Glory Season

settin’ sail.”

Now that they were away from the rock face, the swells were smoother. Maia and the others let the current carry them northward. More booms shook the thick air, louder and louder. Maia felt concussions in her ears and across her face. As they approached, an accompanying sound chilled her heart, the faint, shrill screaming of desperate women.

“We’ve got to—”

“Shut up!” Naroin snapped at Tress.

Then came a noise like no other. The closest thing Maia remembered was the breaking of bulkheads aboard the collier Wotan. It was an explosion not of water, but wood and bone. Of savagely cloven air and flesh. Echoes dissipated into a long, stunned silence, moderated by the nearby crash of surf on rock. Maia needed to swallow, but her mouth and throat were so dry, it was agony to even try.

Naroin spoke through powerfully controlled anger. “They’ll stand off an’ look for a while, before movin’ in. Charl, get ready. The rest o’ you, set sail and then duck outta sight!”

Maia and Brod stood up, together releasing the clamps holding the furled sail, and drew it to the clew outhaul. The fabric flapped like a liberated bird, suddenly catching the wind and throwing the boom hard to port, catching Brod and knocking him into Maia. Together, they fell toward the bow coaming, atop one another.

“Uh, sorry,” the youth said, rolling off and blushing. “Uh, it’s all right,” she answered, gently mimicking his abashed tone. It might have been funny, Maia thought, if things weren’t so damn serious.

Tress joined them in the bilge, below the level of the gunwales. As the skiff rounded the northern verge of their prison isle, Charl took over the tiller, letting Naroin crouch down as well. Only Charl remained in view, now attired in a white smock that was stained around the neckline. She had put on a ragged, handmade wig that made her look vaguely blonde.

“Steady,” Naroin said, peering over the rail. “I see the raft, or what’s left of it … Keep yer heads down!”

Maia and Brod ducked again, having caught sight of an expanse of floating bits and flinders, logs and loosely tethered boxes, along with one drifting, grotesquely ruined body. It had been a nauseating sight. Maia was content to let Naroin describe the rest.

“No sign o’ the reaver, yet. I see one, two survivors, hidin’ behind logs. Hoped there’d be more, since they knew it was comin’… Eia! There’s her prow. Get ’eady, Maia!”

They had argued long and hard over this part of the plan. Naroin had thought she should be the one taking on the most dangerous job. Maia had responded that the policewoman was just too small to make it believable. Besides, Naroin had more important tasks to perform.

You asked for this, Maia told herself. Brod squeezed her hand for luck, and she returned a quick smile before crawling aft.

From the moment the reaver vessel entered view, Charl began waving, shouting and grinning. We’re counting on certain assumptions, Maia thought. Foremost, the reavers mustn’t instantly see through the ruse.

It makes sense, though. Inanna wouldn’t stay on the island after the raft was destroyed. She’d come to ferry a cleanup squad of killers through the secret passage, to finish off any survivors remaining above.

It was brutal logic, borne out by recent events. But was it true? Were the pirates expecting to see a blonde woman in a little sailboat? Maia ached to peer over the side.

Charl described events through gritted teeth. “They’re maybe a hundred fifty meters out… sails luffed… still too damn far. Now someone’s pointin’ at me … waving. There’s somebody else lifting binoculars. Let’s do it, quick!”

With a heavy intake of breath, Maia stood up suddenly, and pretended to launch an attack on Charl; throwing an exaggerated punch the older woman evaded at the last moment. Charl shoved her back, and the boat rocked. Then they closed and began grappling, hands clasping for each other’s throats. In the process, they managed so that Charl’s back was to the reaver. All the enemy would be able to make out now, even through binoculars, would be a big blonde woman wrestling an adversary who must have climbed out from the wreckage of the raft.

Shouts of excited dismay carried across the water. They’ll finish us with the cannon if they suspect, Maia knew. Or if they’re bloody-minded about the value of their spies.

Even feign-fighting with Charl was a grunting, intense effort. Bobbing movements of the boat kept forcing them to clutch each other for real. Minutes into the contest, Charl’s grip tightened on Maia’s windpipe, setting off waves of authentic pain.

“Maia!” Naroin hissed from below and aft, her hand on the tiller. “Where are they?”

Maia pushed Charl back and affected to punch just past the woman’s ear. Looking over Charl’s shoulder, she saw the reaver turn and fill its jib enough to gain some headway. “Under…” Maia gasped for breath as Charl shoved her against the skiff’s mast. “Under a hundred meters. They’re coming…”

The next thing Maia knew, Charl had picked up an oar and aimed an awfully realistic swipe. Ducking, Maia had no chance to mention what else she had seen. Among the crowd of rough women gathered at the bow of the ketch, two had brandished slender objects that looked chillingly like hunting rifles. The only thing saving Maia right now was her close proximity to a figure the reavers thought to be their accomplice.

“Eighty meters…” Maia said, elbowing Charl in the ribs, knocking aside the oar and lifting her locked hands as if to deliver an overhand blow. Charl staved this off by ducking and grabbing Maia’s midriff.

“Uh! … Not so hard!… Sixty meters…”

The ketch was a beautiful thing, lovely in its sleek, terrible rapacity. Even with jib alone, it prowled rapidly, s’triking aside flotsam of its victim, the ill-fated raft. Logs and boxes rebounded off its hull, wallowing in its wake. The sheer island face now lay behind the skiff. There was no escape.

“Fifty meters …”

In their wrestling struggle, Charl’s makeshift wig suddenly slipped. Both women hurried to replace it, but one of the reavers at the bow could be heard reacting with tones of sudden outrage. The jig is up, Maia realized, looking across the narrowing gap to see a pirate lift her rifle.

There was no sound, no warning at all, only a brief shadow that flowed down the stony cliff and a patch of sun-drenched sea. One of the corsairs on the ketch glanced up, and started to shout. Then the sky itself seemed to plummet onto the graceful ship. A cloud of dark, heavy tangles splashed across the mast and sails and surrounding water, followed by a lumpy box of metal that struck the starboard gunwales, glanced off … and exploded.

Flame brightness filled Maia’s universe. A near-solid fist of compressed air blew Charl against her, throwing the two of them toward the mast, sandwiching Maia in abrupt pain. Sound seized the flapping sail, causing it to billow instantaneously, knocking both women to the keel where they lay stunned. The skiff rocked amid rhythmic, heaving aftershocks.

Still conscious, Maia felt herself being dragged out from under Charl’s groaning weight, toward the bow. Through a pounding ringing in her ears, time seemed to stretch and snap, stretch and snap, in uneven intervals. From some distant place, she heard Brod’s reassuring voice uttering strange words.

“You’re all right, Maia. No bleeding. You’ll be okay… Got to get ready now, though. Snap out of it, Maia! Here, take your trepp. Naroin’s bringing us along the aft end…”

Maia tried to focus. Unwelcome but frequent experience with situations like this told her it would take at least a few minutes for critical faculties to return. She needed more time, but there was none. Climbing to her knees, she felt a pole of smooth wood pushed into her hands, which closed by pure habit in the correct grip. Inanna’s trepp bill, she dimly recognized, which had been among the dead spy’s possessions. Now, if only she recalled how to use it.

Brod helped her face the right way, toward a looming, soot-shrouded object that had only recently been white and proud and exquisite. Now the ship lay in a tangle of fallen cables and wires. Its sails were half torn away by the makeshift bomb, which had been catapulted at the last moment by two captives who had remained high on the bluff, hoping to do this very thing.

“Get ready!”

Maia’s ears were still filled with horrific reverberations. Nevertheless, she recognized Naroin’s shout.