First Command

by Alex Lidell

  “It’s Syd.” He hooks the chair with his leg and turns it around, straddling the back. “I went to sea at age eight, same as you, I imagine. I’m twenty now.”

  Three years older than me and ranked my junior. I nod.

  “I’ve not the blood or relations for the Admiralty,” he says with a shrug, holding up his hands before I can retort. “That wasn’t a gripe. Just a statement of fact. I merely wanted to say that I understand our relative positions, and I’m all right with them. In case you were concerned on that front.”

  I’m not concerned on that front. Or wasn’t until just now. I’m concerned about the fact that my control over Syd and the ship is thread thin, that a preventable error just threw us into mortal danger, and that despite my rank and training and assignment, I’ve not the slightest idea how to handle Lieutenant Syd Carley. Worse, I’m not sure that I want to handle him. There is something seductively nice about being treated as a human being.

  I walk to the table in center of the great cabin and sit, wondering what kind of man lived here before we attacked his ship. Was he a kind captain or a cruel one? Smart like the career Republic officers I’ve met, or a pompous idiot like the political appointees who take command while knowing nothing of seafaring. He was well educated, I think, judging by the books I see collected on a small shelf—two of them written in Lyron. I speak Tirik well enough, but not so well as to enjoy casual reading in the Republic’s tongue. I wonder if a dead Tirik captain might tell me how to deal with a living Lyron lieutenant.

  “Do you like being a royal?” Syd asks, his attention still on the sea.

  I shrug. “There are worse things.”

  “Such as being common born?”

  “Such as being Gifted.” The words are out before I can think them through.

  Syd turns his head toward me slowly, calculations and memories clicking behind his gaze. “Your twin, right?” Syd’s words are gentle, but I flinch nonetheless. “What is his Gift, if I might ask?”

  “Metal-calling.” It’s not a secret, really, but the royal family little advertises its tragedies. For my twin, Clay, the magic in his blood that attracts metal also destroys his mind. With even walking through a kitchen being potentially fatal, Clay’s life is limited to the palace walls except for occasional, well-controlled outings. Actually, I’m surprised Syd even knows that there once were two young royal children who went to sea. Outside the navy and the Ashing palace, few would recognize me on sight. “What of you?” I ask, changing the subject. “Your accent, it isn’t quite Ashing.” While all the kingdoms of the Lyron League speak Lyron, we all have our own way of pronouncing the words.

  He grins without humor. “No, it isn’t. You can call me a common half-breed, I suppose.”

  I wait for him to say more about his lineage, but the strain in his jaw whispers that the story touches more nerves than he wishes. My own mother is from the Felielle Kingdom, and I know firsthand how different kingdoms’ conflicting values tear at a child. And an adult.

  We sit in companionable silence for a full minute before I make myself tear my eyes from the waves and pull down my jacket. Syd straightens as well, taking my cue that the time to return to reality is at hand, whether we are ready for it or not.

  “All right, Mr. Carley,” I say briskly as we both rise to our feet. “Have the whole ship inspected to ensure we’ve no similar accidents, if you please.”

  “Aye aye, ma’am.”

  I rap my knuckles on the table’s edge, remembering one other task I’m embarrassingly delinquent on. “Also, please locate the senior officer amidst the Tirik prisoners and invite him to join me here.”

  Syd jerks around to face me, his face dark for a moment before he reins himself in with visible effort. The Tirik are known to forgo naval courtesies when taking our people prisoner, and it’s little surprising that Syd wants to reciprocate in kind. I suspect most of the crew does.

  But no vendetta will be playing out aboard my ship.

  My ship. My heart pounds against my ribs as the words thrown casually in my mind fully sink in. I grip my wrist more tightly to avoid my face shifting its mask. “The Tirik senior officer, please, Mr. Carley. And please remind his escorts that I expect this officer to be shown all the courtesies due his rank.”

  “Of course,” Syd says curtly. “Is there anything else, ma’am?”

  Should there be? I riffle through my mind and all the duties I’ve not yet touched thanks to keeping myself busy making sailors nervous on deck. “When you have a moment of respite, please send over your orders from the Swift’s captain attaching you to the Marquis’s complement.”

