Glory Season (61 page)

Brod hesitated, then nodded. “At least it’ll surprise ’em. You ready?”

Maia braced herself and grabbed the boom, preparing to kick. “Ready, Captain!”

He grimaced at the standing joke. Maia quashed rebellion in her stomach, where the bilious, familiar commotion of fear and adrenaline had come back, as if to a favorite haunt.

So much for that string of luck
, she thought.
I should have known better.

“All right,” Brod said with a ragged sigh, clearly sharing the thought. “Here goes.”

Everything depended on nearest passage. How tight could the bigger vessel turn? What weapons would be brought to bear?

As expected, the diminutive skiff was far better at drawing a close tack. The Reckless hesitated too long after Brod changed course. When the reaver ship came about at last, it fell short and wound up abeam to the breeze. Brod and Maia gained westward momentum while seamen struggled aloft, lashing sails so the still-warming engines would not have to fight them pushing upwind. The rest of the reaver crew watched from the railings.
Do they recognize the skiff?
Maia wondered.
By now surely they know something’s happened to Inanna and their friends on the ketch. Lysos, they look angry!

Even with the big ship wallowing, there would come a moment when the two vessels passed by no more than a couple of hundred meters. What would the pirates do about it?

Working hard to help Brod maneuver as tightly as possible, Maia trimmed the sail for maximum efficiency. This meant having to throw herself from one side of the skiff to the other, leaning her weight far out, wherever balance was most needed. She had never sailed a small boat in this way, literally skating across the water. It was exhilarating, and might have been fun if her gut weren’t turning somersaults. In glimpses, she sought to see if, by some chance, Renna stood upon the pirate ship. There were men on the schooner’s quarterdeck, as during the taking of the Manitou, but no sign of Renna’s peculiar dark features.

As the skiff swung broadside to the wallowing vessel, Maia heard furious shouts across the span of open water.
Words were indiscernible, but she recognized the livid, red-faced visage of the ship’s male captain, arguing with several women wearing red bandannas. The man pointed at more reavers wrestling a long black tube at the schooner’s portside gunwale. Shaking his head, he made adamant forbidding motions.

Underneath his outrage, the captain seemed blithely certain of his authority. So certain, he showed no suspicion as more wiry women, armed with truncheons and knives, moved to surround him and his officers … until the man’s tone of command cut off abruptly, smothered under a sudden flurry of violent blows.

From a horrified distance, Maia could not make out whether trepps or blades were used to cut the men down, but the attack continued many seconds longer than seemed necessary. Loudly echoing yips of pleasure showed how thoroughly the women pirates relished a comeuppance they must have long yearned for, breaking a troublesome alliance and the last restraint of law.

“We’re pullin’ away!” Brod shouted. He had been concentrating too hard even to glance at his former shipmates, or hear meaning in the recent spate of shouts and cries. A good thing, for the fall of the officers had been just part of the coup. When Maia next found time to scan the rigging, most of the remaining male crew members had vanished from where they were working moments before.

The Pinnipeds may be suffering hard times
, Maia reflected, still in shock from what she’d seen.
But they drew the line at deliberate murder. So, they get to share our fate.

These reavers were fanatics. She had known that, and had it reinforced during this morning’s ambush. But this? To deliberately and cold-bloodedly attack and slay
men
? It was as obscene as what Perkinites constantly warned of, the oldtime male-on-female violence that once led to the Founders’ Exodus, so long ago.

Renna
, she thought in anguish.
What have you brought to my world?

Maia cast a brief prayer that her sister, part of the engine crew, hadn’t been involved in the spontaneous bloodletting. Perhaps Leie would help save any men belowdecks, though realistically, the pirates seemed unlikely to leave witnesses.

Right now, what mattered was that the mutiny had won Maia and Brod seconds, minutes. Time that they exchanged for badly needed meters as the shouting reavers reorganized and finished turning the ship. “Ready about!” Brod cried, warning of another jibe maneuver. “Ready!” Maia answered. As her partner steered, she slid under the boom and performed a complex set of simultaneous actions, moving with a fluid grace that would have shocked her old teachers, or even herself a few months ago. Practice, combined with need, makes for a kind of centering that can increase skill beyond all expectation.

