"Fantasy at its most fantastic. Monsters, mystery, and magic in a beautiful and frightening world all their own. Justice Kasric and her strange family are a delight from first to last." -Steven Harper, author of The Books of Blood and Iron series
CHAPTER 1
Estuary Raid
The Mist.
It pooled ankle-deep on the deck,
moving in little eddies around our feet every time we moved. A slow, dank
current of it flowed silently down the forecastle stairs in wispy trails,
then down to the main deck where it pooled again before draining out
the scuppers and down the hull to the ocean. But no matter how much
fog drained out, there was always more. Made me itch to grab a broom or
mop and get it all off the deck, only I knew it wouldn’t do any good. There
was plenty more where that came from. All around us, in fact.
I was at the front rail near the
bowsprit, the very forefront of the ship. A lantern threw yellow light
that clung to the deck behind me but didn’t penetrate more than a dozen
feet or so. All I could make out was more fog pooled on quiet, black,
still water. The ship’s prow barely made a ripple as we cut through the
water without a sound. We’d been forced out into the Channel;
coming back towards the English shore had a forbidden feel. We
weren’t welcome here in England anymore. You could feel it.
The mist had a way of dampening
sounds, so that I kept looking back to make sure that everyone else was still
there. I could see the rest of the quarterdeck that Faith, Sands, and
Avonstoke shared with me, but the rest of the ship was lost in the
haze.
Quiet should have been good. We were
prowling in enemy territory. I’d given the orders for silence myself, but
now the heavy feel of it was making my skin crawl. I thought the darkness
was starting to show a little gray in it, at least, as if dawn might not
be that far off.
“Justice,” Faith hissed from behind
me. “We’re too far in!” “Shh,” I said, craning my neck to listen for
signs of other ships, or possibly the English shore. England used to be
home, before the Faerie took it and shrouded it in this bloody fog. Now
it was enemy territory and there was no telling what changes the
Faerie had wrought to it.
“Too far in!” she said again. I was
supposed to be captain, but one of the problems with having my older
sister on board was that she’d never taken orders from me and wasn’t
about to start now. Didn’t matter if I was a captain, admiral, or a bag
of rutabagas.
Faith looked unnatural in the eerie
yellow light, with her white London dress and her long ash-white hair. No
pants for her, despite being at sea. The Faerie might have conquered
London, but they hadn’t made much of a dent in Faith’s sense of
propriety or fashion. At least she’d forgone any hoops or a bustle.
She stepped closer, her dark eyes
wild with panic. “You know the strain it takes for Sands to keep the
shield up. He’s going to collapse if we keep him at it.”
I pushed my weather-beaten
wide-brimmed black hat back on my head to peer up at her. She had to be
prettier and older and taller. Life’s not fair.
“What about you?” I snapped.
“Do you feel anything? Anything at all?”
Faith’s lips went tight. “No, same as
the last time you asked. If I felt anything, don’t you think I’d tell
you? Everyone keeps call ing me a magician, but that’s all they can tell me.
You don’t learn magic as much as feel it, but I don’t feel anything! I’m
about as close to singing fish into a hat as raising a shield! You have
to take us back!”
I shook my head. “You know we can’t
do that. They get one ship across the channel and it’s all over.” I
turned my back on her. She made a smothered noise behind me and I could
sense her frustration.
The worst part about Faith’s warning
was that she was probably right.
Sands looked an absolute and
unmitigated shamble. The man’s face, when I glanced back again, despite
myself, was covered in sweat though he shivered in the cold damp. His black
coat and tails were spattered with salt, and he’d lost his hat. His
cheeks showed two day’s growth around his blonde mustache and
goatee and his blonde hair stuck out in all directions. His eyes, a
startling emerald green under normal conditions, now shone like cat’s
eyes or undersea lanterns, washing the forecastle deck and our
boots with lime, eldritch light. He stared out over the water, looking
for dangers most of the us couldn’t even see.
The Faerie invasion force had put up
the mist to keep us out, of course. The Outcast Fleet stayed on the edge
of the mist, where the rest of humanity couldn’t reach us, but venturing
further in, like we were doing now, was like taking out a rowboat into a
monsoon.
