Talis strode back to the starboard railing, enjoying the moment. The consequences were coming, she knew. A man like Hankirk didn’t let an insult like that stand without an answer. But for now she could breathe again. Even if she couldn’t quite get the muscles of her jaw to unlock.
Wind Sabre leaned away from her would-be captor, her turbines chuffing, her engine purring, and her lift system hissing.
Across the widening distance, Hankirk’s order to pursue them sounded small and hollow.
Talis finally unclenched her teeth. “Push ’em, Tisker. They’re about to move.”
“They’ll try to, anyway,” Sophie said, and adjusted the navline while she watched the other ship with interest.
There was a coughing rumble. The Serpent Rose lurched. Then the hull shuddered. Talis winced involuntarily as the engine screeched a death rattle that would give a ship’s mechanic nightmares. Sophie pressed her lips together, leaning forward over the rail. The Rose’s aft port engine puffed gray smoke, and then it began to bleed oil from its joins.
Talis saw Hankirk turn to yell at his crew, and saw a confused gunman report their missing fuses. Then the Imperial captain pushed past the man in a pantomime of irritation, pulled the rifle out of someone’s hands and brought it to bear on Wind Sabre. The other riflemen did the same.
Wind Sabre was pulling ahead, but they still weren’t out of range. Talis ducked as she saw the rifle pull in Hankirk’s hands, saw the puff of smoke the same instant a bullet cracked the wood of the great cabin’s door behind her. Another mark on the tally. He could afford to buy her a new door.
The impulse to return fire was strong, but with the four of them on deck they’d be out of range before they could bring their cannons to bear.
The whizz and thwup sounded as Hankirk’s men started their volley. One bullet pierced the lower half of their lift envelope, and Talis grit her teeth.
“Push it,” she said to Tisker. Never mind a confident casual retreat; she hated patching canvas.
“Hankirk’s ordering them to cease fire,” Dug said, the scope to his eye.
The timbre of Hankirk’s voice was barely audible as he shouted at his crew, and the words were too tousled by the wind to hear.
Sophie squinted across the distance. “Why?”
“Save bullets? I don’t know. You prefer they shoot us and hit the top of the envelope, or the turbines?” Talis asked.
“I prefer they behave like I expect them to behave, Captain.”
“For good reason. But let’s say we take the only victory the day gave us, Soph.”
Talis stood at the stern railing as Wind Sabre lifted up and slid away. She knuckled her brow cheerfully at Hankirk, who turned away in disgust. She didn’t feel that cheer, but she wasn’t going to let him know that. And it wasn’t like being humble would stop him from hunting her down at this point. When Wind Sabre’s sails were unfurled to catch the slip winds, and The Serpent Rose still hadn’t made any progress toward pursuing them, she went below to reheat the rest of that pot of coffee.
Chapter 6
The slips carried them well away from where they’d left The Serpent Rose with hobbled props, impotent cannons, and toasted lift lines.
That evening, they grappled Wind Sabre behind a small island with the stars to their back so they could get a meal in and maybe let their hearts slow their pounding. They might have stayed on the move and rotated duty at the wheel, but as a group they’d decided their little ordeal called for a sit-down meal and a platter of Tisker’s famous glazed beef. It was a true bachelor’s recipe: rehydrated strips of jerky drenched in a bourbon reduction and served with spicy sautéed peppers. He steamed shredded cabbage and added the last of the ship’s butter, with Talis’s blessing. Comforting, quick, and satisfying. They ate at the table in Talis’s cabin, with a brass cylinder spinning cheerful pipe music from the alcove opposite her bunk. They’d all but licked their plates clean and were leaning back in the worn wooden chairs. Talis had relaxed enough to join in the laughter over Hankirk’s last furious expression as they made way.
But as Tisker brought in a round of coffees to finish off the meal, Dug brought up the topic that had been lurking in their minds all evening. “So there was no contract, then,” he said.
They’d kept the discussion off it until now. Sophie had recounted her solo adventure sneaking aboard The Serpent Rose to sabotage their engines and, after, they got her going on the subject of how the alien ship propelled itself or stayed aloft. But the contract had been peeking between the pauses of conversation all through dinner. Their bruises, and the wince from Sophie as each careful bite of her food crossed her split lip, were persistent reminders.
Everyone shifted in their chairs as Tisker distributed the hot mugs, and it seemed as though the heaviness of their predicament settled as extra weight on the protesting furniture.
Talis upended the velvet bag, retrieved from the hidden compartment in the back of the galley’s ice box, dumping the ring out onto the table. It spun, wobbling on the rough edges of its chipped surface, then settled to a stop with one of the pearl cabochons facing her. Glowing softly under the half-lit chandelier, its milky white surface stared up like a blind eye. Talis had the uncomfortable sensation that it was waiting for an answer as much as her crew was.
She leaned forward with her chin cupped in her hands and stared back at it.
“No contract,” she agreed. “So much for your captain’s business instincts.”
“You trusted Jasper on his word,” said Tisker, quick to defend her. Even from herself. “Normally that’s good as guaranteed.”
She gave him a brief, unconvinced smile.
“It will be guaranteed again after I’ve had a word with him,” she said, brooding into her coffee.
“We should move on.” Dug sat just outside the halo of
