Cole shook his head, suddenly remembering why he’d retired from his pranking career. The last thing they needed was a magical duel between his friends. He made for the door to the lower decks, but a sudden flapping of wind stopped him mid-stride.
“Cole!” Valen said, hovering above. “Where is the captain? You haven’t been dawdling have you? This is important.”
A nervous tingling had filled Cole’s chest as he looked from Valen to Sitra, who strode casually away from them, her face hidden from view. Eliza meandered off to the side, suddenly very interested in Oberon. Cole’s mind raced as he inventoried his scant spells to put out a fire.
“I was just discussing the issue with the others. I’ll go get the captain now…” Cole’s voice trailed off as Valen’s wings vanished and he dropped to the deck.
“Don’t bother,” Valen said, storming past him. “It’s obvious you don’t realize the danger we’re in. If one of those cross beams comes loose…” He stopped at the door, turning around slowly. “What is that in your hand, Cole?”
Cole shifted his hand slightly to hide the nut from view. “I…I don’t have anything.”
In the blink of an eye, Valen shot across the space between them and snatched Cole’s wrist, wrenching it upwards. The nut fell from his hand, bouncing and rolling its way across the deck, then it slipped between two bannisters as it fell overboard. Eyes locked on Cole, Valen released his wrist as his hand glowed a dull jade. The nut came sailing up from the sands and smacked into his palm.
Cole swallowed. “Another one fell while you were up there.”
“I find that unlikely. What are you up to, human? If there’s something you’re not-oh!” Valen yelped as a gout of flame erupted from a nearby gas pipe.
The flame snaked its way around Cole, dousing Valen’s legs in dripping fire. Valen jumped up and down, slapping the flames while he cried out for help.
“Fire on deck!” a voice hollered from a crow’s nest. “Fire on deck!”
His words were echoed from the crew as a few sailors came running with large rifles with red tanks fixed to the stocks. Water shot out of the barrels, spraying in narrow cones over Valen’s legs. The flames did not die, however; they flared and grew, as if angered by the water.
Arms flailing, Valen yanked and pulled at his pants, but the smoldering cloth fell apart in his hands. “Someone, please!” he pleaded.
The fire showed no sign of relenting as the water guns sputtered and died. The crew dropped their extinguishers and bustled around Valen, stomping at any flames that dripped onto the polished wooden deck.
Cole ran through every memory and trick he used to put out fires. Water of course was of no use. He could transfer the heat into another object, but everything around them was flammable. Unsure, he took a small step towards Valen, who now hopped from foot to foot, slapping his legs and screaming in pain.
The door behind Valen burst open, revealing Lileth, her eyes wide with apprehension. She scanned the deck as spells shimmered to life in her hands. A powerful burst of air charged across the deck, knocking Cole to his backside. He scrambled to his feet, his ears ringing. Both Valen and the broken pipe ceased burning.
Silence fell over the deck, broken only by Valen’s panting and his sizzling trousers.
“What happened?” Lileth asked, directing her question towards Cole and Eliza.
Cole’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. He looked to Eliza, but she remained silent as well, wearing a look of polite amusement.
Boisterous laughter exploded from above them. Sitra hung from the netting of the rear mast, holding her belly as she sniggered. She took a deep breath as if to speak, only to laugh even harder. The Firedancer’s crew took a step back, putting space between them and the lunatic above.
“Sitra?” Lileth called up. “What’s so funny? Your war-brother is hurt.”
“Never mind, me!” Valen spat, covering his nakedness. “This rusty bucket is falling apart! It’s been raining nuts and now the ship is spitting fire!”
Sitra’s howling rose as she fell from the netting, crashing through a crate below the rear mast in an explosion of splinters. Cackling madly, she rose from the wreckage, gasping for air and limping.
“Did you see him dance?” she squealed when she finally found her breath. “Valen the wise, dancing with fire! Aboard a ship called the Firedancer!”
Valen picked up a few scraps of his pants and tried to cover himself. “Sitra, did you have something to do with this?”
