The Raven

by Ann Fisher

  Jamie raised his voice again, but whatever he said was drowned out by a sudden wail. One of the crew took a hard hit to the kidney. Janek felt it. The burst of pain created a pulse of energy that he was able to absorb and redirect into the storm. The energy released by pain wasn’t as powerful as death energy—it was little better than aether—but even aether was better than nothing. There was more yelling, the sound of men dropping to the deck from the ropes, cursing.

  Finally, distracted by the uproar, Janek turned to look down the main deck. Despite everything, he started to laugh.

  Jamie had started a brawl. On his own ship. During the foulest of storms. While they were being chased by the Order’s fleet. All to feed Janek’s dwindling supply of magic.

  As Janek watched, Jamie grabbed a man by his arm and turned his body sharply, popping the sailor’s shoulder from the socket. Another pulse of energy came to him. It wasn’t much. Normally a fight like this would be just a pleasant hum in his veins, but today he was willing to use every last scrap of power he could get.

  This time, he poured the energy into the storm, ratcheting it up, letting it expand outward until it swallowed the Madalie too. He left the spell open, like a child’s messy knot. Eventually it would unravel on its own. The storm would be frightfully destructive in the meantime, but it would end.

  He did his best to shield the Madalie. The fight on the main deck died down as the storm hit them full force and men took shelter as best they could. Two were swept overboard to their deaths. Neither of them was Caden. Janek felt five more fall from the pursuing ships before the storm took them out of range. While the remaining mages might yet be able to repel a targeted attack, the chaos of the storm was too much for them. Pulling at them from every direction, it would be like fighting a dozen weaker men rather than one strong one.

  Jamie’s Madalie was in poor shape. When their mast went, it landed poorly, pinning a man to the deck and killing him instantly. Janek used the power he gathered from that to keep the ship from rolling. And then there was nothing to do but hold on. He sank to the slick wooden planks of the deck. He was drenched with spray and sweat and shaking in the chill wind. The rope around his waist tied him to the ship. Jamie must have done that. He hadn’t even noticed. Looking around at what was left of the Madalie, he wasn’t certain whether to be comforted or alarmed by the fact that he was tied to it.

  The storm raged around them, but he had nothing left to control it with. He let it go, let everything go, and sank into a stupor. When a weight fell to the deck beside him, he managed to pry open one eye. It was Jamie, his arm pressed tightly to his side, coddling a broken rib.

  Janek managed to rouse himself briefly. “Caden?”

  Jamie lifted his chin to indicate a spot behind Janek. When he looked, he saw Caden lying only a few feet away, tied down even as he was. He attempted to go to him, but Jamie shoved him back onto his ass.

  “Took a knock to his head. He’ll be fine. Has a hard head that one. He’s like his mentor in that way.”

  “I’m not his mentor. Or his guardian. I’m just the guard dog.”

  “And a good one.” Jamie grinned at him, teeth stained with blood, his nose skewed at an odd angle. “You’re a hard friend to have.”

  “Sorry about all this.”

  “I knew what I was getting into, taking you on.” Jamie squinted and wiped the salt spray from his lined face. “My people have a saying that you should never befriend a viper or a sorcerer. That never seemed truer than now.”

  “Well, you’ve always had a reckless streak.”

  “You broke my ship.”

  “Aye.”

  “I’ll expect payment.”

  Janek let his head fall back against the wall. He was bone deep exhausted, but Jamie could still make him smile. “Of course you will.”

  Knowing Jamie, the old pirate would keep him alive just long enough to extract that payment. The sound of Jamie’s laughter followed him down into welcome oblivion.

  4

  It was eerie. The strange storm rushed over the Raven like a wave rolling to shore, gone as quickly as it came. It passed them within an hour, leaving them shaken but no worse for wear. Unlike a natural storm, the black clouds simply slowed and then dissipated like a dark mist.

