MARY
Hart paced about his ship as I closed, his head low, chest heaving and hooves pawing.There was no sign of his former foe, but a nearby Mereish vessel with the figurehead of a lean, monstrous bull drifted listlessly.Nomadwas here too, along with Jessin Faucher’sThe Red Tempestand a smaller Mereish vessel who appeared to be under Aeadine control.
Someone must have recognized me in the water, for a line slapped down into the waves.I seized it and held on as I was drawn up toHart’s rail and used the last of my strength to clamber aboard.
“Ms.Firth!”Mr.Penn met me as I fumbled my sodden way over the rail.He helped me upright, but the anxiety in his face was not for me.“Hurry to the main cabin, miss.It’s the captain.”
Fear clamped over me.Moments later I lunged, breathless, into Samuel’s cabin.Sam was splayed across the table on his back, his chest covered with blood.Olsa and Enisca braced over him, the Usti spy holding a compress to the source of the blood while Illya stood guard next to the door with Charles.Poverly patted her captain’s face with a damp cloth while Maren laid a series of talismans on his bare, bloody chest.
“Hold him still if he rouses,” the Mereish man said to Olsa, and caught sight of me.Relief flooded his expression before his eyes flicked to Illya and Charles.“We need to act now.Find Benedict.”
The pair hastened past me, Charles catching my eye as he did.His worried eyes only compounded my fear.
“What is happening?”I panted, clutching the doorframe.My head was light and my breathing too fast, too shallow.
“He is dying and his spirit is trapped in the Other,” Maren replied.Below him, Samuel’s chest hardly rose, and his stomach was still over the high buttons of his breeches.Enisca did not lessen the pressure on his compress, which was already soaked with blood.“He was shot with an ensorcelled pistol.The ball was made for a Sooth, but not to cut them off from the Other.To imprison them there.I have removed it, but he was too weakened to come back.He is still trapped.”
“It is too early to do the ritual,” Enisca said, half to me, half to the others in the cabin.“But if we do not try, we may never have the chance.Should we proceed without the brother?”She directed the last at Maren.
“Try what?”Benedict stopped just inside the doorway, staring at his twin.His expression was impassive, locked in stone, but I saw the way his fingers twitched at his sides.
“Your brother’s spirit is trapped in the Other,” Enisca said, her words blunt and clipped.“Hae shot him, and no talisman can bring him back.Either we heal your corruption, the both of you, or your twin will die.His body cannot fight with his spirit absent.”
“Our chances of succeeding are already low with Mr.Rosser unconscious,” Maren admitted.
Benedict crossed to stand at the foot of the table, looking down the length of Samuel’s body.“Remove the shot.”
“We already did.That is not the problem,” Olsa snapped.“He is too far gone.”
“Ben.”I drew up to the other side of the table, bracing my hands on the wood to stop their shaking.The urge to touch Samuel was nearly overpowering, to clutch him and speak to him and beg him to wake.
Ben and I were close, closer than my instincts considered safe.“Please.You have to do this.Please.”
He did not reply.
“This,” I said, holding his gaze, “is the right thing to do.”
“Is it?”he asked hollowly.“To risk my power for a chance at…”
“At saving his life,” I finished, speaking the words he seemed unable to.“He took the fall for you.He fought for you.He came for you in Mere.We did.”
At the last he seemed to truly look atme, for an instant.
“Please, Benedict,” I said, infusing my words with every ounce of sincerity and compulsion I could muster.“Please.”
Illya stepped forward, backing up my words with more explicit force.
“No need for that, Usti,” Ben muttered and turned his attention to Maren.“Tell me what to do.”
“Ms.Poverly,” Maren prompted.
Poverly approached Benedict and held out a bottle of vaguely bloody-looking liquid, coppery and thick.
“Drink that.It will help you shift physically into the Other.Samuel will be there too, but he may be disoriented, even unconscious.”
“I’ll go with Ben,” I offered.
Enisca released the compress to Poverly’s smaller but no less capable hands and took up a second bottle in blood-pinked fingers.She tipped it towards Benedict in a mock salute.
