The Blue Lady burst through the webbing, roaring with rage, and turned to face Amree. The ship’s mage spoke a spell and a whirling ball of fire filled her hand. She threw the fireball at the Blue Lady. Shang-Li felt the heat of the fireball as it sizzled past him. A massive wall of wind met the fireball only a few feet in front of the Blue Lady. The flames twisted and roiled around her, but they never touched her. She threw her hand out and blue-white beams sped from her fingers and became icy spears.
Iados joined Shang-Li and together they rushed the Blue Lady as Amree staggered back.
“Fools!” The Blue Lady shifted her attention to Iados and Shang-Li. “You only hasten to your deaths.”
Iados clutched a shield in front of him and leaped into the air as lightning shot from her hand and assumed a serpentine shape. The serpent-lightning lashed out and Iados managed to get his shield in front of it, but the impact sent him spinning backward ten feet along the pitching hull.
Shang-Li ran across the hull, thrown off stride by the shifting footing. The Blue Lady turned on him and threw a hand out. Kicking his feet out, Shang-Li slid across the deck under a glistening orb that suddenly burst and hurled razor-sharp projectiles in all directions. A few of the projectiles ripped into the back of his leather armor and one tore through the side of his neck. Warm blood flowed down into his armor and across his collarbone. When he reached the Blue Lady, she leaped over him, but he’d expected that.
Flicking the blades of the fighting sticks out, Shang-Li caught them in the ship’s hull to stop himself, but immediately caught a burst of blue lightning that knocked him up and away. Red Orchid was striking blindly at anyone trying to harm the ship. But her attack may have saved Shang-Li’s life because the Blue Lady thrust with her spear and pierced the nearby deck.
Blue energy crackled and lashed out at the Blue Lady, hammering her backward. Iados pounced quick as a cat, slashing at her with his sword. But his weapon only dulled on her spear and against her skin. The Blue Lady laughed at him and tossed a few snarled curses in his direction as she drove her spear at him.
“You can’t harm me with that weapon,” the Blue Lady stated.
“Perhaps not,” Iados replied grimly as he dispatched one of the sea shambles that had scrambled on board, “but I can be a distraction.”
“Only until you’re dead.” The Blue Lady lunged at him again as Shang-Li gathered himself.
Iados batted the spear aside with his shield and sword again and again, moving backward constantly and taunting her. “Perhaps you can’t harm me with that weapon either.”
Growling in rage like an animal, the Blue Lady continued her attack. Moonlight glinted from the force of her attacks. Amree attacked once more with a spell that seized the Blue Lady and lifted her from the ship in an invisible grip. The Blue Lady freed a hand and waved. Crackling waves of power dispelled the invisible grip and she dropped to the pitching hull.
Shang-Li closed on her, attacking with the enchanted blades of the fighting sticks. She managed to block most of the blows, but she gave ground at every attack and some of them got through. In seconds she was bleeding from a half-dozen small wounds.
She levitated from the deck and shouted, “Enough!” With a gesture, a storm gathered and black clouds obscured the pale moonlight. In the space of a drawn breath, gale force winds whipped across Swallow and tore at her exposed sails. Waves crashed against the hull. Timbers creaked and Shang-Li grew afraid the ship was going to be torn to pieces. Blue energy coursed down Swallow’s length again and again.
Amree touched a necklace tight against her throat, then flung out her other hand. Deadly red missiles streaked from her fingers and underscored the darkness surrounding them. The missiles crashed against the Blue Lady and jolted her, drawing forth screams of pain and rage. Amree prepared herself again, still clinging to the necklace. Then a sea shamble stood up on the hull and wrapped its misshapen arms around her.
“Iados!” Shang-Li yelled across the thunder and crash of the waves. “Get Amree!”
Without hesitation, the tiefling hurried to the side of the ship’s mage, but a dozen sea shambles stood up on the hull.
A small, lean figure struck out of the darkness. Kwan Yung launched himself from the deck and swung a sword at their foe. For a moment, the Blue Lady fell back, then she stretched forth a hand and invisible force wrapped around Kwan Yung and lifted him from the ship’s hull. She held him aloft and cursed.
Shang-Li’s heart sank. He had known his father wouldn’t be safe on the ship, but if things went badly, as they looked like they were going to do, he’d assumed he would be dead before he saw anything happen to his father. Standing bowed by the storm lashing Swallow, Shang-Li blinked through the stinging salt of the sea spray and tried to figure out his next move.
At the prow of the ship, Red Orchid and Thava still battled the squidbut it was impossible to tell how the battle was going. Thava either had hold of the creature by one tentacle and was fighting her way toward the center mass, or the squid held her and was drawing her toward its mouth.
The Blue Lady turned her beautiful face toward Shang-Li and smiled. “I still have use of you, manling. I can still be generous. I will let you live if you lay down your arms and swear allegiance to me. But I will no longer spare your father.”
True fear pierced Shang-Li. All those years Kwan Yung had appeared implacable and invulnerable. But Shang-Li knew that wasn’t so. His father was mortal, and he was the bravest, most stubborn man Shang-Li had ever known. He couldn’t imagine a world without his father in it.
“Or,” the Blue Lady said, “you can trade your life for his. Perhaps he’s as good a scholar as you are when it comes to deciphering Liou Chang’s books.” She paused and gloated as sea shambles and Nine Golden Swords warriors clambered over the hull and massed for an attack. “Lay down and die, manling, and I will let your father live. Choose!”
Shang-Li focused and drew the calm into his body that his father had always instilled in him, and he drew upon the stubbornness that he knew came from his mother and her people as they lived unfettered in the forests of their homeland. Both had taught him skills, and neither had raised someone that would quit. He felt the turbulent power coursing through his fighting sticks.
“No,” he said. “You’re going to have to choose.” He joined the fighting sticks into the staff as he sprinted forward.
Just in front of the line of sea shambles and Nine Golden Swords warriors, Shang-Li planted the staff and vaulted over their heads. The storm winds howled and crashed into him as he left the ship’s hull. He landed atop a sea shamble, ran across two more, then flipped into the air. He flicked the blades out at both ends of the staff and thrust it toward the Blue Lady’s heart.
Surprised by the attack, the Blue Lady drew back in the air, unmoved by the winds that she had summoned. Her hold on Kwan Yung failed and he dropped to the ship’s hull.
Shang-Li dropped to the deck and gathered himself again. Then he sprang once more to the attack, chasing the Blue Lady forward toward the prow and the writhing mass of tentacles that Thava and Red Orchid battled.
“You forfeit your life, manling.”
Remaining focused on the Blue Lady, Shang-Li bashed a Nine Golden Swords warrior from his path, knocking the man back into the rough sea, and gaining speed. Swallow moved more sluggishly beneath him and he knew she was taking on water. Either the canvas air pocket ripped or the sailors hadn’t been able to keep the opening sealed.
More red missiles struck the Blue Lady and lit her up in scarlet fire for a moment. Shang-Li took heart in the knowledge that Amree still lived, and if she lived there was hope that Iados did as well.
Hurt and distracted, the Blue Lady searched for Amree and threw out a hand. By that time, Shang-Li had reached the ship’s prow and ran out of hull. Surefooted as a deer, he leaped for one of the squid’s rising tentacles and caught it with one hand. As the creature flicked its tentacle, Shang-Li took advantage of the power and movement and launched himself at the Blue Lady. He gripped the staff in both hands and aimed one of the blades at her heart.