Rune crumpled the message in his fist. The Lord of the Otherworld was growing impatient, the fact that Rune was now on the man’s personal flagship proved as much. If he couldn’t produce the witch the Lord of the Otherworld wanted, Rune’s contract—no, his very life—might be forfeit, not to mention his dreams of ruling. Tamping down his rage, he wrote back.
We are tracking the rogue lantern as we speak.
I have not yet been able to ascertain who it is, but I assure you I am making every effort.
I will keep you apprised as the search continues.
With his message finished, he sent the mechanical bird off and stared gloomily ahead at the impending storm. He hated skyships.
* * *
* * *
The Lord of the Otherworld shoved his wife’s face toward the brass globe and spun it. “Tell me again,” he demanded. “Scry.”
“She’s here,” the high witch swore, pointing to the vast area of ocean known as the Saccadic Sea. “I’m certain of it. She’s in the sky somewhere. But I’m so drained, it’s difficult to get a more precise reading right now. Perhaps if I could just rest a bit.”
“You will rest when we capture the witch!” the Lord of the Otherworld spat. The sight of his sickly, feeble wife disgusted him. Her hand shook as she wiped the drops of spittle from her cheek.
“Yes, my dear,” the high witch said.
When she rose from the chair, he violently shoved it against the wall. “Apparently, my lot in life is to be surrounded by incompetents!” he shouted, then turned to the guard standing at the door. “Pack my wife’s necessities. We’re taking a trip. It would seem there are some things a man has to do for himself.”
They both awoke suddenly when the ship lurched, dumping them onto the floor with a thump. Ember pushed a pillow out of the way and removed the sheet from her face, wondering what on earth was pressing down on her. Then she saw it wasn’t a what, it was a who.
“Oh,” she said, brushing the hair from her eyes. “It’s you.” Jack looked down at Ember and realized their position was entirely inappropriate.
“I…I do beg your pardon,” Jack said, his blond hair falling in his face as he attempted awkwardly to extricate himself from the sheets that had wrapped around them.
The long shirt Ember wore from the day before shifted loosely, exposing a bare shoulder, and her unbound hair framed her face in soft curls. Jack pointed in the vague direction of her neckline and mentioned that she might wish to adjust her frock. Ember squeaked and tugged on the shirt only to pull it tight against her form. Jack sucked in a breath and moved away faster.
He’d just gotten to his feet and helped Ember to hers when a blast rocked the ship and Ember fell into his arms. He tried to ignore the swell of her hips meeting his palms and asked, “Are you all right?”
She nodded, wide-eyed. Ember’s lips parted, and Jack couldn’t tear his gaze away from her mouth. Their lips were just inches away from each other when the entire wall buckled and a large section of it tore away from the ship.
Ember screamed and Jack tugged her toward the door, where they found a confused Finney in the lounge. The boy took in Ember’s bare legs, the long shirt not even meeting her knees, and narrowed his eyes at Jack. He pushed his glasses up and drew up his hands into fists, but just then, Jack caught a glimpse through the broken window of another ship passing by them with cannons aimed just where they stood. When Finney saw it too, his eyes widened.
“Come on!” Jack shouted to the boy, and pushed Ember out of the lounge as quickly as possible, totally ignoring her and Finney’s pleas to return for their things. “Get Finney!” he shouted to his pumpkin while he herded Ember out of the decimated rooms and up to the deck, hoping for safety among the crew.
Once there, Jack despaired at the bedlam. The deck was riddled with smoking holes. The whistle of bat bombs and rocket ravens overhead made speech impossible.
Above them, a bat bomb flapped metallic wings and landed with a snap to a heavy chain attaching the ship to the nets. Then it exploded in a burst of witchlight. The rigging above followed, splitting apart with the force of the blast. Ember squeaked and grabbed for Jack’s arm, as the deck they were standing on lurched downward.
Ducking as a rocket raven screeched past, Jack threw his body against Ember’s and used his light as a shield while calling for his pumpkin to bring Finney quickly. Jack kept his back to the chaos and prodded Ember toward a slightly better protected alcove. Smoking debris rained around their feet. When Finney finally burst through the door, Jack waved him over, then frowned at his pumpkin when he saw Finney had retrieved not only his own bags, but Ember’s as well.
