“Then it doesn’t matter what we do. He’ll always find us, and he’ll overpower us no matter what.”
“You told the captain you could beat him using that sword,” he said.
“But I don’t know if I can,” she admitted. Saying it aloud seemed to make her losing the fight more likely, and she suddenly lost her appetite.
“Then it was a trick,” he said after a moment. “You just want the sword because you think it’ll get you out of here, and it isn’t about Blane at all.”
“No, that’s not true.” At least, she didn’t think it was true. She couldn’t look at him.
“Look, if you don’t think you can beat him, you shouldn’t fight him,” Henry said.
“You’d have to be brilliant to beat him,” she said, thinking back to the one fight, trying to pick apart his style. He’d been toying with her. It wasn’t enough for her to have a strong defense. She had to be able to counterattack. “He’s fast and smart—I tried to attack, but he always seemed to know exactly what I was doing, where I was going to put my sword, even before I knew, like he could read my mind. Henry, he’s really good.”
“I know I wouldn’t want to fight him. I couldn’t beat him. He’s never lost a duel.”
Jill had been in tournaments with fencers whose reputations preceded them, where the whispers passed through locker rooms and along team benches. She’s never been beaten, she’s never lost a bout. And if you listened to those rumors you’d already lost. This was the same, Jill thought.
As much as this was about skill and talent, this was a mind game.
The crew kept to the edges of the ship, against the sides, away from the heat and noise in the center of the deck. Tennant was still working, hammering at the sword, steel on steel. The noise of it rattled above the snapping of sails and splash of waves.
The ship rounded a spit of island as the sun set, turning the ocean a molten pewter color. Tennant still hammered at the sword, and Jill wished this didn’t have to take so long. It wasn’t just a matter of gluing one piece of steel to another—the tip would only break off again the first time she hit anything. Tennant had to reforge the blade. Get the steel hot enough that it became malleable, so that the two pieces could be hammered together, merged, making the molecular structure of the metal continuous. When he was finished, if he knew what he was doing, the break wouldn’t simply be mended—it would vanish, as if it had never been, and the blade would be as strong as ever.
Then she could fight with it.
Jill had been trying to sleep on deck—no one was lingering belowdecks, except the surgeon, who was still locked in his closet. No one was sleeping much, either. People kept looking over the water for the Heart’s Revenge. When the night turned still, with only the waves and sails as background noise, Jill needed a moment to notice, for the clanging of hammer on steel to fade from her ears. Tennant had finished.
She clambered to her feet and raced to the central deck. Tennant was holding the sword tip-down in the barrel of water. The fire in the forge was flickering out.
“It’s done?” she asked.
He glanced at her. Even in the cool breeze, his whole body was slick with sweat, his tan skin shining with it, his trousers soaked through. The scarf tied around his head, meant to keep sweat out of his eyes, was itself dripping. His shoulders dropped, weary, and his smile was weak. But he smiled.
“Not quite yet, lass. The blade needs an edge.”
Jill sighed. Behind them, the shadow of an island loomed, painted charcoal under the light of the stars and moon. The Heart’s Revenge was on the other side, presumably coming around to chase them down.
“There isn’t time,” she said.
“The Captain’ll keep us ahead of the dog, just you see.” Tennant left the sword cooling in the barrel, then went to sit down and take a long drink from a mug.
At dawn, she climbed the mainmast to keep the next watch. The island they’d passed in the night was a haze on the horizon; the next was approaching to starboard, and Cooper was plotting a course that would take them around the windward side of it.
Jill called down when the Heart’s Revenge came into view. All its sails were hoisted, a vast field of white gleaming in the rising sun.
“How’s it coming, Tennant?” the captain called. The smith was on deck, working to sharpen the blade, polishing the edge with a stone.
“Need more time, sir!” he called back. Their voices were distant, echoing. Jill felt removed from it all, drifting above the ships and the action. Now if she could just float away….
“Right, let’s keep the bastard running!”
