She climbed out into the light, which was hard and white. The scouring wind was full of sand, and the ships were closer. The one that had fired first was smallest and fastest; it was coming up quickly on the starboard quarter, and Hester could see the men on its hull taking aim at her with some kind of swivel-mounted cannon. It puffed out white smoke, and she felt the shot whisk past her, exploding among a stack of biscuit-colored rocks a hundred yards to larboard.
She wiped her nose on her sleeve and steadied her gun against the cockpit rail. “Be easier if you could do this,” she told Grike, pushing her sand goggles up her forehead and squinting through the jezail’s telescopic top sight. “I can hardly see them…”
“i cannot,” said Grike. “I have told you many times. something dr. zero did to me; some barrier in my mind …”
“I wish I had your Dr. Zero here right now,” grunted Hester, trying to focus on the little knot of men busy with their sponges and ramrods around the swivel gun. “I’d put a barrier in her mind.” She squeezed the jezail’s trigger and cursed as the stock slammed against her shoulder. The empty cartridge casing went tumbling astern. Where the bullet had gone Hester could not say, but she had not hit her target. She was no sharpshooter. Her talent wasn’t shooting, only killing.
Luckily the men on the other ship were no better than her; shot after shot went past her as she worked her way steadily through a pocketful of ammunition. She was about to start on the second pocket when the other ship suddenly veered off course.
“Did I do that?” she asked.
The enemy ship was out of control. Maybe one of Hester’s stray shots had severed a cable or pierced a tire. It curved across the line of ships, and a three-wheeler close behind it swerved wildly and collided with a little armed yacht. Tangled together, both ships overturned and started to cartwheel impressively across the sand, shedding spars, wheels, sails, and scraps of broken mast. The leading ship had overturned too, throwing up a billowing scarf of sand that hid the remaining three for a while, but they emerged again, vague at first, then sharp and clear and gaining fast. Bullets from a steam-powered machine gun mounted on the big dune runner started thumping against the woodwork close to where Hester crouched. She said something filthy and lay down out of sight.
“THEY ARE TRYING TO CAPTURE THIS SHIP, NOT DESTROY IT,” Grike guessed. “NOW THAT THEY HAVE LOST THREE OTHERS, GRANDMA GRAVY WILL NOT WANT THEM TO RETURN WITHOUT A PRIZE.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” said Hester, looking up at him from ankle height as the bullets hanged off his armor. “What are you going to do when they board us?”
“IT WILL NOT COME TO THAT.”
“What if it does?”
“THEN I SHALL DEFEND YOU IN ANY WAY I CAN,” said the Stalker patiently, “I WILL SNATCH AWAY THEIR WEAPONS. I WILL RESTRAIN THEM. I WILL STAND BETWEEN THEIR BLADES AND YOUR BODY. BUT I WILL NOT KILL THEM.”
“And if they kill me?”
“THEN I WILL KEEP THE PROMISE I MADE YOU ON THE BLACK ISLAND.”
Hester squeezed off a couple more shots at the dune runner. Overhead, the sails were starting to fill with holes, but the silicone silk was tough and did not split. “Why did she do this to you?” Hester shouted. “I mean, tricking you into smashing that Anna Fang thing, fine, but why couldn’t you just go back to normal once the job was done?”
“I AM SURE THAT DR. ZERO HAD HER REASONS FOR LEAVING ME WITH A CONSCIENCE.”
“Well, I miss the old Grike.”
“AND I MISS THE OLD HESTER.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
But she never found out, because at that moment the dune runner pulled alongside, and grappling hooks came hurtling across the narrowing gap between the two ships, and it was time to drop her jezail and pull out her pistols and fight.
The hammer blows of bullets against the hull got into Theo’s dreams, so perplexing and out of place in the quiet green spaces he was drifting through that he had to wake up to find out what they meant. He lay on the bunk for a moment, wondering where on earth he was and why it was jolting about so. The portholes on the wall above him were shuttered, so it was shady in the cabin, but just above his head someone had stretched a golden cord right across from one wall to the other. Theo wondered why anyone should do such a thing. Was it a washing line? If so, it was more beautiful than any washing line he’d seen before; so bright, so shimmer. He put his hand out to touch it, and his fingers slid straight through it. It was made from warm light.
Theo sat up. There were more of the cords stretched all across the cabin, like a cat’s cradle. Every now and then there would be a thud against the hull and another would appear. They were shafts of sunlight, poking in through the bullet holes that were appearing in the cabin walls.
Dizzy with sleep, Theo rolled off the bunk and landed on the deck. The smooth wood bucked beneath him as the sand ship sped over the rough desert floor. Theo started crawling toward the metal ladder at the rear of the cabin. He could hear shouting above him, and the slam and cough of handguns. As he reached the foot of the ladder, a man came down it headfirst, dead, his turban smoldering where the flash from Hester’s pistol had set it on fire. Theo looked up the ladder through the open hatch. A confusion of struggling shapes blocked out the sun.
He climbed the ladder. Out on the deck in the white, blinding light a scruffy battle was taking place, almost silent apart from the stamp and scuff of feet on the deck boards. A ragged brown dune runner was keeping pace with the sand ship, attached to it by ropes and grappling hooks. Men had jumped across the gap, thinking it would be easy to overpower a one-eyed woman and a Stalker who would not kill, but three of them were already dead, tangled in the rigging or draped across the rail. A fourth was struggling with Grike, who had taken his gun and was holding him away from Hester. A fifth circled Hester, who had thrown her empty pistols aside and was holding a knife, jabbing it at the man each time he lunged at her. He had a sword, much longer and heavier than Hester’s knife, but he had not yet worked up the courage to get close enough to use it.
Theo stood unnoticed in the cabin hatchway. The fight and the desert swirled around him; the heat and light came down on his head like a fall of bright water. On the deck at his feet lay a boarding axe, and the light seemed to pour from its blade. He picked it up and hacked at the rope that stretched from the nearest of the grappling hooks. The rope was old and greasy and parted easily after a few blows. The sand ship lurched, starting to pull away from its attacker. Theo scrambled toward the next hook. “Theo!” he heard Hester shout. He looked up. A man stood in the dune runner’s rigging, grinning at Theo and aiming a blunderbuss. Hornets were buzzing past, and Theo felt one sting his arm. A knife appeared, sticking out of the man’s neck, and he dropped the blunderbuss and fell out of the rigging into the storm of sand between the two ships.
Theo looked at Hester. She had flung her knife at the man with the blunderbuss, and now she was defenseless. Without thinking he swung the flat of his hatchet at the swordsman who was attacking her. The man still hadn’t noticed Theo, and the blow caught him by surprise. He crashed sideways against the rail and over it, away into the swirling dust. Grike dropped the man he had captured down after him, and Theo saw them clamber to their feet in the sand ship’s wake and stagger painfully away, waving at the surviving ships, which were slowing and starting to turn, dismayed by their losses and abandoning the chase. “Good work,” said Hester.