Pirate of the Prophecy

by Jack Campbell

  Another sound intruded on that of the storm. Jules listened, trying to sort it out. “I hear surf! We’re nearing the harbor entrance!”

  As the last word still hung in the air, Jules saw a large boat appearing out of the storm. Four men and women were at the oars, pulling for all they were worth.

  And a Mage in the back, who stood up at the sight of Jules.

  Blazes.

  Jules reached back, drawing the revolver. She’d never tried anything other than a shot very close to her target. Could she hit a Mage a few lances away?

  The boat bumped against the bow of the Sun Queen, the Mage steadying herself as she stared up at Jules.

  Jules aimed as well as she could and pulled the trigger.

  The crash of the shot echoed across the harbor.

  She saw a spurt of water leap up as the shot missed both Mage and boat completely.

  The Mage hadn’t yet cast a spell, and somehow seemed frustrated.

  Even though there was no way of telling how much time she had before the Mage finally acted, Jules forced herself to take her time to aim again, down the barrel of the revolver, waiting as the motion of the boat and the ship and the water carried the line she was aiming along across the front of the Mage.

  The boom of the second shot startled Jules, who hadn’t realized she was pulling the trigger until the cartridge went off.

  The Mage jolted, took one wavering step backward, and fell back over the stern of the boat.

  “Jeri!” Jules looked back to see Liv staring through the murk at her. “What happened?”

  “A Mage. She must have ordered a boat to take her to the harbor exit so she could catch us.” Jules saw the boat vanishing into the storm as the rowers fled the site of the encounter. “I shot her.”

  “Everyone in Sandurin must have heard it!”

  “And what was it I was supposed to do instead?” Jules demanded. She looked to starboard as a vague line of white appeared, growing then vanishing. “We’ve got surf to starboard! About three lances I think!”

  The Sun Queen heeled to port as that word was relayed to the quarterdeck.

  Jules heard alarm bells ringing in the harbor and in the legion fort atop the high breakwater, the sounds fading as the Sun Queen found the open sea and fled west with the winds of autumn at her back.

  * * *

  By noon it was obvious that the storm was traveling with them, the westerly winds pushing it along in the same way they propelled the Sun Queen. That minimized the chance that any patrolling Imperial ships would spot them, but also maximized the discomfort aboard. Below decks was crammed with not only the Sun Queen’s normal large complement of sailors but also all of the rescued prisoners, giving it a feel not all that different from the cell in the detention building. The mood was far different, but the surroundings were damp, cold, and very crowded.

  They’d met the sloop carrying Loka, but the seas were too rough this day to risk transferring people between the ships. The sloop had veered close enough to the Sun Queen for Loka and some of his people to shout messages across to each other, but then the ships had opened the distance between them to reduce any chance of collision.

  Not wanting to fight for enough room to breathe, Jules slumped on the deck, letting the rain beat on her. Her uniform was going to be a mess, but then the odds of getting away with using that uniform a third time seemed too long to risk it anyway. She wasn’t sure that she’d have the nerve to try even if another good opportunity arose.

  Someone stopped before her, kneeling on the wet deck, his head bowed. “Lady Pirate.”

  She squinted at him. “Oh. Aron. How’s Lil?”

  “Your healer says she should recover. Lady, I promised to be your slave and-”

  “Don’t finish that. I told you I wasn’t looking for a slave.”

  He hesitated. “But, you-”

  “I did what I did because I wanted to, not because I wanted a reward,” Jules said. “Now drop it.”

  Aron gazed at her with a wondering expression that irritated her. “For you, of all people, to risk yourself for us when-”

  “I’m telling you not to go there,” Jules said.

  He paused, choosing his next words with care. “How can we ever repay you?”

  Jules looked away. “For getting there too late?”

  “Lil told me what else would have happened to her. It wasn’t too late.”

  “Are you still going to marry her?”

  “Of course I am,” Aron said.

