Fifty-Eight The Fog of War

FIFTY-EIGHT

The Fog of War

SAMUEL

T ane manifested, standing atop the waves with her arms thrown out in defense. Mary dropped beneath the water just as claws tore the waves where she had been into frothing furrows. The winged beast shrieked in frustration and swatted at our spar, sending it spinning before the creature swooped back into the sky.

Only Ben's iron grip kept me above the water as our tenuous raft bobbed and jarred. I felt immeasurably weak, beset by a pain so all-encompassing that I hardly felt the sting of salt in my wound and my eyes. My memory was fragmented, but my Sooth's Knowing was there to fill in the gaps.

Hae's shot. Struggling back on deck and collapsing in sight of Penn and Fisher, who must have seen me safely delivered to my cabin. Then… blood and binding threads in the Dark Water.

How I had come to be in the water was beyond me, but that hardly mattered now.

"Mary?" I rasped, attempting to twist and survey the waves around us, but I was thwarted by a shock of pain.

Mary resurfaced between Ben and I, and I nearly let go of the spar in relief.

"That thing is wearing a collar. Did you see it? Sam?" She panted. "Where did it go?"

"Hae," I concluded, dread assailing me. A thin hope that I had killed the man and simply forgotten was extinguished.

Ben pointed straight up to where the beast circled, preparing for another pass. "Can you stop it?"

Not with my voice, that I knew. The edges of the world had blurred again, but this time with fatigue instead of the Dark Water.

So I spoke to the beast in silence, a wordless stretch of will near Magni in its function. That will reverberated through the fabric of the worlds and directly into the mind of Hae's beast. I sent it one instruction, clear and simple.

Go back.

"Get under the water!" I rasped, reaching for Mary, who wrapped an arm around my shoulders and drew a hasty breath.

Light burst across the sky as the waves closed over our heads. It came with a bone-deep boom that sent ripples in all directions, stirring our hair and clothes and turning back the very waves of the sea.

I stared through a veil of salt-blurred water as the purple light vanished. Relief coursed through me, then faltered. The creature, temporarily pushed back over the divide between worlds, re-emerged in a struggling, raging clamor of bone wings and shuddering seaweed.

More lights joined it, rushing towards us in the human world, from sky and ships and the depths below. Creatures converging on the presence of a Summoner—or perhaps, at another Summoner's command.

Fucking Hae . I cursed him and myself, but regret was useless now.

Huden. Morgories. Dittama. More beasts I had read of but never seen converged, with streams of fae dragonflies swirling throughout. Some were already in the human world. More crackled through the barrier between realms, bursting through the Tide-thinned veil with ravenous speed.

"Mary," I panted, pulling her into me and bracing us both against the spar. Ben clung beside us now. "Can you clear the fog? I need to see."

She nodded and began to sing, one of her arms still around me in turn, anchoring us.

The fog began to move, clearing the area around us with alacrity. No other Stormsingers contradicted her, though I heard distant voices join in. Bells rang in rhythm and songs spread—both Mereish and Aeadine, even Capesh and Usti and Ismani and Sunjani—as captive Stormsingers across the fleet joined in chorus.

Ships came into view: whole ships, battered ships, great drifts of wreckage and bobbing boats, overloaded with survivors. All was lit by lanterns and Otherborn beasts, and more than one burning ship.

I glimpsed Hart in the distance, then Nomad . The urge to swim towards them was strong, but there was no way my body could comply.

My fatigue shifted towards resignation as more beasts emerged from the Other, one by one. My pain yielded to the awesome horror of it, and, from the cries drifting across the water, I was not alone in that feeling. But still, the Stormsingers sang.

There was a moment of assessment, in which I could imagine every captain in the fleet staring, conferring, beginning to disseminate orders. I could imagine the other Sooths, staring as I did, with the burden of responsibility heavy on their shoulders.

Then the beasts began to attack. I heard the crack of a mast as Hae's winged monster latched onto it. The vessel rocked and sailors toppled, shrieking into the sea. A loose cannon went with them, striking the waves with a muffled gong, a crack of cooling metal and a plume of steam.

For one more heartbeat, I prepared. I relished the feeling of Mary, bracketed between my arms, the sound of her voice and the movement of her legs, brushing mine. I looked to Benedict, clutching my arm in urgent prompt, his eyes more open and honest than I had seen in twenty years. I cherished the pain, the sting of saltwater in my wounds.

Tilting my head back and pressing Mary into my chest, I filled my eyes with a hundred Otherborn beasts. I spoke again, in that second world. I commanded them to go, and shrieking, sucking cracks began to reverberate across the fleet.

Lesser beasts vanished back into the Other. Some returned, fighting me, while others continued to ravage the fleets without care for which ships they attacked. Ghistings manifested everywhere, including Tane, who still guarded us. Hart was there too in the distance, stamping the waves and swinging his massive antlers as morgories swirled around his drifting ship.

New voices joined me, springing up one after another. Men and women, young and old, Mereish and Capesh—all Summoners. Fainter voices called too, Sooths whose unaltered, natural abilities were amplified by the rise of the tides and the darkening of the moons.

Beasts began to depart, one by one. Soon only the strongest of them remained, interspersed with clouds of harmless dragonflies. The latter swirled up masts and raced over the glistening surface of the water while the former, including Hae's avian monstrosity, continued to ravage the fleets.

"Cap'n!" a voice shouted from a longboat. Mr. Penn, along with two other sailors. "Best we get back aboard, sir!"

Mary prodded me, opening my arms and hauling on one of my hands as she started for the boat. Ben joined in, holding the boat steady as she clambered aboard, then forcing me to go after her. Pain made my world skew briefly, what little wit I had focused on the beasts, but when I came back to myself Ben was in the boat with us, raking hair back from his face.

"Did you find Enisca?" I heard Mary ask Penn. "She should have come out of the Other with us, but—"

"We'll keep searching, Ms. Firth," Penn replied, casting a glance over the water. "Soon as you're safe aboard Hart ."

Safety, however, proved an evasive thing that night. Otherborn beasts demanded my attention at every moment, and I was forced to situate myself on Hart 's foredeck while Mr. Keo continued his capable command and the fleets' Stormsingers, including Mary at my side, labored to dispel the fog. Willoughby and Poverly tended my wounds, and I felt marginally better with a numbing poultice on my chest and a heavy dose of rum in my belly.

Would, though, that I could give a thorough account of that final hour. Swarms of Otherborn creatures, banished once more from our world. Mereish and Aeadine vessels, turning on one another once again. The half-drowned town of Renown in the center of the battle as we drifted east, its docks and buildings submerged, its people fled to the fort and higher ground. A flaming brigantine, sailing past a northern bastion, where cannons steamed and tattered Aeadine colors spasmed in an ever-changing witch wind.

I recall Mary, standing at my side, her voice joined with a dozen other Aeadine Stormsingers across the fleet as cyclones erupted and the waves themselves turned on the Mereish. I do question, however, if she retained any awareness of me. She was lost in her magic, in the strength of her voice and the ghisten light that prickled from her skin.

Benedict stood with us. His presence was unfailing, his power dulling my pain and strengthening Hart 's crew. His expression was distant, as opaque as it had ever been.

Some small part of me, freed by the instinctiveness of my actions, feared that we had failed. That my brother remained as he had been.

Then lanternlight passed across his face, and I saw the brightness of tears in the corners of his eyes.