  Afterwards, the sun shone as brightly as if the storm had never been. The waves settled to a smooth roll. The wind cleared of that suffocating pressure. And there was a ship, less than five miles distant, drifting listlessly on the waves. A ghost ship, the sailors of the Raven whispered as they made slashing signs across their foreheads to ward off evil. Lorel was of the opinion that evil, if it had been present, had passed with the storm.

  She handed the glass to Dani and bit her lip in indecision. The derelict’s mast was shattered and parts of the rail were missing. The sail had been cut loose, which suggested that someone was still alive and mobile. The current here would take a drifting ship west, sweeping it on toward the straits. The ship would likely wreck there on the cliffs. Even with a sound ship and a healthy crew, the straits could be tricky this time of year. Her kinder, gentler side wanted to check for survivors. Her kinder, gentler side was one she’d worked hard to repress these last years. It was inconvenient that it should rear its head now.

  The ship itself was a pretty prize. An Asaran sloop, its draft was shallow enough to allow it to hide places where the empire’s warships couldn’t follow. It would run fast and light on the water, able to strike before an alarm could be raised. It was the perfect kind of ship for a pirate.

  Dani wanted it. Lorel didn’t even need to ask the question aloud to know the girl’s opinion on what they should do. All she had to do was look at the avid tightness of Dani’s expression as she peered through the glass, the flush to her skin that had nothing to do with the wind. There was a predator lurking beneath that lovely face, no mistake.

  “There’s no movement on deck,” Dani said, lowering the glass. “Could be abandoned.”

  Kenna, standing on Dani’s other side, shook her head. “What it means is they’re smart enough to hide.”

  Dani tapped her fingers on the rail. “A ship that size would need a crew of about fifty men to run it. They might have lost a few, but we can’t count on that. If Kenna’s right and they have a sorcerer aboard…”

  “Then we can’t take the risk,” Lorel said.

  Dani looked exasperated. “I was going to say, if they have a sorcerer aboard then we have the chains to hold him. Cinn has a set of specially made shackles in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe in your cabin, inside the bespelled chest. They’re designed to stop a mage from casting spells. We could make a pile of coin selling a sorcerer back to the empire.”

  “I won’t risk trading with the Order,” Lorel said firmly. It went against everything she stood for.

  Dani rolled her eyes. “We get rid of a sorcerer and drain the Order’s coffers while we do it. I don’t see a downside there. Besides, we could use another ship.”

  That was the honest truth. With the difficult succession, the empire had withdrawn most of their soldiers from the island, but as soon as they had their own political problems sorted out, they’d be back. It was only a matter of time. Erys needed a fleet to protect the island from future invasion. Bran had tracked down several gifted shipwrights and set them to work on the problem, but it still took months to build a ship, and the empire could turn its greedy eyes to Erys again at any time.

  Lorel narrowed her eyes at Dani. “Think of Erys, is it? How patriotic you’ve become.”

  Dani shrugged. “It’s faster to steal a ship than to build one, and this one’s not beyond repair. If not Erys, then think of your own pockets. We bring this home with us and Bran might just hand you the keys to his tavern.”

  Lorel crossed her arms. “Who says I want a tavern?”

  “You don’t want a ship, that’s clear. You might not have told Cinn yet, but I know you want out. You never would have left Conri behind to make this run otherwise. You want out. I
want the ship. The empire won’t even come looking for this one. It’s flying the Asaran flag.”

  “I’ve no quarrel with Asarans,” Lorel said. “They’re as much victims of the empire as we are.”

  Dani rolled her eyes. “Great Deg, woman. You make an awful pirate.”

  “I’m not a pirate, and neither are you on this run.”

  “But why waste a catch thrown right into our nets?” Dani stared at the ship. By her expression, Lorel judged she was tallying up the damage, weighing its worth against the difficulty of killing the survivors and sailing the broken vessel through the straits.

  “We can take it,” Dani said finally. “If there are any survivors, they’ll be injured and exhausted.”

  “They’ll be desperate and dangerous.”

