Seafire

by Natalie C. Parker

  Shoot, my brave girl, she heard her mother’s voice whisper.

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” she said, preparing to fire. Her fingers trembled.

  Now his eyes grew wide, his hands stiff and splayed in the air. “Please,” he said, “please, show me the mercy the Father never does. Take me with you. Whatever life you have, it’s got to be better than the one he forces on us. Please, help me.”

  This was precisely why the rule was shoot first and not shoot as soon as possible or shoot when you feel ready. But she’d broken the rule and now this wasn’t a Bullet, it was Lir.

  Lir, who desperately wanted a way out.

  Lir, who hadn’t hurt her.

  Lir, who might be someone’s brother.

  If it were Donnally on some other beach with some other girl’s gun to his head, wouldn’t Caledonia want that girl to help him?

  “Stand up,” she said, lowering her aim to his chest.

  Lir complied, and his expression softened when Caledonia moved in and pulled six guns and two knives from holsters on his thighs, calves, and back. Up close, he smelled even more like the ammunition he carried, but with a pinch of something too sweet. He kept his hands up as she worked, eyes marking every place she touched him.

  “Please,” he repeated. “I’ll never have a chance like this again. Please, help me.”

  The ocean rushed toward them and away, the waves quickening as the tide began to roll in. It was the same tide that would carry all the families aboard the Ghost far away from this terrible life that turned children into warriors, that made Lir plead for his life on an empty beach in the middle of a moonless night. She could help him. And she wanted to, but it went against everything her mother had taught her.

  Shaking her head, she pressed the muzzle of her gun into Lir’s chest.

  Desperation surfaced in the tremulous bend of his mouth. “What’s your name?”

  It wasn’t a secret, yet she frowned, refusing to give it up.

  His smile turned mournful. “How about I call you Bale Blossom, then? It seems fitting.” His eyes raised to trace the frame of her hair. The smile on her own lips surprised her. It wasn’t the first time her hair had been likened to the deep orange of the baleflower, but it was the first time the comparison felt like a compliment.

  “Call me whatever you like,” she answered. “I still won’t give you my name.”

  “You don’t trust me. There’s no reason you should, but I’m going to show you why you can.”

  Caledonia’s finger tightened on the trigger as he slipped one hand into his vest and produced a push dagger she’d missed. The handle was small enough to fit inside his grip completely while the black blade protruded between his first and middle fingers. He held it out hilt-first in the narrow space between them.

  She snatched it, noting how his body had warmed the metal, and tucked it into her belt.

  “How’s that for trust, Bale Blossom?”

  Caledonia wished desperately for her mother’s wisdom. Rhona would know what to do in this situation. She would know how to do the right thing even if it was a dangerous thing.

  But Caledonia had only herself.

  “No one trusts a Bullet,” she answered. “But maybe I can help.”

  “Are you going to take me to your crew?” Lir smiled sadly, seeming to know the answer before Caledonia had given it.

  Rule number three: Never reveal the ship.

  “No,” she said, resolute. “But I’m not going to shoot you.”

  Lir nodded, the bravery on his face haunted by disappointment. Even in the dark of the night she could see his jaw was carved with dirt and old scars. His eyes glittered dimly, and his mouth settled into a hard line. The flash of hope Caledonia had seen a moment before had been swept away by resignation.

  When he spoke next, his voice was hollow. “You should leave. Go back to your ship. Get out of here. I’ll hide or I’ll die, but I’ll do it under my own sail.”

  She glanced in the direction of the Ghost, wishing it was as simple as taking Lir with her.

  Lir followed her gaze, and before her eyes, he became as steady and as cool as the gun in her hand. He asked, “Do you know what we call this moon?”

  “There is no moon tonight,” Caledonia answered.

  “It’s the Nascent Moon,” he said after a quiet moment, all trace of that sad resignation gone. “It’s a time of potential and growth. A promise for things to come.”

  He touched her cheek, and Caledonia gasped, her arm lowering. She felt his hand slide into her hair, felt a spike of delicious heat follow his grazing fingers.