  Sometimes people didn’t disappoint you. “Than I have my pay in full,” Jules said. “Have a happy life. Have kids. Stay away from Mages.”

  “We’ve decided that we’ll name our first daughter for you.”

  Jules shook her head. “That name hasn’t brought me much luck.”

  “Not the real name. Can I say that? We know what that is, but it has a…a purpose.” Aron asked. “Jeri. We were going to name her Jeri.”

  Jules laughed, surprised. “Fine. You do that.”

  She was still chuckling when Keli sat down beside her, looking tired. “How are they?” Jules asked.

  “They’ll all live,” Keli said. “But their injuries serve as a reminder of why I left the Empire. You didn’t happen to kill that prince, did you?”

  “Sorry. He wasn’t there.”

  “Shame.” Keli grimaced. “What about you? Are you hurt?”

  “Only my pride,” Jules said. “I had a talk with some Mechanics.”

  “That’ll ruin anyone’s day,” Keli said. “You killed another Mage?”

  “I think so. There’s no way to know for sure.”

  “Scared the blazes out of me, I’ll tell you, when that thunder broke on our bow. Why are those Mechanic weapons so loud?”

  Jules shrugged, feeling the rain running down her face. “I’d have to know how they work to answer that. But thanks for reminding me that I need to talk to the captain. I never did get a chance to give him a rundown about what happened ashore in Sandurin.”

  “You sure spend a lot of time in that cabin.”

  Jules felt an inner chill warring with the cold of the rain on her skin, her earlier levity vanished. “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing,” Keli said, having heard her tone shift and watching her with sudden tension.

  “It meant something. Why did you say it?”

  The healer paused, clearly thinking before speaking again. “I’m not implying anything improper.”

  “What does that mean?” Jules heard the steel in her voice and saw Keli swallow nervously. “Just what do you think is going on in that cabin? Because you clearly think that something is.”

  “Jeri, no one thinks that you and the captain have anything going on. If you were, it couldn’t be hidden. People would know. We all like Captain Mak. You know that. He’s happier around you. So that’s good.”

  “What do you mean he’s happier around me?” Jules pressed.

  “Just that! No one thinks any more than that. It’s easy to tell when a man and a woman want to touch each other, and that’s not you and Mak at all. You’re just comfortable with each other. That’s all there is to it.”

  “We’re not…” She’d been about to insist that she and Captain Mak weren’t “comfortable” with each other’s company.

  But she did enjoy being around him. When they weren’t arguing.

  “I need to talk to the captain,” Jules said.

  She hauled herself up, suppressing a groan as she felt how her cold muscles had stiffened while she was sitting in the rain, and walked to the cabin. “Sir? I need to report.”

  “Come on in.” She went inside, seeing Mak lying on his stomach in his bunk. “Are you all right, sir?”

  “My back got a little scorched,” Mak said. “Keli already put some salve on it. I’m too tired to stand, I can’t lie on it, and I can’t sit with my back like this.”

  “May I sit down, sir?”

  “Blazes, Jules, just sit down.”

 
She took a chair. “Sir, did you know that the rest of the crew thinks you and I are…comfortable together?”

  “Comfortable?” Mak surprised her with a laugh. “That’s life for a man. His whole life he’s a threat to womankind, until the day he becomes old enough to be comfortable.”

  “Captain, you’re not old.”

  “But I am apparently comfortable.” Mak gave her a curious look. “Is that bad?”

  “I don’t know,” Jules said. “Am I behaving properly toward you?”

  “I think so. Except when you decide to run off on some mission you’ve just decided has to be done into an Imperial city swarming with Mages.”

  She looked down at the deck. “I’d hoped that you’d understand.”

  “I can’t get into your head, Jules. No one else can. You’re facing a situation that no other person has ever had to deal with. Was that also about proving you weren’t just the woman of the prophecy?”

  “No, sir,” Jules said, looking back at him again. “It was about someone who needed help, and I could be that help. There wasn’t anyone else. So I knew it had to be me.”

