The man may have been mocking him, but Calder got the impression that Nine was trying to extend him a measure of respect. To treat him as the man he would someday become, perhaps. It still made situations like this uncomfortable.
“The sea is full of surprises,” Calder responded. He shot a glance over at Andel, but the man wasn’t laughing; he was staring straight at the deadly fires.
Nine grunted, raising a hand to shade his eyes as one of the shapes dipped close to his face. He didn’t flinch back from the heat, as Calder would have done. Perhaps Champions couldn’t be burned.
Nine’s braids swayed as he shook his head. “What do you think, Eight?”
“I’m watching the prisoner,” Eight responded shortly.
“Fine,” Nine said, “I’ll take a turn, but we run into some sort of Elder-spawned sea serpent later, it’s yours.”
Eight said nothing. He continued standing with his arms folded, shield on his back, looking between Urzaia and the fire in the sky as though he thought his prisoner had engineered this somehow, as part of an escape attempt.
For his part, Urzaia began to snore.
Nine lowered one hand to pull the hammer from his belt, raising the other hand. He closed his eye for a moment, smiling a little.
And the hammer changed.
After only an instant, the Champion held more than just a tiny claw hammer. The steel seemed to stretch and swell, forming a blunt head of steel, its hilt becoming a shaft of solid shadow. In half a second, it was the size of a sledgehammer. He didn’t raise the weapon, but left its head leaning against the deck.
That was impossible. No one fully understood Awakening or the powers of a Soulbound, but there were a few rules. For one thing, an Awakened object changed shape only once: during the Awakening process. Most Readers believed that the phenomenon had to do with the physical structure changing to align more closely with the invested Intent, but regardless, the Awakened object could not be reshaped afterwards. A claw hammer couldn’t become a giant weapon of war any more than any hammer could spontaneously grow in a carpenter’s hands. It was ridiculous, the kind of mysterious ‘magic’ that came from folk tales.
Yet if anyone could do the impossible, it ought to be the Champions.
Jerri’s grip tightened on his arm, urging him to explain. “He shouldn’t be able to do that,” Calder said.
She shook her head. “Not that. Look.” She nodded up at the geometric flames above the ship.
The grand orbital procession had practically frozen, each shape simply spinning in place instead of dancing and weaving around one another. The lights sat anchored, as though waiting.
The Intent in the air sharpened, like one giant, invisible eye had turned all of its scrutiny onto the Champion called Nine.
“He’s drawn its attention,” Calder said, fear bleeding into his voice.
Jerri managed to frown at him in confusion without taking her eyes from the spectacle in front of her. “Attention? Attention of what?”
Calder wished he knew.
But there was a second Intent, opposing the first, that emanated from Nine. Something edged, and cold, and a little morbid, like a condemned convict’s manic laughter as the noose tightens around his neck.
The shadows on the haft of the hammer crawled like a nest of snakes.
Only a few seconds after he’d drawn his hammer, Nine let out a tightly controlled shout. And a hundred lashes of shadow whipped out from his upraised palm, each snapping into the center of a flame like frogs’ tongues taking flies. The sky darkened noticeably under the canopy of shadow for a second, as though the sun had blinked, and then the shadows retracted. The hammer was just a hammer again, and Nine tucked it away into his belt.
Most of the flames had simply vanished. The temperature dropped into the sudden chill of a spring breeze, the light darkening from the white of a flare to typical afternoon brightness. Only five or six chunks of fire remained, bleeding sparks and wobbling drunkenly like an injured horse.
Nine scratched the stubble on his jaw, looking up at the fire. “Huh. Thought I got ‘em all.”
A silent shriek sounded in Calder’s mind, desperate and pitiful at once, like a child with a papercut. He managed to shout a wordless warning before the unseen force retaliated.
The floating shapes of flame struck Nine like half a dozen bolts of orange-white lightning.
The Champion ignited. He roared, pain and anger and shock all mixed into one cry. The heat from his body flared again, sending another wave of heat passing over Calder.
Andel ran for the barrel of seawater they kept at hand for scrubbing the deck, but Calder had a faster plan. He dropped to one knee, pressing his hand against the deck.
A rope shot out from a coil nearby, wrapping itself around the burning Champion. He grabbed on, no doubt intending to tear the thick strand apart, but Calder was faster. With a mental effort, he used the rope to hurl Nine over the railing and into the sea.
The flames blazed brighter on Nine’s body as he soared through the air, but he landed with a heavy splash. Calder had no way of telling if the man was alive or dead, or if he would have the presence of mind to stay afloat, but it was better than watching him burn to death.
Eight shouted at the sight, and for the first time, he took his gaze entirely off of his prisoner. He stared at the geometric flames in the sky, slowly removing the shield from his back.
The fiery lights returned to their dance, spiraling around one another in a slow orbit. Either they didn’t see Eight as much of a threat compared to his partner, or he hadn’t attracted their attention, but they seemed to ignore him.
Wind spiraled around the shield, carrying with it the icy bite of winter.
In seconds, frost coated the shield, and snow swirled around Eight’s entire body. The few remaining flames froze in their tracks; once again, the hostile Intent in the atmosphere congealed. The invisible eye had returned, watching the Champion.
When the fires struck again, just as they had with Nine, Eight was ready for them.
The lights crashed down like orange lightning, but the bald, pale man was even faster. His shield blurred, and six sprays of campfire sparks shot out from him like geysers.
He’d swatted all of the flames from midair at the same time. Faster than Calder’s eyes could process, he’d struck at least six times.
So this is a Champion, he thought. He wondered how much it would take to hire one for his crew, but quickly dismissed the thought. If he couldn’t even afford to dig himself out of debt, how could he support a warrior like this?
The sparks fell to the deck, taking with them the heat and the unnaturally bright light. In fact, the air on deck was still being cooled by the blizzard Eight carried on his shield.
Before Calder, Jerri, or Andel could say a word, Eight had already stripped his Vessel off his arm and tossed it down. Without a second’s hesitation, he ran to the railing, obviously prepared to vault over.
Calder couldn’t help a certain sense of smug self-satisfaction, seeing that. He’d actually thought faster than the Champion.
Under Calder’s control, the rope ladder drifted up the side of the ship, carrying Nine’s body. The burned, one-eyed man smiled weakly. “Why’d you do that, Captain? I had ‘em.”
His head lolled as he passed out, and Eight grabbed him before he could fall back into the sea. He threw his partner over his shoulder like a sack of grain, turning to Calder.
“He needs rest,” Eight said. Calder expected him to finish the statement, but he never did.
Jerri ushered him forward, toward the cabin where Andel usually slept. “Lay him down here. Andel won’t mind sleeping below for a while, will you, Andel? We have two passenger cabins down there, though they’re a little cramped at the moment.”