My voice did not waver, though my admission should have panicked me.“Perhaps.”
Before the conversation could go further, a cannon fired in the distance.The Mereish, testing their range.I flicked my gaze alongthe front line of Aeadine ships, all massive warships with a hundred or more guns, but was much too distant to see the splash.
Another gun cracked in response, this time from the Aeadine Fleet.I saw its muzzle flash and even fancied I heard the whistle of the shot, audible over the creaks and rustles of nearly one hundred ships.
Then the singing began.
FIFTY-ONE
Tempest Sisters
MARY
My world became song and chaos and wind.My voice merged with my fellow Stormsingers’, led by hard-eyed Slorach and the occasional orders of Admiral Solace.Our voices bled into numerous harmonies that urged the rain back towards the Mereish Fleet and an ever-thickening crown of slate cloud and churning wind.
As fierce as my indignation towards the Navy was, I felt a certain kind of freedom as I lilted and roared and sent my voice to the sky.A release.A revelry that made my blood surge through my veins and my lungs savor every breath of salty, livid air.
The rising of the Black Tide was intoxicating.I felt as though I were drawing close to a hearth on a cold winter’s night, though rain still lashed my scalp and my damp hair clung to my throat.Power saturated me like heat seeping through frozen flesh, leaving room for one, singular goal.
To let that power free.
My voice began to slip out of concert.I closed my eyes, pulling new threads of wind to me.I tasted each one, sensing their possibilities.
Aboard the ships all around us, other Stormsingers sang their own occasionally discordant chants to the sea and sky.Many fought contrary winds and swaths of rain from the Mereish Stormsingers— first a wave of tearing squalls then familiar banks of fog, creepingacross the waves before the enemy fleet.Their every sail was full of unnatural wind—and that wind, I decided, to steal from them.
The other Aeadine Stormsingers pulled a new, fresh easterly, and the Aeadine Fleet began a gentle, arcing advance towards the Mereish.
“Come as the winds come,” the women around me sang.“When forests are rended.”
“Mother, mother, oh mother of mine,” I sang in harmony, my voice softening as I drew into myself.Tane flickered across my skin like a winter chill.“Deep in forest and woodland shrine…”
Guns began to boom, but I did not flinch.My eyes were closed, but I could still see the wind and a mist of fine, twisting rain.I saw, too, the clouds boiling across the sky—the sky above both fleets now brimmed with coming wrath.
“Come as the waves come, when Navies are stranded,” my companions sang.
I felt someone take my arm.I ignored them, continuing my own song.“Our bows will hide you, our roots grow deep…”
Someone pried the hand from my arm and I heard a heated exchange.Then the space around me broadened—full of wind now, instead of bodies and voices.
I opened my eyes.The other Stormsingers had moved away, leaving me in a semi-circle with my back to the stern railing.Their eyes were on me, and, slowly, they began to echo my song.
Wind swirled between us, its strength growing with each passing moment.
“In our shelter, find your sleep,” I sang.
Behind the Stormsingers I saw the grim faces of Admiral Solace and Lieutenant Barlowe—Adler was nowhere to be seen.Beyond them stood a line of red-coated backs and primed muskets, separating us from the rest of the ship.
Beyond all of them, the space between the fleets—the black, choppy waves full of Otherworldly lights—grew ever shorter.Swathsof fog eddied, thickening with gunsmoke and muting flashes of cannons into pulses of orange and red.
“Leaf and branch and root and vine,” I fixed my gaze and will across the water, on the Mereish ships.The other Stormsingers’ voices twisted with mine—amplifying my power and carrying my words far farther than they could have ever traveled alone.
“Bend no knee to the march of time…”
The rainstorm began to cede to me—to us, to our choir of power and influence.I felt its last resistance give way in a rush and swirl, and the air on my face grew suddenly warm.
Distantly, I was aware of Admiral Solace bellowing orders.The songs of my fellow Stormsingers faltered, as did the movement of our ship.
I carried on as the first cyclone touched down on the waves.Water exploded upwards in stuttering plumes as the whirlwind skimmed the surface—one plume, two, then a waterspout shot from sea to sky in a terrifying, marrow-curdling roar of water and wind.It crashed through a Mereish ship with steady indifference and plunged deeper into the fleet, drowning the sound of cracking wood and screaming sailors.