Sitra held her stomach, massaging it with her fist. “Oh don’t be such a worry-worm. You weren’t in any real danger, you only thought you were. And now we know how good of a dancer you are!” A fit of giggles took her breath from her once more. “Ow, ow, ow, my stomach’s cramping!”
Valen face darkened. “What do you mean I was in no danger? You lit me on fire, Sitra! What in Oberon’s light would possess you to light me on fire? On a wooden ship!”
Sitra took a steadying breath, wiping tears from her eyes. “Look at your skin. Look at the wood. Do you see any damage?”
Dripping wet, Valen’s eyes darted about his legs as he assessed himself. While his pants were nothing but a charred pile on the deck, there was no visible injury to his skin or the wood. Confused, he looked back to Sitra. “What was the point of it then?”
“To laugh at your misfortune of course!” she said in a sing-song voice, dancing over to Valen and putting her arms around his shoulders. “Loosen up, brother, my fire only ate your pants. Not every day needs to be about rules and tasks. Cole was right, we owe it to ourselves to have some fun now and again.” She bent down and picked up an unburnt scrap of his pants and clapped it to Valen’s backside.
Valen’s face flushed through several shades of red as he fumbled between hiding his front and batting away Sitra’s hand.
Sitra pulled her hand away, revealing tendrils of green light streaming from her palm. The patch of Morthainian armor began to stretch and flow over Valen’s naked skin. “Give me a hand Liza, I was never good with the seamstress stuff.”
“Of course.” Eliza smiled, adding her magic to Sitra’s. “Be sure to leave him extra room around the knees and groin, we never know when our fire-dancer might lose himself to another bout of frolicking.”
“You took part in this sneakery as well?” Valen asked, a look of utter betrayal on his face.
Eliza held her fist above Valen’s head and sprinkled him with a handful of iron nuts. “It’s a more likely story than a rain of nuts.” She chuckled, slapping him softly on the cheek. “Don’t be so serious, Valen. It was only a game.”
“A game you say?” Valen said, adjusting the belt of his newly mended trousers. “And I assume our little Cole was in on the plot as well, weren’t you?”
Cole rubbed his jaw. “I may have found a nut lying around. I just brought it to your attention, didn’t I? And you went and checked all the masts twice! The ship’s in better shape than it’s ever been. What’s wrong with that?”
A hint of a smile twitched at Valen’s jaw. “So I see. I think I understand your game now. We will have another match soon enough, though next time you may find yourself the fool.” He nodded to Lileth. “Please don’t tell me you were involved.”
Lileth crossed her arms, a wry half-grin pulling across her cheek. “Would you believe me if I said I wasn’t?”
Valen squinted at her. “Probably not.”
“In that case, count me in on all games henceforth,” Lileth said in an offhanded tone. “A bit of friendly competition will keep our minds sharp, which ought to come in useful as we’re headed to a city full of Wisdom-followers. Cole may even be forced to solve a problem without Rage for once.” She winked at Cole, walking over to the burst pipe, which now bled oil all over the deck. “Though I think we ought to leave the Firedancer out of it. The ship that is, not you, Valen.”
Valen’s stony glare cracked like brittle glass as laughter finally took him. The rest of the unit joined in, releas
ing weeks of bottled-up tension. Cole had never heard Valen laugh before. Throughout the collective mirth, Cole thought he felt Eliza in the back of his mind, nudging Valen’s elation with Passion.
A gunshot brought their attention to a crewman standing up on the stern deck. He leaned against a rifle longer than he was tall. The sailor spat at his feet before addressing the unit. “Your lot has done nuthin’ but stir the sands since yer arrivals. Good men is dyin’ back there, yer Roth included. And here ya are, jokin and bayin like a bunch o giddy prats! We’re only bringin’ ya’s cross the sands as a favor to our King, the true King mind. We won’t bring ya’s no farther, and we won’t hold with any more of yer games. Disrespectin’ the Firedancer, bah! Not while there’s still marrow in my bones.”
A dozen crewmen appeared while the man spoke, appearing from nowhere as though they had popped right up from the planks. They all grumbled and growled their agreement as they hefted clubs and Morthainian weapons.