The ship tipped until Jill was hanging over the water, and she tightened her grip on the rope. If she fell, she’d hit the waves instead of the Diana’s deck. The ship caught a better wind and leaped over waves. They were flying now. Despite all its masts and sails, the Heart’s Revenge was bigger, less maneuverable, less able to tack into winds and steer around the maze of islands. The Diana should have pulled ahead. They should have been able to outrun Blane.
But his ship kept coming closer.
Jill gripped one of the shroud lines and lowered herself hand over hand, balancing with her feet, fast and sure, not even thinking of it, so much more confident than she had been those first days. Almost like this was home.
“Captain!” she called, running to the helm. “He’s gaining!”
“Never!” Abe said. “Not in that lumbering monster!”
Cooper went to the side and looked through the spyglass. She studied the view for a long moment, and when she turned back to the helm, her expression was thoughtful. “Blane’s never played by the same rules as the rest of us. He expects to chase us down and have his way with us like one of his port whores. That’s it, then. We’ll have to do what he doesn’t expect.” She had a gleam in her eyes when she turned back to the deck. “Tennant!” she shouted.
“Not yet!” he called back. Jill wanted to scream.
“You’ve no more time, lad!” she said. “He wants a fight, we’ll ram it down his throat. Tadpole, you still up for it?”
“Aye,” Jill breathed.
“We’re not going to wait for him, we’re going to put ourselves in his lap before he knows we’re coming and take the wind from him,” the captain said. “Man the cannons! Not you, Tennant.”
The thunder and chaos of a ship preparing for battle began.
Even with the sword ready, Jill wouldn’t have anything to do until the real battle began. In order to fight Blane, the ships would have to draw up alongside each other. She’d have to board the Heart’s Revenge. With all the cannon fire and fighting, she might not ever reach Blane to fight him.
She climbed back into the rigging to take up the watch again as the battle approached.
“Hoist the colors!”
There was Henry, running the black flag on its line up the mainmast. The skull on it seemed to grin.
“And ready the cannons!”
From on high, Jill looked back at the Heart’s Revenge. It had seemed to stall, but that may have only been because the Diana had changed direction and the two ships were now circling each other, keeping their distance. The shore of the distant island slipped by, showing that they really were moving.
Abe shouted into the rigging; Jill barely heard him. It was newly learned habits that told her what to do to put the sails in place. The ship heeled and turned, leaving off tacking and putting the wind full behind it. The Diana jumped and lurched, spray flying up past the hull and into the rigging as if the ship itself were eager.
Cooper was steering them into place for a broadside. They only needed to get within range. The slots in the sides opened; the cannons rolled forward.
The Heart’s Revenge’s cannons were more powerful, with a longer range, and they fired first. But the Diana had stayed pointed toward the enemy, offering a slender profile. The shots hit wide and splashed into the water. Abe called orders, spun the wheel, the Diana heaved over, and Cooper gave the order
to fire. While the Heart’s Revenge reloaded, the Diana sailed within her own range. Explosions roared, and the air filled with the smoke of burned powder.
Jill was helpless. She could only wait and hope that the Diana wasn’t destroyed before they got close enough to board. That was Cooper’s plan, she could see: Dodge cannon fire. Get within range. Make boarding the only possibility. Ram the fight down Blane’s throat.
“Captain, it’s done!” That was Tennant’s cry. Jill raced down the lines to the deck, coughing through the smoke.
On deck, she found Cooper and Tennant standing together. Tennant held a now-whole sword in both hands. Even amidst the smoke from the cannons, it shone silver and powerful. The blacksmith set it in the captain’s waiting hands. She looked it up and down, studying it, smiling faintly. “The red in it’s gone, do you see that?”
She was right; the bloody sheen had disappeared. Maybe they’d destroyed the curse, claimed the sword for their own.
“You’ve done a very fine job,” Cooper said.
“I shouldn’t have been able to do it all,” Tennant said. “I didn’t have the right heat, the right tools—but it’s like it wanted to be whole again. It wanted to be mended.”
