1. TheDawn Watch
I remember the first time I ever saw theShip of Spells because, in fact, I didn’t.
It was a stormveil, conjured to keep the notorious ship unseen as she sat moored in the busy dockyard of Hodgetown. The day had been sunny, the eastern wind strong and heavy with salt. I’d just turned twenty-two and was celebrating alone in a tavern by the docks when I found my eyes looking everywhere but the empty slip on the pier.It’s subtle, my mother had said, back when I would listen.You see other things—the crowds, the clouds, the colorful fluttering of guild flags. Even the dance of shore birds. Anything and everything except the thing you’renotsupposed to see.It was the sign of an experienced mage, and once I’d set my mind to find it, the ship materialized like a vapor, a ghostly vision of ebony-stained oak and gold-shot sails.
So, I raised a glass to the skills of the crew.
I raised another because I was young and in a tavern. Some things don’t need magik to be understood.
After the third glass, I took up my commission as Ensign Bluemage Honor Renn, apprenticed to the blackmage of the Kingship FrigateDawn Watch. We promptly left the harbor and that mysterious ship in our wake as we set off to the Lower Rim, hoping to claw back waters taken by theRhi’Ahrarmada. That was months ago, but I never forgot the sight of the infamous Ship of Spells or, more specifically, the lack of it.
Funny how such memories flashed through my mind as the world exploded beneath my feet.
Cannon fire took out the mainmast first, shattering theDawn Watch’s rigging with a split-shot volley. Next, three rounds to the hull, low-set and lethal, smashed the port gundeck and the ship lurched to the side, the cries of my crewmates filling the air.
TheRhi’Ahrship was a heavy cruiser, easily outgunning the smallerDawn Watchon all counts, and, as with mostRhi’Ahrweapons the last few months, the shots were laced with chimeric. The deadly patterns traced like spyder webs, burning runes into every surface they struck—wood, iron, and flesh alike.
Our two ships had been playing cat-a-mouse for hours in the early-morning fog, but now, the sky crackled as cannon fire blinded even the rising suns.
I heard a rumble behind me as the crew rolled another gun onto the deck, and again I cursed our lack of readiness. We had been working furiously since the enemy ship was spotted, but theDawn Watchwas only a patrolling frigate with a crew of eighty and a conjury of three. I was the youngest, with the least experience and the lowest commissioned rank, and I looked to the blackmage on the quarterdeck.
His name was Taran Vir, and he stood alongside the captain, spinning spells into shields and pitching them my way. I caught them, feeling the burn as they danced across my palms and seared my forearms with kinetic energy. It was my job to augment them and fling them in the paths of cannon fire as fast as they came. We had been at it for hours, and my hands were numb from the patterns and the heat.
It was violent and frenzied and far beyond my skill set, but the redmage had been stationed up in the nest—and she’d been taken out by that first blast. A strategic shot. We were down to two mages now, and I only an ensign Blue, inexperienced and raw. Still, I had more talent than the redmage ever did. Her removal had only been a matter of time.
My stomach tightened as I caught sight of the bow of theRhi’Ahrship bearing down on us.
The enemy vessel was too close, roaring past in a fury of sea spray and runic fire, but through it all, I could see the name carved into her hull.Endorathil.Beautiful name.Beautiful language. It rolled off the tongue like honey, soaked in something old and sharp. TheRhi’Ahrmade war the way other people made love. Each arrow loosed with purpose. Each spear thrown with deadly grace. Their cannon decks made music, flash and roar, flash, flash, boom.
Another shot smashed through the rigging over my head, and I ducked to avoid the shards of wood that rained from above. Orange smoke leaped from mast to mizzen, crackling with arcane patterns, and my heart pounded in my chest. Chimeric. It was the most lethal weapon in theRhi’Ahrarsenal, as old as it was deadly, and it amplified cannon fire in a way that was impossible for us to fight.
My gaze widened as unfamiliar runes continued to sizzle across the sails, turning canvas to char long after the smoke had cleared.
