wheel and angled the ship on her direction. Miscreation groaned with the effort, but she swung to, narrowly avoiding an enormous spike of rock rising from the water.
Eirenaios, the physician, clutched at the railing as the ship rocked violently back and forth. “What are you doing? You’re going to crash this sorry excuse for a boat!”
“No.” Yuri let out a little chuckle. “I’m going to lose that monster in these rocks, just wait and see.”
Rei called down the next direction: “Starboard, fifteen degrees!”
This time, everyone had grabbed hold of something as Miscreation swerved to avoid another rock.
Yuri snuck a glance behind him, expecting to see the serpent avoiding the shallow water, but it glided confidently after them. His glee drained away. Somehow, that thing was managing to keep up with his best sailing maneuvers.
The little girl giggled, an eerie sound in the tense scene. “She knows these rocks.”
Ameyron, who was closest to her, grabbed the girl by the shoulder. “Aristia, don’t joke about such things!”
She giggled again. “It’s not a joke, it’s true. This is her home. She knows every rock here, better than you.”
“Port, forty-five degrees!”
He spun the wheel again, measuring out the angle in his mind’s eye, and the ship swerved around another rock.
“This is insane!” shrieked Eirenaios. “There’s no way you can avoid every rock without seeing them!”
Yuri shot a glare over at the physician. “Would you rather I turn around and face the serpent?”
Mynta had crossed the deck to Ameyron, and now she glared directly at him. “How does your apprentice know this is the serpent’s home? Did you tell her to call it here and lie by omission?”
Ameyron shook his head fervently. “She’s a child, she plays games. She doesn’t know anything, I promise you!”
Unconvinced, Mynta bent to look at Aristia. “Did you call the serpent here?”
“No,” the girl said with an innocent smile. Then she turned and pointed. “That fat man did.”
Everyone looked at where she’d pointed: Eirenaios, the physician.
He took a step back and raised his hands. “Now, hang on a second. Let’s not go making wild accusations.”
Aristia put her hands on her hips. “You stole the egg out of her nest so she’d follow the ship. She doesn’t want to eat us, she just wants her baby back.”
“That’s preposterous!” Eirenaios sputtered. “She’s just making things up!”
Mynta looked at Nik, who was hovering nearby. “Go search his cabin.”
Eirenaios took another step back. “You can’t go in there! My cabin is private!”
Mynta snorted. “It’s on my ship.”
Nikephoros marched to the forward cabins and pushed open the physician’s door. Aristia rushed to follow him. “I can find it!” she called helpfully.
Yuri was still trying to follow Rei’s directions to avoid the larger rocks, but the serpent was swimming right alongside the ship, looking over the railing at all of the people gathered on deck. The monster didn’t look poised to strike—yet. But he kept looking around to all sides of the ship, wary of coils sneaking up around them, or a tail. Did they attack with their tails, like a dragon?
Only moments after she’d gone inside the physician’s cabin, Aristia rushed out again, holding up something that looked like a spherical rock. “I told you!” she cried triumphantly.
Then everything happened at once.
Mynta felt like she was watching it all happen in slow motion. The ship struck an unseen rock, sending them all lurching across the deck. The sea serpent saw Aristia running out with her egg and hauled herself up onto the ship, causing their last forward motion to grind to a halt and the ship to lean dangerously to port. Seeing himself accused, Eirenaios suddenly sprang forward and grabbed the girl, lifting her straight off her feet.
All of a sudden, the rest of the chaos disappeared and Mynta’s gaze focused on the knife at Aristia’s throat. Where had that blasted physick pulled a knife from? She’d been so focused on the mage, she hadn’t paid attention to the other new people on board. Now it turned out that he’d been plotting against them all—and he was threatening a helpless little girl.
“Everybody, freeze,” Eirenaios said, his voice suddenly calm. “You’d all better listen to me, or I’ll kill the girl.”
Aristia clutched the egg to her chest and gasped, tears trickling down her cheeks. “Don’t hurt me!” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t want to die!”
Mynta gritted her teeth together, but she made a show of putting her hands up in the air, and she looked around to make sure that everyone else was doing the same. “I think you’re making a big mistake.”
