Geist

Flicking her head around, she saw Merrick grabbing up that foolish girl he had been making cow eyes at. Nynnia was only just emerging from belowdecks, but she seemed to be an oasis of ridiculous calm in a tempest of terror. Everywhere, the ship was in chaos; sailors were screaming, the Captain was bellowing, and sails and rigging were snapping.

It was impossible to call to Merrick over the monster’s high-pitched keen, the yelling of the sailors and the almighty cracks coming from the dying ship. Instead, she pushed across the Bond. This was no leak; it was a scream.

Follow me. Give me Sight.

Her call must have gotten through, because the air suddenly bloomed. The howl of a falling mast grated at her ears, but now she had the pinpoint accuracy of Sight. The mast seemed to move in slow motion, predictable and easily avoided. She stepped aside nimbly as it crashed to the deck only feet away. Sea spray was flying everywhere, almost blinding her. A huge wave of water, kicked up by the thrashing monster, crashed into her. The taste of salt flooded her senses, enhanced by her shared Sensitivity. At least she had wrapped her cigars up in oilskin. Everything else was soaked. Yet however concerned she might be about her cigars, something else was even more precious.

Over all the noise, Sorcha could hear the neighs of Shedryi and his mare. They were all going to die—that much was obvious as the writhing coils started their downward strike onto the doomed ship—but she was damned if the Breed were going to die in the dimness of a ship’s hold.

Gasping and pushing her sodden hair out of her eyes, Sorcha leapt out of the way of sliding ropes and barrels as the ship lurched to starboard. Briefly, her racing mind considered using Voishem, but the rune of phase was one of the most draining; though it would confer on her the ability to walk through walls, it would not help the horses escape this sudden madness.

Again Sorcha could hear her stallion’s neighs, sounding more demanding than terrified. Merrick had called Shedryi long in the tooth, and had assumed that he was merely a horse to her. Such attachment to a creature could be considered a weakness. Well, he’d know she cared, once she did this.

Opening herself to the Otherside, Sorcha activated Chityre in her Gauntlets. Bracing herself against the bucking and dying vessel, she raised both hands in the direction of the hold where the horses were trapped. The ship was already being ripped apart; one more hole was not going to make any difference. Her Gauntlets lit up like sparkling fireworks as the explosion ripped from her spread fingers. The rune opened a tiny and split-second gap into the Otherside, a blink-of-an-eye moment that would have been an impressive display at any other time, but at this moment was barely noticeable amid the absolute chaos around her. Chityre blew apart the wood of the hatch and the side of the swaying vessel. Nails and debris flew through the air like blades of grass and disappeared through the momentary rift into the Otherside.

Clenching her fist closed about the rune, Sorcha glanced back. Merrick and the girl were following, drenched and pale but somehow still on their feet despite the thrashing monster and the dying ship.

“Yrikhodit,” Sorcha screamed at the Breed. Both of the horses’ heads snapped up at the command, and the proud, noble creatures did indeed come. With a surge, both stallion and mare leapt over the remains of the hatch, skidding and sliding on their hooves on the pitching deck. Sorcha scrambled onto the stallion while Merrick pulled Nynnia up behind him on the mare.

“Horace!” the young Deacon howled, but the pack mule was lost in the maelstrom of the sinking ship. The great, seaweed-encrusted head of the monster was dropping down toward them. Its mouth, as large as two rowboats, ripped into the remaining mast.

This was death, then. Sorcha threw her arms around Shedryi. Long in the tooth. Perhaps that was true, but both of them deserved to die in a better place. With her breath coming in broken gasps, the Deacon leaned down to the stallion.

“Kysotu, my love,” she whispered into his dark ear.

The ship shifted under them, finally succumbing to the crushing pressure of the monster. Only moments remained. Only heartbeats. The stallion, true to his training, remained steadfast. With a shake of his arched neck, he leapt bravely forward into the waves, his mare following after.

The water was freezing cold, and yet it boiled like a cauldron. She couldn’t see Merrick on Melochi. The ocean was full of wreckage and howling sailors. Underneath her, Shedryi was swimming as hard as he could, almost an underwater gallop. His head stretched forward, nostrils flaring. He had no saddle on, only a bridle. Sorcha felt herself sliding off his slick back, and wrapped her arm around his neck.

The waves surged and she let out a scream into the storm as everything tilted. She caught a glimpse of a tangled mass of rigging and mast swinging toward them. There was nothing she could do. Everything crumpled away into darkness and waves.

SEVEN The Sweet Taste of Intercession

The discovery of Corsair had destroyed morale, making every crew member shiver. After Aachon and Raed returned, they cast off from the crippled warship and never said a word about what they had seen there. Silence descended on Dominion. Snook, the thin little strip of a woman who was their navigator, had tried to keep the others back from the railing, but the smell of death and the pool of scarlet on the deck had been witnessed by everyone. They were not fools; they too would know that nothing human had wreaked that vengeance on the Imperial Navy. Raed was not the only one to realize the implications of what had happened.

Aachon kept hold of his weirstone, not putting it away as he usually did, as if to reassure himself and the rest of the crew that it was still alive.

“She’s a hazard,” the Young Pretender whispered to him, jerking his head sideways at the limping warship.

The first mate nodded, understanding immediately. He turned to the gun crew. “Two shots into her, below the water line, if you please, Mr. Eastan.”

The report of the cannons made Raed flinch. He didn’t turn around to watch the battered ship sink under the waves, though he heard many of his crew rush to the railing to do so. He couldn’t blame them for muttering among themselves. It wasn’t every day that a blood-soaked Imperial warship went down to the bottom.

He heard Aachon talking to Byrd. “We will send word to the Imperial Navy when we get to Ulrich. Their families should know.” It was a small danger, yet the right thing to do.

Raed swallowed hard. Those relatives would be better off without the knowledge of what had happened to their loved ones. The image of the desiccated Captain, reaching for his dead weirstone, was burned on the Pretender’s brain. He glanced up where the Rossin flag fluttered over Dominion. The mer-lion was hanging over him, just like in the ancient Curse.

Every assumption of his life had been blown out of the water, as conclusively as Corsair had been, and Raed needed time to pull himself together. He started toward his cabin.

“My prince”—Aachon intercepted him before he could reach the safety of his quarters—“I was thinking . . .” He paused to glance down at the swirling weirstone that he’d still not put away. He cleared his throat. “We need to be away from this area immediately and without delay.”

Dominion had been fast once—the fastest in the Northern Sea. Now, with so many barnacles on her hull and with all their running repairs, she wallowed in her native environment. Once a swift runner, she now could barely walk the course. Raed was about to open his mouth to make some quip, yet when he saw the serious look in his first mate’s eye, he knew what he was suggesting.

The Pretender glanced down at the weirstone for a moment; then he nodded. “When all the cards turn against you, it is time to stack the deck.”

Aachon grinned bleakly and spun about on the deck. “Prepare to run before the wind.”

Most of the crew scrambled up into the rigging, but Byrd, as always, was the one to speak his mind. He turned his sun-browned face into the slight breeze. “But sir, we’re nearly becalmed.”