Several rivets popped and a portion of the metal frame overhead buckled, rupturing a nearby pipe. Something hissed from the breach, reeking of rotting vegetation and foul sulfur, and Frank hobbled over as fast as he could, calling to Jack to use his light to smelt it. It was a stopgap effort, but it worked. Once the ship was successfully patched, gas filled the balloon again and the ship steadied.
Finney handed Ember her leggings and boots, and Jack left his pumpkin behind to watch over them while he headed over to help the captain. He stumbled when the gunners manning the carronades fired. The witchlight cannonballs found their mark, and explosions lit the clouds from the inside, but still Jack couldn’t see who they were fighting.
Captain Delia moved at supernatural speed, shouting orders to her crew from every place on the deck and calling out bearings. A fusillade of shots peppered the deck where she stood and Jack threw a ball of light, pushing her quickly away as the area where she’d just been standing became a jagged wound spiked with sharp, twisted metal. Just then, a girder rocketed toward Jack. He ghosted swiftly to fog and the beam slammed down into the decking of the Phantom Airbus instead.
Chemical explosives—invented by unscrupulous alchemists, and very illegal—sank into the rigging and rained down noxious gases in green clouds. Those who came near them began shaking with convulsions and fell to the deck, foaming at the mouth. They were unconscious within seconds, but, Jack noted, not dead. No. Some were dead, but only the male crew members. Whoever was attacking them was trying to disable the ship but not kill its female crew or passengers. That meant they were after something, or someone. Ember.
Jack spun on his heels and ran headlong back the way he’d come.
* * *
* * *
Dev was perched in the stern swivel gun, clutching the controls, waiting for the other ship to come into range so he could fire. He was by far the most skilled marksman aboard, and as soon as Delia realized what they were facing, she sent him to that position.
To say that Delia had been surprised to see the ship on the distant horizon was an understatement. Ships didn’t venture out that far on their own, especially not with a well-charted ghost storm in the area, and no one, to her knowledge, knew their destination anyway. At first Delia had cautioned Dev when he panicked, saying a captain needed to keep her head, and that he shouldn’t assume that just because a ship shared their sky, it meant to swallow them up. Fear can make a shark out of a minnow when you squint at it hard enough, she’d said.
So the two of them had watched and waited. Dev desperately hoped that Delia was right and that the ship was simply passing through the same airspace. Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that the distant minnow was indeed a shark, and a hungry one, at that. When it drew closer, they realized what they were facing was a dreadnaught, the Lord of the Otherworld’s prized flagship. Deverell’s heart sank.
Dreadnaughts were merciless enforcers existing to serve one function and one function only. Rarely seen, they were only sent out when the Lord of the Otherworld wanted something dealt with swiftly and brutally. The crew on such skyships obeyed orders to the letter and never, ever, returned without their prize. The bottom of the dreadnaught narrowed to a thin blade and the bow was razor-sharp. The under blade would be deadly if it crossed over the Phan
tom Airbus, and would easily slice through both net and balloon with absolutely no damage to itself. It wouldn’t even need to fire. Their ship would be cleaved in two, the pieces ripped apart as easily as one might divide a piece of fruit. And that, combined with twice as many guns and a hull so thick it was nearly impenetrable, made the dreadnaught almost impossible to defeat.
To be fair, Delia’s own reputation for winning was also notable, but Delia focused on robbery, not murder. Even when she won, she made every effort to leave the crews intact on the ships she plundered, taking them as prisoners or putting them off at ports or islands. She was a pirate, yes, but she was a pirate who followed a certain code. She didn’t kill for killing’s sake.
Dev swiveled in his chair, his waistcoat unbuttoned so he could maneuver more easily. His blue vampire eyes were trained on the sky. The glass aerodome at the stern might have frightened other gunners since it sat directly behind the ship, but Dev found he quite enjoyed the view.
