Seven Hart

SEVEN

Hart

SAMUEL

I awoke to a soft light. Slowly my sleep-heavy mind registered the source, and I stilled.

A spectral stag stood over my hammock. His tines were huge, vanishing into the deck above, and his mane thick above powerful forelegs. His eyes of indigo sea-glass peered down into mine, and, despite their lack of soul, his stare brimmed with meaning.

He stomped and the ship shuddered.

"Awake! I'm awake," I gasped. I rolled out of the other side of the hammock and tugged my breeches from the lines, abandoning all dignity to hop my way into them. "What is it?"

The ghisting could not verbally respond—I was no ghiseau — but Hart abruptly shed his substance, sinking back into the wood of the ship and streaming through it towards the door then out into the passage.

I emerged into the companionway just as a small form barreled into me.

"Captain!" Ms. Poverly, the steward's girl, squeaked as I set her back on her feet. Fourteen, red-haired and narrow-faced, she instinctively touched her forehead and panted out, "We've been boarded. They're in the hold! They were in the hold—"

"Rouse the rest of the crew, call quarters." I pushed her aside, gently but firmly, and hastened on. "And send me Ms. Skarrow!"

Poverly bolted and I resumed my pursuit of Hart's snaking, guiding light.

The gun deck was a cacophony of shouts, jostling forms and swinging hammocks. Mr. Penn, quartermaster, shouldered his way to me.

"Two strangers, jumped out the gunport," Penn grunted. "There's a third still below, sir. He has Mary."

Ghisten light flooded the hold as I descended the ladder. Half a dozen crew already surrounded two figures at the far end: Mary and a stranger in an unremarkable grey coat, long and concealing. He had lost his cocked hat, crushed nearby, and his hair was wet in the ghisten light.

He had a long knife leveled at Mary's throat, who stood against a wall of crates, a spent pistol at her feet and her hands raised. The air stank of tar, damp, blood and gunpowder.

Rage and urgency made my blood sing and my focus narrow— Mary, the knife, the stranger. My Sooth's senses roamed, skittering the divide between worlds and sending me gouts of images, impulses, and warnings.

My eyes dropped. The stranger favored one leg, and, though the light was weak and his coat long, I could see the bottom half of his trousers were soaked with blood.

"Give me that musket," I murmured to Penn. "Is it primed?"

"Aye, sir." The quartermaster handed over his weapon and I passed him my cutlass.

"Drop the knife!" I advanced through the rows of lashed barrels and crates with the musket to my shoulder. Mr. Penn and a dozen other sailors flooded around us, hemming the stranger in. Lanterns joined Hart's spectral light and shadows cavorted about from a hundred angles.

The intruder looked at me. In his distraction Mary began to hum, low in her throat. The knife started to shake, drawing a snaking line of blood on Mary's exposed flesh. She inhaled sharply and tipped her head back, her hum faltering, her eyes snatching mine. She looked at me, prompting, demanding. Frightened.

I fired and was through the gunsmoke before it plumed, my strides eating up the deck.

The intruder moved, slashing and staggering simultaneously. Mary seized his knife and dropped it instantly, cursing and clutching a bloody hand.

She kicked it spinning down the deck. The man, barely upright, clawed after it, but, upon realizing the futility of his enterprise, turned back on Mary. He grabbed her by the skirts and hauled, trying to bring her down, to wrestle an arm around her throat.

I dove into the fray. I pulled Mary upright and smashed the butt of my musket down on the man's face at the same time as Mary recovered and stomped on one of his flailing hands. He shrieked, and a second blow from my musket silenced him.

"They came for Monna," Mary panted, staggering back into the crates. Her eyes swept the hold and she twisted, still clutching her bleeding hand at the wrist. Crimson dripped to the deck, joining a growing stain from our captive. "Tane says she escaped."

"Mr. Penn, find Monna!" I called. There was a rush of movement as my orders were obeyed, and I edged between Mary and the intruder, now flat on his back on the floor. He was barely conscious, his breaths thick, rattling things, clotted with blood.

"Who is he?" I traded my cutlass back from a helpful crewwoman. A dozen crowded around, wary, waiting for orders and led by my first officer, Mr. Keo. The rest had vanished above with Penn, and running footsteps reverberated throughout the ship.

