Fifty-Seven Otherwalker

FIFTY-SEVEN

Otherwalker

MARY

H art paced about his ship as I closed, his head low, chest heaving and hooves pawing. There was no sign of his former foe, but a nearby Mereish vessel with the figurehead of a lean, monstrous bull drifted listlessly. Nomad was here too, along with Jessin Faucher's The Red Tempest and a smaller Mereish vessel who appeared to be under Aeadine control.

Someone must have recognized me in the water, for a line slapped down into the waves. I seized it and held on as I was drawn up to Hart 's rail and used the last of my strength to clamber aboard.

"Ms. Firth!" Mr. Penn met me as I fumbled my sodden way over the rail. He helped me upright, but the anxiety in his face was not for me. "Hurry to the main cabin, miss. It's the captain."

Fear clamped over me. Moments later I lunged, breathless, into Samuel's cabin. Sam was splayed across the table on his back, his chest covered with blood. Olsa and Enisca braced over him, the Usti spy holding a compress to the source of the blood while Illya stood guard next to the door with Charles. Poverly patted her captain's face with a damp cloth while Maren laid a series of talismans on his bare, bloody chest.

"Hold him still if he rouses," the Mereish man said to Olsa, and caught sight of me. Relief flooded his expression before his eyes flicked to Illya and Charles. "We need to act now. Find Benedict."

The pair hastened past me, Charles catching my eye as he did. His worried eyes only compounded my fear.

"What is happening?" I panted, clutching the doorframe. My head was light and my breathing too fast, too shallow.

"He is dying and his spirit is trapped in the Other," Maren replied. Below him, Samuel's chest hardly rose, and his stomach was still over the high buttons of his breeches. Enisca did not lessen the pressure on his compress, which was already soaked with blood. "He was shot with an ensorcelled pistol. The ball was made for a Sooth, but not to cut them off from the Other. To imprison them there. I have removed it, but he was too weakened to come back. He is still trapped."

"It is too early to do the ritual," Enisca said, half to me, half to the others in the cabin. "But if we do not try, we may never have the chance. Should we proceed without the brother?" She directed the last at Maren.

"Try what?" Benedict stopped just inside the doorway, staring at his twin. His expression was impassive, locked in stone, but I saw the way his fingers twitched at his sides.

"Your brother's spirit is trapped in the Other," Enisca said, her words blunt and clipped. "Hae shot him, and no talisman can bring him back. Either we heal your corruption, the both of you, or your twin will die. His body cannot fight with his spirit absent."

"Our chances of succeeding are already low with Mr. Rosser unconscious," Maren admitted.

Benedict crossed to stand at the foot of the table, looking down the length of Samuel's body. "Remove the shot."

"We already did. That is not the problem," Olsa snapped. "He is too far gone."

"Ben." I drew up to the other side of the table, bracing my hands on the wood to stop their shaking. The urge to touch Samuel was nearly overpowering, to clutch him and speak to him and beg him to wake.

Ben and I were close, closer than my instincts considered safe. "Please. You have to do this. Please."

He did not reply.

"This," I said, holding his gaze, "is the right thing to do."

"Is it?" he asked hollowly. "To risk my power for a chance at…"

"At saving his life," I finished, speaking the words he seemed unable to. "He took the fall for you. He fought for you. He came for you in Mere. We did."

At the last he seemed to truly look at me , for an instant.

"Please, Benedict," I said, infusing my words with every ounce of sincerity and compulsion I could muster. "Please."

Illya stepped forward, backing up my words with more explicit force.

"No need for that, Usti," Ben muttered and turned his attention to Maren. "Tell me what to do."

"Ms. Poverly," Maren prompted.

Poverly approached Benedict and held out a bottle of vaguely bloody-looking liquid, coppery and thick.

"Drink that. It will help you shift physically into the Other. Samuel will be there too, but he may be disoriented, even unconscious."

"I'll go with Ben," I offered.

Enisca released the compress to Poverly's smaller but no less capable hands and took up a second bottle in blood-pinked fingers. She tipped it towards Benedict in a mock salute.

