FIFTY
My Boys
SAMUEL
How could you let this happen?”
The door slammed behind me, rattling the glass in the window and causing the wood in the fireplace to crumble in a plume of sparks.Sparks wafted over the ornate black screen and into the candlelight that illuminated my uncle at his desk.
Admiral Rosser set his quill aside and rose.I knew that look— the guardedness and calculation.He was trying to figure out which twin I was, and I supposed that, wild-haired and enraged as I was, I must have looked more like Ben than ever.
“Control yourself,” Admiral Rosser commanded.“This was out of my hands.”
“‘Out of your hands’?”I repeated, advancing.“Admiral Solace overruled you?”
“Sit down, Samuel.”
“Are you not equals?”I demanded, planting my palms on the desk and leaning forward.“Do you have no voice?Did you eventryto defend her?”
“Sit down!”The command came so sharp and so firm, my knees bent—just a fraction.I shoved the chair away, and it toppled with a satisfying clatter.
Admiral Rosser stepped back from the desk, thumb to his temple, fingers digging into his forehead as he took a deep, calming breath.“Hartis a fine ship, Samuel.But we cannot waste a Fleetbreaker on him.Mary must sail with Solace.With any luck, they will fracture the Mereish before they are in range of our guns.This matter is larger than you or I or one witch, and duty demands sacrifice—you are the last person I should need to explain that to.”
His words drilled home, angling towards the supposedly selfless, stoic convictions I had once based my life upon—and still longed to, in a withering corner of my heart.But the idea of Mary carried off without her consent, stolen into the hands of the very same people who had used her mother and lost her to pirates… that could not be borne.Least of all not when my own uncle, whom I had trusted and whom Mary had revealed Tane to, stood complicit.
“I give you my word, she will be returned to you after the action.”The admiral began to round the desk, abandoning the shelter of its divide to face me.Encouraged by my silence, he continued in a lower voice, “There is no more natural feeling than the desire to protect and keep those you care for.But this is war, Sam.Your Mary could save us all, given the opportunity.So we shall give it to her.”
“If she is killed—” I started but could not finish.
My uncle stepped no closer, but the hard edges of his face softened a fraction.“I can make no guarantees.But Iwillensure she is freed after the battle.You have my word.”
I resisted the urge to scoff.My head was aching—a warning of Hae’s searching or simply a physical response, I could not tell.The Dark Water waxed and waned with every beat of my heart and the natural lights of the port outside the windows transformed into the illuminations of every ghisting, mage, and lurking monster in range.
I felt for Mary instinctively, merged with the blur of other Stormsingers’ lights aboardRecompense.
Visions came, assaulting me in quick succession.I foresaw a ship with red sails, looming over me.I saw a serpentine, Otherborn beast burst from the fabric of the sky and cannon embossed with scenes from myth drifting downwards, past the trees of a submerged forest.I glimpsed death and destruction in a hundred ways, and Mary’s singing voice threaded through it all.
Cool metal pressed into my hand, and I blinked, swaying.My uncle stood before me, clasping my hand around my coin.His eyes were round, the pomp and practicality of his station abandoned.
“Samuel?”he asked, patting the side of my face as a father might.For an instant hewasmy father, visions twisting with memory.
My father with one hand cupping my cheek, one Ben’s.
Take care of one another, my boys.
My uncle released me, and the Dark Water, along with the visions, retreated.
For once, Admiral Rosser was nearly speechless.“Samuel… you need a physician.”
“IneedMary,” I replied, my coldness undercut by the fact that I had to steady myself on the desk.“And I must return to my ship.”
“I will do all in my power to free her, after the Black Tide has waned and the threat passed,” the admiral vowed, yet again.“It will be mere months, Samuel.”
“Months?”I tossed back.I pushed myself upright and stepped towards the door, propelled by the need to be alone, to separate myself from the admiral and the confusion of emotions he elicited.“I will reclaim her after this battle.The Tides be damned.”
I did not linger to hear my uncle’s counter.
To my shock, Ben stood in the darkness of the hallway.Dark Water lapped around the heels of his boots, and his head was cocked to one side.
