I surfaced some distance fromRecompense.But sightingHartwas no easier above than below.I was in a maze of battling and burning ships.Smoke stung my eyes, and the air was full of the crack of cannons and the roar of fire and the screams of combatants, the ringing of bells and the moan of wood.
“Tane,” I said aloud, itself a testament to how shaken I was.“Can you senseHartat all?”
No, best to start swimming.
So, we swam.I passed other survivors in the water, swimming for wreckage or milling longboats.An Aeadine sailor spied me and beckoned from a boat, but to their confusion I waved them off and kept my own course.
Once, in the distance, I saw morgories swarm again.This time there was no ghisting to intercede for their intended victim, and a floundering woman shrieked as she was encircled by white light and boiling waves.To my relief—and, perhaps, hers—she was quickly consumed and vanished beneath the water.
An indistinct roar turned into the crackle of flames, the moan and whine of overheated timbers and the hiss of steam.A burningMereish frigate emerged from the miasma, too close, too fast.Heat came with it, waves and waves of it, and I barely ducked under the water before flaming debris peppered the place where I’d been.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I panted as I resurfaced, still so close my flesh threatened to sear.I was losing control of my fear, despite Tane’s near indomitable ability to keep me alive.I was lost.No part of mewantedto be in this water, wanted to be swimming frantically away from burning ships and watching morgories eat people alive.“Shit!”
Cannons boomed.My teeth jarred.A length of bar shot whirled over my head and impacted with the burning frigate, taking a spar and a tangle of rigging and sail to the deck.Sparks plumed.The finer shriek of canister shot followed on its heels, and, though I could not see the carnage it wrought on the deck of the ship, I heard the pain it brought.
Then, through the chaos, I saw Hart.He charged across the waves, away from a vessel whose bowsprit was all I could see, given the jumble of ships and monsters between us.Ghisten light flared as he met the charge of another ghisting, a great bull, and the two locked in battle.
Another ship drifted between us, blocking the sparring ghistings from sight, but I knew where to go now.
I started swimming.
FIFTY-SIX
Stormlight, Shadow, and the Veil Between Worlds
SAMUEL
Iducked under a low beam and peered through the shadows.I was in what might have been the wardroom, with a long table, toppled chairs and a scattering of hammocks illuminated by several fae dragonflies.Their shattered lantern rolled across the deck as I lingered just inside the doorframe, blocking my quarry’s escape.
“Mr.Hae,” I called.“Shall we continue to chase one another like children, or face one another like men?”
Hae shifted on the other side of the cabin.His signature in the Other was particularly murky now, more brown than green, and it cast little illumination.
I slipped more deeply into the Other.He must have done the same, for his form solidified—masculine and clad, like me, in billows of Tide-amplified power.The walls of the ship thinned around us, retaining only a vague ghisten glow, and the lights of other mages and creatures beyond took on greater strength.
“Where is Enisca Alamay?”Hae asked.His voice was still foreign, though I had seen his face many times in my memories and visions.“She fled with you.I sensed it.”
“She is well.She proved to be a valuable ally.”
Hae’s expression turned stormier, and I knew I had struck a chord.But precisely why eluded me, chased by vague visions of a partnership and travel, side-by-side.I sensed nothing romanticbetween them, but there was a loyalty, an expectation now thwarted and worthy of the worst of punishments.
“She is still aboard your ship with the documents,” Hae concluded, straightening slightly.“No matter.I will see to her once I am through with you.”
I kept my expression composed.Thedocuments?Alamay had stolen back Faucher’s documents, and they had been aboard my ship the entire time?
Whether or not he sensed my line of thought, Hae’s lips twisted smugly.“It has been a fine chase, Mr.Rosser.But the Tide will not last, and I have much to accomplish.”
A pistol cracked—not now, but in the moments to come.In the present I dodged, seeking the protective shadows outside the cabin and farther up the passage, but Hae was a breath ahead of me.He surged across the space with preternatural speed and filled the passageway behind me.
I had the briefest of moments to register a new glow, outlining the shape of a pistol in Hae’s hand—its ghisten wood the palest indigo and its metals infused with a Sooth’s faded green.
Then Hae’s finger closed on the trigger.There was no visible muzzle flash, not on this side of the worlds.But there was pain.
And a spreading stain across my shirt.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Otherwalker
