His wife only grinned crookedly. “We’ll figure something out. If we have to, I’ll just scream at you like the harpy you say I am, and you can fake it as we go.”
Fengel smiled. “Oh. That’s all right, then.”
She bent her lips to his as the island rumbled, the dragon roared, and volcanic ash fluttered down around them.
Chapter Twenty
Lina stared at the dead man.
It was Jonas Wiley, the unburned twin. He lay in the hammock below, between her and the deck, his eyes wide and staring. The pool of blood below him was mostly dry. He had likely died sometime during her nap.
Jonas had been obnoxious, but that was small in the face of his death. Lina breathed a heartfelt sigh and sat up. Her back creaked and her muscles were sore. A glance at the rest of the quarterdeck revealed that it was all but empty; only those injured in the raid still rested uneasily in their hammocks. Having been awake as the Dawnhawk’s scout, she’d evidently slept longer than any of the others who’d partaken in the raid. It had been an uncomfortable, dreamless sleep, yet for all that, she’d been completely oblivious to the man dying slowly beneath her.
Blue skies and daylight showed through the portholes, accompanied by the dulled crack of muskets and the distant thump of cannon. We’re still being chased, then. Sleep wouldn’t come again any time soon. Lina hardened her heart and decided to go check up on things. Besides, I’m going to need someone to help with the body.
Lina gingerly tried to avoid the pool of blood as she hopped down from her hammock. Jonas’s death was an unpleasant surprise, though not entirely unexpected; she’d lost many friends last night during the escape from Breachtown. In fact, this entire trip had been one catastrophe after another. How did things get this bad?
There was one bright spot, at least. Lina cheered as she thought of Michael Hockton, and the way he had smiled at her. His screams, too. There had been a lot of screaming and yelling last night, really.
Lina stretched again and looked around for Runt. “All right, you little monster,” she said. “Where are you? Let’s go see what the day has in store.”
She glanced up to see him behind a support strut stretching between the mess hall bulkhead and the deck up above. The scryn was curled into a tight, anxious coil, glaring down at her with beady eyes.
“There you are. Come on down. Let’s go find everyone.”
Runt poked his head out from behind the strut and hissed at her. Caustic spittle spattered across the boards of the deck, smoking. Lina cursed and took a step back.
“What in the Realms Below was that for? Get down here this instant, you horrible thing!” There was a bottle of Corsair’s Cure-all in her stowed gear, but if her pet was going to be cranky he could damned well stay up there.
Runt pulled his head back into the coil and rumbled to himself. Lina made fists with her hands and was about to turn away when a low groan sounded behind her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She looked back over her shoulder, already knowing what she’d find.
The corpse of Jonas Wiley was staring right at her. There wasn’t any doubt that he was dead — his usually tanned skin was waxy and his chest did not rise with breath.
“Oh,” said Lina in a small voice. “Oh no.”
The Revenant gave a low groan that sent a cold shiver running down her spine. Runt hissed violently and squirmed deeper into its recess behind the strut. Ryan Gae and the other injured pirates shifted fitfully in their sleep.
“Okay,” said Lina. “I’m, I’m going to just go...find someone. Runt! Keep an eye on Jonas here, okay?”
And then she fled.
The quarterdeck moved by in a blur. She raced up the stairwell past storage, past the captain’s cabin, and up out onto the cool wind of the main deck.
The Dawnhawk in daytime was a welcome sight, even if the great airship was somewhat unkempt at the moment. Coils of rope lay across the deck, intermixed with toolboxes, winches, and great bolts of spare canvas patching. Almost the whole crew was currently present, barring those who had been lost in the raid and those sleeping below. The majority milled about, peering over the gunwales at their pursuers or crouched in some out-of-the-way place, focused on their own internal miseries. The remaining minority saw to the running of the ship itself, and were busy calling reports back to the helm or hauling gear aloft to the gasbag.
Lina paused, half out of the stairway hatch. Where were they going? What was the point of going on? The colony raid had been a failure. A good number of her friends were dead and they had less than nothing to show for it. The Ship’s Committee had proven worthless. They’d already mutinied, and the captains were gone.
