Oathen

by Giacomo, Jasmine

Moments later, the brigantine at the front of their line flew at full sail between the two oncoming lines of Swordfish ships. The galleon behind it followed in its wake, wavering slightly in its course as the wind filling its sails was stolen by those of the upwind Swordfish galleon.

  “This is going to be tight,” Ruel called, over the rush of wind above and the coursing swirl of the sea below.

  Rhona gritted her teeth and inched her wheel to starboard a hair as her caravel zipped between the two larger galleons on either side. The two lines of Swordfish galleons were separated by a distance narrower than the Princeling’s length from bow to stern. But she’d chosen her captains well; they slipped their ships, large and small, past the enemy unnoticed.

  Kemsil began to sweat with the effort of holding the Circuit’s barrier in such a long, slender shape. He braced himself on the rail, brows drawn together. Meena put a comforting hand on his shoulder, and he nodded his thanks, feeling her healing touch flow through him.

  Each heartbeat seemed an hour. The rush of the salty wind, the foaming crash of sea between the ships, and the smells of fish and tar all cemented themselves in Salvor’s mind. He had already died once. Back in that Ha’Lakkon alley, he hadn’t taken the time to memorize the scenery, but it seemed his mind was making up for it now, in case he died again shortly. One never feels more alive than when one is threatened with death.

  “Fire, fire, fire all! Fire at will, fire at will!” Rhona shouted, whirling her arm high in the air. Signals flagged fore and aft, and the air was shattered by dozens of cannons firing in rapid succession. The iron beasts on Rhona’s top deck leaped back against their moorings as they hurled balls of destruction toward the galleons on both sides of them.

  Cannonballs tore through the sides of the Swordfish galleons, riddling them with ragged holes at incredibly close range. The sea rushed in, foaming and swirling through gaps below the water line. Smoke, thick and caustic, began streaming through every available hole on one of the ships as its inner decks caught fire. Salvor heard the Swordfish sailors calling in alarm, while their captains began shouting desperate orders.

  That was his cue. Salvor, Ruel, and dozens of others began showering the Swordfish decks with crossbow bolts, adding to the chaos.

  “And I’d heard Swordfish was a formidable opponent,” Ruel said with disdain, taking aim. His bolt caught a woman in the thigh, and she toppled to the deck, dropping the cannonball she was carrying.

  Rhona’s foremost brigantine was already clear of the far end of the sea gauntlet, having only had time to fire its sixteen cannons once. Salvor saw how swiftly the Princeling’s crew reloaded the deck cannons. Glancing behind, he could see the crew of the brigantine Posca doing the same.

  Sporadically, the Swordfish galleons’ bronze cannons began to return fire. A cannonball whizzed right past Rhona’s head. Everyone on the castle saw it slam into the galleon on the other side.

  Rhona laughed with delight. “Good thing this is only a caravel,” she called. “Any higher and the mud-loving eels might have gotten in a lucky hit!”

  Two cannonballs slammed into the Princeling’s port hull, rocking the vessel; the Princeling fired back with several cannons at the same moment.

  “You were saying?” Salvor shouted over the din.

  Moments later, they too were through the far end of the gauntlet.

  “Ruel, the wheel!” Rhona shouted.

  Her cousin thrust his crossbow at Salvor and took control of the ship. Rhona ran to the stern rail and leaned out next to the flagger, watching her last two ships skim past the smoking, sinking galleons of Clan Swordfish. The last ship in her formation, the galleon Zeru’s Scales, got off a final volley, sealing the fate of the two hindmost Swordfish vessels, before it shot out into open water.

  “You can let it go now,” Meena murmured to Kemsil, who slumped onto his elbows with a sigh of relief, leaning onto the rail. The orange barrier of the Circuit flew away from the line of Agonbloom ships, forming its default sphere.

  The crews of the Agonbloom vessels raised a triumphant cheer, and many gave the traditional Clan cheek-baring to the enemy behind them, forgetting in their glee that they were invisible.

  The common pirates, seeing the six Clan vessels destroyed by an invisible foe, had since turned their sails to the wind and fled. Their aborted pursuit left Rhona’s scout ships only slightly damaged. The pair of caravels sailed wide past the Swordfish ships, aiming to meet up with the other five ships further out to sea.

