“School your face,” Domenic murmurs, though his muscles coil beneath my grip. As much emotion as he’s willing to show.
Releasing Domenic, I start toward the companionway ladder, my heart racing, my chest tight around my ribs. My idea. My plan. My fault.
A Bevnian sentinel stops me with a bared sword aimed at my heart. A musket is slung over the man’s shoulder, along with two pistols tucked into his belt and a bandoleer of prefilled powder cartridges. All I have is a small knife to cut rope. Domenic grasps my shoulder, pulling me back toward the rail. The prisoners around us are retreating too, most raising their hands in preemptive surrender. A dozen more well-armed sentinels pour out onto the deck, corralling all the prisoners together while a bosun’s pipe calls all hands to deck.
That’s when tendrils of dark smoke filter from below, and my heart stops beating altogether. Fire. There is a fire in the bowels of the ship.
“Where are Kyra and Vikon?” Domenic murmurs into my ear, his face an emotionless mask.
I twist about, surveying the crowded deck. Faces stare back, frightened and indifferent, hollow and determined. None are Lyron. Kyra. Storms. What the bloody hell happened?
Outside the ship, water rises in an unnatural stream and attacks the hull and portholes, the Gifted braiding water and wind to put out flame. The combination is infinitely more efficient than the hand pumps that are usually rigged, and the Bevnians seem more furious than panicked over the inferno. Furious enough for murder.
“Easy,” Domenic’s low voice warns. “Keep controlled.”
He’d know. He’s spent years standing beside a tyrant, keeping his face indifferent as stone while he struggled to mitigate Rima’s atrocities.
The sentinels clear a space around the quarterdeck, where punishment is usually meted out—the same center stage that was last used to turn Trice into a living dead man. On the poop above, another squad of sentinels forms a line, their muskets loaded and pointing down at us. Andres is there already, surveying the gathering. He snaps his fingers to summon me just as Saarik appears from below, the three Gifted behind him.
Between my bone-deep longing to do something, the too-tight proximity of three powerful Gifted, and the chain I’ve kept on my own Gift since the Stardust, my magic flares with a force so violent that I stagger. A furious, wild beast that wants out out out of the prison my body traps it in. My breath quickens, blood rushing through my veins so quickly, it makes me dizzy. My muscles tense and buzz deep inside, solid tissue and magical energy straining against each other. A hunger to call the wind to me is a jagged void in the pit of my chest. My Gift doesn’t just want freedom, it wants to hunt.
A hand presses into the small of my back, and Domenic’s warm body steps up silently behind me. A pillar of muscle and stone who has known for a while now just how dangerous I am. Who knew it before I did. Warned me. He doesn’t tell me to go to Andres. He says nothing at all.
Swallowing, I raise my chin and step forward, taking my station at the captain’s side—so very close to Trice—even as my magic bubbles and roars. Pressure building behind my eyes and the pounding in my head echoes like a Diante gong. Bom. Bom. Bom. I shake my head to clear it, but the movement is a mistake that makes the pounding worse.
Below, seaman after seaman stumble to the deck, some curious, some frightened, some too hollow-eyed to care. None of them are Catsper, Vikon, or Kyra.
“Silence,” Andres calls, though thanks to the sentinels, the noise is already limited to whimpers and prayers whispered under breaths. Andres nods to the chief sentinel, and three figures with bags over their heads are pushed into the open space beneath the poop, and suddenly, my pounding head no longer matters.
Even with the heads covered, Catsper’s lithe, panther-like body is as obvious as Kyra’s fragile form. By process of elimination, the prisoner being dragged between two Bevnians must be Vikon. The Bevnians following in their wake are soaked in blood that is too fresh and copious to be all theirs.
“Is the fire contained?” Andres demands.
“Aye,” Trice replies, climbing to stand behind Andres with the other Gifted.
On the deck below, Saarik has his prisoners on their knees, unbound but held at sword point.
“Report,” Andres calls to his first officer.
Saarik pulls the bags off. Catsper’s face is blank as if nothing of particular significance is taking place, but both Kyra and Vikon are appropriately terrified.
