“Get off my podium.”
Detan snorted, straining as he held the wheel straight under the buffeting of higher altitude winds. “You can captain this ship when you’ve got all the sel back.” He called over his shoulder to Tibs, “Mark course already!”
“Working on it,” Tibs’s voice was strained, made thready by the wind whipping past his lips.
“This isn’t your ship, Honding. Step aside and help the others.”
“By the pits, Pelkaia, you think I’m enjoying this? You ever flown into a sea storm before?”
The twitch at the corner of her eye was the only answer he needed – no, she hadn’t. Detan straightened, firmed his resolve not to let her take control of the wheel. An inexperienced pilot in this mess could send them all splashing down. And he’d just replaced his boots, too. It’d be a shame to ruin them in the salt water.
“I see you haven’t. Well, I have, and I’ll be damned if this is the right moment to teach you how to handle it. Thank your cursed stars I happened to be aboard, and go get your sel back. And don’t come bitching to me if we lose the watchers before you succeed. My goal is getting us out of this alive and free. I don’t care about your surplus.”
Pelkaia opened her mouth to protest just as a gust struck the ship, throwing the mainsail hard to one side. Detan cursed and clutched at the wheel, bracing himself against the podium as he straightened the ship’s sideways slew.
“You want to help? Get those sails down! And have everyone tie in. Things are gonna get rough.”
She glared at him, but strode off anyway, her footsteps easy and comfortable over the bucking surface of the deck. Soon dark silhouettes moved across the deck, away from the aft where the struggle over the sel continued, spindly figures swinging up on the masts to bring the great sails down. He breathed a sigh of relief. One less thing to worry about.
A black bolt skittered across the deck, nicking the heel of his fine new boots. He yelped, jumped forward enough to slam his chest into the wheel. The ship began to slide, but he straightened before the effect could be troublesome.
“What in the black–”
“Company to starboard,” Tibs said.
The watchers’ craft had caught up, pacing the Larkspur’s rail. It was a low-bellied thing, narrow enough to cut through the sky just as quick as its propellers could force it along. Selium shimmered all around it, twisted into strange, knotted shapes as the sensitives on board the Larkspur struggled to wrench it away from the three sensitives Detan had seen fixing the craft when they’d first arrived. All along the deck a string of watchers spread out like links in a chain, at least eight of the bastards, with blackened crossbows pointed straight at the Larkspur’s deck. And there wasn’t a sensitive aboard the Larkspur willing to answer those crossbows with the ship’s harpoons so long as the sel remained in jeopardy.
“You make a real nice target,” Tibs mused.
Another bolt skittered across the deck near his feet. One thunked into the wood of the podium with a heavy twang. “Pits!” Detan hunched down in the three walls of the podium, struggling to keep his body hidden while still being able to exert enough leverage to work the great wheels.
“They’ve got a harpoon!” one of Pelkaia’s crew yelled, voice sharp with panic above the howl of the storm-winds.
“Hold on!” Detan called back, praying to the clear skies that Pelkaia had got his message across to everyone to tie themselves in. Huddled as he was, the wheel was a bear to turn, but turn it he did, groaning and growling as he heaved the wheel to the larboard. The sleek ship responded immediately, tearing away from the watchers’ vessel so quick Detan feared he’d roll them. Screams – mostly startled – popped up all around. He jerked the wheel straight and risked a glance over the top of the podium for the starboard side. The watcher craft was a good couple of hundred strides away, and although Pelkaia’s crew was scattered like thrown sand all across the deck, they appeared to all be there.
“Whoo!” He grinned, popping up to his full height, and angled the ship for a gentler curve to take them away from the watcher craft. Soft, fat drops of rain began to pelt Detan’s head, running down his hair and into his eyes. The shadow of the watchers’ craft turned, following tight behind.
A damp Pelkaia marched toward him, the rain making the sel on her face shimmer as it plowed riverbeds through her illusion. It gave the effect of her skin cracking, as if she were leaking selium from within. Detan shivered.
“Blow it,” she demanded, thrusting a finger toward the watchers’ craft. Selium enveloped it – Pelkaia’s surplus.
Hot sweat mingled with the cool rain on his neck. “No.”
“No? No? Look at it! We’ve lost it. Blow the watchers, and we can reel in what’s left.”
Detan squinted, shading his eyes to keep the rain clear. The amorphous blob of pearlescent gas twisted at the edges closest to the Larkspur, connected to the main blob around the watcher craft by thready wisps. His little stunt had gotten them out of harpoon range, but it’d been too sudden – half the crew had lost their hold.
But he could still feel it, looming like the promise of a stiff drink in his mind.
“So you lost it. So what? I told you–”
“Sirra.” There was a warning note in Tibs’s voice so stern that both Detan and Pelkaia whipped around to look his way. “We’ve a problem.”
Tibs pointed. Detan’s gut nearly emptied itself on his new shoes. A great column of cloud, grey and bulbous and churning, loomed on the horizon. It speared up from the sea like a god’s leg, its body crackled with streaks of lightning. The patchy clouds that spilt rain upon them reached out toward that swollen pillar, twisted into smears as they were pulled in under the force of the storm’s updraft.
He’d seen columns like that before. Usually on the far horizon. Spears in the sky bidding him to go around. Had seen the bodies and ships of those who’d flown too close to them, too. Broken husks, cracked in so many pieces they looked as if they’d fallen down the rocky side of an endless canyon. Half-frozen and half-mashed.
Never had he seen one so close it filled his view, dwarfed his vision and his hope.
“What–” Pelkaia began, but he cut her off.
“That’s a cloud suck. A god’s tower. That’s death.”
“Captain!” Coss struggled toward them, the growing winds already swirling clockwise over them. “The watchers are gaining again.”
Detan looked to the watchers, standing between them and Petrastad. Looked to the cloud suck, standing between him and Ripka. Made his choice.
“Right,” he said, bracing himself, straightening his spine. “Pelkaia. Use what you’ve got left and block the watchers’ view of us. Throw up a mirror of the cloud suck, right in their path if you can. We’re going the long way around, and we don’t want them following. We’ll have enough problems without ’em on our heels.”
“Just blow the cursed–”
He slammed a chock-plug in to brace the wheel and turned, grabbing the front of Pelkaia’s shirt in one fist. She gasped, startled, as he jerked her forward to stare eye-to-eye with him.
“I said no.”
“Think you can intimidate me, too? I’m not my crew, Honding. I know the make of you. Now blow that skies-cursed ship.”
The crew went quiet, every last eye on the deck glued to Detan and their captain. He felt them all. Felt them probing at him, wondering. Wondering if he’d blow more than the watcher vessel, if Pelkaia pushed him just right. Wondering if they could bash his head in before he got the chance. Detan cleared a rough catch in his throat and lowered his voice to a raspy whisper. “No innocents.”