What were they all going to do?
A distant thump of cannon fire sounded, followed by the scream of a ball flying past the stern of the airship. Lina shook herself. Foolish. There was always something more to lose. And right now, not only did the Perinese want them dead, but there were Revenants in the quarterdeck.
She peered around for someone to bring that fact up with. Nate Wiley certainly wasn’t it; Lina didn’t relish being around when the Jonas’s twin found out. Henry Smalls stood at the helm with Konrad and Maxim. Her friend Andrea hung from the port-side gas-bag rigging. Tricia and a few others were on the deck, hoisting a light-air gas canister up to her via winch and pulley. The older Mechanist oversaw this, while Committee-Member Lome argued with Reaver Jane about something near the starboard skysails. Lucian Thorne sat on the exhaust pipe rising from the deck nearby with Lina’s stolen bottle of Cure-all in hand, looking out into the sky. She frowned at that, but kept looking, hoping for a glimpse of Michael Hockton. The renegade Bluecoat wasn’t anywhere to be seen, though she did spy Omari’s blonde dreadlocks up near the bow.
Perfect. If she told anyone on the crew they’d overreact, and the committee, well, was a failure. Omari had the most experience dealing with Revenants, she suspected. She made the damned things, after all.
Lina rose from the hatch and stalked up to the front of the airship. The ex-apothecary’s assistant stood at the very front rail, looking out at the horizon where the sea met the sky. The air was clear but for a few puffy clouds, and the sun hung at midmorning. White-capped waves rolled several hundred feet below, unblemished by any sight of land.
A cannonball flew below, before disappearing into the ocean.
“I can pretend we’re not being chased up here,” said Omari. “At least, until something like that happens.” She looked at Lina. “Why don’t we fly higher?”
Lina listened to the whirr of the propellers before answering. “We’re at full steam already,” she said. “That takes coal and light-air gas, which we probably don’t have a lot of to spare at the moment. Also, we hit a bunch of merchant ships on the way over to Breachtown, so we’re running a little heavy. I wouldn’t worry about getting shot down, though. It’s pretty much impossible to hit something in the sky with a cannon, and musket shot won’t do near enough damage, even if they can manage it.”
Omari only grunted and went back to watching the waves.
“So....” continued Lina. “We’ve got a problem in the quarterdeck that I think you should handle.”
The Yulan woman wheeled on her. “What? You wreck my home, my business, kidnap me, and now you want to put me to work?” She shook her head. “The gall of you Perinese.”
“Hey!” said Lina, affronted. “I’m from Triskelion, the machine-city. Don’t lump me in with these dogs chasing after us.” She lowered her voice. “Besides. This is one of your problems.”
She caught Omari’s gaze and held it. After a moment the other woman sagged. “Oh,” she said. “You pirates are dropping like mayflies. But I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”
“Well, stop raising them for starters,” she said heatedly. “Jonas being dead is bad enough, but no one’s going to be able to handle watching him walk around. Especially after last night.”
Omari threw her hands wide. “What, do you think this i
s a game I play? That I enjoy? I have no control over who comes back, or how. He’s not some conjured daemon, to come at my beck and call.” She shook her head. “Just put them out of the way somewhere. They’re not usually violent unless you get in their way a lot.” She paused to think. “Or unless they were really violent people in life.”
“Well, you’d better think fast on what you can control,” said Lina. “Or—”
“Take cover!” came a cry from back near the helm.
Lina heard the rudder-assemblies at the rear of the ship give a loud clack. Then the airship pitched abruptly to its port side. Omari yelled and grabbed the gunwale railing, echoing the surprise of the rest of the crew.
A black blur flew overhead. It thrust past the gunwales amidships and up at the gasbag frame above them, pressing the semirigid canvas skin until it was concave. Lina had a half-second’s horror as the canvas split and the cannonball punched up out of sight through the interior of the ’bag.
“Puncture!” called the Mechanist from the middle of the deck. “Clear amidships for gas leak!”