My ghost eye, which helped me see
through Faerie magic, allowed me to penetrate the first line of defense:
the illusions, or glamours, as the Faerie called them. Dark flocks of
predatory birds, specters gliding on top of the ocean’s surface, that
sort of thing. It was enough to scare the crew into a wailing froth and
I was just barely holding that fear in check, constantly reminding them
that the glamours weren’t really there. The only person not showing any
fear was Avonstoke and I had him to thank for bolstering the crew. Without him,
I’d have a mutiny on my hands for sure. I looked back to where he stood,
supporting Sands.
Avonstoke was tall, a Court Faerie
like the stern and uncompromising Faerie marines. But Avonstoke wasn’t stern,
not by a long shot. The average Court Faerie was slender, with high cheek
bones and angular features in a way that was disconcertingly in human. But
Avonstoke wore it better somehow, more mysterious
than inhuman, and with that kind of
height and broad shoulders, he took the breath of every woman around him.
I found him endearing, distracting, and exasperating in equal measures,
but he’d become a sturdy support, my rock when things got danger ous,
like now. His eyes, like the others of his kind, were pale gold, without
any pupils. They were an echo of my ghost eye, a solid black marble in my
left eye.
That ghost eye also allowed me to see
the visions that really were out in the mist. Dark shapes cresting
the water, ghost ships, an enormous bat-winged shape far overhead. But
only Sands and I could see those, and neither of us mentioned it to the
others.
“Ghosts,” he muttered when another of
the ships went by. “Intangible?” I said, keeping my voice equally low. “So,
they can’t hurt us?” Avonstoke and Faith were close enough to hear,
but I trusted them to keep their mouths shut.
Sands turned his glowing cats eyes to
me and shook his head. “Probably not.” There was the hint, like
always, of France and other unfamiliar places in the lilt of his voice.
“Ships, or other things, caught by a vortex and wrenched free of their
place in time. If they are ghosts to us, or we are ghosts to them, I cannot
say. Now they move through when, as well as through where.
Let’s hope they are not close enough in the fabric of time to reach us.
Years spent in the mist would leave you quite mad. I should know.”
I wanted to ask more, but now wasn’t
the time. He turned away, peering out into the fog with those luminous
eyes. What we were really worried about were the vortexes. Dark
twisters, like supernatural tornados, that threatened either to tear us
to pieces or pull us entirely out of the world we knew. One false step
and we could be ghosts ourselves. Or we could just be dead.
Even as I watched, another black
tornado lurched out of the mist, moving far too quickly for us to avoid
it, and battered itself against Sands’ shield. The shield, which, through
my ghost eye, I could see as a soft green shimmer around the ship,
rippled under the impact. But it held. It was all eerily silent and
unreal. I felt no sign of the impact under my feet, which was even more
unnerving.
But Sands shook under the impact, as
if he had been hit directly. Avonstoke’s grip on him was the only thing
that kept Sands from falling.
Faith wasn’t wrong. The little blonde
man couldn’t take too much more of this.
I could see back to the rest of the
ship, which was a far cry from a comfort. Every face that peered back was
tight with sullen fear, watching me, or Faith, but mostly watching Sands,
our only magician.
Except Sands wasn’t a full-fledged
magician anymore. Since passing his mantle to Faith, his powers had been slowly
fading. To make matters worse, Faith, his replacement according to
Father’s plan, didn’t seem close to taking his place.
I gnawed my lip.
The air was still, the rigging quiet,
the splash of water soft, while we all struggled not to breathe too
loudly. Everyone was listening hard enough to make their ears bleed. The ship
itself made barely a creak under my feet. No scent of land came with the
bare excuse for a breeze, even though I knew we had to be close.
The chill off the water was like something off a grave.
A Prowler crew member ran up to
report, knuckling his forehead. “Foretop lookout is seeing branches, Ma’am.”
“Branches?” I said, raising an eyebrow. The man blanched, his greenish
skin going visibly paler, but nodded. “Yes, Ma’am.” Sometimes I forgot
the reverence the Faerie from Father’s domain, most of our crew, regarded our
family. If they only knew. I opened my mouth to get a better explanation, but
by then there was no need.
“There!” Faith said, pointing.
“What’s that?”
The mist parted to reveal a tree
growing up out of the water, craggy and black and dripping with lichen
and slim. The trunk was easily as wide around as the Specter was
long, with branches angling up in all directions, long, jagged shapes
that disappeared into the fog.
The tree was festooned with bodies.
