I returned to the vault door and, with an even dozen swings of the axe, managed to hack off the handle and lock. Thirteen chests remained closed and locked. Among them were magics that allowed the possessor to breathe underwater, or make a person fall ill at a touch, or see events transpiring far beyond the reach of sight. Though my imagination danced with the power each could bring, a body could only hold one magic at a time, and none of those were the one I’d gone through all this trouble for.
Sitting to the side, in a small chest whose hinges had gone rusty from lack of use, was the magic to quicken men’s tempers and turn their ire against one another. Cross called it venom magic, but I’d always known it by a different name. No, not as impressive as the other magics I could have snatched from these chests, but I had good reason to want this one above all the others.
I smashed the lock off the chest and dropped to my knees. Lifting the lid, I marveled at the warm, golden dots of light that drifted slowly upward with a sound like grains cascading down a pile of sand. I shed the ghost magic into the nearest open chest and reached into the one I had come here for. The dots climbed my arm and shrank into the pores of my skin. A smile worked its way onto my face.
A crash from above reminded me how little gap there was for me between escape and capture. I hurried from the room, exiting in the opposite direction in case Five Finger came back. On my way to the stairs, I passed the brig, where Isabelle, Thomas, and Two Ears remained chained to the wall.
Thomas looked up at me through iron bars, confusion written across his face. “But you were the one who kept buying me beers and telling me Dead Arm would make for a better captain.”
I wished him good fortune and ran for a gunport that I’d hung a rope from earlier in the evening. Unfortunately, two of the crew, each armed with a sword, stepped between me and my escape route, intent on delivering a quick and lethal lesson in the consequences of deserting shipmates in the middle of a battle. I suggested to one of them that perhaps he was misremembering how he lost his foot, and that in fact it was the man standing next to him who had stolen it and was now walking around on it as if it were his own. My blackheart magic ensured that this crime enraged the fellow, and I continued on while the two shoved each other and bickered over the matter.
Once I’d climbed down into the rowboat, it took some weaving to get clear of the merchant ships that had surrounded the Carrion Crow. Fortunately, none spotted me, their attention was on the battle still raging across the decks above.
As I rowed for land, I couldn’t help but wonder if Cross’s crew would manage to fight their way down into the Flower’s vault. If so, I imagine they would be disappointed when they got there, for all they would find is the magic to determine whether or not someone is lying. Very useful for building a merchant trading empire, but not so useful for escaping a fleet of ships. Once Lord Buckworth turned him over to the governor’s courts, Captain Cross would soon after find himself on the uncomfortable end of a noose. Too bad he’d been misled about the Flower’s vault holding storm magic, but he should have known better than to believe everything he hears. Who knows how such wild and reckless rumors get started?
Although, I must say, my former captain was dead right on one account. For the children of those noble houses whose magic he stole, growing up in the slums did make them tough and resourceful. Some of them tough enough to live like a pirate for years. And some of them resourceful enough to concoct a swindle wherein they recover their family’s magic while at the same time revenging themselves against the very pirate captain who’d stolen it from them.
David VonAllmen
It wasn’t until David VonAllmen’s high school professor thought one of his short stories was suspiciously high in literary merit and threatened to have him expelled for plagiarism that he realized he just might have the talent to be a real writer. David’s writing has appeared in Galaxy’s Edge, Daily Science Fiction, Factor Four, and other professional publications. David is the Grand Prize winner of the 2018 Baen Fantasy Adventure Award. He lives in his hometown of St. Louis with his wife, Ann, and children, Lucas and Eva, who write some pretty darn good stories of their own.
Website: www.davidvonallmen.comE
Facebook: DavidVonallmen
Twitter: @VonAllmenDavid
Emaiclass="underline" dave@davidvonallmen.com
STANDING WITH CENTAURS
by Jennifer L. Hilty
5,000 words
NOBODY TOLD ME the new girl was a centaur.
Centaur’s probably not the politically correct term, I thought as I watched her move into the dorm room down the hall. We’d all known she was coming; the International Space Relations Consulate made sure the entire town, not just the college, knew that an alien creature would be integrating into our normal Earth community. It was all part of their efforts to join the new Space Coalition—some mumbo-jumbo about interplanetary cultural exchange. And what better way to integrate members of other “advanced” races than to dump them straight into our educational system?
Yeah, we’d gotten a real laugh out of it too.
Doors stayed clamped shut all along the hall, but Mom always said I was curious to a fault. There were four races in the Space Coalition, but this had to be the strangest: her torso and arms and head looked human enough, albeit furry and pointy-eared, but it all fell to pieces when your eyes moved down to the four-legged body of some giant dog/cat beast, complete with huge paws and fluffy tail. Straight out of Narnia, except the centaurs I liked as a kid had hooves, not paws. They also didn’t use their feet to turn doorknobs. I leaned farther out involuntarily, staring as the alien lady pushed her way through the door with two boxes balanced on her horizontal back. No student valets out today. Shouldn’t somebody be helping her move in?
“Elliot, you moron, get in here!” My roommate chucked a blue coaster at my head, which missed, because his aim is terrible. “It’s bad enough we have to live in the same dorm without introducing ourselves. Leave it alone.”
“Her,” I muttered, but I closed the door. Luke was right. I didn’t need to be getting involved in any alien business.
I saw her again later that week, as I crossed the quad toward Physics II. She was eating the leaves off a decorative bush outside the administration building.
OK, no one could blame me for stopping and staring this time. She didn’t see me, which was fine since my natural instincts decry being noticed by anything more than three times my body weight. I just stood there and watched as her delicate humanoid hands stripped leaves from branches and then stuffed them into her mouth. She had a rubbery tip to her nose, like my old German shepherd, and it sniffed each handful lightly before she ate with apparent relish.
A bell sounded in the distance, reminding me that I was officially late for class. The dogtaur’s ears twitched at the sound, and then she turned around and saw me. We stared at each other for a few seconds. How did something from another planet end up with a face that looked that human? It defied science. She smiled and opened her mouth as if she might say something.
I finally snapped out of it and spun, hurrying toward Building 6 with my newsie cap tugged low over my face. Hopefully nobody saw that. Voices from around the corner preceded a group of people coming in my direction, and I ducked through them to further my escape. I was halfway down the next sidewalk when I heard catcalling behind me.