On Discord Isle (36 page)

Fengel held his wife’s gaze. “I learned something important that day. If you can’t make it on your own, then pretend. Never let them see you stumble. And in the end? There isn’t any difference between that and being the hardest, meanest bastard on the Atalian Sea.”

He fell silent and looked away. The breeze from off the ocean was warm, and salt-tinged. It carried with it a faint whiff of the volcanic ash falling down like black snow.

“It’s more than that,” continued Natasha, after a moment. “Fraud or not, you inspire something real in Henry and the others.”

Fengel turned to look at her again. The set of her jaw was soft, her lips missing their customary sneer. Her eyes were golden, and very large. “Faking is good enough for them.” He chuckled, and it hurt. “It’s a funny thing. People want someone who can lead them, show them the way. But I’ve found those that follow you are the ones you deserve, all the same.”

He watched Natasha frown at the thought and look away.
Food for thought, my wife. After all, Mordecai was no accident. Henry Smalls, Sarah Lome, Lucian, and even young Miss Stone are the crew that I deserve, and in turn, they deserve me.
Fengel started.
Goddess. How could I let this mess with Natasha get between me and them?

Ash rained down in periodic silence, punctuated only by the mechanical roaring of the Dray Engine on some distant part of the isle. Fengel rolled the epiphany around in his head, only noting Natasha’s continued silence after the sun had climbed a hand’s width above the horizon.

“Why do we fight?” asked Natasha.

Fengel looked to her. His wife was observing the seabirds as they flew out over the ocean. He watched one of the filthy birds dart down to snap up a fish from the cresting waves. It made for the beach, but then another attacked it. The two squabbled over the meal. Seen from so far away, their fight seemed small, set against the backdrop of the sky and the sea.

“Because we enjoy it,” said Fengel.

Natasha made a grunt of agreement. “And because we both like to win.”

Fengel nodded. There was a choice before him, he realized. He turned his head slightly, catching Natasha’s gaze out of the corner of her eye. “You know,” he said, “I see something too, in the faces of those that follow you.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Oh?”

“Fear.”

Natasha blushed. She looked away and toyed with the flower bud growing from the bushes being slowly crushed beneath them. “You’re just saying that.”

“No, it’s true—”

The rest of his words were lost as Natasha grabbed the back of his head and crushed her lips to his. Fengel froze, then gave in. He returned her kiss tentatively at first, then with increasing passion. The ledge shook and the ground rumbled again. Distantly, he heard another explosion from the volcano at the center of the isle. Fengel realized that he didn’t care.

Natasha broke away suddenly. Ash rained down between them and her face was now a picture of concern. “Wait,” she said. “I shot you with that weird Voorn musket. Why aren’t you dying?”

He’d been ignoring the pain, but her words brought it back to the fore. “It hurts…” Fengel rolled over to reveal the injured side. His jacket was torn, and scorched where the beam had hit. Amazingly, though, his shirt underneath was barely burned through to the skin. “Huh. Something stopped the blast.”

He gingerly fished around in the pocket on that side of his jacket. Something round and hard fell into his fingers and he pulled it out. The object was an eyepiece, bound in brass with a gold chain. The lens was brightly reflective on one side, though. And the brass ring was smoothed, half-melted almost in the shape of an eyepatch, now.

“Oh,” said Fengel. “My spare monocle. The blast did something to it.”

Natasha was nonplussed. “You keep a spare monocle?”

Fengel gave her a confused look. “Of course.”

“But you’re still wearing that cracked, messed-up thing.”

“Well, yes. Then I wouldn’t have a spare.”

Natasha made a snort of disgust. She snatched both eyepieces, the one he was wearing, with its now-broken chain, and the one in his hand. His wife shook her head, then threw away the old and planted the spare squarely on his face. A pang of loss shot through Fengel. He tried not to look out over the ledge after his lost monocle. Natasha climbed up onto his chest and took his head with both hands. “Shouldn’t we think about getting down, somehow?” he asked.

His wife only grinned crookedly. “We’ll figure something out. If we have to, I’ll just scream at you like the harpy you say I am, and you can fake it as we go.”

Fengel smiled. “Oh. That’s all right, then.”