Cole assessed the man holding the rifle. He was not the captain, but judging by the way the others fell in around him he was well-listened to. He had a hard, dangerous stare that implied he was accustomed to getting his way.
In a flash almost too fast for Cole to see, Sitra appeared on the stern deck directly in front of the crew. Before they could finish flinching, she snatched the rifle from the man’s hands.
Sitra admired the rifle, taking aim at the stars and flipping it in the air. “You know, if you boys wanted a part in our game you only had to ask. And don’t you fret, we’ll put your Firedancer back together before we leave. And maybe I’ll give you your toy back if you ask real nice,” she said, slinging the rifle over her back.
The man puffed his chest and stood to his full height, which was a half-head shorter than Sitra. “Darlin, you just made yerself an enemy o’ the crew. Keep the gun. Yer gonna need it.”
“Hmm,” Sitra huffed, turning her back to the man and walking down the stairs, patting the stock of her new rifle.
Tension twisted the air as Sitra mended the broken crate with Wisdom. Lines of emerald light shot from her palms, pulling the broken pieces back together. Eliza collected the loose nuts in her cupped hands, bringing them to her lips and whispering something. The nuts glowed a dull jade before shooting off like bees back to their nests. Valen went below deck to speak to the captain as Lileth siphoned up the oil and fixed the burst pipe with a quick spell. Cole tried to help with the clean-up, but his grasp of Wisdom was useless outside of the most basic tasks. He hoped that the crew’s threat didn’t extend beyond Sitra. Lileth was right; he only had his Rage to get him out of trouble. He had no desire to wield his munisica against these men. As if in answer to his doubts, a wild growl bumped against his mind.
Cole hardened his thoughts and returned the mirak’s mental bump. “Yeah, yeah. I’ve always got you too, Goran. They’d think twice about messing with me when you’re around.”
From somewhere below deck, Cole felt Goran shove an entire pie into his mouth before rolling over and falling back asleep, his treat dripping from his jowls.
• • • •
The next few days aboard the Firedancer were wrought with sticky surprises and complex traps that taxed Cole’s Wisdom to the limits. There was no reprieve from the assault, as every inch of the Firedancer seemed to have some unseen trick ready to spring at him. Cole drank from a water jug offered to him by Valen, and for several hours afterwards his mind had reversed its definition of left and right. He would try to use his right hand to grab hold of a railing, only to have his left reach out into thin air as he went barreling down a flight of stairs. Eventually he became accustomed to the vertigo, only to have the effects wear off as his usual faculties then became his handicap.
On an evening when the soul flies were particularly active, he secured a spot for Lileth and himself to watch the show. Lileth offered Cole one of her conjured telescopes. He gazed through it but knew at once something was wrong. Cole looked to Lileth and fell, quite literally, into her eyes, smashing his forehead against hers. He had lost all sense of depth perception, making the crow’s nest more like an angel’s nest as high as the heavens. He cowered in the nest long after she left, though she promised that the effects would relent once he reached the bottom of the mast. It took him nearly an hour to muster the courage to make the descent, and another hour to actually make it to the main deck.
Not all of the jokes were mentally debilitating, however. Cole never found out who the culprit was, but he woke every morning to find himself completely naked. At first he thought someone had stolen his clothes, but as it turned out, they had merely been made invisible. Tired of waiting around for his clothes to reappear every day, he started hiding them under Goran before bed. The fight with the Colossus had revealed the full measure of Goran’s savagery, and no one dared give him reason to display it again.
While the rest of the unit enjoyed unravelling each other’s spells, Cole’s ineptitude with Wisdom left him helpless to the hazing. Often Eliza would take pity on him and relieve him of the magical fetters. While Cole had become the unit’s punching bag, he was certainly not the one who suffered the most. True to their word, the crew had made Sitra their sworn enemy. While they made no outright attempt to harm her, their tricks were as subtle as they were clever. No one could figure out how, but she had somehow become a magnet to every rodent on the ship. She spent her waking and sleeping hours fighting off rats of varying size and persistence, tossing them overboard or being scared awake by wet noses and scratching claws. Worse than the nighttime visitors was her hourly rush to the toilets. Sitra alone had contracted a crippling malady of the intestines that the crew had dubbed ‘bubble gut,’ and ‘screamin squirts.’ Sitra made no attempt to restore peace with the crew, and continued to wear the rifle like a trophy as she waddled around the Firedancer. Cole winced every time he saw her run to the lower decks clenching her backside. Making a silent vow to himself, he swore off all pranks until the end of his days.