From the corner of my eye, I spied a rim protruding from an enemy porthole, and I glanced at the blackmage. Taran Vir hadn’t seen it, and I cursed to myself. His back was to me, blond hair lashing in the wind. He’d shifted to cover the starboard side—and missed the threat dead ahead.
As a Blue, I wasn’t allowed to conjure my own spells, but I’d be damned if I let theRhi’Ahrloose another shot unchecked. Without waiting, I flung a crackling shield across the water and over the cannon’s muzzle. Fire powder flashed from the port, but the ball was blocked and the bulwark of theEndorathilboomed inward. It was her first serious damage of the fight, and I did not stifle the swell of pride.Ihad caused it. Me. Not the redmage, not even Taran Vir, the Black.
If we lost this fight, there wouldn’t be anyone left to discipline me, so I began to conjure a second spell when, suddenly, there was silence.
I thought it was aTempusspell because now, everything slowed as if underwater. I watched a sizzling black iron ballhurtle past me toward the prow. It hit, wood splintering and rising on the morning wind. I saw Vir’s hands, the runes spilling from his fingertips. Too slow. Too late. The captain’s mouth wide, his orders silenced by the blast, a horrific cloud of yellow and white and articulating chimeric. Both mage and captain lifted off their feet, arcing backward, becoming silhouettes in the brilliant flash that engulfed them.
Flash, flash, and boom. The deck beneath my feet bucked, struck by the music of the magik-filled shell.
Sound returned along with a wall of blistering wind, and I felt my boots leave the deck, taking half of the rail with me. I sailed backward and down, the threads of my blue woven sash leaping with flame, and I hit the water hard between the hulls of both ships. The cold bit my back and shoulders, and I struggled to keep my hands above the waves. I couldn’t help without my hands, couldn’t weave the patterns needed to cast spells. I was a Navy mage. My hands were my life.
But the waves had other plans. They reached up to meet me and pulled me completely into their furious embrace. My chest burned as I was swept under, and water crushed the breath from my lungs. For a moment, I was tempted to let it take me. I was miserable, poor, and young, but this was war, and it was the best hope of a life for a proud, skilled mage from an island the size of a pebble.
Underwater now, I fought the salt sting to open my eyes. The Navy peacoat dragged at my shoulders, heavy with water, pulling me down like a lead anchor. I shrugged it off, shoving hard against the sodden wool, feeling it peel away in slow, useless folds. Better gone. I was tempted to kick off my boots as well, but something about exposing my toes to hungry mouths in the deep made me shudder. No, best to keep those on for now.
My breeches were black Navy issue but not as thick—they didn’t weigh me down as much. The blue sash still wrapped atmy waist, ends fluttering like a flare, as if my rank mattered here in the deep. The linen tunic, though, was a second skin now, plastered to my curves as I kicked, hard and furious, straining for the surface.
The oaken bones of theDawn Watchlittered the depths as I swam up through them, her beams and timbers slicing into the darkness as they sank. The black shape of a cannon plummeted past me, churning bubbles in its wake. Someone followed—arms flailing, legs thrashing—and with horror, I realized that it was Corwen, the powder boy, dragged down by a tangle of rope at his foot. I swiped for him, and our fingertips touched for the briefest of moments, but the rage of the water was too strong, and he slipped free. His terrified eyes were the last things I saw before he was swallowed by the deep.
Suns, he was only twelve. Too young to meet Our Mother, the Sea. She was mother to us all, her watery bosom a welcome home for weary swabs to lay their heads at the end of our days. I knew it was a blessing, but, as fine as she was, I wasn’t ready to let her welcome me yet.
I emptied my breath in a rush of bubbles, kicking and thrashing with all my strength. I broke the surface and swallowed the air in cold, greedy gulps. The world roared all around me as I rose and fell with the water’s swell—the thunder of fire, the screams of my crew, the crack of timber as the ship’s rigging swooped down from above. Shattered masts slapped the waves, and the sails filled with water, the canvas heavy and dragging like an anchor. I watched in horror as slowly, savagely, theDawn Watchbegan to roll.
I could stop her. I had to stop her.