“Two bucks started a fight over a filly and knocked a lantern over in the process. More specifically, this one,” Saarik kicks Catsper’s back, “attacked this one,” he kicks Vikon, “over this one.” The final kick lands on Kyra, toppling her over.
Catsper lunges at Saarik, taking out two of the Bevnian sentinels before four others swarm in to grab the marine’s arms. The lot have Catsper facedown on deck in a heartbeat, and I flinch as Saarik unhooks the whip on his belt and cracks the braided leather over Catsper’s back. Once. Twice. A dozen. New blood wets Catsper’s shirt as Saarik tries and fails to make the marine scream.
“Saarik.” Andres’s voice is deep and displeased. “Either put down the lot and be done with it, or get on with a demonstration worth remembering.”
Saarik grinds his jaw but steps back, letting Catsper right himself as far as his knees. The marine’s face is tight with pain, but his chin rises defiantly. He shoots a murderous glare at Saarik. No…not at Saarik, at Vikon.
Storms. So there truly was a fight. I find Domenic with my gaze, see the same bewilderment and horror that courses through my own veins. We missed it. Both of us. Were so focused on the Bevnians that we missed disaster brewing beneath our very noses.
Andres’s heavy hand slaps the back of my head, the dull ringing as effective as cold water to jerk my attention to him. “If you’ve forgotten how to use your tongue, I’ll be happy to remove it for you. I said, tell the Diante dimwits that the two bucks were fighting over a filly. And now everyone is about to witness the consequences of that nonsense.”
My voice catches as I translate, my mind grappling for words and weapons. Nothing beyond a tiny work knife. But even if Domenic and I had swords, pistols, muskets—the two of us could no more take the ship than we could fly.
I could kill them all, the magic in my blood purrs relevantly, sending my heart thundering. Despite the cold wind, sweat beads on my temple.
Andres puts his hands on his hips and glowers down at the bloodied prisoners. “Keelhaul all three.” Andres turns his gaze on the crew. “Have the cook make those who fail to survive into stew for the slaves in place of their usual feed. A dozen lashes to anyone who refuses to dine.”
Vikon, who fully understood Saarik’s words even before my translation, throws himself at Saarik’s feet. Keelhauling isn’t just a likely death sentence, it’s torture. Vikon’s eyes are wide, a puddle of urine joining the blood dripping from him. “Please!” Vikon’s voice rises. “I wasn’t fighting over the wench, sir, I was defending the ship.” Vikon points a finger at Kyra. “She attempted to set the Arrow aflame. With magic. Wanted to burn us all to a crisp when I found her. It’s her. It was all her.”
Saarik steps away from Vikon in disgust but turns a questioning face up to Andres.
Vikon’s hands tremble as he pulls off his bloody shirt, now more rags than clothes. “Look,” he gasps, pointing to charred skin along his breast and flank. “She did this. A fire caller. She wants to burn down the ship.”
Saarik silences Vikon with a kick and turns on Kyra. “Is that true?” Saarik demands through me, regarding the girl like a coyote toying with a choice mouse. “A fire caller amidst our livestock?”
“N-No,” Kyra stammers, her whole body trembling.
Beside me, Andres’s face sparkles with excitement. Has been sparkling ever since the possibility of a Gifted appeared before his very nose. The captain’s tongue caresses his lips. “Check her.”
Saarik raises his hand to silence Vikon, whose mouth is already open, and snaps an ord
er to Piranha. The young Bevnian flinches but disappears to do Saarik’s bidding. Silence reigns over the deck, each minute of Piranha’s absence stretching for an eternity. My headache returns, pulsing as the magic struggles for murderous freedom.
Then Piranha places a familiar wicker basket before Kyra, and nausea drowns out my pain.
“Pick a snake,” Andres calls out to Kyra. “Don’t be afraid, girl. If you are Gifted as the buck claims, the venom will tether your magic. Make you stronger and healthier. And if you aren’t… The death from the venom is kinder than what Saarik has in store. A win for you either way.”
Saarik’s heavy boot nudges the basket toward Kyra.
She leans away.