  Four of Swordfish’s ships floundered in the foaming sea. Two more were quickly sinking, their crews abandoning them en masse. Rhona let an evil grin cross her lips, and she turned to look at Kemsil. “Time for the last part of the plan.”

  The Swordfish crews dashed between equally important, equally necessary tasks required to keep their four remaining ships afloat. Captains in enameled-wood-and-silk breastplates and stiff short braids bellowed orders over the din. Crew desperately worked the bilge pumps and dumped all excess weight from the worst-hit vessels, including their prized bronze cannons. Longboats dropped to the sea to pick up survivors from the unrecoverable ships. All thoughts of chasing the presumptuous interlopers out of their territory were forgotten.

  Then a sailor gave a hoarse cry. Hands pointed. Voices shouted in disbelief and amazement, even—rare among the Clans—fear.

  The aft half of a large caravel rippled into existence atop the sea, its sails lowered. It balanced magically on the water. Two complete ships lurked on either side of it.

  All eyes were drawn to the unfamiliar jellyfish symbol on the closest ship’s bow. A young woman in a brass breastplate jumped onto the starboard rail as the half-ship began to arc past the vessels in distress.

  “Be ye warned,” she called across the gap, “your days are numbered, Swordfish! With such mighty weapons as you have seen at our disposal, and the full support of the great Jualan House of Aldib, First Clan Agonbloom of the Southern Sea Clans intends to wipe you from the face of the deeps! We have seen the vast riches of the Middle Sea, and we intend to take them!”