Everyone knew the danger present. Light-air gas was not only intensely flammable, but extremely poisonous as well. The Brothers of the Cog tended toward gas-mask respirators for a reason.
“I thought you said we were safe!” yelled Omari. “I thought you said that they couldn’t hit us! Now we’re going to sink and drown in the ocean.” She hugged up against the gunwales and said prayers in Perinese before switching to some other, native tongue.
“That was a one-in-a-million shot!” exclaimed Lina, somewhat stunned herself. “And the ’bag is made of individual cells. We’ll be fine! Probably!”
Those nearest the breach rose to their feet to obey the Mechanist. Though the gas was mostly invisible, it left a blur in the air when it passed in enough concentration. The gas billowed down at the deck in a hazy column, and the pirates scrambled to get away from it. Tricia wasn’t so lucky, and Lina’s heart sank as the woman dropped abruptly to the deck beneath the breach in the gas bag where the haze was thickest.
The sound of a thousand hammers pounding against the hull added to the chaos. Splinters flew from the gunwales as fat iron marbles skipped up over the side with lethal force. Lina watched Fat Thomlin jerk violently as he was struck, and a dozen others fell to the deck as they were hailed with spars of broken wood.
“Grapeshot?” gasped Lina. “They’re able to hit us with grapeshot?”
The airship heaved beneath her feet as it twisted back onto its course. Distantly, she spied Henry and tall, gaunt Maxim fighting with the helm. Konrad was closer, raising his thick-fingered hands at gas bag and deck. A wind kicked up, too strong and sudden to be anything natural. The heat-haze poison of the light-air gas dissipated before it, and Lina caught only the faintest whiff of the stuff. It smelled sour, like milk gone bad.
Once the airship had righted, the Mechanist marched down the deck, calling out commands in his harsh voice. A few of those crew uninjured by the attack and not crippled by wounds suffered last evening rushed to obey. In such a situation, he was in charge, and they all knew it. Her friend Andrea led the race to the equipment lockers running down the deck, breaching them to pass out gas masks and coils of rope. The Mechanist then led them up the rigging to repair the damage above.
Lina’s gaze went to those still on the deck. Gunney Lome and the others of the committee were helping where they could, but most of the emergency supplies had been used during their escape from Breachtown. She couldn’t tell how serious the grapeshot volley had been, but there would be at least two on the crew who wouldn’t rise again.
A horrible thought occurred to Lina. Or will they?
She wheeled around on Omari. “Stop! Don’t do it!”
The other woman stared at her with frightened, angry eyes. She shrugged after a moment, helplessly.
Lina cursed and ran away, down the deck to where she’d seen Fat Thomlin and Tricia fall. Pirates screamed and yelled for help as she passed them. What am I going to do? I can’t just toss the bodies off the ship! Couldn’t she? The others would never understand….
A dozen paces away, she saw she was already, horribly, too late. Fat Thomlin twitched. He raised one mangled arm, then another. Groaning, he sat up and stared at Lina with dead eyes.
“Thomlin!”
Reaver Jane appeared at Lina’s side. Belatedly, she remembered that the committee-member was close friends with the recently returned corpse; both had been on Natasha’s original crew.
Fat Thomlin the Revenant gave a guttural groan and faced Jane. Blood soaked his torso, and still dribbled from where the grapeshot ball had destroyed his right arm and torn out his throat.
The committee-member gasped in horror and drew her cutlass.
“Wait!” cried Lina. “Wait, they shouldn’t be violent.”
Reaver Jane turned a horrified, incredulous look on Lina. “They?”
Lina closed her eyes as Tricia groaned as well, and the young piratess lurched and gurgled and crawled to her knees, tongue lolling and skin blackening from light-air gas overexposure.
Omari appeared beside Lina, along with several others. The Yulan woman grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back. “What mad horror is this?” she cried, casting a meaningful look at Lina, wanting her to play along.
“Oh by the Goddess,” breathed Sarah Lome, wide-eyed.
“Revenants!” cried Nate Wiley.