  The corner of Syd’s mouth twitches, a conspiratorial half smile returning to his face. “You’ve yet to start your captain’s log and paperwork, haven’t you?”

  “Go away,” I mumble, and he chuckles before disappearing out the door.

  With the amused laugh and obnoxious lieutenant both gone, I am left alone in a dead man’s company. I run my fingers over the wooden bulkhead, the lovingly crafted furniture, the port open to the sea beyond. Years of another captain’s life cling to the walls in forms of books and portraits and unfinished letters.

  My Dearest Mairella, is scrawled in a neat-looking hand atop a loose sheet of paper.

  I turn the page over. The author of the letter, the rightful owner of this cabin, the captain of the Marquis, is gone. Killed and gone overboard in a battle he never could have won. And while I’ll read any naval journal he might have left behind and turn the room over for the slightest chance that a Tirik signals book wasn’t thrown overboard when the ship fell, I won’t violate his personal life more than I must.

  Despite being half the size of Captain Fey’s cabin on the Faithful, this space feels too large for me. Even once I was out of the midshipmen’s berth and had my own cabin, the space was never large enough to entertain guests. More importantly, the door of my cabin led to the gunroom, where fellow officers awaited. Not friends, perhaps, but comrades. The door from this cabin leads to a hallway with a marine sentry outside.

  Staying one more moment in the dead man’s isolated home threatens to suffocate me. I step toward the door, only to remember that I’ve marooned myself here with my very order to summon the Tirik officer. My mouth dries, and I force myself to look through the remainder of another sailor’s life in search of something to offer my guest.

  I’ve just located a bag of dried dates and a pair of cups for water when the marine outside raps the door sharply. “Midshipman Korrelie, the People’s Republic of Tirik, ma’am,” the man calls.

  Midshipman. The senior officer left of the Marquis’s Tirik crew is a middie. I bid Korrelie to enter and rise as a boy of fourteen with thick red curls and stormy eyes glares at me with disdain.

  I nod formally to the middie and hold out my hand. “Lieutenant Nile Greysik of His Ashing Majesty’s Navy, at your service, sir.”

  The boy spits at my boots. “We will kill you,” he informs me in broken Lyron. “You and all your high kings.”

  Chapter 4

  I rein in my rising temper, reminding myself that this meeting is about maintaining Ashing standards of naval conduct and not about converting wolves to vegetarians. War is horrid enough without forgetting that those on the other side of the broadsides are human beings. Perhaps ones with whom I’ve more in common than the swath of Lyron subjects who make their life outside the sea.

  Plus, ensuring that our own captured sailors are treated well starts with showing the same courtesy to a frightened midshipman. So, I nod to Korrelie as if the boy hadn’t just spit at me and pull back my hand. “A pleasure to make you acquaintance, Midshipman,” I answer in Tirik, which is greatly more fluent than the boy’s Lyron. “Are your sailors well?”

  He raises his chin. “We are held prisoner.”

  “Yes, I’m aware. But besides that inconvenience, have your needs been seen to adequately?”

  His nostrils flare, and he studies me with the angry eyes of an injured anima
l examining the trap around a piece of meat.

  I sigh. “I will treat you with the military courtesy that is the custom of both our navies unless you prove yourself unwilling to hold up your end of the process.” I motion him to the dried fruit and water I’ve set out on the table, not a feast, but a treat nonetheless. Catching rats to supplement rations is not unheard of for middies even in the Ashing navy, and by all reports, our comforts greatly outpace the Tiriks’. “And as you are almost an officer, I’m willing to accept your parole. Give me your word that you will do nothing to interfere with the operations of this ship or try to escape, and you will be free to move about the decks until we near port.”

  Korrelie might as well be deaf for all the response I get from the boy.

  I clear my throat. “I thought you’d be interested to know that we are heading for an Ashing port. Once there, you and your men will be transported to one of the other kingdoms to join fellow prisoners of war.” Ashing is too small to house and sustain camps and prisons. “If you’ve questions I might answer without violating my own fleet’s security, I am happy to oblige.”