Benedict stiffened—my months in the man's presence told me that the tic in his jaw was more alarm than anger. He held up his own bottle. "This will send me into the Other? How this different than what they did to Sam?"

Enisca's reply was unflinching. "We know what we are doing."

Benedict's fingers contracted around the bottle, and for a moment I feared he might crush it.

Olsa took one of Samuel's limp hands, clasping it between both of her own and settling her shoulders in preparation. "I will not cross over physically, but I will in spirit."

I longed to be in Olsa's place, her hands wrapped around Sam's, but knew the other Sooth was far more capable than I of managing Samuel's disoriented, injured body.

I could see Benedict's anger and growing frustration, making his chest rise in tight, short movements. He hung his head briefly, eyes closed, simply breathing.

I forced myself to offer him an open palm.

"What do you want?" Ben asked.

"Hold my hand." I still did not look at him, focusing on Sam's closed eyes instead. "I'll be with you. I'll Otherwalk and anchor you as long as I can."

"You must move more quickly," Maren interjected. "Do not speak. You will all have four breaths before the danger of corruption— further corruption, for the twins—becomes too great, so hold each breath as long as you can."

Ben ignored my proffered hand but downed the bottle in one long swill.

At the top of the table, Maren gently hefted Samuel's shoulders and tilted back his head. "Mr. Grant."

Charles carefully poured the liquid between Samuel's lips, and, under Maren's direction, massaged his throat to help him swallow. Sam did not stir.

"Do not let him breathe more than four times on the Other side," Enisca instructed Ben, Olsa and I. "Cover his nose and mouth between breaths."

I couldn't bear it—the sight of Samuel's limpness, the slosh of strange liquid or the suggestion that we would need to smother Samuel to keep his physical form in the Other.

I left Benedict at the foot of the table and took up position next to Maren. Then I drew a deep, level breath. As I let it out again, Tane's presence surged, and indigo-grey light filtered around my vision.

The human world dropped away with ease. The walls, the table, every object in the room faded, until only the lights that were our companions remained. The distant boom of cannons and clashing storms vanished. Olsa's brightness became stronger as her spirit followed us over the divide and began to pace the cabin, surveying the Dark Water beyond with vigilant eyes.

Samuel's body lingered, suspended in the air before us and wrapped in his dark, forest-green glow. Still limp. Still unresponsive.

I heard the sharp intake of Ben's breath—a gasp, shuddering on the way out. His first breath.

Samuel's physical form suddenly crumpled to the deck of the ethereal cabin. I bit my lips closed and dropped down next to him, pulling his head into my lap and covering his nose and mouth with careful hands.

A heartbeat later, the red-hazed body of Enisca joined us. Her eyes were wide, her lips pinched, and her hands pressed to her stomach in apparent nausea. Still, her movements were quick as she reached into the pocket of her coat. She pulled out a wooden knife, the blade glowing like ghisten wood.

"Help me lift him. We head to the water now," she said—her first breath. Her voice was low but clean and natural, and I fully comprehended that, along with Samuel, she and Benedict were wholly in the Other with me. Olsa's form was still ethereal, half-present and watchful, ready to warn us of approaching danger. But Samuel, Benedict and Enisca were Otherwalking.

I had known this was coming, conceptually, but hadn't anticipated the rush of emotion it brought. I was not alone in the Dark Water, with the lights of a thousand monsters beyond tenuous walls.

I reached to heft Samuel's shoulders, but Ben pushed me aside. He heaved Samuel up on his own despite his barely healed shoulder, expression straining, nostrils flaring as he battled not to breathe, and looked at Olsa promptingly. A breath slipped through Samuel's lips, then I covered his nose and mouth once more.

The Sooth woman led the way to the bulwark. She passed through without hesitation and stepped, bizarrely, directly into the water paces below—ankle-deep water for her, though the draft of the ship ran far beyond that.

One breath later, we were with her. The Dark Water lapped as Enisca motioned—hastily now, all of us nearing our final breaths— for Ben to put Samuel down. I crouched with him, and Ben arranged his brother's head in my lap above the slosh of the black waves.

