The hanging line swung and creaked as Umara climbed up behind him. Looking down, he could just make out the ghost her spell and the raindrops made of her. He took hold of her arm and pulled her onto the deck.
“Thanks,” she gasped.
“Are you all right?”
“Just winded. Crawling up a rope half drowned was harder than I expected. What now?”
“I’ll show you.”
As they skulked forward, he peered in an effort to spot the sea mage Naraxes had recruited. He couldn’t, though. The spellcaster was probably all the way forward, where it would be easiest to target the galley, and masts, cordage, and assorted reavers were in the way.
Well, if the fellow was at the far end of the ship, perhaps that was just as well. Anton took a cautious look around, then undogged a hatch. The ladder beneath it descended to a different section of the hold than the one where he and Stedd had been imprisoned.
With the hatch lowered again, the cramped, cluttered compartment was too dark to see anything more than shadows. Then Umara murmured a charm, and a patch of bulkhead glowed silver, revealing a miscellany of casks, crates, and tools.
“I take it,” she said, “you were counting on me to take care of this detail in the master plan as well.”
“Why not? Whoever heard of a wizard who couldn’t make light?”
“Now that I have, what are we looking for?”
“This.” He gestured to a box with cabalistic sigils painted on it, then remembered she couldn’t see him do that or anything. Smiling, he indicated the container by giving it a little shake inside the netting that held it securely on a shelf.
When Umara spoke again, her voice sounded from right in front of the crate. “These are signs of cold and quiescence.”
Anton sawed at the netting with his dagger. “And I paid a wizard plenty to draw them. Many a captain has doomed his own ship by bringing incendiaries aboard. Until this morning, I didn’t intend to be one of them.”
When he finished cutting the netting away, he pried the box open and lifted off the frigid lid. Nestled in straw, the round black catapult projectiles inside had arcane symbols of their own inscribed on them.
“It looks they’re all here,” Umara said.
“They are. A pirate can’t make much profit burning up the very prize he’s chasing. They were only for an emergency, and lucky me, I finally have a suitable one. Can you set them off from up on deck?”
“I can, but will it matter? The sea wizard put out one fire already.”
“Yes, but surely he was expecting Kymas to throw more flame. We can hope a surprise explosion ripping through the guts of the ship will befuddle him. Even if it doesn’t, flooding the hold to put out our blaze ought to pose its own problems.”
Topside once more, the pair of them phantoms in the rain, she whispered, “When I cast fire, I’ll reappear. I’ll veil myself again immediately, but still.”
“I’ll watch your back,” he told her.
She murmured hissing, popping words that had no business issuing from a human throat, then swept one vague, transparent arm down at the open hatch. A red spark shot from fingertips that simultaneously became opaque flesh and gleaming nails once more.
A detonation boomed, and a tongue of flame leaped higher than Anton’s head. He just had time to think, Not bad, and then a far louder explosion jolted the caravel from bow to stern and sent him reeling. The initial blast had only been Umara’s spell birthing flame, while the one that followed an instant later had been the incendiaries detonating in response.
Staggering, ears ringing, he struggled to recover his balance. A part of him was appalled at what he’d done. But the ship he’d just scuttled didn’t belong to him anymore and never could have again. He thrust such sentimentality aside, pivoted to see how Umara was faring, and cursed.
The Red Wizard sprawled on the deck next to the hatch and had evidently bumped her head when she fell. Her eyes were open and her mouth was moving soundlessly, so perhaps she wasn’t entirely unconscious, but she was near enough that she wasn’t even trying to shift away from the heat of the flames shooting up right beside her.
She was useless in that condition, a liability, and Anton started to turn away. But then he hesitated. For all he knew, she might come to her senses in a moment. And he needed her to convince Kymas Nahpret to welcome him aboard the galley.
The Iron Jest was already listing to port-maybe the blast itself had punched a hole in the hull without the fire needing to burn through-and Anton dragged Umara until he could deposit her at the foot of one of the shrouds to keep her from sliding over the side. Had any of his fellow pirates been paying attention, the knave likely would have realized that an invisible agency was hauling the stunned woman along. But the crew had plenty of other matters to distract them, like their own falls and resulting injuries, the yellow flame leaping and black smoke billowing upward in various places-remarkably, somehow fire was already licking at the mainsail-and a first panicked scramble for the lifeboats.
Anton crouched beside Umara and patted her cheek. “Wake up,” he said, “we have to go.”
The green eyes blinked, but she still seemed dazed. She certainly wasn’t trying to get up.
“Come on,” he growled, “or I swear by every devil in every hell, I’ll leave you behind.” He pinched her cheek as hard as he could.
She pawed clumsily at his hand in an effort to push it away. Then he sensed a figure standing over them. He looked up and caught his breath.
Anton had known Evendur Highcastle was now undead. But he didn’t frequent any deity’s temple, even Umberlee’s, and he’d only glimpsed the Bitch Queen’s new hierophant at a distance in the streets of Immurk’s Hold. And now, even though he’d never liked the swaggering bully his fellow captain had been, it was revolting to finally, truly behold the slimy, swollen horror his transformation had made of him.
Evendur glared down at Umara. “You again,” he snarled. “You did this.” He bent to seize her in hands whose rings were all but buried in puffy rot.
Anton sprang up, whipped out his saber, and slashed.
The rapid motion compromised his concealment. Sensing something whirling at him through the rain, Evendur jerked backward. The tip of the saber still sliced him across the forearm, but the cut was scarcely the lethal stroke Anton had intended. It was, however, a sufficiently aggressive action to make opacity race up the blade from the sludge-smeared point to the guard and then on into his hand and arm.
Evendur peered at his newly revealed attacker with a mix of fury and surprise. “Marivaldi!”
“Wait,” Anton replied. Even as the request left his mouth, he recognized it as likely the most useless word he’d ever uttered.
“Kill him!” Evendur bellowed, and though many of the reavers were too busy trying to fight fires or abandon ship to heed even Umberlee’s Chosen, several came running.
The first one thrust with a boarding pike. Anton sidestepped, and momentum impelled his opponent another step down the slanting deck. That brought him into saber range, and Anton slashed his leg out from under him.
That was one adversary down, but Anton had to pivot instantly to confront the next. This time, the treacherous footing made him slip, and, off balance, he only just managed to parry a cutlass cut to the head and riposte with a slash that opened the other pirate’s belly.
The wounded man dropped the cutlass to clutch at his stomach. As the weapon started to slide and tumble away, Anton stabbed the tip of the saber into the loop defined by handle and guard, flipped the captured blade into the air, and caught it in his off hand.
That bit of panache made his other assailants hesitate, but only for an instant. Then they resumed their advance, and in a more organized fashion than before, spreading out to flank him. Meanwhile, seemingly untroubled by the fresh gash in his arm, Evendur unlimbered the boarding axe slung over his back, stroked a fingertip along the edge, and made it glow a sickly green.