  He studied her closely before replying. “That matters a lot to you, doesn’t it, Jules?”

  “Yes, sir. I…” She waved an uncertain hand. “I know how it feels to want someone to come, to wait for help, and to never have it appear.”

  “All right, Jules. But there’s something you need to think about. I know how unhappy you are with that prophecy. With what it did to you,” Mak said. “But since that prophecy was made, the common people of the world have set their hopes on the help that will someday come in the form of that daughter of your line. If you die before you have a child, that help will never appear.”

  If anyone else had said it, Jules would have raged at them. But she knew that Mak wouldn’t have said it unless he thought she needed to hear it. “You’re saying I can’t afford to take such risks.”

  “No, Jules, only you can decide that. But you do have to take everything into account when you decide. I’m sorry. It’s an awful burden.”

  She sighed. “Maybe I’ll just go ahead and find some guy. Someone who’ll do. And get knocked up and have a kid and…stars above, that wouldn’t solve anything, would it?”

  “No,” Mak said. “And if you don’t mind your captain saying so, you don’t seem the type of girl who’d settle for just someone.”

  “Oh, no,” Jules said as something occurred to her. “What if another Mage sees some guy and says a daughter of his line will do those things? Wouldn’t that mean that he and I would have to have children? No matter who he was?”

  “That hasn’t happened,” Mak said, but she could tell he was unhappy at the thought. “The choice remains yours.”

  “But…no. You’re right. The choice is going to be mine. No one else is going to decide who the father of my children will be. I hope he turns out to be someone you like, though.”

  Mak raised his eyebrows at her. “Why does that matter?”

  “It just does. I guess because I respect your opinions. Although I guess you’ll let me know if you don’t think he’s right for me, won’t you?” Jules added, unsure if she was teasing Mak or not.

  “I was right about Don,” Mak said, smiling at her.

  “We were both right about Don,” Jules said. “The only person who thought he had a chance at me was Don. Sir, I actually came in to fill you in about what happened in Sandurin. I didn’t get the chance to tell you a lot of things.” She told Mak about the events of the night before, including what she could remember of what the Mechanics had said.

  “That sounds like some serious infighting among the Mechanics,” Mak said. “People have disappeared, she said? People like that Mechanic Karl, you think?”

  “Probably,” Jules said. “From what I saw of him, he probably didn’t stay free for long before the Mechanics Guild snapped him up again.”

  “Are you sure you should have told those Mechanics all that you did?”

  “No, I’m not. I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.”

  Mak put one hand to his mouth as he thought. “They will get weaker. Internal fighting never did anyone any good.”

  “But what about the Mages? How could they get weaker?”

  “I don’t know. You said the Mage on the boat just looked at you? No spell even though it seemed she had time for that?”

  “Yes,” Jules said. “I mean, I had time to shoot twice. I can’t be sure of anything, but I felt like she was frustrated.”

  “Frustrated? Why would…do you think for some reason she couldn’t do a spell?”

  “All I know is that she didn’t do a spell,” Jules said.

  “But the Mages on the pier definitely did, though none of their spells hit you directly. One more thing to think about,” Mak said.

  “There is no answer. There are answers beyond number,” Jules said. “Sometimes I think that old Mage was just messing with me, and other times I think he really was trying to tell me wisdom as he knew it.”

  Mak nodded. “Thank you for everything that you told me. Get some rest, Jules. You look awful.”

  She grinned. “Thank you, sir.”

  “You’re welcome. We’re headed back to Kelsi to offload our new passengers. If things are quiet there we’ll stay a few days.”

  Jules nodded wearily, seeing the water still dripping off of her onto the deck of the cabin. “Sir, you’ve been nice not to chew me out, but I messed up again. Everything was fine while I followed our plan, but then I went off to do something else and only luck got me through that.”

  Mak tried to shrug from his position lying on his stomach. “Plans are what you do before you encounter the situation. Once you’re in it, sometimes you have to let your instinct tell you what to do.”