“Blood magic,” the captain whispered.
Jill would hold this newly made sword and know how to get home—she knew it. “Captain,” Jill said, sounding a little too desperate.
Cooper frowned; her hand moved to the grip, tightened. Thinking of the past, perhaps. Of what she could do with the power of the sword—of taking her revenge on Blane. And Jill didn’t think she could blame Cooper if the captain decided to take on Blane herself, whether or not Jill lost her way home.
But the moment passed, and Captain Cooper held the sword, grip first, to Jill. “We’re going to need every blade we have, won’t we?”
Jill took the weapon, one hand on the hilt, other hand careful of the sharpened edge. She couldn’t find where the break had been. The blade was healed, extending long and unbroken to a deadly point. The engravings were gone, hammered clean by Tennant’s work. The sword was smooth, fresh, reborn. It sat heavy in her hands, but balanced. Dangerous. Her arm felt powerful, holding it—like the tingle she’d felt when she first found the shard, but more. She couldn’t tell if the power came from the blade, or from the knowledge that she held an extraordinary sword.
But the whisper of power remained a whisper, and the only message she got from it—Blane had to be defeated.
“Thank you,” she said to Tennant, who nodded.
The ships approached each other, becoming shrouded in the clouds of smoke now hanging over the water.
Jill lost track of the explosions; she could no longer differentiate between one blast of cannon fire and the next, and couldn’t tell if a given explosion was the Diana’s cannons or Blane’s ship’s. The ship was taking damage, splinters of wood flying, sails ripping, the shrouds playing free after being torn loose. The masts creaked and swayed. Jill kept waiting for the ship to fall apart around her. It didn’t.
The Diana couldn’t fire cannons from this position. Speed was their only weapon now—in moments, the Heart’s Revenge wouldn’t be able to fire, either, because their range would be off. They’d overshoot. Jill recognized the tactic from fencing: Get inside your opponent’s reach, making their offense useless, then strike. But Cooper’s ship had to move quickly, before their enemy could find the range again.
Abe took up the command. “All hands! All hands! Let the sheets out!”
Then Captain Cooper’s voice came through during a heartbeat of calm. “We’re comin’ up on them, lads! Ready arms!”
Amidst the smoke and splinters, then, the dozen or so crew above decks swarmed to the rigging. Jill took her place at the fore mainsail. She looked out, trying to see the Heart’s Revenge through the haze. The ship heeled as Abe turned her hard to starboard. Jill had become used to the rolling lurch of a ship making a turn like this, and balanced on loose knees, ready to haul line. Henry had the same position opposite her, on the port side, grinning, like always.
The schooner was now headed directly toward the Heart’s Revenge.
Cooper had picked the right moment in the two ships’ circling. Because the Diana had the wind behind her, she had the speed. Blane’s ship was sluggish to react.
At the captain’s command, most of the crew had gathered on the deck with an array of weapons: muskets, braces of pistols crossed over their chests, some combination of swords and daggers in both hands, and then spears and pikes—they’d probably started out as boat hooks.
Jill felt Blane’s sword sing. She turned it in her hand, testing a movement, a disengage and attack, and marveled at how well balanced it was. It didn’t seem to weigh anything, as if it really was an extension of her arm. Maybe she could fight Blane.
The crew didn’t shout, didn’t stand at the rail, carrying on in order to intimidate the other crew. There was no point to that. This time, they stood silent and ready.
Shouting carried from the deck of the other ship—maneuvering orders, commands to adjust the sails. Calls to arms, to battle.
The Diana was going to ram the other ship head on, out of reach of cannon fire. Jill couldn’t believe it, but what else could happen? The ship sailed forward, strong and sure, her bowsprit leading like a sword. The Heart’s Revenge seemed to bob, stationary, trying to turn but having no wind to move her.
“Hard to starboard! Hard over!” Cooper shouted at the last minute, and the ship lurched, turning in as sharp an arc as Jill had yet seen. When the Diana did collide with the Heart’s Revenge, instead of shattering into her hull, piercing her with her bowsprit and becoming hopelessly tangled, the two ships came together bow to bow, hulls pressing together. Wood groaned.
