What does she want? We passed their check point. This ship doesn’t even have any guns!
Wren bolted to Omar’s side and when she saw that neither he nor the captain was holding the wheel, she grabbed it with one hand as she said, “What’s going on? Who is that woman? What does she want?”
Ortiz muttered something in Espani and then jogged to the steps to fend off one of the invading sailors.
Omar glanced back at Wren. “That woman… She…”
“What? Can you tell what she said? What does she want?”
Omar’s expression hardened. “She wants me.” He gripped his seireiken tightly, but did not draw it out.
“You? Why? Do you know her?”
Omar nodded. “That’s Nadira.”
Who the devil is Nadira, you old fool? Can’t you ever just answer a question without making me ask another one?
But Omar was already jogging away to help Ortiz. Wren frowned at the wooden steering wheel before her and then gazed out over the deck of La Rosa where a dozen Espani sailors were grappling and stabbing a dozen Turkish sailors. Above the fray she peered into the mist, seeing nothing but knowing that somewhere out there was the southern shore of the Strait and the walls of Stamballa.
Well, my good lord Woden, if the Turks aren’t going to play nice, then there’s no reason to give them what they want, is there?
Wren spun the steering wheel to the left and felt the caravel lean gently to port as the combined force of the wind in the reefed sail and the momentum of the gunboat slowly spun La Rosa around her mooring. Watching the tips of the masts of the nearby ships and the walls of Stamballa, she waited for the pair of battle-locked ships to come about until they were both pointed out into the Strait and the northern shore of Constantia, and then she straightened up the wheel. For a moment the ship seemed to come to a full stop, but then she felt a ragged tremble in the deck and they began to move forward again.
Yes! We’re dragging the anchor and moving away from the Turkish shore! Now they’ll have to get back on their own ship unless they want to be dragged all the way to Constantia!
Wren looked down at the ship again and her satisfaction evaporated. On her left, a Turk shot one of the Espani in the belly and then charged up onto the quarter deck. Wren let go of the wheel and reached out for the Turk with her right hand, willing the frail aether in the fog to rise up against the man. A swirl of white rippled up from the deck and slapped the man sideways, sending him tumbling over the rail and into the water.
A second Turk in blue jogged up the steps right behind his fallen comrade, and Wren felt a cold hollowness in her arm. The aether was too thin now, too scattered. She’d barely managed to push the first man overboard. So she shook her right hand, unwinding the sling around her wrist, and yanked a stone out of the pouch on her belt as the second Turk charged across the deck with his cutlass raised to strike her down. She’d only just managed to get the stone in place when the man slashed at her.
Wren dodged back, keeping the huge wooden steering wheel between her and her attacker. She hurled her stone at him through the spokes of the wheel, only to have it glance harmlessly off the man’s armguard. “Omar? I could use some help here!”
The Turk dashed around the wheel and she dashed back toward the stairs down to the main deck, where she saw yet another man in blue waiting for her. She shouted, “Nine hells!” and threw up her right hand. The aether answered, rolling up against the man and sending him reeling back several steps. And while he kept his footing and he kept his weapon, the momentary distraction was time enough for Wren to wrap the leather strap of her sling around the man’s neck and yank him off balance and wheel him about to use as a shield against the swordsman charging down from the quarter deck behind her.
The swordsman lunged, Wren shoved her hostage into the attack, and blood spattered the deck. As her prisoner went limp in her hands and the swordsman raised his blade again, the armored woman on the gunboat shouted “Bas-ast!” and the swordsman stepped back and lowered his weapon.
I know that word. Stop? Enough?
Out of the corner of her eye, Wren saw the fighting across the deck stutter to a standstill, leaving the men bloodied and leaning and panting. She loosened her grip on her sling and the dead Turk slumped down onto the deck, and she scampered back a few steps to stand beside one of the injured Espani sailors.
Captain Ortiz shouted something as well, and his men slowly sheathed their knives and straightened up, though they continued to cast black glares at the men in blue.
Her heart was still pounding and her palms were slick with sweat, but Wren shivered and tugged her black scarf a bit more firmly forward over her forehead before she wrapped her sling back up around her wrist. Across the deck, she saw Omar talking to the armored woman, who had jumped down from her ship onto La Rosa. For a moment she hesitated, not wanting to break the semi-mystical trance that had seemingly frozen all of the Espani and Turks in place on the deck as they waited to hear whether they could truly stand down or would be called upon to resume butchering one another.
She swallowed, and then started walking, slowly at first and then more quickly, heading toward Omar and the woman he had called Nadira. And as she walked toward them, she saw a pair of hands appear on the railing behind Omar and Ortiz. And then two more. And then five young men, little more than boys and dressed only in gray tunics and belts, with bare feet and only a single knife clenched in their teeth, came swarming over the side of the ship.
Five, then ten more, then twenty, all in the same drab state of undress. But after the ones with knives came the ones with guns and they poured across the deck, tackling the Espani to the ground as they opened fire on the Turks. Wren dropped to the deck, her hands wrapped around her head, her eyes squeezed shut as the huge pistols thundered again and again.
The lead balls screamed through the air and the men screamed as they fell to the deck or overboard into the sea. Wren heard wet slapping sounds and thumping sounds all around her, and she tightened her body up into the smallest ball she could imagine.
Lord Woden, I’m sorry I said anything about your fog. It’s a wonderful fog, and you’re a wonderful god, and please don’t let me die here like this!
A moment later the pounding of the guns subsided, and the screams of the men retreated into a few half-hearted moans. As the ringing in her ears faded away, Wren began to hear someone calling her name. Slowly, with her hands still clenched on her hood and her belly still a bundled of knots, she half-rolled onto her side and peeked up at the voice.
Omar.
He was squatting right beside her, leaning toward her, but not touching her, and as her eyes readjusted to the light after the darkness inside of her arms and hair, she saw why he had not come any closer. All around her, in every direction she looked, there was a wall of aether. It swirled and drifted and bubbled in a perfect dome over her, like a watery current moving around and around a vortex but never being drawn down into oblivion. As she relaxed her hands and exhaled, the protective bubble of aether broke up and drifted away, vanishing into the fog, and Omar shuffled forward and helped her sit up.
“Are you hurt?” He moved his hands over her arms and back quickly and roughly.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Did you see what I did? That shield-”
“Yes, yes, very impressive. But there is something else-”
“Where did your friend go?” Wren squinted at the railing where the armored woman had been standing, but both she and her gunboat were gone.
“Wren, listen to me.” Omar gripped her shoulders. “We’ve been boarded by the Hellans and-”