“Crawlies away,” Patka gloated.
The others uttered muffled, nervous snickers.
Wren grinned, imagining the pirates feeling every single hair on their bodies start worming around as if alive. In the dark, it would be easy to imagine a sudden onslaught of really nasty insects—and judging from the howls, yells, and curses rising from that direction, that was just what the pirates thought.
“Row,” Thad commanded. “No splashes, remember.”
Patka and Danal began plying their oars, Thad whispering a count under his breath so they stayed in rhythm. They began to glide slowly away from the longboat—very slowly, for the gig was long and heavy for only two rowers. Lambin shot seven more crawly-arrows, and Wren leaned forward, peering ahead for her next target.
Four distinct yells and howls sounded across the water from the direction of the longboats.
“Four hits,” Patka whispered, grunting as she pulled her oars. “Not bad for shooting in the dark.”
Lambin whispered back, “There are so many I’m sure to hit one.”
That grim thought silenced everyone, and the rowers worked even harder.
In the distance, two pirate ships lit lamps, alerted by the yells carrying over the water.
Wren drew in a breath, another idea forming—this one risky, but irresistible. With twenty enemy longboats hunting them, what did she have to lose? She picked up one of her fire-breads, focusing on the twinkle of a light on the foremast of the nearest pirate ship.
Then, muttering the transfer spell, she tossed the bread into the air, finished—
And it vanished with a soft pop!
Half a heartbeat later a huge fireball whooshed up the pirate foremast. Now another great cry went up, sounding like birds from that distance.
The second ship hastily began putting its lights out, but not before she sent a second fire-bread high into its foremast. The sails of two pirates lit the sky with flames, as black shapes crawled about in the rigging, trying to put the fires out.
Zzzip! Zzzzip! A hissing of arrows sped directly overhead, followed shortly after by slingshot stones. The pirates were now trying to sink them, and worry about capture later.
The missiles skimmed harmlessly overhead, but each one that was diverted lessened the protective ward. Wren whispered softly, strengthening the ward. It was the biggest she’d ever had to make and sustain; it had taken all afternoon to establish it, and now it was wearing away much too quickly.
Lambin grabbed an arrow at random. Twang! Zang! Another arrow flew over the water, and then shouts rose.
One had hit a longboat, releasing a fine powder of dried breadcrumbs loaded with itch spells. Triple strength itch spells.
The shouts turned into howls of anger and disgust as pirates began scratching furiously.
One arrow had obviously missed, but Lambin shot again, and this time connected, releasing a fresh load of itch weed.
“They’re going to ram us,” Thad said sharply.
Wren swung around. A row of longboats ranged directly behind them, rowing fast.
“Time for the net?” Danal asked.
“Time for the net.” Wren settled back against the rail, drawing in a deep breath.
This was a complicated spell. She whispered the Crisis Rules, but images kept skittering through her mind: seaweed, nets, pirates. Ships. Fire.
Chickens.
She shook her head. She’d gotten no use whatever out of repeating the Crisis Rules. She wasn’t even listening to herself.
Concentrate!
This was more sustained magic, much tougher than wards because it involved physical objects. She touched the first seaweed. One at time, you can do it . . . She began the first spell. The bundled seaweed net on the gig’s prow slowly began to unfold its length, rising into the air. It was working! Patka gave a gasp of joy.
—And that broke Wren’s concentration.
The net promptly fell with a squelching plerp sound, like a bubble popping in mud.
Again. She turned her back so she wouldn’t see the others watching her. She brought her hands up, just like a beginner, as she enunciated her spells. She used her hands to keep her focus steady, for this sort of magic—used for lifting huge beams and stones in building—required not only focus to keep the object steady, but precision in moving it through space. Her net wasn’t all that heavy, but it was quite large, big enough to drape over a big three master—or else along a row of attacking boats.
Like the ones coming on fast, the oars splashing high.
Concentrate!
