“Send her crashing, Smoke!” shouted Fahr, and the quartermaster flung his hands toward the third stormshear. The second obliged, and the collision between the pair almost sank us awash with sea spray.
The ship rolled again, everyone sliding taut against their ropes, but the three spinners were untied, and I lost sight of them as another wave breached the bulwarks.
The ship was heaving hard; each wave sent us deeper and longer into the waters before rising again, and I heard a scream as someone went over the side. I hoped he was tied off, but I hadn’t much hope even then.
For all of us on deck, there were as many others below working the bilge pump and batting any holes, hatches, hawsers, and ports that spilled. Men often drowned in the bilge. They were crushed by barrels, pinned by crates, and strangled in cords. There was no place safe on a ship in a storm, and it was all any of us could do to survive.
The ship rolled back, and the waters flooded, and I saw Buck rise to his feet, Fahr and Smoke in the crook of each arm. The men pushed to stand, and Fahr slapped the minotaur’s powerful chest. They needed tying off, so I worked loose the knot in my own line and threw myself toward the wheel.
Tree is not ship and ship is not tree. Branches will break to set the bird free!
The ship bucked, and I was tossed to my knees as a shriek cut through the roar of the wind. Up the mizzen, Kit was caught in the rigging, and the winter hawk had her in his talons. He was desperately trying to pull her free, but it was then that the top gallant cracked. Its boom rattled my very bones, and her shriek became a scream. The spar was heavier than them both, and ittilted toward the deck. She was caught between, and I knew she was being pulled in two.
I yanked my gloves off with my teeth.Praesidium!
I struggled to my knees to cast, but a wave broke over the rail, and I lost sight of everything as the weight of water pushed me to the deck. Too long, too cold, and when I broke out of it, all I saw was the topgallant sweeping down in a weighty tangle of stays, spars, yards, and shrouds. I threw myself back to the deck, covering my head with my arms, but the mast was anchored by a stay rope, and it swung wide, scraping the boards and cracking into the cannons before the wind caught the sail and blasted it into the sea.
The ship lurched now, dragged as the topsail acted as an anchor, and I could hear her wailing in my head.
“Cut her loose, Mr. Smoke!” cried Thanavar, a man once again as he landed on the pup.
“But Kit!” I cried, and I threw myself to the rail. The topgallant was too far, the sea too wild, and it was impossible to see if she was still in the rigging or submerged beneath the waves.
“Cut! Her! Loose!”
TheTouchstonegroaned as she heaved low, pulled broad to the wind by the gallant, and began to roll once more. She was a tough sea bird, but I knew she couldn’t handle much more. Both Buck and Smoke appeared at the rail beside me, the bosun hauling with both hands on the line to keep it low. The quartermaster pulled a hatchet from his belt, and it took the pair of them a dozen blows to free us. The ship snapped back and flung all of us to the deck again.
Leeward once more as she heaved hard, and I clung to one of the cannons for my life. Molly Boom was her name, scraped into her iron below where the yard had struck. The leeward roll eased, and theTouchstoneheeled to port. Another cannon broke free and began to slide, and Buck blocked it with his powerfulhands. But it was too heavy, the pitch of the deck too steep, and he bellowed as a ton of iron slammed his leg into the bulwark.
I peered over the rail, trying to spy Kit in the waters, but my gaze was pulled up, up, up at the sight of the wave. Easily four ships high, she rose above us like a furious, white-maned giant. The deck was nigh thirty degrees inclined, and, because of the topgallant, we were still too broad. We would roll fully or be flooded when she hit.
“Praesidium, all!” came Thanavar’s voice, echoed by Fahr and Smoke. “All hands,Praesidiumwide!”
I didn’t need to think. This time, I simply obeyed and flung my hands high. Chimeric crackled as I cast the protection spell, tracing patterns in the air.
Every swab on theTouchstoneflung theirPraesidiuminto the sky, and the force of it pushed me to my knees as my shield joined with theirs. It was like a crackling umbrella, pulsing upward, expanding with each addition, and soon, the deck was lit by an eerie runic glow. It was not a heartbeat too soon, as theTouchstonegroaned, the storm surge roared, and the full weight of the wave came upon us.
“Omnisia Iliad!”cried an ironmage from the pup.
I can’t even begin to explain what happened next.
My mother had told a story, back when I was young…
We were inside the wave.
About a whale that swallowed a girl…
The ocean had swallowed us whole.
ThePraesidiumprotected us, that was certain, but the Court of Sand’sOmnisia Iliadformed a bubble around us, a sphere of light and rune and pattern, and I could see everything within its shell. It looked just as Fahr had described, like a “giant spyder’s web” cast by the suns, a net of rune that we merely strummed to make the music we called magik. But here, all sound was muffled, all vision blurred. This was more than common magik.This was unreal, arcane, and utterly breathtaking.
Mother, said theTouchstone.Mother.
Slowly, I drew my gaze to the pup. The ironmages were crouched and casting, Thanavar standing tall in the middle. He was augmenting on a scale like I had never seen, and I knew it was them that had saved us. Thanavar and the Court of Sand.
Even Death herself was afraid of them.Perhaps he should have joined them, so long ago.
Time seemed to slow as theTouchstonecut her way through this heart of the sea. In the waters all around us, I could see fishes, and I marveled at how they didn’t die in a storm this fierce. Black and blue and silver and green, the ocean hummed as she passed us by. I would never forget that moment as long as I lived.