“Rope,” Saarik orders, holding out his hand while a Bevnian trots up with a coiled line. He holds the object before Kyra’s face. “Do you know what keelhauling is?” he asks, his voice hypnotic even through my emotionless translation. “We loop a line beneath the ship’s hull and tie you to it. Then, we drag you along the bottom of the ship all the way from one end to the other. If we pull quickly, the barnacles—these are sharp growths on the hull—will shred your flesh. If we pull slowly, allowing your body to sink low enough to avoid the sharp edges, you’ll drown before it’s done. Either way, what water and sharp edges spare, the rocking ship will make up for by knocking your head as the seas roll.” Saarik pauses as Kyra sobs, a smile growing on his face. “Can you picture it?”
“Stop playing with your food, Saarik,” Piranha snaps suddenly.
Saarik’s face heats, but it’s Andres who motions two sentinels to force Piranha to his knees and hold him there.
Saarik leans closer to Kyra. “Well?”
My breath stalls.
Kyra says nothing.
“A demonstration,” Saarik growls, jerking his chin at Catsper. “Seize him up, and keelhaul the bastard.”
“Don’t!” Kyra shouts, only to have Saarik knock her to the deck with the back of his hand.
Two Bevnian sentinels level their muskets as a third approaches the kneeling marine. I wait for an explosion of limbs and fury, but Catsper holds still, allowing the Bevnian sentinels to wrap a rope around his waist. The marine’s eyes are hard and unrelenting as they lock with Saarik’s. No sound, no word, no surrender.
No fight either. Catsper is smart enough to know when resistance is futile.
My small work knife slides into my hand, and I know without looking that Domenic is doing the same. For all the good it will do. My breath comes quickly, the rising magic surging so hard that the wind comes despite my efforts. A leak of magic forcing itself around all my shields. Air stretches my lungs, the searing pain dropping me to my knees.
“If you pass out,” Andres tells me under his breath, “I will throw you overboard.”
I barely hear him. Storms. My eyes sting in foreknowledge of what’s coming. For a heartbeat, I’m on another ship at once, the masts cracking, the ropes whipping innocent people overboard. I did this. I brought us here. Any time now, Catsper will be just as dead at my hands as at Saarik’s. Him and everyone else.
Domenic’s gaze sears into me, confused and expectant. I called on my wind to knock his hat off his head; surely I’d tap it to save a friend’s life. Domenic doesn’t know it’s different now. I’m different. The truth finally pierces my heart like a driven nail. I must fight with every ounce of strength—not by wielding the winds to protect Catsper’s life, but by bringing everything to bear against those winds, by forfeiting one friend’s life to keep the others from being torn to shreds.
Just as Vikon proved himself a danger greater than the slavers, I am a greater threat still. As vile an abomination as that flesh-melting powder. As the Bevnians.
The sentinel finishes securing the rope around Catsper, whose blond hair ruffles in the wind, like it’s often done in training or when the marine climbed the shrouds.
“Ready!” the sentinel calls, and there is no one to stop to him from pushing the marine toward the rail. Not me, whimpering on my knees. Not Domenic, whose attempt to shove forward is met with a pointed musket. Not Catsper, who opens his body to the sea below.
Chapter 38
Nile
Kyra moves.
Not toward Catsper, who is about to tip over the rail, or even toward Saarik—but toward the closest sentinel. The man, twice Kyra’s size, blinks in confusion as the small, ferocious girl clamps her body onto his thigh. Kyra’s thin hand reaches up, her fingers splaying open against the sentinel’s flesh. Lightning resolve flashes in her eyes—and then the bandoleer of gunpowder packets strapped to the sentinel’s chest explodes with a resounding boom. Blood and entrails are still raining down on the deck when Kyra knocks a second sentry into Saarik and sets off the second bandoleer powder charges with the same brutal efficiency.
This time, the explosion roars back at Kyra herself. She staggers, her eyes wide, and crumples to the deck while Saarik’s body crackles and flames.
“Kyra!” Catsper’s bellow thunders across the ship. “Kyra!” Grabbing the rope attached to his waist, Catsper loops it around the neck of the sentinel closest to him. They fall together, the entangled guard choking and thrashing as Catsper snatches the man’s knife and saws himself free. Not a proud warrior facing death, but a feral predator.
Catsper’s blade just severs the rope when a second sentinel leaps atop him and flattens the marine onto his back. A few paces away, the others scatter back from the spreading flame.