  A flicker of a smile crossed Dani’s face. “We have the means to disable a sorcerer. Kenna’s strong. Our crew is solid. ”

  More than solid. Which is why Cinn had trusted Lorel with the ship in the first place. If Lorel lost the ship, Cinn would kill her slowly and with great relish.

  Dani looked her dead in the eyes. “If my mother were here she wouldn’t hesitate to give the order. You know it, and I know it. It’s worth the risk.”

  Coming to a decision, Lorel said, “Bring us in closer. Close enough to hail them.”

  “You’re not going to talk them into handing over their ship.”

  “We’re not stealing the ship. We’re going to offer them help.”

  Dani looked scandalized. She opened her mouth to argue, but Lorel cut her off. “We are not pirates.”

  A half hour later, Lorel was beginning to rethink her position. Their attempts to hail the survivors had gone unheeded, but she still didn’t believe the ship was empty. The ship looked worse close up. The rails were smashed. Pieces of the deck were missing, and the mast was a shattered wreck. But there were no visible bodies.

  “We’re a merchant ship bound for Erys. We mean you no harm.” Eamon repeated the call. He was a large man with a booming voice. Loud enough to wake the dead, Dani had often said. Lorel sincerely hoped that wasn’t the case. The dead could stay dead as far as she was concerned.

  Dani shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe there truly aren’t any survivors.”

  “There are. Someone’s alive over there. I can feel them watching.” Lorel’s years as a dancer had left her with an acute awareness of when she had an audience. She was certain that they had one now.

  “Oh?” Dani’s brows arched. “Can you feel why they aren’t responding?”

  Lorel ignored the sarcasm and unsheathed the long knife strapped to her thigh. This was only the fourth time she’d had to draw a weapon in preparation of a fight, and she felt the same stomach dropping nausea she’d felt the first time around.

  She touched the heartstone at her neck for courage and blew out a shaky breath before turning to Dani. “You stay here.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To check for survivors. This was my idea and I mean to see it through. Don’t ransom me if it comes to that.”

  “I won’t.”

  Lorel believed the promise. Dani might attack the ship to avenge Lorel’s death, but she wouldn’t give up the Raven to save her life.

  After Eamon and Joss set a plank between the ships, Lorel crossed to the Madalie on quick feet. Passing between the bucking ships without losing her balance was her finest talent as a sailor, and the one that had originally caught Cinn’s attention. Bending her knees, she leapt across the final distance to land lightly on the wet deck. She caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head sharply to follow it.

  It was only a rope, frayed at the end and rocking with the movement of the ship. A steady banging noise echoed up from the hold, likely caused by shifted cargo and a busted strap. Water slapped at the hull. A gull glided far overhead, calling hoarsely in what sounded like an alarm.

  Lorel stepped cautiously forward, knife at the ready. Everywhere she looked said the ship was abandoned, but her instincts screamed danger. The watchful silence pressing against her skin was not at all friendly.

  Dani seemed to believe that the sorcerer—if there was a sorcerer—would be weakened by the fight and not as terrible of a foe as tradition suggested. Dani often discounted the tales told by what she saw as the superstitious and the weak. But Lorel knew better. She knew that not all sorcerers were as evil as the stories made them out to be, but they were powerful. She sincerely hoped that Kenna had been mistaken about the source of the storm.

  Crouched down, she jogged along the deck, her bare feet barely touching the slick wood. She wanted a look down the steps to the lower levels, but she wouldn’t risk moving out of Kenna’s sight. Kenna could do a good deal to protect her even from a distance, but only if Lorel remained visible.

  She blocked out the fearful voice in her head telling her to turn back and sail as far away from this ghost ship as she could get. Her legs kept moving, carrying her around the broken base of the main mast to the quarterdeck. Deep down in her heart she knew that she was doing the right thing. You didn’t abandon someone at sea. It was a moral law as old as the island. The Ghadrians might believe that all Erysians were lawless and bloody barbarians, but that didn’t make it so.

  She kept going, ducking under a torn sail that was flapping in the wind, and taking a quick look around the corner.

  She came to a hard stop.