  The boy’s face tightens. He glances once at the table, then puts his hands behind his back as if to keep himself from reaching for the food. The anger and hate rolling off him are potent enough to curdle cream. I wonder what Ashing or any other Lyron League kingdom could have possibly done to warrant such personal fury. A heartbeat later, I have my answer as the boy speaks again.

  “Greysik,” he says, pronouncing the word like a curse. “Is that not the name of the oppressors of the Ashing people?”

  “I am a member of the Ashing royal family,” I say flatly, “if that is what you are asking.”

  The boy nods, his eyes narrowing at me as if searching for poisonous snakes I doubtlessly keep in my pockets. Raising his chin, the middie speaks loudly enough to be heard throughout the ship. “The Greysiks and other filth sitting on your throne, swaddled in comforts the people break their backs to deliver, are the disease behind orphaned children and hungry families. I will give you no parole or cooperation, Nile Greysik. And once Tirik is victorious and all people breathe free, I will join them in dancing upon the remains of your throne and bones.”

  Well, this is going swimmingly, isn’t it?

  I motion for the marine guard to take Korrelie back to the holding cell with other Tirik prisoners while I retrace the encounter in my mind. I search for what I said wrong, desperately hoping that I did say something wrong. Because the alternative is that even at fourteen, a Tirik officer so hates my people that he’s unwilling to shake hands. And if that’s true, I do not see how we will ever end the war short of destroying each other.

  I return to deck to a hushed silence, as if the crew took a collective step backward with my emergence. Ellis, the master’s mate, refuses to meet my eyes. Landon turns his back and throws his energy into working the pump, though very little water remains on deck. They heard the Tirik boy’s words and are as little happy with my extending a hand to the enemy as he’d been. If I was attempting to close the gap between our peoples, I succeeded in accomplishing the opposite.

  I force a smile to my face.

  Hands formally touch foreheads.

  I clear my throat. “As you were.”

  The men and women around me return back to their tasks. Outside my interference, the crew works together smoothly, needing few words exchanged between each other even for the most complex of tasks. Many have been at sea longer than I, and their training under Captain Fey has them going about duties with little more from me than official approval for tasks they intended to undertake anyway. The truth of Syd’s words returns to me. I am the ship’s captain, and I’m the least useful body on deck.

  Hours pass, and the watch changes, the fog still hanging thick around the ship. I look up the shrouds to ensure the lookout at the top of the mainmast is alert. He is. And below him, hanging upside down by his knees on the rigging, his arms thrown wide to enjoy the bustling wind, is my curly-haired Mr. Jax.

  I can’t claim myself innocent of the same behavior a few years past, but I am starting to see why it drained the blood from Captain Fey’s face every time I did.

  “Mr. Jax,” I holler up into the rigging. “A word, if you please.”

  Jax swings himself upright immediately and scampers down like a monkey. Within moments, he stands on the quarterdeck, trying to tug his coat straight without me noticing. “Ma’am?”

  “I’m very short on officers, Mr. Jax,” I tell the boy solemnly. “It would be very inconvenient for me if you broke your neck on this cruise.”

  I see the denial of any such possibility flicker in the middie’s eyes, followed at once by trained instinct never to contradict a ship’s captain. One that, clearly, Syd failed to acquire. Before Jax opens his mouth to make a promise he’s no intention of keeping, I step closer to him and lower my voice.

  “Additionally, I will be looking to you for information and advice, Mr. Jax. And I little fancy having to climb to the foremast to discover the status of our prisoners, the repairs, and crew watch bills.”

  That makes the boy straighten. “Aye, ma’am,” he says, touching his hat. “Was there something specific you needed to know, ma’am?”

  My throat tightens. Don’t ask questions to which you little want to know the answer. “Mr. Jax,” I ask quietly nonetheless, “were you on deck last night when our gun discharged?”

  The middie nods solemnly. “Aye.”

  “And did you happen to see anyone smoking or having open flame beside it before that happened?” I hold my breath.