The net bobbled. She shut her eyes and whispered. The magic strengthened the net’s flow up, up . . .it trembled . . . the ends wobbled . . . Wren tensed her fingers, using them as guides. When the net was hovering over the foremost longboat, she finished her spell—
“Danal,” she gasped.
—and began the next spell.
The net began to drop. Danal blurted his string of magic words, and with a loud splorch! the net dissolved into a rain of slime.
“Yearrrgh!”
Stinky slime. It had been Patka’s idea to add the aroma of rotting fish to the net. Even at this distance, the stench was eye-watering.
The effect on the pirates was quite spectacular. The crunch of rending wood smote the air as two, then three longboats crashed together. After that, others collided with the three already tangled up. The remainder veered wildly—or attempted to, but their beslimed oars slipped out of their hands and squirted out onto the water.
As the pirates in the longboats tried to get away as fast as they could, Wren turned to the ships silhouetted by the flames. With the help of Lambin and Danal, she loaded the pirates with spells: their weapons flew up into the rigging and masts, sticking there. Then, with a mental salute to Laris, Wren used the same spell that had caused her own shoes to attack her on her return to her room after the war. Buckets and blocks started chasing any pirate within arm’s reach, thumping them vigorously while the pirates ran about trying to escape, an impossibility unless they dove overboard into the water.
Wren’s eyes prickled with tears. Dear Laris! So much fun, such an excellent mage. Another victim of Andreus’s war. You would have done far better today than I’m doing, Laris.
Then she forced herself back to work.
Ghost images of other ships drove the ships into one another, spreading the fire—and the chaos. Wren clung to the gig’s mast, intent on magic-making on a scale she’d never before attempted. Exhilaration kept her going until exhaustion and then singing dizziness threatened to overwhelm her.
In the east, a faint smear of light had gone unnoticed, but now it began to spread. Sky and sea began to take on color, revealing the pirates, and . . .
Patka uttered a cry of woe.
Lambin whispered, “We’re done for.”
Wren turned her head, ignoring the pangs running down from her neck to her left hand clinging so tightly to the mast. She gazed in blank-minded dismay at the sight of ten huge ships sailing straight toward them, sails and studdingsails billowing in a faintly rising breeze, jib sails along the bowsprit curved to catch every breath of wind.
Overhead the jackdaws wheeled and dived.
Eighteen
“What’s with Red? I’ve never seen him like this, and we shipped together through the islands all last autumn.”
Connor was aware of the voices behind him, but he kept the spyglass pressed to his eye as he leaned against the rail of his friend’s schooner, the Piper, and scanned the horizon.
The high, scratchy voice of his friend, Captain Tebet, went on. “Is it this some kind of prince foolery? I didn’t know he was any prince. Six weeks together on board last fall, twice fighting off river pirates, and I didn’t know that.”
“Nobody knew,” came the deeper voice of Connor’s friend Marpan, known to everyone as Longface because of his predilection for jokes told in a deadpan voice and expression. “Six weeks, nothing. Six months we were caravan guards together, through
the Purba Hills. Brigands, robbers, thieves, you name it, we fought it. Sharing drink, flirting with village and harbor girls. No hint of any crowns or thrones.”
Of course not, Connor thought. I don’t own a crown, and I’ve never sat on a throne.
He didn’t say that either, as he swept the dark skyline once more, impatient for the sun to rise higher. He never talked about his family at all, or he might have pointed out that when you’re the last of eight children in a land where the royal budget is always on the brink of trouble, there aren’t a whole lot of crowns to be had.
Longface continued in his even-toned rumble of a voice, “Said something about an old friend. Mage.”
A snap of the fingers, followed by Captain Tebet’s squawk, “More mages! What is it with Black Hood and mages? Rumors flyin’ all over every harbor from here to Beshair. He’s chasing mages. If he is one, why’s he want more?”
Longface gave a low chuckle. “Well, seems to me that’s what we’re on the way to find out.”
“And that’s another thing. Why’s Red even with us, and not ridin’ high with the Admiral over there on the flagship?”