Fae dragonflies converged in languorous gold and purple swirls as Enisca took one of Samuel's hands and slit his palm open, her lips pinched, her movements fast. She set his hand back under the waves, dark blood merging with darker water.

She took Benedict's hand next, opening it shallowly from thumb to little finger in one clean swipe. He watched her without expression, though I saw the strain in his jaw and the way he fought not to speak.

He held out his hand and watched his blood drip into the Dark Water. As it fell, spectral tendrils of light surged into existence, lacing Samuel and Benedict to the world all around them and one another. The ties between them were strong, a clean and unyielding black that Tane sensed as healthy. But another cord wound around it, a muddied mingling of forest green and burned red that pulsed and strained. That same cord passed through each of the twins and trailed off into the water—Ben's more sickly pink than red or green, and Sam's tinted with orange.

Then, just as my lungs began to scream and Ben tipped his head back, chest spasming for want of air, a pure, blood-red color trailed up from the water. It wrapped around the men's bleeding hands and seemed to pry into them, into their veins.

The muddied mingling of colors clarified, each color separating into individual strands, still entwined but whole in their own right. The fae dragonflies around us surged and brighter lights began to close—morgories, I knew, among other monstrosities.

We had to leave, and not just because of the creatures closing in. Enisca put a hand to her chest, clearly straining, and caught my eye. She nodded once, her expression ill for want of air, and gasped.

The solidity of her form vanished, transitioning into a red haze. But I hardly saw.

Samuel, Ben and I all shuddered back between worlds. Water clapped over my head. I struck out, flailing—not to save myself, but to find Samuel. Limp, unconscious Samuel.

I surfaced and raked in a frantic breath. For an instant all I could do was fill my lungs—they were bottomless, ravenous, and burning. I tried to claw the hair from my face but my eyes stung with saltwater and I couldn't see, couldn't find—

A strong hand seized me by the collar. It jerked me forward until I bumped into a piece of wood—wreckage. I clung to it, instinctive as a newborn babe.

Benedict did not let go, holding me on one side of a drifting spar while, on the other, he held Samuel's shoulders above the water. Samuel, whose eyes were slowly opening beneath a hedge of sodden hair.

"Thank you," I tried to splutter, but ended up coughing instead. I fumbled to wrap my arms around the spar.

"Do not drown," Ben rasped. His power came with it, lending strength to my limbs and clarity to my mind I hadn't had before. It felt different—clearer, truer—and his voice was not entirely devoid of emotion. If anything, he sounded overcome.

"Saint." Samuel coughed. He fumbled weakly for the spar too, and Ben pulled him closer, bracing him against the wood.

I reached across to grab his hand, and he grabbed mine in return. His face was deathly pale and creased with pain, and I tried not to think of his wound bleeding into the water.

"What happened? Where is Hart ?" he asked.

I twisted, blinking stinging eyes as a bank of smoke blew across us. We were alone between unfamiliar ships, save for the spar, trails of rope and patch of tattered sail. Hart was out of sight, Samuel was bleeding into the sea. And Enisca was gone.

"We need to get you to a surgeon," I said to Samuel, eyes flicking between the nearby ships. The smoke was thickened with fog, forming a dense miasma. Two vessels in sight were disabled, one burning. Another appeared to be Aeadine and mostly intact, but was swarming with Otherborn beasts. The screaming of her crew was muffled, not only by the fog but by the roaring of the fire and wash of the waves, as if a boundary had been set between us and her horrors.

"I can search for Hart ," Benedict said. "I can still swim."

"No." Samuel seized his wrist. His expression was thick with bewilderment, disconnected, but, as he looked down at himself, memory must have slowly returned. He paled even further—as impossible as that seemed—and he grasped the spar more tightly. "Something is coming. Stay together, at all costs."

A horrific screech chased his words. A heartbeat later a spindly, bone-limbed monstrosity of Otherborn flesh plummeted out of the sky—straight down upon us.