There were dozens of them, all very
dead, hanging from the branches on nooses. They’d been tall when alive,
and not at all human, with great horns on their heads, white or black
hair, gray skin, and talons on their hands and feet that immediately
remind ed me of the Soho Shark. The talons swayed, very gently, though
there wasn’t any breeze. Drops of moisture dripped down into the water
with a morose and solitary dripping sound.
“Formori,” Mr. Sands intoned, his
green eyes still blazing. “Leaders of the Faerie once, but all wiped out
by the Seelie Court.” “Much to everyone’s relief, according to the stories,”
Avon stoke said softly behind him. “The atrocities they tell are enough
to make even a hag’s skin crawl.” His handsome face looked thoughtful and
a little curious.
“Formori,” I repeated grimly. “Like
the Soho Shark.” Sands looked confused and alarmed and I told him and the
others, in as few words as possible, about our encounter with the Soho
Shark and Victoria Rose. Just thinking about the two of them gave me
shudders.
Mr. Sands whistled low. “The leader
of the Formori was said to be missing one eye. A very dangerous
individual, if this Soho Shark is the same person . . .”
He frowned, lost in thought, while his hands plucked nervously at the
brass buttons on his vest. He jerked with surprise when his fingers
plucked one off completely.
“Damn,” the little ex-magician
said.
I had Mr. Starling ready a few crew
members with long poles so they could push us off from the tree, if
necessary, but we glided slowly and silently underneath the long line of
hanged Formori.
Immediately after clearing that
grisly obstacle, however, someone shouted up in the topmast. I heard a grinding
sound, then the sound of breaking wood and the snapping of lines as a
piece of the topgallant mast went splashing into the sea on the
starboard side.
“What happened?” I shouted, breaking
my own rule of silence. “We hits a low branch, we did!” a gravely, squeaky
voice shout ed back.
“Was anyone up in the gallants?” I
shouted back.
“Don’t know, Captain!”
I leaned over the rail, calling to
Avonstoke and Nellie down in the chains. “Have Wil check that wreckage
and make sure no one is in it.”
“Yes Captain,” Nellie said. She
called out in the soft and lilting Prowler language and Wil’s head broke
the surface of the water. “What did you do that for?” Wil said after
Nellie relayed my orders, but then he dove without waiting for an answer.
Two minutes later he surfaced. I couldn’t hear his words, but Nellie
turned and shook her head up at me.
“Thank Heaven for that,” Faith
said.
I nodded in agreement, too
overwhelmed with relief to speak. At least that much luck was with
us.
There was a shadowy line of the riverbank
on the port side now, with the gleam of white through the fog as the
gentlest of surfs broke on the rocks.
“Shoaling on the far side!” Nellie
called out softly.
I leaned over the rail, pointing so
that there should be no con fusion. “Port?”
Nellie nodded. “Yes, ma’am.
Port.”
“Pass along two points to starboard,”
I ordered. The waiting sailor nodded and turned to pass the
message.
A flurry of breezes came, luffing the
main foresail immediately above us with a snap like the crack of a whip.
“Hear that?” Faith said.
I stared at her. The entire ship had
heard it.
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“Not the sail. The singing.” “I don’t hear anything,” I said
carefully.
She frowned. “It’s gone now.”
Then I spied what looked like not
only a land mass, but a familiar one. The Girdler, a sandbank, which
would put us in the Queen’s Channel. I let out a long sigh. It was
incredibly gratifying to know that this much, at least, of English
geography remained.
Suddenly, the mist cleared. Well, not
cleared exactly, but became more penetrable. More normal, like regular
old English fog and not some supernatural abomination. There was
even enough breeze to catch the sails and I felt the Rachaela make
decent headway for the first time in hours.
“Well done, Sands,” I said.
“Thank you, Captain,” he said. His
voice sounded normal, more human than when he’d spoken under the strain
of his spell, but utterly exhausted, too. He looked more normal now,
too. Still disheveled, but more like a man than a magical beacon.
The eldritch light had faded from his eyes. He smoothed down his
hair, then took a rueful look at his vest and trousers. He took a
shaky step and Avonstoke steadied him.
“Through!” Faith
breathed.
We’d thought it possible, but hadn’t been
sure. The Faerie could have had this stuff over the entire country for
all we knew. But apparently not. That was worth knowing and information
I had to get back to the rest of the fleet. Or what was left of it.
Father had commissioned a dozen ships like the H.M.S. Rachaela,
but they had been lost in the mist before I’d taken command. Now,
all that was left was the enormous Seahome and a few schooners.