"Mereish," Mary said at my shoulder. "Monna said they came to kill her."

"Why were you here?"

When Mary did not reply, I cast a glance over my shoulder. She met my gaze in a way I did not need my Sooth's abilities to interpret. Whatever her reason was, she was not about to divulge it in front of the crew.

I knelt beside the stranger in a pool of spreading blood. He was plain in death, a simple, Mereish man with death-bleached skin, angry eyes and blood bubbling over his lips. The impulse to try and save him welled, and passed. He would drown in his own blood long before a surgeon could be found.

"Who are you?" I asked. "If you tell me, I will see you are given a proper burial." Even though you threatened my Stormsinger. Even though you invaded my ship and released my prisoner.

He tried to speak, but the effort sent him into a fit of coughing. Mary's hand tightened on my shoulder as the coughing thickened into a choke, then a garble. Then nothing, save twitching muscles.

Silence overtook the hold. Distantly I heard whispered questions, orders passed to the deck above. The ship creaked in the harbor waters. Hart's light faded and we were left with only lanternlight, the stink of blood and emptied bowels, and the gaze of the dead man.

I rose. Now that the danger had passed the urge to reach for Mary beset me, to pull her close and wrap her in my arms and make sure every inch of her was whole. I settled for pulling my handkerchief from my pocket and wrapping her hand, which she gave me silently.

"Wrap the body and bring him up on deck," I said to Keo. "I need to report this to the port authorities."

"Wait. Tell no one, yet. Ensure the crew keeps quiet," Mary interjected. "Captain Rosser, you and I need to speak first."

* * *

The first rays of dawn seeped across the sky as Mary preceded me into the cabin. No sooner had I closed the door than she turned on me, one anxious hand rubbing her collarbone. The other had been properly bandaged, though the sight of the blood already seeping through made me wish we had a proper surgeon aboard. Mary healed quickly, but not quickly enough for my liking.

"Promise not to throw me off the ship," Mary said.

I looked for traces of jest in her expression, untimely though it would have been. I found only nervous concern.

I beckoned her join me by the gallery windows, where the cool dawn light fell across us. "All right. I give you my word. What is it?"

"Last night, I went to see Monna. To try to reason with her, alone. She was terrified of being handed over to the Usti, and, when I told her that you still wouldn't agree to her proposal, she told me why."

"And?" I prompted.

"She called herself something in Mereish, an oathbreaker. She says that the Usti want her for information, not piracy, and that her own people would sooner kill her than see that happen and had likely already sent someone to kill her. Someone from a group called the Ess Noti."

"So it was these Ess Noti who boarded us?" I pressed. An inkling struck me, thick with magic. "Was there a woman among them? Blonde?"

Mary's expression was tight. "I don't know. The only one I saw clearly is the dead one. But yes, I think it was the Ess Noti. They spoke in Mereish. They moved… it was eerie, Samuel. Tane says they weren't mages but something off. I tried to use my power on the lot of them, to Quell the air in their lungs, but it only worked on that last man, briefly. In any case… before they came, I struck a deal with Monna. She told me where they took Ben in return for a chance to escape."

I held my expression carefully still. "So where is he?"

"A place called Gat, a fortress on the Mereish coast, near the town of Maase." Mary searched my eyes, anxiety leaking through her conviction. She tried to smile. "I know I betrayed you, and I know you might hate me for it. Thus the ‘please don't throw me overboard.'"

"I would never throw you overboard," I said, but my voice was harder than I intended. The name of the fortress rung in my ears, taunting and obscure. Compulsively, I clarified, "Though I would throw you overboard if the ship was burning."

Mary's smile wavered, but she seemed to take my admission as a victory and plunged on, explaining all Monna had told her.

"The Ess Noti will seek out Ben too," she finished. "That's another reason why I struck the deal. Sam, we were not delivering Monna to justice, only torture and a knife in the dark. And we needed to know what she knew, for all our sakes."

I ran a hand across my mouth, stretching my aching jaw. I could feel a headache coming on, and with it a jangling of half-formed premonitions and presentient whispers. This moment felt familiar, as if I had lived it before, and I knew, intrinsically, that everything was about to change.

"When I went down to free Monna just now, the Ess Noti came upon us," Mary went on. "But Monna did escape."

