I have to leave her, I said to Tane.I have to, but I can’t.
Then push her.
I shoved the girl into the railing.
“No!”She panicked, suddenly coming to life.“We’ll drown!We’ll die!”
“There are fates worse than death!”
“No!”She tore away and lunged for the balcony door just as it opened and Mereish poured through.
I leapt for the rail.My hip went over—I felt the pain of it, the jar of wood on flesh, then the shift of balance as I fell off the balcony, down into the miasma of smoke and fog and the churn of the swollen sea.
FIFTY-FOUR
Black Tide Sons
SAMUEL
Wood moaned and rigging rattled asHartcame alongside a Mereish brigantine.I knelt on the quarterdeck, sighted down the length of a long Usti rifle, and picked a marksman from the enemy’s deck.
Muzzles flashed, gun crews hastened to take up small arms, and boarding nets clotted the sloshing, jarring divide between ships.Benedict and his boarding party pressed at the rails, buoyed by my brother’s magic into a courageous, stolid line.
I reloaded with thoughtless movements, my focus on my brother and the haze of Magni magic that wafted from him like smoke.To me, the Dark Water was fully overlaid with the human world now, hardly a gossamer veil between the two.The effect was nauseating, but the intoxication of my heightened power overrode it—along with any qualms I might have had at my brother ensorcelling my crew.
I heard Mereish commands amid the furore.The voice was obscured by the melee, but my dreamer’s senses knew precisely where she was, who she was,whatshe was.She stood on the foredeck, a woman of forty-five years—an artist in her childhood, duelist in her youth, and today she would die of a shot to the chest.
I sighted down the barrel of my rifle, though I knew I would not be the one to kill her.
My mind began to divide.I saw a dittama snatch a mage from our prize’s deck six heartbeats before the creature wriggled from the Other.I felt the thud of another ship’s fallen, listless spar collide with our hull at the same moment as Mereish bar shot shattered it from its mast.
I existed outside of time.And for the first time, my mind bore it.
“With me!”Benedict roared, leaping up onto the rail.
His boarding party, drunk on Magni valor, surged aboard our prize.I landed one more shot, taking a marksman down with a ball to the shoulder, then the melee was too thick.
The clash was brief, as Ben’s power swept the ship and Mereish weapons clattered to the deck.The dittama dove, dragging a screaming Stormsinger with it.The captured ship’s ghisting, manifest as a robed saint near the bowsprit, yielded back into their figurehead in a slow pulse of ghisten light.The captain took her shot to the chest and proceeded to die.
After that, enemy sailors and marines dropped to their knees and allowed themselves to be bound.Ben and select members of his party stripped them of their clothing and donned it themselves, transforming boarders to crew in moments.The prisoners were hustled below, and Ben saluted me with the Mereish’s commander’s ceded sidesword.
I raised a hand in return.
“Cast us off, Mr.Keo!”I shouted down the length ofHart.
“Sir!”Keo acknowledged, and under his direction we began to disentangle from the prize.
“Are you sure we have time for such… deceptions?”Grant asked, his hat gone, his sandy hair pulled into a hasty tuft and his skin darkened by powdersmoke.He cradled a musket in the crook of his arm.“Do not mistake me, I admire a good disguise, but should you separate so close to the ritual?”
“We have time,” I said.I reached for my former intoxication, seeking to pull it over myself like a blanket, but, as Ben and hisnew ship began to cast off, my expression must have betrayed my concern.
Grant slung his musket over his back and adjusted the strap across his chest.“I shall see him back in time.”
“I would be grateful,” I conceded.“He seems to have some respect for you.”
Grant grinned broadly.“Pestering a soulless Magni into friendship is among the grandest of my achievements.”
“I would not claim friendship so soon,” I warned.“Be careful.”
