Fifty-Four Black Tide Sons

FIFTY-FOUR

Black Tide Sons

SAMUEL

W ood moaned and rigging rattled as Hart came alongside a Mereish brigantine. I knelt on the quarterdeck, sighted down the length of a long Usti rifle, and picked a marksman from the enemy's deck.

Muzzles flashed, gun crews hastened to take up small arms, and boarding nets clotted the sloshing, jarring divide between ships. Benedict and his boarding party pressed at the rails, buoyed by my brother's magic into a courageous, stolid line.

I reloaded with thoughtless movements, my focus on my brother and the haze of Magni magic that wafted from him like smoke. To me, the Dark Water was fully overlaid with the human world now, hardly a gossamer veil between the two. The effect was nauseating, but the intoxication of my heightened power overrode it—along with any qualms I might have had at my brother ensorcelling my crew.

I heard Mereish commands amid the furore. The voice was obscured by the melee, but my dreamer's senses knew precisely where she was, who she was, what she was. She stood on the foredeck, a woman of forty-five years—an artist in her childhood, duelist in her youth, and today she would die of a shot to the chest.

I sighted down the barrel of my rifle, though I knew I would not be the one to kill her.

My mind began to divide. I saw a dittama snatch a mage from our prize's deck six heartbeats before the creature wriggled from the Other. I felt the thud of another ship's fallen, listless spar collide with our hull at the same moment as Mereish bar shot shattered it from its mast.

I existed outside of time. And for the first time, my mind bore it.

"With me!" Benedict roared, leaping up onto the rail.

His boarding party, drunk on Magni valor, surged aboard our prize. I landed one more shot, taking a marksman down with a ball to the shoulder, then the melee was too thick.

The clash was brief, as Ben's power swept the ship and Mereish weapons clattered to the deck. The dittama dove, dragging a screaming Stormsinger with it. The captured ship's ghisting, manifest as a robed saint near the bowsprit, yielded back into their figurehead in a slow pulse of ghisten light. The captain took her shot to the chest and proceeded to die.

After that, enemy sailors and marines dropped to their knees and allowed themselves to be bound. Ben and select members of his party stripped them of their clothing and donned it themselves, transforming boarders to crew in moments. The prisoners were hustled below, and Ben saluted me with the Mereish's commander's ceded sidesword.

I raised a hand in return.

"Cast us off, Mr. Keo!" I shouted down the length of Hart .

"Sir!" Keo acknowledged, and under his direction we began to disentangle from the prize.

"Are you sure we have time for such… deceptions?" Grant asked, his hat gone, his sandy hair pulled into a hasty tuft and his skin darkened by powdersmoke. He cradled a musket in the crook of his arm. "Do not mistake me, I admire a good disguise, but should you separate so close to the ritual?"

"We have time," I said. I reached for my former intoxication, seeking to pull it over myself like a blanket, but, as Ben and his new ship began to cast off, my expression must have betrayed my concern.

Grant slung his musket over his back and adjusted the strap across his chest. "I shall see him back in time."

"I would be grateful," I conceded. "He seems to have some respect for you."

Grant grinned broadly. "Pestering a soulless Magni into friendship is among the grandest of my achievements."

"I would not claim friendship so soon," I warned. "Be careful."

"Aye, aye, Captain." The former highwayman saluted and made for the rail. I watched as he leapt the growing gap between ships, landing with moderate grace. Sweeping up a fallen Mereish officer's hat, he planted it on his head and sauntered off to join Ben on the quarterdeck.

My Sooth's senses reached after the pair, searching the constant influx of premonitions for their faces, their new ship, for a glimpse at whether our plan would succeed. All I saw was a chaos of conflict.

I retreated to stand beside the helmsman and clasped my hands behind my back. I leaned into my power, shirking my concerns to focus on Hart 's impending route through the fog—and the eerie, shifting green light that was Inis Hae.

"Nor-nor east, Mr. Kennedy," I said.

We began a circuitous route through the battle, trailed closely by Nomad . I remained beside the helmsman, giving frequent corrections to our course and occasionally calling orders down the deck. When a swarm of morgories surged our way, I diverted them to a Mereish frigate, whose own Sooth—if they were still alive— was no Summoner. The creatures battered the hull as we passed from sight. When a sudden, unsettling doldrum overtook us and a Stormsinger's voice drifted across the wind—singing a Mereish hymn to the sea—I knew where to train the mouth of my rifle to silence but not kill. When her song cut off, the wind returned and we continued forward.

At last, we came into sight of a familiar Mereish frigate with towering red sails. Ben's smaller vessel emerged from the fog a moment later, to all appearances adrift—her deck scattered with limp figures and swaths of blood, and her sails drooping.

Ben's commandeered ship rammed Jessin Faucher's The Red Tempest in a moan of wood, clatter of spars and slosh of water. A ship's bell clanged and the frigate rocked dangerously towards us—her deck bared, crew screaming and grabbing onto anything they could. Half a dozen slid down into the water with splashes and suddenly extinguished cries.