She bent her lips to his as the island rumbled, the dragon roared, and volcanic ash fluttered down around them.

Chapter Twenty

Lina stared at the dead man.

It was Jonas Wiley, the unburned twin. He lay in the hammock below, between her and the deck, his eyes wide and staring. The pool of blood below him was mostly dry. He had likely died sometime during her nap.

Jonas had been obnoxious, but that was small in the face of his death. Lina breathed a heartfelt sigh and sat up. Her back creaked and her muscles were sore. A glance at the rest of the quarterdeck revealed that it was all but empty; only those injured in the raid still rested uneasily in their hammocks. Having been awake as the
Dawnhawk
’s scout, she’d evidently slept longer than any of the others who’d partaken in the raid. It had been an uncomfortable, dreamless sleep, yet for all that, she’d been completely oblivious to the man dying slowly beneath her.

Blue skies and daylight showed through the portholes, accompanied by the dulled crack of muskets and the distant thump of cannon.
We’re still being chased, then
. Sleep wouldn’t come again any time soon. Lina hardened her heart and decided to go check up on things.
Besides, I’m going to need someone to help with the body
.

Lina gingerly tried to avoid the pool of blood as she hopped down from her hammock. Jonas’s death was an unpleasant surprise, though not entirely unexpected; she’d lost many friends last night during the escape from Breachtown. In fact, this entire trip had been one catastrophe after another.
How did things get this bad?

There was one bright spot, at least. Lina cheered as she thought of Michael Hockton, and the way he had smiled at her. His screams, too. There had been a lot of screaming and yelling last night, really.

Lina stretched again and looked around for Runt. “All right, you little monster,” she said. “Where are you? Let’s go see what the day has in store.”

She glanced up to see him behind a support strut stretching between the mess hall bulkhead and the deck up above. The scryn was curled into a tight, anxious coil, glaring down at her with beady eyes.

“There you are. Come on down. Let’s go find everyone.”

Runt poked his head out from behind the strut and hissed at her. Caustic spittle spattered across the boards of the deck, smoking. Lina cursed and took a step back.

“What in the Realms Below was that for? Get down here this instant, you horrible thing!” There was a bottle of Corsair’s Cure-all in her stowed gear, but if her pet was going to be cranky he could damned well stay up there.

Runt pulled his head back into the coil and rumbled to himself. Lina made fists with her hands and was about to turn away when a low groan sounded behind her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She looked back over her shoulder, already knowing what she’d find.

The corpse of Jonas Wiley was staring right at her. There wasn’t any doubt that he was dead — his usually tanned skin was waxy and his chest did not rise with breath.

“Oh,” said Lina in a small voice. “Oh no.”

The Revenant gave a low groan that sent a cold shiver running down her spine. Runt hissed violently and squirmed deeper into its recess behind the strut. Ryan Gae and the other injured pirates shifted fitfully in their sleep.

“Okay,” said Lina. “I’m, I’m going to just go...find someone. Runt! Keep an eye on Jonas here, okay?”

And then she fled.

The quarterdeck moved by in a blur. She raced up the stairwell past storage, past the captain’s cabin, and up out onto the cool wind of the main deck.

The
Dawnhawk
in daytime was a welcome sight, even if the great airship was somewhat unkempt at the moment. Coils of rope lay across the deck, intermixed with toolboxes, winches, and great bolts of spare canvas patching. Almost the whole crew was currently present, barring those who had been lost in the raid and those sleeping below. The majority milled about, peering over the gunwales at their pursuers or crouched in some out-of-the-way place, focused on their own internal miseries. The remaining minority saw to the running of the ship itself, and were busy calling reports back to the helm or hauling gear aloft to the gasbag.

Lina paused, half out of the stairway hatch. Where were they going? What was the point of going on? The colony raid had been a failure. A good number of her friends were dead and they had less than nothing to show for it. The Ship’s Committee had proven worthless. They’d already mutinied, and the captains were gone.

What were they all going to do?

A distant thump of cannon fire sounded, followed by the scream of a ball flying past the stern of the airship. Lina shook herself.
Foolish.
There was always something more to lose. And right now, not only did the Perinese want them dead, but there were Revenants in the quarterdeck.