  Her legs buckled at the sight that greeted her, and that was probably what saved her. She turned her stumble into a roll across the blood slick deck and then scrambled back the way she’d come. The magebolt seared through the air above her head and hit the splintered mast at her back.

  Battle cries ripped through the silence as the hidden sailors rushed forward. Above the uproar, Lorel heard the cursing of a man whose voice she thought she’d never hear again.

  Janek.

  Of all the cursed ships on all the cursed seas, of course this would be Janek’s ship. Who else would tear across the water in a black cloud of magic and brimstone? He’d nearly killed her with that bolt.

  She ran back toward the boarding plank just as a group from the Raven surged across it. She nearly careened into Dani who moved her sword aside just enough to avoid skewering her. Grinning, Dani turned her upper body to let Lorel’s momentum take her past and for good measure gave her a shove toward the ship. “Go on. I’ve got this.”

  “You were supposed to stay back,” Lorel shouted.

  “I got bored.”

  “Dani…Wait!”

  But Dani wasn’t listening. She’d already stepped forward, moving toward a short Asaran with a scarred face and a blade as sharp as the day it was forged. Crap. Cinn would kill her if something happened to Dani. And Janek was there, his sword arm lowered, staring at her as if he were the one looking at a ghost. He said something to the Asaran, and when the man didn’t respond, he spoke again more sharply.

  Janek’s words weren’t going to stop Dani’s blade from slicing open his friend’s belly. Lorel kicked Dani’s ankle and swept her feet out from under her. She wouldn’t have done it if she’d been thinking clearly. Stupid instinct. Where Janek was concerned she was all instinct and stupidity.

  “Hold,” Janek shouted. A few of his men turned their heads, but no one lowered their weapon.

  Ignoring Dani’s snarl of outrage, Lorel turned to her crew and threw up her arms. “Hold. These are not our enemies.”

  That was overstating things, but there might still be a way out of this without bloodshed.

  Dani pointed her sword at Janek. “He almost killed you. We all saw it.”

  Janek’s smile didn’t soften the harsh lines of his face, but it made Lorel’s heart swell anyway. “I thought you were an imperial ship, disguised. You’ll have noticed that we were chased. There was no reason for us to believe you were friendly.”

  He took a step in Lorel’s direction, and Dani’s sword came up. Lorel shoved her arm aside.

  Dani glared a
t her. “Is this the Ghadrian who helped you to escape the Keep?”

  “He is.”

  “That doesn’t mean shit, Lorel. You know that. Not here, not now.”

  Not true.

  The fact that it was Janek made things both more complicated and easier. More complicated because…well, because it was Janek and he made everything more complicated. Easier because he didn’t immediately become suspicious when she stepped forward.

  He looked the same as the day he’d left Erys. Better, possibly. The setting sun picked out the warm tones in his hair. His skin was sun-darkened. He looked strong and fit and as in control of everything as she remembered. The Asaran standing at his side glared at her murderously, but Janek’s voice softened as she approached.

  “I can’t believe it’s truly you. I never thought I’d see you again.” He started to lift his hand to touch her face but thought better of it and aborted the motion midway through. A wry smile touched his lips. “When next I’m at the Temple square, I’ll have to give thanks to whatever twisted god keeps hurling you into my path.”

  She couldn’t help but smile at the thought. “Which god would that be?”

  “One who loves trouble and chaos,” he said. “A female assuredly.”

  “I don’t believe in your gods.”

  “Maybe they’re punishing you then and not me.” He shook his head. “What in Deg’s name are you doing here?”

  “That offer of help? We meant it.” She ignored the sharp bark of laughter from the Asaran. “But the fact that you’re aboard this ship, along with the storm that brought you, that changes things.”

  Suspicion edged out the wonder in his expression. “Changes things how?”

  She glanced back at Dani to make sure the girl stayed put, and then she leaned forward, placing her hand on Janek’s chest. A wave of lust and longing and sadness broke over her with the contact. He was real. He was here. She was going to have to betray him again.