  “Should I have risked it? Going to get Lil?”

  “Should you have?” He paused, thinking. “Despite what I said earlier about risks and the future, I think so. More importantly, Jules, could you have done otherwise?”

  “I don’t think so, sir,” Jules said. “But I have to stop spilling my guts to people. You should have seen how those Mechanics looked at me when I said I’d had an actual conversation with a Mage. And I had an actual conversation with a Mage! Who does that?”

  Mak looked over at her. “Jules, according to the prophecy that daughter of your line is supposed to unite Mechanics, Mages, and commons, right? She’s going to have to talk with them to do that.”

  “Yes,” Jules said. “But how?”

  “The first step is to talk to them. Then you figure out how to understand them. Just maybe, Jules, your willingness to talk to people you’re not supposed to ever exchange words with will prove to be a valuable skill for that daughter of your line. Maybe the most valuable skill.”

  Jules laughed. “You’re saying that one of my weaknesses is something I should hope gets passed down to my descendants? How about my rushing into things? How about that?”

  “Your instincts are good, Jules. I’ve told you that. The daughter of your line is likely to face a lot of danger. Being able to react like you do might save her.”

  She gazed at him, remembering other things she’d done. “What about my dark streak?”

  Mak met her eyes. “That, I don’t know. Perhaps somewhere along the way that dark streak will be softened.”

  “Thanks for not pretending it’s a virtue.”

  “Jules, we don’t know what that girl might have to do. Overthrowing the Great Guilds might require her to do some very ugly things.”

  She nodded, gazing at nothing. “It’s why I went to get her. Lil. I think it came from the dark inside me, which at least partly came from that feeling of being abandoned. I don’t know for certain. Maybe that daughter of my line will need that darkness in her. It’s funny. I don’t like her all that much most of the time, but I don’t want to think of her having to do ugly things.”

  “You don’t like her?” Mak asked, startled.

  “Yes.” Jules
sighed. “She took my life from me. I’ll never get all of it back.”

  “But she’ll be your great-something-grand-daughter!”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t love her,” Jules said, looking at him so Mak could tell she meant it. “I do. I just have trouble liking her, because of what she did to me.”

  He nodded slowly. “I see. I suppose I can’t find fault with that.”

  “You still love yours, don’t you, sir?”

  “You know I do. My daughter may never look on me with love again, but I won’t change my feelings toward her. I do miss her, though,” Mak said wistfully.

  Jules forced herself to her feet, feeling awkward to see the feelings that Mak usually kept hidden. “Well…I’m here, for whatever that’s worth.”

  “Yes. You are,” Mak said, smiling at her. “But you shouldn’t be. You should be getting some rest.”

  She grinned at him. “I’m going to get out of this sopping mess of a uniform, change into something dry, see if I can talk Keli out of a shot of rum, and get some sleep. Call me if you need me, sir.”

  “Jules.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You did well in Sandurin.”

  She smiled. “Thank you, Captain.” Others had said the same. But only when Mak said it did she really believe it. Because she knew he’d tell her when she messed up.

  * * *

  With the storm winds urging on the Sun Queen, they made excellent time, reaching Kelsi’s settlement as dawn rose on the third morning after leaving Sandurin. Even better, Kelsi’s once more proved to be devoid of Mages. “They left on ships headed east,” was all anyone could say.

  “Sandurin?” Liv wondered as she, Jules, and Ang looked at the city from the deck of the Sun Queen. “Like they expected you to be there.”

  “That one Mechanic said he thought more Mages were in Sandurin than usual. But if they knew that, why weren’t they in position to catch me when I first went ashore, instead of barricading the pier after I’d already gone into the city?” Jules shook her head, puzzled. “It’s like they knew I’d be here, but they didn’t know when.”

  “It’s more like they knew when, but only one when,” Ang said. “They would have caught you then, that second time you came back to the pier. That seems to have been when they expected you to be heading for the harbor.”