Jutting out into the sky and attached only by a large circular gasket through which a gunner entered the pod, the clear bubble gave Dev over a 180-degree view of the space behind the skyship.
His palms began to sweat as he held the grips in firing position, cocked low and ready. There was an almost kinetic energy he could feel. Dev sensed the weight of the heavy ship as it moved around them. The sun burst through the clouds, effectively heating his pod like a solarium. Then, right before his eyes, the dreadnaught descended from the clouds. He sighted the hull, took aim, and clicked the witchlight transmitter that sent an electromagnetic charge to the warheads.
The first two lit. Jets bursting, they shot out from the Phantom Airbus, gaining velocity every second as they arced in a perfect trajectory. When they met the dreadnaught’s hull there was a burst of energy, enough to rock the glass aerodome where Dev sat. The hull belched smoke like a foundry, but there were no secondary explosions. He lined up a second shot and a third, trying to hit the already-weakened hull, swiveling as the ship progressed across the sky, but the dreadnaught shook off the torpedoes as if they were mere pebbles.
He fired again and again, fully knowing that the warheads wouldn’t cause enough damage. Then he heard the click that told him his guns were empty. The ship drew closer, but instead of cleaving them in two, Dev saw the grapnels soaring across the expanse between the two ships. Wheeled, metal gears spun on the dreadnaught, drawing cables tight and bringing the Phantom Airbus closer. They were going to be boarded.
Wriggling out of the cockpit, Dev ran back through the dark corridors of the ship so fast, a mortal would only see a blur. Flickering gasoliers cast their umber light in the rooms and passageways, but they offered no warmth. Dev felt cold, clammy. His blood rushed from his bones and invigorated his limbs, lending him strength for the upcoming fight. This would be nothing like fighting ghosts seeking to take possession of the living. This time there would be death and blood.
On deck, there were at least ten grapnel hooks now connected to the Phantom Airbus with dozens of armed men sliding down at exacting intervals. The Phantom Airbus crewmen, led by Frank, shot carbines, and the staccato sound of unloading ammunition pinged as deckhands from the other ship slid down the cables and landed on the ship.
One man released a bag of clockwork frog grenades, which hopped from the deck onto the nearest men and exploded. The boarders all had little buttons on their collars to repel their own grenades. Dev grabbed the nearest enemy; then he tore into the man’s neck with his teeth and took the button, determined to put it on Ember.
The brawl began in earnest and Dev fought, forging a path to Ember, inch by bloody inch. He saw the lantern darting between and around boarders, using his light to blind them and bring them to their knees while heading in the general direction of Ember.
Dev pressed on and arrived at her side at nearly the same time as Jack, not that she noticed. Dev reached for the edges of his unbuttoned vest and tugged it sharply, then swiped his chin with his palm to remove any dribbles of blood, and grimaced at seeing the stains. The lantern, on the other hand, looked as fresh as if there were no battle happening at all.
“Here,” Dev said, pressing the button into her hands and frowning. “It will protect you from the clockwork frogs.”
“The frogs aren’t targeting her,” Jack said bluntly. “They’re only going after the men. I saw one leap cleanly off Captain Delia before detonating.”
Ember purposely turned and attached the pin to Finney instead.
“They’re after Ember, then,” Dev said.
Jack spun. “Obviously. Tell me, vampire, what do we do? How do we protect her?”
“There’s only one thing we can do right now. Fight.”
Jack and Dev began fighting, and, strangely, side by side. Jack used his light to blind their opponents while Dev took them out with his teeth and his witchlight-tipped cane. Soon both of them were drawn into the thick of the battle and lost sight of Ember again.
Though Dev and Jack drew off several, there were too many boarders for Ember and Finney to elude. Ember pulled out her guns, firing while Finney reloaded for her, pulling new tubes from the bag. She didn’t even care which spell she used. Men fell back blinded, covered with acid, shrieking with blood trickling from their ears, dripping with slime, or electrocuted.