As the Firedancer raced towards Oberon, the white powder beneath them turned to a dark mud, which eventually gave way to murky waters. Oberon was now much larger and nearly right above them in the starry sky.
The Firedancer sloshed down into the choppy water, its usual smooth ride shifting to a constant rock and sway. Cole had not seen the captain since the first few days of their journey. He guessed that the salty old man wanted nothing to do with the foolishness going on above him. When the Firedancer neared the shores of the destination, the captain emerged from his quarters, hobbling up the creaky steps and joining the unit on the prow deck.
“This is as far as we’ll bring her. We don’t have favorable relations with the folk up in the Fangshards.” The captain pointed a knife up at the jagged peaks that lined the shore. “I’d offer you one of our ferry boats, but it looks as if you lot are keen to use your Wisdom to carry you ashore.”
Valen stretched and flexed his wings. “We will get ourselves ashore, but your offer is appreciated all the same. Should we expect any opposition from the people of the Fangshards?”
The captain shook his head: “No, I don’t think so. As long as they don’t see you coming from the Firedancer that is. We had some bad blood with them before the banishing, and there’s a fair chance they’d recognize a Morthainian ship, so we’ll park her right here. We’re well on the Dark Side of the world now, far beyond the barrier and our borders. Be quiet about making it ashore and keep to yourselves to the valley once you get there. If you stick to the main pass it’ll take you right to Oberon City, and they’ll probably not bother you.”
Cole didn’t feel too assured by the captain’s advice. His gaze stretched over the mountain range before them. The serrated peaks seemed to touch the stars and looked as if they’d been pulled from the jaw of some ancient predator. Anyone who could survive in such a place must be tough indeed. Focusing his Wisdom, Cole stretched the lenses in his eyes, zooming his vision and revealing strings of lights and tiny villages sprinkled across
the whole ridge. At the foothill was a winding path that cut through the mountains towards Oberon. There were certainly fewer lights around the pass.
“Thank you for the advice, we’ll depart immediately.” Valen turned, though he was halted by a little cough behind him. “Yes captain?”
“I know relations between the crew and your unit have been a bit… tenuous of late, what with these stupid prank wars.” He rubbed his hands, wincing slightly, as though the words pained him. “What I’m getting at, or suggesting really, is that if you were to charge up the Firedancer’s gratia stones before you left…well it would go a long way to mending things. It would shorten our trip home by a considerable measure, and as captain I would declare you the sporting victors of whatever the hell a prank war is. I know your own affairs are priority, but if you could spare a bit of that Passion of yours…” The captain’s voice trailed off as he shook his head. “Ahh forget I asked. You lot charged half the fleet back in the docks.”
Cole felt a pang of sympathy for the captain and his men. He knew what they were really after was the creature-comforts provided by the gratia stones’ power. Hot showers, warm meals, and cold ales were a luxury they had never known while out in the sands. The stones were near empty and they would suffer a bleak journey back if they had to travel by wind power alone.
“Consider it done, Captain,” Valen said.
“Are you sure then?” the captain asked. “It’s a hard day’s march to Oberon City. You’ll need your strength.”
Eliza approached the captain, placing a soft lavender-lit hand to his jaw. “What Valen meant to say is that you can consider it already done. Sitra and I charged your gratia stones earlier today. Do not mourn our strength, for Passion requires none. It merely asks for a moment of kindness and a willingness to heal someone’s hurt.”
The captain’s face slackened when Eliza pulled her hand away. He closed his eyes, smiling as the breeze carried a tear from his cheek. He opened his eyes, face lit with a child-like glee. “Thank you! Thank you, warrior of The Sill. Thank you all! Should you ever find yourself in the White Sands again look for our sails. You are most welcome in our ranks.”
Saving The Dark Side Book 2: The Harbingers Page 22
