  By the time they arrived at the main hall, the sun was just beginning to slip through the trees and stir the village to life. The queen’s people led Oran away as soon as they docked, and a young woman with a babe rounding her belly informed Caledonia that the queen was ready for her.

  Caledonia was instantly nervous. This was not a woman she wanted to keep waiting.

  She was sent into a room adjacent to the main hall, where she found the queen seated at a low table. Today, she was draped in robes of sage green and black, and though she sat o
n a cushion on the floor, she might as well have been in a throne. Her back was tall and her chin effortlessly high, as though she possessed a vein of precious metal within her, running through her backbone. Before her, a mottled brown teapot woven with cords of silver released fragrant steam, and the doors and windows had been flung open to the morning light. At each entry two guards stood with ready weapons.

  “Your ship has been repaired, Captain,” the queen said, leaning forward to pour the tea as Caledonia took her seat across the low table.

  Caledonia didn’t know what to make of the moment. Shouldn’t she be the one to serve the queen and not the other way around? But this wasn’t her queen. Merely a woman she’d swiftly come to admire. “Yes, thank you.”

  The queen continued in her placid way. “Your galley is stocked with all we can spare, your batteries fully charged, and I understand we’ve even reinforced your bow. It will make you heavier than before. You’ll feel the difference, I expect. Might slow you down, but not by much.”

  Pisces had overseen this particular improvement. The stays had shown signs of buckling, and the Slagger engineers had recommended a full reinforcement of the nose. It had required a considerable amount of Slagger resources.

  “All of this for saving one of your people? I’m grateful, but this is more than I can promise to repay.”

  “You saved one of ours and we are grateful, but I suspect it was not your intention that day. Tell me, Captain, did you set out to save Hime from the Bullet fleet?”

  Caledonia remembered each of the barges they’d destroyed, but none so clearly as the one on which they’d found Hime. It had been early in their campaign against the AgriFleet. They’d only taken down one other, and the barge had appeared before them like a gift. It floated, unguarded, far from any shore. They approached cautiously at first but soon realized that the barge was in distress. The flowers were wilted under the brutal summer sun, and no one stood on deck to tend them. When they boarded, they found four Scythes belowdecks. One was dead, her small body stiff in her cot, one was feverish and pale, shivering on the floor. The other two, deranged by a combination of fever and Silt, rushed at Redtooth’s boarding party. They died quickly, and Redtooth returned to the Mors Navis with the only surviving girl in her arms. The one who’d been collapsed on the floor. The terrible truth was that Hime only lived because she hadn’t been well enough to fight them.