I barely had time to assess my companions—one guard scrambling to help another, who clutched a long shard in his thigh—before shots cracked acrossRecompense’s deck.Screams rekindled, and a nearby soldier with the red collar of a Magni collapsed in a spray of blood.A shriller shriek accompanied the stumbling form of the young girl.I’d no time to see her injuries before she was swept below decks with Elsher.
For an instant, a feeling of solitude struck me—every eye was somewhere else.I could jump ship now.Surely, I had no real loyalty to the other Stormsingers, no hope of freeing them in any lasting way.I could still fight the Mereish fromHart.
Then I remembered the power of the cyclones, the churn of all our voices in concert.How much had been Tane and I, and how much had been them?
I felt another shot strike the rail beside me and plunged below after the other Stormsingers.
BEASTS, OTHER—Sooth Mages have long spoken of beasts who reside within the Other that defy established classifications and titles.The majority of these, unlike implings and their ilk, cannot pass at will between realms, or emerge so rarely as to remain in folklore alone.However, recent attempts to classify these creatures have been made, and new categories proposed: the squid-like ishalk, the winged argreth, and the ursine andowt.See also:ANDOWT, ARGRETH, ISHALK, OTHERBORN.
—FROMTHE WORDBOOK ALPHABETICA: A NEW WORDBOOK OF THE AEADINES
FIFTY-TWO
The Summoners
SAMUEL
Isaw Her Majesty’sDrake’s demise moments before he shuddered with an unseen explosion.
“Brace!”I bellowed acrossHart.Everywhere, my crew dropped to the deck, and Olsa, at my side, stepped behind the mizzenmast.
Blasts rippled throughDrake, spewing fire from gunports and shaking marksmen from the rigging.His ghisting circled the ship in distress as fire raced from stern to bow.When it reached the figurehead, the ghisting Drake reared in silent, terrified pain, and I saw Hart’s light ripple through the deck at my feet in agitated response.
“That was no accident,” Olsa said beside me, her posture still crooked with tension.She cast her gaze out across the fleet at another explosion, then another.
The third explosion, however, could hardly be heard over the roar of a whirlwind.I shouted another warning as one of the Aeadine Stormsingers’—now, apparently wayward—cyclones touched down three ships away.The sea erupted towards the sky, taking with it a glistening, churning stream of morgories from the water below.
For a breath, I could only gape at the sight, then orders cut from my lips.Hart’s crew scrambled to respond, and I clutched the shrouds as wind and spray battered us.Slowly,Harteased away from the cyclone.The other ships in our squadron scrambled to do the same, andNomadnosed out into the sparse stretch of empty seabetween us and the Mereish.He loosed a broadside, cannons firing in a synchronous ripple I had no time to laud.
“Samuel!”
Benedict advanced up the quarterdeck stairs, prodding a sailor ahead of him at cutlass point.Despite the man’s obvious ensorcellment, Benedict was careless with his blade, and several bloody puncture marks marred the back of the man’s jacket by the time he fell to his knees before me.
Benedict grabbed his prisoner by the hair and tipped his head back.“Recognize this bastard?”
Mr.Pitten stared up at me with Magni-dulled eyes.
“What were you doing aboard my ship?”I asked, though my Sooth’s senses—so sharp I felt as though I knew each sound before heard it—had already delivered me an answer.“Sabotage and murder.”
Mr.Pitten contorted, fighting not to react.
Benedict nodded to his pocket.“I found an Ess Noti talisman on him, a Magni one.”He shook Pitten’s head pointedly, and the man’s face creased in pain.“Pity I am a Black Tide Son, Mr.Pitten, and that thing was a fucking trinket.”
Pitten gasped in sudden, unmitigated terror, and Benedict’s power billowed around him in my doubled vision.
“You came to sabotage my ship,” I repeated.“And kill, but who?All of us, Mr.Pitten?Can you bear to have so much blood on your hands?”
“I was to disable the ship, that is all, I swear!”the cultist protested.
“Why?Under whose orders?The cult’s?”I gestured to the charred wreckage ofDrake.
Pitten tried to scream in frustration but choked off as Benedict’s power rushed into his nose and mouth.He spasmed.
“Answer, now,” Ben demanded.
“They sent after the man, the Mereish man!”Tears streamed down the landsman’s face, but hints of accusation battered their wayinto his gaze.“I have no choice.I have to kill him.He told me to!The Midden Ghist!He—”
“Maren!Secure Mr.Maren!”I snapped to Olsa.She was already running across the deck and vanished through a hatch.Illya raced to join her as I added, “And look in on Alamay!”