This was why it was folly to brave
the mist, but also why it had been so necessary. It was worth all the
risk I’d taken just to know we could navigate it. Now we could attack the
invasion forces, rather than just wait for them to make a move. One bold
move here could outweigh months of ineffectual engagements.
“Land on the port side!” came the hoarse
whisper from the main deck. “Crow’s nest reports land on the port side!”
They were still relaying messages to avoid shouting. Good. We were in
the Estuary proper, in the Queen’s Channel just as I thought. I
tilted my head, listening hard, suddenly sure I heard something.
“Take him below,” I said to Faith,
nodding at Sands. “Let him rest while he can.” As soon as we’d done our
business here, he was going to be needed for the trip back.
She opened her mouth to say
something, then stopped, her eyes wide as saucers. She heard it now, too.
Sands looked around as well.
Voices. Another ship? Then I could
see them. Three dark silhouettes of sails and rigging slowly sliding across the
still water. Yes. More than one ship, it seemed. The largest looked big
enough to be second or third rate, maybe, comparable to our ship.
Only they probably didn’t know we were here because of the fog and
our effort to remain silent. We might be out of the magical part of the
Faerie mist, but fog was still fog. Also, the enemy ships, from what I
could see, didn’t look to have anything like a full complement of crew on
board.
I passed the word for the spyglass
and it came in short order. The nearest ship showed me silhouettes that
were unmistakably men. Normal men, not Faerie. English men pressed into
service by the Black Shuck. Probably not even sailors, since the Shuck
had run out of those.
That didn’t change what I had to do,
because the ships’ holds would be filled with all manner of Faerie
infantry. Enough infantry to get and hold a landfall in France. Even just
a few could be too much for mundane forces and the Faerie would spread
over the continent. The only thing stopping the Faerie from crossing
and taking over the rest of the globe was the remaining Outcast
Fleet. For three months, we hadn’t been able to penetrate the mist,
but we’d easily thwarted an attempt at crossing the channel because
the invading Faeries knew nothing of sailing. But we’d lost so many ships
trying to raid the coast that our defense of the channel was stretched
hopelessly thin. If the invaders realized that, we’d be in trouble.
Other figures, tall and angular,
moved on the enemy deck. Court Faerie like many of my own crew, but in
uniforms of dark leather and bone. The Unseelie Court. The Black Shuck’s
people.
The Rachaela might have been
outnumbered, but that wouldn’t matter as much if they were only partially
manned and rigged. They barely had any sail up and all listed and
wallowed uncertainly. They weren’t using the wind like we were; they
were being towed by rowboats. Foolish. In addition, something had
gone wrong with the towing ropes of the lead ship and a knot of the
enemy, Faerie and human, were huddled around the prow, arguing.
Good. The Faerie still hadn’t learned
any real seamanship. They’d never had the need before now, since all
sailing in Faerie was done with magic. That was our only advantage and I
was going to exploit it to the hilt.
“Oh God,” Faith’s voice came softly
next to me. She and Sands were still here. She sounded like she was going
to pass out. Or throw up. Maybe both. I had the same feelings when I’d
been poring over maps and planning the engagements. I’d have
them again, when I was looking over the lists of the wounded or
seeing the damage wrought on my ship.
But now, all I felt was a sudden,
thrilling rush. I could even feel a madcap grin crawl over my face.
“Oh God,” Faith said again. “Whenever
you get that look in your eye, I know we’re going to be knee-deep in
flying cannonballs right away. I hate cannonballs.”
“That’s why you’re taking Sands
below,” I said cheerfully. “Go on.”
Of course, cannonballs could
penetrate below decks, but mentioning that to my sister wasn’t going to make
her feel any better. I could have had Avonstoke take Sands below, but I
needed Avon stoke up here as much as I needed Sands and Faith out of the
way.
Faith finally moved to go, and then
stopped, glaring at me. “It’s unnatural, you know.”
“Of course it’s unnatural.” I turned
and stepped past her to bring the spyglass to bear on the enemy ship
again. “We’re at war with the bloody Faerie. Where have you been?”
“Not them,” she said stiffly. “You.
You’re not supposed to be happy on the brink of battle. It’s
unseemly.”
I waved her away, keeping my eye to
the glass, too busy to bandy words with her now. But I could feel a
delicious thrill rising in me at the prospect of action, unmistakable now that
she’d pointed it out.