The Diana seemed tiny next to Blane’s three-masted monster of a ship. The other ship’s deck rose above the Diana’s to the height of a person. A mass of the other crew crowded to the edge, shouting in fury. Then they started jumping over.
The crew of the Diana backed away and let them come; they’d have been cut down if they’d tried to throw ropes up and climb aboard the Heart’s Revenge. So the enemy crew piled down to the deck of the Diana, where the Diana’s crew met them head-on.
The madness had a method to it: Those with muskets and pistols took up positions in the front and let loose a volley, cannon in miniature, that took out the first of those who’d boarded. That left the stragglers for the swords and daggers, while the next round of muskets and pistols came forward. Jill didn’t know if there was another round after that, and there wasn’t time to reload.
She fought. No time for precision here, no time for planning or elegance. Nobody was watching to admire her stance or judge her skill. She’d only win if she came through this alive. It was much more focused incentive than a medal or championship qualification.
Letting her vision go soft, she could take in action on the whole deck, at least in abstract. People moved all around; the enemy was in front, and her friends were around her. But the enemy was trying to cut through the line. She cut back. Once the muskets and pistols had all fired, the battle became a tangle of blades.
Fencing is easy, the joke went. You just put the pointy end in the other person.
Jill tried. She blocked with the dagger Henry had given her and slashed with her rapier, half knowing that the slashing was distracting her enemy at best. Then the line ahead of her broke and a target presented itself.
A scroungy man with an angry snarl, broken teeth, and a chipped sword in each hand. He might even have been one of the ones who would have thrown her over the cliff back on New Providence. He was slashing at one of her crewmates, shouting, beating him down—the man only had a pair of daggers. A spent musket lay at his feet. The attacker didn’t see Jill at all, right beside him.
This was how it went, then.
She thrust, stabbing him under the ribs, twisting her sword, then lunging back and out of the way. It was easier than she thought it would be—took bar
ely any effort at all. Flesh was fragile. The blood came far too easily. She didn’t have time to think of it.
Screeching, he arched his back, flailing at nothing. Blood poured out, turning his unwashed tunic red. She slashed at his arm; he dropped the sword. The Diana crewman lunged next, dagger straight out, and put it in the man’s gut. He, too, made a wrenching move and turned away, keeping hold of the weapon—you didn’t want to lose your weapon here. The attacker doubled over, groaning wretchedly. He wasn’t dead, but he was done.
The man she’d helped—Matthews—nodded at her and plunged back in the fight.
A sheen of blood marred the upper third of Blane’s rapier, fresh and glaring.
A mass battle changed more quickly, was more frenetic, than a duel. Jill decided she liked dueling better. Here, people fought in groups, three and four of them, watching each other’s backs. A crowd of them would bunch together, then suddenly the area where they’d been would clear as the groups split and reformed somewhere else, and so the fighting ranged all over the ship. Jill lunged and slashed at anyone who approached. She did it more to keep the space around her clear than she did to hurt or kill anyone. If she could just keep a clear space around herself, she’d be safe.
Then, for a brief moment, no one else came for her. The battle hadn’t stopped; crashing weapons and shouted curses still dominated, drowning even the splash of waves against hulls and the rippling of sails. Jill came to rest against the foremast, leaning against the stout pole to catch her breath.
Across the ship, she caught sight of Captain Cooper. The captain was staring toward the deck of the Heart’s Revenge with murder in the set of her jaw. The woman sheathed her sword.
Captain Cooper hauled herself up the shroud, as skilled and nimble as any of her crew, and hacked at a line, one of the ropes hanging off the yard of the mainsail. Then she climbed it, pushed off the mast, and swung to the deck of the Heart’s Revenge. She actually swung—just like in the movies, after all.
When the captain reached the enemy’s deck, she drew her sword and looked around, urgent. She was on the hunt and out for blood.