  Jax nods. “No sailors near that gun at all, ma’am. Only Lieutenant Carley. He was smoking a pipe there for a good half hour, ma’am.”

  Syd, you bastard. I shut my eyes, but the moment is short-lived.

  “Deck there!” The lookout’s voice rolls down from the foremast. “Sail off starboard! Tirik by the looks of her! Square rig with more guns than we have.”

  Considering that we have eight guns on each side and two chasers, it was hardy likely that anyone out there would have fewer guns than us. Worse, I’ve not the sailors to work all the guns we do have. And if we need to alter sail, I’d be lucky to have just two of the great beasts ready for action.

  “All hands on deck,” shouts Syd, appearing beside me at once. “We shall beat to quarters.” He shouts the order to bring the crew to battle stations.

  “Belay that.” My voice carries through the deck, pausing the crew in midstep. I feel their confused gazes, but it is Syd to whom I address my orders. “We will indeed come to quarters, Mr. Carley, but in silence. Any ship out here is likely to outgun the Marquis, but small also means fast and difficult to spot in the fog. Our only hope of winning this fight is to avoid it. So we shall have full noise discipline from this moment on. Nothing to draw attention to our location. Understood?”

  Syd looks ready to argue, but then a flash of unexpected respect glints in his eyes as he touches his hat. A moment later, the deck comes alive with rushing sailors. Loose objects are cleared or tied down, a net is slung above the deck to catch falling debris, sand is spread onto wooden planks to help with footing. Three minutes and the Marquis is as ready for battle as she’ll get.

  “Do you think she sees us, ma’am?” Jax whispers.

  As if hearing the middie’s question, a great gun belches in the distance, its flash lighting up the foggy murk. A moment later, a splash sounds a cable’s length from our bow.

  “I believe she might,” Syd says calmly.

  Chapter 5

  My heart is oddly steady as I keep my eyes on the fog and touch Syd’s arm to get his attention. “Set all sail,” I order in a barely audible whisper. “Now.”

  The muscles of his forearm coil beneath my touch. “Are we cowards who run?” Syd hisses, his nostrils flaring.

  I wait for the rush of panic and self-doubt to flow through me, but it doesn’t. Not even with Syd’s taunt beside me and the deck vibrating with energy of the c
rew as they stand at battle stations, waiting for orders that will decide their lives. And deaths.

  “Knowing when not to fight is strategy, not cowardice,” I tell Syd levelly, well aware of the crew’s listening ears. “One that Tirik are fools not to understand. I am not a fool.”

  “They’ve just fired shot at us,” Syd insists, a glint of panic in his dark eyes for the first time. His hands twitch at his sides. “We must fight.”

  I drape my hands behind my back. Slow. Easy. Trained. “They fired a shot at where they think we might be,” I say quietly but surely, as if the discomfort in Syd’s eyes had calmed all doubts in mine. “And they missed. I would prefer not to find out just how long it will take them to calculate our actual whereabouts. That’s enough discussion, Mr. Carley. Be about my orders.”

  Syd opens his mouth to protest, but the seamen are already in motion, swarming silently into the shrouds to set sail as I ordered. My breath halts once as the poor visibility and swaying ship threaten to knock them from precarious purchase, but the topmen know their craft. In minutes, the Marquis’s sails fill with a pop, and the ship lurches in a flight as fast as winds can carry her. Another shot sounds, farther away this time, as the Tirik ghost ship searches the thick fog for its fleeing prey.

  “This is a fool’s run,” Syd hisses to me, his hands crossed too tightly over his chest. “The fog can lift at any time, and then the Tirik, not us, will chose the angle of attack. Better face them on our terms.”

  At least he’s dropped the only-cowards-run approach to pushing his strategy.

  A raised eyebrow is all I bother with to silence Syd. “Then we better be outside their sight sooner rather than later, Mr. Carley,” I say with a mildness that fools no one and leaves him to stand frozen in place as I call for a chart, calculating with nothing but math and compass and estimates. Squirrel keeps himself beside me, fetching anything I might need. Sunset. I need to keep us alive and out of reach of the Tirik man-of-war’s guns until sunset for the second part of my plan to work.