  Swordfish captains and their crew raised their voices in protest and denial, but in another moment, no one was listening. The half-ship and its escorts had vanished again, leaving the defeated Clan crews alone in the sea.

  ~~~

  Geret listened as the enemy pirates’ angry, confused shouting faded into the distance. The crew of the Princeling let up a raucous cheer for their own success. Rhona hopped down off the rail into Geret’s waiting arms, and he spun her around once before setting her down on the castle deck.

  “That was amazing! Your plan worked perfectly!” he said.

  “No, our plan worked perfectly,” she countered, slipping her hands around his neck and drawing him down to her. His arms tightened around her waist as her lips claimed his. The crew hooted and catcalled as their captain’s hands tangled in Geret’s shoulder-length hair.

  “That’s not right, taunting a man like that,” Kemsil murmured as he came to stand beside Salvor, looking away from the kiss.

  “I think she’s in earnest.”

  “I meant me.”

  Salvor grinned as the couple drew out the kiss. “Sorry, Kem, I can’t help you with that one. Maybe you could ask Meena; she could take it.”

  “I heard that,” Meena said, looking over at them with a saucy grin.

  Rhona finally let go of Geret’s hair, and he stepped back.

  “There’s nothing like a fresh sea skirmish to wake you up in the morning,” she said in a carrying voice. Chuckles and whoops ensued. “Let’s regroup and get this tub repaired before someone else sails up and sells us a map to the deeps.”

  Ruel stepped up and began to bark orders, and the crew scurried to obey. Rhona backed Geret up to the starboard rail, giving him a predatory smile. “All this extra energy; how should I spend it?” she murmured, sliding her hands up his chest.

  Geret, flushed with success and relief, carelessly replied, “I don’t know about you,
but I’m pretty tense after that. You could spend it on giving me a back rub.”

  Her hands paused, and she looked at him for a long moment. The smile that spread across her lips made his stomach sink.

  “Lesson two: favors,” she said. “As my claimed, you can ask me anything you like, and I can choose to grant it. But for every favor I do for you, I get one in return. At any time, and of any nature.”

  “What? That’s not fair.”

  Her eyes glittered. “It’s the Clan way. Now, I like the idea of granting you this favor, so I will. But that means that, at some point in the future, I get to ask you for anything I want, and you can’t refuse me.”

  “What if I really don’t like what you ask of me?”

  “Then you’ll do it for me anyway, and afterward, I’ll tie you down and beat you.”

  “What?”

  She laughed at his expression, and he realized with relief that she was making a joke.

  “I do have very persuasive ways, Geret. If you want to experience them, by all means, keep being stubborn.” She pulled herself to him, hands fisted in his open shirt collar, and kissed him hard. Then she stepped past him, trailing one hand across his chest, and descended to the main deck. “I’ll get my oils out; don’t make me come looking for you.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I shall not let you steal the lives of these innocents, vile assassin,” Anjoya called to the grimacing woman before her. She threw her arms around the her opponent’s waist and flung herself out into thin air.

  The audience below gasped in mock fear as the two women spun down to the Shoon’s deck, lowered on ropes by sailors who hid in the rigging within the dimness of twilight.

  The women landed with only a slight bump and lay still, feigning death. Then Anjoya gasped dramatically, arching her back and widening her eyes. She slid out from under the other actress’ body, then touched the still bodies of several extras lying around them. They obediently rose from their prone positions, gasping in relief. Then they surrounded her and fell to their knees, proclaiming amazement and gratitude. Anjoya stood, accepting their praise.

  “Thus began the legend of the Unbroken in the land of Hynd,” she announced to the silent, overcrowded deck.

  The crowd erupted into cheers and clapping. Anjoya helped up the woman who had played the Breathstealer, and together they bowed to the audience along with the other cast members.

  Someone pressed a small cup of rum into Anjoya’s hand, and she took a grateful sip, easing up against the rail where the breeze could reach her overheated skin. There were far more people on board than when they had embarked from Salience, and it made for a hot, aromatic press of bodies, which was inescapable even at night. The top deck had become a vast collection of huddled forms surrounded by narrow walk spaces created by the crew in the course of their constant duties. Anjoya hadn’t expected to be grateful for her rough, threadbare hammock, squeezed between an old woman with sleep apnea and a post that jabbed her in the ribs with every rock of the ship, but since they’d picked up several dozen frantic refugees on the Byarran coast, she’d formed a more positive outlook on her own circumstances.

  The Shoon had begun to encounter mile-wide floating islands of pumice a week out from Ha’Hril. Captain Naizmin had ordered his men to sail around them. Broad currents of water swirled pale brown with ash. Many of the pumice islands encompassed scorched or broken trees. Some bore bodies of the dead, or what remained of them. Once they sailed past a pumice island that surrounded an upturned hull, blackened to a crisp.

  Unsure of what awaited his vessel if he sailed too near to the volcano, Naizmin had sought out other ships’ captains for advice. He found them clustered near the mouth of an ash-filled bay on the Byarran coast. As the Shoon dropped anchor, Anjoya and Runcan came up on deck and looked out across the ruined landscape in utter shock.

  The trees had no leaves; many bare trunks had fallen. Blankets of ash covered everything in sight. A few buildings in the nearby trading town had been unearthed by survivors and refugees, and the bright hues of their clothing were the only colors in sight. Swirls of ash were caught up by the stiff breeze and hurled across the useless bay, the decks of the anchored ships, and the dinghy that rowed out to greet the new arrival. The sea was a pale muddy color, swirling with dirty bubbles against the ships’ hulls.