The next time she glimpsed the Reckless, it cruised several hundred meters back but was picking up speed. The gunners kept having to reposition their recoilless rifle each time the schooner shifted angle to track the fugitives. They could be seen shouting at the new helmswoman, urging a steady course. Straight-on wouldn’t do, as the larger vessel’s bowsprit blocked the way. Eventually, Reckless settled on a heading that plowed thirty degrees from the wind. It reduced the closing rate, but finally allowed a clear shot.

Shall I warn Brod?
Maia pondered, more coolly than she expected.

No, better to let him stay focused every possible moment.

She watched her friend flick his gaze to the trembling sail, to the choppy water, to their destination—the rapidly nearing cluster of vast, stony monoliths. Using all this data, the boy made adjustments too subtle to be calculated, based on a type of instinct he had earlier denied
possessing, seducing speed out of an unlikely combination of sailcloth, wood, and wind.

He’s growing up as I watch him
, Maia marveled. Brod’s youthful, uncertain features were transformed by this intensely spotlit exercise of skill. His jaw and brow bore hardened lines, and he radiated something that, to Maia, distilled both the mature and immature essences of maleness—a profound narrowness of purpose combined with an ardent joy in craft. Even if the two of them died in the next few minutes, her young friend would not leave this world without becoming a man. Maia was glad for him.

A booming concussion shook the air behind them. It was a deeper, larger-caliber growl than the little cannon of this morning. “What was that?” Brod asked, almost absentmindedly, without shifting from the task at hand.

“Thunder,” Maia lied with a grim smile, letting the hot glory of his concentration last a few seconds longer. “Don’t worry. It won’t rain for a while, yet.”

Water poured down from the heavens, soaking their clothes and nearly swamping the small boat. It fell in sheets, then abruptly stopped. The cascade, blown into the sky by another exploding shell, sent Maia with a bucket to the bilge, bailing furiously.

Fountains of falling ocean weren’t their only trouble. One near miss had spun the skiff like a top, causing the hull to groan with the sound of loosening boards and pegs. All Maia knew was that her bailing outflow must exceed inflow for as long as it took Brod to single-handedly find them a way out of this mess.

The gun crew on the Reckless had taken a while settling down, after their mutinous purge. They shot wide, frustrated partly by the skiff’s zigzagging, before finally zeroing in amid the deepening twilight. For minutes, Maia nursed the illusion that safety lay in view—an open channel
leading to the anchorage of Jellicoe Lagoon. Then she glimpsed a familiar and appalling sight—the captured freighter Manitou, anchored within that same enclosure of towering stone, its deck aswarm with more crimson bandannas. All at once, she realized the awful truth.

Jellicoe must be the reaver base! I led Brod straight into their hands!

“Turn right, Brod, hard!”

A sudden, last-minute swerve barely escaped the fatal entrance. Now they skirted along the convoluted face of Jellicoe itself, alternately drenched by near misses or the more normal ocean spume of waves crashing against obdurate rock. There were no more delicate, optimizing tack maneuvers. They were caught in a mighty current, and Brod spent all his efforts keeping them from colliding with the island’s serrated face.

Darkness might have helped, if all three major moons weren’t high, casting pearly luminance upon the fivers’ imminent demise. It was a beautiful, clear evening. Soon, Maia’s beloved stars would be out, if she lasted long enough to wish them goodbye.

Again and again she filled the bucket, spilling it seaward so as not to watch the glistening nearness of the “dragon’s tooth,” which towered nearly vertically like a rippling, convoluted curtain. Its rounded fabric folds seemed to hint a softness that was a lie. The adamantine, crystalline stone was, in fact, passively quite willing to smash them at a touch.

Maia couldn’t face that awful sight. She poured bucket after bucket in the opposite direction, which fact partially spared her when the reavers tried a new tactic.