“Unseemly,” Faith said. “Especially
for a girl.” She finally took Sands below.
I turned and leaned down over the
railing aft of us and called down softly to the main deck.
“Password to Starling. Bring us about
on the port tack. Ready a turn to starboard and ready the starboard
guns.”
•M 12 N•
Justice at Sea
“Aye,” a barely-visible crewman
called back. They rushed off aft.
“Swayle,” I hissed at the Faerie
marine colonel, also on the main deck. “Have your people ready.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Swayle said. She nodded
at her people, who began nocking arrows to bows and readying themselves
at the rails. All the marines were Court Faerie like Avonstoke, tall,
slender, with those same blank, golden eyes. Most of them looked severe,
but Swayle had an expression so stern you could crack walnuts on
it.
She pointed twice, without speaking,
and another detachment of marines started climbing lithely up the masts
to elevated positions, silent as wraiths. For all that the Faerie weren’t so
great at seamanship, war was another matter altogether.
I looked back at the enemy ships.
Amazingly, they showed no sign of having heard or seen us. The nearest of
them were still arguing over the tangled tow rope. For once the mist was
working in our favor, dampening sound.
Relieved of being Sands’ caretaker,
Avonstoke came and joined me at the front railing. He didn’t say anything
at first, merely stood there next to me, a comforting presence, tall and reliable.
The ships were still moving closer.
Slowly, so slowly. I’d have to order the turn soon, but for now, we had
everyone ready and our slow progress through the water only brought
things into a better position for our maneuver. Better to milk our
element of surprise for all it was worth. Only it sent my nerves
jangling, knowing I could hear an outcry any minute, but holding,
holding . . .
“Like an Avatar of Naval Warfare,”
Avonstoke murmured, very softly, “watching as battle draws nigh.” He sighed
solemnly and profoundly pained at the poetic sorrow of it all. “I
wonder, perhaps,” he went on, “if an Avatar should have, I don’t know,
a cleaner coat? Or a hat that isn’t quite so lumpy?”
“Shut up,” I said softly. “I love
this hat. You, I barely tolerate.” A captain had to keep a certain level
of aloof decorum, but I let a whisper of a smile come out. Avonstoke had
a way of bringing that out in me, even at times like this.
He grinned down at me, a wild light
in his eyes. There never really was any way of telling what he’d do next,
a creature of mercurial urges with so many apparently random emotions that
it wasn’t a matter of detecting them on his face so much as sorting
them out. Did he think of that kiss we had shared as much as I did? Of course,
that had been months ago and now things were different. I was his commanding
officer. I couldn’t look at him that way anymore, and yet, I couldn’t
quite forget.
If he was having any conflict with
how he thought about me, I’d seen no sign.
The fog was breaking up even more,
allowing me to see the full length of the Rachaela behind me. I
made out Mr. Starling, my se ond-in-command, back on the quarterdeck. He was a
burly Dwarf, completely bald except for a tall, startlingly-red topknot
waving above him like a thin scarlet flag. His mustache and beard
were equally red and his mouth, like always, twisted in a frown. He
was also quivering with readiness.
The increased visibility meant that
the enemy now had a clear view of us, too. Astonishingly, they still
hadn’t called out any alarm, though if it was because they didn’t notice
us, or simply didn’t recognize the danger, I didn’t know. It didn’t
matter. No point waiting any longer.
“Bring us about!” I shouted, no
longer worried about anyone hearing us. “Ready cannon!”
“It’s her!” someone from the other
ship shrieked. “It’s Bloody Justice Kasric!” A clamor went up, both from
the enemy ships and the rowboats down in the water. That, at least, felt
good. I could feel that grin on my face getting wider.
“Fire as you bear!” I shouted at
Render, another Dwarf and captain of the gunnery crew.
“Aye, Captain!” Render said. He
signaled one of his gunner’s mates standing at the hatch, who would then
signal the gundeck captains below. Then Render tapped both gun captains
on the shoulder with his riding crop. Both the guns boomed, shaking
the deck beneath my feet and throwing up two plumes of acrid smoke.
The glyphs and sigils on the side of the brass cannon glowed a fiery
yellow, then immediately started to fade. Extra enchantments to pierce
Faerie protections, but also to keep the brass cannon from falling apart,
since cold-forged iron couldn’t be used by the Faerie at all.