Trapping the sentinel’s hand and foot, Catsper bucks his hips. The pair flips over, and now it’s Catsper who sits astride his assailant. A flick of the blade, and Bevnian blood spurts on the deck. Catsper is up and moving toward Kyra before the Bevnian finishes twitching.
“Trice! Douse that flame!” Andres roars to the trembling water caller behind him. After a lifetime of protecting his hide, the Gifted stands frozen in the face of combat.
“Charge!” Domenic shouts to the prisoners, slugging the first Bevnian he can reach by way of demonstration. The sentinels on the poop discharge their muskets, felling several of the prisoners before rushing into the brewing fray, swords bared and white hair streaking in the wind.
I force myself to my feet. My lungs scream, and the wind coming toward me grows with each heartbeat. Narrowing my eyes to my target, I take one step. Another, my bare foot splattering the warm urine Trice spilled on deck. And then I reach around the water caller’s neck and place my blade against his jugular. “You are my water caller now,” I purr into the man’s ear.
The stream of water attempting to douse Kyra’s flames dwindles to a trickle, leaving bits of black smoke rising into the air.
Andres turns, the question on his face dissolving when he sees me holding Trice. To his credit, Andres merely crosses his arms and looks me in the eye. “A poor choice of hostage, girl. Trice doesn’t fear death, for it runs in his veins already.”
I swallow, forcing my voice to work. “Not planning to kill him.” My knife twists up, the tip swinging to slice through the Gifted’s lip. For a man who’s lived this long only through meticulous avoidance of any injury, the unexpected pain and taste of his own blood is enough to set him howling. “Rock the ship, Trice,” I order.
Andres’s jaw hardens, a frozen ice statue silhouetting the screams of pain and triumph filling the mid decks below. My knife presses into Trice’s lip again, and the pungent stench of fresh urine rises up between us. Andres crinkles his nose in disgust.
“Rock the ship, Trice,” I say again.
This time, waves rise to bang the hull with loud, echoing thumps.
“More!” I demand, my incision shallow but terrifying long. And slow.
The ship lurches like a skittish jackrabbit.
“You are going to capsize the whole damn frigate, girl,” Andres growls.
“Order the boats lowered,” I tell Andres. “Take all the Bevnians and cast loose. Either that or go down with this ship.”
Another cut, another wave striking the Arrow.
>
“You’ll drown too,” Andres counters. “You’ll kill hundreds of people. Murder them.”
I force a smile to my face. “Like you said about Trice, we’ve nothing to lose.” My wind slips the leash further, and a gust of wind twists the sails. I grin as if it was Trice’s magic, not mine, that made the ship tilt. “I fear you’ve little time to decide, Andres. Trice is losing his courage with each heartbeat. Who knows what horrors he’ll be sending our way soon.” I pause, swallow, and drop the game. When I speak next, my voice is sincere. Respectful. One officer to another, one last time. “We all live or we all die, Andres. Give the order and do right by your people. You can come back to kill me another day.”
Murder shimmers in Andres’s eyes, but he turns toward the melee below and bellows for the Bevnians to stand down. The command requires repeating before it’s heeded, but after a few moments, weapons are lowered. Not altogether happily, by either side.
It’s my turn now, and I gather a lungful of breath as I turn to the newly freed prisoners, whose blood still boils with a potent brew of exhilaration and revenge. “Stop! The Bevnians have surrendered!” My words rumble across the deck, slowing some swinging fists, some kicks of downed men. “We are not murderers! Stop!”
A large Tirik man holding a kneeling Bevnian’s throat releases him, passing the word to others until the violence settles like a slowly dying flame. Not all at once, not without final spiteful blows, but it settles.
A wave of dizziness washes over me. I grip Trice more tightly to keep myself upright while the ship’s boats swing into the ocean and the remnants of Kyra’s fire are doused with buckets and pumps. The girl herself still lies on the deck, her chest rising and falling with gasps. Unconscious but alive. My attention returns to Andres, my voice dropping. “Captain, please be so good as to have your officers descend quickly. I imagine if any decide to linger, their experience will be less than pleasant. The three Gifted will be staying with us.” Under very tight guard.