“You make speak in normal tones. The sound will not carry, as long as it is not excessive,” the warforged intoned in its hollow voice.
Thecla looked over at her, a sly grin tickling the edges of his mouth.
“Give it up, Sabira. You don’t really expect me to believe that a Sentinel Marshal would stoop to murder, do you?”
Sabira tightened her hold on the pilot’s throat.
“I’m not going to stand by and do nothing while a member of my House—a friend—dies.” Not again. “Believe that.”
She leaned into the pilot, her urgrosh pressing into the soft flesh of the half-elf’s neck as she breathed into his pointed ear.
“What about you? Whoever is helming the Inheritance, he or she is a pilot like you. A Lyrandar like you. Is Arach really paying you so much that the life of a fellow Lyrandar is worthless by comparison? And the lives of all the other people on that ship?”
The half-elf didn’t hesitate.
“Yes.”
Sabira felt a momentary stab of jealousy. Apparently, she’d sold her services on the cheap. Fast on the heels of that mercenary regret was an equally strong urge to shove the spear tip of her shard axe into the pilot’s brain for his callousness, but she squelched it as quickly as it arose, recognizing the hypocrisy behind it. How could she blame him, when she herself only really cared about one person on the Inheritance herself, and it wasn’t the Lyrandar?
“Fine. Take the Dust Dancer up over the top of the Inheritance and then suppress the elementals.”
“But then we risk attracting the yrthaks again!” the pilot protested, before Sabira repositioned her arm forcefully across his larynx. He was right, of course; even if the Dust Dancer was silent, the air flowing around it as it moved could still be detected by the yrthaks.
“Not really seeing the problem with that, since you’ve got four ballistae here to the Inheritance’s one,” Sabira replied. “So how about you just do what I say before I get tired of holding my urgrosh and find somewhere to stick it, hmm?”
The pilot couldn’t reply, but Sabira felt him stiffen as he invoked the powers of his hidden Mark of Storm and the ship began to rise in response. With the warforged’s spell still in place, the ascent was eerily quiet, making it easy to hear the muffled sounds of the battle playing out somewhere below them.
The faint sound of a ballista being fired was followed by a weird, high-pitched scream. Had they scored a hit or just enraged the yrthak? Sabira strained to hear, but she couldn’t tell. There was shouting, but there was no way she could make out individual voices. No way to know who was still fighting and who had already fallen.
Then came the cry she’d been dreading, clear even through the dampening effects of the wizard’s spell.
“Man overboard!”
Host, no. In these waters, that meant almost certain death.
“Stop here!”
The pilot made a wheezing noise, and Sabira shifted her arm just enough so that he could speak.
“I don’t know if we’re in the right—”
“We’re close enough. Now suppress the elementals.”
“But—”
Sabira let the sharpened spike pierce flesh. “With ears that big, Lyrandar, I know you’re not deaf. Quit stalling and suppress the elementals.”
The half-elf did as he was bade, and the Dust Dancer came to a stop, floating serenely on the air currents.
“Now let’s move.”
Sabira urged him along, keeping his body between hers and the weapons of Thecla’s crew, more of whom had acquired crossbows in the interim.
The first mate, who hadn’t moved from his place by the wizard, crossed his arms and gave her a skeptical look.
“Just how far do you think you’re going to get, Marshal? The minute you let him go, my men are going to fill you so full of feathers you’ll be able to fly yourself. Maybe I’ll have them do it before you let him go. I’m sure we have enough healing potions on board to patch Irlen back up after the fact.”
Sabira didn’t bother to respond; if that were true, she’d already be a porcupine. A dead one.
She moved down the stairs to the main deck as quickly as she could, tightening her hold to make sure Irlen didn’t decide to fake a stumble. Thecla followed her, trailed by Hotch and the warforged. Ears was waiting for her at the bottom of the steps, but gave way at a word from Thecla.
“Grab a life ring,” she ordered the pilot while she threw a glance over her shoulder to make sure none of the crew had circled behind her yet. The path to the port-side railing was still clear.
Irlen pulled the wooden circle down from its mooring and it immediately floated up into a horizontal position at waist level.
“Pull it along, up at your chest,” Sabira said as she backed them toward the railing. When she felt the wooden balustrade at the back of her thighs, she shifted the urgrosh away from the half-elf’s neck. “Hang on tight!”
And then she threw her weight backward, wrapping her legs around Irlen’s torso as the two toppled over the side of the airship and plummeted toward the ocean at an alarming speed.
“What the—?”
Life rings were supposed to be able to bear the weight of four people with no problem, and to slow their descent to roughly a third of the normal rate of fall. This one was either malfunctioning or else Irlen was a lot heavier than he looked.
Well, first things first. Sabira released her hold on the half-elf’s neck and slapped her urgrosh into its harness. Then she reached over his shoulder to grab onto the edge of the life ring. Once she had a firm grip, she unwrapped her legs and began pulling herself painstakingly around to the other side, hand over hand.
Once their weight was more balanced, the ring began to descend at a more reasonable rate, but still faster than it should.
Not that it really mattered. She wasn’t planning on dangling from it for long.
“Over here! Hey, ugly! Over here!”
“What in the name of the Devourer are you doing?” Irlen hissed, eyes wide with alarm as he stared down at the yrthaks harrying the listing airship. “You’re going to—”
“Attract one? Yeah, that’s sort of the point.”
Irlen had stopped the Dust Dancer several hundred feet from the Inheritance’s position. There was no way she was going to be able to reach it unless a gale blew up suddenly out of the east, in which case she’d have a lot more things to worry about than just saving Elix. So she’d have to go with the next best option: taking a ride on the back of a yrthak.
And, lucky her, it looked like one had finally noticed her and Irlen and was about to oblige.
CHAPTER EIGHT
If she’d thought the yrthaks were ugly from a distance, seeing one up close was nothing short of a nightmare out of Xoriat. The reptile swooped toward her, its impossibly huge mouth yawing open. She could clearly see the rows of jagged teeth, the protruding, bulbous tongue, and the blackness beyond that led to the creature’s gullet. Something fleshy was lodged there. Sabira didn’t want to think too hard about what it might be.
It was coming at her from the side and looked like it was more interested in taking a chunk out of her than blasting her with that Hostforsaken horn, so she kept yelling and kicking to make sure its focus remained on her legs. Sabira waited until the last moment, when it lowered its head and arched its neck for the bite, then pulled her legs up out of the way. The yrthak passed harmlessly beneath her in a rush of foul wind, mere inches from where Sabira hung from the life ring like a pig on a spit. Then she breathed a prayer to Olladra and let go.