"She left you to them? After you saved her?" I was disgusted, but hardly surprised.

"Not really. Two Ess Noti went after her, and the last one… He looked at me strangely, as if he suddenly realized that he knew who I was." She gestured to her face. "He tried to take me with them. I shot him and missed. I tried to steal the air from his lungs. Then you arrived."

Betrayal. Relief. Grudging gratitude. A great, blossoming weight of emotion. I cleared my throat and focused on Mary's face again. "You should have come to me right away."

Mary's chin drifted to one side. "You would have stopped me and handed Monna over to the Usti."

Frustration hit me like a rogue wave, along with the suspicion that she was correct. If she had come to me in the middle of the night asking to release Monna, my first instinct certainly would have been to discard the Mereish pirate's revelations and say no. At least until morning.

Then the Ess Noti might have come and gone in the night, and the body in my hold might be the pirate's. Mary and I would either be dead, captured, or know nothing of the Ess Noti's interest in us and the Usti's curiosity about Mereish sorcery. And I would have nothing to lead me to my brother but a vague light on the horizon, veiled and insubstantial.

"These Ess Noti are still a threat to us," I stated.

Mary nodded. "And perhaps everyone else who came back over the Stormwall, especially the ghiseau ."

"I knew this could not be kept quiet," I muttered, remembering our arrival back in Hesten and the warnings that the pirate James Demery had circulated among our little fleet. His intention with those warnings had been to keep the details of the Ghistwold and treasure we had found as vague as possible—guarding our own future plunders—and to keep the dual natures of the ghiseau private. Not all of the thousand men and women who had returned with us had even known about the ghiseau , confined as they were to other quarters of the battle.

But there was no silencing sailors with too much money and a hell of a story.

"What happened beyond the Stormwall—it changes everything we thought we knew about ghistings and mages," Mary added quietly. "We knew that information was dangerous, just not to this extent."

The knot in my chest began to loosen, and responsibility flooded in with a deep, even breath.

"Monna was taken from us by unknown Mereish assailants," I observed. "Our commission is unfulfilled, and their natural destination is Mere. It would be understandable for us to intercept them before they hit Mereish waters, or perhaps pursue them further south."

Mary's eyes lit, immediately catching my ruse. "That would be expected," she agreed, sounding a little breathless. "We're going, then?"

We could not see the sunrise from the windows, but the sky was light. A frozen, misty haze hung over the harbor and turned the ships to spectral webs of masts and rigging, with dark water beneath and pink-grey horizon beyond.

"Yes. But I cannot trick the crew into coming, not on a personal endeavor," I said. "We will need at least a day to resupply and reorganize. I will warn the crew that this journey is likely to take us far off course. Whoever wishes to leave, can. I will have Mr. Keo dismiss anyone we cannot wholly trust. Many of those who were with us beyond the Stormwall we can bring fully into our confidences. As to Monna's ship, I will leave it and her crew in the custody of the port mistress. That should appease the Usti for the time being."

Mary reached out to snag my hand. There was much more I wanted to say to her—needed to, once I had a chance to soothe the wound her betrayal had cut. But for now, I focused on gratitude. She was alive. We knew where Benedict was. Because of Mary, I could act. She had sullied her hands where I refused to, and she had nearly been killed for her effort.

I did not have to let my brother die.

Impulsively, I pulled her into my chest. She was stiff for a moment, startled, then relented slightly. For a time, we simply held one another, and I felt the last of my betrayal fade into a temerarious hope.

We were going to Mere. Mere, where Ben was. Mere, where the secrets to our healing might finally be found.

That feeling of impending change, of momentousness, assailed me again.

"The Ess Noti may come back," Mary pointed out, pulling away before I was ready to let go. She scratched at her throat self-consciously, came away with bloody nails, and fished a kerchief from her pocket to wipe it away.

I forced myself to watch, reliving the fear of seeing her with the intruder in the hold, the knife breaking her skin.

Mary went on, "We don't know nearly enough about them, so we should prepare for anything. Double watches. No one goes ashore alone. We… could use some more allies."

Her tone gave me pause. "Do you have someone in mind?"

She lowered the handkerchief and smiled slyly. "How about two smugglers and a highwayman?"