  “It’s the moon of beginnings and endings.” His voice found a malicious edge.

  Too late, she realized if she’d missed one dagger she might have missed another.

  His fingers tightened in her hair. A slaked smile surfaced on his lips.

  And the blade sank into her gut.

  Lir gripped the back of her head. As hot blood spread across her stomach, he held her close. Her knees buckled and her gun hit the ground with a thud.

  “Thank you for your mercy, Bale Blossom,” he whispered, lowering her almost gently to the sand. Nauseating pain burned through her body. “And thank you for your ship.”

  Caledonia screamed, fighting to stay conscious. If they heard her, they might escape. She clutched at her wound and felt sand against her face, rough against her lips. She knew there was pain, but all she felt was panic. She had to get up, find Pisces, warn the ship. She screamed again.

  Footsteps. This time, she knew them to be Lir’s as he raced away, toward the Bullet clip that would soon find her family. She fumbled in the sand for her gun and fired three shots. It was still deadly dark, but she thought she saw him falter.

  Even if those three bullets had missed their mark, everyone near the island would have heard the shots. Her family would have warning. They could escape, and as long as they followed the rules, they would.

  Her nausea eased into a strange numbness. The blade, she realized, was still in her gut. A parting gift, and one that might just save her. Holding the knife in place to stanch the bleeding, she got slowly to her feet and began to stagger toward her cove and the bow boat, the only thought in her mind to see the Ghost safely on its way.

  “Cala!” Pisces burst from the trees, her long braids swinging around her like ropes. “Oh, spirits, Cala!”

  “Bullets.” Caledonia barely managed the word before falling again to her knees. “We have to hurry.”

  Pisces nodded grimly and ripped a long strip of material from her shirt. The blade hurt even more coming out. Pisces worked quickly, binding the wound tightly before tucking her head beneath Caledonia’s arm and lifting her friend to her feet.

  Together, the girls stumbled through the woods, taking the shortest possible path to where their little boat waited. Caledonia tried to run. With each step her legs felt weaker, her lungs more shallow. Her gut burned as she moved. Thorny plants clawed at their legs and arms, leaving small trails of blood on their skin. Thick vines slowed their progress even more. Before the ocean was visible again through the trees, the sound of gunfire ripped through the air.

  Neither girl spoke until they’d returned to the cove. The boat they’d used to come ashore was still there, bobbing as the tide came in. But now, out where their family’s ship lay at anchor, a Bullet ship approached, flared with light.

  It was an assault ship with a sharp nose and grooves along the hull where Bullets waited with magnetized bombs. The Ghost fought to weigh its anchor and gain speed, but the assault ship was already upon it. Bombs soared across the narrowing channel of water. A boom rent the air as the missiles exploded against the Ghost, ripping open the ship and knocking the breath from Caledonia’s lungs.

  Flames spilled from a hole in the side of the hull. It was everything the girls had been taught to fear, t
o avoid, everything their parents had spent a lifetime protecting them from. And Caledonia had brought it right to their feet.

  Screams replaced the sound of gunfire. Caledonia lurched, pushing past the pain and into the shallow water. She surged forward once, determined to swim, but her body faltered and she cried out in defeat. Her feet sank into sand, salt burned in her gut, and Pisces gripped her shoulders to pull her back to shore. “Caledonia, no!” she cried.

  The two girls could do nothing but witness. No one would be spared.

  It lasted less than fifteen minutes.

  The sun rose higher. Screams and gunfire waned.

  Then the Bullets began their gruesome work of dragging the dead to their ship and hoisting the bodies of the slain on the metal pikes studding their rail.

  One body, placed at the very front of the Bullet ship, wore an overly large coat that puffed in the air like a gray cloud. The feet dangled in the wind, and Caledonia choked on the memory of leaving Donnally behind just a few short hours ago.

  Caledonia shivered in the warm night. Blood seeped down her body, but the pain in her gut was nothing compared to the pain in her chest.