  The dinghy brought an ash-smeared Byarran friar to speak to Captain Naizmin, begging for passage for as many stranded refugees as he’d be willing to take. Unfortunately, he spoke only Byarran, and the Kauna’kanan captain didn’t. Anjoya had translated for them both, resulting in the friar’s genuine gratitude and the captain’s consent to transport a few dozen refugees across the Southern Sea to civilization.

  The woman who had played the Breathstealer was one of those who had been given deck space aboard the Shoon, and Soli had found a kindred spirit in Anjoya, the lost hostess of Lesser Salience.

  Anjoya drained the last of her rum; there was nowhere near enough to last the journey to Yaren Fel, so she savored its rich flavor a moment longer. Come morning, they’d sail past whatever was left of Ha’Hril and Heren Garil Sa. Soli had expressed an interest in hiding below decks, but Anjoya’s mind harbored a morbid curiosity; she knew she’d be at the rail. The refugees had brought various rumors aboard regarding the island’s fate: it was actually intact, hidden inside a cloud; it had split in two and sunk into the sea; the mountain gods had claimed it as their new home, chasing away the mortals with a show of power; the fire dragons of ancient times were reawakening to assert their dominance again; such destruction must be a sign of holy disapproval for the lascivious and gaudy lifestyle of the Hrillian people.

  Somewhere among the various versions, she suspected, was the truth.

  “You’ve been rather introspective the last couple of weeks,” Runcan said to her the next morning, as they stood along the crammed starboard railing, straining for that first glimpse of the ruined island.

  “I have. These nightly performances don’t just do the refugees good; they’re a distraction for me as well,” she replied.

  “You’re worried for Kemsil.”

  She sighed, eyes on the horizon. “Only when I’m not furious with him.”

  “I see.”

  She turned. “Do you?”

  “I seem to recall that the prince I was sent out here to watch over has sailed away with lawless pirates toward a realm filled with evil magics, and he didn’t bother to ask whether I minded.”

  Anjoya lowered her gaze and smiled. “You do see. At least you don’t think you’re in love with Geret.”

  “No. Though it’s possible that Sanych elTiera holds that opinion for herself.”

  “Really now. I thought that was somewhat forbidden in your culture.”

  “It is.”

  “Poor girl. She should have fallen for one of the local Hyndi lads.”

  Runcan grinned. “She might have, if one of them had constantly loitered around her library door, offering to help out with her favorite project.”

  She smiled. “Geret has a hard time with subtle, I notice.”

  “Indeed. Unlike Kemsil, who managed to play two games at once upon the moment of our meeting. The man would do well in Vinten politics.”

  “If he lives,” Anjoya added in a faint voice.

  Gasps caught their attention: Ha’Hril was in sight.

  The crowd alternated between a low buzz of speculation and silence as the Shoon made its way closer to the volcano. A steady, pale plume of ash rose from the island, whose body seemed lost in a haze of dim mist.

  Closer still, the watching crowd could make out a spire of rock rising from the island.

  A body pressed close to Anjoya; she looked over to see Soli, eyes smudged from crying, peering toward the island.

  “You came after all,” she said to the young woman.

  “My family was there. They probably still are, somewhere.”

  Anjoya put her arm around Soli, and together they watched the is
land draw closer. Though its entire surface was a monochromatic buff color, and all sign of the endless toothspice plantations had been erased, many who had claimed that the island was intact began crowing that they had been right all along. Relieved sighs spread across the deck.

  Then the Shoon passed the mountain’s spire, and the eastern side of Ha’Hril came into view.

  Or rather, it didn’t.

  The eastern half of Heren Garil Sa was gone. The ash plume rose from open vents all along the sheer cliff face. Where its eastern foothills used to be—where Meena had once dug out a mysterious dark orb—there now existed a massive new crater which had consumed all the land above it and eastward to the sea. The whole eastern lobe of the island had been obliterated, leaving an ash-soaked, round bay in its place.

  No one spoke as the ship sailed past. Ha’Lakkon’s distant dock area was unrecognizable; the entire coastline was smothered in enormous drifts of ash. Grimy waves slapped against newly formed sandbars a mile out from the island’s shores, forcing the Shoon to slow.

  As the Shoon and its gawking passengers left the devastated island behind, Anjoya found herself far more shaken than she’d anticipated. She turned to Runcan, feeling tears of helplessness on her cheeks.

  “What if Kemsil’s fate is just too large to escape?”

  ~~~

  A few days after the successful attack against Swordfish, Sanych was sitting at Rhona’s table, staring unseeingly at the open book before her, when Geret opened the door. She slapped it shut, nearly knocking over the inkwell, then blushed. “You startled me.”

  “Sorry. I just came down to get something for Rhona. I’ll be out of your way in a moment.” He slipped behind her chair and through the red silk curtains.

  Sanych huddled at the desk as he rummaged around. She sighed despondently as he began to pass by on his way to the door. Is it wrong to want to be more than just an advisor, when I know nothing can come of it?

  “Sanych?” He paused by her side and frowned in concern. “What is it?”

  “Aye, what is it?” Rhona asked from the doorway. She was clad in a black leather vest over a pale blue blouse and linen pantaloons, having set aside her captain’s breastplate once they cleared the isles of Nadoth vri Fron. “Does it take the both of you to fetch me a ribbon for tying my hair back?”