Connor’s spyglass took in the silhouette of the huge four-masted flagship, sailing at the head of the arrow-shaped formation of eight Okidaino naval frigates. The rising sun painted the edges of the masts with golden color and the sails with the pale blue of dawn.
The Piper and another small schooner stayed well back, as ordered.
“We can ask. He’s standin’ right there,” Longface observed. “But if it were me offered a choice, I’d be right here, too, where a body can actually talk, and not trip over one of them everlasting military rules and regs.”
Captain Tebet’s laugh sounded like a fight between angry parrots. She was small and scrawny and so sun-browned she looked a lot older than her sixty years, but she was full of stories about the sea—stories that occasionally included the Iyon Daiyin.
Connor had asked more one night. Captain Tebet had shaken her grizzled head. Truth is? I don’t like talkin’ about ‘em much. I told me children that there was a rumor we were descended from ‘em. My daughter went t’find out, and hasn’t been seen since.
She came forward, thumping Connor in the arm with a hand made strong with years of pulling ropes and tending the wheel during storms. “Red, now that we’re a long way from the harbor busybodies, and no one can hear us but us, what’s the inside word?”
Connor kept his glass sweeping. The light was getting stronger. Was that something way out there? “What word? I told you everything I knew in that council session yesterday. Black Hood is Andreus, former king of Senna Lirwan. Killed the pirate brought in. Sent ships to chase the Sandskeet, which seems to be carrying my friend Wren. Admiral wants to catch the pirates in the act. I hired you to carry me out.”
“Yes, it’s that part, me boy, I want to ask about. I assumed there was some treasure in it, or reward o’ some kind. Now, spill.”
Connor laughed. Captain Tebet was never subtle about the prospect of gold, but she was so fair-minded and good-hearted she somehow had never ended up rich. “If there was any treasure, the Admiral would have gotten sniff of it first thing. And I wouldn’t have to hire you, would I? Seems to me treasure would be its own hire.”
“So why did you hire us?”
“Us?” Longface added in. “I came along o’ my own free will. Like a nice fight with a pirate now and then. Keeps my hand in.”
Connor said, “Now that we’re well away from the good Admiral, I’ll tell you. I’m pretty sure that the mage those pirates is after is a friend of mine. If we are in time, if we do rescue her, and she doesn’t want to be swept inside the naval net the Admiral is laying for the good of his kingdom, I wanted an out. We could just sail off, and no fuss.”
Tebet squawked. “Red! And you’re hiring me for that? What an insult! Of course I’d sail anywhere to keep a mate, or a mate’s mate, outa the sticky hands o’ them land lubbers. Sail they might, those naval fellows are really landrats. Or at least, their commanders are.”
“How you figure that?” Longface asked. His voice was exactly as flat and growly as ever, but Connor knew he was getting ready for a punchline of some sort.
“Well, ain’t it obvious? They take you up into their castles, and months go by with questions, and forms, and this and that. Rules and regs, like you said, until there’s no turning around without some scribe tellin’ you this or that law keeps you right in place. No, give me the sea and freedom.”
“And that’s why I hired you,” Connor said.
Captain Tebet said shrewdly, “And where does your gold come from? My guess is, prince or not (and I’m not sayin’ I don’t believe it, but if I could get those fools in charge o’ that harbor to move faster than a stone, I’d be queen o’ the universe) you ain’t exactly sleepin’ on gold. Else why was you crewin’ for me last fall?”
“I saved all my earnings from the caravan last summer,” Connor said. “And they pay me really well to tend the Eye, there in the harbor. . . Say. Is that a fire out on the sea, or is it only my eyes playing tricks?”
The other two joined him at the rail, one to either side, the captain snapping out her more powerful spyglass, and Longface just squinting.
“Fire,” Captain Tebet said. “Ship on fire. At least one.”
A cacophony of whistles and shouts rose aboard the naval vessels.
“Lookouts spotted it, too,” Longface offered.
Captain Tebet sniffed. “Steady wind risin’ out of the west. We better get the topgallants up,” and she turned to squawk orders.