“Just like back in Breachtown,” moaned Reaver Jane.
The Revenants twitched and groaned, but did little else. Thomlin tried to stand again and failed. Tricia let out a horrible wet gurgle, emptying hemorrhaged lungs onto the deck. More of the crew clustered to see the cause of the commotion, only to fall back and draw their weapons.
“We’ve got to destroy them!” called a pirate.
“How do you kill them?” asked another. “They’re already dead.”
“Cut off the head,” replied the first. “A priest once told me that works.”
“You can’t cut off his head! And why are they even coming back?”
“It’s her fault,” said Lina. Everyone looked at her. She jerked a thumb back at Omari, who glared daggers. “She’s cursed, or an aetherite, or some damned thing. Says dead things just come back around her.”
The crew exploded. Rough hands grabbed Omari.
“Why? Why would you do this?”
“And after we take you onto our ship?”
“Toss her over the side!”
“End your magics, damn you!”
“It’s not my fault!” howled Omari. “It just happens when I’m around! They’re harmless if you leave them alone! Mostly!”
Lucian Thorne stepped forward. “As if everything else going on wasn’t bad enough, now we’ve got to contend with this.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, miss, but there’s really no place for you aboard. We’ll give you a float, and maybe the Perinese can pick you up.”
“Wait!” growled Reaver Jane. “Aren’t we a committee? There should be a vote. And my suggestion is to just gut her here and now. Why give her anything?”
“But what do we do about the Revenants?” asked Sarah Lome.
“No one is doing a damned thing,” growled Henry Smalls.
The steward shoved his way violently into the crowd. At his back came Andrea Holt, both Allen and the older Mechanist, and the aetherites, Maxim and Konrad. Behind them stood the small knot of crew who had remained onboard during the Breachtown excursion. All held gas-mask respirators, tools, and swathes of canvas and rope.
Lina felt a moment’s panic. If they were up here, who was piloting the Dawnhawk? The thump of cannon fire had grown faint. She realized that they had gained a lead again on their pursuers.
Henry stared at them all in turn. The pleasant, older fellow who had always politely suffered through inconvenience was gone now, replaced by a grizzled bulldog of a man who wore the threat of violence like an old pair of boots. Lina was shocked at the change.
�
�I don’t like it any more than you,” replied Lucian, “but the committee—”
“To the Realms Below with your committee,” snarled Henry Smalls. “It’s been a miserable failure ever since it started. You argue and you bluster and in the end, you just throw up your hands and take whatever path is easiest, with no thought to who gets hurt. And look at you now! We’re being chased by the damned Perinese, we’re trying to keep this ship in the air, and you’re arguing about a couple of probably harmless corpses!”
He shook his head and quieted. No one said anything in response. Lucian, Sarah Lome, and Reaver Jane all stared at him, as if a loyal hound had suddenly transformed into a dragon. Even the Revenants watched the proceedings with their dead-alive eyes.
Henry pointed a finger at Omari. “You say they’re not violent?”
She shrugged. “Mostly! They tend to get agitated if there’s violence around them, or if they are kept from doing what they loved most in life. Or, uh, if they were really violent to begin with. But I’m sure they’re fine!”
The steward watched her a moment longer. Then he shook his head. “This woman stays aboard. What happens to her isn’t our call to make.”
Lucian threw up his hands. “She’s making Revenants, Henry! We’ve got to do something about that.”
The steward glared at Lucian. “No, we don’t. In fact, we’re not changing a thing. Everything is as-is until we get to where we’re going and fix this mess.” Those behind him all muttered an affirmation.
“But where are we going?” asked Lucian. “How are we going to fix this?
“We’re going to get the captains back.”
Henry Smalls spun about and stalked back to the helm. The rest of the crowd dissipated, slinking off to tend to the damage the ship had just taken. Lina and the rest of the committee were left with the groaning Revenants.
“But what about the Revenants?” asked Lucian, shouting back at the helm while gesturing to the corpses writhing beside him.
On Discord Isle (The Dawnhawk Trilogy) Page 28