A sudden detonation exploded behind Maia, bouncing the skiff in waves of compressed air and near vacuum, pummeling her downward to the bilge. To her own amazement, she retained full consciousness as concussions rolled past, fading into a low, rumbling vibration she
could feel through the planks. Reflexively, she clutched at a stinging pain in the back of her neck, and pulled out a sliver of granitic stone, covered with blood. While purple spots swam before her eyes, Maia stared at the daggerlike piece of natural shrapnel. While the world wavered around her, she turned to see that Brod, too, had survived, though bloody runnels flowed down the left side of his face. Thank Lysos the rock fragments had been small. This time.

“Sail farther from the cliff!” Maia shouted. Or tried to. She couldn’t even hear her own voice, only an awful tolling of temple bells. Still, Brod seemed to understand. With eyes dilated in shock, he nodded and turned the tiller. They managed to open some distance before the next shell struck, blowing more chunks off the promontory face. No chips pelted them this time, but the maneuver meant sailing closer to the Reckless and its weapon, now almost at point-blank range. Looking blearily up the rifled muzzle, Maia watched its crew load another shell and fire. She felt its searing passage through the air, not far to the left. An interval passed, too short to give a name, and then the cliff reflected yet another terrible blast, almost hurling the two fivers from the boat. When next she looked up, Maia saw their sail was ripped. Soon it would be in tatters.

At that moment, the convoluted border of the island took another turn. Suddenly, an opening appeared to port. With quaking hands, Brod steered straight for the cul-de-sac. It would have been insanely rash under any other circumstance, but Maia approved wholeheartedly.
At least the bitchies won’t get to watch us die at their own hands.

One side of the opening exploded as they passed through, sending cracks radiating through the outcrop, blowing the skiff forward amid cascades of rock. The next shell seemed to beat the cliff with bellows of frustrated rage. Cracks multiplied tenfold. A tremendous chunk of stone, half as long as the Reckless itself, began to peel
away. With graceful deliberateness, its looming shadow fell toward Brod and Maia.…

The boulder crashed into the slim gap just behind the tiny boat, yanking them upon the driving fist of a midget tsunami, aimed at a deep black hole.

Maia knew herself to have some courage. But not nearly enough to watch their ruined boat surge toward that ancient titan, Jellicoe Beacon.
Let it be quick
, she asked. Then darkness swept over them, cutting off all sight.

Dear Iolanthe
,

As you can see from this letter, I am alive … or was at the time of its writing … and in good health, excepting the effects of several days spent bound and gagged.

Well, it looks like I tumbled for the oldest trick in the book. The Lonely Traveler routine. I am in good company. Countless diplomats more talented than I have fallen victim to their own frail, human needs.…

My keepers command me not to ramble, so I’ll try to be concise. I am supposed to tell you not to report that I am missing until two days after receiving this. Continue pretending that I took ill after my speech. Some will imagine foul play, while others will say I’m bluffing the Council. No matter. If you do not buy my captors the time they need, they threaten to bury me where I cannot be found.

They also say they have agents in the police bureaus. They will know if they are betrayed.

I am now supposed to plead with you to cooperate, so my life will be spared. The first draft of this letter was destroyed because I waxed a bit sarcastic at this point, so let me just say that, old as I am, I would not object to going on a while longer, or seeing more of the universe.

I do not know where they are taking me, now that summer is over and travel is unrestricted in any direction. Anyway, if I wrote down clues from what I see and hear around me, they would simply make me rewrite yet again. My head hurts too much for that, so we’ll leave it there.

I will not claim to have no regrets. Only fools say that. Still, I am content. I’ve been and done and seen and served. One of the riches of my existence has been this opportunity to dwell for a time on Stratos.

My captors say they’ll be in touch, soon. Meanwhile, with salutations, I remain—Renna.

In near-total darkness she stroked Brod’s forehead, tenderly brushing his sodden hair away from coagulating gashes. The youth moaned, tossing his head, which Maia held gently with her knees. Despite a plenitude of hurts, she felt thankful for small blessings, such as this narrow patch of sand they lay upon, just above an inky expanse of chilly, turbid water. Thankful, also, that this time she wasn’t fated to awaken in some dismal place, after a whack on the head.
My skull’s gotten so hard, anything that’d knock me out would kill me. And that won’t happen till the world’s done amusing itself, pushing me around.