She peered around for someone to bring that fact up with. Nate Wiley certainly wasn’t it; Lina didn’t relish being around when the Jonas’s twin found out. Henry Smalls stood at the helm with Konrad and Maxim. Her friend Andrea hung from the port-side gas-bag rigging. Tricia and a few others were on the deck, hoisting a light-air gas canister up to her via winch and pulley. The older Mechanist oversaw this, while Committee-Member Lome argued with Reaver Jane about something near the starboard skysails. Lucian Thorne sat on the exhaust pipe rising from the deck nearby with Lina’s stolen bottle of Cure-all in hand, looking out into the sky. She frowned at that, but kept looking, hoping for a glimpse of Michael Hockton. The renegade Bluecoat wasn’t anywhere to be seen, though she did spy Omari’s blonde dreadlocks up near the bow.

Perfect
. If she told anyone on the crew they’d overreact, and the committee, well, was a failure. Omari had the most experience dealing with Revenants, she suspected.
She made the damned things, after all
.

Lina rose from the hatch and stalked up to the front of the airship. The ex-apothecary’s assistant stood at the very front rail, looking out at the horizon where the sea met the sky. The air was clear but for a few puffy clouds, and the sun hung at midmorning. White-capped waves rolled several hundred feet below, unblemished by any sight of land.

A cannonball flew below, before disappearing into the ocean.

“I can pretend we’re not being chased up here,” said Omari. “At least, until something like that happens.” She looked at Lina. “Why don’t we fly higher?”

Lina listened to the whirr of the propellers before answering. “We’re at full steam already,” she said. “That takes coal and light-air gas, which we probably don’t have a lot of to spare at the moment. Also, we hit a bunch of merchant ships on the way over to Breachtown, so we’re running a little heavy. I wouldn’t worry about getting shot down, though. It’s pretty much impossible to hit something in the sky with a cannon, and musket shot won’t do near enough damage, even if they can manage it.”           

Omari only grunted and went back to watching the waves.

“So....” continued Lina. “We’ve got a problem in the quarterdeck that I think you should handle.”

The Yulan woman wheeled on her. “What? You wreck my home, my business, kidnap me, and now you want to put me to work?” She shook her head. “The gall of you Perinese.”

“Hey!” said Lina, affronted. “I’m from Triskelion, the machine-city. Don’t lump me in with these dogs chasing after us.” She lowered her voice. “Besides. This is one of
your
problems.”

She caught Omari’s gaze and held it. After a moment the other woman sagged. “Oh,” she said. “You pirates are dropping like mayflies. But I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”         

“Well, stop raising them for starters,” she said heatedly. “Jonas being dead is bad enough, but no one’s going to be able to handle watching him walk around. Especially after last night.”

Omari threw her hands wide. “What, do you think this is a game I play? That I enjoy? I have no control over who comes back, or how. He’s not some conjured daemon, to come at my beck and call.” She shook her head. “Just put them out of the way somewhere. They’re not usually violent unless you get in their way a lot.” She paused to think. “Or unless they were really violent people in life.”

“Well, you’d better think fast on what you
can
control,” said Lina. “Or—”

“Take cover!” came a cry from back near the helm.

Lina heard the rudder-assemblies at the rear of the ship give a loud
clack
. Then the airship pitched abruptly to its port side. Omari yelled and grabbed the gunwale railing, echoing the surprise of the rest of the crew.

A black blur flew overhead. It thrust past the gunwales amidships and up at the gasbag frame above them, pressing the semirigid canvas skin until it was concave. Lina had a half-second’s horror as the canvas split and the cannonball punched up out of sight through the interior of the ’bag.

“Puncture!” called the Mechanist from the middle of the deck. “Clear amidships for gas leak!”

Everyone knew the danger present. Light-air gas was not only intensely flammable, but extremely poisonous as well. The Brothers of the Cog tended toward gas-mask respirators for a reason.

“I thought you said we were safe!” yelled Omari. “I thought you said that they couldn’t hit us! Now we’re going to sink and drown in the ocean.” She hugged up against the gunwales and said prayers in Perinese before switching to some other, native tongue.