Her plan wasn’t going quite according to expectations. But the result was the same—she was out. She had her magic. Now… she had to figure out how to get off the boat and to Meru.
The fire followed her, sprinting ahead like a ribbon unrolling upward through stairwells and ladders to the main deck. People attempted to approach her, twice, but they backed away from the flames in fear, shouting curses. Vi spat magic at them left and right, not caring who she leviedjuthagainst.
Vi emerged onto the main deck, surprised to find it dark. Fallor had been coming at night, not morning as she’d originally suspected. Not that it mattered now. She was too far along in her attempt to turn back now.
“Fire below!” a man bellowed, rushing out of the portal she’d just come through. Vi felt the crackle of magic at her back—a Waterrunner no doubt trying to subdue the flame.
“Fire above!” a woman shouted back, jumping from the quarterdeck to land heavily at Vi’s side. As she stood, ice shards appeared in the air in a wide arc around her. With a flick of her wrist, they were sent hurling toward Vi.
“Mysst xieh,” Vi said as she raised a hand. The glyph of light was ablaze and the ice hissed as it melted on contact. It was as though all of her magic right now had been steeped in flame.
A rumble from deep within the bowels of the ship stilled them all. Vi turned toward its source and like the frosty breath of an icy dragon waking, mist poured from the opening beneath the quarterdeck—where Vi had just come from. There was no sensation of flames beneath any longer, just the stillness of ice. Thetap tap tapof a cane announced Adela’s arrival. She emerged into the moonlight, the draped silks over her shoulders heavy with ice.
“Give this up and return to your cell,” Adela cautioned. “You try my patience.”
“Let me off this vessel, and I’ll allow you and everyone on it to live.” Vi didn’t really think the threat would work, but damned if she wasn’t going to try.
Adela laughed.
Tearing her eyes from the pirate queen, Vi turned toward the northwestern horizon. She could barely make out the silhouette of what she hoped was land and not clouds.
“I need youalive, girl; I don’t need you well,” Adela cautioned.
“Juth starys!” Vi didn’t wait for the woman to make her first move. She sent a ball of fire in Adela’s direction and began to run once more.
It would be safer to commandeer a rowboat, but it would almost ensure her recapture. Adela would find her among the dark waters and hoist her back into the boat. She would freeze the sea itself around Vi’s escape and ensnare her. There was only one hope for a way out—to be lost in the waves.
“Remember you chose this,” Adela said, almost bored. Lifting her cane with her icy hand, she dropped it onto the deck. A ripple of magic shot out, expanding until it reached in front of Vi before it propelled upward through the air, a solid wall of ice. Vi turned, only to find the ice spreading around and above her, forming a near-perfect cube.
It was so cold that even within her flames, Vi shivered. She looked through the nearly transparent wall at the sea beyond.A little more—it would not end like this.
Closing her eyes, Vi dug deep. She was exhausted, famished, worn to the bone; whatever magic had been unleashed from Ellene’s bracelet was waning.
“Yargen please, just a little more.”
Fire pushed against the ice, magic pitted against magic. Vi opened her eyes to see her progress, but there was nothing but light surrounding her. Yet she could feel it, the walls of ice that tried to contain her unstoppable fire, and pushed all the harder.
“Juth calt,” Vi said, and put an end to her icy prison with a crack that seemed to echo through her very essence. It was followed by another, and another, and then—a rupture that shook the ship itself. Freed, her fire ran over the deck, leaving people screaming in agony, fleeing from its incinerating tendrils.
Vi turned, looking back to Adela. She found the woman encased in her own thinning shield of ice.
“You…” the woman whispered. “It was you, your magic that broke my treasure ward all those years ago.” There was a joke somewhere in those words, judging from Adela’s crazed laughter, but it was lost on Vi. “It wasyouwho stole the Crown of the First King from me! You, a human girl!” She was screaming now. “How?Tell me how!”
Everything around them was burning as Vi’s fire continued to increase in power. Men and women screamed, jumping into the water, pouring out from decks below. The ashen ice-soaked wood was quickly drying under the heat of her flames, the ancient tinder going up almost eagerly once freed from its cold prison.
“You would see your crew die and your ship burned to save yourself?” Vi wondered at the strange phenomenon she witnessed around her: Adela was drawing her power inward to protect herself. She was the only one untouched by Vi’s fire.
“I’ve lived too long to die here and now,” Adela said off-handedly, the ice continuing to surround her like a frozen coffin. “I have much to do, yet. And I know you won’t kill me now, little princess. Because I have your father.”
Time seemed to slow. The crackle of the flames had vanished alongside the screams of the pirates. There was only Adela and her savage grin with the sounds of Vi’s breathing layered atop.
“I will find him with or without you. Nothing will stop me,” Vi whispered. With a shout of agony, Vi placed all her focus on Adela. “Juth starys hoolo!” Ice sheered away in sheets at the initial fiery assault, evaporating before it could even drip onto the deck.
“Finally, a Solaris with real fight!” Adela pushed the ice forward.
Startled, Vi didn’t have the chance to incinerate it completely, and was sent tumbling by the blow. She felt the tell-tale crackle of magic under her left shoulder and Vi rolled just in time to see a spear of ice protrude from the deck. Another crackle, another roll, this time onto her knees.
Adela lifted her cane, and a thick mist poured from the top. Like a weighted blanket, Vi could feel it sitting heavily atop her flames, trying to smother them. She stood, ignoring the force pushing her downward.