  “How?” Pisces whispered.

  Caledonia slumped to her knees. She shook her head, unable to confess the truth to her friend. She’d failed her entire family; she couldn’t fail Pisces, too. So she pushed the truth deep down, beneath her grief and her guilt and her anger.

  “What do we do?” Pisces asked, her brown face bright with tears. “Cala, what do we do?”

  Caledonia fixed her gaze on the Bullet ship, her ears on the final screams of her family. Fire reflected angrily across the black surface of the ocean. For all its darkness, it had failed to keep her family a secret. But so had she. Her heart hardened over the memory of Lir. He had taken her mercy and turned it red. Now she and Pisces were all that remained.

  Taking her friend’s cold hand in her bloody one, she gave the only answer she could find. “I don’t know.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Four Years Later

  Just before dawn, Caledonia climbed into the aft rigging of her ship. The ropes were rough against her calloused palms as she scaled fifty feet of the mizzenmast, confident and sure, her hands and feet flying faster and faster, daring the sun to beat her to the top.

  The sky filled with the hazy blue glow of dawn, and Caledonia pushed harder, relishing the first kiss of sweat against her skin. She’d scarcely reached her chosen perch when she yelled to the team of girls on deck below, “Haul!”

  Eager voices repeated the command, and four sets of strong hands took hold of the lines and heaved. Along the mast, pulleys squealed and churned; Caledonia kept her eyes on the gaff beam moving toward her.

  “Break!” She shouted as the gaff rose level with her chest. From it hung their treasured sun sail; hundreds of shiny black scales made to absorb solar energy and feed their engines.

  The girls below began to secure the ropes while Caledonia moved to balance atop the beam. The morning wind that was so gentle on deck was bracing this far up, and a constant tension whirled in her stomach. Leaving one hand to grip the ropes, she stretched to retrieve the peak anchor and pull it down, snapping the cable in place.

  The horizon was burning yellow now, and the approach of the sun brought a smile to Caledonia’s lips. Below, she could see Amina perched on the starboard railing, tracking her with shrewd eyes. It wasn’t necessary for the captain to secure the sail. Any one of Amina’s Knots could do this just as easily as Caledonia, but this moment was unlike any other aboard the Mors Navis, and Caledonia craved the feeling of the world at her feet.

  “Trim to port!” she called.

  The sail angled toward sunrise just as the first gentle rays slid across the surface of the ocean. Light climbed the hull to paint the girls in their boldest strokes for just a second before it reached the black plates of the sun sail.

  It was like fire.

  Light leaped from a hundred scales at once in vibrant yellows, oranges, and pinks; a cascade of momentary brilliance washed upward as the sun climbed higher in the sky, and at the top of it all stood Caledonia. Wind tugged at her sleeves and her hair, light washed over her from boot to brow, and she felt as alive as the ship beneath her feet, charged and powerful.

  It lasted for only a moment, then that dazzling morning fire was gone.

  Sunlight glittered calmly in the sail, creating fuel to power all the systems of the ship once known as the Ghost. Repaired and renamed Mors Navis, the large vessel was sharp and elegant, all of it skinned with dark, gray steel except for a few patches of wood and tar. Everything on the ship was a mixture of old-world tech and whatever natural resources they could find. And they made it work. The Mors Navis now carried a crew of fifty-three girls, six cats, and one goat. They’d made this ship both a weapon and a home.

  Four years ago, this had been a fantasy. Trapped on a beach with nothing but a gut wound, her best friend, and this very ship in pieces, Caledonia could only dream of the day she had the means to stand up and fight. It had come sooner than she could have hoped, the morning Pisces looked at her square in the eyes and said she wanted revenge. It came as they bent their minds to the task of recovering their ship. It came one girl at a time. Caledonia and Pisces had stitched this ship and its crew together from odds and ends discarded by the world.