I turned. “Swayle!” Hardly had the
word left my mouth than the deadly twang and hiss of loosed arrows
snapped all around the deck as our marines fired. Screams from the other
ship floated across the water. Swayle’s Court Faerie archers, unerringly
deadly, would rack up as many casualties as the cannon by the end of
this engagement.
Unfortunately, the enemy archers
would be just as good, but we had a few moment’s respite as they
recovered from their surprise.
But the gundeck below was still
silent.
“Render!” I snarled. “Why aren’t they
firing down there?” “Aye, Captain!” He shouted and rushed to the hatch. Ren der
was still new, having taken over as gunnery captain after the previous
one had been killed. He was alert, but still trying to compensate for both
not having enough Dwarves to man everything, and the bloody slow process of
passing commands from deck to deck.
Finally, the gun captains down there
must have gotten it together because more cannon banged and the ship
shuddered with even greater fury. More smoke drifted up into view off
the starboard side and more screams came from the opposing
ships.
One of the Goblins on our side, a
little fellow named Chuck Chuck who had tufted bat’s ears and a bulbous nose,
cackled merrily and a ragged cheer went up from my crew.
“Back the topsails!” I shouted. I
wanted to slow our progress now that we were in prime firing
position.
“Aye,” Starling shouted back.
Avonstoke, still next to me, clenched
his hand.
I’d seen it before but hadn’t gotten
used to it. This was shadow magic, and part of why Father had assigned
Avonstoke to protect me in the first place. One instant, his hand was
empty, the next, a dull-black scimitar blossomed in his fist. It looked
like three feet or so of heavy, curved metal, but I didn’t think metal
had anything to do with it. The material, whatever it was, trapped light
rather than reflected it, a thing of shadow with an occasional
glimmer of moonlight that hadn’t come from any sky above us. The
edges shifted slightly any time I tried to get a good look at them,
making the exact dimensions disconcertingly fluid.
An arrow shot out of the cloud of gun
smoke, coming right for me. I ducked, but Avonstoke batted the missile
with a flick of his sword. Seemed the enemy archers had recovered.
“Glad you’re here,” I said.
Then the musket ball shattered part
of the rail two inches from my right hand.
I looked at the broken part of the
railing. Two inches. Two inches in the right direction and I’d never use
that hand again, regardless of Avonstoke’s protective intentions. I
hadn’t even caught any of the ragged splinters, which were deadly enough
on their own.
But for now, I was fine.
The other ship was still a skeletal
gray shape in the mist, with shadowy outlines on something flat a dozen
yards ahead that might have been sailors on a deck. Some of them must
have had rifles, because that’s where the shots were coming from,
but then a dozen more of Swayle’s marines fired and more of our
cannon banged away, shaking the deck underneath my feet, and then all
opposition stopped. Men were fleeing the rowboats and already two of the
three enemy ships were listing. We’d have them demasted and sunk in a few
more minutes and the enemy could do little to resist us. More Faerie were
pouring out of the holds and jumping overboard.
We’d won the day.
I could feel the grin return to my
face. The Black Shuck wasn’t going to get any ships across the channel
today. If Sands was strong enough to get us back through the mist, we’d
have dealt the invaders a bitter blow with relatively little cost to
us.
Then the light wind tore the smoke
barrier away and my grin died as I could better see what kind of damage
we’d wrought. Just because we weren’t the ones paying a cost didn’t mean
it wasn’t being paid.
But I kept my mouth shut and let the
firing continue, despite the taste of smoke and ash in my mouth.
The Faerie weren’t going to carry
their invasion forces across the English Channel. At least not
soon.
We’d bought the rest of the world a
few weeks’ reprieve, at least. After that, it was still anyone’s
guess.
Faith came back out on the deck while
the battle was continuing. If you could call it a battle. Mostly, it was our
gun decks belching flame, smoke, and destruction and the other, smaller
ships screaming. I could see in her face that it would be no use trying
to send her below again. Her thoughts were as clear on her face as
if she’d spoken them out loud. I can’t fire the cannon or shield us
from vortexes in the mist, but I can stand with you here, now.
She stood, very close, both our hands
on the rails, which trembled under our white-knuckled grip as the topside guns
and those on the deck below continued firing, over and over. There was
little that needed done by way of sailing, so Avonstoke came and
stood with us, too.
Having them next to me helped, some,
but it was still horrible. It was war.
1 comment:
Sounds interesting
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