"Fire!" Ms. Skarrow roared.

The deck shuddered beneath my boots as our guns sounded. Canister shot harried The Red Tempest' s deck before she could rock level once more, and, in the belly of the ship, I saw Hae's light flare. My head immediately began to ache, and I took a moment to clutch the coin in my pocket and grit my teeth.

"Make ready to board, Mr. Penn!" I shouted to midships, where the bald man and his armsmen waited. Through the fog, I saw Nomad begin to drop his boats, brimming with Fisher's boarders.

Minutes contracted into seconds as we came alongside our prize. Grappling hooks clattered and boarding pikes stretched across the gap like emaciated fingers under a barrage of musket fire. Swivel guns on the rails of both ships barked in a deadly contention, but, facing threats on three sides, the frigate was overwrought.

Hae was not passive, however. His unseen assault continued, a holystone wearing through my skull and into my mind. I saw his signature light move, heading for the companionway midships.

My time had come. "You have the deck, Mr. Keo!"

I seized a tattered rope and swung the gap between ships to land solidly on the hull, both feet planted between two gunports.

I veritably ran up the remaining distance to the ship's rail. Just as I was about to reach the top a figure appeared, hatless and dishevelled, his edges obscured by the boiling, slate-dark sky. He raised a hatchet and hacked.

The rope gave way. I swung at the last moment and landed on an open gunport, which rattled under my sudden weight. I crouched, seized the edge of the port, and swung under it just as musket fire peppered the wood where I had been standing.

Tired muscles howling with the strain, I latched my legs over the lip of the port and sat up.

The muzzle of a cannon yawned at my chest, so close I could feel its heat.

A ramrod stabbed towards my face. I twisted to the side and tumbled through the hatch.

I hit the deck in a roll and made to stagger upright, only to be bowled back over by Hae. We fell together. I sensed a nearby bucket of sand, ready to soak up blood and water, and threw a handful in Hae's face.

The other man reared back. I grabbed the whole bucket this time and swung it at his head.

He surged to his feet and retreated, drawing his sword as gunners scattered. I let the bucket go and drew my cutlass in the same movement. There were no useless words or threats, no dancing about and wasting breath. He lunged. I caught his blade and twisted into a thrust. He sidestepped and disengaged, his attention dividing as a fresh thunder of feet battered the deck above and the shouting above took on a fevered pitch. Somewhere nearby, an officer shouted close quarters, and the cannons were abandoned.

I gave Hae no reprieve. I attacked in a series of sharp, tight cuts and thrusts, parrying and deflecting his recourses in seamless, timeless action. He met each one with the same ease, the impossible swiftness of premonition.

The exchange lasted seconds. Then, with only the slightest drop, I tucked my sword around his, took control of his blade and thrust. The tip of my sword slit his wrist like butter. Hae cursed, dropped his weapon, and vanished into the melee.

I made it two steps before a snap and rumble brought me up short. The deck tilted. A badly fastened gun broke loose and began to slide, scattering a cradle of shot as it went. Cannonballs tumbled to the deck as the gun crashed into one of its fellows, crushing a hapless sailor and toppling yet another rack of shot. More cannon balls began to thunder across the deck, smashing ankles and scattering everyone in their path.

I darted out of the way and searched the chaos for Hae—his face or his light.

Above. I fought my way to the stairs and emerged on deck. There Ben and Grant fought their way up the quarterdeck stairs to where Jessin Faucher was surrounded by a guard of twenty armsmen. Fisher was nowhere to be seen, but I recognized her first officer organizing the flow of boarders midships.

"Samuel!" Ben roared. Half the armsmen faltered under an onslaught of Ben's power, but the rest, evidentially guarded by talismans, resisted. "If you please!"

Hae was gone again—below. Hiding? Cowering? My headache eased.

What happened from my feet meeting the quarterdeck to the moment I laid my sword at Jessin Faucher's, I could not recount. My memory is a blur of action and movement, the swift responses of instinct and a cacophony of violent images, one cutting in the next. But soon after, he relinquished his blade, and the ship surrendered.

"So this is your response?" Faucher demanded. His expression was one of betrayal, of all things. "To all I have told you?"

"Not at all. You and I need to speak of many things, but later." I pointed my sword at him before I turned on Mr. Penn, Benedict, and Grant. "Run up our colors and secure the ship."

Penn saluted, and Grant sketched a bow in response.

"Captain," Ben returned, planting Faucher's hat on his head as the man and his loyalists were led below. The rest were already either being corralled into the hold, accompanied by flying fists and last bouts of resistance, or sent over the side to the tenuous mercy of dumped longboats.

"If you will pardon me," I said, cleaning off my cutlass with a handkerchief. "I must seek out Mr. Hae."