The Piper resounded with stamps and shouts and creaks as crew got sails higher on the mast, in order to make use of every bit of wind.
Connor kept his spyglass trained steadily on that smeary orange glow, his neck tight with tension.
Longface said, “Why’s this mage so important?”
Connor leaned his elbows on the rail, smiling up at the sky. “When I was a dashing young prince of twelve or thirteen, I thought I’d impress this short round girl in shabby clothes, with wild striped hair, who’d had the effrontery to make friends with my old friend Tyron. So I waved my sword around as I made heroic declarations.”
Longface almost smiled. “Did she laugh?”
“No. She was never mean.” Unlike half my siblings.
“Did she make her own heroic declaration?”
“Not her!”
“Well, what did she do?”
“She said, ‘Watch the curtains.’”
Longface waited, and when nothing more was offered, his dark eyes widened. “That’s it? Watch the curtains? And you even bothered to remember that?”
Connor sighed. “I guess it was the way she said it.”
“Something’s sure missing.”
“How much fun we had, the three of us. How brave she was, while making jokes. How smart. How . . . heroic, though she’d hate being called a hero.”
Longface’s incredulity faded, and he gazed at Connor with a speculative expression unlike his usual deadpan. “I know what’s missing,” he said in a wondering voice.
Connor flushed, remembering the many flirtations he and Longface had shared along the road. Always fun, and never remembered afterward.
“She didn’t like romance,” he said.
“Seems to me there’s a lot she doesn’t like,” Longface commented skeptically.
“The last time we saw one another, we’d been fighting Andreus of Senna Lirwan. It was not a romantic time,” Connor said.
Longface sobered back to his usual deadpan. “And now this Andreus is chasing her on that smuggler? Yeah, I guess she must be good at whatever it is she does.”
“She’s a mage student,” Connor said. Her real gift is not just seeing you as you really are, but accepting you, too.
If she was on that burning ship . . .
Even if Andreus was not there on the unseen pirate ships, it was his malice behind the orders, his hand raised in threat over his
underlings. Connor’s grip tightened on his spyglass.
The added sail caused the ships to plunge and rise, their speed increasing on the strengthening wind. But it was not fast enough for him.
“They’re moving into attack formation,” Captain Tebet observed. “I wonder what the navy sees from those higher masts o’ theirs.”
Connor shifted his eyes away from the spyglass, blinking against the blur caused by staring through the lens for so long. Archers climbed into the mastheads. Boom crews stood in the waist, ready to swing out the big booms attached to the central mast to sweep an enemy’s rigging in a close encounter.
“What ho?” Captain Tebet squawked, as the lookout above the flag ship gave a cry. She ran up the shrouds holding her mainmast, crowding in beside her own lookout, until she yelled down, “There’s someone out there!”
“What?” Longface and Connor spoke at the same time.
“There’s—I can’t make sense of it . . .” She peered through her powerful glass, and then gave her parrot screech of a laugh. “I must be dreamin’, or seein’ wrong, but it looks to me like there’s a single gig, floatin’ all alone right here, and all the big ships behind it burnin’, life boats swarmin’ around . . .”
“A gig?” Longface asked. “A gig? Has to be a life boat full o’ pirates.”
“I don’t know, they look like mighty small pirates, if you ask me. Yes, they’re standin’ on the rails. I think they see the flags on the foremast of the navy—”
“Who’s in that gig?” Connor rapped out, his heart beating hard.
“Boy with hair color o’ yourn, Red. Passel o’ dark-haired ones, and a little round one, with hair that looks like someone took a paintbrush to it. A bad painter—”
“Wren,” Connor breathed, and he leaped up onto the bowsprit, holding onto the jib-sail with one hand. Now he could see the gig, and that short person right in the middle, clinging to the mast and staring up—
“WREN!” he bellowed.
Captain Tebet rapped out orders, and the schooner, fast and light, slid ahead of the navy ships, though it was strictly against orders. Connor gripped the rail, scarcely breathing, until the gig was alongside, and ropes thrown over.