  As Caledonia began her downward climb, she heard the bow boat drop from its hanging berth and hit the water. She saw it a moment later, pushing past the ship with five girls aboard and Redtooth at the helm, the red tips of her blonde braids visible against the bright blue morning. That team would scout a few miles ahead of the Mors Navis, looking for trouble or opportunity. Caledonia paused, watching as Redtooth raised her hand in salute to another dark shape in the water before speeding away.

  Pisces. Some days it seemed the girl had been in the water since the attack on the Ghost. She’d risen before the sun that first, terrible day on the beach and walked straight into the ocean to drown her tears. When she came up for air, her sobs left jagged stitches in the hushed morning. Unable to move much on her own, Caledonia had no choice but to be still as her friend’s grief washed over her. That grief was like a fever, one Caledonia could feel burning in her own blood. As Pisces sought solace in the ocean, Caledonia hoisted her eyes to the sky and let her own tears drain into the hard sand.

  So much had changed in four years, but some things were very much the same. Pisces was in the water every morning as early as Caledonia was in the rigging. Just as Caledonia knew the surface of the ocean and her ship, Pisces knew what lay beneath.

  Sunlight glinted off Pisces’s smooth head and shoulders before she dove once again, vanishing from sight. Caledonia recalled the moment Pisces had come to her with a razor in her hand and tears in her eyes. “I want it gone,” she’d said.

  “You want what gone?” Caledonia asked as she cautiously reached for the razor, already afraid of whatever answer her friend was about to give.

  “My hair,” Pisces said, voice quiet. Tears slipped down her cheeks. “It drags in the water. And I need to be faster.”

  Caledonia began to cut, pausing every so often to blink away her own tears as she worked.

  It had been the first of many sacrifices. But every one had made them stronger, brought them closer to the fight they ached for—to avenge their mothers and fathers and brothers and all the families aboard the Ghost. One day, they would take this fight all the way to Aric Athair himself.

  “How’s the view this morning, Captain?” a voice called as Caledonia reached the deck.

  Lace was always among the first to greet her, no matter how early Caledonia rose.

  “As bright as your hair.” Caledonia faced the small girl, eyes appraising the pile of blonde curls that were as stubbornly cheerful as the girl who wore them. “What’s the news?” Caledonia asked, turning her steps toward the bridge.
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  Though on the younger side of her command crew, Lace had stepped into Caledonia’s trust almost as soon as she’d stepped aboard the ship. She was calm and competent, with a laugh as grizzly as Rhona’s had been. Her skin was pale as seafoam and her curls, while not rusted red, were defiant. It was strange to associate someone so young with her mother, but Caledonia found something comforting in their similarity of spirit, and she’d loved Lace immediately for it.

  Lace matched Caledonia’s pace and began her morning brief of the day’s activities. She covered changes to the duty roster, maintenance issues, health concerns. Lace had a knack for reporting dismal situations without sounding dismal, a talent that was exceedingly rare. Most of it didn’t require Caledonia’s direct attention, but the last item on Lace’s list always landed heavy on the captain’s mind.

  “And finally,” Lace began.

  “And finally,” Caledonia repeated with a sigh.

  “Vitals. Far says we’re down to beans and salt soup, and she can keep us running on that for five days at the outside.”

  “It’s been five days for the past three, Lace. The soup is starting to look like water. Are you sure we can survive for five more days?”

  Lace’s smile was as sturdy as the deck beneath their feet. “We’ve survived worse than thin soup, Captain.”

  Five more days of meager fare would make for a weaker crew. Caledonia felt the pinch in her own stomach amplified fifty-two times. Beside her, Lace had grown unusually quiet. “There’s more?”

  All around them, the deck buzzed with activity. Laundry lines were pulled taut and covered with clothes, the five Mary sisters were oiling the cable cutters and their clips beneath the railing, and Amina and the eleven girls who made up her sharpshooting team of Knots crawled through the rigging to polish the plates of the sun sail.

  Lace’s smile drooped when she answered, “We lost Metalmouth.”

  “Dammit.” Caledonia stopped in her tracks, hands settling on her hips.