When Finney yelled that she was out of ammunition, Ember summoned the power inside her like she had with the ghosts. But this time when she touched a man who tried to lay hands on her, he was blasted away, his body crashing among the battered decking, a smoking hole in his chest. Steeling her mind against the carnage, Ember moved forward with Finney just behind her, taking out man after man with her witch power.
Ember got a firsthand glimpse of what happened when a clockwork frog targeted a person. One of them was hiding in a corner, and when Ember passed by, it activated, leaping on Finney. She gasped, trying to pull it off, but the button on his lapel blinked red and the frog turned and hopped off his shoulder. Within two more jumps, the frog found one of Delia’s crewmen, attached itself to his leg, and then detonated.
The poor man was blown to pieces. His bloody boot landed at Ember’s feet and came to a stop. They moved on, managing to collect a few other weapons: a pair of knives, a gun that shot pellets infused with witchlight, and a short sword.
They had to squint through the smoke as they edged furtively forward, trying to distinguish between enemy and crewman, but it was difficult and they made little progress. Jack and Dev were gone, though Ember thought the screams she heard were likely those of their victims. She coughed and realized the fog wasn’t entirely made up of cloud. Something was burning.
Finney pointed toward a contraption just below the main rigging. “The propulsion unit is on fire!” he said. “There’ll be no saving the ship!”
“I should think you’d be more concerned with saving our lives!” Ember shouted in response as she took down a man barreling in their direction, his eyes gleaming with malice.
“Well, yeah. But that’s obvious, then, isn’t it? Looks like we’re meant to flounder between the devil and the deep blue sea. I say the sea looks like the better option.”
Ember wasn’t so sure she agreed.
They heard a familiar shout. It was the captain. “Five degrees starboard!” she shouted. “I agree, Frank. There’s no help for it. Drop those boarders and sound the klaxon, then prepare to accelerate to ramming speed!”
Finney and Ember turned to each other, mouthing, Ramming speed?
They fought their way over to Captain Delia and drew close just as an alarm sounded. It blared loudly enough that Ember wanted to press her hands over her ears. “Ember!” Delia cried when she caught sight of her. “Dev told me you have a cauldron.”
“I do. It’s on my hat.”
“May I have it? It will likely save our lives.”
Ember nodded quickly and Finney fished in the bag until he found the hat and handed it to Delia.
The vampire ripped the cauldron off and tossed the hat back to Finney. Then she turned and threw the cauldron to Frank, who opened a little box at the base of the balloon. A strange glow was coming from inside. He tossed in the cauldron and shouted that it was ready.
Delia nodded and turned back to Ember and Finney. “You two stay close. Once we’re in position, I’m going to lash the wheel. We’ll only have a few seconds to clear before the explosion.”
Squeaking, Finney echoed, “Explosion?”
“Yes. If we time it right, and if the gods of luck are on our side, they’ll never see it coming.”
Ember didn’t know how one ship could miss another one barreling toward them at ramming speed but, then again, she wasn’t the captain. Finney brandished the sword and tried his best to keep men away from the helm, but it was Ember who was able to take most of them down, protecting the captain as she worked.
Delia pushed some buttons on her control console and then threw a switch. There was a great burst of energy in the nets and they began to glow white. Finney heard the engines double, or perhaps even triple, their speed. Captain Delia cranked the wheel hard and the ship surged backward, away from the dreadnaught. The cables attaching the Phantom Airbus to the other ship tightened and snapped. Once the captain had taken the ship a distance away, she turned it, quickly maneuvering it so the bow faced the dreadnaught’s hull.
Frank appeared. “She’s ready, Captain. Crew’s aboard. At least, them that remain.”
“And Dev?”
“He’s aware and will join us momentarily.”
“Good. Right, then.” Delia tossed a length of strong cable across the helm. “She’s lashed. Take these two down, Frank, while I put her in gear.”
“ ’Tis a sad occurrence indeed to lose so fine a ship, Captain,” Frank said.
“It is. But take heart in knowing we’ll live to plunder another day.”
As Frank took them to a wall and pressed a button opening a hidden door, Ember saw Delia pat her ship fondly and say, “You’ll be missed, you old rattletrap. Rest assured knowing a piece of you will live on.”