Eirenaios’s lips curled up in a sneer. “Oh, that’s what the uneducated country gal thinks, huh? You’d better leave this discussion to the scholars.” He jerked his chin out at Ameyron. “You didn’t think you were the only monster expert on board, did you? Except I learned how to control Wyld Magic instead of fight it. I could make the serpent crush this whole ship and eat all of you with one incantation. By your inaction, I surmise that you don’t have a single spell that would stop it.”
Benu, the priest, stiffened. “Controlling Wyld Magic is heresy—and it doesn’t work reliably. That monster will turn on you, and Deyos will judge your soul.”
Eirenaios let out a deranged cackle. “You think it doesn’t work? Do you want me to demonstrate my power?”
“No, just wait,” Ameyron gasped out, finding his voice at last. “If you destroy the ship, you’ll go down with us. What do you want out of this? Surely you must have demands.”
“Oh, of course I want something.” Eirenaios cackled again. “I want to expose you for the pompous, ineffectual fool that you are. I want to show your Academy what real power is—the power that man has over the Wyld.”
Mynta suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at his cheesy speech. While Eirenaios was going on about how much better he was than Ameyron, he was distracted. That gave her the opportunity to inch just a little bit closer, sliding one foot forward without lifting it off the deck, then shifting her weight to move the other foot. If he kept at it for just a little longer, then she’d get close enough to break his arm and take the knife away.
Ameyron was playing right into that distraction without realizing it, because he looked offended at the insult to his academic integrity. “The Academy doesn’t care about showy tricks. We’re observing these creatures’ behavior so we can understand them, how they think, why they attack humans. If you want to impress the Academy, a properly researched paper, published in a peer-reviewed journal, would do more—”
“I don’t care about stuffy research papers!” His voice was taking on a nasally whine. “No one rates a physician on his papers. What counts is how many people you save—or kill.” He squeezed Aristia tighter, making the little girl cry out in fear.
Yuri lifted his head from the helm. “Aren’t healers sworn to do no harm?”
Eirenaios opened his mouth to reply, but then Nikephoros rushed out from the shadowy cabin, his empty hands reaching for the crazed physician. He saw the oncoming attack and whirled to face the larger man, brandishing his knife at the girl’s throat again. “Stay back or I’ll kill her!”
Nik halted halfway across the deck, but Eirenaios now had his back turned, which was all the distraction that Mynta needed. She bent, snatched up one of the pikes from where they still lay scattered across the deck, and hurled it as hard as she could.
Blood sprayed across the ship as the pike pierced Eirenaios in the back. He jerked once and then fell forward.
Nik sprang up once again, snatching Aristia away and striking the knife out of the physician’s hand.
There was blood on the girl’s tunic, and for a heart-stopping moment, Mynta thought that the pike must have gone through Eirenaios’s chest and impaled her as well. But then she stirred in Nik’s arms and gasped loudly.
>
Aristia looked down at the physician, then up at Mynta, her eyes full of horror. “You killed him!” she said accusingly.
Mynta walked over to the crumpled man and bent over, putting two fingers at his neck to feel for a pulse. Nothing. “I do what I need to do to protect my family,” she said flatly as she straightened up. She kicked the corpse. “Throw this scum overboard. Maybe his death will satisfy the beast.”
Everyone turned to stare at the sea serpent, still motionless on the deck. It stared back at them, unblinking.
“Put me down,” Aristia said, wriggling away from Nik. When she regained her feet, she rushed over to the sea serpent fearlessly and lifted up the egg.
The serpent bent its head down to meet the girl.
“Wait, stop her—!” Mynta started for Aristia, certain that the monster was about to attack in order to get the egg back.
“Shh, you’ll scare her,” Aristia warned, smiling up at the serpent. No one else dared to move.
The serpent slowly moved closer, then stuck out a long, forked tongue. In one smooth motion, it wrapped its tongue around the egg and slipped it back behind its enormous pointy teeth. Mynta thought she saw the egg slide into a pouch at the back of its mouth.
Aristia waved good-bye as the serpent eased over the side of the ship and disappeared beneath the waves.
The crew tossed the traitor’s corpse over the side into the ocean as the captain had ordered. A more thorough search of his cabin revealed evidence that Eirenaios had been involved in the forbidden cult of